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

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.

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.

flowers and some unsolicited advice

the first of the crocosmia flower stems came into flower today.  This was the first thing my eyes caught through the mudroom window.

first red echinacea flower from the volunteer foxglove's co-creative partnership.  The latter is gracefully going to seed.  I hope to collect plenty to share!

I think of this variety as the Quinacridone version.  She will definitely be divided in the fall.

the Meadowsweet colony on Sunday afternoon.

The lower deck's container garden is coming along nicely.  I love tending to the strip of pots in the foreground because the deck is just the right height from the ground for standing/back comfort.  Picnic table was left behind by previous owners who said it was part of the original sale from first owner who built, enlarged, and landscaped the home.   Love this particular bit of casual history of the human place.  Continuity.  We all - of the clan who have been at home here - have sat at this table.  Dined, talked, thought and daydreamed.  This year J. had to re-work one of the end caps on the back bench.
First Monarda Fistulosa flower in the first fully mature self-seeded stand from one of the original plants I grew from seed.

my unglamorous and not yet dealt-with pool-skirt addition to the deck containers.  Mainly note many volunteer anise hyssop plants.  I grow them for their flowers which I collect less fairly than most other flower harvests.  I inter-plant tulsi pots which gives the bees another high-grade food source.  In the background is my potting table - our former picnic table from the old place.  In addition to work space the table houses two large asparagus ferns and an allamanda plant that winter in my studio.

These are thriving rescue self-seeded volunteers that I transplanted from a whiskey barrel in the field on a miserable rainy day in later April.  They've required a bit of extra nurturing and encouragement but are now fully ready to be moved to permanent homes in some pots on the skirt addition.

This is the barrel which I allowed to be consumed by red clover.  It gave me an extra harvest source and I appreciated that because clover is a flower where I am scrupulously fair about how much I take from the other species that thrive on her nectar.  The first flowering is largely kaput.  The biggest reason I allowed the clover to have its way is because of what that will give to the soil in the barrel.  Have set aside some conditioner and amendments.  Did not get the finnocchio seeds started in time so I'll sow the barrel with beets. 

Un-pictured:  a pair of swallowtails who swooped to nectar from my fledgling lantana.  To give this beautiful easy-care friend as much sun as she needs I shift the pot's location at noon and in the evening.  Most of the flowering plants I choose for the container garden can handle light shade for part of the day.   Not Ms. Lantana.  Was called to attain the plant and prepare a remedy for the new series that's emerging this summer.  Didn't know that at the time.  Just felt an insistence that had nothing to do with my personal wish-list.

This is a classic New World remedy in many commercial repertories.  Its unique gift is supporting a desire for release and change in those who cannot or will not cry.

I used to be Ms. Clint Eastwood and flat out refused to consider taking this remedy.  My rationale was pretty air tight, I thought at the time ... Well lookit, I never have sinus infections.  Ever.  and Chinese medicine says that's what happens when you don't cry as you should.  Ergo if I never got sinus infections there was nothing ultimately out of balance about the fact that I refused to cry.

not so any more.  children - and specifically Other children - in cages brought that wall down for good and all. 

but I know plenty of folks who are still not-crying while also talking about it 'way too much for the not-crying to be authentically organic and just how they're wired.  A few have written me to ask if I think it's something they should pay attention to and perhaps alter.  I usually reply with just two words:   I did.

really enjoying the fact that the first African Foxglove to bloom is the smallest decidedly runt-like of my basement seedlings.

This is the tree where the Mama catbird comes to sing a special greeting to me when I head for the field on my morning inspection tours.

Trees heavy and lush from a third night of rain fall in a row.  Three of the five overflow tomato plants have set multiple clusters of fruit.  The other two have fruit-cap forms.  If I ever knew the proper name for that phase of fruit development I don't remember.   The towering burdocks are there right in the middle of everything and thriving as they are, unchecked, because they are the King of this place as mugwort is the Queen.  After snapping this I walked over to the plants which I've been too preoccupied to track in close detail.  The flower stalks are a solid 7.5 maybe 8 feet tall.  There is a trio there.  They form a clearly defined boundary line/protective hedge.  Beneath and behind them a quantity of small leopard frogs live to jump another day.

won't this make an awesome Hungry Ghost palace?   Another left-behind item.  May have always lived in this yard.  For years now it has lived in the tiny pool cabana because J realized it was too heavy for him to manually lug into the woods where I envisioned placing it.   Now I'm glad to have a place to work on developing it and also working with it as a shrine.  This whole topic of racism, black/white relations, the emotional fever chart its evoked in me both philosophically and very personally have brought from deeper shadows any number of hungry ghosts.  Right now as you read the words I've chosen with care and love, sure, but far more than that - in order to be respectful to myself and to you in equal measure.  Right now as you read this I am showing you as gently and mindfully as I can who I am in my own white aspects.  I'm one of those unabashedly impatient foot-tapping oh come ON type of raised-to-be-white girls inside an aging half white lady's born-to-racial equality-activism-via-Pearl body.

What I'll begin reading sometime later today. 

would give quite a lot (and I do realize I've said this before) to have Howard here to explainify - if only through historical contextualization - these painfully awful and increasingly strange days.   Have had some kinda almighty struggle of late figuring out where (or even what) my personal sense of life processing via my ingrained sense of racial context is truly centered.  What is my racial consciousness actually about and how do I upgrade it from all the overwhelming options.   Things didn't really start turning around for me with that until yesterday.  In the aftermath of the initial shift in focus and...I guess you'd call it more directly and personally calibrated racial triage and its solution.

From my point of view - if you're a white person - screw any further consideration/explication of your fragility for the moment.  Just ... for right now ...  Look on that part of yourself as, I dunno.  Hillary's emails from a democratic/critical thinking point of view  Read/play/think/engage through your strength and get back to self-examination of what was previously un-tapped info/general life awareness after the fact of moving through your strength first.  You will truly (I promise) gain and learn a lot more from circling back to that other point later when you can also apply the direct retrospect of having engaged through your strength in the meantime. 

Also:  Read Zinn next.  as in n-e-x-t.  There's plenty of stuff to find here online to read for free.  You might find relevant You-Tubes or Vimeos of him reading his words or speaking to the subjects they contain.  Do this with great conviction if you balk or bristle at the idea and/or immediately think oh no that's not who I am.  Who cares.   About any of that.  At a moment like this?  Not relevant.  You shouldn't even care.  Not at the vastly needful moment of THIS moment.

  Read Zinn specifically in relation to his work as an educator and activist during the Spelman years.

You're welcome.  At some point this is going to click in a way where you WILL want to thank me.  Instead pass the fire to somebody else who needs both the light and the warmth that only comes from collectively joined and collectively focused human energy.

p.s. notice how I'm not spoon feeding you from my wealth of collected  Howard links?

that's on purpose.

what are you going to do with your strength. 

Aim to push yourself all the way beyond your personal feelings.  Especially those concerning your own self-relationship. 

thank YOU

eta:  definitely check out the article Mo offered in the second comment - under my name - below.  This is where we, collectively, are. 

excitement in the wee hours

Yesterday afternoon this maple trunk was at a forty five degree angle.  I pointed it out to J in relation to how its length seemed to suggest it might fall on the roof.  We agreed somebody would have to come and take it down ASAP.  I edited a late-night post I made on my other blog just 20 minutes earlier so I could provide an on-the-scene account of what I heard and saw as the trunk came down.

I did that as means of trying to calm myself enough to keep from waking J.   It was raining at the time and I'd gone out to make sure the side of the house and/or roof wasn't damaged.  But i was still anxious (especially about the Mary statue since I knew the house was okay) and did wake him in order to report  I almost had to wake you up because of a complete disaster. Told him to go to sleep but instead he got up and grabbed a flashlight before his shoes.  It was raining harder by the time we both had our shoes and were back outside so he could see things for myself.

many many choruses of oh my god.  we are so lucky later ... we agreed this would be project number one for the morning.

The trunk was joined to three others.  The decay area is about ten feet long.  It will take awhile to get in there and evaluate the structural shifts and structure, period of the remaining three trunked tree.

Partway through the morning I got a text from J who was outside.  I was on the dreaming couch in the studio with T who felt his legs stable enough to climb all the extra stairs for the first time in months.    Took a short intermission from our two-water-signs-let-it-all-hang-out conversation because I didn't understand J's text and wanted to see what was happening.

Virgo deconstruction capability has amazed me in the past and will undoubtedly go right on gobsmacking me in the future.

especially notable to me is how all the stripped-off branches are in piles of the same size, shape, and height.    Mary is fine and was not impaled within the squishy mud.   We've found her relevant nearby digs for whatever interim is involved with getting the main trunk dealt with.  Meanwhile, no mowing of the front lawn.  The place where J got our power saw is taking repairs but they have a 2 week turnaround window.   So figure 3 or 4.   The situation is a work in progress. 

Without the fourth trunk serving to corral the out of control forsythia one can see just how deeply out of control it really is.  Even those of us (side eye) who valued the privacy over the look of how that privacy was attained.  Now J fully agrees with me that it looks just awful and way too much.   There is MUCH too much cover for ground critters to thrive and multiply as well. And all ensuing high jinks but on the other hand privacy is always directly relevant.  Especially since many humans 'of' the road continue to walk up and down our hill as a way of life.  Only the pandemic walkers have receded.   What's interesting is that it means more people are walking now.  The ones who avoided the extra walking population can now resume their former walking schedules with confidence there won't be any extra humans. 

I felt Jim's work and timely spotless removal of all debris demanded I step up - especially once T moved on to a friend's afternoon barbecue.    I went out and sawed and hacked and stood, crouched, and then finally thought sitting down might be better - there on the rocks of the wall.  Told J later he would have had cat fits if he could have seen which is why I cleared away all the easy stuff on my own while he was in the pool.  He replied that I obviously had to be watched.

And that's the point.  I got the overall point of focus cleared of what I could [relatively]competently remove and then I stopped.  Should have stopped 20 minutes sooner for my cardio-vascular system's comfort zone.  Will make a note and scale back my midday gardening expectations.  Now there will be direct sunlight until early evening when we'll be doing different things on our today list.

The next round of trimming to be done involves thicker branches.  Forsythia bark is incredibly slippery. In the thick branches I really need the pruning saw with the deeper and more varied teeth that's gone walkabout.  But J has more strength and a few extra saws I generally forget about because I nearly always have a collapsible version in my back pocket.    Do not authentically need - but do very much want - a proper tool belt to carry this and also both pruning shears and harvesting snips.  Spray bottle with properly diluted neem oil.  etc.   I do have a cloth variation that's super awesome for herbal micro-harvesting because it has layered pockets and I intuitively designed it for this dedicated purpose.  So don't like to get it dirty and pulled out of shape.  maybe I'll fashion something else entirely from the denim remnant bundle. 

Will enjoy getting this particular property pruning clean-up detail done and dusted!  Specifically because that modest patch of ground will be more open and in line with the look and vibe of the place when we first arrived.  And also generating better air circulation for the remaining maple trunks. 

as they were in the first weeks of our arrival

The Lean as photographed on 7/9. 

****

Went out a second time about two hours later because simply scanning a minute and a half of news headlines on my phone prompted an unquenchable need to pull a vast number of those weeds surrounding the lion.  Only not where the lion is - across the dooryard from the fallen trees beneath rhodies.  Am thinking now of talking to J about deterrant features such as stone mulch.  From pieces we've dug from the ground in the field.   load them into his truck in the field, drive around and unload.  Place stones between the areas where escaped ferns have settled as a gift from original landscaped portions of the space between dooryard and road.

Even in the rainy dark when sleep would have been preferable I could see the design choice opportunities this situation has provided.  Wasn't on the dance card by any means but neither was almost everything else we've worked on/with so far this calendar year. 

It's not absurdly hot and there's an ongoing breeze but the air quality's hella bad and that always jacks up the 'feels like' temperature.   Have been so preoccupied with the tree that I haven't performed my iffy and yet viable precipitation measurement.  It did rain and rain for quite awhile after the tree fell.  I stayed awake in part just to listen.    Did some smoothing and shaping of a writerly nature and made a few lists of how to organize my explosion of ideas of how I might organize all my various writing topics so there's more obviously a tapestry of coherence and inter-relationship involved. 

***

sometimes at this time of year the main internalized value of blogging on the regular is to have visual evidence to give myself of what I accomplish and how commenters respond to those accomplishments.  Otherwise I'm stuck in my head with my remaining self-nagging hungry ghosts.  All I didn't do rather than all that I did.   It is boring.  I shut it all the way down in myself whenever I'm capable. 

Maybe ... hungry ghosts wouldn't starve and tear at us so much if they had a designated spirit dwelling that was Their own space???

the meadowsweet colony is rising to full flower-power.    That process has been greatly boosted by last night's drenching.   Everything felt as happy as it gets in today's world just to stand and tell each fkiwer stalk how beautiful it was on its own and blended together in concert with all the other flower heads.

don't yet have words for the energy.  To evoke or describe. 

Had to work really hard to keep from shadowing much of this lovely blossoming in progress.   The colony started as three stalks in a gallon pot in '13 or '14.   Waited two following seasons for a single flower.  Always hoped for a patch.   pollinators.  go.   insane.  They are drunken delirious throughout the flowering and it's a fabulous thing to watch for awhile during the days of this all too brief peak.

sunshine after rain

Am 63 years old now.  It rained a great deal on my Tuesday birthday as it often does.  The ground was in need of massive soaking and it's our combined gift to have it so.  Hope you enjoyed some glimpses of my exuberant (and lengthy) morning inspection tour.  It began around 7:30 and everything looked sensational.  Despite the amount of wind and rather violent rain there were no casualties beyond a few stalks of the Great Fleece Flower.    And a daunting amount of windblown debris.  We had roughly 3 inches of rain.

(we also on/for my birthday had our first take out pizza since before the winter holidays.  T eats takeout roughly half the time from a small constellation of trusted places but this was a major adventure into former normalcy for the two oldsters.  We liked it but I wouldn't want to get back in the habit.  This is the kind of thing that only truly made sense when J had to drive past the places in order to get home.)

It's an ongoing practice for me to take the first couple of days in July as extra time to rest and reflect.   A revolution around the sun has finished and another is beginning.  I like to be still and undistracted enough to soak up that liminality here in the green hearted season.  More generally I also like to consider the dreamy restful needs of the newly born.  What if our birthdays offer us a chance to unfold anew - just as an infant does.  Feeling and breathing air with increased understanding and acceptance.  Coming to understand form and light.  wind and water on the skin. 

I thought about that a lot this year.  And as the rain poured down and I made a point to think about myself and the past year rather than fictional characters I also thought about how hard it was raining the night T was born and how I hadn't a clue of that until he was taken away, with J, for his second apgar test.  And the two midwives said to me enjoy these moments alone.  You won't see anything like them for a long time.  And they laughed amidst shared looks as women do.

***

In tonight's early evening I broke a pair of reading glasses.  Third pair in a week.  A single pair remaining.  Jim suggested a CVS run to re-stock.  Why not?  We'll jump in the truck right now.  Both of us suddenly ready  - both at the same time -  to go out and do this thing.  We went to the one with the self-serve checkout that never has more than two or three other people in it.  Ever.   

We had masks, gloves and a list.  In both directions we enjoyed beautiful rides through the woods and fields right on the cusp of twilight.   Once in the town with the CVS we made note of people socially distancing in line at the barbecue place.  Across the road a group of 7 squeezed maskless around a picnic table all seeming to talk and laugh at once.    People have been going around to places of service work to decorate with handmade banners of appreciation.  Knew that was a thing but it was nice to see it locally with my own eyes.  We came home on a different road that was quite leafy and wild.  Then we took a slight but compelling detour before coming home. 

A road at the edge of a secondary hill on the next ridge over from our own.   We looked at a place there.  One year on J's birthday we stopped, spur of the moment, to pick raspberries at a farm a bit further along the road that's since become a lot more high profile and considerably spiffed up around the edges.   We gawked like people taking in Manhattan for the first time.

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.

constancy: how things have looked

evolving sanctuary/roughly 7 a.m. yesterday.  Everything is growing quite quickly.

I love this young poplar tree - encouraged and sworn protection by me upon arrival following closing - despite its inappropriate location from a homeowner's point of view.  I have lifelong associations with the poplar medicine spirit but this past decade is the first time I've lived with one.

am grateful the landscape remains vibrant and lush.  We've been short on rain of late but today's changing that in a deeply appreciated way.  On any given day since my last post I've been 'slow' gardening and micro-harvesting healing & restorative herbs.  Day to day my activity level (and general internalized reaction/response narrative) unfolds in slow increments.  Between one thing and another I'm glad it's happening at all.  Extremely grateful as well.  To have such a strong and actively healing counter-balance to so much else that's beyond difficult to parse let alone consistently integrate.

(usually the smiling elemental has a far more public location.  think the switch up is its own meditation on fostering quiet and purely personal forms of sustainable joy and happiness.)

  for daily restoration and psychic nourishment I've been infusing fresh picked red clover and tulsi with one of the remaining dried anise hyssop flowers from last year's harvest. Still being at least two thirds wordless given the way our demented destiny continues to unravel - I cannot adequately describe how much this specific combination is helping me stay both focused and ever so gently de-toxified.  The combined phytochemistry is glorious:  Red clover cleanses the blood which in turn nourishes the liver. All of which brightens the skin and lowers inflammation.  Tulsi soothes and sharpens the mind in equal measure.  Plus it's a solidly effective - yet very gentle - digestive tonic.  Tulsi's phytochemistry lends strong support for elevating the tone and scope of individual consciousness. Anise hyssop comforts the central nervous system and very gently restores it to balance.  Also helps with anxiety and re-settling into gentle rest after waking from a nightmare.

 the beautiful volunteer foxglove is a goddess of immense presence and beauty.

(morning inspection tours remain a highlight for all involved.)

was both charmed and delighted to spy a flower head developing on the most prominent part of the sequestered echinacea.  I love that something's happening here that I can't begin to understand but do comprehend it's deeply known between these two species.

Peering into the co-creative matrix I see the two fully supporting each other's life flow. 

(and sometimes I feel a strong connection between the foxglove's energetic imprint and my grandmother Pearl)

a newly developing full-sun area.  love how it includes plant stock from my former garden (red bee balm, one of two remaining A. archangelica descendants), volunteers from the original plantings (lamb's ears and blue centaurea).  I've also planted joe pye weed, blue vervain and a very showy violet flowered centaurea. One of the three thymes.  Plus a datura I meant to plant close to our bedroom window.  But horrid flying insects heretofore unknown to me made it clear my intended effect would come to disappointment.

Added neem oil to our health food store order this week in case the succubi return. and because there are bound to be other insect battalions in need of discouragement as summer arrives. 

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.

light & green

on Sunday I spent an entirely pleasant few hours sitting in a camp chair with a pair of noise-cancelling headphones.  spent a bit of time looking around and breathing deeply.  Snapping pictures from time to time but mostly I was spotting for J while he did this:

and this

and also this

With no prior experience and only a variety of you-tube videos for guidance an early learning mistake was the best of all way-showers.  J had to dig the augur out manually.  That gave me time to take pictures of places I love to document as they flow towards full leafing.

Hickories are the last to leaf.  and also one of the most beautiful unfurling ballets branch-to-branch.

The familiar view expands with fresh life.

earlier in the day (at 7:30 a.m.) I set-out a bowl with three Iris flowers. 

Here's the bowl at its alchemical mid-point.  This is one of the most radiant and light soaked mother stocks I've had the honor of shaking to life.  It's astounding to me what's been unfolding bowl by bowl.  The summer season hasn't started and I've already harvested 11 essences. 

***

On Monday we were meant to finish getting the fence post holes augured.  Instead I spiked a fever and then had a most un-pretty meltdown due to a debilitating fibromyalgia flare-up that refused to let me push through it to the other side is how I think of it.  I've had three flare-ups in the past two weeks.  Feels like an entirely lateral shift from fleeting but mercilessly potent anxiety attacks of the previous few weeks. 

J was okay about the tool going back with having only used it one day of the two he'd planned.  Said using the powerful machine the day before 'took a toll' and as a result he was fine with the zen of digging all the rest of the holes - save one that will be difficult.  There may be more problem-soiving needed between us as a result.

Look how she's growing!   I will try to get a better shot of the branch canes which are hugely attractive to me.  Kind of like bamboo at this stage.  Spent yesterday doing nothing but read The Year of the Flood, plan what I hoped to be able to accomplish today in the outside world (I did), and watering the host of seedlings pictured below.  Fall asleep about 6:30 in the evening.  Slept through until 5:30.  Got up and walked around just to see how my joints felt once in motion.  I felt at 60% capacity and trusted I would renew even more energy and cellular nurturing over the coming days. 

Right now I am accepting that part of what's involved in getting back into physical balance will involve re-setting my weird classic-teenage biorhythms. My physical/mechanical body had an ongoing conversation with both my soul and critical thinking brain.  By day's end I'd replaced grim what if this means that and then that and that and that with a sense of optimism.  Because:

Everything from my basement greenhouse is happy and we are in the throes of planting a little here and there.  This evening J and I transplanted three clumps of red bee balm from the very edge of the transplant bed.  It's being pushed out of the garden by a ground-cover(ing) veronica that ran wild at the old place.  I did not bring any here on purpose!  Took five years to appear and since then everything else is being pushed farther and farther into the grass.  I worried the three bee balm colonies we ultimately relocated would be destroyed or seriously maimed by the fence process. 

Just before twilight J dug troughs roughly a third deeper than necessary.  I added lobster compost and J chopped it in the soil below the trough then remixed after adding the dug-up soil.  We planted the first two with equal measure of care and firmness.    As we worked J made ongoing note of the soil's superb condition.  How free of root pieces and little stones it was.  When we got to the last chosen planting site the soil was so impeccable he said

you weren't fucking around.

allowing myself a shy quiet moment of pride I then felt it was important to provide context.  I pointed down at the soil and said

this was the day we found out T needed a biopsy.

We planted that clump extra tenderly. 

The waxing crescent moon of this evening was fantabulous