Space pollution: some might call it progress (and some might say ‘Aliens!’) I saw something similar awhile ago and vaguely recall someone saying it was a Space-X thing. Whatever it is it doesn’t belong in the north sky.
Wren was excited to ride to a party in a new electric truck! Like me, she is grateful for anything that minimizes petroleum use.
Where’s Wren?
I was grateful for the ride, and for the gathering of neighbors, old friends and new, who feel the same as Wren and I do about our precious planet, and commit time and effort toward protecting the environment and preserving our democracy. Such as it is.
I’m grateful for support and encouragement in my 20V&F endeavor. Cousin M sent a photo of her lunch which included eight vegetables, and which inspired me to make a salad for dinner with six V&F, bringing my daily total to nine different kinds.
Now more than ever, I’m grateful for the simplest things. I’m experiencing big sadness. Gratitude, like any mindfulness practice, is a habit we cultivate during smooth sailing, so that when life gets rough, it’s right there to sustain us: I don’t have to search for it, which supports resilience.
Amy insisted that gin infused with strawberries and rhubarb was well worth the patience, so a week ago I chopped up rhubarb from next door, and organic strawberries from the store, and set them to steep in a jar of gin.
I left them in for around six days—I lost count after checking at three and concluding it hadn’t been long enough. Then I strained the gin into a pint jar—filled it perfectly—and since I didn’t want to waste the saturated fruit I whipped that in the food processor with some sugar and stuck it in the freezer to see what happened.
Cousin Mel has informed me that we need to eat twenty different fruits and vegetables each week for optimum health. So I’m starting a daily log of what I eat, first to get a baseline, and then to hold myself to this standard.
Last night, I got in six for dinner alone: mushrooms, scallions, garlic and red orach, which I sautéed and then threw in an egg. I garnished with pesto which added arugula and pecans to the tally. It was delicious. And so simple!
Wednesday night I baked a lemon pound cake to serve the next morning when Honeybadger came for coffee in the garden. I was grateful to have a whole cake to share and sent her home with a big chunk; then gave another chunk away the next day, leaving altogether a reasonable amount for just me for a few more days.
I enjoyed a piece of the cake for dessert last night, along with a slushy made from the beautiful frozen fruit purée and infused gin. I was thrilled to realize I’d just added another four fruits to my count that day: lemon, strawberry, rhubarb, and juniper berry. I think that must have also counted as one ferment for the day!
Though I was sluggish this morning, I did get Wren out of the yard for the Breakfast Loop, and loved seeing blooming Erigeron along the trail home.
Where’s Wren?
Back in through the lion gate, I was grateful to see irises blooming in the yarden.
She’s not far from me, that’s where she is, any time I check. After a brief rain squall, I noticed first flowers on the pink honeysuckle, and played with the magic tools in Photos to remove the background, just for fun. It’s hard to imagine that I was such a holdout on digital cameras for so long. …Or is it?
I’m grateful for friends and cousins who recommend positive influences, such as infused gin and twenty fruits and vegetables in a week. And I’m grateful for my increasing capacity to feel that gratitude as it arises and moves through my body.
I’m grateful to finally learn how to Sudoku. It’s mystified me for years and I never even wanted to know how until a few days ago. For years, Wordle sufficed as far as mind games. Recently NYT introduced Strands, another word game that intrigued me enough to stack it with my Wordle habit. And then, I returned to the mini-crossword, began to dabble in the regular crossword again, and started playing the other word games on the app, Connections and Letter Boxed. (I’d already tried and abandoned Spelling Bee years ago.)
I’ve been mind-training for years with meditation and other mindfulness practices, and decided my brain is old enough now that I should exercise it more strenuously in a different field. After all, it no longer spins its wheels ruminating so it’s got some spare time and energy for more healthy weightlifting.
I had labeled myself for most of my life as A Word Person Not A Number Person. I think about my poet friend Marion, also a word person who long ago fell hard for Sudoku. I couldn’t understand why. It seemed like a betrayal of Words. Once I started using the Games app, the one numbers game began nagging for attention. I’d think of Marion and how she loved it; I opened it a few times and closed it, but finally, tonight, decided to learn how it goes. Sudoku didn’t prevent her from succumbing to dementia, and may not help me, but research suggests that this kind of brain game actually does help keep the mind nimble. I felt pretty pleased when I completed my first ever Sudoku. And it’s probably a healthier way to spend precious time than the boob tube.
I’m also grateful for French toast with peaches, yogurt, and real maple syrup.
Even though it will snow again soon, I’m grateful for the arrival of early spring. Today it climbed over sixty degrees in the sun, and two little irises opened. I worked in the south border for an hour and planted some tulips I didn’t get in the ground before it froze. Maybe they’ll bloom this year, maybe not; but at least they’ll take root, and I planted them in a cage so they’ll survive the does. I’m grateful for the promise of spring.
I’m grateful for community activism on behalf of environmental protection, and this time it’s right in my own back yard. As a community, we’ve been fighting for our quality of life and our livelihoods for more than a decade, in a battle with the oil and gas industrial complex that seems to never end. If you’ve ever visited here, or you just want to support us, please consider signing this comment form to the BLM now. The deadline for comments is February 20.
When this started in 2011 with proposals to lease public lands at the heart of our watersheds for fracking, there was enormous community response. Hundreds of people attended meetings, thousands sent letters, urging the government to protect these lands that are crucial to the agriculture and recreation that drive our economy. What can one person do? I realized I could compile some of my many photographs of the area into a ‘visual comment’ to submit to the BLM during the initial public comment period. And then I realized I wasn’t the only one who had photographs.
By the time it was done, more than fifty valley residents and a few visitors from out of state had sent me hundreds of digital images, which I complied into the North Fork Scrapbook. Please visit the online scrapbook generated and maintained by our leading environmental protector, Pete Kolbenschlag, now director of the Colorado Farm & Food Alliance, to learn more about the unique valley and the looming threat to its health. I’m grateful to Pete, to the Western Slope Conservation Center, to Citizens for a Healthy Community, and to the thousands of valley residents who are making their concerns heard in an effort to protect our home.
I’m pretty confident that the bird in the top of the birch tree is a western bluebird, but I don’t know what the others are. All About Birds from Cornell Lab of Ornithology says that outside the breeding season, they flock in large numbers with several other species of birds, and the flock this morning was huge. They filled the trees and flew among them as Wren raced with delight below. I’m grateful for bluebirds and all the other little songbirds that live here year-round and those who migrate through. I’m happy these birds were enjoying the birch catkins. I hope they’re back tomorrow; I’ll try to get a better view and photos.
When I pulled into the parking space in front of the PT building this morning, I couldn’t stop looking at this gargoyle face emerging from the natural rock of the stem wall.
I’m grateful for all the right tools, for the raised beds, snow on the mountains, and the resilient red salvia that keeps on blooming for any stray hummingbirds or other pollinators in need.
When a friend cut my hair the other week, she noticed a ‘birthmark’ on the back of my neck. I couldn’t believe I could have had a birthmark for 64 years and never known about it, but I asked my primary care provider today when I went in for a Medicare intake that was mistakenly scheduled since I have to wait til I’m 65 for that particular appointment. But it was good to see her, to hear that the weird bump on my finger was a benign cyst that is pressing on the nailbed making it grow crooked, but nothing to worry about; and that the strange red splotches underneath my shorn hair are what’s known as a ‘stork bite.’ This extremely common type of birthmark, found on nearly 30% of newborns, apparently remains in around half those people into adulthood. What a relief! With all the skin cancers I’ve dealt with through the years, I’m grateful to have a simple stork bite.
A stork bite, photo from Bing Images
Stork bite! It’s a hilarious phrase and I can’t stop saying it. I’m glad I had something to laugh about, because when I went to the pharmacy after waiting an hour for a clinic appointment I didn’t really need, they once again said that Medicaid didn’t cover the new Covid vaccine. I got impatient with the tech, because after the same person told me the same thing last week I had called around, including my insurance provider, and been told it was covered; I’d called the store manager and she said there was a mistake and to come get it anytime. Well, I put my foot down this time and made them call the number on my card, but as the situation unfolded I felt like an ass for holding up the line behind me and being cranky to the helpless tech. Turns out it’s true, City Market won’t take Medicaid for the Covid shot; the store manager had double-checked flu shot coverage, not Covid.
As I waited, though, instead of fuming and getting more impatient, I called to mind that it wasn’t their fault, they work hard, I didn’t want to make anyone’s day worse, and I gradually surrendered to ‘this is how it is.’ The tech who had taken the brunt of my bad attitude had left the scene while the pharmacist was on the phone trying patiently to learn how they could give me the shot. When I heard her say, “So we need to get pre-authorization?” I called to her “If I can’t get it today I’ll just go to Safeway.” “Are you sure?” she said. “Yeah.” So she hung up and came over to apologize, and I apologized for getting cranky. But as I drove home I thought about the feelings of the other tech, who had taken a break. I put myself in her shoes: I’d have taken a break from me too. I felt awful for bringing discord into her day just because I was annoyed and inconvenienced.
Maybe she was already having a tough day. Maybe my attitude would make the rest of her shift more difficult, or maybe she’d go home and still feel bad about that interaction. The possible ripples and ramifications of my impatience plagued me, and I could really understand the truth of how we create our own suffering when our actions are out of alignment with our values. I value kindness and patience, and I had not been kind nor patient. Granted, I had not spiraled into a tizzy as I might have a few years ago before mindfulness practice, and I wasn’t stewing at her or the situation all the way home. So I’ve improved myself some. But not as much as I’d like to. Once I got home, I called the pharmacy and offered the tech a heartfelt apology, and she was grateful for it. So was I.
I’ve been pondering how to enjoy a BLT without the bacon, and am grateful that it finally occurred to me to order some vegetarian bacon bits and see if that could work. And more grateful that it did! Nothing equals bacon. But I haven’t been able to eat it for the past year; I simply lost my taste for eating pig. I’ve only eaten meat a couple of times this year, though I will continue to slowly cook up the few pieces that remain in my freezer, or eat meat if it’s served to me. It’s hard even to serve it to my cat and dog, though I will because I believe it’s the best option for them.
Meanwhile, I’ll explore substitutes like soy-based bacon bits and other options, as well as eat more legumes and pulses, and all the other vegetarian proteins available. I’m grateful I got some bacon bits in time to make some semi-BLTs with the last few garden tomatoes.
I’m grateful for mindfulness practice, and for the Mindful Life Program where I trained to be a mindfulness teacher. Their latest yearlong cohort graduates tomorrow, and I’ve participated in some sessions of their final online retreat this weekend. One of the sessions for teachers involved some outdoor mindfulness exercises, including a ‘mindful photography’ piece option: to take pictures representing the Four Keys of Living Mindfully. These are Attention, Values, Wisdom, and an Open Heart. For attention, I captured this lovely moth on a Maximilian sunflower, representing attention to detail, or to nature, or to beauty, your choice.
For Values, I shot my clothesline, representing my value of living lightly on the planet: off the grid, entirely solar powered, my home doesn’t have a dryer. I’ve been enjoying drying clothes on this Irish-made Breezecatcher clothesline for many years. Clothes, and in this case, kitchen linens, the dish towels I use in abundance to reduce paper towel use, and the dish cloths I knitted for several years until arthritis stilled my knitting needles for awhile. I hope to get back to knitting more this winter. What a relief to knit long-lasting cotton wash-squares that clean as well as any disposable sponge and last for years with frequent hot water washes.
The last two keys, Wisdom and an Open Heart, are represented in the Contemplation Tree in the yarden, where skulls, antlers, horns and various other found artifacts of wild life surrender slowly to Impermanence. The tree itself, a skeleton of an old juniper, honors Impermanence. As I may have mentioned once or twice before, comprehending the truth of Impermanence is fundamental to Wisdom. The barbed wire heart, which has been hanging there for nearly thirty years, was something I hadn’t noticed in a long time and a perfect surprise representation of Open Heart.
Little Wren greets the notch-eared doe who is nibbling a few tomato scraps I put out for her in a patio pot. I think Wren was more interested in the tomatoes than in the doe, but the two of them peaceably nose to nose is also a sweet example of Open Heart.
I was grateful that I forgot to add tomato to today’s cheese sandwich, I think it would have fallen apart. Swiss, pickle, lettuce, avocado mayo, and mustard.
You might be thinking, “OLD skin?! How can she be grateful for old skin? Doesn’t she wish her skin were still young, supple, and firm?” Well of course it would be nice to have the kind of skin that I formerly had, but what would be the point of wishing for it now? Why would I want my skin to be other than it is? It is, after all, the skin that has carried me through a lifetime of adventures and still holds my body tenderly the best that it is able. I’m grateful for my old skin, because to be otherwise would cause unnecessary mental and emotional distress, and without it life would be unbearable. I’m grateful for my old skin, despite its increasing fragility, its wrinkles, its crépey quality, its inclination to bruise and tear with the slightest provocation. I’m grateful for my old skin because as long as I can be aware of it, and tend to its scrapes and bruises, its basal cell carcinomas, its dry itches, it means that I’m still living.
Don’t look down if you’re squeamish. While I was harvesting, an apricot twig poked a dog scratch that hadn’t healed yet, and it looks worse than it felt. I’m grateful for my poor old skin, and for the compassion it gives me for my dear departed father, who got lots of bruises on his hands, and for all the elders with fragile skin who bruise and bleed easily and get by with equanimity and plenty of bandaids.
I can’t believe how old my poor old skin looks, though; it certainly doesn’tfeel this old, or at least I don’t feel this old inside.
