From the journal of Jenna Bless, May 31

May 31, 2017

Well, today the kids officially opened their area for all of the adults to see. Sean, Margaret, Elisabeth, Eric and I have been helping the kids take apart and put together their play structures. We found seven of them and we used four of them as they were at the corners and used the materials from the others to make bridges between them and walls around them. The whole thing kinda looks like a castle with towers or platforms at the corners. The area inside has maze like passages that lead to small open areas and in the center is a real tower that we are building with materials we found on patrol. The walls between the play structures will not keep the zombies out, but when we are done, this tower could be a safe place for the kids to shelter if the undead get inside the compound. And it might make a good lookout point in this part of the compound.

Life has been good for the last couple of weeks. We are all settling in and have found rooms to share. Carol started a school for the kids in the library. None of us older kids go right now, but we are old enough to work with the adults towards survival and read about subjects we want to learn about. The adults were getting taught things like gun safety, knife fighting and hand to hand combat, all from Williams who used to be a correctional officer. These subjects are way more important than math or science for us right now.
Dr Ben has been really busy lately. He spends most of his time in the lab we helped him put together working on analyzing Henry's blood to see if he can figure out why Henry survived while no one else has. If he's not in the lab, he's in the trailer that has become his medical suite with Mike. Dr Ben has taken lots of samples from Henry and is separating plasma from the rest of the blood he took from Henry and once it's done, he is going to give it to Mike, who is still sick but hanging on with all the antibiotics and other medicines to control his symptoms. I would not want to be in his condition, but I guess alive and suffering is better than dead and being a zombie.
Some of the others from our group have started working on making our walls and fences more secure with the construction supplies we brought with us. Gary, Steve and Daniel have scouted out all the construction sites in a five mile radius around our compound. There are sever al sites where huge new homes were in the process of being built as well as two commercial construction sites at local strip malls. These should all give us enough materials to do any improvements we feel might be needed.

The garden has been started and we are going to have a good variety of vegetables and even some fruit. Garden vegetables are all well and good, but we need more sustainable crops to keep us going. So next, we are going to have to plow up enough ground to plant some corn, oats, rice and wheat, if possible. We are all going to have to learn how to be farmers and we are so lucky that we have a trained chef who knows what to do with the grains once they are ready.
Amanda is really awesome when it comes to preparing food. She knows how to make all kinds of preserves, salsas, jams, jellies, pickled veggies and even smoked meats and cheeses. Of course, we would need to keep livestock if we wanted to have dairy and would have to hunt or slaughter our livestock for meat. But, with her knowledge, it opens up possibilities.
I am so happy now and wouldn't have believed it if someone had told me how it would be here right after I lost my family. Williams is staying. We have a good group that has people my age. We are in as safe a place as we can get now and the compound is getting better and better every day with all the improvements we are making.
Sean is cute, sweet and says he likes me, too. We get to spend lots of time around each other and are getting to know each other. Helping the kids build their fantasy play area threw us together every day for eight days. I know his favorite color, food, movie, band, and car. He knows the same for me and we both like the same actors and music groups. I am so lucky how this has all turned out and I am thankful for all the good stuff.

As a writer and artist, I appreciate any readers and their comments. Thank you for taking the time to read this blog. Please, come read the other blog I write for our artisan collective, Raven's Castle Creations, on our website at www.ravencastlecreations.com. It includes posts on art, the mythology of symbols we use in our art, history and more! Also, come see the art we produce in our Etsy store at etsy.com/shop/RavenCastleCreations. Follow us on Twitter at @ravencastleart and on Facebook at @ravencastlecreations.