For the Birds

May14

When you choose to feed wild birds you choose a relationship. Like any relationship, it requires a commitment and certain inviolable responsibilities. Like a relationship with a cat, though, the responsibilities are largely one-sided. You commit to regularly scheduled feedings, keeping food and water bowls clean, and to not leaving them in the lurch. They provide you with beauty and delight.

An alert went out on Facebook last week from a wildlife rehab specialist in Montrose, which two friends forwarded to me from different community message boards. They were understandably alarmed and immediately took down their feeders. Here’s what it said:

“Songbird illness alert:  Mycoplasmal Conjunctivitis has been detected in a Red finch near Montrose. This bacterial infection is highly contagious and spreads at hummer feeders, seed birdfeeders, and bird baths. Disease in birds spreads far and wide quickly, so this applies to our region. Please take down your feeders and water features for wildlife asap. The infection causes blindness and is considered painful. The birds starve to death because they cannot see to find food. Infected birds spread it to their young in the nest and to their mate. The young die of starvation since their parents can’t see to find food. Birds do not need to be fed. Even if you disinfect the feeder, put it back out and an infected bird shows up–the disease continues to spread. Anytime creatures feed in the same area, bodily fluids of saliva, feces, urine and blood build up—making it easy for disease to spread. There is more information online. Please, for the health of the songbirds, take down your feeders! This info from Brenda Miller, Roubideau Rim Wildlife Rescue, 501c3  email:  rrwildliferehab@gmail.com  970-209-5946.”

Like my human friends, I don’t want to unwittingly cause my precious songbird friends suffering and death. I called Brenda, since she’d made her number public, to ask for more information: crucially, what might be the range and speed of possible contagion? I live about 25 miles from the location of the sick bird as the healthy bird flies, across the gaping chasm of Black Canyon. Brenda was generous with time and information, and we had a wonderful conversation about experiences with wildlife and shared values, and I took her words to heart. She advocates never feeding wild birds, for reasons that include the strict necessity of keeping bird feeders (and birdbaths) and the ground around them clean enough to remain pathogen-free; risks to pets who might eat the seed under feeders or drink from a birdbath; the allure to rodents, raccoons, and skunks, and the possibility of those animals drawing larger predators into the yard; and possible chemical residue on commercial seeds that could harm birds. While she recognizes that there are farmers whose livelihoods depend on the seed they grow, and merchants who rely on selling bird food, she’s also seen some horrific things as a rehabber and prioritizes the birds. I expressed my gratitude for the work she’s done for decades, and for the time she took to talk with me; and, I told her I’d need to think about it. Partly because I have 25 pounds of bird seed, and partly because of my committed relationship, and partly because I still had questions.

We also talked about bird strikes. Millions of birds (up to a billion) die each year in this country from smashing into windows, many of them in cities with glass buildings but as I’ve shared here, more than enough in our rural windows as well. This year I applied decals on my main windows. They’re unobtrusive: after a few minutes getting acclimated to them I barely see them anymore. Birds see something more vibrant.

I took my questions to Dr. David Inouye, Principal Investigator at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory. He pays a lot of attention to pollinators, hummingbirds, and wildlife in general. I asked him first about Brenda’s alert and advice. He said he’s leaving his feeders up because of the distance from the sick bird, and also because he’s doing banding research. He lives another 20 miles farther from Montrose, and said that in our valley there’s currently no widespread occurrence of conjunctivitis, and unless we start to see or hear of it more locally he thinks it’s safe to keep feeders up. Of course, if you see a sick or dead bird in your yard you should immediately take down the feeders, and I’ll add call Parks and Wildlife to report it.

As far as chemical compromise of seed, he suggested that for short-lived species like songbirds the risk is minimal even if there are trace pesticide or herbicides because the birds’ natural lifespan wouldn’t give that kind of toxin time to build to a dangerous level. I asked him about an admonition I’d read not to put pet fur and some other fibers out for birds to use to nest, and he allayed my concerns on all of them, but did advise that if I wanted to put short yarn snippets out they should be natural fibers that will break down, not synthetics.

He concurred that it’s good practice to wash feeders and birdbaths, and thought that what I’m doing cleaning them thoroughly with water every few weeks and letting them sun dry is sufficient. He approved my once or twice daily hard rinse of the copper bird bath as well. As my retired zoo manager friend reminded me the other day, “If you wouldn’t eat or drink from it…” Which brings us to hummingbird feeders. This post is getting long so I’ll save David’s hummingbird feeding protocol for the next post, but let the last word be this: KEEP THEM SPARKLING CLEAN!

I’m grateful to be taking my houseplants outside again, acclimating them to gradually more sunshine. This bonsai jasmine accompanies me out for morning coffee, and I’m delighted to see native bees enjoying its nectar or pollen as much as I enjoy its scent. And now for something completely different:

Yup, that’s a mammogram. I had to go back this week, after a routine screening ten days earlier, to get a diagnostic mammogram and ultrasound to determine whether a ‘nodule’ noted in the screening warranted further intervention. I’m grateful that mindfulness has helped me grow in acceptance and resilience so that I didn’t waste all of ten days worrying about what it would reveal. I ran through some scenarios in my imagination: lumpectomy, needle biopsy (also, when you do it to fish I happen to know, ‘punch biopsy’ which is what it feels like), double mastectomy, languishing in my dying days in my living room with loving friends helping me along… But, and this is important, I imagined these scenarios with equanimity, not with terror and stress. And more importantly, I actually didn’t waste time worrying. I savored the days, the moments, and while there was a lot going on inside me, worry and fear did not rule my life.

Nevertheless, I was profoundly grateful when Dr. F came into the ultrasound room and the first words he uttered were, “I don’t see anything concerning…,” after he had previewed the second mammogram and the ultrasound that G had just done. He showed me a little black circle and said he thought it was probably a cyst but was too small to tell, and invited me back for another ultrasound in six months. I accepted his invitation. Though I had pouted about having to drive down to Delta for the process, I was so grateful for the hospital and for everyone I encountered. N in admissions had some inspiring signs in her cubicle, and after she got me checked in she said intently, and with unnecessary kindness, “You’re going to be ok. Everything will be okay. Think positive!” I thanked her, and I felt positive, or at least equanimous. The tech who did the mammo could not have been more gentle or kind, wrapping me in a warm blanket as I waited for word if I needed the ultrasound. As G gently rolled the wand over the warmed jelly on my breast, we talked about the changes in technology in the forty years he’s been doing that job. Everyone was so pleasant and kind. I feel truly fortunate for the healthcare in our valley, and grateful for Medicare despite the complications around its cost.

I’m grateful to be eating meals outside again! I’m grateful for fresh-picked free-range asparagus shared by Neighbor Mary, as I nibble my way through a large bag. This week’s winning cheese sandwich is mayo, mustard, Wauwatosa seasoning, cheddar, garden lettuce, and seared asparagus spears drizzled with balsamic vinegar.

Lunch outside under the red umbrella!

I’m grateful to Cousin Melinda for sharing with me this delightful animation honoring David Attenborough on the occasion of his 100th birthday.

Obligatory Wren portrait, in last light last night.

Learnin’ All Over Again

May9
An aerial photo of the August 10, 2025, landslide and the aftermath from the tsunami it triggered in Tracy Arm taken during a U.S. Geological Survey field reconnaissance overflight on August 13, 2025. John Lyons/U.S. Geological Survey; lifted from Scientific American daily newsletter

I am hurting all the time. Sometimes it spills over but mostly I keep it inside. I’m learning to hold it with tenderness and compassion instead of resist it with criticism, judgement, and subjugation; to shine a gentle light on it and invite the possibility of healing. It’s possible that if I had compartmentalized this hurt (if I even could have) half my life ago and made different choices, I would have become a ‘success’ of the kind the Colonel expected, my mother hoped for, society defines, with some great career as a writer or a scientist or even a world-renowned mindfulness teacher. But there are times I think that if I hadn’t landed here, in this little patch of forest where I found the leading edge of peace, that I might have killed myself by now.

The face of the same glacier in July, 2001, shot from a Zodiac tour on a Nature Conservancy Alaska coast cruise with my mother.

Don’t worry. I never would have back then, if only for the suffering it would have caused others. And I never would now (except possibly in a case of M.A.I.D.) because I’m too curious to see what happens next. And even when I touch the depths of despair and self-loathing I’m capable of, I remain grateful for this life, for waking up alive each day in this world whose natural beauty exceeds its human depravity. And there are enough people around me who embody the basic goodness the Shambala tradition posits, and I know that some of them love me. But I do understand now why people end their lives, in a way that I never did in younger years. There but for the grace of God… I have no more judgement; I have compassion.

A large calving we were privileged to witness: the brighter section in the center is the ice breaking away, and the dark wedge in front of it is the beginning of the wave it created.

This isn’t a treatise on suicide though maybe there will be one someday; this is simply an acknowledgment that I empathize with what it is to hurt deeply inside where no one else ever sees it. And I feel how difficult it is to show it to anyone, to clamber out of the shame spiral, brave the inner critic, and admit to profound, seemingly inexplicable, existential suffering. There’s an unfortunate and unrealistic stigma to vulnerability. For the few hundred people who read this who don’t know me, it’s no risk to share my struggle. But considering the students and friends I live among daily who may read this, and the human propensity to judge, I’m sticking my neck out to reveal that sometimes I go to such dark places inside.

I’m grateful to see the apricot tree struggling back to green life. These tender leaves suffered setback from the hard freeze the other night but seem to have pulled through. A couple more leaf tips have poked through the bark since I took this yesterday.

Sometimes. Most of the time I’m functional, content, engaged, in fact now more than ever thanks to meditation and mindfulness practice. I suffer less than I used to. But just touch the right blade to my surface and the darkness wells up. Do I have mental illness? Is my brain different than “normal”? Or is this normal? Am I simply a highly sensitive person in a world that grows more confusing by the hour? I’m grateful that I’ve always had the resources, financial, familial, social, and/or internal, to find a way out of the pit when I tip into it. As Calamity Jane said, “Every day takes learnin’ all over again how to fuckin’ live.”

Life’s simple pleasures: vanilla bean ice cream sandwiched between two big fat cookies.

I wrote about this once years before there was a blog, and I was shut down by an editor whose argument seemed to be that if I wasn’t serious about killing myself it was insensitive to say that I could understand it. That response seems like part of the societal problem, to me. I’ve not written or spoken of it since, having been told by an authority figure that, essentially, I had no right to write about it. But now, in the blogosphere, mental health is no longer taboo, as exemplified in the writings of a brave new friend. Also now, for me there’s only the internal editor, and she’s given me permission to share my compassion toward myself and others.

“O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!” A frog nest in May! I discovered the first one yesterday, and another today. How many frogs do you see keeping watch?

“For people who practice it’s not about eradicating the darkness,” a dear friend concurred today. It’s about how you relate to it. From the venerable Thich Nhat Hahn to my beloved Catherine Ingram, all dharma teachers advocate allowing the full range of human emotions: the ten thousand sorrows along with the ten thousand joys. Skillful living is about holding them all with tenderness, loosely, not clinging to the joys and not rejecting the sorrows. It’s about opening your heart to your self as well as to others.

For whatever reasons, Americans seem particularly prone to suffer low self-esteem. The Dalai Lama famously couldn’t comprehend the question when a student asked, “Your Holiness, what do you think about self-hatred?” It’s a vicious circle that requires steely intention to step outside of. And it requires education, exposure to opportunity to access the knowledge that there’s another way to think. Self-compassion is one reason I turned to gratitude practice five years ago, and committed wholeheartedly to mindfulness practice the year before that after dancing around it for a couple decades.

Sharon Salzburg writes, “Seeking to punish ourselves endlessly will leave us exhausted and demoralized. Caring about ourselves allows us to renew our efforts and continue on. This is the love that the Dalai Lama had tried to explain to me during our talk about self-hatred many years ago.” These are great reminders that it’s important to care about yourself, to care for yourself: your body, heart, and mind, your relationships, your own suffering. It’s said that in order to truly love another you need first to love yourself; in order to be fully compassionate with others you need first to be compassionate with yourself. I can’t argue. These are some more reasons I’ve committed to these spiritual practices, so that I can one day truly, deeply love this living being, this unique incarnation of energy I call ‘myself.’

I’m grateful for the gift of fresh duck eggs today, and for the visitor who brought them! I soft boiled one for dinner with leftover veggie soup. Five minutes was just perfect, and it was wonderful: a greater yolk to white ratio than a chicken egg.

When I let slip to a friend the other day that I, too, suffer from the kind of emotional distress she was sharing, she was surprised. “Really?!” she said, “I think of you as having it all together.” Whatever that means. Nope. I don’t have it all together but I turn my attention every day to practices which help me hold it mostly together most of the time, and that enables me to experience moments of joy, days of genuine happiness, weeks, even months at a time of contentment. I know objectively that I am fortunate in this world where billions of humans lack the animal necessities of food, water, shelter, and space; where billions of humans are unable to read, lack education, lack basic healthcare. Anger arises when I consider that more Americans than ever are falling into those lacks due to the billionaires’ takeover of our country.

Click to play. A fluke hummingbird frenzy the other day… more about that next post.

I know some people who have it all together, who seem to lack inner demons–but not very many. Getting through a day without despair must come easier for those with a higher genetic set point for happiness, for those who were raised by skillful parents, or those who’ve found the right therapy, or those with a trajectory of purely serendipitous conditions shaping their lives, or for those who just don’t think or care much beyond their own desires. But just as the leopard can’t change her spots, I can’t flip a switch and be someone I’m not. I can only learn and grow moment by moment, experience by reflection, day by day. I’m grateful that the life I inherited from my ancestors and the choices I made as I’ve muddled through it thus far have brought me to exactly where I am today.

No-Self

May5

I’m grateful for meditations at the pond, with the frog chorus building to a crescendo and then resting, the blackbirds calling, mountain bluebirds and nuthatches coming to the edge to drink, spring winds rising and falling, sun or shade as needed on one side or the other depending on the time of day.

I’m grateful for getting onion sets planted before a couple of good rains; red, yellow, and white onions from Afton’s, and a round container of shallots.

I’m grateful for golden mashed potatoes with buttermilk and chrysanthemum salt; and more potatoes the next day sautéed with oyster mushrooms and onions, half hot the first night with a soft-boiled egg, and half cold in a salad the next day.

I’m grateful for signs of life on the poor apricot tree. Though the leaves are dessicated and brown, there are tiny tender green shoots beginning below them. Fingers crossed they survive tomorrow night’s hard freeze.

I’m grateful for the simplest sandwich I’d never thought of before: peanut butter and jelly with mayo and potato chips. So delicious! I grew up on PB&J and learned young to stuff my chips inside for a fun crunch; and later the Colonel persuaded me to try peanut butter and mayo on a cracker. After my initial aversion to the idea of it, I found it delicious. But somehow I’d never tried them all together.

I’m grateful today for an opportunity to explore the Buddhist concept of no-self, which in its simplest interpretation means recognizing the influence of ego and releasing it. A miscommunication in the morning left me with hurt feelings, but once I’d expressed that in a reasonably mature way I was able to let the emotions move through pretty quickly. Instead of ruminating over it all day, I used the incident to practice letting go.

I quickly let go of attachment to outcome, and I eventually let go of the story. Emotions don’t last more than a couple of minutes, but like many I tend to repeat the story over and over thus regenerating the emotions again and again. I’m finally learning to say “Oh well!” and really mean it. It’s no big deal. I still felt the upheaval of disappointment like an echo in the background of the rest of my day, but I didn’t participate in it. Instead, I dug deeper into the dharma and nurtured my better qualities.

This is the actual Big Deal. I was able to find gratitude for the opportunity to learn and grow from an unpleasant event. I was able to use an emotional challenge to deepen my understanding of liberation through no-self; to see clearly how suffering is generated by an unruly mind; and to recognize and release some of my habitual thought patterns more quickly than ever before. I’m grateful for the teachings, the teachers, and my own dedication to the practice.

I’m grateful, too, for the cheese sandwich with chicken salad flavored with Penzeys Wauwatosa Village seasoning.

May Day

May1

Despite the crazy spring weather, the yuccas promise to bloom this summer. These stalks grow at an amazing rate, it will be fun to watch them climb and open.

I found myself with some extra buttermilk, which I bought for maybe the second time ever, for a recipe, and used only a little. So I searched “buttermilk waffles,” and saw there was such a thing, but ended up using a different recipe with sourdough discard, but subbed buttermilk for the milk in the recipe. As usual I made the whole recipe and now have some in the freezer for later. So simple, so delicious! Dipping in cinnamon sugar seemed over the top, but I tried it anyway–and it was over the top, but what a great idea if you don’t have all the other trimmings: organic maple syrup, blueberries, and Greek yogurt.

The May Day rallies appear to have gone pretty well today, though as usual there’s not much coverage from mainstream US media. I did work, but I work from home helping people cultivate equanimity and prosocial emotions, so that was my protest action. No spending money for me! A dear friend did though (I’m not naming names!) but she had not known about the economic blackout. She promised to pay cash when I scolded her, rather than support big banks with a credit card, and she was supporting a local small business.

As I was baking these marvelous cookies I listened to Joyce Vance, Norm Eisen, and April Ryan, recorded on Substack yesterday. A lingering moment of delight, swapping out half the chocolate chips for dark chocolate M&Ms, basking in sweet color and also in the camaraderie, dedication to justice, and joie de vivre of three of our most influential resistance leaders. If you watch this you cannot help but feel uplifted by their energy, and breathe in a little of their hope.

Between morning leading meditation and afternoon editing my podcast, we took a lovely windy walk to the canyon. The milk vetch (Astragalus) is blooming, the wind was blowing, and a storm thundered over the mountains. I’m grateful for this life, for this wild place, and for meaningful conversations the past few days with old and new friends.

Savoring Small Things

Apr29

I’m enjoying the new NYT game Crossplay. I was never a Scrabble fan for a few reasons, which playing at my own pace with a perfectly matched computer resolves. I love playing with words, and I usually beat it on the medium level. However, I have to consider the impact of playing with AI on the environment, and that makes me sad. I’m grateful I could persuade my Connections buddy, who had a similar aversion to Scrabble, to play me online. It’s a slow game, we each make roughly one play a day, but we’re well matched, and I don’t feel aggressively competitive with her as I do with the computer.

A forgotten cheese sandwich from last week: that gift bacon, and gift calamondin jam, plus mayo, mustard, garden lettuce, Bad Dog fried egg, and havarti on the last square of homemade focaccia.

May Day! May Day! May Day has historically been a day of union and immigrant support, at least in recent US history, and this Friday will be the Mother of All May Days: ‘No school, no work, no shopping.’ We can hope an economic blackout will wake up another layer of complacent Americans to the urgent threat to our country, indeed to the entire planet. Stay home or join a community action to resist the regime, and whatever you do don’t spend any money.

I thought this was funny in the window at intake admin at the hospital when I went for a routine mammogram last week, but in this moment I can’t help but relate it to the lunatic in the White House. Whatever the motivation for the shooting at the Correspondents’ Dinner, no matter; I was deeply disappointed not to get insight from the Great OZ into the mind of the madman, and I hoped that the mentalist might deliver a message that scared some iota of sense or perspective into him. “He’s tainted so much,” a friend said yesterday, but I heard “He’s taken so much.” Either way. When you look back at the relentless string of assaults on the constitution, the rule of law, the American people in general and marginalized people in particular, other sovereign nations, and the life blood of the planet, it becomes more unfathomable every day that Congress, the governors, somebody, doesn’t just MAKE IT STOP FFS! I saw that phrase on an ex-boyfriend’s Facebook post the other day, and marveled at how decades and miles apart we are of the exact same mind. We the people have got to be the ones to make it stop.

I stopped in at Afton’s on the way home from the mammogram to pick up a few more plants, and stepped into the rose tent simply to breathe the heavenly air for a few minutes, and to feast my eyes on beauty.

Afternoon at the pond, the frogs are softly singing… please play the recording below

Redwing Blackbirds

Apr26

This piñon jay braved the snow last weekend and was surely grateful for the new ‘premium’ feed with a higher proportion of sunflower seeds. In more freeze news from The Colorado Sun about that devastating night, many orchards of the famous Palisade peaches squeaked through with some damage, but it appears that “Most of Delta County had 100% crop loss on all fruits….” That’s our county, our precious organic fruit capital of Colorado.

Redwing blackbirds take flight as Wren interrupts their feeding on one of her routine patrols.

I promised a story about a black bird, but first I want to share this philosophical essay by an anthropologist friend about her own black bird story. I’ve been reading it in small bites, as it’s dense and loaded with meaningful inquiry. I’m personally fascinated with Karen’s exploration of “the self,” which touches on so much of my own mindfulness and Buddhism studies. Then came the darling and ultimately heartbreaking story of Hercules, a starling she and her family raised one summer. I cried. This is followed by a deep dive into linguistics in several more sections covering umwelt, metaphor, naming, deiectics, and a few other concepts exploring the nature of reality for humans and other living beings. Like Hercules, for example. What I love about this essay is how thoroughly it represents my fascinating friend. She and her husband have ranched in this valley their entire lives, and he’s a retired veterinarian: non-human animals have been their constant companions since they were born. If anyone can figure out how non-humans experience life, my money’s on them.

Between last weekend’s freezing weather and this weekend’s rainy chill, I met a few goals in the garden. Wren is exhausted after supervising the planting of the last six perennials in amongst irises in the Tortoise Border. These great cages move around as necessary, and here they’ll keep deer from ripping the tender new plants out of the ground, and give the transplants a chance to root well and grow strong this year before being left to their own devices next year.

Some notable lunches this week have been salads with homegrown perennial lettuce and feral arugula, dressed with chopped pecans, cheese, poison fish, and homemade honey mustard dressing.

On Thursday I’d had enough of this lingering earache so I called our local audiologist. She insisted I come in right away so she could do an impedance, measuring pressure in my middle ear to determine if there was an inner ear infection. There wasn’t, which was a relief, so investigation continues. Meanwhile, I was profoundly grateful that she rushed me in, and I thought on the beautiful drive over how grateful I am for this community treasure. She lives in a pastoral vineyard on the edge of the next town, with her office downstairs. There was a lot of traffic on the twenty-mile drive, about twenty cars altogether both directions. It’s a pleasure to drive there, and to park in the shade of an old tree, and be treated like a friend. She always takes time to explain things, and in this case recommended that I do the Valsalva maneuver each morning to make sure there was no pressure buildup in the middle ear. That, it turns out, is pinching your nose shut and blowing as you would to equalize pressure driving over a mountain or in an airplane. Turns out it can also quickly restore an abnormal heart rhythm, but not always. You probably have to blow harder for that than she showed me, and it can backfire, so don’t play around with it.

Yesterday Wren helped me plant potatoes. I’ve been moving these feral violas as I need the space in the garden beds, planting them randomly in borders or patio pots. I’m grateful they’ve self-sown so profusely, just like the lettuce. Then I sliced the end off a fresh loaf of sourdough and enjoyed a deconstructed cheese sandwich for lunch. Later we all took a nice long ramble through the woods with our imaginary infrared lens. It was Wren’s Arrival Anniversary, and we celebrated her being here at Mirador for four years!

And now, at last the black bird story. It’s short, but it cracks me up to even think about it. I told it to Ellie the other day and we both enjoyed a good long belly laugh about it, just as I did when Neighbor Fred told me, in his consummate, wry style. We have a lot of redwing blackbirds in our yards these days, a cacophony of them as Mary says. When Fred came to prune the apricot we stood and watched them at the feeder for a few minutes. “We had a friend from Australia visiting once,” he said, “who was real interested in the birds here. We were sitting outside and he said ‘What’s that black bird over there with the red wings?’” We both started laughing. The punchline says itself.

And then today, it rained off and on all day. It was glorious. There might even be mud tomorrow. I was glad I chanced to look out the window in a momentary break in the western clouds to catch a rainbow cast over the canyon.

Yesterday’s quote from the Waking Up app

While there’s plenty to worry about, I was grateful to spend a weekend immersed in home and yard maintenance, restorative relaxation and meaningful connection. Instead of pointless anxiety. Tomorrow, I’ll step up again and start taking action, while still cultivating equanimity and perspective. Wishing the same for you. We’re in this together.

Still Grieving After All These Years

Apr23
We’ve several times walked past the juniper where the squirrel was hiding the other day without sight nor sound of it, but I did want to show the context. I held the camera over the hollow where the dead snag comes forward out of the twisted trunk. Amazingly, this tree, hundreds of years old, is still alive.

I’m assured by the Worms that the apricot will probably survive the freeze. It never occurred to me that it would suffer in last weekend’s cold snap, because it was thoroughly leafed out. I called in to As the Worm Turns this evening, and learned that apricot trees all over the valley suffered the same fate. All the leaves are dead. Above, I noticed they were drooping the second day AF (after freeze); below, yesterday, beyond drooping they are drying up, along with the embryonic fruits. Lance and Lulu have never seen this before either. We all moved here roughly thirty years ago plus or minus. An orchardist called in right after I did, and reported that they lost everything, peaches, grapes, you name it. Everyone is optimistic, though, that the trees themselves will survive, and we’ll know more later if they’ll leaf out again this year.

It was time to strain the lilac blossoms from the sugar on Sunday, but they did not want to sieve. They must have been too damp when I mixed them in, and they weren’t pretty so I didn’t want to keep them in with the sugar, so… I brought my science mind in and dumped the whole jar into a pot with half as much water. The blossoms floated to the top, I skimmed them off, and boiled until…

Voila! Lilac syrup! It’s as thick as honey, I could have taken it off sooner, and it is just as sweet as honey, too.

My dear friend and teacher Cindy would have turned my age tomorrow had she not died almost two years ago. She left behind one bereft daughter, some precious friends, and many grateful and grieving students. As I usually do I sublimated my grief about her illness and death until it started to surface late last year. I find myself thinking of her more often, her insights, lessons, and example informing my work and life more consciously than I acknowledged at first. Everyone has their own way of grieving, and even my own is unique to each loss, but in general I tend to close down around it for awhile and then it seeps out over time. I do a lot better with it now than I did twenty years ago during my Decade of Loss during which my mother died.

It’s been 22 years since she lived her last spring. Really, time flies whether you’re having fun or not. Even before she was sick, I cherished this picture of her. It’s an old print that suffered water damage, which I scanned and optimized. She was younger then than I am now. She and her sister and their old high school friend Lucy (with husbands tagging along) had met for a long weekend reunion at some woodsy resort in West Virginia. Here she’s reclining on the bank of a creek with her cocktail, looking as happy and relaxed as I’ve ever seen her. I thought of her as I grieved Cindy this week, and felt compassion for her daughter who was so much younger than I when she lost her mother. All these feelings swirled up as I was reading this article that came in The Atlantic email yesterday, “On Losing a Daughter,” which brought to mind a dear friend whose daughter died just over a year ago, leaving three young children. I can’t imagine a worse grief for a parent, except I can and it’s one reason I chose not to have children. Just in case. Reading of this woman’s singular grief, thinking of my friend who lost her daughter, imagining Cindy’s daughter’s emotions as her mom’s birthday approaches, my own grief for my mother surged. All the grief of mothers and daughters swelled and swirled together in me. And the recognition that this little whirlpool of these particular mothers and daughters is a drop in the bucket of global grief, mothers and daughters just one current in the vast, bottomless ocean of human griefs.

Michael and me as Carmen y Miguel, c. 2000

Anniversaries can be hard, especially birthdays and death days. The grief cascade actually started last week when John’s birthday came around and I thought about him a lot, missing him, missing Boyz Lunch, and feeling for his surviving partner. And then the anniversary of Todd’s death just a year ago came a few days later, and my heart was with his surviving partner. And then out of nowhere came a wave of grief for Michael, who died that same horrible summer of 2020 when Raven, Ojo, Diane, and Auntie also died, and everyone’s world changed with the massive Covid casualties, especially those whose loved ones died of it.

And the grief this week just keeps coming. A dear friend had to euthanize her dear old big dog last week. He had lived a good long life but that is cold comfort in the moment when the utter absence shocks and wracks and keeps on shocking for days, weeks, months. In my awareness of and compassion for her grief, the loss of Stellar the Stardog rocked me again, in gentle waves, much calmer than the tempest that accompanied his passing.

Griefs can’t be compared. But they can crack our hearts open to empathy, compassion, and more love, with time. And they have no timeline other than their own mysterious meandering path, with steep hills of struggle, long lulling valleys, and all terrains in between. I still mourn the sweetest black cat Ojo, and have come to a revised demise: as Paul suggested last fall, it’s far more likely that he was killed by a great horned owl than by a mountain lion. I was reluctant to accept that hypothesis, but given all attendant conditions it does make more sense. It doesn’t help the grief quotient, though.

I worried this morning that I might have lost his sister Topaz. We’d started out the gate for a walk and she was right behind us. I didn’t look back for awhile but it’s not unusual for her to take a shortcut and catch up so I kept walking. Then I heard a shrieking screeching that stopped abruptly. Wren took off in a beeline back toward the house, and I followed with quick steps. She was nowhere to be seen. There was no evidence of foul play, but no sign of her. I stood by the gate and called in all directions, walked back toward the woods and called, nothing. If she were out there she’d have come. It was late in the morning for an owl but not necessarily too late; and there’s that little fox that’s been passing through frequently. The sound could have been a magpie screaming at a cat, a cat screaming at a magpie, a cat screaming at a fox, or a fox simply screaming. Or any number of other options. I was gonna be late for an appointment, so I had to keep moving. Maybe something had scared her and she’d run back to the house. I checked the front door, then the back. Whew! She was lying by the back door as if I were late for her. Whatever happened, it’s one of those rare circumstances where we actually won’t know more later.

There are some animals that trigger grief in me any time I see images of them: polar bears, penguins, elephants, and gorillas among them. This is Fatou, 69, the world’s oldest gorilla in captivity, in the Berlin Zoo, who showed up in The Atlantic’s photos of the week. I can only imagine what kind of grief she must experience. Probably solastalgia.

But really I think the grief train started while I was reading Against the Machine. It came up in conversation with a dear friend last night who was responding to my post about it. Paul Kingsnorth broke my world view, I told her. That book shattered the last of my illusions, pulled the scales from my eyes, as it were. I’ve been grieving the world I grew up in, and thought we could still maybe save. I’ve been swimming in the grief of solastalgia for weeks, months, years. Earth Day is a great occasion to mention it. Solastalgia is “the experience of chronic trauma, longing, or hopelessness due to negative or distressing changes to the home or ecosystem you are still in due to the impacts of climate change, weather events, fire, or other environmental factors…. With solastalgia, the home you are longing for can’t be returned to—it is there but not the same.” I’m grateful there’s a word for it, and grateful that this feeling is being addressed in Tricycle’s annual online Buddhism and Ecology Summit, which I’ve been participating in this week.

And, in the midst of awareness from within this sea of grief, I am bouyed by profound, uplifting gratitude for the number of people I can call my dear friends. And each day I’m noticing and savoring beauty, moments of joy and laughter, and the company of animals both wild and tame. The ten thousand joys and the ten thousand sorrows: Can I be grateful for all of them? Next post, a story about a black bird…

After the Freeze

Apr18

The lilacs out the window on Friday morning. Note the decals on the kitchen window, iridescent through birds’ eyes, to curb or hopefully prevent window strikes. Overnight it went down to 15℉. As anticipated, this morning the cherry blossoms and nascent fruits look finished for the year. Oh well. The magnificent yellow columbine at the cherry tree base took a hard hit but will likely come back from the center. Everything else in the garden looks stressed or wounded but I’m optimistic that all will survive. I covered them again tonight.

Yesterday was a perfect day for a grilled cheese sandwich: cloudy with blowing snow all morning and bitter wind even after the snow stopped. The high was barely above freezing. Melted dill havarti on rosemary-garlic focaccia with thinly sliced red onion, lettuce, mayo, and a splash of raspberry jam offered tasty comfort at lunchtime. And it was a perfect day to finally bake the orange marmalade brownies I’d been considering for a long time.

I’ve never really liked orange marmalade, and I thought maybe this recipe would make it palatable for me. It was simple to make, and I must say, delicious. But I doubt I’ll be spreading marmalade on toast any time soon.

This day dawned sunny and crisp and then warmed up into the 50s. The brownie went beautifully with my ritual maple-vanilla latté and morning fiction. It felt good to share the bake with my neighbors, so Wren and I made a quick run up the driveway and then around the corner to make deliveries. Not only did I feel good about sharing, but I got to return home with surprise bonus bacon! Which went right into today’s cheese sandwich: lettuce, cheddar, and bacon with mayo, mustard and raspberry jam.

Of all the articles I read online this week, by far the best was this hilarious article on The Best Free Restaurant Bread in America. It provided a wonderful balance to the majority of the other headlines. I’ve been working with Discernment this month, and considering deeply what media I ingest. Why, I wonder, is 90% of the news and entertainment about horrors, when in actual fact, most humans spend most of their time–maybe as much as 90%–doing good, kind, generous things, and simply aspiring to be good, kind, happy people? Media coverage of the species is terribly skewed toward bad behavior, and by over-representing violence, betrayal, destruction, hatred, rage, etc., is invariably influencing the zeitgeist. Too bad. One more good reason to focus on gratitude and living mindfully.

Preparing to Freeze

Apr17

I baked a sourdough focaccia yesterday thinking I would freeze some portions for later. It was delicious even though I forgot to spread it in the pan before going to bed so it overflowed the bowl overnight. I worried that it wouldn’t rise enough in the pan to be soft. It wasn’t perfect but it was perfectly fine.

After today’s cheese sandwich I’ve got enough for three more lunches. I didn’t need to worry about freezing any.

We took a short slow walk yesterday afternoon to check out the early flowers, knowing they might freeze back in the next couple of nights. Did I mention that I thought I heard the first hummingbird a few days ago? I quick went inside to start nectar water on the stove, pulled out the box of feeders and cleaned one with dilute bleach and let it dry while the nectar cooled, and put it out a couple hours later. This morning I saw the first male black-chinned hummingbird at the feeder. Time to get the other feeders ready to go out Saturday morning. I did bring in the one feeder for tonight with the freeze forecast.

Wren checked out the numerous Townsendia scattered along the sides of the trail. I played with Hipsta Impressionist again to see what I could get with its random filter. I especially like the second one, how it smeared a petal like impasto. But I prefer the original unfiltered photo below over all the variations.

Wren had run ahead of me and Topaz and I heard the sharp alarm call of a critter, but I couldn’t find it. She was running back and forth near this tree, and it sounded like the cry came from the canopy. I listened from all angles, as Wren was doing; it sounded high, it sounded low, it sounded even as though it came from another tree. Then there was a buzz to it. We finally narrowed it down to a hollow in the base of the trunk, and Wren seemed determined to tear it apart. I barked at her to leave it, and aimed the camera in but couldn’t tell much, so set it to 5x zoom with flash. Right as I snapped the picture Topaz shot out of nowhere hissing at Wren and startling me. Thankfully Wren cowered instead of attacking. But then they were both obsessed with the trunk and I discerned it was best to hurry us off. Only after I got them both well away from the trunk did I check my hasty image:

Today’s adventure took a different turn. There’s a freeze warning for tonight, and a hard freeze warning for tomorrow night. The garden is so far along I worry I’ll lose a lot. The cherry tree! I’m grateful that I caught some of As the Worm Turns on my drive home from my annual checkup yesterday.

The gardeners were discussing ways to protect fruit trees from freezing. The valley orchards will be at high risk tomorrow night, and I feel for the fruit growers. I wish for all their orchard-warming techniques to succeed. One way they mentioned is to spray foliage with kelp spray, which strengthens cell walls among other things. I didn’t catch the details, but did drive up to the Hitchin’ Post this afternoon to pick up a bottle of FoxFarm Kelp Me Kelp You seaweed plant food. I mixed the kelp with water in my pump sprayer and saturated the cherry tree foliage and pretty much everything else I’m concerned about. If it doesn’t help protect them from the freeze at least they’ll be well fed when they come back.

I spent the entire work day preparing to freeze. It started when I decided to make lilac scones. The second round of lilacs were only half open and I expect to lost most of them tomorrow night. I brought in some more blooms for the vases, and harvested a basketful to make lilac sugar. I couldn’t find the recipe I used some years ago, when I just plucked the flowers off the stems and incorporated them into the dough, so I looked up recipes again. That’s where I learned about lilac sugar and lilac syrup. I’m not sure whose recipe I’ll use for the scones whenever I get around to baking them, but making sugar and syrup I’ll have lilacs preserved for months to come and many uses.

I decided to make the syrup first, but after rinsing, drying, and plucking petals for an hour I didn’t think I had enough for syrup, so I opted for the sugar. It calls for 1 cup lightly packed petals to 1 cup sugar. By the time my packed petals met an equal volume of sugar I realized I had packed them too tightly and probably could have pulled off the two cups for syrup, but by then it was too late. They were all shook up.

I had to add more sugar to achieve an equal ratio. Now the petals steep in the sugar for three days, and I’m supposed to sift them out, but I think I’ll just make a batch of scones including petals first. Then we’ll see what happens with the rest of it. So, the lilacs are prepared to freeze, I’ve done all I can to preserve them.

Then I set about recycling the distilled water bottles from the mechanical room, which I save for just this purpose as I fill the solar batteries through the year. I cut the bottoms off them, and in late afternoon as it clouded up and the temperature dropped, I set them over all the new perennials I’ve planted in the south border and in patio pots.

Then I fluffed old hay over all the garden beds filled with tender pea shoots, strawberry plants, nascent rhubarb, delicate carrot tops, baby kale, flower sprouts, and garlic leaves. I also covered a few areas with an old blanket and black plastic. As I moved through the day I clipped any remaining tulips, jonquils, and the flowers from the new perennials since they’ll freeze Friday night anyway, and gathered them all in a couple of vases. I am now finished preparing to freeze.

Delicious Weekend

Apr13

It’s unfortunate that major media expends so much energy rehashing bad news, when there is actually a lot of good news happening every day. I’m grateful that Jess Craven publishes Extra! Extra! every Sunday to elucidate the good news that shows an undercurrent of positive, hopeful change in this country.

I made an interesting chicken and cauliflower soup over the weekend. It wasn’t simple or exactly delicious, but did introduce me to a tasty trick. The chicken thighs were seared in the pot first, then the crisp skin pulled off and roasted until it was “shatteringly crisp,” and crumbled on top of the finished soup.

I was grateful for a splendid success in the Birthday Cake Challenge. Not only did the cake turn out beautifully, but I acquired some new skills. Unintentionally, I learned how to make sweetened coconut shreds out of unsweetened flakes. There was no sweetened coconut in the store so my dear resourceful personal shopper purchased unsweetened flakes, above.

Locating instructions was the hard part; once I found them it was easy. I pulsed the flakes a half cup at a time for just a few seconds in my coffee grinder—it was a great excuse to give it a thorough cleaning. Then for each cup of shreds I dissolved a quarter cup of water and a teaspoon of sugar in a saucepan, took it off the heat, and stirred in the coconut. But first, I experimented with one cup replacing white sugar with maple syrup. Confident in the technique, I spread that out to dry and use later, mixed the remainder with white sugar, and set it aside for morning.

Then I baked the ‘Upgraded German Chocolate Cake’ from Sally’s Baking Addiction. I usually just fudge the high altitude adjustments, but due to my recent baking record I followed them all precisely, using the table on King Arthur’s website, tweaking flour, sugar, liquid and leaveners as well as baking temperature and time. The sponges were perfect.

After they cooled completely and before heading to bed, I stacked them with their parchment papers between layers so I could store them safely under the cakestand lid to prevent drying out or interference. I didn’t think Wren or Topaz would get to them, but better safe than sorry.

Sunday morning I enjoyed the cherry blossoms again, and a quiet read with Wren during coffee.

And then I started on the frosting. I toasted the pecans, beat the eggs, measured the coconut and brown sugar, and cooked everything to perfection in plenty of time to let it cool completely and chill for an hour in the fridge. Then I commenced construction.

But I couldn’t let it go at that. The day before I pulled out a bag of frozen apricots from the last bountiful year and cooked a quick compote with a bit of sugar and a squeeze of lemon juice. The consistency was perfect, and I hid it inside the frosting between the first and second layers. After all, the cake was to celebrate the apricot king!

I finished assembling the cake in time to check in at Cousins’ Zoom, and then delivered the cake next door right on time. It was precarious. Frosted, the cake was just too tall to fit under the lid so I grabbed a spare cardboard box and braced the stand with more cardboard, leveled the box on the back seat, and Wren and I drove around the block slowly.

Neighbor Fred has been pruning and consulting on the apricot tree for however long it’s lived here, neither of us can recall, but at least twenty years. I’m forever grateful for him. He seemed happy with his cake.

And after we each enjoyed a piece of it, Mary sent me home with a generous tithe that will see me through the next few mornings’ coffees. Now, who’s birthday is next, I wonder?