What A Day in Yosemite!

What a day! Yosemite was perfect in every way: clear weather, comfortable temperature, very little traffic, easy parking, and a great group of cohousing hikers!
We all chipped in for a 15-passenger van that Bryan rented, and Chris and Jen drove their own van with their four girls. One of our 15 couldn’t go at the last minute, so we were a merry band of 20, ranging in age from 18 months to 70 years.
Bev swears she had the best time of all, holding Winnie the Poodle and watching us all, especially the teenagers, stuff ourselves into the van at 7:15 a.m., some awake, some not so. We picked up Mark at his house in Coarsegold and zipped on up to the park.
Rebecca and Bryan planned a great hike that was do-able for all: first to Sentinel Dome, then to Taft Point where we had lunch, and then a finale of Glacier Point—all in all, 5 miles on our boots. Violette had been to Yosemite just once before and had only a fleeting glimpse, so the views for her were spectactular. The young kids did great. Sammy, the 18 month old, was the envy of us all, especially at the end, with her dad, Chris, carrying her in a baby back pack.
We made it all back to Oakhurst for dinner at El Cid’s and then took Mark back to his home. Mark invited us in, and we topped off the day with a whee of a time on the zipline he and Marilyn have installed behind their house!
We headed home, arriving about 12 hours after we started, tired and happy—a great day for being with our neighbors!

Submitted by resident Pat Looney-Burman
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Neighborliness Expands the Circle

It's hard to know sometimes how the things we do touch each other - In cohousing, thank you and appreciation abounds. These two "Thank You's" one internally and one to the neighbor next door are good examples I think of cohousing feels different from other "drive into your garage, close the door" communties. Following the "thanks" you'll also find a story reprinted from the Tree Fresno group about a tree planting. Several Fresno Cohousing residents participated.

David Firth (custodian/sextan at the UU church next door) gave me excellent information on how to enlarge type on my iMac desk-top computer, how to send e-mails, make copies, send copies, and how to FAX using my Canon Printer/iMac Computor. Resident Pat M.

Thanks to George, Michael, and Neil, the crafts room got a coat of primer. Thanks to Katie Kelley and Joe Syverson, we now have the first coat of paint, and thanks to Katie and Joe for putting on the 2nd and final coat of paint. Now we can move on to phase 2. Also - Thanks to Sarah, Katie, Joe and Cyndee for helping to haul the recycling ($23 more for the teen room). Resident Bryan S.

Reprinted from the Tree Fresno site

Planting one tree every two minutes may not be record breaking but pretty darn fast. You've got to dig, pull, plant, fill, build a berm, pound the stake, then tie an eight.

That's exactly what our volunteers did on Saturday, June 12. They put 70 trees in the ground in just over two hours at the Fresno Metro Flood Control District stormwater basin on Chestnut, just north of Alluvial. On this beautiful morning, Basin neighbors and volunteers from all over came out to build sweat equity in the 18-acre site. Soon the top one-third of the basin will be seeded with turf and the result will be much like the beautiful basins at Maroa and Herndon, and at McKinley and Weber.

Trees and turf will be watered by an irrigation system which draws water from the basin itself or from the nearby Maupin Canal. Surface water irrigation systems save millions of gallons of potable water each year. This planting was the 12th partnership between Tree Fresno and the Fresno Metropolitan Flood Control District in a continuing effort to beautify stormwater basins throughout Clovis and Fresno.

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Would Your Neighbor Show Up With a Truck?

Last night, after attending Back to School Night at my son's school, my husband and I went out to our car and it wouldn't start. While waiting for what turned out to be the first of three tow trucks (the auto club dispatcher just didn't seem to believe that we were unable to put this hybrid car with electrical problems into neutral, nor could it be jumped, so we needed a tow truck with a dolly or with "go-jacks". Yes, this is much more than I wanted to know about car towing, too!), my husband called our neighbors Bev and Neil to see if they could be available to drive us home from the car repair place after the car was towed there. Well, they had an even better idea. They both showed up, Bev in her Prius, and Neil driving the small pickup truck that belongs to the community. Members of the community can use the truck to haul stuff, or for occasions like this when an extra vehicle is needed. Neil handed us the keys, both of them said some words of encouragement, and were on their way. We stood there in the twilight, feeling so grateful that we live in cohousing. Posted by resident Lynette Bassman

Editors Note: Neighbors helping neighbors is a wonderfully common theme in cohousing communities. The days where you popped in at a neighbors' house for a cup of sugar are almost only a memory. The exception seems to be the 150 or so cohousing communities across the United States where neighbors are still stopping by to share tomatoes, or beans, cook a meal or wash clothes for someone recovering from surgery or offer a kind word of encouragment. Cohousing is the future of community today.

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Hawaiian Marinara, Peach Upside Down... Fit for a Prince and Princess

What’s it like to cook dinner for 35 people? Well, actually it’s not bad—and to be truthful, it’s exhilarating and I’m coming down from a high! George and I cook twice a month (the community expectation is once a month, but we love to cook….), and I feel like this each time after we prepare a community dinner. Tonight we had spaghetti with a special marinara sauce (a recipe I got from a Japanese woman I worked with in Hawaii—go figure!), regular meat balls and veggie meat balls (thank you, Trader Joe’s, for both), tossed salad with veggies from the community garden, hot garlic bread, freshly grated parmesan cheese, and fresh peach upside down cake baked this afternoon by George.

Usually we do a lot of the prep work a day or two before the dinner, but this week our schedules were packed and we just couldn’t do it earlier. I did most of the grocery shopping yesterday on my way home from work and then started in on the sauce this morning around 8:00 a.m. I chopped the garlic and onions here in our house and then took that to the Common House to load into a big pot. Once I got the sauce put together and simmering, I set the tables while George picked the veggies from the garden and made another trip to the grocery store (eight more people had signed up after I had done the initial grocery run—fortunately, TJoe’s is just around the corner!). I showered and went to work, returned home around 3:30 and even got in a 45 minute nap before heading back to the Common House to finish the last minute things. George baked the cakes while I was napping so that they would still be warm when we served them.

Almost everything was ready when people poured in at 6:00 p.m. Michael helped George get the spaghetti in the serving dishes and tossed with olive oil while I ladled out the sauce. Without a shred of modesty, I say that it was all delicious! There were good conversations going on at each of the four tables. George plated the “late plates” for Joe and Heidi before Michael, Cindy, Jenny and Candy took over the kitchen for clean-up. I saw Chris wiping down the tables, even though he wasn’t on the clean-up crew.

People strolled on the walkway after the dinner, chatting. Jeff pulled Kara and Sean in Kara’s wagon, with the two of them looking like the Prince and Princess of La Querencia! The evening light started to fade, and Venus was lit up brightly up in the western sky. The squadrons of geese took off from the ponding basin (our own “Lake La Querencia,”) passing over our houses, with another squadron coming in for a landing. What a sight!

George and I went down to the pool about 8:15 to join a smaller group of residents, ranging in age from 15 months to 81 years old! Four year old Tessa wanted George and me to stand in the pool “right there” so she could swim over to us. Addie urged George to do an underwater flip—and he did! I tried it, too—and couldn’t!

So—that was my day in cohousing—and I know there are more to come! I can’t imagine living anywhere else.

Written by resident Pat Looney Burman
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Thanksgiving in the neighborhood

Thanksgiving at Fresno Cohousing is a community and family event. Imagine a day with your releatives and about 30 new friends. About 56 people attend, counting kids. Out of town relatives for residents came from Pennsylvania, Washington state, San Jose and Morgan Hill, as well as a returning college student from Cal Poly and local
relatives and guests. More turkeys, than needed were purchased - but where is the down side to that? We'll enjoy cold turkey sandwiches on white squishy bread with gobs of mayonnaise, soups and other yummies for several days.

Joe had a soulmate with his 11 year old cousin here. Both boys alternated between swimming in the very cold pool and jumping in the hot tub. The weather was balmy enough for several tables to be set up outside on the patio for al fresco dining. Several games of Wii, some puppy mischief (2 dogs left at home during the day managed to get into the pantry & dust the house with flour and rice - payback for being left out of the festivites I suppose) & great conversation made this Thanksgiving another reason to be thankful for the opportunity to live in LaQ.

Pat

Dog Walking

Pat, my wife, and I enjoy walking in the morning. Shortly after we moved into La Querencia, we began taking two of our neighbor’s dogs along with us. Tristan and Drake are 80 lb Boxers who love to walk and certainly improve the workout we get with their energy.

A month or so after Tristan and Drake joined us, we invited another pair of neighbor dogs, Freddie and Winnie along. Freddie is now 14, of indeterminate ancestry, and weighs about 15 lbs. “Winnie The Poodle” is a 4 lb. Toy Poodle and is the princess of the pack.

We have most recently been joined by Noah, a hyperactive rescue dog about 2 years old; 20 lbs of total energy!

We started doing our walks in some of the nearby Clovis Trail System, a great network of bike, walking and running trails that run close by. In order to maximize our time on the trails and not on the street, we pack all the dogs into our Prius and drive about half a mile to the trail. Tristan and Drake and in back (although Tristan wants to get his face into the windshield and navigate!). As we encounter other others on the trail, we find that they are often incredulous that none of these 5 dogs are ours, and that we are not paid dog-walkers. It is one of our favorite “Cohousing Moments.”

Solar Panels Go Live

On January 7, 2009, the La Querencia Cohousing Community switched on 29 photovoltiac (PV) solar arrays. This is the first multifamily residential project in Fresno to go 100% solar. All 28 of the condominium residences, plus the common house each have a solar PV array. The combined power of these 29 systems is 44 kilowatts, which results in an annual reduction of 65,455 pounds of CO2.

In addition to substantial savings on their electrical bills, each residence has qualified for a rebate, through the California Energy Commission, of $3100. In addition, homes purchased before December 31, 2009 are eligible for a Federal tax credit of about $3000. The PV systems were supplied and installed by Unlimited Energy, of Fresno.

La Querencia, located on Alluvial Ave just east of Chestnut Ave calls itself “the Greenest Neighborhood in Fresno,” and for good reason. The project was the first multifamily residential project to qualify for, and receive, an incentive award from the City of Fresno under its “Fresno Green” program. This was based not just on the plans for solar, but for the overall energy efficiency, the use of sustainable building materials, reductions in water use with efficient irrigation and low use fixtures, wide roof overhangs for shading and many other “green” features. In 2008, La Querencia was awarded the Gold level by the Fresno Business Journal for the “Best Green Project.”

For more information on the project go to http://www.fresnocohousing.org/

Moving is not fun

We haven't moved for 20 years. Now, we are sorting, giving away and packing "stuff" so we can move to our new La Querencia home. We called and Disabled American Vets came with a big truck and picked up boxes and boxes full of our former stuff a week or more ago. Very liberating. And we do hope others come across that stuff (books, clothes, knick knacks) at the thrift stores and find it useful, or beautiful, or funny, or thought provoking. We bought a lot of it, especially books, at thrift stores and used bookstores, over the years ourselves. Now we are trying to do as our friend Bev wisely says, take only what we love. Easier heard than done. However, we are looking forward to a less cluttered, more full life. Dichotomy? Not at all. Less clutter of stuff, more full of living.

Six weeks in Cohousng

Where is the time going??? My body feels like it's still last January, but the calendar tells me that it's Nov. 7 and that we moved into our new cohousing community exactly six weeks ago today. You'd never know it to look at all the boxes and piles around the floor...our neighbors put us to shame! Last night, though, I realized that being a procrastinator has its benefits: we've had six weeks for reality testing to truly know how much we really don't need and how much we can do with far less than what we had before. I'm speaking primarily of kitchenware. We moved here from the World's Greatest Kitchen, one I vowed never to leave...but here we are, and I really like the new one! The peninsula is actually larger than the island in the old house. The new one is a one-person kitchen, rather than the two-person space of before, but I can work on one side of the peninsula with George on the other, and it all works out.

I have never slept so well as I do now in our new house--and that's been every night! The cats are missing the fireplace, I think, but now they spend more time on the bed with us at night. We couldn't find Nina last night when we went to bed. She's a creature of habit, but last night she broke her mold and disappeared to places unknown. She has seldom ventured outside for more than 30 seconds, so I had no doubt that she was still in the house--but I looked everwhere--and no Nina. George turned over in bed around 5:00 a.m., and there she was, in her usual place next to me on the bed, in her usual sleep--totally unconcerned that she had added another gray hair to my head!