A week ago wildfires started in Colorado. Off and on, the mountains to the east are entirely obscured by smoke from the convergence of wind currents blowing through the Gold Mountain fire to the south the Snyder fire northwest on the border with Utah. Grand Mesa to the north is also occasionally invisible, and the sun is a red disk setting.
At times the smoke is mild, reminiscent of a campfire at a site across the campground, only pervasive and persistent, not wafting and shifting. Other times it’s an acrid stench that stuns my lungs. I’m grateful the fires aren’t closer, grateful I’m still safe at home, still breathing.
The Air Quality Index has been fluctuating between the 50s on the best nights to as high as 185. During the day it’s been hovering around 90 give or take a dozen, depending on how the winds have been blowing the previous hour. I wear a dampened mask to go outside and fill bird feeders, shift hoses in the yarden. The poor little birds! Especially the hummingbirds with their tiny lungs and extravagant heartrates.
Unretouched photo of a sagebrush glowing at sunset.Smoke billows a few days ago from the Gold Mountain fire roughly 60 crow miles south of us.
This evening the West Elk mountains are under deep chiarascuro. It changes hour by hour, more or less dense, wind dependent. The good news is that the Snyder fire seems to have stalled at 30,000 acres and is now 95% contained per Watch Duty.
Last night’s moonrise
The bad news is, the Gold Mountain fire just north of Ouray has grown to 25,000 acres in six days. The 2500-acre Willow fire in the mountains above Aspen forced evacuation of an Outward Bound base camp where a friend’s son lives. He remains up in the mountains on an extended backpack with a group of teens and may not even know of the fire. Friends of a friend lost everything the other day in the explosive Aspen Acres fire southwest of Pueblo including their pets, and barely escaped alive. More than 11,000 humans have been displaced from that fire alone as of tonight. Hundreds of structures have burned. Fairgrounds around the state are open to house large animals evacuated from the paths of various wildfires.
Current Watch Duty map, at 9:21 pm MT July 3.
And there are a few more wildfires in Colorado. A week ago, there were none. Multiply every human that’s affected by these fires by pick-a-number, and guess how many other sentient beings have been killed or displaced. Most of these fires will be found to have been started by human activity, whether accidental or malicious. All of them are raging as wildly as they are because of human-caused climate chaos. Tomorrow will likely bring more fires across the region from idiots shooting off fireworks despite fire bans. Climate ignorance pervading the political sphere has only and will only exacerbate the threats to all beings.
And even in the midst of smoke and rage I’m doing my best to calm down and eat well. Here’s a creamy potato-cheddar soup I had for lunch the other day.
I’m furious about human stupidity. I’m grateful for the courageous individuals and teams who do their best to mitigate these disastrous consequences, from the local, state, and federal firefighters on the ground to the fired federal employees who got together to resurrect the Strump-shuttered climate.gov with a new website, climate.us, and everyone in between.
I’m gratified to see the desert willow in full gorgeous bloom just a few years after a freeze so hard I thought it was dead.
I’m grateful once again for Alexandra Petri, who writes about MAHA day at the Great American State Fair, an event which I’ve been only peripherally aware of with my limited intake of current events and what passes for news. I giggled all the way through, from her description of the Screamin’ Freedom energy drink to her interaction with a featured ‘legacy’ speaker who urged her to go topless. If you don’t laugh sometimes you’ll just cry.
Even though Amy and I swore off Instagram recipes, we both can’t stop. The other day I tried the rice-waffle with some leftover rice, mixed with a little rice vinegar and sesame oil. I used too much liquid since I fudged the recipe with only enough rice for one cake. It took forever to crisp up and didn’t hold together well, but it was tasty and fun enough that I’ll try it again with proper proportions. They topped theirs with sushi elements, but I just made an Asian tunafish salad based on this recipe with what I had on hand.
Also doing my best to savor the moments I’m able to be outside. The temperature this fiery week has been lovely, it’s just been too smoky to enjoy it except in small sweet snatches.
And when we can’t be outside, we make the most of being inside.
Things I’ve been grateful for recently include discovering that the ‘new’ lens for the husband camera has been the wrong lens all along. It’s just never provided the same quality closeups (or any distance, really) that the original husband camera did with his original equivalent lens. (Imagine sufficient technical jargon here to explain why it was not the right tool for the job and move on.)
After shooting these images the other day, inspired and excited to bring my husband out to play for the first time in a long time, I ended the day feeling the same disillusionment that I have every time I’ve used this lens since I bought it. There was a cascade of reasons I didn’t investigate this sooner, among them the possibility that it was just me, unable to hold the camera quite as steady as I used to.
So I’m grateful to learn that it wasn’t me! And I’m grateful that I can return the whole setup. While this results in a financial hit, at least I’m able to trade in the lens, the camera body, and the other lens I bought six years ago and get back about 25% of what they cost me.
I may or may not get another camera. Except for photographing my favorite things, bugs and birds, the iPhone camera does well enough for what I foresee needing going into this next phase of my life. I’m no longer showing or selling large prints, I’m simply sharing online or creating small-scale projects like books or slideshows that don’t require the fancy components of a husband camera.
I’m grateful that I’m finally feeling motivated to simplify and downsize in a profound way; enough that I can contemplate relinquishing this pleasure and many more elements of this full and busy life. It’s time to release my grasp on things, conditions, relationships, drives, commitments, etc., that have added so much to my life but have become overwhelming.
Buddhism is often distilled into one simple phrase. The exact phrase varies from teacher to elder to practitioner, of course, but the gist is this: “From beginning to end, the path of dharma is about letting go.”
I don’t know if there is such a thing as the simple art of being, but I might be close to discovering it. It’s been a restful couple of weeks spent turning inward, spinning a cocoon, resting into my life as it is moment by moment, making deep inward contact with myself.
I’m grateful to those of you who read this blog regularly and encourage me to continue posting with your supportive comments. I’m grateful for the connections I’ve made and those I’ve deepened through this platform. I’m not walking away from Morning Rounds, but for now I won’t be posting as regularly as I have over the past five years.
Caterpillar of an owlet moth species photographed in the garden some years ago.
I attended an online retreat last weekend in which a dharma talk included a description of the life cycle of the monarch butterfly. It’s a great metaphor for many aspects of the Buddhist path, from faith and resilience and patience to impermanence and transformation.
The monarch butterfly by Joel Sartore, creator of the Photo Ark.
What resonated the most with me in that talk was the idea of imaginal cells. Once any caterpillar spins its chrysalis, it dissolves itself into goo inside the cocoon. It unmakes the caterpillar it was and with the provocation of imaginal cells it creates the butterfly it was destined to become. Right now, I’m the goo. It could be awhile before I know what I’m turning into, but for now I’m content and grateful to rest inside myself and let the imaginal cells determine the course of my transformation. Let me remember to be grateful every living moment of every day.
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.
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.
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.
Freeze damage report: not all was lost. Most of the tulips still bloomed, and the lilacs look good. Some iris leaves turned yellow at their tips, the crabapple blossoms all shriveled except for the twigs I had brought inside, and it looks like almost all the tiny apricots froze dead. I’m not optimistic about a peach harvest.
But the cherry tree is just waking up. This was taken Easter Sunday, and today blossoms are starting to open. If they can survive next week I may have a nice cherry harvest. In kitchen news, I tried an instagram recipe in which grated fresh parmesan is whisked with hot pasta water and butter to make a creamy sauce for the pasta, but mine turned into a bowl of string cheese and water. It still tasted good but was kind of hard to eat. Another insta-fail, why do I keep trusting those reels? Or maybe I did something wrong, it’s possible.
I was grateful to my Neighbors yesterday for Wrensitting while I went to my new dentist in Montrose for the day. Dr. Bloss is on the Board of the International Academy of Oral Medicine and Toxicology (IAOMT), a global network of dentists, health professionals, and scientists who research the biocompatibility of dental products, including the risks of mercury fillings, root canals, and jawbone osteonecrosis. I’m grateful for her professional care, and that we have this incredible resource in the region. I’m also grateful that she and her assistant got on board with my photographic documentation of the adventure.
I’d been contemplating removal of my mercury fillings off and on for years, but let myself be lulled into complacency by the prevailing attitude of US dentists and the FDA. Mercury amalgams were outlawed by the EU last year, and are scheduled to be banned by WHO by 2030. After the dentastrophe I experienced last summer, in which two molars with mercury amalgam were ground down for crowns with great cheerfulness, no mention of the mercury, and zero safety protocol, exposing me and the dentist and assistant to significant mercury vapor, I decided to get rid of the rest of it once and for all properly. This is what that looked like:
Dr. Bloss and her team use extensive protocols created by IAOMT, including full protective gear for themselves and for the patient as well. That’s me under her green hands, with one tooth isolated behind a rubber dental dam. There was a small suction device under the dam, a large vacuum over us, and highly specialized tools to suction the amalgam out as she ground it. My nose was covered with an oxygen mask and the rest of my face protected as well. I was given a vitamin C and charcoal rinse and drink before and after the procedure. I felt safe. In contrast, during the grinding by the dentist last year, I felt really uncomfortable inhaling and swallowing tooth dust even without realizing it was full of elemental mercury. This is what mercury amalgam removal done wrong looked like last summer:
Ten months later, I still have big ugly feelings about what happened last summer, but I’ve come a long way in letting it go now that the discomfort has largely dissipated. I wish I’d known better back then, but as Maya Angelou said, “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”
I stopped at Afton’s on the way home for some garden center therapy, and treated myself to this beautiful magic carpet spirea, with its russet spring leaves emerging. I wanted an accent shrub for this full-sun spot where rinsing the birdbath every day gives extra water. A couple varieties of blue mist spirea are doing well in other parts of the garden, but I was entranced with the prospect of pink flowers and dramatically changing foliage through the seasons. I also picked up a few more colorful perennials that I’ll find joy in planting over the next couple of weeks. I remember a time when I thought planting flowers was wasteful; that was before I understood the importance of gardening for pollinators. Now that I know better, I do better, gladly and gratefully.
I saw the first mini irises popped up in the dry dirt on January 21, the earliest everI think.
I want to be a helper. I am certainly grateful these days for the reminder to look for the helpers, when the wounds are so heavy. The contrast between the monks walking for peace across the south and the ICE thugs besieging Minneapolis is staggering.
Bird Buddy caught this lovely northern flicker Friday morning, just as the lightest snow began to fall.
The helpers, the good people with big hearts, are showing up in many thousands along the trail of the Walk for Peace monks; and the helpers generating compassion in action are showing up in the many thousands in the Twin Cities. It’s helpful to keep these many thousands of good-hearted Americans in mind.
By bedtime when I went to shut off the generator the snow was deep and heavy, weighing down birch limbs and wild rose stems almost to the ground.
My heart breaks for the VA nurse murdered yesterday and the mother murdered two weeks ago, and the two-year-old girl and the five-year-old boy and the fourth-grader and and and… I mean just imagine it for a second and it can’t help but break your heart (if you have one): a tiny child with no sense of what’s happening or why suddenly ripped away by strangers from all they know, and shipped to who knows where.
This morning the sun came out.
The sun coming out helped my heart yesterday. I remember the wisdom of the teachers that when I get mired in sadness because of anyone’s suffering I’m helping no one. I only help if I let that sadness morph into compassion and take action to alleviate the suffering of others. You can do it too. Call your congresspeople every day, show up in the streets if you’re able, write letters to editors, talk with friends and family, share reliable news sources with them if they’re blinded by propaganda from the regime. Do something to support the resistance: action is the antidote to anxiety. The stakes have never been higher.
Also, or if it’s all you can manage, do some random act of kindness for a neighbor, or a friend, or a stranger. And also: take care of your own nervous system. Everyone has their own unique capacities in each moment, each day. I took the weekend off, mostly, from screen time, from news, and still it was hard to relax. There’s this dreadful undercurrent, against which happiness, joy, and gratefulness become acts of resistance. So I spent the weekend in the kitchen, mostly, baking for friends and neighbors in gratefulness for their kindness.
Watching as much GBBO as I do, I got to feeling that there are too many great cakes and not enough birthdays. It’s time to step up my cake game, and anything you want to get good at requires practice. So I decided that I’d try to bake a birthday cake for everyone in my found family here this year. Clearly I can’t ship them to Portland, Florida, Santa Cruz, Virginia, Alabama, etc., but if I can drive it I aspire to bake it.
Today was devoted to a Bake Off worthy birthday cake for Neighbor Mary. The challenge I set myself was creative fillings, so I made white chocolate ganache and piped it around the bottom layer because that’s what the bakers on the show do. I don’t know why. I covered the first layer with ginger jam and a thin layer of the ganache.
Atop the second layer I smoothed the last of the raspberry and hibiscus jam, sorry there wasn’t more of it but committed to it once I started. I didn’t want to mix it with any other jam and get judged for sloppy flavors. (Does Paul Hollywood say sloppy flavors? I don’t think so.) I didn’t have a time limit and two kitchen icons waiting to judge me, but I can’t say that it wasn’t a bit stressful. But the fun kind of stress, where you’re stretching your capacities in your growth zone, like on the show.
I did have a deadline and some important distractions throughout the day. I was glad I had paced the elements, baking in the morning so it could cool completely, making the ganache before lunch so it had time to cool enough to whip, and starting assembly immediately after my family zoom so I could deliver before dark.
I covered the whole cake with chocolate cream cheese buttercream. Please recall that piping was not the challenge. Piping does challenge me, and I easily loaded the piping bag with a trick I saw on Instagram from Blue Cottage Bakery, so I gave myself a pat on the back for that step in the right direction. I scribbled the remaining ganache on top, plunked the cake in a Chewy delivery box, ripped the snow cover off the windshield dislodging six inches of frozen snow, and drove around the block just after sunset.
Neighbor Mary was thrilled. Her delight and joy was the icing on the cake for me. I begged her to wait for her birthday tomorrow to cut it, but she wanted to send me home with my tithe tonight so she cut a sliver for herself as well. (That’s my tithe above, and her sliver below. Obviously, I need to taste test all the birthday cakes so I can judge for myself.)
As she tasted and swooned over the various components, I told her what they were. I waited til the end to tell her what kind of cake it was. I wanted to capture her reaction for all time. “It’s a chocolate mayonnaise cake,” I said, camera ready.
“Yay mayonnaise!!!” If you were wondering about the first cake picture, in the mixing bowl, now you know: white sugar, brown sugar, and lots of mayonnaise.
Obligatory Wren picture to share the joy: So often when I get up from the couch during TV time, to fuel the fire or refill my water glass or feed the cat, a line from ‘Cecelia’ sings to mind: “…when I come back to bed someone’s taken my place.”
And just to give Topaz equal time: it’s a little blurry because she’s always looking around, but for one remarkably rare moment yesterday she sat on my lap.
Related to gratitude and grief, joy is an essential quality to cultivate for mental, emotional, and physical wellbeing. Big joy had come for a friend who dropped by the other day, and I shared her excitement experiencing empathetic joy, a felt sense of happiness in her joy. I made sure to notice how my joy for her great happiness felt in my body, and savor the tingles and my big smile, and her big smile: Savoring a good feeling for twenty seconds cultivates neural pathways and stimulates beneficial neurochemicals. That empathetic joy came on top of my pure joy at her surprise visit. We walked to the canyon, which gave Wren joy, and took a dose of forest medicine hugging an ancient juniper.
The view from the tree hug
The next day several more joyful surprises came my way. I dedicated myself to fully experiencing them all, opening my heart and my mind. The first was three volunteers who came from North Fork Senior Connections to help with yarden work for an hour, and we got so much done. All were seniors themselves, and from the larger neighborhood surrounding our small town. The program sent a dozen volunteers out into the community to lend hands to five seniors who had requested assistance. I had actually asked for help more than a year ago when I could barely move, but this was the first time they called and though I’m pretty capable by now, I can still use an extra hand with some chores. I baked a big batch of molasses ginger cookies to thank them.
While they did some of the more physical projects, I bent over and pulled a frost-killed sweet potato vine out of the patio planter and dropped my jaw when two fat little sweet potatoes came out with it. After sharing that surprise with Garden Buddy, who had persuaded me to try rooting and growing one two summers ago just for the beauty of the vine, I dug gently into the planter and discovered a handful more small tubers. Not a huge crop, but enough for a few meals, and a strong motivation to try a whole bed of them next year. Amazingly, the grasshoppers didn’t fancy the leaves.
After the helpers went merrily on up the road to another yard, I dug the last potatoes, the red potatoes I had protected under straw mulch until I could set up to save them in sand. The quantity and size of these tubers was another joyful surprise. The grasshoppers had hammered the foliage to the point that the plants never bloomed, and I was not expecting much when I dug my hands down into the cold dirt. I savored that activity so much I can still feel the cold in my finger bones and the rough dry soil in my cracked fingertips.
I love these wire baskets I bought online which no longer appear to be available. The garden hose made quick work of washing all the tubers outside, in the basket, and then they air dried before I brought them in the house.
While I waited for the potatoes to dry, I cut back the dead dahlias and salvias that had filled some of the garden pots, and was met with this delightful surprise of small orange flowers. The plant had died back in summer heat but emerged again a month ago, and was secretly blooming beneath the big red salvia. A honeybee was sipping from it but fled to a snapdragon when I pulled out my camera.
While the potatoes continued to dry outside I washed myself off and dressed to go to a patio party down the road. A friend invited me as her plus one and came to pick me up. It was at the home of a newish neighbor whom I’d been meaning to take a plate of cookies to for a couple of years but… being a reclusive hermit, I hadn’t gotten to yet. I had saved enough cookies to bring him some, and found I was warmly welcomed. Another gathering of neighbors I mostly didn’t know! I listened, and laughed, shared a few baking tips, and met another knitter. I was grateful the party was outside, the weather was beautiful, and the company easy and engaging. The host had asked that guests bring something for his compost pile, which struck me as both creative and courageous. I took a bucket full of the dead annuals I had trimmed in the morning, so that even if something sprouts from my offering it will be a lovely flower and not a weed.
Once home, I packed the red potatoes in play sand in a cardboard box. I still have two bags of the gold potatoes in the fridge I need to cook and eat or freeze in the next couple of weeks. They are more delicate, and probably wouldn’t keep well, but I’m optimistic about these hardy red potatoes. I spread a layer of sand, covered it with potatoes, poured in another layer of sand… and made a three layer sand and potato lasagna, which I then closed and tucked under a chair in the mudroom where it will stay cold but not freezing (I hope) so I can eat homegrown potatoes through the winter. Maybe when it gets real cold I’ll have to bring the box with whatever’s left into the pantry. We’ll know more later. One potato at a time.
And the last joyful surprise is the fragrant orchid that hadn’t bloomed for a couple of years, for so long I had forgotten it’s fragrant. It’s been in this hanger near my desk for more than a week, I’ve walked past it dozens of times a day, when suddenly one midday an exquisite perfume stopped me mid stride. I inhaled deeply, exhaled completely, and breathed deep again. I savored this intoxicating scent for more than twenty seconds, until my scent buds acclimated and could hold no more. It continues to release its sweet aroma a for an hour or two in the middle of the day, and then goes quiet. Each time I pass during one of those fleeting floral exhalations is another joyful surprise that captivates me for several lingering breaths.
I was just heading out for sunset last night when a friend from Australia called seeking help with a podcast software we both use. After I got her squared away with it, she wanted to chat so I took her out with me. The technical connection was murky, but the personal connection was delightful. We talked about the moral decay of civilization, the polycrises, the lorikeets in her birdbath, and some of our exes, and we laughed a lot. Sometimes it’s all you can do.
Prior to the broken lying man I dated briefly a few years ago, my previous relationship was with — well, another broken man — who, when I said I valued kindness above all, spit out “Kindness? I don’t even know what you mean by kindness.”
From today’s vantage point, I can see that this came from his brokenness. But he hadn’t said it in a sad way, he had dismissed my foremost core value with contempt. I should have dumped him that minute, instead of sticking around for another three years of emotional abuse.
Four decades of research by the Gottman Institute reveals that the primary destructive force in any relationship is contempt; and further, that being the recipient of contempt in a relationship is a good predictor of—this is wild—infectious disease.
Crazy Panela Mexican cheese that you can simply slice and FRY! So I put the last of the beans in a tortilla, added a fried circle of Panela…
Sadly, I’ve been in a number of emotionally abusive relationships. This likely accounts for my now being happily single for so long; and, it also gives me firm ground from which to point out that the American people are in an abusive relationship with their president.
… a fried egg, roasted green chiles…
The lying, meanness, belittling, controlling, gaslighting and contempt I’ve experienced with past partners have parallels in everything this president does. America is in a national abusive relationship with its President. America, he won’t give it up: It’s up to you to extricate yourself from it. It’s not easy to admit how thoroughly you’ve been fooled, how completely you’ve allowed your values to be undermined to the point that you’re willing to hurt yourself and your loved ones just to keep him happy.
… a few corn chips for crunch and a splash of salsa, and fold the whole thing up like a Taco Bell crunchwrap.
I’m retraumatized every time I hear about the president’s performative cruelty, because I see it for what it is. So I’m retraumatized daily, and have to be careful how much of my attention budget I spend on the brilliant satires and shocked screeds that others are writing about his mental collapse, the brittle reports of each bite his regime takes out of the Constitution, the flagrant corruption of the Supreme Court, the complicity of legacy media and the oligarchy, and that’s just the tip of the shitshow.
After years of trying, I’m finally able to feel compassion for those who naively believed his lies, who felt a want, a lack, a need in their lives that they believed he and only he could fulfill. I imagine that some who voted for him weren’t voting based on hatred, mysogyny, and white supremacy, but on their very real needs: economic needs, a sense of security, a feeling of safety or belonging… and so they chose to believe the lies, despite some inner ick that tried to warn them.
I empathize with their longing for someone with seeming strength and certainty to make everything okay, and I understand the sense of betrayal they are starting to experience. I wish that they may find true relief from their suffering. It won’t come from piling more anger, hatred, cruelty and violence on top of what’s already being done in their name. May they come to see reality clearly, forgive themselves for their delusions, and walk away from this abusive relationship before it completely destroys their lives.
Over the past few days I’ve been appreciating political satire as medicine for mental stability. The Borowitz Report shared a series of great artworks redrawn for these hard times, of which this last was my favorite.
I became familiar with a grassroots nonprofit from North Carolina, American Muckrakers, when they took on ‘not-my’ western Colorado representative Lauren Boebert during her first term. Their motto is “holding terrible politicians and people accountable since 2021.” Their efforts, I believe, helped drive her out of CD3 where she would likely have lost reelection, but drove her into CD4 where she won in 2024. CD3 didn’t fare much better last November, with Jeff un-Hurd hurting his constituents from the get go by casting the swing vote that pushed the Big Bad Bill over the edge. As congress debates the must-pass budget bill this month, we can all let our senators know that we oppose it.
We should have definitely blended the tomato butter in the food processor instead of just mashing it with a fork, which would have emulsified it. The next day it was a little particulate, but still delicious on steamed sweet corn-off-the-cob.
Meanwhile, another under-the-radar threat looming is the regime’s plan with the delusional Dr. Oz to require more pre-authorizations for Medicare patients, and to have AI be the decider about who gets what procedures, regardless of doctor’s orders. Indivisible has a petition that explains the dire implications of this AI Death Panel (remember who coined that phrase, death panel?).
More leftovers: the last tomato pesto tart topped with our new favorite omelette and more pesto. Chef José Andres calls it “the best omelette in the history of mankind” and reveals the secret: one egg, one big spoon mayonnaise, whisk it, microwave for 30-40 seconds.
So old people won’t be able to get the treatments they need to thrive or even to survive, and meanwhile Florida has decided it has too many children, as Alexandra Petri points out in this lucid satirical essay in The Atlantic about the state’s elimination of all vaccine mandates.
“Their hands are too small. Sometimes they are sticky, and no one knows why. They say they’re eating their dinner, but you can see that they are just pushing it around on their plate. They come up to you on the sidewalk and tell you their whole life story for 10 minutes, wearing face paint from a birthday party three days ago. Some afternoons they announce that they are sharks, but they are obviously not sharks. They do this over and over again.”
A sweet surprise through the kitchen window, ID’d from this photo by iNaturalist as a green-tailed towhee.
The biggest threat to American public health is without doubt the delusional Health and Human Services secretary. His anti-science anti-vax platform is the first step to killing more children across America, but all this makes sense if the GOP goal is actually to decimate the population of the country.
Bucky is growing big and strong, and stopped by the pond for a drink this afternoon. Wren ran down to say hello and he gave her a sage nod.
Old people, poor people, children, everyone really, will suffer much more, and many of us are already suffering from the ramifications of Project 2025, which is what’s really at the heart of this campaign of cruelty, this great undoing of America’s carefully built societal infrastructure.
The tragic strawberries are finally getting a few flowers to fruition despite ongoing grasshopper predation, and we reaped a few this morning. Wren got three, and I got three.
Setting aside all the insanity “out there” for awhile this evening, it was lovely to zoom with friends from coast to coast in a Grateful Gathering where we talked about pilgrimage as a metaphor for life, with gratefulness as a guiding light.
And then it was lovely to step out into the glorious light of a clear autumn evening and stroll til the sun set, grateful for another day.
