The pond just keeps on giving. More froglets in all stages, some with tails climbing onto the rushes, tadpoles with arms bulging beneath their skin, and some fully transformed. The rushes seethe with them fleeing when we get down there and the water bubbles beneath as they disappear into it. It happens so fast, they’re so tiny, I’m trying to film it but they dive before I can even steady the camera.
The good news is that by now there are so many that even when the masses dive away I can still sneak up on a few. Some look pretty thin and vulnerable to me, others look fat and sassy.
And whose eggs are these strung along the curly rush behind the froglet?
There’s always at least one big mama keeping watch.
The hummingbird feeders are busy, too; there’s not enough time in the day! Come evening, I walked the little pets up the drive a little way, and was startled when I turned around to see this:
The Leroux Fire is less then twenty crow miles northwest on BLM land. With winds it grew from one acre this afternoon to a hundred by dark. Thunderstorms Friday did bring some rain, but also lightning, and this fire may have been smoldering for two days before erupting. Another close call on this mesa with a strike at a neighbor’s, but the Crawford volunteer fire department put out the burning tree before it could spread. We are all so grateful for their commitment, bravery, and skill.
What a marvelous sight greeted me at the bottom of the stairs this morning! Topaz was watching a baby bull snake lying still on the floor. I only saw it when I took a step and it wiggled away. I fended off Wren and picked it up gently. It was so gentle and calm, and curled and crawled around my hand as I considered the best place to release it, but it never panicked or thrashed.
After I released it into the wood pile, where I hope it finds enough mice to remain there forever and live long and grow big, I came back inside and tried to put her collar on Topaz as she knelt at her food bowl, the way I often do. I reached around her neck with the bell and she jerked and flipped around wide-eyed. I tried again now that she knew it was just me, but she wrenched away; after I washed my hands she accepted the collar willingly as usual. I’m grateful for the little dose of wonder that started my day.
One reason I practice gratitude is because of my innate pessimism. Well, I can’t say innate in the sense that I was born with it, I’m not sure I was. But it came to me early through a series of prophetic dreams that started while I was still in single digits. So this article about likely societal collapse didn’t shock me as it might some of you, should you choose to read it. History shows that increasing wealth inequality consistently precedes collapse, contends economist and international relations expert Dr. Luke Kemp in his new book Goliath’s Curse, which analyzes 5000 years of human civilizations’ collapses.
“…as elites extract more wealth from the people and the land, they make societies more fragile, leading to infighting, corruption, immiseration of the masses, less healthy people, overexpansion, environmental degradation and poor decision making by a small oligarchy. The hollowed-out shell of a society is eventually cracked asunder by shocks such as disease, war or climate change.”
Last night was Zoom Cooking with Amy. We chose a simple pasta sauce made from sautéed zucchini, which we blended with some garlic, parmesan, salt&pepper of course, and a little pasta water. We spooned that into our bowls, topped with pasta and more parm, and I sautéed a handful of frozen snow peas from the spring garden in the hot zucchini pan.
Sound familiar? Kemp lays the imminent demise of our so-called civilization at the feet of “leaders who are ‘walking versions of the dark triad’ – narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism”; and while he says that a fundamental transformation of society on a global scale could save our species, “the large, psychopathic corporations and [world leaders] which produce global catastrophic risk” make self-destruction more likely.
This reflects, to one degree or another, my fundamental world view since I was a child. It’s less popular and less acceptable than believing in aliens, so I don’t articulate it often. It’s something of a relief to read it so clearly outlined by a scholar of human cultural history.
Kemp suggests that “even if you don’t have hope, it doesn’t really matter. This is about defiance. It’s about doing the right thing, fighting for democracy and for people to not be exploited. And even if we fail, at the very least, we didn’t contribute to the problem.”
Hope is a conundrum for me. It can mean a passive wish for good things, but I prefer the interpretation of Joanna Macy, who died last month at 94, that hope is a verb, that how we live matters, and that this time in history is one of great unraveling and also of the potential for a Great Turning.
My life’s trajectory continues to lean into celebrating this fragile, spinning globe and all the Life that supports our tiny existence. It’s really a question of perspective, of world view: Domination or collaboration? Each of us chooses how to live, every living moment of every day.
Though it’s taking a lot longer than from tadpole to frog, I’m grateful for my own metamorphosis through the years. And grateful to photograph a fully formed froglet flying through the water—next challenge: film it.
I didn’t see the one hiding behinduntil I zoomed into the picture.
Now that I know where and how to look for them they’re all over the pond, in various colors with tails of various lengths. I saw one kick through the water like a grownup without any tail, too fast to catch on camera. This little one hung out under the rush flower for a long time—see the nubbin of tail? The rest of it already metabolized. And then the shot of the day, below.
Despite experiencing joy anyway, I often feel wracked with guilt that I’m not making more noise about the corruption unraveling our democracy, not doing more to raise the alarm, not making enough people wake up. It’s because I can’t say it as well as others, and I don’t even want to know about it. But we all must know. If you get a little delight or insight or respite from reading this blog, or even if you don’t, you also need to be paying attention to the political machinations that are demolishing American life as we have known it all our lives. Please keep reading, now, the words of Mark Elias, who likens what’s happening in the US with the musical Cabaret: As a populace, we are sleeping amid our pleasures while the Nazis take over.
POLITICIZATION OF THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE: The DOJ is now a political arm of the GOP
I know I’ve written about this before, but it bears repeating: under Pam Bondi’s leadership, the Department of Justice is a political arm of the GOP, and the attorney general is Trump’s personal lawyer. Right now, we’re seeing that clearly with the Epstein Files saga. As the MAGA base calls for the release of the files, Bondi is protecting Trump — not representing the American people. This will only get worse. If you want to see where the DOJ’s loyalties lie, keep an eye on Bondi.
TARGETING OPPONENTS: Threatening those who oppose the administration
On Friday, as part of her latest conspiracy, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard promised to investigate and prosecute Obama administration officials for their disclosure of Russia’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 election. Then on Sunday, Trump followed up her warning with an AI-generated TikTok of President Obama getting arrested by the FBI. This is just another in a long series of threats to political opponents — and it should be taken seriously. With the DOJ acting as Trump’s political weapon, it will go after and prosecute those who defy and speak out against the administration. Don’t dismiss these threats.
UNCONSTITUTIONAL ACTS: Betraying and defying the Constitution
Under Trump, the Constitution has become nothing more than a suggestion. Administration officials have been defying court orders left and right, ignoring judges of both parties. Emil Bove, Trump’s former personal lawyer and his nominee to serve on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, told government lawyers they should say “fuck you” to court orders. And back in March, the administration defied Judge Boasberg’s orders to turn a plane of Venezuelan immigrants around. The administration isn’t following the normal rules. There are no guardrails. Pay attention to who they’re taking orders from — because it’s certainly not our justice system.
ELECTION MEDDLING: Interfering with the outcome and results of our elections
Trump and the Republican Party are gearing up for 2026. They know their policies are unpopular. They know the Epstein Files have them in hot water. So, what are they going to do? Gerrymander and suppress voters. In Texas, Trump pressured Gov. Greg Abbott to hold a special session and illegally gerrymander his state’s congressional map. And in Colorado, election officials received calls from a GOP operative asking to inspect election machines and gain access to voter rolls. The 2026 election isn’t going to be a normal one. Get registered now. Double-check your registration. Make a plan to vote. When democracy is on the line, it’s never too early.
“When we said women and people who loved them needed to vote like their lives depended on it in 2024, it wasn’t hyperbole. Despite the hole the Dobbs case, which reversed Roe v. Wade, tore in the heart of so many Americans and the women who have suffered and even died since then from the unavailability of basic medical care, not enough Americans understood how precarious the world had become for women….
Trump is waging war on women in ways both big and small, subtle and obvious. When federal employees are fired, women lose jobs that permit them to support their families. When Medicaid gets cut, single moms, who are just trying to get by, are burdened. DEI gave woman a path to higher paying jobs. Now it’s being closed down. He’s trying to make it harder for us to votewith his Executive Order on voting and the SAVE Act.
But above all, it’s been abortion, the right that both kept women safe and made it possible for them to set the course of their own lives and families. This is an administration that not only wants to end abortion, but has also set its sights on contraception. There is talk of resurrecting the Comstock Actwith the complicity of the Supreme Court. That would make it illegal to mail material that talks about family planning, let alone the drugs like mifepristone that are essential for medication abortion. That means women who need access to medical care to prevent serious infection or death due to medical complications in pregnancy may no longer be able to get it.
The party that claims to be pro-life isn’t. It’s not just the misbegotten refusal to provide abortion, which can be lifesaving in a pregnancy gone wrong. The culture war against women is in full-blown progress.
Since I’m borrowing the words of others… from Instagram
But now in Tennessee, they’re taking it a little bit further. Unmarried? Pregnant? Sorry, no healthcare for you. According to footage shown by the Tennessee Holler, an unmarried woman who was pregnant was denied medical care by a doctor who didn’t want to treat her. She didn’t want an abortion. She wanted to carry the baby to term. He denied her care because she wasn’t married. It offended his Christian beliefs. We’ve heard about Christian bakers not wanting to bake cakes for gay couples. This is the next logical step in the Supreme Court’s permissive politics towards Christianity. Except that this doctor seems to have forgotten that Mary was an unmarried, pregnant woman when Jesus was conceived.
Apparently, the Hippocratic oath no longer matters, at least not if your patient is an unmarried woman who’s pregnant. Women in Tennessee have sufferedinthepast for being denied an abortion while carrying a nonviable pregnancy, only to lose their fertility as a result. But this is next level. This is a doctor denying a patient care because he, HE, doesn’t approve of the way she is choosing to live her life.
We have the opportunity to end this now. There is an election coming in 2026. An election where we will have to fight to register, stay registered, vote, and ensure our votes get counted. But it’s our fight. It’s the fight for democracy. Unlike 2024, when Americans failed to vote in sufficient numbers to keep Trump out of office because they somehow didn’t understand the stakes, we have to make sure every single person who cares about our country—and thinks women shouldn’t slide into second-class citizenship where they can be denied basic, noncontroversial medical care—is on the front lines in this election. In 2024, too many people thought they could use their voice to protest, whatever the issue, by staying home or voting for a candidate other than the one committed to democracy. The results have been tragic, just six months into Donald Trump’s second administration. It’s dangerous to be a woman. It’s dangerous to be an immigrant. It’s dangerous to be a member of the LGBTQ community. It’s dangerous to be someone who has devoted your life to government service if your work involved investigating Donald Trump or promoting DEI. It’s now dangerous to fall outside of Trumpism’s rigid definition of what’s right…. That’s wrong for all of us.”
another borrow from Instagram
And that’s my rant for the week, with deep gratitude for the big, courageous voices on the national stage who are shining the bright light of reality, of truth, clearly on the haze of deception, propaganda, brainwashing, and large-scale swindling that defines the current regime. Time really is running out, and we’ve got to wake up and really drain the cesspool before we drown in it. We can do it! Here are links to some other people’s words, newsletters and articles, to help us wake up and be a proactive citizen.
I’ll be back in a day or two to help us relax and savor the quotidian delights in our private lives.
Let’s get the food shot out of the way first, because simple and delicious though this lunch was, it wasn’t the highlight of the day. Pretty much the same thing as the past two days, except with havarti instead of cheddar, no egg, and some chopped tomato and apricot included with the onion greens pesto, mayo, and bean mashup. I’m grateful I’ve learned that good food doesn’t have to be complicated, fancy, or difficult.
And in fire news, it was mostly cloudy with some drizzles today which must have helped the firefighters across the western slope a lot, and certainly made for a more comfortable day for those of us with challenging lungs.
But for today’s big JOY: I was beside myself this afternoon to discover that some of the tadpoles have actual legs! At last!
I needed a second opinion, so I asked Topaz to investigate since she could get closer to the water than I could. She confirmed my assessment, and suggested I bring down the husband camera.
There are two legged-ones who show up in this video, one near the beginning and one at the end. I might have missed another one or two…
Husband camera confirmed, and I was especially delighted to catch this one with just the bare beginnings of legs. Most of those I observed tonight, maybe three percent of all the tadpoles, had slightly better developed legs than this one.
As though mama is keeping tabs… As far as I know, each of these images is of a different tadpole. I’m grateful for the gift of being able to observe the miracle of metamorphosis in real time in my own backyard.
I’m grateful that today was significantly cooler and that what little wind there was came from the north, clearing the air considerably. Instead of Air Quality of 150-200 it’s fallen steadily through the day from 80 to 56 at bedtime.
I was able to spend a little time at the pond this morning, and run errands this afternoon with the car windows down. I was grateful for the kindness of Christina at the DMV, and the consideration of pharmacy staff, and the tiny blonde girl who said hi to me at the market. I said hi back and smiled, but she couldn’t see that because I was masked; with the forthright candor of her three or four years, she asked “Why do you have that?” I was happy to explain that my lungs don’t work so good so I’m wearing it because I don’t want to get sick. She nodded and continued chewing on the date in her hand.
I was grateful to sit by the pond for awhile this evening and watch tadpoles and frogs; and later, to sit on the deck while a small festival of dragonflies feasted on mosquitoes overhead and a few stray swallows swooped through, watching heavy clouds roll into the mountains, breathing easily. I’m grateful that the firefighters had an easier day too.
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.”
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.
I’m grateful for the kindness of neighbors this weekend. I needed to borrow bacon for Zoom Cooking with Amy, so I called over to Pork Central and while I was there picking up bacon I borrowed a hummingbird feeder. I had to take down the oriole feeder they were using because the holes are too big and too many native bees were drowning in the nectar; these hummers are territorial, and kept coming back to the empty hook admonishing me.
The honeybees have arrived at last, en masse, to bring the pink honeysuckle to buzzing life.
Today I realized I wouldn’t have enough bird seed for the new feeder to last until the sacks I ordered from Grand Junction arrived, so I called the Hitching Post in town to check their holiday hours. “We’re actually closed today and tomorrow,” she said, “but what can I do for you?” I told her I was out of bird seed and I thought they were feeding babies, but they could wait a couple of days. She said she’d be downstairs for a little while if I wanted to come get some. This great little store I’ve mentioned before, always has one of anything you could possibly need, and they were so generous to open for a moment for me today. I thanked her profusely, and gave her a hunk of Teddy Roosevelt clove cake I’d baked last night when I picked up the seed.
I’ve been grateful watching the frogs’ eggs develop day by day, the little black blobs taking the shape of tadpoles. My calculations were off, though: I didn’t expect them to start hatching until tomorrow, but they actually started Thursday night. I spent all day Friday watching and filming, and got a good first-sunburn-of-the-season to show for it. Since then I’ve been wearing long sleeves, and watching in awe as the egg mass empties one cell at a time.
The tiny tadpoles break free of the mass and spin around for a minute before latching onto the curly rushes with their tiny teeth. Over the past few days one nest has emptied almost completely, and the other larger nest is more than halfway done hatching. Video to come.
I’m grateful for sunshine on red flowers in the dry woods. The other evening this patch of scarlet gilia caught my eye as we walked toward home on the Breakfast Loop. Then this evening we chose to walk the Medium Loop to the canyon, and a flash of red drew me up off the trail into a cactus patch.
The prickly pears aren’t blooming yet but the claret cups are! It feels early, they used to bloom in June. In just the few moments after my first glimpse from the trail, clouds moved in and shadowed the flowers’ glow by the time I reached them.
Along the rim the little buckwheats are in bloom. Most of them are cream colored but there are a few with this sweet rosy hue. And farther along, another sunlit glimpse, another cluster of claret cups peeking out.
By the time we reached the cactus patch along the main trail home, the one I always try to catch in bloom, the sun had dipped low behind deep clouds. But now I know they’re all blooming I’ll be out again tomorrow chasing that little thrilling flash of red through the trees.
A mystery encountered: many small limbs broken off a young piñon pine. I didn’t stop long enough to look for tracks or fur, but I’ll check again well before dusk tomorrow. It doesn’t look like buck damage but it could be; or it could have been done by a bear. Or who knows? The forest is full of wild things.
The lilacs, the tattered Mourning Cloak, the day, all winding down…
What would it feel like if there were no problem to solve? I’ve been meditating with this question for a couple of days. I know there are plenty of problems to solve, big and little problems, from what’s for lunch to how we save the planet. There’s a huge problem with the regime dismantling democracy, decimating government services, and demolishing the middle class. which would be great to solve and we’re working at it. Millions of Americans! But way too many millions more simply have their fingers in their ears, heads in the sand, eyes closed to reality. We need to amplify the truth at every opportunity.
There’s a big one coming up on June 14. But before that, there’s a massive threat to every American who is not a billionaire, and that’s most of us, in this “big beautiful budget bill” being voted on imminently. Make some noise! Medicaid is on the line, along with countless other programs that benefit most Americans. Our local healthcare system, Delta Health, could be gutted, along with most rural hospitals in the country. Learn more anywhere anyone is telling the truth, and Jessica Craven’s daily newsletter, Chop Wood Carry Water, is a great place to start. This bill is savage and wrong. So yeah, there are problems to be solved.
But what if, just for fifteen or thirty minutes each day, you could restore your nervous system with a deep, conscious rest during which, just for that short time, you could let your mind quit trying to solve problems? It’s been helping me.
I woke this morning to discover a hard frost overnight had burnt these lovely potato sprouts photographed just last night. Most of the scarlet salvias also died back.
Today is a perfect of example of how practicing this effortless mindfulness helped me sustain inner peace. After discovering freeze damage in the garden, I rushed off this morning for a ten a.m. appointment the provider had scheduled for noon; I let it go, did some other errands first, and came back later. Great news from Phil’s: the collaborative car fix last week is sufficient! But it was one glitch after another besides that, a couple of long delays, a couple of places closed on Tuesday; and, while taking the scenic route because I had time, a traffic jam. I kept my sense of ease, humor, and patience through it all. Just a day unfolding instead of a series of problems to solve.
I appreciated the care the movers took extricating the van from the tight spot, and instead of fretting about the delay I thought how grateful the homeowners on each side of the road must be.
Along the way we stopped at the town park so Wren could stretch her legs, and I looked for the stumps. A couple of huge trees had recently been cut for safety reasons. I know the guys who did the job, and admired the clean flat surface they left behind. I recalled one of them telling me how they got harassed while they were making the park safer. Later I counted the rings as best I could from the photo and was not surprised to pass one hundred.
Even so, I was sure grateful to get home to my little sanctuary. I had food in the fridge for lunch, repaired hearing aids, a new library book, a morning’s adventures with my values intact to reflect upon, a good zoom meeting, and a pond full of frogs to relax with.
Wren examines the day’s catch from the smart feeder on her iPad.
When the day’s work was done, I decanted the lilac cordial. It fizzed a lot when I opened the jar and poured, but then it settled down.
I’m sorry to report that it tasted primarily of weak honey. Lilacs, lacking any essential oil, are notoriously challenging to preserve. I suppose there’s a faint floral note, and it was light and refreshing on ice. And it sure looked lovely in the late evening sun.
I’m grateful on this brand new day for an abundance of sunshine and little yellow tulips, for the grape hyacinths, for sandhill cranes flying over head in their eons old migration, for evening grosbeaks, house finches, and piñon jays.
I’m grateful for the energy to cut back the curly rushes in the pond with the Sunjoe plant trimmer (though these photos are before the job), and Wren is grateful that we get to play down at the pond again.
She takes her Frog Patrol quite seriously, and I had to trim rushes in a pattern that didn’t disturb the frogs and also kept Wren at bay from both the cutting blades and the frogs so that everyone had safe space.
Our patience and persistence was rewarded with a rare sighting of a pair of courting Northern Leopard frogs. Once I spotted them we left the pond for the day.
No-Buy New Year is going pretty well a quarter of the way in. I’ve spent more than I’d like to on vet care, more than I needed to on groceries, nothing on clothing, and only indulged in a couple of justifiable gadgets. I dropped my mini-digital-voice recorder I’ve used for many years and it broke, taking with it irretrievable pearls of wisdom from the previous few months. Oh well. So I went without for a couple more months, but the phone voice memo app is awkward in many situations when I need to record a thought, detail, bird sighting, or perfect turn of phrase, so I just ordered a new recorder for $80 before the price goes up. (Or maybe it already has; but it will pay for itself before long anyway, and will likely only get costlier if I wait.) I didn’t order from Amazon, have quit buying anything from there, and am looking to support more ethical alternatives.
Yellow-crested Half Wit
Thanks to Neighbor Mary for the giggle with this image of the Yellow-crested Half Wit. With Easter on its way, I also appreciated this from Penzeys egg-seasoning email this morning: “Trump ran on lowering food prices from day one. With eggs this isn’t rocket science. A few practical low-cost regulations to lower the spread of bird flu. Getting the poultry industry all the workers they need. And if we do have to import eggs to stop demand from outpacing supply, don’t jack up import costs through the roof with economy-crippling tariffs.”
And a palate cleanser for our eyes, a reminder of sweetness and light.
