Tag Archive | garden

Red Hat Day

Feb26

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.

A Small Cremation

Feb2

I woke to a startling warning text from Amy. I didn’t doubt her but wanted to know more. Eew. It didn’t take more than a minute reading to decide what to do next. I don’t want to see its invariable change. So I gently lifted it off the stem…

Eew. Sticky! Where did she come from? Will winter kill any others that might have laid their cottony egg sacs outside? It says they can hatch 600-800 eggs in a few days in summer but take a couple months in winter. Thank goodness I didn’t wait to see what happened!

Eew. Very sticky!

I tried to lay it on a paper towel but it was so sticky I had to spread it to get it off the tool. I couldn’t see any eggs so I used the handy zoom feature on my pocket supercomputer.

I considered my options for disposal of these pests. Definitely not the compost! Maybe garbage? I don’t like to kill any being, but nor did I want to risk them surviving and spreading. I decided on a ceremonial cremation, so I folded up the paper towel and set it on top of the woodstove to wait for tonight’s fire.

Wren supervised. I set the shroud on the floor to start the fire, and once it was blazing I tossed in the deceased mother and her hundreds of eggs. Goodbye, cottony cushion scale! Thanks Amy!

Just What We Need

Jan4

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.

Joyful Surprises

Nov2

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.

Inner Work

Jul12
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.”

— Joe Primo, grateful.org

Holiday Weekend

Jul7
A few chokecherry clusters are ripening.

I’m under doctor’s orders to swim. I swam recreationally for a few years before Covid, but haven’t been back to a public pool since. I don’t like driving 45 minutes to the indoor pool, especially in winter; I don’t like getting to the community pool early enough for swim lanes in summer; I don’t like the mandatory shower before entering the pool; I don’t like what the chlorine does to my hair and my skin. But I love to feel my body glide through water. The rec center pool in Delta has the Lazy River, a rib-high sinuous flow of warm water. That’s technically what I’ve been ordered to do.

Rocky Mountain beeplant started blooming last week and drawing in all manner of pollinators.

So I bit the bullet and ordered a new swim suit when my Dog World sister mentioned them on deep markdown at Lands End. And the other night I ordered new swim goggles, wax ear plug discs, and a swim cap, all of which succumbed to age even as my swimming tapered off.

chewing side of crown
cement side of crown

This afternoon as I sat under the pleasing influence of nitrous oxide in the dental chair, the dentist was chatting with the tech as she ground down my old cracked tooth. “You know Pat–gonia?” she asked. The tech murmured her answer as I pondered the question. Not that I could reply, but I thought, “I just ordered from them the other day,” because while I was at REI spending my free dividend money on swim gear, I also shopped for some sale items, including Merrell water shoes and a Patagonia jacket. I buy Patagonia whenever I can, because of their integrity.

His Holiness celebrated his 90th birthday this weekend. Millions around the world also celebrated his birth, his life, his remarkable gifts to humanity. That was my holiday.

Even though I thought heard “Pattie Gonia,” my first thought went to the clothing company, but in the next second she clarified to her friend “…the drag queen? I saw her in Denver.” I tipped both my thumbs up, then made the heart sign, and they laughed, so she talked about the amazing Pride show that Pattie Gonia headlined in Denver last month. I’d seen clips and pictures on Instagram.

The resilient desert willow, who almost died of cold a few years ago, has rebounded and bears more blossoms this summer than in many years.

I started following Pattie Gonia a few months ago when she showed up as one of National Geographic’s nine Travelers of the Year 2024. She was also named one of Outside magazine’s Outsiders of the Year in 2022, and a Time Magazine Next Gen Leader in 2023. The reason Wyn Wiley chose this name for his drag queen alter ego is self-explanatory if you know the brand. Learning that my dentist is a fan of Pattie made me all over tingle – though that might have been the nitrous.

Fennel when it’s ready sucks in its bulb and reconstituted the energy in a central stalk that shoots up and flowers then seeds.

My emotions have been very close to the surface this weekend. Tears spring at the least glimpse of beauty or tenderness. This is a welcome counterpoint to the simmering rage that erupts when I encounter another headline or photo, or comment from someone I know, that reflects the hypocrisy of so-called Christians celebrating the BBB that will starve children of food and education, kill thousands by making healthcare costly and/or inaccessible, pillage public lands, expedite the climate catastrophe, kidnap and imprison innocent people, and so on. I don’t claim to know the Bible like they do, those hypocritical politicians, neighbors, at least one cousin, but I do know what it says about the poor. Among a hundred other scripture quotes:

“Therefore I command you, you shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy and to the poor, in your land.”

Deuteronomy 15:11

So I tuned them all out this weekend, and turned my attention to the beauty, wonder, and delights of the garden. The fennel was bolting so I pulled the last four bulbs that were still solid, and left the few that were morphing to go to seed.

I couldn’t use it all at once, so I sliced the bulbs a little more thickly than I would have to use fresh, plopped them into ice trays, and froze them. That left four fennels worth of fronds to use or compost. I made a fennel fronds pesto, and froze some of that as well.

Into the food processor I put four cups of coarsely chopped fronds, the zest and juice of one lemon, four garlic cloves, olive oil, a little butter, a couple tablespoons of water — which a recipe called for but I didn’t like what it did to the consistency so I threw in an equal amount of cream cheese to add a little binding. Once that was all pretty smooth I added half a cup of pecans and pulsed a few times. I froze most of it, but kept some out.

Then I boiled some pasta, grated some parmesan, and enjoyed my lunch. One pesto recipe I looked at called for a splash of Dijon mustard, which I forgot to put in, so I added half a teaspoon when I tossed the pasta. Yum!

The next day I made sourdough pizza crust and baked two skillet pizzas. On the small one, fennel frond pesto, parmesan, Kalamata olives, and red onion; on the large one, from the freezer, roasted tomatoes with basil and garlic, grated Havarti, red onion, and chopped pancetta.

Yum! It was too hot to eat outside so I enjoyed my a few slices inside, with a delightful book that a friend passed along to me. Thanks, Chris! Later, when it cooled down a bit, I cooled off with my feet in the pond. This time, I went down and got up very carefully, properly, safely.

The babies are getting so big! Their nibbling tickles now. I thought maybe I saw a few tiny legs starting to emerge but Dr. Amphibian suggested maybe not yet. He said it could be six months before they complete metamorphosis, and that they’ll be fine overwinter in the pond whatever stage they’re in. Whew! It all depends on variable conditions, including water temperature. They change at their own pace.

Image borrowed from Encyclopedia Britannica. The Mirador tadpoles are at the early late stage illustrated in the center.

This evening’s sunset walk delivered the perfect cherry on top of my holiday weekend. It’s been years since I’ve seen a bull snake. This little baby startled me — we startled each other on the path, she was perfectly camouflaged, and she slid gracefully away to an ancient juniper. May you also find moments of beauty and joy in your day.

Cameras

Jun29

I’m perpetually amazed by having a camera in my pocket at all times, which also functions as a phone, a weather station, and an encyclopedia. I’m grateful for my Girlfriend camera who can capture a bee on a blossom this clearly.

I’m grateful for my Husband camera, too. Here he is poised to capture the bluebirds fledging this morning. Sadly, they had already flown, last evening, but we didn’t know that yet. Stay tuned for the two-day adventure of watching them slowly emerge: nothing like I expected.

After watching the nest for a couple hours after sunrise I was confident enough that it was empty that I asked Girlfriend camera if she could squeeze inside and take a look. The only thing we learned for certain was that it was definitely empty. What exactly we’re looking at remains a mystery. Is the actual nest down inside the wall space on one side or the other of the central platform? What various materials did they build it with? How many chicks were there? It’s been a great mindfulness exercise to observe the stories I’ve made up every step of the process, and realize how little I actually know.

Exquisite pastries from the North Fork Boardwalk chef

At noon I took both cameras to Zenzen Gardens in Paonia to document the celebration of life for a precious friend. It was a beautiful venue in a field of mown clover, with tasty snacks, talented musicians, and filled with my found family, and reminiscences from the wonderful community that had grown around our dear departed neighbor and his lovely wife. What happens when we die? Another mystery to consider. The cameras did a good job but, like me, overheated, so we left early.

I was grateful to rest in the cool house for awhile after so many hours outside in the heat of deep summer the past few days; and to then spend some deeply quiet time in the garden this evening.

Metamorphosis

Jun16
Waking up with another brand new twenty-four hours ahead of us that will never come again.
Sitting down by the pond with morning coffee.

It’s ridiculously exciting to watch metamorphosis in real time. The tadpoles are growing daily, some subtly assuming a slightly froggy shape, with proto-eyes apparent and coloring shifting from black to mottled. I couldn’t get close enough this morning. The chair was too far away, standing on the edge of the pond too far away, so I sat down on the flagstone rim and dropped my hot feet into the cool, clear, water. Grateful for the ability to do so, albeit a little awkwardly, but completely without pain or trepidation.

Here they are three weeks ago, shortly after hatching. When I first saw them all settled on the bottom of the pond I was afraid they might be dead. Turns out they just like to tuck into the muck overnight, and wake up when the sun warms the pond in the morning.
Here my little babies are on Saturday morning, just waking up.

Unanticipated delight: a couple of intrepid tadpoles nibbled on my dried out old hide. I couldn’t feel it, of course, but I can imagine they were gobbling up those skin flakes with their tiny teeth… A vision began to take shape, where people pay a hundred dollars to dangle their feet in the pond and let the tadpoles gently exfoliate them, just like at a ‘fish spa.’ Haha.

Where’s Wren?

Imagine if all ten thousand tadpoles transform into frogs! There would be no room in the pond for me! I’m grateful to have Captain Amphibian on call to hold my hand through the suspenseful developments down at the pond. He assured me that garter snakes would show up to manage the tadpole population, and indeed, I saw the first one last evening, though it escaped my camera.

Meanwhile, in other news, I’ve harvest a few cups of snow peas this week, a fennel bulb, several hefty lettuces, and a couple of meals worth of kale. Grasshopper mitigation is holding steady for now. If only life were this simple and sweet! This is how I want to spend the days of my elder years, my evenings of writing about gratitude, joy, mindfulness. I wish I could stop this post here, with the rhubarb-strawberry-lemonade soda I made yesterday.

But I can’t. I can’t sit by and not raise my voice about the patently illegal performative cruelties this traitorous president is inflicting on people in “the land of the free.” If only his supporters could, would, see clearly that the atrocities he carries out daily will ultimately harm them as well. His latest just boggles my mind:

“Doctors at Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals nationwide could refuse to treat unmarried veterans and Democrats under new hospital guidelines imposed following an executive order by Donald Trump. The new rules, obtained by the Guardian, also apply to psychologists, dentists and a host of other occupations. They have already gone into effect in at least some VA medical centers.”

The Guardian, June 16, 2025

Let us not suffer from a failure of imagination. There’s only one reason I can imagine for this unfathomable order: He intends to split the armed services in two, into his supporters and Others, turn them against each other based on political affiliation. Your imagination can take over from there. I hope tomorrow I wake up to see that every active duty military officer is screaming from the tops of their lungs about this, as I feel like doing; that every veteran in every branch of the US Armed Forces from Army privates to Navy admirals and everyone in between can see this for what it is, a heinous wedge, and vociferously reject this decree and the megalomaniac who proclaimed it.

Communication

Jun7

I spent a lot of time in the garden today, spraying vinegar on the ground to kill grass and weeds popping up through the chips we put down to mitigate grasshoppers; pulling weeds, spraying a neem/soap mix on the cabbages, onions, potatoes, carrots and more to drive grasshoppers away; and burning some scrap wood since it was finally calm enough and damp enough to not pose a wildfire risk. And I also found time to take Husband Camera for a few strolls around the yarden to capture the love between flowers and their pollinators.

The little orchard bee first caught my eye in the top picture, and as she moved down the Gaillardia blossom I saw the spider. But she did not.

I serendipitously caught the moment when the two insects communicated: as though the spider said “I am here” by gently reaching a leg toward the bee’s antenna.

Then the bee courteously said “Pardon me!” and flew back to the top of the flower. And the spider smiled her thanks with her eyes.

I’m grateful for this gorgeous day, for the communication I witnessed among many beings, for communication with several friends, for the health, energy, and stamina to spend the day working and playing in the yarden.

Flowering Trees

May7

I’m grateful to see quite a few baby apricots that survived sequential deep freezes in early spring. And grateful to see the first-year cherry sapling buzzing with so many different species of native bees.

I’m grateful to spend time with the lilacs and their bees, and to perfume the house with fresh blossoms clipped daily; and grateful to see the crabapple continue hosting butterflies and bees.

And back to the cherry tree, because I just can’t get enough of it. I’m grateful for the warm sunny days that preceded the past two days of rain and hail: grateful for the moisture, and that the hail was small and brief and probably didn’t do much damage to anything in the garden.