Sparkling Lotus Ink

wren central

A few days back a new lithium battery for my DSLR arrived.  Although I have a couple different lenses for it my favorite is the lens that I keep on the camera - a 40mm portrait lens with macro capabilities.  We all know why, right?  Yeah.  Close-up flower portraits.  I haven't actually used this camera very much in about a year.  And now that I have it back in operation I want to use my favorite lens for a greater range of purpose.

To that end I went outside yesterday morning for a wander with the camera rather than my phone.  Although I did take a lot of shots in close range mode I also began to actively prompt myself to start taking the kind of flower pictures I want to continue getting better at isolating with my eye and then stretching the "portrait" aspect of how I can learn to frame larger description highlighting a landscape vignette.  Was just beginning to push myself beyond a wheel of perpetual blossom/other organic close-ups when the battery gave out.

I've never disciplined myself to learn how to work this lens for landscape images.  But one of the reasons I chose it as what would work best for me is that so many camera buffs said this is a prime lens you can throw on your camera for months at a time - using it equally well for work-related needs and also vacations or group activities, etc.  Then when J gifted the dream lens I went gaga for close-ups.  Because it's all I've ever really wanted to photograph.  Flowers.  Thank you.  That will be enough. 

Note how the large community of Queen Anne's Lace to the right of the garden posts looks like a gigantic illuminated bowl.

J's favorite indigenous species.  Was thrilled to capture a look at the flower's entire life cycle.   Will print and frame for his office as a birthday gift next month. 

Here is a close up word detail about the way I've most had trouble assimilating to a so-called new normal.  I really couldn't deal with the absence of ongoing tra-la-la visits to the greenhouse and nursery visits.   While winnowing my photo files I started crying one night in an authentically brokenhearted way.  I'd noticed how many of my spring and early summer photos through the years held spotlighted and peripheral evidence of ongoing visits to a nursery or the farmer's market perennial lady.  It was the no-more-doing-of-this thing that felt most unnatural to me.  At least once I'd gone through my cycles in earlier spring of getting so wigged-out and emotionally raw without a background of casual drop-in/run-into-each-other level of of socialization I hadn't realized was so central my to sense of inner stability and balance.

this went on for awhile.  I had only J to talk to about it and he'd look around at all the seedlings and fail to appreciate my emotional turmoil until it manifested in random cry-fests over unrelated things.  He kept telling me this was about that and I should re-institute parts of an order I cancelled when he was first laid off.   There were ... tiffs of an ultimately pointless nature related to my reluctance to resurrect the order once he found the right fit of a new design gig.  Who knows what tomorrow holds, right?  So I made a deal with myself I'd wait for the annual live plant sale at Select Seeds at the end of May and then see.

They had the sale early this year no doubt to stimulate sales among hesitant  shoppers.  I browsed the sale items listing at 2 in the morning back in very early May.  Among several other things I chose two different fuchsias.  They're planted in the same pot and I recently put them on a table rather than leaving them to bloom on the deck's floor.  This will give the hummingbirds clear visibility of the flowers.  It also offers the treasured little birds more protection from Mama.  

Such concerns are front and center over last group of days because the wrens who were born under the lid-cap of our propane tank have fledged.  They're loud and extremely quick to learn.  J's had a front row seat to every step and flutter of their progress since he's working from home and has a window-view desk right in line with their ventures back and forth from the tank.

It's really the perfect place from a wren's point of view. Sometime I'll do a post about that specifically.  But for now just imagine that everything I write here is accompanied by wren song and/or scolding.  Imagine it's what we hear at the volume all teenagers play music riding in a car.  This goes on from the time the babies wake until they go to sleep.  In between they explore their song range and figure out how the various hooks and riffs fit together.  This morning I did my morning yoga practice's beginning standing meditation with the sun shining right in my eyes at first.  On the peak of the mudroom's roof one of the wren children stood backlit by the sun.  This allowed me to see how nearly all of its pinfeathers are gone or reduced to fluffy bits that will most likely be gone by noontime.

The bird sang with great conviction.  I can't say it was joyous like our pair of lovebird cardinals.  It wasn't loopy or strutting its stuff like the catbirds.  It was a song of all the truths this tiny magical bird knew.  A song to be sung in a voice that has learned its primary powers of wing and song.  I listened and watched the bird sing.

Eventually, with the tiny new wren still singing, I got on with my practice and was all the way to its ending point of corpse poste meditation before I realized the bird wasn't singing anymore.  It's kind of like the 7 roosters who live next door.  Yeah you heard me right.  Going full tilt from 4 a.m. until the hens are in every evening.  We don't even hear them anymore, no lie. They have to get super piercing to break the caul of normal decibel acceptance range.

The other day J was in a meeting and I heard him explaining yes, there are multiple roosters and they are very loud but we don't hear them anymore.  He had to shut the doors to the rest of the house and the outside world so his meeting could continue effectively.

Now there are also wrens.  And not just on our deck and all around the roof and foundation plantings of the house.  They are everywhere throughout the propery this year as I've said before.  And I keep thinking about them in relation to Celtic legend.   How there was a contest to see which bird would be king.   The birds would fly as close to the sun as they could.  and Wren figured out how to win by tucking into Eagle's feathered ruff until they were quite close to the sun.  then Wren emerged and flew free fast to be crowned King.  Wren flew directly into the sun's corona before dodging free again.  so Wren was quick enough to escape death but the spots on this bird's tail and wings are said to have originated from this particular escapade.

After we lived at the old place for a few years a decaying local nursery business was restored.  They began restoring the former display gardens by building a pergola to showcase a mantle of yellow trumpet vines. I wished mightily and many times over those years:  that I might someday live in a place with this flowering vine in a previously unknown color.  I found it exotic then and now I find it omnipresent.  There are runners everywhere in the lower portion of the field and throughout the evolving sanctuary.

I so admire Dee's amazing captures of recently dead life.  There's a name for that kind of assemblage but I do not recall what it is.  And cannot think clearly.  There are five or six wrens going full tilt just beyond the windows of this room.  A mother is attempting to instruct on some level and multiple other young wrens have shown up to weigh in on the proceedings.  

I do not want to become immune to their vocal presence as you kind of have to with the roosters.  I've already posted about how much I delight in bearing witness to the wren fledglings' learning curve and individuation process.

This is a seasonal leafy cave created by the original landscape design's placement of the vine.  I put the angel there the day of Vindman's testimony.  I was afraid he was going to be assassinated.  Thought the angel's style and coloration looked out of place but at the same time she seemed to be where she belonged.  This is only the second time I've gone into the leaf enclosed space.  The first time I left a certain flower offering for an immeasurably pivotal friend in the throes of active death. And now, also yesterday when I checked to see if there were any remains now that he was gone. 

I found no trace.  and took it as a message.  I'll be doing that for awhile.

Out in the field the Autumn Clematis vine has found its footing after languishing during the drought as well as before.  This lovely flowering plant's hardiness asserted itself in the wake of something (the big hare-like rabbit I assume) eating it down to practically nothing not once but twice.  Then J nailed one of the left behind lattice forms and I doused liberally with emerald elixir and pear essence.  We have watered from time to time as well when ordinarily we would not.

Basket flower with buds.  I think this is one of the most seductive flowers especially for a bee.  Bumbles are particularly fond if her. Am used to thinking of her from a pollinator's perspective but this year I've also begun to look at the fully opened illuminated crown aspects.  They are so obvious to me now but it took almost two decades to look up, as it were, from the fascinating world of how various local pollinators interact with this flower  Unclear why it took so long.  Mind too stuck on the flower canon and thus Lotus being the open crown blossom of choice.  Basket Flowers attract all manner of pollinators especially hummingbirds and butterflies.  This particular bloom is about 5 inches in diameter. 

Yesterday afternoon J and I went to retrieve the winged cat guardian tribute to Celeste.  On the way home we stopped at our friend's farm.  He lives on the banks of the river I share in an ongoing way.  Said this has been quite a drought  season so yield is both lower and delayed.  Has been irrigating constantly from the river.  I noticed the chickens have a new enclosure and the fields have been rotated in really creative ways.   Loved that their garlic was cured still on the stalk.  I got so much in anticipation of the tomato influx in the near future.

Mark grows wonderful corn.  That's how we got to know him at first.  He and J have music in common but now he says everything they knew as standard socialization fare has fallen apart due to the pandemic.  It seemed logical and yet still a very shocking moment - the three of us standing in the sun joined in contemplation of what that meant at a personal level.  I'll go back for more garlic the next time I do errands in that direction.  I've ordered ahead for the fall and we'll get the unturned plots amended with rotted manure but until then I'm grateful to have a local organic source for this essential plant ally.

Leafing through this book a few times a day - stopping to spot read here and there.  It is AMAZING.  Have decided to set-up a pairing blog for books that are closely related and enhance each other in a useful or balancing way.

Will be pairing this one with Farming While Black.

Took her directly to the field when we got back from our excursion.  Yes.  She belongs.  Later in the afternoon J drove out to the Valley to get take out from our 'special' Indian restaurant where we've been going for years in celebration of holidays and family dates of importance.  Our anniversary is the day before T's birthday.  So we've always gone to have this meal together on either the 10th or the 11th of March.   This year our special dates were eclipsed by Charlie closing things other than restaurants that made all three of us reconsider how comfortable we were doing takeout.  And we couldn't decide.  None of us knew.

So last night we celebrated T's 35th birthday and our 36th wedding anniversary. I additionally count as part of the anniversary our previous 5 years living in Boston.  We arrived in town on the 10th.  When we decided to marry J suggested we do it on that anniversary date.  So we are just 9 years away now from a full half century of time together.  We could not have conceived of what retrospect might show us about ourselves as we have always been.

The restaurant has a slimmed-down menu to accommodate the times.  There was also a sticky note to ask if you had kitchen favorites not on the new menu.  They prepared Pudina Ajwain for me and I was very grateful because I love that bread so much.  Am eating the leftovers of my meal as I type.   The meal here at home was festively low key and a beautiful part of the day's overall vibe and how easily it seemed to be absorbed into my family's etheric skin.

I noticed beyond our collective good humor that we were not as physically distanced.  four or three feet rather that six.  T is into month four of his treatments.  It is indeed unpleasant for him as the doctor described it would be.  His own description ahead of the fact as "highly annoying" is still his way to describe what's going on for him no matter how obviously he's suffering quite a bit on any given day.

I am amazed at his strength and pragmatism.  J has previously shared that T says he learned how to warrior-through from me.  I was surprised.  Yesterday he said it to me directly.  And I was so grateful that the thing I most thought might cause him to flunk me as being a genuinely good mother turned out to be something he can re-invent in line with his own necessity. 

Today I'm collecting Blue Vervain flower heads to make a tincture.  Over the past week I've started two half pint jars of Monarda fistulosa flower tincture.  I've also made a quart and a little extra of a heal-all oil containing dandelion, calendula, prunella, and red clover flowers - all picked here at home and dried earlier in the season.  It also contains comfrey, lemon balm, plantain and violet leaves all picked fresh yesterday.  Preparing the herbs and layering them for the warm oil infusion was an extremely satisfying experience.   Am giving it a few days for sediment to settle and then I'll turn a large portion of it into winter-skin cream.   We've been using some iteration of this recipe all the time this year due to the hand sanitizer drying our hand's skin so much.  Especially our palms and fingers.

(the length of this particular post is a response to a request I honor our departed plant geek leader extraordinaire by posting exactly as I would have if his eyes could read along.)

Namaste

crashing to the earth (only to rise)

Yesterday we got the tail end of the hurricane storms.  I spent most of the day absolutely miserable with migraine pain and resulting fairly profound nausea but found a few things to do in the studio.  Mama was with me and the vibe was pretty calm beyond the rain and wind until there was a series of ungodly cracking noises.  And then, in a kind of slow motion way the secondary cracks and crashes of tall trees breaking into pieces.

The first thing I thought and had trouble shaking from my mind was the fact that I'd spent a lot of the day, off and on, making a skeletal plan for a chapter in the novel I'm apparently writing.  I say "apparently" because I'm acting like it was all planned out in advance.  I'm disciplined, structured, and I go to bed and wake thinking about whatever's cooking right then.  I "make time" for tracking reality news-wise the way I used to (occasionally) make time for writing at this kind of level of dedicated concentration and taking myself seriously even if I may forever remain unclear why, exactly.

Specifically, even though it's very on the nose contextually, I have been impelled to title the chapter that next needs writing Officer Down.  So the idea of things crashing in horrible ways was already on my mind  when the trees came down.  My instinct was to run outside and take pictures.  But not before I was sure it was safe because I'd seen wires across the street bouncing all around though seemingly still connected to the poles. 

Called J on the phone and learned he hadn't known where the sounds came from so he hadn't been sure where to look in our landscape of wall to wall trees.  Throughout this time the storm was still in progress.  Once it stopped he called up the stairs pretty much directly.  By that time I didn't notice the weather change or the doors opening and shutting because I was crying while I wrote about a person who doesn't actually exist catching Covid.  Even though I knew he wouldn't die I likewise knew he would wind up with nasty aftermath syndrome travails, and so I was sad about the terribly difficult choices involved with writing fiction.

(which is one of the main reasons I stopped doing it for a quarter of a century.  couldn't handle the responsiblity, man.)

In any event J, by comparison, lives firmly on planet earth any time music isn't involved.  And so he called from the real world to say he'd been out and the road was utterly blocked "no exceptions".  Naturally I grabbed my phone to see for myself.

This was my first shot.  There was mild wind and light rain at the time.  And a husband walking beside me poised to caution and warn in a vast array of ways.   Two species of oak and a double trunked hickory or ash (unclear and I haven't had time to nail it down yet) came down from our neighbor's yard.   They are currently away and the town and utilities people cleared the road and wayside only.  That left us with nothing further to be done.  But the neighbor's driveway was left untouched and completely blocked by the double trunked tree.  That will be a lovely welcome home token whenever they arrive.

The double trunked tree took out their cable line but no other power on the street.  Yesterday and throughout today the vibrational energy on our short portion of the road has felt chaotic and disjointed. A friend suggested I scatter one of the new essences and I'm going with the red clover/chrysoprase elixir. Then in a day or two I'll scatter something else.  Probably Lady's Mantle and Chrysocholla.  

Wondered how many birds had been there roosted in various branches when the trees began to fall.  The double trunked tree fell on the two oaks and severed their crowns.  This afternoon when I went out to take better pictures wrens were absolutely everywhere scavenging among the fallen trunks and branches.  We have at least eight chimes just on this portion of the road including three on our property.  All combined I guess they are a super chime?  It's kind of insane especially now that all the babies are flying and learning their various vocalization patterns. 

***
Yesterday, with J right on my heels insisting it was time to go back in before a greater amount of rain re-commenced, I swiftly gathered branchlets of leaves from the 3 fallen trees.  Those leaves were perfectly formed and glossy with sunlight absorbed much higher in the sky.  Last night I slept with a leaf from each tucked into my pillowcase.  Have no recalled dreams.  But this morning I took them out and placed them beside me on the sheet.  I marveled afresh at their vividly green and marvelously glossy sunstruck perfection.  It was an excellent way to begin the day.

Last night I got a message on my phone from our baker.  She was worried people wouldn't be able to get to her (she lives 'way in the woods) for the bread pick-ups or even out of our own driveways.  That was me at first but I was able to get out just a half hour or so later than usual.  Got there with no problems at all.  Had a lovely conversation with her (she had many suggestions for herbal and holistic support allies for T) which hasn't happened since the old Farmer's Market days of last year. 

*

Is it just me?  I don't think of this time we're in as transitional anymore.  I don't think about "getting back to normal."  I think about what was, what is, and what could be.  period.

*

The clear sailing of the morning's outside errand left me energized to make a bird seed run.  For a solid week their online ordering's been down and I learned just this morning that they have no plans to fix it unless Charlie shuts everything down again. In reference to our governor, Charlie Baker.  Figured since I was headed into a much more densely populated area, the roads would be as good or better as what I'd seen earlier in the day through thick forest.  WRONG.

dear lord.  I drove around and around for a good fifty minutes all twitterpated because I wasn't completely sure (everything gps oriented and other think-for-me bells and whistles has been DISABLED in my car...) where I was.  Finally pulled over to call J for guidance in getting out of an endless hell of detours.  Chain saws were blaring every place.  Once J was on the phone he kept getting stuck on where I was exactly.  He couldn't figure out how I'd gotten there so every time I pleaded with him to focus and help me he'd ask where I was again and I'd tell him and then he'd say "but how'd you get there?"  Engineering brain.  I just couldn't with it after a few minutes.

We are both laughing about it now but at the time when I more or less hung up on him by way of hyper-efficiently thanking him for his time first he said he sensed himself 'swirling in the bowl'.  And gave permission for me to blog about it so there ya go.

All told it took me a little over two hours to run an errand that generally takes 35 minutes and that includes stopping by the river for pictures.  Ack.

Before I went on the most circuitous "quick run out" ever I was working on Officer Down which on this day effectively meant bringing myself to tears every twenty minutes or so.  I have 'known' this particular character for approximately 24 years and he has always been a super introverted massively aggrieved flannel wearing GenX-er but as such he never went anywhere but deeper into my own heart.

One day right after I started writing again I had a basically formless dream of a guy in gold-mirrored shades and when I first woke up I somehow knew it was Jake.  And that he was a fiery ever on point (but in a good if often overbearing way) state trooper rather than a dissaffected online entrepreneur.  I  further understood the latter role more naturally belonged to his daughter whom he over-protects for a number of pivotal plot-point reasons.  These are the kind of things that become commonplace when a universe of your own device needs constant tending.  It is so much more overwhelming and needing of diligence than a garden.  And mentally it involves a inherently wacky split screen way to live but if that's what it takes for me to get myself through the next 90 days or so and whatever's to follow then so be it.

This morning I went into the field.  It's the first day in three solid weeks when I haven't been stuck somewhere between five and seven on the pain level scale.  That kind of existence gets very old extremely quickly.  I have been doing okay because I know how to keep myself relatively comfortable at least 50% of the time.  But neurological disturbance is causing me to drop a lot of things.  Last night J watched me drop three spoons in a row there in our kitchen.  I also dropped the same container of yogurt twice but miraculously it didn't split open on the floor.   It's also difficult to use my words.  I mean in verbal speech here in the walking around world.  But I am quiet anyway.  You wouldn't think it from how many words I employ here online but I'm extremely quiet two thirds of the time.

*

today while I was out I saw a statue of a cat with wings that I wish to bring to the field with Celeste in mind.  I thought at first I wanted it for the spot where we created a memorial garden and intend to bury her ashes.  But then once I got home without having purchased it because I wished it was white rather than brown and stone rather than polymer I saw that where I really ought to put it was right beyond the fire pit in a wild area that is currently the most glorious mosh pit of thick Queen Anne's Lace colonies.  Celeste loved that area in the 7 summer seasons when she reigned supreme.

And so now when I show it to J for his opinion about the brown versus white issue I will also pull up the above picture so he can see where it would live.  This is always helpful for him when I've previously just explained something verbally.  Especially when I'm having trouble getting my words well formulated.

Think she is roughly half the height or just a little more than our Mary.  I think in the field, her browness would be well employed.  Polymer could be a distinct advantage in terms of durability.    Of course she'd come in for winters.  Opinions?

happy birthday, Pearl

Very early this morning I had a dream that my grandmother was making a slow perambulation of the field garden.  She was wearing a brown and white check dress she favored and vigorously shaking the fence wire all around the perimeter.  When I woke up I was still partially in the dream and then I remembered today was her birthday.  She'd come to check and make sure what I most value remains safe.  Still on her watch of watching over me.  Probably has been through all the years I felt no sense of vibratory connection.  Waiting for that change.  Picking her moment as old women do.

Usually, if I happen to be blogging on her birthday, I prepare a written tribute the day before with just a single image of her at the top.  Today I thought I'd work with image prompts I snapped as I  moved with my thoughts of her on this morning's inspection tour.  Things around the place that remind me of her.  Things I believe she would love and/or strongly approve of.  And, in the case of above, something she gave me on one of my own tween birthdays. 

She would sometimes remind me when I was especially sad (usually about not "having" a father) that we were both born of the summer when everything grows and makes seeds for the years to come.  She would jostle me by the shoulders none too gently but her voice held that lion's purr of persuasion at all times.  She would insist we understood how to live perfectly fine without parents or siblings helping us understand how because we were born in the season of life itself.  And then she'd give me science-y books of successful distraction to read like the one above.

***

  Always - from her to me for all holidays and also just-because gifts that were usually based on sale price windfalls - there were books. Not "a" book (although there was nearly always an extra special book that got saved as the last thing to be opened at her insistence) but books in the plural. 

(I don't have many of the books my grandmother gave me and scarcely any of her (many) other gifts including what was stipulated in her will as mine to inherit.  My mother systematically destroyed or gave away nearly everything important to me and/or my grandmother, generally right in front of me, in the wake of Pearl's death.  So the book above is super-precious to me.)

Having been raised through cycles of somewhat profound deprivation she also survived reversals of fortune borne of the depression, a hound dog of a husband who spent a great deal of his money on other women, and escalating racial tensions she feared would be the absolute death of our democracy.  She could be flinty and harsh when passing judgement on those who did not know how to suck it up and get on with things in an absence of emotional overwhelm.

she raised me, a person who is emotionally overwhelmed on an average of two or three times an hour, to get on with things just as she did.  This part of my background has taught me a lot over the long haul.  Think people who read here would for the most part agree that I do, in fact, get on with things.  And much like this complicated and always passionate woman who showed me what's what about being female and living in the world, I can be undeniably flinty and well past my last nerve when it comes to those who weren't raised to come through come hell or high water.  Although I wonder a lot , and always have, about what life would be like with those kind of options I'm not sure I'd be well suited to living in such a way myself.

Pearl understood I was a creature of volition long before I did.

The first time it occurred to me that Pearl's spirit might travel to visit and explore our place it was during the meditation portion of my morning yoga practice during the late winter of '17.  I suddenly saw her standing in the woods pictured above as they were when I first went outside at quarter of 7.  She was in her brown and white checked dress with her hands on her hips and her head thrown back so she could scan the tree tops.  She whistled a series of flawless bird calls.  And I opened my eyes, pulled out of the meditation and said out loud "Yes that's what she would do first if she came to visit."

If she was alive I can imagine her getting out of the car for the first time and heading directly towards the woods to commune with the bird nations she loved so dearly.  Kind of like I and many I know get out of our cars and don't really say hello to any of the humans happy though we may be to see them so much as we go wandering as if magnetized straight to the nearest garden space.

My grandmother's legacy is multi-plexic but she definitely taught me that whatever's wrong in human life can be healed by something you'll find in the natural kingdoms.  And unlike many holy rollers of those times and since - my grandmother didn't believe in a strong-armed interpretation of man having dominion over all other life forms.  She believed we didn't deserve our brains or our hearts if we didn't act like we knew how to use them.  I can easily see her chaining herself to a nuclear facility's chain-link fence or a redwood tree's trunk.

Pearl raised me to take no shit.  From anybody.  If something was wrong, anywhere for any reason, it was my duty to speak up.  To understand the problem from an overview level and help re-arrange a point of conflict's individual parts if I could.  She raised me to boycott, to actively put my body on the line in protest, to pray on problems I had no idea how to solve under my own steam, and to never forget absolutely everything and every person connects to everything else and every other person.

Something previously inexperienced began to happen after I had the vision of her standing in the woods with her hands on her hips.  It involves a cat.  My grandmother loved cats.  So did I but I was forbidden to have one and eventually given a dog who didn't like me at all and vice versa.  Be that as it may I associate double-leo Pearl with cats.  I once went into somebody's house to discover their most reclusive of four cats, Minerva, sitting expectantly on the counter right by the door I'd entered.  I had the spontaneous idea she was conveying one of those silent cat messages but picking up on any specifics was not my reading forte.  But the special human to the cat aka the friend I was visiting was an animal communicator.  She told me Minerva - who never came out to greet guests let alone wait expectantly for their arrival - wished me to know something:

You're grandmother's waiting for you.  Somewhere.  In the woods.

Since then it's become my habit while woods wandering to sometimes ask tentatively and sometimes with loud exuberance if Pearl is present and would like to account for herself.  To no avail until I started to realize something about the times I've been doing it most recently here at home.  Anytime I talked to Pearl, Mama would come racing to the scene.  Sometimes I'd see her approach or hear the thud of galloping feetsies but usually she was just suddenly there.  And she'd commence scratching like crazy on the trunk of the nearest tree.

This morning when Mama came galloping I actively wondered if there was a connection. 

and then I thought about the fact that even though my grandmother wouldn't recognize a lot about today's world and the ways my family personally lives within it she would undoubtedly recognize the part of my container garden that remains disaffected by my overall efforts to up my Final Effect game by summer's mid-point.

Am referencing the stuff on the pool skirt.  This is how Pearl herself gardened although I didn't make the connection until this moment.  If she were somehow here today I have a good idea of what she'd do.  Stand over me with her hands on her hips until I took the perennial red sage out of the beautiful pot which is clearly too small and get it duly situated in something larger and lackluster in appearance.

Perhaps that's where I'll start delayed-by-heat chores rounds this evening.

(my grandmother quite successfully taught me that the look of a place couldn't hold a candle to its cumulative atmosphere and effective purpose.  In that respect and a good many others she would have approved whole-heartedly in my choice of husband.    She would also find him suitably generous of his cumulative resources in a long haul way with just the right level of big flashes to show proof of a kind she always noticed and highly prized - that what mattered to me also mattered to him if only by default.)

took about six pics in a row while Mama sat there gazing at me and I asked if my grandmother's spirit was afoot within her.  was figuring it might be one of those occasions where one or two pics in the chain showed obvious activity of anOther sort.

nope. 

but then again, knowing Pearl, she keeps her options fluid and body surfs ...

During my first of today's visits to the garden I picked the first ripe tomato.  Cut the Blush baby in half so J and I could share this first homegrown taste.  Our jersey roots kind of mandate we make something of a ceremony of it for each type of tomato grown.  This variety offers a sweet burst of cherry tomato taste coupled with extra meaty full tomato-flavored flesh.  Hoped it would be perfect equally for salads, sandwiches and stir frys.  And it will.  Could probably also handle a barbecue skewer.

thumbs up. 

Will share small packets of seed for anyone who might like to have a go next year.

the caveat:  given enough space, light, and manure these vines are super prolific food bearers that have reached the end of their stake length here at the high summer mark.   That's why I'm offering small amounts of seed.  Even if I grow 2 plants max every year for the next few I will not be able to use up the seed while it's viability level is close to full potency. 

last night I could not sleep - already! - over exactly what I plan to do with all the emergent tomatoes as they ripen.  It was a rousing un-success but then just now as I'm sitting here making this post I realized I can chop them up with some of last year's shallots and create a cooked-down stock base that can be frozen in meal-planning chunks.  Will experiment also with freezing the fruits whole as well.  Even though it brings up immediate flashbacks of a Little Findhorn experience involving several gallon freezer bags full of yellow pear cherry tomatoes that did not unthaw so much as mush themselves into oblivion.

~*~guess it's obvious I have re-thought my level of willing accommodation to the Too Many Words contingent of email consideration points in recent times.

I came back to blogging in order to do it deliberately.  And for me that's impossible without words in sufficient number to the themes.~*~

picture perfect Saturday

It took two 32 ounce spray bottles full of diluted neem oil and part of a third but I appear to have prevailed over the odious squadrons of cucumber beetles that were devouring this impulse purchase Datura.  This plant and many others featured in these posts (such as the fuchsia at the top of this post) are in the mix via Select Seeds' annual plant sale in early May.  Thought the Datura would be lovely to grow right next to the only accessible remaining A. angelica.  You know - that contemplative sun and moon thing again plus other contemplations based on Datura's lateral growth structure that I'll save for another time. 

Am glad I have a large bottle of neem oil for many reasons but in this particular case that stuff's been quite essential.  Felt terrible that I had ushered a lovely and lively seedling into a life of hell.  Made some baffles as I was taught during that Hilltop Orchard summer and also instinctively placed a chunk of black tourmaline at the base of her stem.  Now thanks to so many consecutive rain storms washing everything away - she is coming into strength and a wealth of lateral branchlets.  The beetles appear to be in a lulling phase. I keep the spray bottle in my tool caddy during morning chore rounds all the same.

Mama's orange streaks are going blonde.  We assume because she's spending at least half of her days out in the field and that benefits from the blending-in power of a lighter coloration

Yesterday I finally set up my scavenged silvery shallow bird bath in the field garden.  It's diagonally opposite where I planned to put it but that's because I noticed the blue and golden warblers and carolina wrens are always in this quadrant of the enclosure when I come out for evening watering time.   This corner is at the edge of the tomato patch.  The plants are very tall and loaded with fruit.  The blush oblong shaped cherry tomatoes will be on the table by this time next week.

grace's Queen bowl is now a basket of seeds. 

now the garden feels like home. This Italian protest flag was everywhere the year we visited T during his h.s. junior year winter break in the run-up to g.w.'s declaration of war.  I was very sorry I'd never tracked one down to purchase while we were there but T. brought one as a gift when he returned that May.  Yesterday I ran steel wire through the rod pocket and twisted it firmly in place with the wire fence.  This stability allows the flag to billow and swoop with every little breeze.   It's a much better spot than it's former home on the back edges of the dog run attached to our garage.

fruit of the earth:  in addition to the volunteer delicata vines we also have a vigorous zucchini and a cucumber vine.  Beans coming up - quite late from how I learned but one of our CSA friends swears by going for a heavy yield from a later crop for the best keepers especially if you combine with other ingredients in canning and freezing.   Guess we'll see how that goes for us.    Got a variety pack and sorted them to plant in blocks so I can evaluate what we like best, etc.  They are bush beans so I could save the fence in that quadrant for morning glorious vines.   Whatever variety has pale mint green seeds has emerged without exception.  Quite strong and deep rich green color to the leaves.  Without the fence they wouldn't exist by now.  J did a beautiful job turning and amending the soil in this bean patch as well as the three smaller patches he prepared so I could at long last get all of the Tulsi in the ground.  Am done with that just as the herbal harvest picks up speed and volume.

now micro harvesting:  anise hyssop flower buds, calendula flowers, prunella flowers, various mints. 

Morning fresh-picked tea usually contains a borage flower, small sprig of dill, pinched-back tulsi flower head mostly in bloom.  Sometimes I add a prunella flowerhead if my kidneys feel undernourished and/or energetically murky.

unpleasant reality check:  last night there were a LOT of helicopters. 8 at least coming in two groups of three and later in the wee hours five more just in these seemingly endless line of noise and motion.  Loud with military silhouette and flying far lower than they needed to be.  Nothing like anything in the past.  Ever.

daily sustenance

  in our latest small heatwave it seems there have always been between three and five of the farm's honey bees drinking water out of our birdbath.  It's common practice for me stand with quiet patience for several minutes until they've finished and only then do I dump out, clean and refill the bath. 

I love them.  Intensely.

basket flower has become so heavy it bent its own stalk over night. 

Mamatoes
violet centaurea

Our volunteer mystery compost squash vines have revealed themselves to be the Acorn Delicata. eta: The vegetables have grown so much in the past few days of big heat and t-storms that my mistake was abundantly clear on this morning's no camera day inspection tour.  We are delighted.   

In the later afternoon I entertained two guests in the shade of the maple tree in our front yard.   The company and conversation shifted some things for me that have been waiting to slide into a more authentic groove Within for several weeks now.

So maybe a few more words than I'd planned but still in the blog's established sweet spot.

feed your head from your soul's heart

[Please note this post is different from usual in that it's structured to serve as an example of what a more long-form writing endeavor might be like. My emergent intention is to publish topically relevant think pieces in this basic writing style at a password blog or (my first preference by several miles) as a pdf I send out to a bcc mailing list of interested readers.   My main writerly objective is to evoke a self-guided look at existing thoughts/assumptions and a deepened practice of self-exploration that's focused in large part on topics relevant to societal and cultural cause and effect. 

In my experiences and observation that level of introspection isn't best served or nurtured in the transient immediacy of the blogging format.  And so "the conversation" that's both so beloved and collectively defined in community blogging terms often serves as only a shorthand version of actively absorbing more personally relevant layers of whatever is most current within the electronic zeitgeist on any given day, whoever else is or isn't part of that given day's dialogue, etc. and so forth.

Also note for the next little piece of going forward I'm going to take a short intermission from write-blogging here because it's that part of the growing season where I need ten arms and as many extra hours in the day to get even half of my to-do list properly managed.  That means I'll primarily post photo-heavy postcards from the garden.  I do plan to go on blogging as usual (whatever that means ...) on my creativity blog.  Will link to such posts here as and when they occur.]

I see this sign twice every week.  Once when I'm driving to pick up our bread order and then again on the way home.  Every time I see it I get the same kind of heart swelling fierce LOVE sort of tears in my eyes.  Sometimes they spill over.  A lot of times they shimmer right on the edge of falling for a couple of hours.

The sign is enormous.  It's painted on both sides.  The house in which I must presume some person or persons is responsible for painting the words twice over and sinking the sign into the ground is surrounded by other houses that have equally large and imperative messages to share.  On the same road on any given day there are somewhere between 5 and 8 Gadsden flags.  Every single one of them is at least twice as large as this enormous sign that you cannot possibly miss no matter how much you don't want to see it.

In addition to everybody wanting to make it damn clear you'd best no tread on them personally (nearly all of the flags have been consumed from the NRA.  Those are bigger flags by half and I'm told the yellow background is phosphorescent and fairly Area 51-ish in glow level after dark) a person or persons has taken it upon themselves to make it clear there is something beyond M-E that should not be tread on.  For any reason whatsoever and yet here we are.

  Before J became re-employed we both rode to get the breads.  We'd see the sign and say in soft loving tones look there it is.   J always asked if I wanted a picture.  I always said no.  A part of me was afraid if I got out to take a picture any one or more of the adjacent neighbors might take offense in ways that led to irrevocable problems.  And then I'd think T has enough of them right now without winding up adding any dead or maimed parents to the list.

Just like that I'd think it.  Every single week.   And know without needing to parse a single fragment of my knowing that it was a thought best kept to myself.

When I took this picture the safest place to park on the curving local artery had a house directly flush with the road and virtually no dooryard.  I was frightened.  You never know.  I've been chased by a belligerent guy cradling a rifle just for examining a magnificient cluster of coltsfoot blooms at the base of his driveway.  Who knows what might go on when I bop on over across the street to take pictures of the BLM sign.  Or how it all might intensify when/if they have a squinty eyed overt realization I'm not completely white.

***

As I've mentioned on my creativity blog I've begun to organize a few topics of meaning to me where I feel I might have something relevant and ultimately nourishing to contribute in a writing sense.  I won't be writing about this topic or a few others on this blog anymore in order to get myself moving more seriously. Instead I'll share whatever I'm coming up with on a schedule unknown so for now I'll just say from time to time.

To that end the most significant place I feel it's relevant and timely to focus is writing a lot more candidly and contextually about what it's like to live - not just not-white while living in white-land for the last quarter century - but doing it in the very heart of a gaslit dogwhistling portion of a state that has since its inception nurtured historical movements of great renown in relation to both social reform and racial justice. Massachusetts is in other contexts one of the most classically latte liberal states of our dis-union that I can name. 

One reason I need to write about it is because I've found myself struggling to have sustained serious conversation with other progressive and stalwartly liberal thinkers who live to my east and west in our fair commonwealth.  They do not want to believe this undeniably gorgeous place where I live which is full of equally undeniably swell people has a correlational equal and undeniable underbelly.  But it's undeniable to me, at least.  That's because I haven't lived in the projectively subjective version of reality that most of my most loving and caring white friends inhabit.  To wit:

'But why do you dwell on these things when you're usually so positive?  Why do you keep telling me?  I'm from the North!" 

Me too but that's an increasingly irrelevant detail.

For me hearing that any time I've tried to bring up things more complicated and baked-in beyond which side of the mason dixon line informed a person's internalized coding I've had a fractional scintilla of an idea of what it might conceivably feel and remain encoded as 'being' for at least a few of the black people heretofore consigned to going through their life, day after year, hearing 'well-meaning' white friends or total strangers who just want to make clear their personal bona fides vigorously assert

"Just so you know I've always been completely colorblind."

I mean people say that to me as a [woefully unexplored culturally or genetically] Hispanic person and/but all too frequently with the implicit context of black-white relations specifically.  In the spirit of beginning in the manner I intend to continue - I have to be honest enough to own the fact that once I hear it I start relatively swiftly down the road of considering them unreachable to or by anything but their own self-hype.  Luckily though I do stop just short of creating an actual judgement out of a reactive conclusion.  You have to when you're bi-racial. Or I should say that's how I have had to be. 

I used to say or at the very least think all kinds of things when somebody - generally without the slightest indication of encouragement or personal interest on my part - ran that one by me.   Now I simply say/think not relevant and keep moving with our larger conversation for the ultimate sake of our collective heart & soul.

This is not what I was planning as my first topic.  I assumed I would begin with the topic of cannabis as a multi-purpose healing agent but apparently that's veering off as the vehicle of choice for fictionland ventures of these times.  hence I"m going to start writing (but "well", hopefully - instead of the loosey goosey way I write here but maybe not.  we'll see.  Maybe I'll just be working out how to do the loosey goosey thing really well) about what it's like in this part of the state.  And how that's becoming interwoven with my own deepening understanding and self-education where this particular part of America's bedrock inhumanity of dehumanizing Other is concerned. 

From now on if you'd like to see what I'm thinking and feeling on the subject of race and all its relations that will be something you can read in this more long form style of communication but actively tightened-up and considered to befit the effort and time of both reading and writing. If you or somebody you know  might like to read these perambulations to see if there's something there for you/them, drop me an e-mail and I'll build electronic readership from there and a couple of friends hitting their address books on my behalf.  This will be informal and have free access with the gratitude offering option like everything else that I do.  But I'm going to be wearing my established serious writer's hat gentled-down to the point where people don't have to feel like I'm driving us over rocks and dust in a go cart while screaming at the top of my lungs.  Or otherwise unpleasantly diverted from, you know, the literal birds, bees, flowers, trees and so far safely un-mined and un-colonized moon up above.

At my ripening age I've finally figured out that most people don't read my words or anyone else's in order to be jolted awake in any way let alone at a relentless pace.  That's a definite me-thing and a many other people-thing for sure, but most people, I've come to realize, need somewhere to rest and reflect at their own pace and with the benefit of private rather than social consideration.

My co-company's latest self-named healing & illumination blend: gentle your relations

My realization came while I was harvesting a mother stock from the amazingly soft, light, gentle essence bowl above. Earlier that day I went out to the field presuming I'd update the SL repertory's meadowsweet essence.  It was early morning and the whole eastern side of the field and garden glowed.  I noticed through the fence a particular glow of St. Johnswort's light when the rising sun first kisses the solar yellow petals.  Once the eight flowers were in the bowl I looked back into the garden from the other side of the fence.  Queen Anne's lace had just begun to open fully around the edges of the meadowsweet.  I took a single flower, one careful section at a time so I wouldn't have to touch it as I would have if I'd taken the flower whole.  This time, last year's illuminated bowl within a bowl became the contents of a bowl within created by meadowsweet.  The eighth St Johnswort flower is nestled between both former and current bowl.

Before this cumulative act of co-creation I was in an intensely safe and illuminated protective caul.  That was a beautiful experience but I was not feeling particularly beautiful in the experiential backwash sense.  Specifically because of the deeply significant and utterly mandatory BLM movement and how, even within a moment of awakening that clearly took a lot of effort and determination to sustain, white people determined to rouse themselves were all too frequently making the moment about how they felt about this, that, or the other aspect of the rousing process.

After I set out the bowl I went to sit in another part of the garden.  I wasn't happy with my thornier feelings and thoughts.  When I'm trying to grow and heal in ways that stick I reverse the order of how those two are often paired because for me as a cancer that's the order they're always going to present themselves and become most dysfunctional if I insist on trying to reverse the order in which I deal with them.

(all these thinky psycho-logical analytic flowers-in-a-bowl stream of consciousness pieces are going to start to accumulate in their own pdf, too.  When that grows as clear to me as the way I intend to approach and grow along with the race relations topic has I'll post to that affect and you can let me know if you'd like to read them.  Otherwise I'm considering a very considered objection to how many of these posts are appearing in this space.  Going forward I'll simply continue posting the bowl pics as part of my visual roving reviews)

***

the other thing I'm considering developing separate from this blog is a blog which is kind of the book equivalent of jude's original Threadcrumbs blog for sharing personally meaningful samples from her collection.  The pandemic/isolation factor of the past winter and spring has put me back in nuanced daily touch with my existing book collection.  There have been entire months worth of time in which a pile of botanical encyclopedias sat by my dining room chair like a faithful companion.  Which of course they are.  For awhile I had out all my aromatherapy books and then I organized my widely dispersed collection of graphic arts compendiums.  I looked at books I used to peruse on a daily basis but hadn't opened in years. 

I was happy.  Because I love books in general and primarily the books I've decided to live with.  To buy instead of saving or attaining something many others would find more necessary or appealing.  When I was younger I always pictured an entire wall full lovingly collected books and from there trails of piles of additional books winding off into whatever sunset awaited me.  Never really thought about a home or where it might be located but I always clearly pictured a wall of books with piles moving outward the way plants expand turf in a garden.

  The pandemic showed me the obvious.  Something I "knew" without seeing the wealth of what I'd collected for the point in my life when I was still sharp but unable to get out and around as I'd like.  I live my disembodied dream now.  I've also recently allowed myself to lightly amplify my collection about as much as I care to at the moment. Also on that separate blog I see myself passing along books that I've read and they were great but I don't wish to keep moving forward.  This is something I was going to do a lot more locally and the fact that I haven't been able to do it at all has driven me even deeper into my book collection because why not winnow more extensively when you've absolutely no way of actually jettisoning the books from your environment.

Many of the books I'm uncovering I'm probably going to offer with a price tag of sorts.  But some I just want to pass on.  And only to places with states that are more open than closed for now.  If you live in a currently closed state and have interest in a book nobody else is claiming I can hold it for you until the situation shifts where you are.  If you are international and your country accepts US mail we'll have to do a barter because the money commerce is based on checks and money orders.  Barter otherwise.

***

Below are some books I've selected to read over the next while.  The writing voices/their overarching and underlying tones and topical contexts are varied enough that I can handle them back to back without feeling over-saturated within any particular thematic groove.  That in no way means I'll read them in the order they appear below.  That's just about groupings that make sense in my own mind thematically and as fulcrums for each other.

Since American racial inequality and injustice is the very taproot of American success and exceptionalism I'm accustomed to taking a wider frame to the nation's hegemonic culpability and bad juju/karma.  After I'd decided which specific black-white/black perspective books I was going to read in my own first-step efforts to diversify my inner awareness and how it forms its automatic pictures I also  picked up a non-fiction/fiction pair that speak to the wider issue of race and our nation's greed-waste-destruction continuum.

And additionally gathered another non-fiction/fictional pairing that are specifically African American in nature.  A comment from grace at Dee's blog put the Wilkerson book on my radar.   Toni Cade Bambara became known to me some time in the long gone past when I used to take the T to the main branch of the Boston public library and scoop up book after book from their new fiction stacks.  Stacks.  Stacks worth of new fiction after growing up in a town with a new shelf each for fiction and non that was switched out maybe twice a year or, in 'progressive' cycles of political appointee-ism once a season.   When I went with J in the van on the rare nights he wasn't at a gig or practice (hence all the books...) I'd gather two armloads.  When I was alone with a backpack I had to be more selective and discerning.  I focused on authors, titles, and covers for the two armload method.  To discern the worthiness of lugging something back home over my shoulder on the T I additionally relied on randomly scanned snippets of paragraphs and which books had the highest ratio of snippets that appealed to me.

I can't remember the name and scanning her catalog didn't help.  But this book I was scanning made me want to sit right down on the floor and begin at the beginning.  Not just for content but equally for architecture.  She was doing something wild and inventive at the mechanical level and from what I've read about Salt Eaters the same factors are very much at play.

A re-read/new read pairing by women whose writing shows deeply through another pair of eyes.  I chose to re-visit this particular ZNH collection because its landscape is so implicitly political and divided in nature.  Was hoping for insights born of spontaneous correlative maps I might imagine concerning the now while I read about the then.  The Sower will be my next morning book.  This is what I read instead of looking at my phone before I'm out of bed.  Since fibromyalgia's back in the mix my muscles benefit a lot from an extra twenty minutes or so before I actively start my body's day.  And my soul and mind benefit a lot if I keep things strictly analog and self-selected.  Books have always equaled stability as well as learning and imagining things other than my own landscape and experience.  The books I'm sharing are not the only books I've gathered.  But the full curation had to be re-calibrated to fit guestimates of available time and our collectively achieved light-bulb moment.  My remaining to read before year's end cache as it stood was instructively white and past tense in that even newly released and lusted after non-fiction selections were about dead white people.   It was appalling to swallow that particular bit of instruction.

When I shared it with J he pointed out this was most likely because I'd already read everything written by, for, and about non-white reality.  He reminded me of a joke I'd made about this specific situation and how there was nothing left for me to do but break down and address the real victims in the room.  They who need least need the loudest and so forth.

re-reading the nature writing anthology written by people of color and edited by a white woman.  She addresses that fact right off the top.   For me personally not in a convincing way but that's something I want to re-visit.  See if anything can shift within my own portals of certainty.   Picked up the novel on my birthday visit to Boston last year.  Which wouldn't be complete without a slow perusal of the bargain tables at the Brookline Booksmith.  I picked two previously unheard of novels one of which I devoured whole on the following day.  This one I kept with the thought it was really more of an introspective wintertime read.  The plot concerns a bi-racial male and his experiences in the 60's and 70's here in the US.  Inadvertently shelved it in a pile behind a pile of previously read books on the shelf.  So it remained unnoticed and forgotten until I was making my 2020 pile.  That's what I read from and where my reading goals remained focused prior to the shutdown here in MA.  For me that started three weeks earlier than the official version because that's when J started working from home.

After the first day and a half of that particular shift in lifestyle I re-tooled my book pile based on removing choices that were likely to evoke powerful emotions I would need to process in a way that was congruent with the shifting needs of our physical space and how it got used during the day.  In other words:  I had to monitor my bad moods.  Not just their severity or frequency in terms of what I allowed to show of such things but also the pivotal ways a solid half of my reading focal trends reliably feed difficult emotions. 

In the past that hadn't mattered.  Such moods came as they did and that was the moment at hand.  I walked or stomped through them occasionally talking to myself at vociferous length.  If something got me torqued enough I wrote about my emotion-heavy impression in roughly scrawled longhand discursive paragraphs in which I actively titrated how much sarcasm/vented spleen I allowed myself and called that my personal growth proof of life for the hour at hand.  Rinse lather repeat until it was too much of a physical burn and then I'd take a shower, pull my active thoughts up and back to matters of skin care, fresh clothes, and an emergent plan for moving on with more gratitude than guilt that I hold options and ability to re-set more or less successfully because I live such an incredibly and obviously white existence of the life is good enough for me to structure nearly all of my days as I please variety. 

And then Now happened.  And this novel is back in the pile.  Most likely a morning book on the other side of The Sower or even before.

Pearl raised me to have a dining room table book.  Ideally it would be my Bible until I pointed out her bible was by her bed and she had a bird guide at the table.  After that I was allowed to branch out enough to read from The Saints and their Lives.  It was basically my only table book because the saints (not to mention their lives) made no sense to me.  That's where my mother swooped in to put the saints/lives dichotomy into historical context. 

stories (many of them) for another writing module. 

I unconsciously re-claimed the habit when we moved here.  It began when I borrowed the left re-read from our town library.  Within a few essays I knew I'd want a copy to keep and found a used volume at Powell's.  I recall there being relevant essays to read in this volume but more to the point it's a perfect dining room table book.   Feel as if the new-read collection of stories is likely to be the same.

windows of opportunity .17

Yesterday was my first opportunity of open-up season to stop at the river spot I used to blog about on a weekly basis.  The other handful of times I've been by the spot the parking area was clogged with vehicles.  Lots of people mingling very close without masks.  But yesterday there was just one car with an empty boat trailer.  I was able to get out and wander around for the better part of twenty minutes.   Below is more or less what I looked like while I did it.   No mask on because there were no people.  It was right in my pocket and what a fine treat to be able to keep it there.  It's a first beyond the car and somewhere on our property.

This was supposed to be a picture of the two oak crowns.  But I inadvertently turned it into a reverse phase selfie and didn't realize until I was back home.   I love the joyous shine in my eyes and how the trees evoking so much happiness are reflected in my glasses.  Am glad to have a visual reminder of how wonderful it felt to be back with them. 

I hugged both trees and stood with my spine against their craggy bark. Previously I've just seen them from the road and sent them longing messages of my affection. Today my palms still hold the pleasant brrrrrrinnnnngggg of connecting to their powerful energy.  Sustenance of this kind, I'm coming to realize, is just as important and necessary to our species' survival as is quality nutrition in the belly, brain, and body at large.

  Moving closer to the trees and stepping into the green caul of their shade I noticed their offspring scattered all around them. Their combined presence has transformed a roadside pull-off into an authentic oak grove.  Additionally it would seem someone's come in and cleared-away the saplings of other species.  Only oaks remain in the first two rings of their grove  I knew I would benefit from breathing the atmosphere into my lungs slowly and deeply but I was loathe to disturb the vibe with the motion of my breath.   It felt greedy and perhaps unearned.  And so I wanted to float there in that moment just before breath occurs.  No wonder the spot is attractive to so many in this tenuous season of community discord and personal re-structuring.

Note the flourishing Greeter oak on the left hand side above.   I called out "Greetings to the Greeter!" 

  (The guy in the boat above came under the bridge just as I reached the water's edge on the other side of the road.  It was a gentle form of continuity.  Something that could have happened at any point in time since this river was reclaimed from big industry.  We did not acknowledge each other beyond a quick head-nodding glance but there was a feeling of shared gladness to be there.)

The clusters of white flowers are yarrow.  Also made note of the tail end of the red clover's first blooming.   Smaller than usual drifts of St. John's wort.  Plentiful mullein especially down by the boat launch.

They aren't so tall but their group energy is quite lovely.  I stood and admired them one by one.  I noticed some other lovely star shaped flowers on long stalk clusters.   They seem deliberately planted and since they're in the same vicinity as a grouping of planted trees I'm assuming maybe they are.  An effort has clearly been made to eradicate purple loosestrife and I saw only a single stalk of it.

It was nice to stand and absorb the river's energy quietly.  The guy in the boat glided by and then I could have spoken aloud to the land but I couldn't think of what to say beyond we are a sick species. Realized as I said it that I wanted to take greater personal responsibility but didn't know how.  So I said all of that and then I thanked all the other species involved with buildling and maintaining a vibrant ecosystem. 

Finally I sang a little bit of Brokedown Palace but only in my head.    The song has followed me through the years as I've followed moving water.

**

plus here are a couple butterflies I enjoyed once I was back home

evidence of changing micro-harvests

be still my heart!  It's the first basket flower of the season!

and for grace - an illuminated bowl within a bowl at the top of the slope down to our stream.

weeds have powerful seeds

A lot of times I deliberately cultivate weediness but this vignette is more of a spontaneous development.  I don't even know what these plants are called (they have a lot of nightshade characteristics) but they grow everywhere beneath the rhodies.  I usually pull them out in large handfuls every spring but the amount of seeds they produce is clearly legion. 

This year - what with the spontaneous field garden ungrade project and everything else - I did not get the weeds cleared and replaced with dead nettle slips as I'd hoped I might.  Now I find myself taken with the notion that the lion is happier having some level of concealment.   But it's too much unplanned weediness.  and the time to pull is now before they start scattering more seeds.

Today J and I focused our garden time on planting a small memorial plot for our departed calico queen, Celeste.  I will take pictures and write about it once the space and various plants have had a chance to settle in.   Last year I grew our shallots in one half of that space.  The rest I planted with green bells of ireland and california poppies so I could prepare replacement essences of both. 

As the season wore down I planted the bed with 13 sweet fennel plants grown from seed but only two survived our strange green winter.  One has been a food source for a caterpillar that skeedaddled on out of there once J and I and a tray full of little plants arrived.  The rest of the story should be told with pictures once things find their groove.

After the planting J went in search of Mama as it was past her 7 p.m. curfew.  I stayed out watering here and there for the better part of two hours.  This will hold everything until we either get rain on Wednesday or I need to water again on Thursday-Friday.  Now I have only tulsi, a smattering of culinary basil varieties, and horsemint to plant in permanent seasonal locations.   The luxury of empty space in the field means this isn't stressful beyond, you know, getting it done and dusted.

My game plan is both solid and realistic.  So perhaps with age does come wisdom.  Maybe?

in beauty its beginning is finished

Ended my last post with a certain wish for finishing our garden gate once knowing J would top it with a stabilizing crossbar because the frame is so heavy.  I'd hoped to hang the wind chimes above in the resulting space but alas the piece is too long to fit.  J hopes 'at some point in time' to find stained glass we could insert in the space.  When he mentioned that I brought up an idea I'd had to somehow mount/insert a big dish I recently found by the side of the road.  He saw it clearly but the space isn't quite tall enough.

The place where I hung the wind chimes is well suited for the lines and look of the piece.  A female catbird watched everything - including my journey towards this spot.  She clocked me (I saw her flutter to a closer branch for a commensurately closer look) as soon as I stepped out the door.  Later - after it was hung and had grown silent she flew to sit on a maple branch near the western edge of the garden -  She sang and sang interspersed with her more percussive repertoire of noises. 

Yesterday in between rain showers we hung the gate.  This morning I once again leaned into horse wire while Jim affixed wire to wood.  He used hardware from a gate (and entire section of fence) that fell down years ago after one of the hurricanes.  I'd forgotten about this episode as well as the gate's saved hardware.  Think this is fine for its purpose  Anything that can get through the gap can also get through the fence's wire grid as well.  Have concluded I'm going to cave to popular advice and use the dish as a low bird bath.  I know a great spot that's well-aligned with the flight paths of small warblers and other woodland birds. 

*****

Last night I took an unplanned three hour nap on the couch.  Once awake I spent some high quality wandering around the downstairs time.  Doing little boring-to-me things I notice on the fly but never actually fix/change/re-organize.  There's something about mild disorientation and a re-setting of circadian rhythms that I find a pleasant match for a whole host of tiny ideas I have and then conclude I don't have the patience or sufficient devotion to detail to implement them.

with-in my wandering I shook out a curtain in a way that made a beautiful Tibetan bell ring.  Where it has always hung - the spot for which I bought it - frames it awesomely as a thing to see with your eyes.  But it hardly ever rings.   Have never felt this bell was meant to be mere set-dressing so I took it down and let it swing gently in my hand.  Realized if we put it in the field hanging from the gate's cross-beam it would ring any time the gate opened or closed as well as when the wind moves it.

Yes.  Okay. 

The hammered pattern on the peace symbol is a flowering vine.   J's eyes lit up when I first rang it this morning and suggested this bell was a great solution until the stained glass shows up.  We hung it this morning and then I lingered to plant-out leeks and hill-up the shallots and take general stock of what's needed most in the week ahead.  Have concluded the volunteer squash plants are actually pumpkin vines.  Figured I would scythe the plentitude of kentucky mint and let the vines forge their own path beyond the one I'm making to access other key plantings and gradually give them more room to breathe free of goldenrod, mugwort and other leafy opportunists.

Yesterday I tied up tomato plants and pinched-out suckers for most of an hour once the gate was in place.  I didn't have the foot stool I use in deference to a cranky leg.  The opposite knee became super duper cranky as the result of squatting for an hour straight. I've thus appropriated an unused knee brace from J's collection.  It's far too snug for him but on me it's comfortable while also providing support.  So I definitely made it a point to bring the stool today. 

A bit later we went out just as the rain began for a bit of point and shovel transplanting in the strip gardens.  At the moment there's still a hole waiting for me to pop in an African foxglove.  Planted three and have four or five left to get situated. These plants are just coming into their first budding.  Am hoping I can get them all in the ground this afternoon.   Also put in a Van Houttei sage and a newer low growing anise hyssop variety.  [eta: just verified my info and see that it grows to 3 feet.  I thought it was 12 inches which I found completely enchanting.  will now have to transplant somewhere appropriate where it won't cross-pollinate with the other varieties.  sigh.]

My next big garden push involves working-in the rest of the horse compost so I can plant beans.  Also going to plant-out a lot of my tulsi crop since we got a late enough start to leave empty space in the new growing track.  That soil will also need pitchfork revival and some amendments.   Starting kale, broccoli another round of traditional culinary basil varieties and more leeks on the deck.  My gardening brain trust is evenly split on whether or not it's too late to start finocchio so I'm going for it.  The first bunch, which had begun to set plump bulbs, were ransacked by skunks.

While I was composing this post J made himself available to dig a few transplanting holes as agreed upon earlier in the day.   We didn't get all that far before the rain changed from pleasant to punishing but every empty transplant pot is its own form of accomplishment.  Working on filling in the strip gardens because it's close to get back inside if lightning suddenly erupts.  Haven't heard any thunder for about half an hour.   And this is perfect transplanting weather!  Will have to let my knee decide how much more I get done on this particular day ...

let's wander like cats

images are mixed mid-week to present from the sunny/rainless time that's just now probably almost definitely getting ready to end.

this red sage is a new trademarked variety that's supposedly hardy through zone five.  We're now classified as 6b.  When we arrived we were 5a.  The shift is a lot more fun for a gardener born and raised in zone 7.  Entirely grim in context and collective root of the climate change crisis.

Am planning on re-potting or planting it this weekend. Most likely potting until this flush of blooms fade and then planting to encourage a second flowering in mid-autumn.   Meanwhile for this flowering welcoming it to the back deck where generations of the same hummingbird clan have been nectaring in my vacillating container gardens. 

We got the last side of the fence in place mid-week while it was still brutally hot in the early evening.   Was consequently running on half-power and a very sore body for two days.  Today is day three and so far I'm pacing my activities super mindfully.  Am still a bit uncomfortable physically from the effort of getting this sucker in place.  J had said repeatedly it was going to be a beast and I finally asked him to stop but now I comprehend a lot more of why he had to psyche himself up in that particular way.  The middle section went up seamlessly in just under a half an hour like we did it for a living year after year.  He'd been bang on to Eeyore over the final stretch early and frequently, though ...

Today the gate will be attached impending rain storms permitting.   Tomorrow for sure if they last longer than expected or arrive later than radar predictions.  This final part of our garden fence building project is going to be epic.  Especially from J's intuitive building skilz POV and also because it means he'll turn his outside world attention towards opening the pool and having that be ready for his morning and afternoon work breaks.  It's epic for me because I've been in the garden a lot most evenings due to ongoing watering needs.  I've come to know the feeling tone of its enclosed iteration without the full impact.  Is downright magical rather than claustrophobic as I'd feared. 

The physical gate itself has been a morphing testament to J's inner vision from the jump.  He saw what he intended to construct in his eye's mind and then worked with what we have to hand amplified by what he knew to be available at the local lumber yard. He's been there a lot since This began.  And has consistently felt comfortable entering and walking/driving through.  People wear masks even if some have a lot to say about it.   Quality of pressure treated lumber is going down due to presumed rushing of process to meet increased demand.  And EVERYbody's got something to say about that including me.

  the Yard has always been a center of considerable local activity but now it's also enabled former procrastinators - especially from the tech-centric class, like J, who worked long hours and then commuted a couple more per day -  to become rarin' to go lunch hour warriors.

I love seeing this and thinking of the larger collective quality of life shift it's creating - in various ripple effects - for those who've decided to respond to our shared life shifts in this particular way.  Just a few months before the pandemic locked us down here in MA it must be said that I felt partially adrift within a life/style that was equally locked in and at the same time entirely removed from who I planned to become when we moved here - who we knew ourselves to already be. 

I don't at all like the manner & context prompting either one of us to get ourselves and each other shock-waved into a form of action that's been too-long pushed into the realm of a future tense left unimagined at a practical/planning level.  But the enlarging - and fencing - of the garden has put us in a much different (far more balanced and rewarding) relationship with ourselves, each other, and our authentic capabilities to live a life much closer to our dreamy plans and the Place. 

     [spontaneously got up from completing this post when the rain began with a gentle patter.  Potted the red sage as planned and placed her in a position of prominence in the deck container garden. Finished potting up the overplanted calendulas I rescued from the field a few weeks back and began to situate in their permanent homes yesterday.   Put in the three straggler tomatoes that were becoming very straggly indeed.  Potted up six Sweet Thai Basils.  Working in the rain was amazing - first at my poolside potting table and then out in the field.  It took me through memories of every adult gardens' history and much relating to my teens and childhood garden bases.  Also girl scout camp.]

I dare to hope against hope for a certain clearly envisioned grace note following the gate's successful installment.  bulletins as and when.