The Redemption cake came to fruition and was thoroughly appreciated at a dear friend’s 80th birthday brunch today.
After hours outside with a convivial crowd I was dehydrated and exhausted. Back home I napped, then sat under the apricot tree for a long time appreciating the dozens of pollinators all over it: butterflies, moths, bumblebees, digger bees, sweat bees… I was too tired to do more than soak it in. I’m grateful for good tired, and optimistic that I’ll share more about both the cake and the tree soon.
…and counting! I’m grateful for patience and trust from friends this morning, and of course for the cheese sandwich. Today’s included leftover Brie, gifted sliced chicken breast, sriracha mayo and regular mayo, romaine, and pickled red onion on fresh sourdough. But mostly I’m grateful I’ve lived another day. There was meant to be more to this post but the internets balked and it’s bedtime. May tomorrow be your peaceful day.
It’s Puzzle Season in a big way. Stay tuned for two puzzle posts coming soon.
I believe that to have one or two people in your life who burst into heartfelt laughter at you on a regular basis is a fortunate gift. To have more than a couple such friends, as I do, is to be blessed and highly favored indeed. I’m so grateful for those people in my life, and recalled tonight the very first time I recognized this gift. My high school best friend and I were riding the after-school bus home. I don’t remember the situation, but I do remember I was upset and venting, possibly crying, and I said something that made her laugh out loud. That made me laugh, and the upset was over. I just sent that friend a hostage note proclaiming that I would die if I didn’t receive a certain recipe by noon tomorrow. As I hit send I imagined her reading it, and I could hear and even feel her unique, musical laughter erupt as she read it. And so I thought to mention my gratitude for her, and for those several other friends who frequently laugh at my way of expressing myself. You know who you are. Thank you for your laughter: I treasure it and I love you.
Working on perfecting the blueberry cinnamon roll. A batch last week from a new recipe didn’t satisfy me though the people I shared it with weren’t so particular. The dough was a little tough and there wasn’t enough filling. The batch I made yesterday had too much filling, but I’m closing in on perfection.
A new tiny friend made a surprise visit Saturday and was entranced with Biko, the first turtle she’s ever met in her whole life. When she was ready, she touched him ever so gently on the top of his shell. Then we took her to the pond, where she spotted her first ever frog. There is still at least one tadpole swimming around, and a few growing juveniles out even after a freeze the night before, and one brand new fingertip froglet on land. I sent them home with the last two rolls of Batch Number One.
I delivered a couple of rolls from Batch Number Two to the Honey Badger at the top of the driveway last night, so we could enjoy one with coffee this morning separately in our own homes together on Zoom. I was planning to deliver most of the rest to a few more neighbors today, but they disappeared before I could do that.
I’m a night owl and don’t see too many sunrises, so I was grateful for the extra motivation to rise in time to catch the morning clouds with the sun just behind Mendicant Ridge. I wish I could want to get out of bed while it’s still dark.
Yarden Helper came unexpectedly with a load of firewood, so I gave him three rolls to take home for his family, knowing that would brighten their day. Remembering the unattributable quote, “Be kind. Everyone you meet is carrying a heavy burden,” or another version, “Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about.”
He was heading next to Garden Buddy’s so I gave him two for them, and suddenly, without ever having to leave the driveway, I was down to just enough to sustain me until I muster the motivation to tackle Batch Number Three. I’m grateful for the practice of generosity, a natural accompaniment to the gratitude and grief slow dancing inside me.
I can’t share the recipe for the rolls because I used three of them plus a couple of innovations. But most of the recipes I checked involved brushing the rolled dough with softened butter.
I wasn’t happy with the one cup of whole blueberries in Batch One, so I made a quick jam with two cups, but cooked it down too much, so threw in another handful of blueberries. It might have been ok if I’d only used half of it, or if I hadn’t put lemon zest in it as well as lemon juice.
The brown sugar – cinnamon mix was adequate, but I’ve been including some cardamom and the next batch will have only cinnamon.
Clearly it was too much filling!
And I’ll need to practice my glazing technique before I enter any contests, but at least it’s tasty. And I’m grateful I was still around for sunset.
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.
I was grateful to get into the dentist today to check out increasing pain in my teeth since the crown a few weeks ago. All kinds of nightmare scenarios were going through my mind, but not with the pernicious insistence of pre-mindfulness days. The dentist was reassuring, diagnosed it as a “bite problem” and ground down both crowns to resolve it. They said my teeth were bruised. What? I was grateful to learn something new: teeth are held in place by ligaments, and ligaments can get inflamed for all sorts of reasons, including not quite perfect crowns. Fingers crossed that’s all it is. We’ll know more later.
I’m grateful for making it through to another glorious sunset. West, light smoke floated below the clouds. To the northwest the wildfire smoke seemed to float above the clouds, though really, I think, it was just closer.
Remember those waffles I froze awhile ago? One toasted, with organic almond butter and grape jelly, made a terrific breakfast.
There’s a question that’s been bugging me for nearly a decade. How is it that half of America looks at Donald Trump and doesn’t find him morally repellent? He lies, cheats, steals, betrays, and behaves cruelly and corruptly, and more than 70 million Americans find him, at the very least, morally acceptable….
Over the past 30 years, people have tried to fill the hole in their soul by seeking to derive a sense of righteousness through their political identities. And when you do that, politics begins to permeate everything and turns into a holy war in which compromise begins to seem like betrayal.”
David Brooks, The Atlantic
One of the fennel stalks getting ready to flower.
This incisive philosophical exploration of why some people like Drumpf traces the moral collapse of Western Civilization back to The Enlightenment. I’ve been spending too much of my attention budget on this question, but it’s helpful to read others exploring the origins and ramifications of current conditions. I’ve also been spending too much energy on wishful thinking, wishes like this bit of a ‘Prayer for the Resistance’ in Rob Brezny’s newsletter: “May the rich and powerful bullies perpetrating cruel violence be plagued by the consequences of their own actions, as their attempts to undermine empathy and democracy backfire spectacularly….” and other eloquent ill-wishes.
An early variety of cabbage I planted is tiny but ready! The grasshoppers figured it out a day before I did.
Perhaps a complementary article is this reflection from Mark Nepo on the Grateful Living website, about wonder and “finding the wisdom that lives in your heart.” There are two kinds of people in this world… which two kinds are always shifting for me, but there sure do seem to be a lot of aspects of human nature where polar opposites exist. I know, the last thing any of us needs to be doing is polar opposing people. I can’t help that I think about it, though.
A lettuce harvest gets a refreshing rinse from the sprinkler.
In a Saturday morning workshop with dharma teacher Martin Aylward, one of the takeaways was “I’m here to love.” At the end I thanked him for the teachings which validate a lot of the choices I’ve made in recent years, and said, “But I get stuck on ‘here to love,’ because I feel such rage and hatred toward the people making hateful, racist, cruel policies in the US.” I could have seen his answer coming, I know the teachings. He replied, gently, so compassionately, “So that is where you start, right there in your own heart, bringing love to your anger, your hatred which poisons only you, your tendency to demonize others.” A weight shrugged off my shoulders, my hand came involuntarily to my heart, tears to my eyes.
A spatchcock chicken roasted with potato and onion chunks will feed me for weeks.
In other inner work, our Grateful Gathering discussed this video Tuesday evening, which touched all of us deeply. Even more compelling, Ted Leach shared with us the next day some links to give more context on the life of Dot Fisher-Smith, whose wisdom and gratefulness shine through in the video. Talk about a paragon of inner work! And about the power of genuine compassion.
This is the earliest I’ve seen apricots ripen. There aren’t many, and they’re mostly out of reach, but they’re the largest the tree has ever produced.
In grasshopper plague mitigation, I’ve just signed up for this free webinar and recording from PPAN, People and Pollinators Action Network, in hopes of learning once and for all what strategies will work to save my yarden.
And in tadpole development, I remain mesmerized whenever I get a chance to visit the pond. It’s not far away, but with the air quality the past couple of days I haven’t been down there. We’ve only seen a couple of frogs in the past few weeks, and I was glad to catch one on the edge of the rushes the day before the fires. And welcome a lily blossom.
Speaking of the fires, the South Rim fire closed the day at 2500 acres, the Sowbelly at 2240, and the Deer Creek fire near the Utah border which also started yesterday blew up to 7000 acres within 24 hours. This exponential growth is sadly the new normal for wildfires. The smoke wasn’t as thick today due to less wind, and I was grateful for that though I still found it helpful to mask the few times I stepped outside. Grateful living has given me peace beyond the obvious. Where once I may have bemoaned the smoke and worried about its effects or potential duration, now I am simply grateful that it’s not worse: that the closer strikes were spotted and extinguished quickly, that these fires haven’t killed anyone, that the smoke isn’t denser, that my house protects me from most of it, that I’m slowly but surely taming my unruly mind, that every now and then a sliver of true compassion replaces my anger, and so on.
“Living gratefully is not something we aspire to one day. It is what we do. When we practice, this doing shapes who we are, who we are becoming, and the life we lead, transforming our way of being.”
The flat light of dusk shows off the brilliant blues of the mountain bluebird.
Do you remember that song Feed the Birds, from Mary Poppins? The old woman on the cathedral steps feeding the pigeons touched me profoundly at the time, and the song is probably the first to embed itself in my young brain. Its message was formative for me.
I was surprised to see a northern flicker using the birdbath, but both male and female have become regular visitors.
Last year I put out this copper birdbath (I think it was last year, maybe the year before). Every morning first thing I turn on the hose to rinse it thoroughly and refill it. But I haven’t fed seedeaters for a decade, ever since the kittens came, because it wasn’t fair to bait the birds in knowing the cats would hunt them.
Be careful what you ask for. I’ve always wanted evening grosbeaks but even a decade ago when I last fed the birds they never came. This year, they dominate the feeder, and perch in the peach tree.
A few years ago, with censure from the phoebes and some serious discouragement from me, Topaz learned not to hunt birds. Now she’s getting old and slow enough she rarely hunts even mice. So after I saw Ruth’s Bird Buddy, and had been longing for birdsong in my days, I started feeding again.
House finches bring the earliest and most lovely song to the yard. The juvenile male above is starting to come into his adult plumage, and will soon resemble the gorgeous red adult, below.
Why did I start feeding birds again when there’s a bird flu crisis? Well, it’s not really affecting songbirds, but because of the scare I think some people have taken down backyard feeders; and beyond that, humans have destroyed and poisoned enough bird habitat, erected enough glass skyscrapers, and loosed enough domestic cats to kill more than three billion birds since 1970. Across all species of North American birds, the average breeding population has declined by nearly one third. The least I can do is feed the birds.
Finches are among the families especially hard hit by this devastating species decline.
The past couple of years I’ve seen an oriole show up at a hummingbird feeder once or twice, but not stick around. So last winter, anticipating, I purchased an oriole feeder. I put it out a few weeks ago when I learned they were in the area, with some nectar and an orange, but no visitors until yesterday: I only discovered that when I checked the orange this morning and saw that it had been picked clean. After having to rescue too many bees from the nectar I had emptied that, but I put out a fresh orange half, and some organic grape jelly, and waited… and waited…
…and waited, all day. I had to go inside for awhile late afternoon, and when I came back outside before sunset I saw half the orange had been scooped out. I sat down again with husband camera. Within a few minutes, here came the Bullock’s oriole to feast! The gratification of watching this gorgeous creature enjoy the fruit was well worth the wait. I’ll try for better light tomorrow.
The elusive western tanager also made a fleeting appearance last week, slipping into the juniper and slipping out while I was on a zoom meeting I had taken outside because it was too fine a day to stay in. As I sat with camera to eye and continued to participate in the meeting, Ana asked if I had seen the Netflix show ‘The Residence.’ I knew immediately why she asked, and I’ve been laughing for days delighted that I reminded her of the detective obsessed with birdwatching. If you haven’t seen that mini-series yet, I highly recommend it.
I slept late and lingered in a sweet dream where my mother, my grandmother, and Auntie Rita were all waiting for me in a hotel lobby. It was wonderful to hug them each again, and then gather them all into a loving group hug. The rosebuds I’ve been watching unfurl in super slow motion for two weeks had burst open by the time I checked around ten this morning. It’s the first cultivated rose I’ve had in twenty-five years since my rose bonsai met its demise with a housesitter’s neglect. I picked this Sheila’s Perfume cultivar from the rose tent at Afton’s largely for its extraordinary aroma; a big bonus was the colors.
The next thrill arrived down at the pond where equally suddenly a huge ball of frogs’ eggs showed up this morning. I’m pretty sure they weren’t there yesterday. A mama frog in the rushes right above the nest may have just finished laying them.
The potato leaves have been working their way up through the soil for a week now, but it’s still a thrill to see how much they’ve grown. I also spotted a tattered Mourning Cloak butterfly and a Western Tiger Swallowtail in the fading lilacs, through the kitchen window.
We went back down to check on the frogs’ eggs this evening and mama was nowhere near them. I must have seen frogs’ eggs before but I don’t remember it; I don’t think I’ve ever seen them here. My curiosity piqued, I looked up the life cycle so I’d know when to expect tadpoles. Nine days is the average, according to one article, so I know how I’ll be spending my Memorial Day. I’m grateful for all the little thrills this Saturday offered.
