Gurus, garden peas and cherry seeds

These days are kinda like walking through a house. Some rooms have lights on and I can see through the windows, find my way out. Some rooms are pitch black, shades drawn and it's a matter of throwing my arms out and pawing my way over fuzzy wallpaper until I feel my way to the doorknob.

After meeting today with Bob from Capital Grounds in Montpelier, where we get our coffee, I realized how very much I don't know about coffee. But it was a great meeting and I was able to start the process of wrapping my head around it.

I had to cut the meeting short so that I could start the hour and a half trek north into the islands to meet with my small business guru. It was my first time driving up that way and I was totally amazed by how very different it is from the rest of the state. The landscape, the vegetation, the architecture. As soon as I got off the exit, a huge storm moved in and the lake waters were almost surf-able. The long strands of the weeping willows, which we have so few of here in this area, were all blowing horizontal in the winds (gale force winds, mom!). I could barely hear Gillian Welch over the pounding on the roof of the truck.

Twenty miles later, the sun was shining and the windsheild spotless. Vermont.

I spent three hours with the guru. I went in there with a stack of forms and a lack of clarity about how the next two weeks needed to be played out. I was definately groping the fuzzy wallpaper in the dark room for a doorknob.

By the time I left, someone must have tweeked with the fuse box because power was restored, lights were back on and the shades were all pulled up.

He babysat me through that stack of forms, gave me a sweet, little tutorial on quarterly taxes, and went over the business plan. AGAIN. Thanks Pat!

Before I left our meeting, I learned that he has an organic garden and sells his produce, so on my way back out of the islands I stopped at a local store and picked up a bag of his certified organic peas, a bag of cherries and then spent the hour and a half ride home eating peas, listening to more Gillian Welch and spitting cherry seeds out my window.