Sparkling Lotus Ink

the constancy of changing landscape

Look at the happy juniper!   Miss Mama now requires supervised outside time due to her reverting to bird killing.  It took me about three months to train her, a few years of good-girl not going after them and then an interloper cat about three days tops to show by example how she could Be instead.  I take her out doors farther from the feed rocks and she's glad - so far - to just go on inspection tours together.  It was about 20 degrees when I took the above pics - maybe quarter of 8 in the morning.

Yesterday morning - around 7:15.  It felt imperative to step INTO the garden - all the way through the gate.  To stand and feel the energy there.  Remind myself how much of my own intentional YELLOW energy has gone into this space since last March.  I saw clearly how the past season's 'human game trails' made throughout the season might solidify into a path more consciously made from what's there and how the plants move around the passageways.

grace names her young trees and I name the rocks the garden's earth offers.  Every sacred space needs a dedicated male and female guardian pairing.  These came from deep in the ground while J was digging the tomato patch.  Lynne Margulis and Howard Zinn.  LM was really deep in the ground and took J a sweaty hour to extract.   They were undetectable beneath layers of vegetation during the growing season.

Am visualizing next April and early May ...

This morning the cat and I visited the scene of toppled prayers.  I took some care and thought to rebuild:  a more perfect union

and:  finding stability enough to sustain a split foundation

A few hours later the cat wanted to go out again.  This time we visited the stream

There's ice now as an ongoing feature.  If you look at the water furthest away you can see how slow and thick it's becoming even within constant movement.  This is SO different from two weeks ago when the stream rose far above the banks.

And then we went over to the frog pond and considered the holy union between then the juniper and the snowball viburnum.  Also considered some winter pruning.  So many plans, daydreams and necessary chores.  A gardener is always inherently optimistic or at the very least willing to express hope in a few continuous seasons worth of growth.

(the Eye is still there at least to me... and i love how the sun is kind of heart shaped in the light distortion.)

Every once in awhile J and I recollect the afternoon he completed a previously slow-moving section of rock retaining wall repair.   Back in March when we felt ourselves perpetually frustrated and certain we were being lied to or at the very least "handled" and soft-pedaled concerning the pandemic.  I was surprised to see in this pic that we'd already put up two sides of the fence.  It was a lot of high octane nervous YELLOW energy - I am what I prepare to become.

These plans are more quiet.  Listening to what the garden itself might suggest. Listening especially to the sleeping beds of garlic and shallots. They remain covered. with a frosting of icy snow and their original two inches of mulch.  In some places mulch remains.  In others it doesn't.  I worry what that will mean to plants left unprotected.  But, realistically, the more I age the more important it will be to have developed colonies of hardy companions.

Mary's back where she belongs.  It felt all wrong when she wasn't visible from the southern windows.  Yesterday I fell due to neuro-overwhelm and news-related preoccupations.  J is one hundred per cent plugged in and so a lot filters in as he follows me around filling me on a variety of provocative details.  It's only fair.  I've been doing it with him since the summer of 2015.

I keep thinking about what grace wrote:  they stole Senator Warnock's day.  Georgia's day, really.  And yet it all still happened.  Just like my crystalline happiness in the hours before I clocked in just in time to see the guy shouldering the confederate flag walking all around the place.  Abrupt shift off consciousness doesn't begin to cover it, really.  But still I came to everything from an unexpectedly gentle place.  Even at the deeply internalized level it was definitely not what I would have expected of myself.  I have stayed calm as I usually don't in the absence of Mind leading the way as it generally does. 

Normally when my mind says I can't do that right now I panic really overtly.  But this time I stayed calm and practical minded until yesterday afternoon.  I had a purely physical emo-reaction - falling due to neuro-overwhelm and not fully inhabiting my body.  It was a crash landing here in the studio.  I tripped partially over my own two feet and also, due to the muscle memory of moving around a stack of magazines that's no longer there due to me worrying if I didn't get rid of it I might fall. 

Here on the day after I'm far more in my body than I was!  The good news is that it feels good to move and so far I'm not bothered too much by the fallout.  Am achey in places that can be gently stretched with yoga.  Also time to switch from ice to a hot shower.  It's been helpful to move around outside - gently testing the edges of possible movement.  And cold enough to keep inflammation in check!

next year's iris say hello.  The iris essence I sent around came from very deep purple flowers.  If you have it and find your yellow center wobbly or not as bright/grounded as you intend to be try working with this essence.  Am guided to do it myself ...

stuff gets done somehow ...

On Sunday we finished the most outstanding garden tasks: planting the rest of the garlic and the French shallots, pulling up the tomato stakes, and clearing-out most of the remaining thistle colony skeletons.  There's still quite a bit of bird-gleanings so I won't remove too much more.  Probably move some of the fallen leaves around and rake in more as mulch for the hardier areas of this space.  Will use fresh straw mulch in other places.

It's exciting to walk around on a later autumn afternoon and see the first layer of what next summer's garden might look like.   In particular I made note of Evening Primrose rosettes and a few independent oregano plants.  Am putting bamboo sticks beside them so I'll know where to look when transplanting them next year.

I planted the Rojo hardneck garlic bulbs closest to the tomato patch.  They were insistent.  I look at the picture above and visualize more concrete viable plans for expanding this 'warning track' of cultivated food growing space.  Next year I will cultivate more ruthlessly to claim more food-making space. 

In front of the whiskey barrel above there's a strip of ground between the straw-mulched plantings.  The French shallots are to the left and I had a very pleasant surprise when I took them out of their mesh storage bag.  I'd thought nearly all of them had sprouted with weirdly dead-looking growth.

But what I'd seems were the actually dead stems clipped high at the top of bulbs.  There was only one sprouted shallot that we chopped very fine for sprinkling into a green salad.  This is the French classic Frog's Legs variety.  I've cooked with it, helped plant it for somebody else's larder, gratefully accepted their sharing after a plentiful harvest, and so forth.  But this is the first time everything fell in place to grow them myself.   We also planted the standard red variety.  I love harvesting their green shoots and freeze-drying for winter use.  J considers the shallots themselves essential pantry items as do I.

No creative consideration of the root chakra would be complete without a root based project.  I pulled out this hunk of Sumac runner a few weeks ago so it could harden plus wash clear in the rain.  Part of me is interested in using it as an outline stencil to draw on the stairwell walls to the studio.  Most of me just wants to draw variations that are scaled 'way down.  Will use the adjusted outlines to work with (I think...) for the final exercise sometime early to mid-week - next Tuesday or Wednesday.  There's a new exercise I posted yesterday.  The first half is an explanation about the book in which I worked.  The second half is the exercise.  All the RED all at once makes it pretty obvious where to begin.

*

sun in moon in sun

 

I keep beginning this post in frivolous ways.  In other words I keep 'writing'. Working through ideas that aren't what I intended to write about.  And yet I know if I segue to writing rather than blogging I will be distracted about making this blog post when I don't seem to know what it's meant to contain in detail.  This time I'm going with what I know involves whatever it's about.

A short while back I posted on my creativity blog about a particular quilt I made years ago.  It was a life changing experience to make it and it brought me into my full skin as a cardinal sign.  Before that I liked to consider myself an Idea Person.  I'd throw stuff out.  People would say to me, you should do that.  I'd say, I'm already doing stuff.  You should do it. 

To this day nothing bothers me more than people telling me what I should be doing when I'm already clearly doing something very different instead.  That's cardinality.  We need a lot of that because we need a lot of very dedicated and effective self-leadership.  We have to be ready to build reliable gps systems within ourselves. 

nothing is real otherwise.  And it's all very much something to get hung about.

What this has to do with the quilt I made for a very special person is pretty direct:  I went out into my garden yesterday afternoon and after a time I felt her spirit there with me.  It seemed I was just on the edge of smelling her perfume and hearing her melodic arpeggios of laughter. Just right on the edge.  And then I realized that was my own capability of conjouring.  Her spirit watches over me and many others.  And perhaps for all of us when we need it most she seems to be right there or almost so.

I crouched to pull leeks.  As I did so I thought about JP.  I also thought about how my life's been something of a largely enjoyable tiltawhirl ride since a coyote pup sang to me during the wee hours of sleeplessness some weeks back.  Enjoyable daily reality or not, I definitely live in the moment we collectively share.  Yesterday and the day before I wasn't grounded at all.  I couldn't sort the things left on my desk let alone the overflowing stack of assorted Acey-centric supplies beside it.  I could not sort out of my thoughts let alone stuff I've chosen to collect. 

In the afternoon I went out to the field.  It was warm and sunny and my cranky jointed body felt relief rather than recoil.  I kept telling myself I couldn't do anything about the everything.  I could only choose my feelings and how I focused them.  As soon as I allowed myself agency over the jumbled and highly unattractive collection of emotions richocheting all over my inner stratosphere I started to feel calm enough to decide I wasn't obligated to rush through my emotions.  It was okay to let them sit quietly - to perhaps let them figure themselves out.

Then I performed an impromptu ceremony at the fire pit.  I went into the garden and pulled all the leeks.  They filled three quarters of a large paper grocery bag.  Today I'll make potato leek soup with a friends' carrots and the very last of the dill I grew on the deck this summer.  These are good things to do; my family will benefit for a few days and I'll enjoy remembering what it was like in the garden yesterday while I'm prepping the soup and sauteing the rest of the leeks for freezing in ice cubes made from vegetable broth.

I also picked slews of culinary herbs.  It's a first for me to collect anything past the season's mid-point.  But I had dreams and did some automatic writing, meditated out in the garden itself.  Before Samhain it rained almost continuously for three weeks.  There is a great abundance.  I was given the impression that long unchanged human rules might be considered arbitrary and in these current times perhaps downright capricious.

So I harvested and was grateful.  There's now authentically plenty of everything rather than strict rations to ensure enough until it's a new growing season.  Was able to collect fresh lemon balm shoots, tender kentucky mint tips, and marvelous sprigs of german thyme for adding to the coming weeks' blending-up a new batch of abundance of care tea.

The soil is still warm.  Nonetheless the upcoming weekend is when the garlic and shallots go in the ground because it's the only time J will be available before the ground freezes.  We've decided to do the planting together as part of our joined effort to build a mutual foundation, from scratch, in these amazingly goofball level of messed-up times.  Planting our favorite anti-everything bad food and also our most agreed-upon mandatory culinary staple is our living version of a red square.

*

I decided yesterday morning that irrespective of politics and piercing head pain I had to stop procrastinating a return to daily yoga practice.  I was waiting, ostensibly, for my head to stop hurting.  Then I realized between the weather and an obstreperous collection of the most appalling people on the planet that wasn't going to happen.  Yesterday morning I couldn't settle down after the poses to meditate.  Today I could do it even if the blank slate was occasionally overlayed with a kind of mental sky-writing - an unbidden glimpse of the son in law's mannequin-blank face. Barr-none laughing inappropriately.  golden child's hands placed just so over Times Square. Tom freakin' Cotton.  And then different skywriting:  these are PTSD symptoms.  You know that.  Just keep re-focusing.

It was seamless at least for the amount of time it took me to lie on a familiar carpet in the early morning sun and drop out of my mind for twenty minutes.  I went deep into the night sky then.  This particular lunar cycle has been outrageously compelling to me. On nearly every clear night I've gone out and crashed around in search of the perfect viewing location.  I just had to be near it.  I felt the light itself was singing.  I thanked the moon for the power to reflect its cyclical journeys by reflecting various arcs of sunlight.  As I was doing so I had the sense of an incoming message but maybe it was more of a very slowly to sprout insight.  These moments in which I stayed present in what I personally knew to be true and meaningful were an incredibly potent form of resistance.

let's all wake up some extra light in ourselves.  See if we can move it around amongst those we love and help it grow ...

windfall & re-alignment

The autumn season has begun to settle in. Am starting to sift through the layers of learning and question marks involved with the two dozen flower essences, essence blends and essence/elixir combos that were successfully co-created during the spring and summer seasons.  Some of that will be reflected on this blog but it seems like I'm pulling something together in my mind that's not yet clear.   I have an Aries ascendant so am hoping the coming full moon in that sign will be clarifying as it usually is for me.   The past week or so (ever since I pulled the Tower as a final outcome in a tarot reading) has been something of a metaphorical obstacle course to parse beyond the broad strokes of what's true enough to stand and what isn't.

Today/last night I started to feel as if the psychic debris and rubble-dust of the energetic tower's collapse began to clear a bit.  Above is a living collage reflecting my eventual answer to a question a friend asked me yesterday once I reframed it in relation to my sense of personal agency.  Am making a small topic specific art/collage journal out of the vote by mail mailer.  Just something that feels both contained and containable.  The astrology of the moment suggests it will be challenging to find and maintain a cool head and steady heart.  But so important vibrationally and energetically in terms of what we manifest as individuals and at a collective level.

Am helping somebody with a very ambitious long term project.  In the interim I've decided this is an excellent time to do some work on my own energetic operating system.  Am super aware of the eroding and in places threadbare collective first chakra energy all around and thus am strongly motivated to work on that at a personal and small-scale collective level.

J. scavenged this narrow shelved bookcase a few days back.   Once it's cleaned up it'll be used for overflow mother stock storage.   Am very psyched to get the collection better organized and easier to access.  Have two other found-object painting projects.  Grounding pragmatic stuff.  Spent all day today puttering in such a realm.

A favorite marker in my yearly preparation for a new cycle of time-keeping - the arrival of next year's calendar from Lunar Press.   Loved what the artist, Jamie Hogan said about this cover art.  It's a very joyous design. 

Love the mysterious encircling of the energetic center of the mailing envelope's postage stamp.  a spot where all four elements combine.

?

Watched a Pam Gregory you-tube video about the full moon.  Love what she had to say about the next little while's massive opportunity to receive and process an increased amount of light as an individual and collective evolutionary tool ...

reading, writing, inspiration (?) & persistence

I have debilitating seasonal allergies right now.  That's allowed me to slow down even further.  Hang around in the house and properly sort through my clothes for storage and resurrection. I virtually never do that.  I'm either too busy or too sick. This is my second year in a row of being 'just right' and therefore last year I found far more exciting things to do with the extra energy and verve.  This year I'm all about what's sensible and easy to manage/maintain.  I don't know why.  What's changed from last year to this one anyway beyond everything.

*

  Due to the allergy situation I did errands this morning without any of my customary stops in little blurby spots of nature. In point of fact I become miserable for a few hours just going for the mail, putting seeds on feeding rocks, etc. The seasonal occurrence was delayed for a few weeks because of our cold second half of summer.  Consequently for four days/nights off and on I've had shard-swift moments when I become concerned I'm manifesting Covid symptoms.  Some of my friends - in a varied age group range - have started dreaming they have it.  I've done that too.  It's the anxieties piled one on top of the next far beyond anything I'd have previously considered critical mass.  Some/a lot of us were anxious people to start with.  And it's amazing how many anxious people occasionally self-soothe with the shadowed and the mysterious.  I'm not one of them the way I used to be but in these kind of times I can easily take the right kind of ride with everything the genre of Gothic evokes.

This book is pretty awesome.  It's moody and evocative.  Accessible while still gorgeous reading and writing.  The characters are instantly visible and so is the landscape.  Weird inexplicable things have just begun to happen.  It's a super grounding and re-balancing point of view to further slow the revs in my overchurned mind, heart, and body.  In my daily writing I'm dealing with inexplicably magical things that need to be grounded in everyday terms and situations.  What's sinister isn't there to be the point as it is here. Covid is the overtly sinister thing.  That and the shadowy much despised govt.  So my dreaming/receptive brain is reading something that helps my brain hemispheres in balancing as best they can.

A few weeks back I ordered two books from our favorite independent bookstore in new england that does mail orders.  My other choice: Lab Girl.  Both have been recommended to me by enough people that I'd need both hands to count.  Thought I'd start with what seemed likely the most 'fun' book of the pair.  I haven't read a fun novel since the impeachment trial.  I saw the senator from AK (not gonna say its name) sitting there with his fidget spinner and silently thinking about what Charlie Pierce always calls him in columns wasn't good enough.  I had to stop watching altogether and disappear into one of the most delightfully satirical send-ups I've yet to read.  It's a novel that never fails to make me laugh and laugh and laugh if only internally because at this point I've read it five times. 

[Hunters and Gatherers by Francine Prose.  It's for anybody who's ever come up against some level of goddess worship-oriented corrollary worshipping of a human personage that is "guiding" or "leading" anybody so inclined to be guided and lead.  People love to have somebody to follow, don't they?  They love to be told what they already believe and have it re-inforced in a way as familiar as a lullaby.  Prose is pretty merciless.  She's also one of my favorite novelists and art critics.] 

Mexican Gothic is my new morning book.  Previously I was reading Octavia Butler first thing upon waking and it was not a good fit at all.  I was starting each day with guns, violence, slim and generally unrewarding deliverance.  I might as well have continued to start the day reading news from my phone.  But this is good.  I am letting most shit go.  getting news from NPR, political commentary I know I'll agree with from Charlie Pierce and long form reads from the Atlantic.  That's my media tolerance level of this time.

My town is tense.  tense.  When I was out in the world I did a particular errand where a few of my former students work.  It's shocking how they've all changed, especially the young men, from last autumn/early winter when I last saw any of them on an ongoing regular basis.  In seeing them again over the last few months simply from time to time I was struck most by how much themselves they still were.  I cherished the difference it made in the ten year gap between their ages and my son's.

Today - wow.  Whole different story.  Everyone is taking everything in.  I think it's far, far, faaaaaaarrrrrrrr heavier a burden for those who are young.  Today somebody I've known for two thirds of his life looked at me with scarily close to dead eyes and said from behind his mask "I hope you weren't counting on my spirit to raise yours."  It was something he had to say - to me specifically in that it could be said to me.  He knows me and knows I'm not going to suddenly go full on Karen on his ass.  And so he continued.

"I hope I don't have to see a single person who loves coming here because of how much we young people inspire them.  But thank you for inspiring me enough to haul my ass out of bed every morning."  I thought he was going to cry.  And I knew I would probably definitely cry if I tried to say anything.  So I blew him a mask-covered kiss and walked away before he got any kind of demerit/transgression check mark for how long we were taking.

a mundane triumph still counts.   Yesterday I got a seemingly permanent stain out of this t-shirt.  It's two sizes too big for me but I wear it as a sleep shirt.  I like telling myself I'm capable of persistence even when at rest or traveling among dreams.

and the sun said: we got this

Day before yesterday I hit a wall of sorts.  Some of the most draining signs it was coming were entirely self-induced.  My challenge ever since has been to love myself through the results of my ungrounded/ungrounding efforts rather than beating myself up that here we are again, Ace.  Loving myself through the results of something I should have seen coming or even better yet avoided altogether is no small task for someone like me. So that's kinda what's still the major point of pragmatic and ongoing focus.

I decided to start with the one true thing.  for me yesterday, that involved going outside in the pouring rain (this was very early yesterday morning) and standing at the north eastern edge of the field just beyond the garden fence.  I asked the invisible earthly sun to help.  Also explained what I had done to myself and how also I had known better than to have done it.  And then.  Wow.  I felt the whole surface of the field sort of fold around the edges of itself energetically so it vibed like more of a bowl.  And the earthly sun medicine spirit said to me "we got this."

and I knew somehow that the "we" was me and the earthly sun.  Didn't understand what it meant and saw no trace of the sun from one end of yesterday to the other.  Today I woke just about as early and noticed immediately how/why I woke up.  The sun was in my eyes.  Before that, when it was still yesterday/raining, and I had the sense it was going to take more creativity than I possessed to deal with even a single more day of rain without losing my dwindling supply of goodwill, I tried to push past the negativity, man.  I went out with my good camera and took pictures in the side pocket gardens.  They were hushed, water-logged and dripping with moody secrets destined to remained untold.  Was just starting to find my groove, and lots of previous unnoticed garden seedlings like the cardinal flower above, when the rain drops began to fall again.  I mean they fell again.  again.  and again and again and again.

Usually when people bitch about the rain and how they 'don't like' it (especially once it goes on for longer than an hour or two a time every once in a while) I talk about the ground and all the drought cycles we have that we never used to have, etc.  But in this most recent rain binge?  I, too, am absolutely sick of the rain.   Also lightning.  Totally totally completely and absolutely done with lightning.  Have only experienced this frame of mind three or four times previously in my life.  All the other occasions involved enormous frustration while traveling fairly rough across country and wishing to camp in specific places for equally specific reasons but no dice.  It happened in '82 and again in '03.

But me being sick of rain is immaterial to the deeper concern I hold - The ground will get sick if the rain keeps going.  Or rather not the ground itself so much as everything that's trying to grow in soil rather than watery mud under cloudy skies.  As I had feared while sitting inside imagining what was happening in the field between lightning strikes - much of the formerly gorgeous tomato crop has begun to rot.  The beans aren't rotting but they're still an inch and a half long and no wider than they were when I brought in the shallots.  The squash are fine but I want to keep them that way and so I've been reading how to complete the curing process inside.  Have studied repeatedly the exact way they're supposed to be cut from the vine so the curing process isn't interrupted or short-changed.  I will probably screw it up anyway but I say that with a great deal of love for myself rather than self-castigation.

There are a few plants that don't suffer from so much rain.  One is Cardinal Flower.  I originally had two little plants that I hoped to grow into a super colony before I left earth.  They were devoured entirely by insects.  But not before the few straggly flowers apparently set seed.  All the rain brought all the cardinal flower seedlings to attention.  I could see where many bud heads had previously withered too badly to survive but two did and the others had just enough color to them that I could see where the plants were located.  I drew a little map/chart in the dirt and have since gone out to recreate the guidance system on paper with next spring in mind.

 You can see how rain soaked everything is because the flower above had been sitting in full sun for at least two hours and its was still absolutey saturated. I am absolutely saturated  as well and thus grateful this is the full moon in the water sign of Pisces rather than one of the two others. If it were Cancer I'd still be crying and laughing like a lunatic with poor to no ability to explain why.  With scorpio I'd still be sitting quietly somewhere in a calm and relatively dark place.

Or else, far more realistically, let's face it.  I'd still be dancing around to Mambo Sun just to see if I could take myself all the way to other side of whatever the hell that was.  But it was ever-remarkable Pisces.  Therefore I went into that void.  The no-thing-ness.  It was, as always, incredibly supportive in that the void supports all forms of energy.  To me it's like an enormous cosmic hammock supporting all.  forms.  of.  energy.   Once I got that about Pisces I started to be incrementally less concerned about the way my son spun out emotionally. He was two and three during this time frame.  And he also has a scorp ascendant and a sag moon so he spun out a lot.  Emotionally and otherwise.

What I noticed about his spin outs is that they also had what J called drive-backs.  He'd spin all the way out, then kind of donut-circle-drive around all the way out there for however long it took him to get the whole thing untangled within himself and then he'd drive himself all the way back.  In like an hour, tops.  And then not understand (this part remains the same...) why others are still oscillating about the fact that he was tremendously upset but he's not upset anymore so what's the problem.

Understanding the maternal metrics of likewise understanding my kid's personality helped me understand who I was at the core.  Not as a mother.  Not as a grown up.  Not as a kid myself wandering around inside my adult mind and body wondering what to do next.   At the core.   At the core it's said we're all the same and thus all Heart.  Today's vibe still has the all-heart energy of the Piscean full moon and within that window I'm preparing the essence bowl pictured above from Angel Wing begonia flowers. 

T loves having this one put in a bowl of orange water with some lavender essential oil.  I place a few of my great-grandmother's cut glass finger bowls with the combination near places in our common areas that he frequents and then when he's wilting or lookin' flinty I point out the bowl and he stands watching with a silent glow while I replenish the essence and essential oil drops.  I love that this is one of the ways he enjoys being loved by his mom.  And then afterwards he keeps track of the bowl in that he'll look towards it in the room from time to time along with his survey of the other things he enjoys seeing.

It feels nice.  I think doing it while also steadying the ongoing lo-fi blessing of I'm your mother and I love you very much really does 'nice-ify' the rooms' vibrations. 

Begonia's vibrational and healing signatures are written in the key of Heart.  The flowers themselves as they grow often shape shift and evolve into secondary forms of elaborate beauty that at times seem more than a bit otherworldly.  Sound familiar fish lovers?  I'm making this essence with myself and my son and our described unceremony of meaning in mind.  We are both getting hardened by these times and all the thoroughly toxic and corrupt individuals who are making so much noise.  We share an affinity for dark humor that's currently running on scant fumes.  We're both done.  But we're freakin' water signs.  There's no such thing as "done" we simply become uncontained and uncontainable.

Until all that emotional and mental and psychic chaos of no borders or boundaries finds a way to crash or stumble into Heart territory.  And things get quiet.  And if they aren't going to become quiet by themselves we begin to look around at how we can create other forms of quiet to compensate and rebalance.

Today I'm also preparing something both cardinal flower and jewelweed called me to be prepared-to-prepare.  Today's cloudless sky and full-on sun was something I had to take on faith.  I also took the pictures in case it was sunny and I wanted 'nice' images from my nice camera to include in a post.

The bowl above is a very obvious and much welcomed 'raincheck' from my customary birthday bowl.  It holds cardinal flower - which is equally and simulataneously super-grounding and elevating for the first chakra as well as being a ceremonial vibrational stand-by - and jewelweed which is a very versatile essence several flower alchemists in my modest circle of such have been mentioning as seeming on an evolutionary curve that hasn't come all the way into focus.  All I know is that I've never in my 24 years here in central MA seen jewelweed flowers so large and full and vibrantly expressive of their full Being.  We had a rainy later spring but then drought in between the two rain cycles.  The dry periods were also quite hot.  The combo killed off most of the Jewelweed plants.  We're talking hundreds of plants all told.  Yesterday both of these medcine spirits said to me TOMORROW.  I didn't have much focus or sustained energy or even a clear sense of my physical body.  But I did have faith.  Not saying that part has anything to do with how today's turning out but it is what I had.  Didn't think I "had" much of anything at the time beyond a heaping wealth of personal short-sightedness. 

But I did also have faith and I don't know why but I honestly believe I was born with it. 

Jewelweed is for people who don't know how to slow down. In an unchallenged/unilluminated state they don't know what 'stop' means until their mind or body or both provide a glaringly clear definition.  It's also for people who've confused productivity with gear-stripping.  And whose personal definitions of "uncomplicated" would leave most people with crossed eyes and/or the need to speak up and say something.    does any of that sound familiar??

the bowl also contains a single teeny tiny broadloaf plantain flower.   That's for balance in all ways and all things.  I work with the Plantain medicine spirit and the plant's vibrational energy a lot.  Am loving how it might feel to be aware of the tiny ping of a presence of this beloved energetic signature.  There are three red sage flowers for all the usual sagey-reasons in the key of red/securing and illuminating the first chakra.  And there are innumerable tiny individually cut and loved all the way into the bowl fragrant heliotrope flowers.   This is an essence for folks who don't know how/when/why to stop beating themselves up.  a-hem.  Think I'm gonna re-read yesterday's post on my other blog with Fleetwood Mac's Yesterday's Gone playing in the background.  And maybe just for balance and because I love this man so so much I'll follow it up with mega-pisces George H's Horse To The Water.

Already listening to it so I could find the link to put above and below.  You'd think I'd be out of things to mention loving about George and his music but here's something else.  I LOVE that this song is his final musical word.  It really speaks to those two ever so pointy-points on the tips of the Vesica Piscis.  One goes all the way up and the other absolutely never forgets we are also all-one as on all of us inhabiting the same planet and all it contains. Including our own entirely human human-nature.  What I love about Pisces extrapolation the most is the way the energy entices us with something like  "look. here's the limits of earthly consciousness.  Here's the limit of having limits.  Oh look.  here's the other side of consciousness.  It's all one.  It's all the Same."  And the creative art of all types that comes from that energy all holds that message without even having to look very closely.  But when you do you are always richly rewarded. 

Horse To The Water time is upon us, imo.   It's kind of the way "everybody else" seems to be living. Set it up on You Tube and listen while you do something else.  Sam Brown kills the vocals.  From the Albert Hall memorial concert.

*Partway through the Harrison segue J called up the stairs to tell me I had essence bowls on the verge of shade.  Got out and moved them in time but not before entangling myself in a few dozen burdock seedheeds. They are everywhere.  Always.  In all stages of formation and decay.  After I moved the bowls by the pool I went out and double checked the bowl in the field.  Felt when first setting it out that it would like to moved more to the center of the field beyond the garden once the sun was higher in the sky.  Will talk about that bowl and the experience in my next post.

The seeds and the inside of the seed casing is SUPER itchy.  Had to change my shirt and in a perfect world would have also had a shower then and there.  Any number of dwindling burdock plants are left in inconvenient places to seed because the locations mark bird flyways and the seeds are beloved and extremely beneficial after the black frost - for the chickadees who come in from deeper woods and the finches who stay year round.

During yesterday's earlier morning break from rain I captured the Hydrangea bush.  Subsequently had a dream while napping that I told the bush I really disliked the name of the variety and that I felt saying it out loud (Pinkie Winkie) was both diminishing and disrespectful. Today when I was out in the same place gathering the cardinal flowers, jewelweed, and a single tiny plantain bloom I kept going over to the bush because it was beckoning yet not.  When the bowl was set into the grass while I re-stabilized I was looking directly at the bush.  It definitely looked back at me.  When that was established - my knowing it had a conscious bead on me - the bush communicated its wish to be known as Madame Butterfly.

Much better, no?

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.

tackling the fence - part 1

Yesterday afternoon J and I got the first piece of our garden fence erected.   He'd suggested this after I announced this past weekend as an ideal time to get our tomato plants in the ground.  I had not suggested it because there are all kinds of other ways I'm obliged to tweak his sense of doing things as he feels things ought to be done just so we can get them done.   And so there we were.  Figuring it out based on J's formulated ideas morphing into a few degrees of winging it.

Don't have to say, as I often do, that I took direction well.  It was more a morphing physical and mental process of my own.  The fence was like doing yoga in tandem with an energetically and physically oppositional Force.  Intuitively I understood a form of movement practice I've never experienced.  Just knew how to be with it - moving only as need be and focused in an almost binocular way on Jim's task of tacking the fence gauge to the wooden posts.  He also created half of something I call a temporary gate-fold right where the fence gate will be.

Through all of this I literally shouldered the fencing's weight in the place he'd asked me to stand.  This took me places I've never been/seen/imagined before.  Just in terms of learning what my body's capable of at an intuitive level right there in the moment.  If I hadn't focused on that specific slant I might have spent most or even all of the time making a silent mantra out of i can't do this.  Having accomplished most of the best so far all the while telling myself I couldn't accomplish diddly - well.  I thought with everything else that's changing and re-arranging itself in these times I'd upgrade and discard as many I can't programs as possible.

Shallots are up enough that they must have a bit of topsoil hilling provided by day's end.   Also watering.  At the moment that's kind of faraway on a list of things for doing far later in the day.  Am still sore and slow from yesterday's work.  J cut himself prepping vegetables last night so we'll leave the construction project off-burner for a few days while the cut heals. Can definitely get the tomatoes planted a bit at a time over the next few days.  But just for today I have a single - albeit three-fold - gardening goal in mind:

In keeping with this season's theme of sacred pairings - I'll be planting a pair of blue vervain plants in three locations.  It wouldn't be right to let it go at that  because -

This is the arrangement the plant's medicine spirit sought before the physical plants had even arrived.  My brain couldn't make the jump so it stuck.  I'd get to yes okay I see and I understand.  It will be fine.  Convince myself I felt a few molecules lighter and more crystalline.  And then my brain and intentions would jump backwards. 

it wasn't so much I balked at the direction.  Was my ingrained attachment to planting in Groups of Threes.    I traced the roots of this - the way they traveled almost endlessly back to the neighbor lady who allowed me to become a fixture in her garden when I was four years old. Our relationship and her tutelage developed throughout the next decade.

always plant your tall mainstays in groups of three.

The larger co-creative theme of this growing season is definitely sacred pairings.  This has been confirmed in emails from my vibrational/energetic/intuitive gardener's network.  Sacred pairings have shown up in other ways as well.  This isn't about moving numerology forward it's about getting the duality of polarity held in balance right in the here and now.  Or so it seems.

eta: as of early afternoon I've planted two of the three pairings.  am anticipating no problem getting the third pair done after a bit of rest.  Oak pollen is swirling all around and I wound up leaning into an allergy caplet.  Third such choice in the past eleven days. 

additional edit:  J has in fact got the proper fence clips.  He explained some other Thing involving a tool he doesn't have but has since discovered he doesn't need.  For reasons he has definitely explained but I don't remember specifics.  Seems like there's so much to keep straight about this garden enlargement and all the many different Things it's proving to involve.  Plus there have been snafus aplenty as with anything you suddenly decide must be done three months before everything involved needs to function.   

Mainly it boils down to everything happening at a slower pace with plenty of cogitation in between.  What is happening is good and a very positive hint at how total enclosure might feel from the inside.  Had been a bit concerned the space surrounded by wire would feel cut-off from the established field energy.  But nothing of the sort occurred.  This time of year J. stops mowing around the fire pit.  Many of the medicinal herbs I wildcraft for tinctures, blended herbal teas, and oil infusions grow there. 

today is a hush of deeper greening

Yesterday was a no camera day in which I was able to move my body gently and rest it in appropriate ratio and measure.  Today I woke after five deep sleeping hours.  Stayed up late because fibro is like that sometimes and also to wait for the predicted rainfall between midnight and one.  Wanted to see how hard the rain would fall.  The basement seedlings are fully hardened off and ready for planting in terms of dramatically vacillating temperature/full sun exposure but they've had zero rain/wind experience.  

The rain was gentle.  I stood inside J's office looking through the french doors with the overhead deck light on for a moment quick enough to prevent waking T who sleeps just beneath the blaring light's placement. It was enough to see the seedlings would get their first real natural soaking.  That's an important first experience for them.  I feel it enlivens their natural intelligence at a level that becomes more individualized and richly encoded via collectively shared experience.

  My gardenia bush was right on the other side of the glass.  Just after I turned off the light I stood in the dark with my forehead and palms against the glass panes in the door.  This plant and I have spent 20 plus years together.  I could feel her leaves thickening and growing glossier.  Their leaf-green color  darkening.  Water beading for graceful distillation within the upturned leaves.  I smiled and turned towards sleep in which I dreamed of her flowers.  

The dreams, though consciously un-recalled, insure my perspective is overwritten by the gardenia flower medicine spirit:  lightened awareness in mind and intention.  Regenerated and purified soul & spirit.  Yes.  It's one of my favorite vibrational signatures.  Known to some who read here as a single essence - to others within the blend Sight Unseen.

Not-bothering J during his work-related portion of the day - I stepped outside to be greeted by Mama mewing with a note of rebuke atop the lower deck's picnic table.  She was waiting for our shared morning inspection tour.  Usually I'm ready an hour or so earlier.  

***

above is a tree coming to life on our watch.   A dogwood I'm currently unable to locate in my tree ID link cache.  So many are from sites long gone.  Perhaps someone knows and will refresh my memory.  We have a few of this species that I'm encouraging to settle into the spaces where they've appeared.

The walk down to the stream from the back dooryard is fairly steep.  New trees grow at a 45 degree angle that eventually follows their strongest nature and sense of rooted gravity.

Birds are by now fully nested and thus situated for their summer family life to come.  Wild rose canes we missed in earlier sweeps won't be eradicated until the year round wrens etc. have safely situated elsewhere in later autumn.  Carrion vine I pull up whenever I see it.  Pulled up a youngish vine with a very long root just before I reached the bridge.  Mama prefers to sit at the rim of the incline and observe my navigations from a level-footed perspective.

I'll still be able to pull some vinca closest to the bridge.  But most of that will also have to wait for later autumn.   Each day it gets harder to come down the slope and enter this landscape within the larger place and think about things like responsible land stewardship.  My gardenia dreams already had my mind dropped into a calm and glowing awareness of collective Earthstar energy.  As the greening elementals and rising life force of everything from the stream bed to the rocks envelope all layers of our carbon form(s) it is an invitation for ceremonial and experiential laying-down of those forms.  It is a time frame close enough to my birth to feel myself beginning to steep in awareness  - to re-fit myself within the pure essence of human spirit as I most organically embody it.  And then to feel my spirit take a soft leap beyond that.  I feel a glimmer of starseed formation.  The particles of pure light and cosmic life force/energetic essence I contain.

co-mingling.  knowing exactly what peace and co-operative alliance feels, sounds, smells, and tastes like.  A microcosm of inter-mingled life-forms co-creating abundant pockets of nourishment and mystery.

The water's continuing to move in a steady way but there's far less of it.   I can get lost in the slow steadiness of its path through the rocks and plants.  This is an excellent spot to amplify the giving and nourishing practice of gratitude.

In the next small chunk of time we must commence scything the violet colonies, dandelions, etc. in order to have a clear view of the pond edges and, hence, Snappy.  After a day of ongoing study I see the creature isn't really any bigger than it was last fall.  Upon first sighting both this spring and last my brain registered a much larger animal.  From formative memory and also because that's the way my neurology encoded earliest life danger-trauma.  It doesn't have to be a familiar danger it just has to represent legit threat.   When it is legit everything about it mushrooms in size and scope-of-threat. 

all the more reason to keep the ground around the pond tended to.  This area is the green world's energetic epicenter.  Every year we cut the violets to keep the area less attractive to ticks.  But I like to wait until this later point in spring so that the hosts of flower have had their full unhurried chance to sing in unison right here in this lodestone of life and regeneration.

The massive wild rose warren above has sheltered many generations of various wrens and tiny warblers.  There's another at the edge of the field and a third in a place we always mean to cut back but, as per usual, other stuff took precedence.  I'm not-so-secretly pleased.  That particular warren yields fledglings who get all their earliest flying instruction at the edge of our top deck and the foundation rhodies around the corner of the house.  They fly from the rhodies to the maple branches beyond.  They fly from there to the electric wires and back down to their starting point on the railing of the top deck. 

The lessons coincide with the point in late summer when my studio is intolerably hot during the day.  It's sweet compensation to sit with watercolors - quietly exploring color until the excited noises of wren fledglings changes the script completely.  I turn slowly enough to be soundless on the other side of our dining room's front windows.  They can hear through the screens.  Their mother is stationed closer to the ground in a strong crotch of the rhodie.  Her instructions are unmistakable to mothers everywhere.  be careful.  remember what I told you.  I don't care what your brother/sister/the other children are doing you focus on what you're doing.  Now do it again. be careful.  REMEMBER WHAT I TOLD YOU!!!

I treasure those weeks of the year and smile wide to spend these moments capturing memory into words.  For the next few months the green backdrop of these images shelter and amplify all manner of bird drama and behavior.    I love nearly all of them equally but my favorite birds who share their lives with ours are the catbirds, the goldfinches, and the hummingbirds.

A wealth of sweet rocket - all descended from the single surving seedling I brought from the old place - are now in bloom at the edge of the field.  Note in the background the self-seeded plant growing through the center of the gooseberry bush.

On the afternoon and evening when I spotted J's use of the augur we stayed out late enough to catch the first wave of blooms release their scent to the cooler air.  I can now say with authority that every third year there's a blast of sweet rockets blooming as far as their dispersal radius allows.  It's a very wonderful thing to see - an accepted and beneficial introduction to the landscape. 

[while writing this I heard the season's first nearby calls of the peregrine falcon who spends much of their summer and autumn time in the part of our land where we never go.  The falcon is a signal of constancy amidst humanity's state of devolving chaos.  Have been considering what I seek in place of anything my brain conjures for the word normalcy.   Rather than replacing various aspects of what the word must come to mean why not change the word I use for what-is.  Especially in the context of what-is it about tangible reality that holds the most value for me?

Constancy.  That's my word for what I most need, seek, and intend to build/grow/dream into my life, home, and this place.]

Didn't have gloves so I pulled only a few straggly clumps of goldenrod.  Picked out a massive number of burdock sprouts.   Looked around a lot and tried to envision the fence in place.

The whiskey barrel above contains assorted beets.  The stone in Mama's direct background used to mark the ground just beyond the original tilled bed.  Now it's a good 10 to 12 feet within the enclosure we're creating.  J took a day off and then went out yesterday afternoon to sink posts for the two sides with augured holes.  Then he dug holes and sunk posts for a bit of the third side.  Just up to the first gate post.  I saw the accomplishment around 6:30 in the evening with a great deal of surprised admiration. He was all oh yeah this was the goal for the day but it didn't make his goal's successful accomplishment any less amazing to me. 

It wasn't simply the physical task breakdown of the day's effort bringing our intentions closer to fruition.  It was the vision behind the way he'd tilled and planned the expansion's shape and how the fence would be shaped beyond the new beds.  He'd explained - oftentimes right on location while gesturing helpfully but I don't see beyond what's-there on the same wavelength.   In these moments I do what he does when we stand in the same general space and I'm the one explaining and gesturing.  Reeling off plant names left and right - trees and bushes too as the gestures grow wider in scope:

Nod.  put together words like oh yeah uh-huh sure.  I can almost see it. 

He has discovered post extensions via a buddy.  So that's how we're fixin' to solve the issue with the metal post lengths.  The wooden posts are taller to begin with.   All the same, thanks to Jamie's comment we're considering ways we might baffle below ground.  Burying in a deepish trough some of the left-behind scraps of wire fencing that isn't as sturdy but could be tied together in doubled panels.  My vote is to wait and see what, precisely, breaches the perimeter.  But I have ideas.