Tag Archive | good neighbors

Good Neighbors

Jan20
Wednesday morning

You saw this picture Wednesday night. This driveway is drifted a foot deep in places, after a two-inch snow accompanied by strong winds for hours. Because of its south-north orientation, and prevailing west winds, with no windbreak to the west, only a forty-acre field, it’s a perfect equation for drifts. I’m grateful for the opportunity to observe and learn first-hand about the powerful phenomenon of drifting snow. It’s amazing how wind packs and sculpts this delicate substance. I understand better than some when I hear weather reports about blizzards closing highways, or other snow drama. I’m even more grateful for the kindness of neighbors, and the first-hand experience of interdependence.

Thursday morning

I couldn’t have lived here thirty years without the support, friendship, and cooperation of neighbors. Thirty years! I can’t believe it. This summer it will be thirty years at the end of this driveway. I’m grateful I’ve learned to open my heart and my mind, to communicate with and accept differences, and to focus on the shared values of the people I live among. One of those values is perseverance, demonstrated above by the truck tracks (subsequently drifted again in the west track along the fenceline) left by my courageous friends on Wednesday morning determined to get food to me. Food that I didn’t really need and I’m so glad they didn’t get stuck delivering a luxury.

Another value is cooperation, demonstrated below by the plow and tractor tracks made today by a neighbor whom I asked for help. We’re not close, but I’m grateful that he’s often willing to help when needed; as I know he’s grateful for access across my north forty, and its occasional use for his horses. I’ll bake some bread to show my appreciation. I’m grateful for the ideal of good neighbors, and for being surrounded by so many of them. I’m even more grateful that some of them are my dearest friends.

Friday morning

Darkness

Aug8

I’m grateful every single night when I go upstairs to bed and see that the new neighbors across the canyon haven’t installed a giant ‘security’ light on their house. I leave the drapes open to the darkness of night: a spotlight shining in on my bed would infringe on my freedom! Not to mention the wasted energy and disruption to wildlife. I’m grateful for the nearly primal darkness of night where I live.

Apricot Tree

Mar24
I’m grateful I got to have this beautiful creature in my life, if only for five years. I still miss him terribly, but pictures bring back the joy of his soft fur under my hands, his cold nose nuzzling my armpit at bedtime, his lively conversation, and his bright presence everywhere at once in the house and yard. Two summers ago the apricot tree was loaded, and last year too. This year, we expect a light crop, if any.

I’m grateful for the Apricot Tree, and for neighbor Fred who has been pruning it every spring for as long as I can remember. I’m grateful for the tender attention he gives this tree, bringing his ladders, loppers, and pruners, and shaping the tree beautifully with his expertise. It took several years after I planted it for the tree to fruit, and for the next few years while I was in charge the most it ever grew was half a dozen apricots. Once Fred took over, fruits increased year after year, finally yielding more than forty pounds each of the past couple of years. After last fall’s sudden killing freeze, I’m grateful that the tree is even alive. We don’t know yet whether any fruit buds survived, and expect only a light crop if any. He checked out and lightly pruned the peach and crabapple trees, too, and they’re both okay. This will surely be a low fruit year in the valley, but the trees are resilient, and we can hope for more good years in the future, if the extremes of climate chaos don’t kill them first. We’ll know more later.

Fred thinning the cots a couple of years ago. I’m grateful for his lessons in pruning and thinning.
I’m grateful he’s loaned me his ladder for picking, as the tree has grown too tall for me to reach up top.
The apricot tree has been the recovery shelter of choice for birds rescued after stunning themselves on windows. Naturally, no cats allowed then.
Topaz keeping up with me while I was harvesting.
The perfect leaf-line measures the height of deer mouths. I no longer fence the tree because they can’t do much damage to it at this size. I don’t mind sharing the lower leaves and limbs, and they clean up fallen fruit on the ground. I’m grateful for the year-round beauty of this tree being.

Another Day

Mar23
One tiny monarch crocus hard hit by the last storm, but more buds emerge.
The first grape hyacinths bloom in the blue bed

I’m grateful for oncoming spring in the garden, and for precipitation that keeps nourishing the tiny bulbs pushing their flowers up here and there. I’m grateful to see the first leaves emerging from the forest floor, though most of the green shoots are weeds; I’m not sure what this little red cluster will become. I’m grateful for another day walking with Stellar among ancient junipers sculpted by centuries of seasons and stressors. I’m grateful for another day sculpting myself by choosing where I place my attention.

Along the trail through the woods a little mystery emerges, about the size of a quarter. I can’t wait to see what this is!

I’m grateful for another chance to try my hand at orange sticky buns, which turned out just as well the second time. The dough seemed really wet and was hard to maneuver, and there was a little too much filling (as if!) ~ but they baked beautifully. Anyone who might happen to come to prune my fruit trees in the next couple of days, or to deliver groceries ~ and I’m grateful for anyone who might! ~ will surely go home with some sticky buns. I’m grateful every day for where I live, for so many reasons. I’m grateful for good neighbors of all species.

Strong Women

Mar16
Rep. Deb Haaland, D-N.M., is sworn in before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources hearing on her nomination to be Interior Secretary, Tuesday, Feb. 23, 2021 on Capitol Hill in Washington. (Jim Watson/Pool via AP) from NPR

After learning great news about the state of renewable energy in Colorado last week, the Senate confirmation of Deb Haaland as Interior Secretary today was icing on the cake. I’m grateful that a Native American woman with a profoundly sensible land ethic has been put in charge of the public lands of this great nation. After years of vicious assaults on wilderness, National Parks and Monuments, and climate science, the US government is now poised to begin a brave new era of protection and conservation of the precious heritage of natural resources in this country: Haaland is a true conservative, an advocate for our most fundamental truth, the earth itself.

This news adds to the growing sense of peace and ease within me that began with the inauguration of a wiser, more compassionate president; bumped up last week when I was reassured by one-who-knows that renewable energy is an unstoppable economic success; and escalated with the relief of receiving my first Covid vaccine Friday. Speaking of which, Ranchergramma shared this picture on her blog the other day, along with her joy and gratitude about the role her family played in the Hotchkiss vaccination pod. I’m grateful to the Gallob clan for their integral role in the success of this event, as well as their overall multi-generational pillars-of-the-community contributions to life in our valley.

Most of the North Fork EMS team and volunteers (including multiple Gallobs) who put on the successful Covid-19 festival that vaccinated 892 people in less than eight hours. Photo by Doug Fritz, Hotchkiss Fire District.

Driveway!

Feb26
I’m grateful for mud, which = water + dirt, which = growing things. And I’m grateful for Tom UPS, who always leaves Stellar a cookie on top of the box.

Of all the many things I feel grateful for today, including a wonderful night’s sleep in my bed on clean cotton sheets, and coffee in the morning, and a meaningful day’s work, and not getting food poisoning from questionable canned tuna fish, and teaching my first mindfulness practicum class to two delightful volunteers… by far the highlight (sorry, ladies), was the thrilling adventure that Stellar had on our last walk of the day. I give you, Driveway: the Trailer.

Click play to watch the stellar trailer for Driveway! A Stellar Adventure film from Mirador Films, never coming to a theater near you.

I mean. He was playing! For the first time in a year! or More! Just to see him frolic, feeble though he is, brought laughter and joy to my heart. Yes, there was a little concern that he’d twist on a foot stuck in the mud or snow and fall to the ground, but really, there was nothing to do but enjoy his joyful encounter with the puppy next door, whom we met for the first time walking up … the Driveway!

Occasional Beef

Feb18
Grateful for a simple and delicious dinner including a small filet, and salad with homemade ranch dressing. Grateful for good food!

I’m grateful, as an omnivore, that there are neighbors who raise beef, and that I’m able to contribute to their well-being and my own by purchasing their grass-fed, homegrown meat. I wish I could be a vegetarian, sometimes, because it’s better for the planet. But I need meat, and I like it cooked just so, with a little salt. Tonight I’m grateful for the last filet of some grass-fed, grass-finished beef I bought from Wrich Ranch just down the road. And yesterday, I was grateful for ground-beef of the same caliber from right next door, which I buy for Stellar’s homemade dog food, and grateful for the neighbor who delivered it in the snow and packed down the driveway. I don’t eat meat often, but when I do it’s only locally and humanely raised, purchased from people I trust.

The problem with red meat isn’t red meat, it’s our culture’s insatiable appetite for it. We all know that our bodies are healthier with occasional beef than with daily doses, and that factory farming is unsustainable for the planet. Eat less meat less often, savor it more, and grow your own or support local farmers and ranchers whenever possible. I’m grateful it’s so easy and so reasonable in this valley to satisfy my meager, and my dog’s eager, appetites for meat.

I’m grateful we are not experiencing here the catastrophic cold front that has much of the country in its grip, and is devastating cities like Houston. This freak weather pattern, which will become more common, and this freak pandemic, which won’t be gone soon, are both linked to the problem of our gluttony, and not just for meat. We quit calling it global warming years ago when climate change was deemed more accurate, and now it’s time to officially label it climate chaos. We are all connected, all humans, all species, every inhabitant of this earth depends upon the rest. It is my fervent wish that everyone wake up to this simple truth, and start to cultivate more gratitude for what we have and less grasping for what we want. Only through a change in human consciousness will the world be transformed, and thereby saved.