Tag Archive | Topaz

Year of Birthday Cakes

I saw the first mini irises popped up in the dry dirt on January 21, the earliest *ever* *I think.*

I want to be a helper. I am certainly grateful these days for the reminder to look for the helpers, when the wounds are so heavy. The contrast between the monks walking for peace across the south and the ICE thugs besieging Minneapolis is staggering.

*Bird Buddy caught this lovely northern flicker Friday morning, just as the lightest snow began to fall.*

The helpers, the good people with big hearts, are showing up in many thousands along the trail of the Walk for Peace monks; and the helpers generating compassion in action are showing up in the many thousands in the Twin Cities. It’s helpful to keep these many thousands of good-hearted Americans in mind.

*By bedtime when I went to shut off the generator the snow was deep and heavy, weighing down birch limbs and wild rose stems almost to the ground.*

My heart breaks for the VA nurse murdered yesterday and the mother murdered two weeks ago, and the two-year-old girl and the five-year-old boy and the fourth-grader and and and… I mean just imagine it for a second and it can’t help but break your heart (if you have one): a tiny child with no sense of what’s happening or why suddenly ripped away by strangers from all they know, and shipped to who knows where.

The sun coming out helped my heart yesterday. I remember the wisdom of the teachers that when I get mired in sadness because of anyone’s suffering I’m helping no one. I only help if I let that sadness morph into compassion and take action to alleviate the suffering of others. You can do it too. Call your congresspeople every day, show up in the streets if you’re able, write letters to editors, talk with friends and family, share reliable news sources with them if they’re blinded by propaganda from the regime. Do something to support the resistance: action is the antidote to anxiety. The stakes have never been higher.

Also, or if it’s all you can manage, do some random act of kindness for a neighbor, or a friend, or a stranger. And also: take care of your own nervous system. Everyone has their own unique capacities in each moment, each day. I took the weekend off, mostly, from screen time, from news, and still it was hard to relax. There’s this dreadful undercurrent, against which happiness, joy, and gratefulness become acts of resistance. So I spent the weekend in the kitchen, mostly, baking for friends and neighbors in gratefulness for their kindness.

Watching as much GBBO as I do, I got to feeling that there are too many great cakes and not enough birthdays. It’s time to step up my cake game, and anything you want to get good at requires practice. So I decided that I’d try to bake a birthday cake for everyone in my found family here this year. Clearly I can’t ship them to Portland, Florida, Santa Cruz, Virginia, Alabama, etc., but if I can drive it I aspire to bake it.

Today was devoted to a Bake Off worthy birthday cake for Neighbor Mary. The challenge I set myself was creative fillings, so I made white chocolate ganache and piped it around the bottom layer because that’s what the bakers on the show do. I don’t know why. I covered the first layer with ginger jam and a thin layer of the ganache.

Atop the second layer I smoothed the last of the raspberry and hibiscus jam, sorry there wasn’t more of it but committed to it once I started. I didn’t want to mix it with any other jam and get judged for sloppy flavors. (Does Paul Hollywood say sloppy flavors? I don’t think so.) I didn’t have a time limit and two kitchen icons waiting to judge me, but I can’t say that it wasn’t a bit stressful. But the fun kind of stress, where you’re stretching your capacities in your growth zone, like on the show.

I did have a deadline and some important distractions throughout the day. I was glad I had paced the elements, baking in the morning so it could cool completely, making the ganache before lunch so it had time to cool enough to whip, and starting assembly immediately after my family zoom so I could deliver before dark.

I covered the whole cake with chocolate cream cheese buttercream. Please recall that piping was not the challenge. Piping does challenge me, and I easily loaded the piping bag with a trick I saw on Instagram from Blue Cottage Bakery, so I gave myself a pat on the back for that step in the right direction. I scribbled the remaining ganache on top, plunked the cake in a Chewy delivery box, ripped the snow cover off the windshield dislodging six inches of frozen snow, and drove around the block just after sunset.

Neighbor Mary was thrilled. Her delight and joy was the icing on the cake for me. I begged her to wait for her birthday tomorrow to cut it, but she wanted to send me home with my tithe tonight so she cut a sliver for herself as well. (That’s my tithe above, and her sliver below. Obviously, I need to taste test all the birthday cakes so I can judge for myself.)

As she tasted and swooned over the various components, I told her what they were. I waited til the end to tell her what kind of cake it was. I wanted to capture her reaction for all time. “It’s a chocolate mayonnaise cake,” I said, camera ready.

*“Yay mayonnaise!!!”*
*If you were wondering about the first cake picture, in the mixing bowl, now you know: white sugar, brown sugar, and lots of mayonnaise.*

Obligatory Wren picture to share the joy: So often when I get up from the couch during TV time, to fuel the fire or refill my water glass or feed the cat, a line from ‘Cecelia’ sings to mind: “…when I come back to bed someone’s taken my place.”

*And just to give Topaz equal time: it’s a little blurry because she’s always looking around, but for one remarkably rare moment yesterday she sat on my lap.*

A Walk in the Woods

Nov30

Today it snowed at least five inches, which gave me a chance to catch up inside, and review photos from the last weeks of this mild and gorgeous autumn. Most days I woke Topaz from her mid-morning nap on the sunroom table to invite her out for a walk. She’s going a little deaf, so a gentle touch on the side of the basket and she startles awake with a little mrrrp!

It takes her awhile to get going once she steps outside. She rolls on the flagstones and stretches, while Wren and I zigzag through the woods close to the yard, noticing details. I call to her occasionally: sometimes she hops through the gate and runs to catch up, but most of the time we’re well on our way before she shows herself.

Some days she doesn’t join us at all. Yesterday I thought was one of those days, so after awhile I gave up on her and we ambled eastward, from one lovely view, one magnificent tree, to another.

I’ve been practicing a meditation instruction I heard a few days ago, to remember, just for a moment now and then, the felt sense of being “without a care in the world.” The woods is the best place to do that. I don’t think of myself as stressed until I realize how that feeling used to be much easier to find.

It’s healthy to now and then shrug off worries about health, mortality, money, the collapse of democracy, and recall that carefree feeling. I was immersed in it. We had wandered on deer trails for half an hour and were pretty far from the house, the canyon in sight. I sat on a log for a short meditation. A quiet mrrrp interrupted my reverie, and Topaz jumped up next to me. I was delighted to see her. She’d been stalking us all along.

Once she had gotten enough appreciation she wandered away and that was my cue to get up and move again. I let her and Wren dictate our route.

There’s an avenue of ancients near the southeast corner that came to my heart to visit, so I steered us in that general direction. The junipers are evenly spaced down a gentle slope to the canyon rim. A couple of them appear to be around the same age, five or six hundred years or older, and some younger, just a couple hundred. The series below shows more than one angle on each of the trees.

I got to the bottom of the avenue and realized there was another tree in the line that I had not once in thirty years understood. It was just below a rocky ledge, at the top of the scree that angles down to Ice Canyon. As I considered the whole slope, I experienced the feeling of this next tree slowly sliding down the edge as rock eroded over centuries. Its powerful roots kept it anchored and it reached upward even as the earth carried it downhill.

I turned, and for the first time followed the sight line uphill from that tree along the avenue…

… and then I turned again and followed it farther downhill, to another tree I had failed to recognize as the last in line, barely hanging on above the drop into Ice Canyon. I wallowed in awe for a long while without a care in the world.

Wren’s Good Week

Nov19

After four years of practicing gratefulness, knowing at the time I began that it was in response to overwhelming grief, I’m beginning to understand how these two feelings dance together.

Grief and gratitude are kindred souls, each pointing to the beauty of what is transient and given to us by grace.
Patricia Campbell Carlson

It’s been a tumultuous week. Some weeks are just like that. Equanimity was shaken, largely from inside, but I’ve gotten good practice in letting go and letting be, in beginning again. Exquisite autumn weather has enabled me to be outside a lot with the animals and the trees, which is always soul soothing. We visited the Ancient One a few times and sheltered in her embrace for some meditations.

A nice man came to plant a couple of free trees, a river birch and a Fremont cottonwood, and Wren was very helpful. Afterward she thanked him profusely. What a pleasure it’s been over the past year to see this little dog blossoming into a joyful outgoing creature, from the suspicious, frightened little rescue she was when she came here three years ago.

Despite my internal turmoil, Wren enjoyed a very good week. We had planned since spring to upgrade the patio area on the west side of the pond, and that work finally happened under her capable supervision.

The ‘trail mix’ gravel was spread, edged, and raked all in the nick of time before a good day’s rain left snow low in the mountains and frost on the pumpkin down here. Now this portion of the yarden will be safer for me and my aging friends to access, and more welcoming for mindfulness or purely social gatherings.

Wren also inspected the woodpile after a new addition. A friend was sad to have to cut down a dying aspen in her yarden, but happy to give me half of it, for which I’m very grateful. And I’m grateful that my little aspen thrives still, twenty years after hitchhiking here hidden in the soil of a potentilla shrub I transplanted from a friend’s garden.

The little blueberry bush which didn’t even bloom this year nevertheless grew under its protective netting, and then turned this stunning red. I’m grateful this week for nature’s beauty, bounty, and resilience, and for my own growing capacity to turn mistakes into lessons, to cultivate resilience, and to open my heart over and over. A phrase a friend quoted last week keeps coming back to me: “Your people are the ones who make your heart feel seen and your nervous system feel calm.” Intentionally connecting with ‘my people’, a profound acupuncture treatment, and allowing everyone to be my teacher have all helped restore balance. And this excerpt from a lesson by Sam Harris in the introductory course on his app Waking Up really shook some sense into me:

“The truth is, you know exactly what it’s like to feel overwhelming gratitude for your life. And if you have the freedom and the free attention to listen to this lesson right now, you are in an unusual situation. There are at least a billion people on Earth at this moment who would consider their prayers answered if they could trade places with you. There are at least a billion people who are suffering debilitating pain, or political oppression, or the acute stages of bereavement. To have your health, even just sort of; to have friends, even only a few; to have hobbies or interests and the freedom to pursue them; to have spent this day free from some terrifying encounter with chaos, is to be lucky. Just look around you and take a moment to feel how lucky you are. You get another day to live on this earth. Enjoy it.”

After another busy day delivering oxytocin to me and herding the sparrows, Wren finally rests. She is silently encouraging me to knit faster so she can show off her new sweater that matches her beautiful blue eye.

This Week in Animal Action

Oct31

*A B-Brie-L-T on a quiet afternoon. I’m grateful for a peaceful lunchtime even as Hurricane Melissa bulldozes through Jamaica and the so-called president bulldozes the White House.*

A friend sent me this link to a tour of the White House filmed by CBS in 1962 (how far they’ve fallen). If you have an hour it’s fascinating, and bittersweet. Jackie Kennedy walks us through the history and then her current tasteful, legal restoration. She quotes Theodore Roosevelt: “The White House is the property of the Nation… It should be kept as it originally was. It is a good thing to preserve such buildings as keep alive our sense of continuity with the Nation’s past.” In 1902, she continues, “President Roosevelt built two temporary extensions, which became permanent office wings.” It’s poignant in so many ways, including the respect shown to the structure through its many necessary structural renovations.

On an afternoon walk, I paused at a bench for a phone call and closed my eyes for a few minutes while we talked. Something shifted in the silence and I opened my eyes to this sight. It startled me, in a delightful way.

“It would have been easier and less expensive to demolish the whole building,” Jackie says, “but the White House is so great a symbol to Americans that the exterior walls were retained, and piece by piece the interior of the President’s house was put back together. The exterior views were exactly those which Americans had seen throughout the century…” After bringing us up to date on the history of The People’s House, Mrs. Kennedy takes us on a tour of the interior. The stark contrast between her respect for the house and the current situation beggars belief. She shows a plaque with words of President John Adams, “May none but Honest and Wise Men ever rule under This Roof.” Sigh.

As I watched them they watched each other. When Wren took a couple of steps toward him, he took a couple of steps toward her. I murmured for her to stay, to come back, and when she did then he stepped back.

A friend in Baltimore, who used to work in the East Wing as a calligrapher, shared a lament that she had posted in response to a CNN video about the demolition of this “regal, classically designed, and not at all gaudy” building:

“I shared the calligraphy studio with three other calligraphers and two interns. We scribed the most stunning historic documents, certificates, letters of diplomacy, invitations, menus, and even personal addresses of world dignitaries and celebrities…. I also managed The Signature Library, a room lined, floor to ceiling, of card catalog-type drawers, the wooden cabinets that we used to see in libraries, which stored THOUSANDS upon THOUSANDS of signatures of dignitaries and celebrities. No- we didn’t forge their signatures, each one was given to the White House for “procuration” (the opposite of forgery). Imagine this – a card for each individual, wrapped in archival glassine -signatures of important people from around the world, most of whom passed on decades ago. Each individual’s signature written and gifted one at a time through the ages, all brought to one room. A room no one knew existed but those who knew the East Wing. Have you ever conceived such a collection? If you’ve ever been in a space that inspired your intellect or called forth a sense of awe, this library would’ve blown you away. There isn’t even a display of this in the White House Museum. Now it’s GONE. RUBBLE. An INJURY.”

Laura White

*Their little dance continued for a few minutes as I watched in awe*. Then Wren sat at my feet and the buck cautiously stepped around us and walked on his way. When he was out of sight we resumed our walk to the canyon.

I’m grateful to hear people’s stories. Yet another friend, a young man of Indian descent who lives in DC, met some National Guard troops from a small town in West Virginia on the streets the other night. “They were teenagers,” he said, “and they said they’d never seen anything like this before. When I asked what this is, they said colored people, diversity. They’d never seen brown people, they’d only read about us in books.” They also told him that they were excited to be in DC, put up at taxpayer expense at some of the best hotels in the city including the Ritz Carlton. (Current low-end rates there start at $700/night double occupancy, and I have to wonder if their government rates are more or less than that.)

*There the awe continued with the cloud-studded sky, cottonwoods raining golden leaves, and a little dog undaunted on the edge.*

This steadily overwhelming assault on decency is inflicting trauma on the American people. Some of us know it and some do not, yet. But more are realizing it, seeing truth clearly, every day. Indivisible is calling on people to support Democratic senators in holding firm on the government shutdown. Jess Piper encapsulates the regime’s message: “If you don’t give up trying to get affordable healthcare, then we will starve our citizens, kids included, elderly included.” Caving to this blackmail will not make things better.

One of the best antidotes to the anxiety of this savage demolition of democracy is ACTION. Opportunities abound! The other best antidote is spending time in Nature. It’s scientific! Research demonstrates that spending even a small amount of time in nature reduces stress and anxiety, boosts mental and physical health, and promotes emotional resilience. I’m grateful for the causes and conditions that led to my being able to spend time in nature almost every day.

Another morning this week I was inside working and looked out just in time to see a flock of piñon jays fly laughing into the yarden and descend upon the bird feeder. There were a couple dozen of them and because it was cold I could not hear them but I could see their cacophony. They were in constant motion, diving onto the feeder and pushing each other off; drinking at the birdbath and soaring away; a few individuals flew up to the window. No one stayed anywhere more than a few seconds. It was mesmerizing.

The feeder was essentially empty before they arrived. When their frenzy subsided a bit, I went out and filled the feeder again, scaring them off. But in ten minutes they were back, and in ten more the feeder was empty again. I was grateful to contribute to their sustenance as they moved through the area. They don’t actually migrate, but I don’t see them all the time. They seem to flock through sporadically at different times of year. They are listed as Vulnerable, due largely to habitat loss and climate chaos: “Documented climate impacts including widespread mortality and morbidity, reduced cone crops, and decreases in canopy cover of pinyon pines.

It’s been an exciting few days here on the mesa, with lots of animal action, hours of yarden work, plenty of people time, all wonderful antidotes to more than enough political awareness. I was grateful to sit with the little pets outside in the sun for a short while this afternoon, simply sit.

Those Bright Hours

Oct20

Every now and then over the past two days I’ve pressed the pause button and sat down outside to savor the still-blooming patio flowers and the slowly changing colors of the yarden. But in between pauses and work I’ve focused on a fun and labor intensive project: Jelly.

Not just any jelly… not just rosehip jelly, either, though it did require a bowlful of those. These wild rosehips are small and seedy, not much flesh or juice, so I knew it would take a lot of them. And they’re not easy to harvest; even the rosehips themselves have pickers on them, so I took kitchen snippers out to clip them off by ones and twos, invariably snipping plenty of leaves. I picked out the leaves as I dumped the fruits into a bowl of cold water with a splash of vinegar.

Then onto the crabapples! My gorgeous tree produces the tiniest crabapples I’ve ever seen. The rosehips are small, but the crabapples are no bigger than the rosehips! I plucked them from the tree by ones and twos and threes, reaching overhead for most of them and dropping plenty on the ground. It took awhile, but I refilled the bowl, picked out the leaves, and dumped the crabapples into another bowl of cold water and vinegar wash.

It took an hour to rinse the rosehips and pick off blossom ends and residual stems, but at least the prickers had softened during the soak. I put them in a pot, covered them with water, and simmered for well over an hour, mashing them some about halfway through to release even more rosy essence, adding water a couple times to keep them submerged.

When they were sufficiently softened I scooped the mash into the ancestral chinois cone strainer that my sister from another mister gave me a few years ago, which had belonged to her mother. I let it drip for about five hours, squeezing out more pulp a few times with the elegant wooden pestle that you swirl around the edge simply using the palm of your hand on the smooth handle.

Once I’d extracted all the goodness I could from the rosehips, I put the crabapples on to boil, again keeping them just covered with water, and mashing halfway through cooking. They were just as hard to prepare because I had to pull off each stem using small pliers. I cooked them for only around 45 minutes, as I’d read that if you overcook them you ruin the pectin.

This mash strained for a couple hours before bedtime, with a couple of pressings, and then I left that in the strainer overnight, covered with a mesh tent to keep out the one or two pesky houseflies remaining inside.

In the morning I pulled the rosehip juice from the fridge, swirled the two bowls full together, and dumped them into a larger saucepan with an equal volume of sugar.

I brought this to a rolling boil, then reduced the heat and simmered until the jelly had reduced to the proper thickness. Or maybe just a bit longer. I used the “wrinkle test” to determine when to stop cooking: put a couple of small plates in the freezer, and when you think it’s close, pull one out and drop a spoonful of jelly onto the cold plate, let it sit for two minutes, then draw your finger through it. If it wrinkles on top it’s ready; if not, cook a bit longer. Pretty sure I could have called it good after the first test despite not getting the wrinkle but I let it cook another five minutes until the next test wrinkled.

I knew I wouldn’t get much jelly out of all this effort, but volume wasn’t the point. Some kind of crazy satisfaction from the process was the point, and a few mouthfuls of powerful flavor. I optimistically sterilized six 4-ounce jars, and was delighted to fill five of them. While they processed in the hot water bath for twenty minutes, I scraped the saucepan clean and slathered a piece of buttered toast.

I slowly savored every single tart, sweet, slightly flowery mouthful.

Twenty-four hours and uncounted steps later, the labor intensive fun resulted in five tiny jelly jars full. How I wish I had enough to give some to everyone I want to share it with! Oh well. That’s why they say “Mashed potatoes are so everyone can have enough.”

There are still tons of even smaller rosehips on the bush… will I decide to spend another day harvesting and processing another batch? Maybe… but most of the crabapples left are out of reach so it would be purely rosehip jelly if I do it again. Who knows how the wind blows? Who knows where the time goes?

Meanwhile, as I labored away, the lazy little animals just sat around enjoying the gorgeous fall days. Ok, well, I did sit with them some of the time, grateful for the time to sit, and grateful for those bright hours making such extravagant jelly.

National Abusive Relationship

Oct1

I was just heading out for sunset last night when a friend from Australia called seeking help with a podcast software we both use. After I got her squared away with it, she wanted to chat so I took her out with me. The technical connection was murky, but the personal connection was delightful. We talked about the moral decay of civilization, the polycrises, the lorikeets in her birdbath, and some of our exes, and we laughed a lot. Sometimes it’s all you can do.

Prior to the broken lying man I dated briefly a few years ago, my previous relationship was with — well, another broken man — who, when I said I valued kindness above all, spit out “Kindness? I don’t even know what you mean by kindness.”

From today’s vantage point, I can see that this came from his brokenness. But he hadn’t said it in a sad way, he had dismissed my foremost core value with contempt. I should have dumped him that minute, instead of sticking around for another three years of emotional abuse.

Four decades of research by the Gottman Institute reveals that the primary destructive force in any relationship is contempt; and further, that being the recipient of contempt in a relationship is a good predictor of—this is wild—infectious disease.

*Crazy Panela Mexican cheese that you can simply slice and FRY! So I put the last of the beans in a tortilla, added a fried circle of Panela…*

Sadly, I’ve been in a number of emotionally abusive relationships. This likely accounts for my now being happily single for so long; and, it also gives me firm ground from which to point out that the American people are in an abusive relationship with their president.

The lying, meanness, belittling, controlling, gaslighting and contempt I’ve experienced with past partners have parallels in everything this president does. America is in a national abusive relationship with its President. America, he won’t give it up: It’s up to you to extricate yourself from it. It’s not easy to admit how thoroughly you’ve been fooled, how completely you’ve allowed your values to be undermined to the point that you’re willing to hurt yourself and your loved ones just to keep him happy.

*… a few corn chips for crunch and a splash of salsa, and fold the whole thing up like a Taco Bell crunchwrap.*

I’m retraumatized every time I hear about the president’s performative cruelty, because I see it for what it is. So I’m retraumatized daily, and have to be careful how much of my attention budget I spend on the brilliant satires and shocked screeds that others are writing about his mental collapse, the brittle reports of each bite his regime takes out of the Constitution, the flagrant corruption of the Supreme Court, the complicity of legacy media and the oligarchy, and that’s just the tip of the shitshow.

After years of trying, I’m finally able to feel compassion for those who naively believed his lies, who felt a want, a lack, a need in their lives that they believed he and only he could fulfill. I imagine that some who voted for him weren’t voting based on hatred, mysogyny, and white supremacy, but on their very real needs: economic needs, a sense of security, a feeling of safety or belonging… and so they chose to believe the lies, despite some inner ick that tried to warn them.

I empathize with their longing for someone with seeming strength and certainty to make everything okay, and I understand the sense of betrayal they are starting to experience. I wish that they may find true relief from their suffering. It won’t come from piling more anger, hatred, cruelty and violence on top of what’s already being done in their name. May they come to see reality clearly, forgive themselves for their delusions, and walk away from this abusive relationship before it completely destroys their lives.

Vacation

Sep16

I’m tuning out the world at large for the next ten days, and tuning in close to home with a dear friend coming to visit tomorrow. No politics, no meetings, no work except for teaching the first two classes in Mindfulness Foundations Course; just eating, walking the woods, sitting by the pond, talking, laughing, maybe a short road trip or some other wilderness adventure, relaxing… and savoring this life on earth, one precious day at a time.

Meals and a few outings are mostly planned and subject to spontaneous revision, but tomorrow night is a birthday party! Not for me or for him, but for my new titanium hip which will be one years old. To celebrate I’ve baked this chocolate mayonnaise cake, slathered with chocolate cream cheese frosting. Utter decadence. I can’t find the recipe link for the frosting so here it is:

Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting

Ingredients

12 ounces (339g) full-fat brick cream cheese, softened to room temperature*

3/4 cup (12 Tbsp; 170g) unsalted butter, softened to room temperature

3 and 1/2 cups (420g) confectioners’ sugar

2/3 cup (55g) unsweetened natural or dutch-process cocoa powder

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1–2 Tablespoons milk or heavy cream

pinch salt

Instructions

In a large bowl using a handheld or stand mixer fitted with a paddle or whisk attachment, beat the cream cheese for 1 minute on high speed until completely smooth and creamy. Beat in the butter until combined. Add the confectioners’ sugar, cocoa powder, vanilla extract, 1 Tablespoon milk, and salt and beat on medium-high speed until combined and creamy. Add 1 more Tablespoon of milk to slightly thin out, if desired. Taste, then add another pinch of salt if desired.

This is Topaz, refusing to come inside again last night at dusk. Since her long night out recently she’s been sure to be inside before dark, but last night she just sat there six feet from the door, looking defiantly at me holding it open, inviting her sweetly inside. When I took the photo I said, “This may be the last picture I ever get to take of you, if you don’t come in now.” It was true, it could have been, and I’m grateful that I have this awareness: death is certain, for everyone, and time of death is uncertain. And so I savored that moment of her stubborn determination, and loved her all the more for it. I was also grateful that she came in a couple hours later, and that she came inside tonight before dark.

There was another spectacular sunset this evening which distracted me from last minute preparations, but I paused my endeavors to savor it anyway; and the dishes still got done. It’s time now to lay down my sleepy head, my aching teeth, and my grateful heart.

May we all abide in equanimity, meeting each other as equals, free of bias, attachment, and anger…

May we all have genuine happiness and its causes, and open our hearts with loving kindness to all beings…

May we all be free from suffering, and grow in compassion for all beings…

And may we all remember to be grateful, every living moment of every day.

Her Ninth Life?

Sep1

“This is the second happiest I’ve ever been to see you,” I told Topaz, as I returned to the yard after searching the woods this morning for her little corpse. She didn’t come home last night, which is highly unusual. I was grateful for knowing that she’s well-camouflaged, and survived a month in the wilds a few years ago after she was accidentally kidnapped. Wren and I walked the southeast quarter of the woods within a thirty yard radius, out the front gate and around to the east gate. I was grateful for equanimity and patience. I refrained from shrieking her name incessantly as I did that other time, for days. I wasn’t convinced she was dead this time, but even if she was I was able to accept it: she’s been pampered for ten years, getting her way pretty much every minute of her life, and I tell her I love her every time she walks out the door.

We came in the gate and checked out the pond end of the yard to see if she might be down there, alive or dead. As I headed back up to the house, she came sauntering toward me. It was the second happiest I’ve ever been to see her. This may be her ninth life, but I’m grateful it didn’t end last night. During the time of uncertainty, I remembered Stellar finding her brother’s remains; remembered the wrenching emptiness during her unauthorized journey; remembered her catcussion; and I also remembered stroking her back gently as she stood at the door last night, reminder her to come back to me as I do right after I say “I love you,” and before I say “No birds.” I remembered that my aspiration is to treat her always as if I may never see her again, every time I say goodbye; and that this is an excellent aspiration for any interaction with any being, ever: tenderness and kindness, just in case it’s the last time, because it could be, any time.

I let her inside and fed her, and she slept the whole rest of the day. Wren and I hung out at the pond a little while, where she hid in the rushes to avoid the pesky wasps. They’re everywhere. Sucking the hummingbird feeders dry, and always one circling ominously any time I sit still outside, whether at the pond or on the patio, where I’m spending a little time each day shooting hummingbirds.

Eyes of Wonder

Aug30

I’m grateful we finally got some rain. Yesterday it was overcast all day, drizzled off and on, and the clouds gave a good shower midafternoon. Not enough to make puddles, but enough to make the top layer of clay almost muddy. Little Wren shivered in her Thundershirt and wanted to cuddle all afternoon as I frantically plowed through R.F. Kuang’s surprising, delightful, allegorical, and ultimately very disturbing novel Babel before the digital library reclaimed it today.

I was grateful to wake this morning to sunshine on a cool early autumn landscape with clouds climbing the mountains on their way out of town.

I finally steeled myself to check on the potato harvest in the garden beds, and wasn’t too disappointed. I dug one plant’s yield from each of the small red potatoes and the Yukon golds. The red potato gave a pretty good harvest, and the first gold one did not, so I pulled a second gold and got a sizable handful. Both these potatoes did pretty well considering the grasshopper plague that never let the red ones flower at all, and only allowed a few of the golds to bloom, before demolishing the foliage. I was surprised to dig up what I presume was a skin from the seed potato of the bountiful Yukon gold.

I finally got a good look at the little silver stray that’s been streaking away after only a ghostly glimpse for a couple of months. Or, I think it’s the same cat, a pretty little thing. Topaz was fixated out the window when I walked by and when I stopped to stroke her she growled, but not at me. Only then did I look out and see what she was staring at, and who was staring back at her. It didn’t stay long: I was on my way to let Wren out, and thought it best to get it over with before Topaz wanted out again, to preclude a cat fight. The cat streaked through the fence and left Wren prancing at the gate. I have told Topaz many times since her dear brother’s untimely demise that if she wants another cat she can bring one home, but I guess not this one.

This morning we went for another ramble on soft damp ground through the cool woods, greeting trees we’d not seen for awhile.

We found ourselves at the North Pole, so named the first year I lived here when it designated the northern boundary. I’m grateful I was able to buy the field, forest, and canyon beyond after awhile, so now the North Pole marks the halfway point. We continued on until we came to the Survivor, and sat with her for awhile. She never ceases to amaze me, still living green nearly a century now since she resisted someone’s attempt to cut her up. I always ponder: did she fall over first, or did she get cut first and then fall over? Either way, she’s an inspiration to the power of stoic resistance and determined persistence. All the trees tell stories.

At the base of a decaying trunk, a baby piñon and an even younger juniper grow side by side in harmony.

We follow the course of a natural storm drain to slowly amble home. I’m grateful for the aimless nourishing hour we wandered the woods, remembering again connection, reflecting on those halcyon days when it was all so new. For decades with big dogs it was all new every carefree day. How much has changed, now carrying the weight of the new reich; through a darkening lens, yet still able to see with eyes of wonder so much beauty, and with such sweet, quiet little animal companions. Everything changes.

A Different Harvest

Aug25

My tragic garlic harvest this year. They seemed to do so well for so long, then at the end they just gave up. You reap what you sow: I wonder if it was because I used bulbs from garlic I grew last year, and they just didn’t have the energy to grow big and strong. Next year, back to Territorial Seeds or a local organic grower. Of course, that’s really this year: the time to plant garlic is next month.

“How many times have you wondered why 44% of the country still supports the president as he directs soldiers to patrol selected cities, orders heavily armed masked men to snatch people off the street, causes prices to rise, gives tax cuts to billionaires, and ends health insurance for millions? That is a complicated question with no short answer, but one of the main reasons is that millions of Americans are hearing lies or don’t know what the president is actually doing … because much of the media has been silenced by or is fearful of Trump.

He knows where his loyal followers get their “news,” and he is making sure those organizations toe the MAGA line.

Trump’s manipulation can be felt from legacy media (see: CBS News and The Washington Post) to local television ownership consolidation to the burgeoning MAGA-mediasphere of podcasts and social media influencers. But it all starts where the press and the president are in each other’s presence on many if not most days.”

Dan Rather, Steady, August 22, 2025

I’ve harvested most of the slicer tomatoes prematurely, because now that the grasshoppers have demolished everything else I didn’t cover, they’re coming for the maters! I put the first haul into a brown paper bag a few days ago and they’re already glowing up with a little warm color.

Our “local” Denver 9 News is on the chopping block. Kyle Clark, the host of the best regional newscast I’ve ever encountered, is making clear to his viewers, objectively, that selling out to Fox isn’t a great idea. Television is inherently dangerous, as Jerry Mander points out in his first book, especially from a political point of view, because“it is the one speaking to the many.” His work was terribly historically informed and prescient, and it’s only gotten more so since this 1991 interview in The Sun Magazine.

“The fantasies of utopian existence promoted by proponents of the technological, industrial mode of life for the last one hundred years are now demonstrably false. That’s not what we got. What we got was alienation, disorientation, destruction of the planet, destruction of natural systems, destruction of diversity, homogenization of cultures and regions, crime, homelessness, disease, environmental breakdown, and tremendous inequality. We have a mess on our hands. This system has not lived up to its advertising; in developing a strategy for telling people what to do next, we first have to make that point. Life really is better when you get off the technological/industrial wheel and conceive of some other way. It makes people happier. It may not make them more money, but getting more money hasn’t worked out. Filling life with commodities doesn’t turn out to be satisfying, and most people know that.”

Jerry Mander, in conversation with Catherine Ingram

One nice harvest surprise was this handful of small russet potatoes, which grew from an organic grocery store potato that sprouted before I could use it. I stuck it in a tub of dirt in the early spring and it grew in the sunroom for a month before it could go outside. Despite predation, against the odds, it came to fruition.

It’s gone from bad to worse and we’ve been prey the whole time, utterly caught in the sticky web of technology and now unable to extricate ourselves. I’m as guilty as anyone, but I’m grateful that mindfulness practice is an antidote that helps me keep some attentional autonomy. As Mander says, television “is most efficient at centralized, top-down usage which imposes imagery and programs people accordingly. The imagery remains in them and then they imitate the imagery. It is a powerful brainwashing and homogenizing machine.”… (and now by extension most of what the internet offers)

Rocky Mountain beeplant is among the most underrated wildflowers, and one of the most spectacular. It’s also a mad bee magnet. I sow the seeds throughout the yarden at the end of summer, and hope for the best. What comes will come.

My voice feels like a cry in the dark. I struggle to nourish hopeful energy because the forecast trajectory is dismal, as laid out in this Bioneers podcast with Thom Hartmann, who “warns of the existential threat of a virulent new oligarchy: the third frontal assault by the ultra-wealthy in American history to use their concentrated economic power to seize maximum political power – and overthrow democracy once and for all.”

*Two honeybees of distinctly different colors seem in conflict over a blossom…*

Robert Reich names the current president as the culmination of these decades of staggering wealth inequality, explaining that Democrats failed during that time to take actions that could have reined in the power grab. His interpretation adds another nefarious facet to Hartmann’s theory, twisting the script so that the worst of the oligarchs now presents himself as the people’s savior. Reich suggests that it’s not too late, and that if Democrats (and Independents, I might add) would actually unify and undertake specific actions they could regain the reins of the country.

*… but they seem to negotiate an agreement to share the abundant resources, neither taking more than they need and each getting enough.*

We reap what we sow. Where we place our attention matters. For forty years Big Money have been sowing seeds that ultimately bloomed into Project 2025 and curried this regime to implement it. While most of the rest of us let our attention wander down the insidiously addictive techno-entertainment wormhole, we failed to notice the rug being slowly pulled out from under our relatively stable democracy. The deceit was intentional and highly effective.

My friend John was a passionate student of history. He knew whereof he spoke when he said, “We lived in the best times” — before the third wave of Oligarchy began to crest. Turns out history is relevant after all. I eschewed its study through all my school years but the more I learn of it now the more this current moment makes sense. When people ask me “How did we get here?” I can now say, “It’s complicated…” instead of throw up my hands in impossible confusion. As my understanding of the history of this country broadens beyond the founding fathers and fourth-grade lessons on Virginia’s conquerors, my despair softens into compassion, and I renew my commitment to mindfulness practice and the skills that continue to strengthen my resilience in this challenging political and social landscape. I’m happy to share.

It’s not all froglets all the time, there are still a few tadpoles left swimming around. But… it’s mostly froglets!

Morning Rounds

let me remember to be grateful every living moment of every day

Tag Archive | Topaz

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A Different Harvest

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