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.
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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.
