Distinguished Professors & Nursery Beginnings!

About two weeks ago Logan and Blair’s former professor,    

"Botanizing" with Professors Singhakumara, Ashton, & Ediriweera

Dr. Mark Ashton, came for a visit. With him, he brought four prominent Sri Lankan professors of ecology and several students, as well as several local villagers who have been involved in their conservation projects and research over the years. Our new home bustled with activity and we set out into the forest to learn and get acquainted. We were given a crash course by Sri Lanka’s preeminent forest ecologists covering a huge variety of plants, local ecosytems and culture. We toured home gardens, climbed a few small mountains, and made a rapid descent down an overgrown forest path in a monsoon- like downpour.

               

Me & Logan atop Moulawela mountain in the Sinharaja Forest Reserve with a great rainforest view

 

This forest receives around 20 feet of rain annually!

A Soaked trio: Professors Ashton, Ediriweera, & Nimal Gunatilleke

Professor Ashton also gave us a clearer idea of the project he would like us to work on while we are here... we will collect and document information about the cultivation of home garden plant species, build and maintain a plant nursery, and design and install a home garden for the field station complete with labels and ethnobotanical information, so the site can be used for education about home garden techniques and implementation. Our garden will likely include many of the common fruit trees here like coconut, papaya, guava, avocado, and jack. We’ll also plant bananas, pineapples, herbs, peppers, and lots of pretty flowers, but that’s just mentioning a very few of the hundreds of plants that the villagers here cultivate. 

  

In order to be successful with this project, we have begun learning Sinhala (the local language), which if we become proficient, will give us the opportunity to directly get to know and talk to villagers about their lives and gardens. We will also be hiring a translator to help us gain more specific information, but after Peace Corps, Logan and I have realized that our own language acquisition is really key to integration and understanding the culture. Since my last post, we’ve learned many more words and have begun making sentences and asking basic questions. We are happy with our progress, but are also reminded of just how helpless and inept we can feel without common language. Even though we are waiting for our language to get better and for our translator to be available, we’ve managed to visit a couple of homes and tour their gardens. This got us started recognizing plants and learning their Sinhala names. Our neighbors in Pitakele have been wonderful hosts and patient teachers of both the Sinahala language and the uses of the plants they cultivate.

Meanwhile, we established a site for the nursery and have cleared the area. We had some lessons on how to use the local tools for clearning and chopping (a sort of hooked-machete and a hoe-like mattock) and went to work. We also took a trip to the “local” hardware store (~2 hours walking/busing to our closest town) and bought some tools and supplies to get started. Next up, we’ll help cut down a palm tree to make planks that will hold up our little seedlings and start meeting more villagers. Overall, we’re in awe of the beauty of this spectacular place, have adapted well to the climate, culture, and delicious food and are very excited to about the work ahead on our nursery and home garden.                                      

 

BEFORE: the area to be cleared for our nursery

AFTER: cleared nursery area (same perspective as above

Someratane and Logan clear brush with a hooked knife

Laura uses an "idella" to clear vegetation

Our First Week in Tropical Paradise!

We were treated to a spectacularly easy and comfortable arrival both into the country and to our home site! A professor that we will be working with while here picked us up at the airport at an unreasonable 1:00 am and transported us to a comfortable bed and breakfast. The next day, he brought us around Colombo, helping us get set up for our time in Sri Lanka, then drove us the 4-hour journey to our now home in a comfortable air conditioned van. We had the royal treatment and are so thankful for the easy transition.

 

The field station (our home) is very nicely positioned tucked onto a hillside overlooking the rainforest

 

 

 

Our home (the field station) is very comfortable with everything we need. It is tucked up on a hill at the end of an intermittently paved dirt road (also known as Pitakele village) amongst the ferns and orchids.  

40 minute walk to the tiny town of Kuduwa

We have a fantastic cook/caretaker who looks after the house and makes us three Sri Lankan meals everyday, usually including at least rice, vegetables, coconut and curry. 

We also had the good fortune of sharing the house for a few days with a Sri Lankan researcher who toured us around the Sinharaja Forest Reserve and helped us understand the culture a little better. He speaks English and also helped us get started learning Sinhala (the local language). I’ve now memorized the alphabet and am reading like a first grader (although I still don’t know what the words mean). I’m probably up to about 50 words so far.   

Logan, Laura, Champika, & Blair

Really though, the natural world is the main attraction here...

  While swinging in a hammock on our sizeable veranda, I daily witness many

tropical birds, monkeys, wild chickens, lizards, and of course a gorgeous panorama of tropical trees and plants. While we have had surprisingly less rain than we expected, this is also an excellent place to enjoy the sound and smell of clean water falling from the sky.

The weather and environment is much more comfortable than we expected as well. While it is of course humid, it seems less humid than DC in the summer... and the temperature mostly stays comfortable. The evening temperature is perfect for sleeping and the mosquitos are shockingly absent... In many tropical places, we would sweat without moving around or doing anything. Here, we are lucky that this is not the case; we get sweaty only when we are active!  

Although we have a shower at home, we usually choose to indulge in a cool swim at the head of our exceptionally clean river to rinse away the day’s heat. When the current is right, we stand under the waterfall for a massage as well!  

Our private swimming area complete with sandy beach and waterfalls!

Our lush panoramic view from the veranda, where birds and monkeys abound

This week, Logan and Blair’s former professor, who is a leader of the Sri Lankan organization hosting us, will arrive to spend a week better acquainting us with what our next 6-8 months will look like and the projects we’ll be working on.

Mama & baby purple-faced langurs visible from the veranda

We've seen two Vine Snakes (non-venomous) at Sinharaja

A Rat Snake (non-venomous) at Sinharaja high in a tree

Hibiscus Flowers are popular in home gardens

A tiny frog I spotted on a rock near the water

Water Lily is the National Flower of Sri Lanka 

These insect-eating pitcher plants grow here like weeds!

   

Ceylon jungle Fowl (ancestor of chickens) often visit us

Orchids grow all around our house

A very exciting year! Marriage... House... Sri Lanka!

On June 9th, 2016 at the Seattle Municipal Courthouse, Logan and I were officially joined in matrimony. We had a beautiful short ceremony with our own vows in the presence of one of my sisters and Logan's brother.

 

In order to include our families and our many friends all over the country and world without having them fly to meet us, we decided to ask that people who would like to contribute and help us celebrate this wonderful time in our lives instead make a physical page that we could include in a book I created.  We have received many beautiful and thoughtful pages already and are so thankful to all those that have contributed in this way and through our various celebrations and website. For those of you that would still like to send us a page, please submit your address via this link so we can send you a page to complete.  Once all the pages are collected, we'll bound the book with a ribbon on the left.

Our Wedding Book

 After the wedding, we got to work on building our little house... We bought the trailer in the spring and did a lot of research and some forestry work at that time. We really got started building in early August when we started the framing. From there, we spent all day everyday building! We often worked 10-12 hours a day because we knew we needed to get it weathered in and ready for the Pacific Northwest winter (rain). We were actually lucky and the rains barely affected us during the building process! After it all, we think she's ready - all the exterior wood is cedar with environmentally friendly wood preservatives called "Eco Wood Treatment" and "Seal Once." Our windows and door are all double-paned and reclaimed - all flashed in multiple ways to send water away from the house. The roof is galvanized steel with hidden fasteners. The roof is also vented, the whole house is caulked and we've got our wonderful friends looking after her :) The box on the tongue of the house is for storage. The interior has a sleeping loft and a storage loft built in, but although we have the interior space all planned out, that is all that has been done so far inside. She took her "first steps" last week less than a mile over some rough terrain with no problem at all! Now, she's got her wheels off and is sitting pretty for the winter... SO MANY Thanks to all the amazing people that have helped us along the way - we've had many people contribute materials, labor, moral support and tons of building expertise. We don't know how we would have done it without you!

Our completed tiny house exterior

The back side

The front side has the most windows, so we can point that side where we want solar gain (or not)!

Test firing our tiny wood stove made for sailboats! We're going to be perfectly toasty when we get this installed!

She came a LONG way in 2 months! There were SO many steps and SO much learning...

 

Even though we are very excited about finishing our tiny abode, we are taking a hiatus from building to experience another extraordinary adventure!

.... Here's where we'll be living for the next 8 months!

Sinharaja Forest Reserve in Sri Lanka

Why Sri Lanka - you may be wondering...

This summer, Logan and I (and a friend of ours - Blair) accepted post-graduate fellowship positions through Yale to get a couple of projects started at a research field station adjacent to the Sinharaja National Forest Reserve, where we will also be living. Their professor has been working there for over 30 years and has developed the station, the projects, and the funding. The projects will be to start a native tree arboretum and to research, design, and plant a traditional home garden demonstration. The idea of these projects is to have a site for researchers, politicians, etc. to visit that will help them better understand the plants and growing methods of the area. Everything will be labeled and there will be resources in English to help people learn. The home garden is interesting because people there have been growing them for thousands of years and it is important to try to glean and document the extensive knowledge that they have about what plants grow together, how to propagate them, what they are used for, etc. So, we don't know how much we'll get done, but I suspect we'll be able to build a nursery and collect and start propagating some plants, get the land cleared for planting, do interviews and work on design. The Sinharaja National Forest Reserve is a UNESCO World Heritage site - the last large virgin forest in the country. There is a ton of wildlife including monkeys, elephants, leopards, boar, lots of tropical birds and amphibians and only 25 households in the nearby village. The wildlife may actually outnumber the people here! ...not to mention the plants... There is no internet out there - we'll have to travel 45 minutes to use it in a nearby town... We'll have a phone, but it's funny to think we will be even more remote than when we were in Peace Corps! Still, I'll make sure to get some blog posts out from time to time when we do make it in to the 'big town.' We will have a particularly unique experience in Sri Lanka being so remote... Sri Lanka has a population of over 20 million people and is only as big as the state of West Virginia! So, as you can imagine, the city will be a very different environment. Additionally, the people where we will live will primarily be Sinhalese (the most populous ethnic group in Sri Lanka) and Buddhist. We are very excited to experience and be immersed in another new culture. We will attempt to learn as much Sinhala (language) as we can because although people in the city speak English, we have heard that it is very uncommon for the people of the village... and we leave Saturday!  It's been a whirlwind year for us, but while it's been busy - we couldn't be happier!

Sinharaja is the country's last large virgin tropical rainforest

Purple-faced Langur

Tropical birds abound!

We love hearing from everyone, so please send us messages and photos :) Love and hugs from Washington and soon from the other side of the world!

Life on a beautiful new course...

It's been a while, so here are a few updates from months gone by... 

For Christmas, Logan and I gifted his parents their very own cob oven! Due to the beautiful trees growing in the patio area where they wanted us to build it, we opted to make a "mini" lightweight oven (really it's just a little smaller than standard, but it does weigh quite a bit less). Although we haven't tried it, we built it to be moved if necessary.  The oven is built on a perlite insulated wooden box, which is sitting on top of a wooden table. The insulation for the oven is clay coated perlite. It has a clay plaster exterior and we have plans to add another layer of a colored plaster this summer... maybe an earthy orangish... Logan's parents built the roof structure and attached the tiles that we had brought them from Mexico to the wooden box. This summer, we will surely be experiencing some tasty pizzas from this festive new oven!

A movable mini earthen oven provides plenty of heat and space to cook delicious small pizzas

After the holidays, Logan and I decided to move to the Olympic Peninsula in western Washington. Lucky for us, our dear friends that we visit often were nearly finished building a cozy cottage on their property and were happy to have us start renting it and work on finishing touches. We couldn't ask for a better place to live, better neighbors, or (surprisingly) better weather! We have been enjoying every minute of living in this gorgeous new place.

We absolutely LOVE living in this beautiful little cottage in the rain shadow of Washington's majestic Olympic Mountains.

Here is a shot of our fantastic kitchen. If you want to see more of the inside, email me for additional photos.

Although our hiking adventures have slowed this winter, we did get a chance to visit the western part of the Peninsula when a good friend came to visit in March. We spent three days hiking along Rialto Beach, down a trail in the Hoh Rainforest among the big moss covered trees, and to see the site where the Elwha Dam was removed.

Friends on the beach find the most amazing toys :) Imagine that tree when it was alive!

The Pacific Ocean is full of life, power, and wonder... what a presence to behold.

The enchanted forest of the Hoh. These are the small newer trees :)

Further into the forest, we met the impressive grandmother trees.

Water rushes down the mountain as the rain continues on and on...

Elk herds roam freely all over this area. They make lovely music too!

The Elwha River rages again!

It's beautiful to see the Elwha reclaiming its natural course. 

Oh yeah, one more thing...

We're getting MARRIED!

no date set - sometime in the next couple of months at the courthouse...

I am planning some ways to have our friends participate though, so stay tuned and email me if you want more info.

the Final Stretch

After I last posted, Logan and I headed to Phoenix for what we thought would be just a short visit with his relatives, but ended up taking a different turn. During the hour we were having lunch with Logan's 89 year old great aunt, she fell and broke her hip! She didn't have other family in the area, so we stayed with her (and her kitty) through 2 weeks of many ups and downs including a stroke and finding her a new home. It was great to get to know her, but sad too, given the circumstances. She is out of the hospital, but is no longer able to remain fully independent.  Her friends are continuing to visit her at her new group home.

To keep to our schedule of getting back to Seattle to see Logan's uncle and family before Christmas, we headed out towards California and took a quick trip through Joshua Tree National Park.

Joshua trees are unusual looking, as are the rock formations, which are formed in place as softer rock is worn away.

The desert has a lonely and vast beauty. Closer inspection uncovers life that has adapted to survive in unique ways.

These cacti are called Teddybear Cholla... Hmm... I'm not sure about that name... 

Here is a close up of the Teddybear Cholla. Don't you just want to cuddle that?

From there, we visited many friends along the Pacific Coast as we traveled back to Seattle. It was great to reconnect with some of the folks that we met before we lived in New Haven and to see what they've been up to (which was a lot!). We enjoyed thinking about the possibility of relocating to many of these places and Logan also benefited from learning about forestry work in the various regions. That said, we still haven't made up our minds just yet where we will head next, but at least we have some better ideas... I'll post more on our next move in the new year. 

Taking the goats for a walk/forage in the southern California mountains 

Our friends took me and Logan to visit this gorgeous beach near Charleston, OR

 I hope your 2015 has also been full of joy, exploration, and happiness! Love and Peace to you all.