It’s the same view as yesterday evening, only morning, and I’m grateful for a little bit of quiet morning time, with phoebes, coffee, Wren, Topaz, and my journal before starting the workday. Then again, an afternoon break in the shade. Summer vacation isn’t a solid block, like it was as a child, but it’s interspersed throughout slower, easier days.
I was so grateful this morning to see feeding activity at the phoebe nest! At least one chick has hatched so far. I look forward to more and more busyness as more eggs crack open to free their tiny birds.
It’s not my town, I don’t own it or even live in it, but it’s the closest town to where I live. At one point in history it was a thriving center for people moving from various points east to colonize these river valleys, and has been settled by immigrants since the late 1800s after booting out the native Ute peoples. I’m sad about the brutal history. And, I can’t take responsibility for it; but I can point out that all the white folks who live here now are descended from immigrants from foreign countries, and I hope that they remember that.
Anyhoo… I moved here thirty years ago from my roots in centuries of Irish-English immigrants back east, and I was seeking the leading edge of peace in some ways just as they may have been. The oppressions I fled were different from theirs, indeed of their making, but perhaps my motivation was similar. I wanted space and freedom, and because this is America I was able to find that. To some extent.
It’s taken a decades long practice of meditation and mindfulness to fully realize how completely the true heart of peace comes from within each of us, not from external circumstances. I’m grateful for recognizing and beginning to live in this truth before I give up the ghost one day. And I’m grateful for my little town that provides almost every amenity I need to enjoy my share of inner and outer peace.
First, there’s community. Like me, most of my ‘clan’ live outside of town, but we all live around its nucleus. There are also gas, essential groceries, a bank, post office, coffee shop, and a rotation of various gift and souvenir shops; and then there’s the Hitching Post. This morning, I had some errands to run, including bank, post office, and buying a high quality soil amendment to beef up the remaining unplanted garden beds.
I thought I was going to have to drive twenty miles to one of the ‘big’ towns that make up our triangle of villages, but stopped in at the little farm store that ever since I’ve lived here always seems to have at least one of whatever I need in a pinch. Sure enough, they carry Ocean Forest organic soil amendment. So I loaded up the trunk with that and some steer manure compost, and gratefully drove the four miles home before the afternoon squall rolled in. I look forward to a productive and peaceful day in the garden tomorrow.
Boyz Lunch today was fried Sesame Tofu with Coconut-Lime Dressing and Spinach, a light fare on the first really hot day of summer.
I’m grateful that the juniper titmice have fledged, and that I was able to get a sort-of shot of the nest hole, after my mind played tricks on me this morning and I thought maybe they’d left behind a chick. So strong was the story I made up from my illusory senses that it took several close perusals of this image and some others to set my mind at ease, and now it seems so obvious. Ah, how we manage to delude ourselves.
Today I’m grateful to be alive, to have friends, to be part of a wonderful, interesting community. In fact, several of them, one in physical space and a couple in virtual space. Also, I’m grateful to live in the multi-species community that is my yarden, cultivating constant connection with Nature. At lunch today on the patio we were all enjoying the phoebes, and observed the chicks’ milestone of venturing beyond the nest onto the joist. THEN, we were astonished to realize that there are actually five chicks!
I’m grateful today for witnessing so many facets of the miracle of life. The phoebe babies are big enough to peek over the edge of the nest, and I was stunned to see four yellow mouths instead of three. I watched off and on today as their parents flew more or less nonstop back and forth bringing bugs. The chicks would wake squeaking until one was fed, then their fragile little forms would droop back into sleep, their heads sometimes draped over the edge like the one in back. The central chick is stretching its delicate feathering wing.
I was sitting at the patio table watching the phoebes take turns bringng food to their newly hatched chicks when one of them paused to watch me. I’m so grateful for these intrepid little birds! They commonly nest in human structures and don’t seem bothered at all by our activity. Below, papa brings a delicious grub to chicks still too small to be seen above the nest rim; mama feeds a hungry little mouth (my first glimpse of this brood); and then she carries away a poop pellet. I remember this from last year: she’ll feed a baby, wait a moment until it upends itself, then grab the pellet as it pops out. How efficient!
Meanwhile, in the vegetable garden, the perennial onions are in bloom and full of bees of all stripes. This digger bee made its way around a whole blossom (with a mineral tub planter in the background), sharing the bounty with a tiny sweat bee.
Resting at the patio table again after planting out the first tomato and the scarlet runner bean, this Bullock’s oriole caught my eye on a hummingbird feeder. I immediately went inside and sliced an orange in half to supplement the sugar water, which is hard for them to get from the small hummingbird-tongue sized holes. They are infrequent enough visitors during migration to make buying an oriole feeder impractical, so I try to keep oranges on hand for the few weeks in spring that I sometimes see them. Each sighting is a real treat.
On another break, I took the camera over to the single pale iris by the tortoise pen, where I’d seen a bumblebee earlier. No bees, but this lovely beetle which I remember from last summer was the main feeder on the white irises. Then the juniper titmouse caught my attention, bringing food to its babies in the hollow juniper in the center of the pen. Noticing me with the camera trained on its hole, it took awhile to approach, before darting into the hole with a flick of its tail feathers, and remaining there til I left. So cute! I’m grateful for the winged residents of the yarden, and for the luxury of time in my day to observe and connect with them.
Grateful for another Wednesday, to wake in the morning, make meaningful connections throughout the day with people human and otherwise, and come to the end of it still alive, free of regret, filled with contentment for the simple joys of a regular Wednesday.
Today, I’m grateful for the fullness of Sunday morning, all this beauty and adventure in the first hour awake. I’m grateful the day unfolded in peaceful ease, a little yarden work here, a little homework there, some housework mixed in, and a couple of zoom visits, including cocktails with Miss Sarah Belle: I’m grateful that the universe threw us together by chance 32 years ago and that she opted to open her great heart and mind to me. And, I’m grateful that I finally saw the mama phoebe pop her head up out of their fortified nest after he sang to her from the top of the birch tree. Life’s simple pleasures.