The little mustard I noticed the other day was identified by a friend as Boechera gunnisoniana, a vulnerable, rare rockcress endemic to Colorado with most specimens known from Gunnison County just east of here. I’m sure I’ve seen it before, but it didn’t catch my attention until it surprised me blooming so early. I found several more on our walk yesterday.
Neighbor Fred came yesterday to prune our apricot tree. In just the couple of days since the first buds opened, many more had popped. I’m so grateful to and for this wonderful neighbor with so much experience in entomology and in growing fruit trees.
Above, even more buds had bloomed after he pruned. Today (below) virtually every blossom had opened and honeybees were buzzing.
Yesterday, above; and today, below.
And the forsythia surprised me again, glowing golden through the mudroom window late yesterday. It had been a couple of days since I’d been on that side of the house and I swear they weren’t blooming then. This sudden warming brought out everyone.
I managed to save some of the red tulips with a cage in the nick of time, though the smaller patch to the right had already been nibbled by deer before I covered them. The roller coaster is picking up speed early this year.
I gave a friend some maple cream for her birthday, and she said the first thing she did was pour some over vanilla ice cream. So I tried that after lunch today. Yum!
Biko stayed out in his round pen overnight for the first time this year, and it got so warm that he begged to be released, so he had the run of the yard for most of the day. So much tasty green grass! Wren can’t get enough of it either. He tucked in by a tree trunk right after we found him about 5:30, but when we came inside an hour later he had moved somewhere else. We didn’t even bother looking, knowing it will be plenty warm overnight and he’ll wake up happy wherever he chooses to sleep.
Finally finished my hat! heehee… and had leftover yarn so have knitted a few red hat resistance badges for friends who live in warmer climes.
Many days the one thing that motivates me to get out of bed in the morning is the thought that I get to drink a homemade latté. The latté is a fairly recent twist but ever since 9/11 the promise of coffee has been the prime mover in getting me up, and some days it’s the only inspiration I can muster to face the day. I don’t think I’m alone in this; I do think it’s a symptom of a huge societal problem.
On 9/11 I was visiting my parents who lived near the Pentagon. I could die here, I thought when the Pentagon was struck, without my dogs, away from home, away from all that I love…This is the beginning of World War III. I wasn’t wrong about that, it’s just been a slow burn, a ‘forever war.’
Wren and I spent some time in the garden the past few days spring cleaning, and found her a treasure.
War news has been the backdrop to my whole life. To your whole life. I grew up in the sixties watching the Vietnam War on TV during dinner. It ended. Then there was another war. And then more wars, though eventually the government learned to censor photos and video of US casualties and coffins returning home, since those unsettled Americans.
We planted a bunch of old seeds to see what comes up and what might survive whatever weather comes our way in the next six weeks before true planting season begins.
And here we are again. It makes me sick; and, it reinforces the message of the Walk for Peace: Peace begins inside each one of us. Pema Chodron says that War also begins inside each one of us, in a book she wrote twenty years ago:
“War and peace begin in the hearts of individuals,” declares Pema Chödrön at the opening of her inspiring and accessible new book. In Practicing Peace in Times of War she draws on Buddhist teachings to explore the origins of aggression and war, explaining that they lie nowhere but within our own hearts and minds. She goes on to explain that, remarkably, the way in which we as individuals respond to challenges in our everyday lives can mean the difference between perpetuating a culture of violence or creating a new culture of compassion.
With war and violence flaring all over the world, from Iraq to Darfur to London, most of us are left feeling utterly helpless. In this audiobook Pema Chödrön insists that our world will begin to change when each of us, one by one, begins to work for peace at the level of our own behavior, our own habits of thought and action. It’s never too late, she tells us, to look within and discover a new way of living.
We started unfurling hoses and laying out some soakers like this one around the little cherry tree. Wren investigates the bug bath.
It’s ingenuous to ask why it doesn’t change, why is there always war, when will we ever learn? I practice and meditate and inquire and investigate all day long every day, and I still experience anger or despair frequently.
I’m also simultaneously grateful for living off the grid and far from the madding crowd. On our walk the other day we spied some good tracks in the mud. I can’t tell if they are from a coyote or a domestic dog. They’re smaller and rounder than the usual culprits’ tracks, the big white dogs up the road who roam freely. Getting outside more again on these warming days, walking among trees, getting my hands in the dirt, grounds me in what is good and true. I find peace in Nature.
But it’s been a constant struggle to cultivate inner peace when for months I couldn’t separate who I am from the nonstop pain and festering resentment of the dentastrophe. Only in the past month has the constancy abated enough to allow moments of awareness free of mouth pain. Then I got a second opinion last week. My perceptions that the bite is wrong were validated, which lifted a burden; but, a weightier burden was added: Mercury toxicity. The US lags behind the global understanding that dental mercury amalgam is a cumulative neurotoxin implicated in Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, ALS, MS and various other systemic ailments. Last summer, because I didn’t know any better, I allowed two large mercury blobs to be ground to toxic dust inside my mouth with absolutely no precautions. How does one find peace when one feels wronged? I’m seeking it through meditation and polite insistence that the offending dentist drop the remaining balance on my account.
But others choose differently. We know how the President seeks relief from feeling cornered: by escalating aggressive distractions, from domestic ICE assaults to now an illegal war in the Middle East.
“Every leader facing accountability has understood what a war provides. It is the oldest move in the history of power: when the walls close in, find an enemy abroad. A shooting war restructures the entire political landscape. Opposition becomes unpatriotic. Criticism becomes dangerous. Emergency powers that were already being stretched past recognition suddenly have the one justification that has historically silenced opposition in every democracy that ever fell: wartime necessity. And the emergency never ends, because ending it means facing consequences.
A wartime administration that was already stripping Clean Water Act protections from millions of acres of wetlands, already opening 40 million acres of national forest to logging and drilling, already letting coal plants dump toxic ash into groundwater, already withdrawing limits on forever chemicals in drinking water now does all of it behind a wall of smoke and patriotic obligation. “Support the troops” becomes the shield behind which everything else gets done. They are generating attacks on the constitutional order faster than any existing institution is processing them, and they know it. And the ten months between now and the midterms just became ten months of a wartime presidency operating without constraints, with a proven willingness to ignore the judiciary, and with every incentive to keep the emergency going as long as possible.”
(Read further in the essay and you’ll find inspiration and encouragement. We can stop this. We have to.)
Tonight’s supper snack was a mushroom paté made with baby bellas, onion, garlic, fresh sage all sautéed in of course butter, puréed with some cream cheese, with more meltedbutter poured on top, then chilled. I added a sprig of sage blossom. So simple, so delicious!
Trump is what’s called in Buddhism a hungry ghost. He dwells in a special Hell realm, as do his henchmen and women, and many of his billionaire cronies. They are so empty inside that they will never have enough of anything, and live in a state of constant grasping. Call your representatives. Demand impeachments and unredacted Epstein files. Show up for protests. Channel your anger into action.
I posted on Feb. 1 that I could hardly wait for the red yarn to arrive. It did shortly thereafter, and I’m grateful that I got two hats knitted and delivered in time for Red Hat Day. I’m curious to know if either hat went out in the world on those dear heads today. I stayed home and worked, meditated for inner and outer peace, and gardened. Tonight I continued to knit on the third red hat, the one I’ll get to keep.
Red Hat Day marks the day in 1942 that the Nazis outlawed red hats in Norway. Joyce Vance quotes their proclamation in her Substack yesterday, The Other Red Hat. I started the first hat on an old plastic circular needle that I found in my mother’s trove of knitting supplies. I haven’t had to buy needles or notions in twenty years. But I don’t like the feel of plastic needles or how the yarn moves over them, so I indulged in the purchase of a new circular needle with metal tips which make a satisfying click as I knit. The top of the hat, though, decreases to the point that I have to switch to DPN, double pointed needles, to finish it, and the last inch or so gets tricky.
The current Red Hat resistance was born in a yarn store in Minneapolis last month after Renee Good’s murder by ICE agent Johnathan Ross, who has yet to face any consequences. By the time we started our red hats a few weeks later our first yarn choice was sold out and wouldn’t be in stock again til April, and red yarn was flying off shelves virtual and actual so fast that there was a nationwide shortage. Despite regime claims that ICE has downsized in Minneapolis, it’s not by much and atrocities have continued unabated. Both immigrants and citizens continue to be arrested, and detainees are released at all hours with nothing but what they’re wearing. Haven Watch has volunteers meeting detainees with phones, food, blankets and other support as they walk out of the Whipple Building. Reports indicate horrific conditions inside.
I found this Norwegian perspective on both the original and the current Red Hat Resistance at the Red Hat Factory, which includes a link to the Needle & Skein pattern that has raised well over $600,000 to protect and support victims of ICE in Minneapolis. It’s beautiful to see the resurrection of a Nazi resistance tactic from Norway taking root in the US eight decades later, and to see the world embrace it again in solidarity with us.
Cousin Melinda verifies receipt of the first hat.
I may be finding a new direction in Craftivism, which seems to suit my introverted nature better at the moment than taking to the streets weekly at our local Honk ‘n Wave. I’ll still participate in the next No Kings Day on March 28, and hope millions of others will as well.
Amy models the second hat she received yesterday.
The two skeins Amy bought came with “free ball winding,” and I didn’t quite realize what that was til they arrived. I was grateful for it! A yarn skein often comes as a large, loose loop that’s been twisted tightly into a handy size for selling. But a twisted skein is not handy for knitting from; in fact, it’s impossible. So you have to wind the yarn into a ball before you can use it. The third skein from a different seller arrived in a twist.
I’ve rarely had to roll a skein into a ball, and the few long-ago times I did there was always someone to hold the loop around their wrists, elbows bent, arms outstretched with just enough tension to hold the loop on, as I pulled one strand after another off it, rolling a messy round ball that I unraveled from the outside in as I knitted. But there’s another way to wind a ball, center-pull, and YouTube provided instruction. I untwisted the skein and draped the loop around my knees, careful to keep it out of Wren’s hair. It was fun and meditative to wind the ball this way, leaving a tail in the center and winding neatly around my thumb until the ball was so big I had to pull it off and hold it. I’ve been gratefully and neatly pulling the yarn from the center of the ball as I’m knitting my hat on my pleasing new metal needles.
A couple inches of snow, warm days, a drizzle, nourishing the spring bulbs. What a joy it is to see them bloom! How my heart aches for the exquisite beauty of this planet, how I weep for the wild world plundered and sundered by human greed. How grateful I am for daily engagement with a tiny slice of it.
Finally I was quick enough with the camera to catch Topaz upside down in her basket almost before she rolled over. I keep trying and thought she must have some sixth sense, as despite my stealth she always mrrrrps and rolls suddenly just as I get the camera in place. But no, she simply sleeps with one eye open.
Their time in DC was amazing. The number of people they gathered along their route to the Lincoln Memorial lifted my spirits, and the crowd that stood and listened to the closing ceremony was impressive.
I’m still following the Walk for Peace on Instagram, and reading articles about it as people including the monks reflect on what it meant for them, what it means for us. I enjoyed this article in Mindful.org, ‘An Invitation to Reimagine Where Peace Begins.’
“…the longer we resist offering our attention to these unhealed places, the more we will keep living through the reverberating echoes of those same wounds over and over and over again. Different possible futures are only made possible by first giving our loving awareness to what’s happening right now—even (maybe especially) when it surfaces sorrow, hopelessness, or anger that we’re not sure we can handle in the moment.”
It’s a good thing I’m practicing inner peace every day. In my Quest to bake birthday cakes, today’s has been rough! I started last night baking the cake and the cookies with which to decorate it. I got excited because the beaten egg yolks looked so perfectly aerated that I forgot to whip in the sugar before adding flour, so I had to add sugar last. I think it resulted in a slightly heavier batter that didn’t rise as much, but overall the cake itself was okay and the orange shortbreads were perfect.
The first attempt at white chocolate mascarpone frosting went horribly awry. I thought at first it was because I beat the butter and cheese at too high a speed: the recipe said the only thing you can do wrong is overmix it, and to beat it on medium til light and fluffy. Or maybe because the butter and cheese were different temperatures. But in retrospect I think it failed because I used the whisk attachment in addition to high speed. Anyway, I set that mess aside, grateful that I had another cup of mascarpone and another stick of butter. But that started to split too! Though the finished white frosting tasted delicious it looked rather like cottage cheese if you’d blended it just enough to make the curds really tiny. I was afraid to beat it longer to try to thicken it, in case that just made it split even worse! Piping was pointless, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t try, and gooped up the silicone piping bag for no reason. There’s not much more challenging baking tool to wash than a piping bag; I see why people use disposables but can’t bring myself to waste plastic like that.
The lemon curd for the filling between layers turned out beautifully, though. And to salvage the split white frosting I whipped up a quick chocolate ganache, grateful that I had not used all the cream and that I had dark chocolate on hand. However, that also started to split! What? I think I know what happened there too: I added the chocolate to the hot cream in the hot pan, instead of adding hot cream to chocolate in a cold bowl, and the heat caused the chocolate to seize. I was able to salvage it, though, by tossing in a tablespoon of soft butter and whipping it, but that made it too thick to pour a thin layer over top. So the cake ended up with too much frosting of two kinds of chocolate that wouldn’t hold on the sides, and I was grateful I had the shortbreads which I’d planned to stick on there anyway. I took my tithe portion before frosting the cake and filled that missing space with shortbread also. I’d have been sent home from Bake Off with that cake, but instead of feeling I’d failed I chalked it up to practice. And isn’t that what this Birthday Cake Quest is all about, learning new skills? I learned a lot, and the Head Bitch at the Bad Dog Ranch was delighted with all the “many fun layers of yummies!” which is all that really matters.
After the cake was picked up, I dumped the split mascarpone/butter mix back into the Kitchenaid, and used the beater attachment to try to salvage that. It worked, sort of smoothing it, which is how I figured out that while the whisk might work for creaming butter and sugar, it doesn’t work for creaming butter and mascarpone. I was grateful that I have a flourishing herb garden in pots in the sunroom, where I harvested a handful of rosemary, oregano, parsley, sage, chives, and a little tarragon, which I minced and mixed into the butter blend with salt and pepper. All those fresh herbs left only a hint of vanilla from when it was destined to be frosting, and it turned into an adequate spread for toast for lunch, and topping for a baked potato for dinner. A busy and educational day in the kitchen!
I’m grateful, too, that we got a little snow the past few days, with more up in the mountains, but Colorado (the state and the river) are in dire drought this year regardless. That’s the real ‘tastrophe, as explained in this article from The Atlantic. Just before the snow fell I caught the first crocus blooms, and enjoyed a few sessions counting birds for the Great Backyard Bird Count. Never mind that there were hardly any birds over the weekend, at least it got me and Wren outside. So just a few more things I’ve been grateful for this week:
It’s felt both lovely and freaky to sit down at the pond for awhile almost every day this birthday week. Meditating, reading, sipping tea, pondering the implications of this dry, warm January. It doesn’t bode well for summer, but it does encourage savoring the present moment.
The future of the planet feels urgently precarious these days, more than ever before, with its fate literally in the hands of a tragically mad tyrant. How is it possible that no one seems able or willing to stop him?
From Instagram
Much love and many fun things came on my birthday, including stickers both whimsical and political.
I got the best laugh when I brought down the mail on my birthday, and in the first package I opened found this adorable card—and there was another one in the next envelope! What are the odds? I felt seen and known.
There have always been mad tyrants, but it’s the exponential scale of the chaos he’s sowing that’s existentially terrifying. Quotidian delights feel both less relevant and more precious. It takes sustained effort to hold awareness of national and global events, participate in resistance, and still experience inner peace and stability. I guess the good lord never gives you more than you can handle, or at least that’s what they say. Maybe that’s why I’ve been obsessed with personal discomfort, it’s easier than focusing on international calamity.
Celebrating various angles on this spectacular orchid as the sun lights it through the day.
I confess to feeling a little disappointed. I had pinned my hopes for some relief on an appointment with a new dentist tomorrow, which got canceled this afternoon. I’ve been waiting six weeks for this. The incremental improvement that has crept along for six months more or less plateaued around the holidays, and I’m left with several areas of constant and distracting discomfort, plus occasional pain and some anxiety about longterm tooth health.
The house sparrows continue to roost in the wild rose, challenging Wren’s equanimity or delighting her, not sure which.
Teeth are hitting and clacking that aren’t supposed to. Chewing, especially soft foods, is the sensory equivalent of fingernails on a chalkboard. The lower jaw remains stiff and forward of where it should be, with tension along the lower right jaw; at rest my mouth won’t close without effort. My tongue feels too big for my mouth, and a hundred times a day I consciously release it from twisting and pressing into the upper right front teeth; internal pressure in that jaw fans up into my cheek and eye bones, into a low-grade headache most of the time. And some other stuff.
The tame roses that came for my birthday continue to delight me with their vibrant colors.
I just wanted to tell all this to someone who might be able to explain and help. For six weeks I’ve been documenting symptoms and rehearsing/trying not to rehearse what I would say to the new dentist. Maybe writing it down here will help me quit rehashing the narrative in my head, and free me to simply live each moment without the burden of story.
Pickled red onion has become one of my favorite condiments. For so long it was a hasty afterthought, but this week I planned it and made a whole pint so I could use it generously in sandwiches and salads.
The original dentist who did the crowns left the practice, and her partner did a couple of follow ups but then quit. She told me in December that whatever is going on with me now has nothing to do with her partner’s work, “it’s been too long.” None of these symptoms is new: they have all been ongoing since July, and have fortunately decreased with time. I have resisted paying the balance on work that I believe was badly done. We are at a mutually resentful impasse.
But my disappointment at the cancellation was tempered in the same instant as learning of it. “The doctor has a medical emergency she needs to take care of,” the message said, “and she’ll be out of the office for a few weeks.” I called back to offer well wishes and reschedule. “We’ve got a lot of calls to make,” she said. “We don’t even know the extent of it yet.” My heart sank for the dentist, for her staff, for her family. Was it herself? A child, a parent? It could be anything. Compassion rose immediately, eclipsing disappointment and curiosity. And I’m grateful for that.
Little Wren warming by the pond this morning.
There was a time when disappointment about my personal situation or fear about global unrest would have been the defining emotion of my day, but mindfulness practice has transformed my perspective. The two boundless qualities of equanimity and compassion have truly found a foothold in my heart, balancing the more afflictive emotions that still reside there.
From Instagram: Venerable Samma Maggo has left the Walk for Peace to return to his dwelling place in France. He walked bent over his hiking poles, keeping pace with his brothers, with deep concentration. At rest stops, he radiated peace with the most beatific expression. May I emulate his courage and commitment.
After a mindless moment last night at a zoom meeting and my subsequent apology, the friend I had interrupted kindly forgave me, and said about current events, “What if it all turns out ok?” Bless his heart. My fingers are crossed but I’m not holding my breath. This is a common perspective in a certain branch of Buddhism, pointing out that, due to Impermanence, we never know how things will turn out. We really don’t. A common example is the Chinese invasion of Tibet in the 1950s which forced the young Dalai Lama to flee to India; which was the direct cause of His Holiness’s benevolent influence spreading around the world for the next sixty-five years. So sometimes awful things do have a silver lining.
It’s been awhile since I baked a loaf. I tried to score a rose on this one; the stem just opened wide, but the blossom turned out okay for a first effort.
It’s my fear, however, that even if it does eventually turn out ok, whatever that looks like, there will have been total American Carnage in the meantime. Carnage that the USA will have wrought upon innocent beings of all species worldwide, and carnage that will have been wrought upon many millions, in fact most, Americans, by this despotic imposter government. At least from some angles, this is the end times that those apocalyptic idiots on the evangelical right, who have infiltrated then severed the three branches of government, have been working toward all along. But contrary to their beliefs, there will be no messiah coming to save or rapture anyone. And even if there were, it would certainly not be those agents of planetary destruction that she would be coming to save.
If anyone were to be saved by divine intervention, if there were such a thing, it would be the innocents, the thin orange thread of Buddhist monks weaving through the southern US, the millions of American children this regime has robbed of nourishment and healthcare, the cowering brave citizens of Venezuela and Ukraine, and all the future countries conquered by the new Axis of Evil the US just joined. It would be the untold billions of living beings who would be raptured, from ancient juniper trees and giant redwoods to the tiny, iridescent orchard bees to the zooplankton and the giant whales they nourish, all already sustaining lifetaking assaults by the oligarchy gathering at the top of world society like a giant pus-filled zit. Sorry. Please forgive me.
On a lighter note, I made a fabulous cheese sandwich for lunch today: havarti on mayo with Penzeys sandwich sprinkle, jam, lettuce, and a drizzle of honey mustard dressing. So simple, so delicious.
I had a rough night last night, was still nursing a black eye and bloody nose this morning from a bout with my Inner Critic. Maybe that’s colored my view today. My jaw and bite are still not right from that dental work seven months ago and that has certainly affected my tolerance for the taste of bullshit. Welcome to my rare but inevitable occasional rant on the state of the union, on this laden anniversary. It’s Insurrection Day. The regime wants you to forget it ever happened, and the Criminal in Chief is doing his ignorant best to divert our attention through waging war and threatening more. We, the majority of Americans, are not being properly represented; our tax dollars are soon to be requisitioned for global expansionism by the oligarchs who could well afford to wage any war they wish to by dipping their bloodied hands into their personal petty cash vaults. It’s time for a tax strike.
I’m grateful that due to Impermanence, my mood had improved dramatically by lunchtime and I was able to enjoy my little lunch ritual.
I’m grateful that wise friends offered perspective and insight last night when I was beating myself up, that my friend understood and forgave, grateful that the skills of apology and of forgiving myself come much more quickly to me than they used to, and grateful for the wisdom of the Buddhist perspective. Life is both suffering and joy, both beauty and horrors. Equanimity is holding awareness of both/and. The monks’ message in one of their posts today was Peace in Gratitude. In part, “This is not about ignoring difficulty or pretending that everything is perfect. It is about training our hearts to recognize the countless ways we are supported, nourished, held by life itself–even in the midst of challenges.”
I was grateful this morning to see this flock of evening grosbeaks in the birch tree. A friend was distressed the other day because there aren’t as many birds as usual at her feeders. She thought maybe it was because of the sharp-shinned hawk that she’s seen hanging around. “I doubt it,” I told her, “I haven’t had as many birds the past couple of weeks either. I think maybe they’ve just moved on for winter, finally.” Despite the fact that this weather barely qualifies as winter, I thought. But then yesterday morning when Wren burst outside first thing, I saw a sharp-shinned hawk fly off the rose bush where the sparrows roost. And this afternoon, I saw it again… So maybe this is a good year for sharp-shinneds, and maybe not so great for songbirds.
Whatever. Inside, in my own little world, wildlife abounds in the Liberty puzzles this season. This ‘Cutout of Animals’ was more fun and harder than I thought it would be, and great for mindfulness practice. As usual these days I don’t use the box top for help: I look at it once and set it aside. There was a lot of detail in this that I missed in my glance, and my assumptions were challenged every which way. At first I put all the whimsey pieces right side up as I assembled them, and put most of them facing each other.
I had made a point to note the general order of the species stack but no more detail than that. The more pieces I fitted into place, the wider apart the camels got until they ended up in the corners facing opposite of how I’d set them. For the elephants, it was another twist: as I assembled them I failed to notice until they were all together that the images were upside down.
I noticed immediately that the entire puzzle was an imperfect mirror image in both the artwork and the whimsey pieces, and shortly afterward that there were two of every piece except for a stack that would tie down the middle, and a few surrounding the one-each human male and female whimsies.
So this puzzle invited itself to be built from the center outward, from the bottom upward, and from the corners inward.
The anchor at the bottom center was, logically, man’s best friend. (Though the image reminded me of an awful AI interpretation when I asked it a few years ago to make a picture of a dog licking a girl’s face) It made perfect sense to me that dogs would hold up the whole world, and delighted me that the artist had tucked the squirrels in between them.
An added layer of whimsy was revealed with the surprising discovery that the squirrel pieces fit into the dogs’ bodies; just one of the many layers of whimsical delights in this puzzle. Strategy also included matching speckles all around.
And one final twist was that I knew in advance that a piece was missing. A second piece in the bottom edge had been damaged beyond use prior to the puzzle’s arrival from the Florida branch of our puzzle club lending library, so I ceremoniously threw that one in the woodstove. But the missing piece… I had no idea which one that was. This actually loosened my attachment to finding and placing specific pieces, and kept me working on multiple sections and moving on more quickly rather than hunting, hunting, for the next piece in any one segment. So, you know, more like most people do puzzles. It was kind of liberating, but nothing I’m likely to get used to.
Doing this animal puzzle over Christmas was fun and relaxing. The wheels of justice were slowly grinding nationally in a hopeful direction with the Epstein files revelations and the unconstitutional National Guard mobilizations decision, when I started the New Years puzzle. My health seemed to be gradually improving. Despite the freaky climate signs, I was feeling pretty calm. I called my representatives on Friday to give them another piece of my mind about the illegal assaults on Venezuelan boats and the dock attack. Action is the antidote to anxiety.
But then I woke up yesterday. Not only to news of an unconstitutional war on Venezuela, exactly the concern I had expressed to congressman Un-Hurd and my beleaguered senators the day before. But to find a frog wide awake sitting on top of the pond. Which is unheard of in deep winter here. Absolutely apocalyptic.
With the (one, long ago) snow completely melted in the garden I ventured in to see more shocking evidence: carrot tops emerging, snapdragons that never died back, a bed of tiny lettuces, and a cluster of blooming violas. This is April weather.
So, just what we need. Another oil war. War does nobody any good except for the oil barons. Think of all the profits they make on the fuel for the machines of war alone! And now, they’ll get even greater profits as they steal all the oil from under Venezuela. Not only will many humans in Venezuela and in the US suffer from this illegal war, any war exerts devastating effects on the natural world, on all living beings in its path. And any further extraction and use of fossil fuels violates every law of climate science and common sense. With the evidence of staggering climate collapse all around us, the charlatans who run this government exemplify the three poisons of greed, hatred, and delusion in their pursuit of reckless, lawless distraction from the noose of dawning sanity slowly closing in on them.
I’m grateful to have sane, compassionate, smart, and wise people in my life to tether me to the basic goodness supposed to exist at the core of each of us. (That exploration is ongoing.) One of those is Ted Leach, who posts a short daily insight which always includes interesting source links, like the interview with Venezuelan journalist Quico Toro I link to above about charlatans; and these two articles by Toro offering an inside perspective, one from December 12 in which he essentially predicts this attack but misses the motivation, and another from yesterday in which he evaluates the likely outcome. Thanks, Ted!
Oh well. One silver lining to climate chaos is that it revealed my missing garden knife before it totally disintegrated under the snow. And you see, that all about me perspective is why we’re in this shitstorm in the first place. There’s not much I can do about other people’s poisons, but I can dedicate myself to the practice of trying to root out my own greed, hatred and delusion, gradually replacing them with loving kindness, compassion, and wisdom, so that the ripples my life makes in this big pond are more beneficial than harmful to all beings.
An unpleasant surprise the other day was that the potatoes I was storing in the very cool mud room in a box of sand had sprouted and pushed open the box lid. I dug underneath and even the second layer had sprouted, but the potatoes hadn’t gone soft yet, so I pulled out a few to make soup.
Using some of the frozen stock from the Thanksgiving turkey, I made a BBC food cauliflower and cheese soup that tasted in the moment like the best soup I’d ever had. So simple, so delicious!
I enjoyed it for a couple of meals with the last of the rolls, and was glad it was on hand when a friend came home ill after holiday travel so I could provide nourishment.
Morning moment: an orchid in bloom catches the light, stockings hung on the stairway with care, a pileated woodpecker offers loving memories of my dear auntie and the many meaningful visits to her home on the Chesapeake Bay. Smiling with a heart full of love.
The eerie, balmy winter days continued this week. Yesterday I stepped outside with Wren and as I stood stretching on the patio I noticed a redtail hawk flying with a raven. I stood riveted as they circled and spiraled upward on a thermal, occasionally flapping, coming close together then drifting apart, coming close again, tilting, dipping, almost touching wings then parting again. I remembered a poem I wrote thirty years ago, when my heart was light as the hawks’ and I marveled that I’d made a life where I was able to stand and watch them soar for as long as I could see them. For a moment I recaptured that sense of wonder. Grateful that I had the time, chose to take the time, to simply stand still, arms wide, reaching toward the clear blue sky, celebrating flight. Five minutes maybe? However long, I watched until they became small in their spiral climb, then dropped out of it and soared still together down and down, southward, then parted ways level with the low sun, raven to the right of it out of sight behind the roof, redtail to the left, my raised hand protecting my eyes as I watched until the hawk disappeared far, far south of here.
Another lemon bake: lemon chess pie
That reminded me that I’d seen two foxes the other morning. As I set Topaz food in the window sill first thing, an odd flash of movement caught my eye in the west woods just beyond the driveway. It was erratic, not the smooth glide of a deer or anything else, but a flipping flashing motion a couple of times, like two animals in conflict or in play. It took a minute to find the binoculars and by the time I did the woods were still—for a moment—and then I saw another flash, trained the glasses on it, and saw a fulsome fluffy red fox leaping. A second later, another. I’d missed the heat of play but caught their convivial afterglow as they danced on past the window frame.
Taking the garbage up this afternoon before dusk I met a neighbor who’d just spotted big cat tracks south of my house in the next door woods. “I think it’s a big bobcat,” he said, “Keep an eye on your little buddy.” Wren and I had gotten out of the car to chat with him, and she was far afield sniffing unfamiliar terrain. Each time I lost sight I whistled and she came running back. She is SO good!
The final wild surprise of the past few days came after dark. As I got up from the puzzle a shadow flickered through the light, and flickered again. There are sometimes small moths inside, but this was a big shadow. I was astonished to see this cabbage white butterfly flittering around the tiny geranium. Where did it come from? How, in the depth of winter, had it ended up in my kitchen?
I enjoyed watching it for awhile as I pondered the kindest course of action. Let it be? Or catch it and put it outside. I checked the forecast. It looked mild enough for the next few days, and the butterfly seemed disoriented, almost frantic. So I held out my hand and waited. It didn’t come to me. But it did land on the puzzle pieces, so I gently cupped it and carried it out the back door, where I let it crawl onto the still-warm adobe wall, then Wren and I slipped back inside to our quiet little life.
The ‘red lime’ is a cultivar which seemingly arrived on the citrus scene in 2006, and is described as possibly “a cross of Rangpur lime and a kumquat.” There’s not much more about it online. I’m grateful for this bounty that was given, and I squeezed all these to freeze juice while letting a few more ripen in the fridge. Orange appears to be the color of the day this solstice.
I’m grateful for every element of this morning’s latte and biscotti, and all the lives that contributed to this experience: coffee beans, milk, chocolate, almonds, orange zest, flour, sugar, vanilla orchid seeds, tree sap distilled into syrup, running water, tools and technology, and the last crumbs of maple sugar candy sprinkled on top with cinnamon. How many plants, animals, and human hands made this brief moment in my sunroom possible? Feeling the truth of intrabeing.
“When doing something for the last time, we almost never know that it is, in fact, the last time; and everything you will do today, pleasant and unpleasant, you will do a finite number of times. So why not give each thing your full attention?”
Sam Harris
I’ve thought a lot about this since I heard it the other day. In the same reflection, he points out that children grow up, and suddenly they’re too big to be picked up; a recent trend on Instagram shows mothers trying to lift up their teenage sons. I remember the last time I picked up Stellar as he grew from a puppy into a big dog.
I’m pretty sure this was it: he weighed about thirty pounds, and he was getting hard to lift when someone took this picture. I remember thinking, this is probably the last time I’ll pick him up. I remember the last time I made love with my ex-fiancé, and knowing it was the last time. And I know there are a million things I’ve already done for the last time and never realized it.
I wasn’t going to make that mistake today. This was definitely the last solstice of 2025, and I was going to mark the occasion by watching the sunset from the west fence. It wasn’t too dramatic when I got there, but the clouds have been exceptional recently and the fan of grey and deep blue stratocumulus (looking south, above) and altocumulus (looking north, below) quickly brightened as the earth spun away from the sun.
The color dimmed in the north and east, but deepened to the south. Soon the clouds to the west were on fire. I felt keenly the fleeting beauty, the one-timeness of this sunset, the one and only time the sky will look exactly like this. The next moment it looked different, and the next moment.
And who knows, this might be the last solstice sunset I’ll ever see, not just the last this year. All we ever have for certain is this moment, right now. It can be exhausting knowing this all the time, until with enough practice it becomes an effortless habit that enhances experience.
This is what’s meant by the phrase “Death is an ally.” When I’m aware that this could be the last time I see the sunset I really drink it in; when I remember that this is the last time I might see or speak with a friend, I can bring loving kindness into that moment and let grudges, judgements, and other distancing thoughts or feelings fade.
Everything changes, all the time. Let me remember to be grateful, every living moment of every day.
It’s hard to take anything personally from this perspective! This image is from The Atlantic’s 2025 Space Telescope Advent Calendar. This is Day 3’s offering, showing more than a hundred galaxies in Galaxy Cluster Abell 209, about 2.8 billion light-years away from my tiny speck of a life. Refreshing! I’ve always loved sparkles.
“Peace isn’t found in perfect conditions. Peace is found in how we care for one another, in the bonds we share, in the kindness we extend to all beings. Even in winter, love keeps us warm.”
Today was the first day I remembered to check in first thing with the Venerable Monks on their Walk for Peace. It’s been cold and rainy as they wend their way through Louisiana, some of them barefoot, some in socks and sandals, some with canes, walking to spread peace on earth. Between these macro and micro perspectives, I feel humbly grateful for this precious day that will never come again.
