October 1 - October 15 Houseplants Come Inside/First Frost

2010-I took down the hummingbird feeders and put out the seed feeders and oh my! suddenly flocks of birds descended!  There were chickadees, gold and house-finches, English sparrows, nuthatches, downy woodpeckers, titmice and a shy cardinal finally finding the nerve to belly up to the bar.  Overhead, not related to the feeder activity, I noticed a line of geese and something chasing crows out of its territory and the ever present high circling buzzards that I used to think were hawks. 
(If I happen to look up at the sky while I’m doing yoga, I seem to see everything with a new clarity.  Even a slowly drifting shred of cloud seems wondrous and as if accompanied by music.  This vision only seems to last while I’m actually practicing, though.)
2011-The fund drive is a good opportunity to practice turning off the radio and I find that when I am full of something(i.e. plant spirit) it is much easier than when I am empty.
The house plants have been inside  for a week though the frost was very light-even the basil still survives. The colors are beginning to deepen and although they will not I think be so brilliant this year there is instead a more somber condensed intensity as if the essence of life was being boiled down. (Until it evaporates? What residue is left?

Thick old apple, skin
Shriveled and russeted, yet
Heavy in the hand.

Juice-pressed to bursting open
Just so my hidden heart is.

2012-Now that I have kept this journal almost three years, I can see that my sense of whether seasonal changes are late or early is completely subjective. I was convinced that fall was late this year, the colors behind the ’usual’, the weather milder, but other entries show me wrong. Perhaps there is no ‘usual’ outside of the world we construct.  I heard on the radio just now that the most intense fall colors occur where the winters are more severe. So as the climate warms, our stunning autumns might be fading. Since color memory is subjective, will we even know? Will our sense that ‘fall isn’t what it used to be’ be attributed to aging’s tendency to glorify the past?
2013- This entry marks one year since I started publishing this blog. My overall sense is that it chronicles my search for something, though it's hard to say what. A glimpse of something deeper underlying normal experience perhaps? And, when very lucky, a sense of connection to that 'something'.

October 6 - October 10 Supernatural/Purple

2010-When I return from a weekend away the last of the hummingbirds and the small flocks of monarchs we had this year are gone.  There’s one last florescence on the butterfly bush in case a stray one comes through late.  The crows and the jays are raucously making the gathering silence even more so.  Many trees have yellowed though they will be nowhere near peak this weekend, Columbus Day. There’s very little red as yet though the forsythia have branches in a lovely shade of maroon that looks very dramatic against the bright yellow of the re-blooms.  I did see a flock of geese flying south in New Jersey though around here they seem to stay put.
Wait-I was wrong!  As soon as the sun and some warmth returned, I saw the monarchs again flitting about the purple asters and the golden rod in the meadow.  I cannot tell if they are new ones passing through on the journey to Mexico or locals lingering on. It is fascinating to learn that the males can be distinguished by “tiny scent sacs that bulge on the veins of the lower wings.” I can’t wait for a chance to get close enough to see.
2011-Already two nights of frost and the houseplants are brought inside though the forecast for the weekend is bright, sunny, and much warmer days and nights.
I took a workshop in plant spirit medicine with a man well known in those circles. I was hungry to spend time with people who take such things seriously. I liked him very much, especially when he pointed out that all plants are fully conscious. (Though I was disturbed a night later to hear a man on the radio who impressed me the same way with his thoughtful, quiet and honest manner. That man specialized in casting out demons.) I thought I’d gone with specific questions about my attempts to connect with the fern and apple tree but realized that I already do what he does and am on the right path. The obstacle is my resistance to giving up my current world view that does not allow for such things. Here I have removed myself from so much and created so much free time and energy yet have trouble crossing that last barrier.
Then while I was meditating the other morning I was shocked out of it by the dull thud of a bird hitting the window. I came outside to find a catbird on the deck lying wing all askew and looking broken but still alive. All I could think of to do for it was be with it, so squatting down I closed my eyes and tried to get back into a meditative place and just be with it while it died. A few minutes later I opened my eyes and was surprised to see that it had folded its wing nicely into place and was sitting up.  I left it alone thinking my presence was more disturbing than helpful at that point and checked on it every few minutes for the next half hour or so as it sat there quietly.  Then it was gone.  The interesting part of this comes in the feelings I had when I let myself think that my presence had helped heal it. I have seen birds before stunned in this way but just needing a little time to recover before flying off so I argued with myself that that was the case here.  But this bird’s wing had looked broken. So back and forth and the crux of this is the same shift I am having trouble making into opening to plant spirit. It is so easy to dismiss this and then the next day while I was sitting there knitting I noticed a praying mantis had landed on the chair alongside me. I stopped to watch it and it proceeded to walk up my leg, onto my arm and up to my face where it sat inches away exchanging deep looks with me. Eventually it wandered off.  I so want to believe that these things are trying to reach me.
(The next day I picked up Pam Montgomery’s Plant Spirit Healing that I had ordered through the library and was startled to realize that the altered image of Lady’s Mantle on the cover looked exactly like the praying mantis!)
Last night I dreamed of snakes. I saw a tiny one and as I went to pick it up I saw that what I thought was a small snake was really just the head of a huge one. Then I saw that there were three-small, medium and large. While still basically asleep I interpreted this to mean that while I thought that these plant spirit efforts were small, they would lead to something very big/important. Reading the book this morning there was a whole chapter on the importance of three’s.
2012- Down to forty at night but it looks like we will escape frost for at least ten more days. I brought the plants in to be safe and give them time to settle. Cut open a raw milk cheddar and was very happy with it, though initially I thought I sensed an off, almost moldy, taste. It dissipated at room temperature. It’s very trying to invest time-six months- and then risk having it come to nothing. Failure of any of my projects makes me feel like ‘a failure’. It doesn’t take much for me to sink to that place. Need to remind myself that it is all a learning process.
Getting ready for what I hope will be the last mowing of the season. Yay!
2013-This year the purples are claiming my eyes. Is it because their direct complementary-all kinds of gold and yellow-are so intense right now?

October 1 - October 5 Big Waters Pass Through

2010-The remnants of a hurricane and a tropical storm barrel up the coast in the typical weather pattern here and give us a two day deluge ending what seems to have been (but I did not hear called) a drought.  In one day it rained enough to take the September total from a deficit to a surplus (not for the year though).  Nature in recollection is stable or gentle but in actual experience seems one extreme after another. Out of control.  Happily out of our control.  And reality, when we let it in, is so much better than we plan.
2011-The days continue socked in with clouds and alternately dribbling and spurting rain. The temperature may just make 60 but the wetness makes it feel chillier. I would like to just take the edge off with a burst of heat but the oil burner won’t turn on and the repairman is days away from showing up. There’s something in this passive helpless suffering that is iconic for me. I must force myself to do anything beyond sitting in my warm bed and knitting.  At the same time, my dreams have been emotionally intense, full of painful loss, jealousy and frustration.  The leaves seem to want to turn but have only managed a sad yellow brown before they just give up and let go.

The pale yellow leaves,
Disappointed in themselves,
Drop disconsolate.

2012-Warm foggy days with fits and starts of rain; the grey mist seems to make the colors more intense. In contrast to ’expert’ opinion, it is looking like the fall colors will be magnificent this year. Much in the garden continues to grow though the tomatoes have given up as the cucumbers did months ago. I’m suspecting blight and thinking I have not been careful to dispose of suspect plants away from the compost nor made an effort to look for resistant varieties. I had a theory that blight must be always present but healthy plants are immune unless long periods of wet cool weather undermine their defenses. There was a short period of that this year, but also hot and dry ones; condemningly, other people’s tomatoes look fine.
The oil burner is being serviced for the winter today-I’ve had it on the past four or five mornings to take the chill off, but today is warm again.
I finished dyeing the wool I had. Probably that’s it for the season unless something interesting comes out of the Sheep and Wool Festival in two weeks.
2013-The smells have been heavenly.  The whole front yard smells like maple walnut candy and the damp breeze, warm from the south, is rich in the odor of marigold, petunia and heliotrope.

Autumn trees smolder
Till,  with one ray of sunlight,
The whole world ignites.

September 26 - September 30 Meditating in the Sun

2010-The days are growing dramatically shorter, three and four minutes a day.  A week ago the sun hit the deck early enough in the morning for me to do my yoga out there.  Now it stays shady until later.  I noticed the sun setting halfway to its winter position where I guess is just where it should be at the equinox.  With this strong sense of the sun fading away, in strength as well as duration, it was marvelous to have the chance to meditate in my old chair in the middle of the lawn.  As the sun grew stronger, I let it soak right into me as much as I could as if trying to hold it there inside through the winter, until it comes back. In the same way I have been visualizing the breath as waves and experiencing meditation as a period of just sitting by the ocean.  Today it came to me to try to watch the thoughts with the same sense of expectation that I used to feel at the movies.  Why not enjoy them going by?  In fact why not enjoy meditation physically as well, the relaxation and happiness of letting go?  I think I have been trying too hard.
2011- The applesauce proved tasteless, though it made good tea bread. Yesterday the day exactly equaled the night, today is four minutes less.  And so? I’m not sure I’m not looking forward to winter.  How strange.
The best part of the day has been the early morning and the time just after sunset.  The colors are intensified-the dying plants and the skies- the light is refracted through mist, and a heavy silence presses everything down.  I recognize feeling though some kind of crust separates me from it. Is it just a need to cry?

Old colors condense;
Concentrating autumn reds,
Fill my glass again.

2012- A heavy rain followed by a forecast of clouds for the next few days which means having to turn the lights on in the kitchen while processing chestnuts and dyeing wool. The flock of blue jays return from time to time adding a festive blue that really sets off the autumn palette. The trees are turning but seem somewhat behind if they’re to reach peak by Columbus weekend. The maple in front is just going yellow and the most dramatic touch is the crimson Virginia creeper vines snaking up the trees like red exclamation points. I am going to make tinctures of chicory flowers, purple loosestrife and common wormwood(Artemisia vulgaris) to combine in a third eye opening elixir ala Susan Weed. Apparently it should only be used once. Then what are you supposed do after having ‘seen’? I would like to lay myself out in the grass and just invite the fairies to carry me away.
The hummingbirds are definitely gone though I did see a monarch the day before yesterday.
2013-It occurs to me to write that the trees are coloring up intensely this year and seem early. Yet at this same time last year I felt they were late. Is the difference really only inside me?

September 21 - September 25 Harvest Moon

2010-In the course of the day yesterday I must have seen a dozen different kinds of spiders. There’s the ones who seem to be inhabiting every corner of the ceilings, busy producing even more. Then there’s the black one inside the kitchen window that hides inside the track of the storm window whenever it sees me and there’s a brown one, one of these tunnel-web making ones that I’m seeing for the first time this year, just on the other side of the glass. (Do they see each other ?) In the crook of the house outside there’s some kind of spider building webs like shelves, one over the other right up the wall.  I picked a dahlia and found a beautiful white spider sleepily crawling out from its bed in the petals. And then, while scraping paint, I disturb myriads of daddy long legs and several others.  What abundance. I want to think of them as fellow lodgers, little friends to share the day with.  Then when I see them closer up I find many have incredibly beautiful and intricate oriental rug like patterns on their backs. Each one a magnificent creature, all but invisible in our world.
The harvest moon is tomorrow night, coinciding with the Fall Equinox.  I would like to celebrate Japanese style by drinking sake and writing haiku while moon gazing.  Even last night it was bright enough to walk home by and I thought how I always wanted to live where there were no street lights.  How seldom I take the time or make the effort to appreciate that wish come true.   Last night I couldn’t help myself.

Rising harvest moon,
Baseball on the radio,
So high and outside.

I went outside yesterday to see how the storm was progressing and found myself at a loss for words to describe what was happening.  There were definite patches of blue sky at the same time soft light rain was falling out of low dark clouds. I fell in between the words rain and sun; I felt a new word was needed but more than that it seemed that my effort to fit reality into inadequate words was keeping me from seeing/experiencing what was actually there.  How can the incredible complexity of weather fit into a word or even words?  That was the first time I really saw how they could get in the way.
2011-Officially Fall. The trees are yellowish brown, the Virginia Creeper climbing the trunks is brownish red.  It is hot and wet and overcast and expected to stay this way all week--the rain totals are fourteen inches above normal. The tomatoes all blighted and died but Val brought over a bumper crop of chestnuts. The pink sunrise sky lit up misty fields of goldenrod and maroon violet grasses with accents of purple asters.  I saw it before the clouds quickly erased the scene, but my heart wasn’t in it.  There are plenty of apples though they are spotted and small.  Perhaps I’ll make apple sauce today.
2012-The days and nights are an equal twelve hours. Although it’s early, it seems the hummingbirds have been gone for a week already but I’ll keep the feeders up a bit longer, just in case. Cold nights in the forties, but no frost. I put the furnace on this morning to bring the inside temperature up from 56 to 61. I told myself it was to test the burner before they service it next week, but really it was just too cold. How many other self-serving untruths do I feed myself? A very murky unpleasant feeling that I don’t really want to look into. A suspicion that I am a sniveling, self pitying, fear ridden, judgmental pathetic specimen. Just in time for Halloween. What would my costume be? The Gollum?
2013-The leaf colors are changing quickly now and it looks to be a beautiful show this year. Now that we have an apple press we have been making cider and thinking about experimenting with other fruit-friends have pears and grapes in abundance. A series of beautiful mornings and the perfect temperature for yoga on the deck. I think I saw the last hummingbird the other morning.
 

September 15 - September 20 Flocks of Birds Gather Grain

                                          dyed using local plants along with madder and indigo

2010-Just last night I heard a flock gathered on the field just next door  though I couldn’t see them.  Perhaps they were swallows.  The harvest dominates the days now, tomatoes, apples, greens and the last squashes needing to be preserved now.  The last mowings and the garage paint scraping must be fitted in around that.  The weather has been marvelously cooperative though and the only limit to what gets done is my energy.  I noticed as I was tossing the fallen apples out of the way when I mowed under the tree that there were none of the yellow and black sugar loving bees that can be such pests at this time of year, especially when I’m cutting up apples outside,  None.  Is that a natural fluctuation or another sign of environmental harm?
2012-Something I’ve never seen-a flock of two dozen or so blue jays, raucous and marauding, clustered on the trees and houseplants, pecking something out of the dirt. I’ve wondered in the past why I never felt more awe at such a sky blue bird, but in a group like this they were amazing and tropically unusual as a flock of brightly colored parrots.
I’m feeling the need to get involved with plants more, leading me back to experimenting with dyeing wool with them. So far I’ve tried dock root, elderberries, knotweed and achiote (from the supermarket). Poke berries, amaranth and goldenrod in the works.
 Pounds of string beans this year though the cucumbers and tomatoes have died back with what I fear is blight of some kind. Making pesto today and minestrone with green beans, limas, tomatoes, chard, kale, leeks, garlic, peppers and little spears of broccoli, all from the garden. The squash was a disaster this year, weakened by drought because I tried them in the front bed which is too clayey to be kept watered. They had slugs, squash bugs and vine borers. I guess its amazing I got the few I did. The cardoons were attracting tons of those striped bees for some reason, I even stepped on one, though there are no apples (or pears or nectarines) this year so I don’t have to worry about being bothered by them while cutting fruit outside.
2013-The same blight killed the cucumbers again, although they were flourishing earlier in the season. The squash may be affected as well. I’ve been somewhat negligent about it in the past thinking healthy plants would fight off diseases given good growing conditions but I’m convinced now that the soil is contaminated and I will have to take some measures next year.  The grafted plant experiment was not a success, both the eggplant and the tomato dying completely back early on. The black cherry tomatoes are ripening, slowly, but the heirloom ‘Stripeys” are still green. The sprouting broccoli turned out to be an interesting plant in that it yields a constant supply of small florets for cutting every day rather than the few but large heads of normal broccoli.

September 10 - September 14 First Apple Cider

                                                hops ripening on the vine

2010-It is the perfect time to be at the Jersey shore.  Saturday we went down to the water to watch the sun rise-the only time I did all summer. All the ocean sunrises I have seen over the years and I never remember a pink mist over the lilac and purple breaking waves. All these years and still something new to be seen.  The day continued perfectly  sunny but with a late summer twist- the water was warmer than the air. Then sunset on the bay side in the middle of a dreamlike bike ride; so much of time down there seems dreamlike. Sunday the sun peeked briefly through the dark clouds just at sunrise but rain followed right after. It rained about an hour but lightly and we walked on the beach anyway.  After the rain stopped it remained cloudy but warm and we stayed reading on the beach all day. Another kind of perfect.  Monday was sunny and promised to be warm but we needed to leave.  One last long walk on the high tide soft shore before tearing oneself away from summer…
2011-Rather than changing to fall colors, many trees-the maple in particular-seem to be turning straight to brown and then dropping their leaves. Two beautiful days begged me to reconsider my verdict on this season but I cannot. Except for one so far the nights have been warm enough to leave the windows open.  Last night was the full moon, the one for harvest time viewing in the Far East.  I walked down the driveway about seven thirty to find the rising moon through the trees. It was huge and orange and made the surrounding sky look royal blue.

Not much harvest but
The autumn moon still rises.
Glad when this year goes.

2013-A handful of nights flirting with frost, but no damage. We tried out the garage sale cider press with great success- a five gallon bucket of apples produced about a gallon of cider. At night I’ve been drinking last year’s apple wine-very dry and not apple-y at all-not sure which I prefer.

September 5 - September 9 Cool Nights Come to Stay

                                           A stringbean tree

2010-I’ve had to give in and close the windows at night as the temperature drops into the forties.  The bright cloudless mornings promise  a warm day but as clouds come in it may not materialize, yesterday stayed quite cool, especially while the gigantic dark grey clouds were covering the sun.  Every time it broke through was like a benediction.
Leaves have begun to color up, some ash behind the garden are showing red among the yellow and what looks like a maple at the back of the next door field is sporting orange tips in some places.
I continue bringing in and processing harvest-tomatoes, mixed greens (kale, collards and chard) string beans, squash. The scallions are yellowing but I am not sure how to keep them.  Blanched and frozen I suppose, like everything else, to be used in cooking.  The apples are not quite ready and there are not so many as last year.  The cardoons are tied up to blanch before they are harvested at the end of the month.
The hummingbirds are still here, suddenly interested in the butterfly bush and shoving the swallowtails and silverspots and monarchs out of the way. I have seen no traveling geese as of yet.
2011- A hurricane on August 28 created more havoc up here  than I have ever seen.  Trees large and small down everywhere and along with them telephone and electric wires.  There was no power for over a week and when it returned it was followed by remnants of another storm that brought days of heavy steady rain. The landline is still out. Today the sun is shining but the rivers and streams are still rising and the flood warnings continue. I was feeling disappointed in the garden this year but the feeling has deepened to almost fear. If I had thought I could replace loving a human with loving nature, now I have seen another, unexpected side. I am having a hard time; I have lost the feeling of connection.  It feels in waves, too cold, too hot, too wet; I just want to shrink away from it and back into myself. Yesterday I felt something while gathering chanterelles and noticing all the little orange newts and magical colored mushrooms; coral, oyster, boletes-(who knows what else, though I would like to learn.) But it’s like I have been disappointed in love and am sulking.
I will go out to the garden later. The string beans have begun to produce though the plants are tiny. Beets and celeriac are still small. The limas are hard to catch while they are green so maybe I will just dry them all. The are few and small, anyway. The tomatoes just burst and rot with all the water. A few squash are growing though many of the female flowers don’t seem to produce fruit. The eggplant plants look good but produce little. Some of what they do produce just drops off rotting while small. The potatoes were small and blighted, the okra barely grew, the cardoons have all shrunk away and the onions are staying small.  The cucumbers, greens, parsnips, Brussels sprouts and broccoli are doing fairly well.
2013-The praying mantises (manti?) are trying to tell me something. I’m finding them everywhere and they seem to especially like clinging to the window screens and peering into the house. There’s one on the front door, the back door, and the kitchen 2013-The praying mantises (manti?) are trying to tell me something. I’m finding them everywhere and they seem to especially like clinging to the window screens and peering into the house. There’s one on the front door, the back door, and the kitchen window. What do they want?
It’s boiling hot and humid today, summer’s last gasp perhaps but the coloring trees tell a different story.  A sad thing- a hummingbird got caught in the screen of the garden gate, but unlike the one a while ago, did not survive. I need to find another way to keep creatures out of there.

August 31 - September 4 Harvest

2010-I like the suggestion that the period between Labor Day and the equinox allows one to get used to the idea that the summer is over.  You would think that the amount of constant work required by the harvesting and processing of all the garden’s bounty would make one long for a respite and look forward to the end of the growing season.  But I like the heat and seem to have gotten more used to it than I was in July. Baking in the almost 90 degree kitchen doesn’t really bother me. What I do feel is a welling up of the grief that is always in me but is now coming to the fore, even appearing in my dreams. It seems connected to the coming of fall but I don’t know why.  It is good to have time to ease into it.
2012-This year I find myself looking forward to cooler weather. It will be possible to do some real gardening work, digging, transplanting, etc.  The front gardens are completely overgrown and neglected. The days are an even thirteen hours-hard to believe it will be an even twelve in two and a half weeks. Getting up in the dark is something I suppose I will always hate.
2013-The light is draining from these days like water through a sieve. At the reservoir I notice

Foxtail grasses glow,
Each hair clasping grains of light
Burning like sparklers.

August 26 - August 30 A Good Year for Apples

2010-It is time to come to terms with the end of summer.  These days, 90 degrees as they might be, are not July. There is a sere quality to the landscape and the smell--the smell of ripeness, almost of something cooking. The smell of dying.  The days are shortening with alarming speed.  The end of summer seems abrupt to me, but that is the product of living a school year for so long.  In reality there is no abrupt end but just the gradual day by day changes.  I try to let myself relax into them, into appreciation of them and allow myself to discover there is no impending horror (the fear bred out of dislocated memories of endless seeming frigid winters and forced labor).  This anxiety is learned and it is time to teach myself some new tricks.
2012-For the first time I am not suffering from pre-school dread. I am open to the possibility that fall may turn out to be the best season of all-the plentitude of harvest, bracing pleasant weather, and the energy to enjoy it. Someone mentions ‘the calendar of nature’ in reference to the changing activities of birds as they prepare for migration. Isn’t that what I am trying to learn to follow?
2013- I’ve been seeing a praying mantis around the place for a couple of days, and yesterday I watched it eat another insect alive, starting from the head.  Preying, indeed.

August 21 - August 25 The World Begins to Quiet

2010-I hear on the radio this morning that the genetic code for wheat is 5x longer than the human.  What if plants are the superior beings?   I imagine a world where the humans act for the maintenance and betterment of the superior vegetable world and are rewarded with the harvest.  Perhaps that’s how it  once was.  Perhaps it is even true.  We imagine angels in human form but perhaps they look like flowers and seeds and waving grass. 
Why do people feel so much better out in nature?  Isn’t it the same way they feel in the presence of the so-called enlightened beings?  How would a person live if they took this to be true?
2011-I have been feeling a little differently this summer; something implacable/impersonal in nature. There is an element of fear in it and the sense of horror of nature torn from its cycles in the extremes we’ve been experiencing--extremes of water and of heat, an earthquake, and now the biggest hurricane in 70 years headed up the coast for us. Extremes of drought and heat in other places, hundred year floods; are humans responsible or is it just a bigger cycle?
The garden has been disappointing this year-very few potatoes and blighted, few tomatoes and half rotten, few peppers, more eggplants than ever (but that’s not saying much). The collards look good but even the kale is small and peaked. The cardoons barely grew-most of them died away. No fava to speak of but good broccoli and onions, lots of little pumpkins early and promising Brussels sprouts.  But even the patty pans are flowering but producing very little. I had been thinking about living from the garden but it is very humbling.
2012-My not very effective binoculars turn astonishing when I point them at the Pleiades. A blurry little spot resolves into a tight little clump of clearly visible stars.
2013-Even though it’s still August, the words of ‘September Song’ keep running through my head.  “Oh the days dwindle down to a precious few…” So I feel about summer’s end. In an attempt to slow down time, I am not listening to the radio (again) at all as I go about my daily activities, inviting time to hang heavy on my hands so as to feel every second. I immediately notice the constant background music of shrill cicada calls and that hummingbird buzzing actually sounds exactly like a cat’s purr. I think when all is over, I won’t regret anything left undone, but I will be sorry for every minute I was not fully present.

August 16 - August 20 Hot Nights End

2010-Each leaf, because of its particular shape and size reacts to the breezes in its own way.  I am watching the long slender nectarine leaves shiver in a breeze so slight it affects nothing else.  There is something in the movement that seems so alive, and isn’t it?  Perhaps it is the movement of the leaves that stirs the breeze.

Long nectarine leaves
Dance in the shivering breeze.
Which of those came first?

Leaves are falling already and there are spots of red and yellow amongst the trees; the result of a long drought as well as the first cold nights.  The ash I girdled in the spring to allow the blueberries more light is finally succumbing.  I am not proud of it though I deemed it necessary and it is raining down yellow leaves which I find beautiful.
2011-A year later the ash still lives, though it seems to lose its leaves earlier than other trees.  The blueberries were disappointing this year. Actually, everything seems muted.  There is much foliage because of the rain, but the fruits and flowers are less than usual.  I noticed yesterday the Queen Anne’s Lace is blooming almost alone which makes it easier to appreciate what a beautiful flower it is.
This close observation is slowly changing my point of view but with unexpected consequences. The grass must be mowed--but must it? Yesterday I steered that violent noisy machine over a patch of the very same lacy flowers I just claimed to love. Crickets and spiders living in the lawn scrambled out of the way. I think the lawn looks nice but does it really?  I commiserated with P when she complained of hearing the sounds of the cutting down of trees in her neighborhood, but isn’t mowing the same thing on a smaller scale?  I’m very attracted to Fukunawa’s theory of no plowing, no weeding, no fertilizing farming, I.e. following nature’s methods of growing.  Just look at healthy weeds! But to take the idea a step further, wouldn’t it be ideal to learn to live off what is already, naturally, growing?
2012-Again I am looking at the flourishing weeds and they call to me more than the cultivated plants. Perhaps this is a late summer phenomenon- I’m just tired of ‘making’ things grow.
2013-The meadow next door, waiting to be mowed, glows in rich golden colors; mellow late-season foliage and bee-swarmed goldenrod flowers.

August 11 - August 15 Stars and Sky

2010-The Perseid Meteor showers are August 12.  The fact that they fall on the same calendar day every year(within a day) seems to indicate something right about the way we mark time.  The days have begun to shorten by two and even three minutes and as we plummet towards fall the image of a pendulum comes to mind.  The low point is the fall equinox and then the pendulum sweeps through going upwards, gradually slowing down until it pauses at its high point, the winter solstice and then reverses direction, gaining speed again through the spring and then pausing at the alternate high point of summer.  Gravity becomes the force that prevents our living in either eternal winter or endless summer. These two images of time, the pendulum and the circling of my other essay together create a complexity that could not be more different than the straight linear movement usually conceived.   If I could mentally grasp the shape of a pendulum imposed over a spiral I think I would have the picture of time as it appears in four dimensions.
2012-A window opened in the cloudy night sky and I saw five meteors in about half an hour. One was spectacular-big and bright and trailing long. It left a red afterimage in my eyes.
2013-I woke up at 3 last night and was trying to decide whether to get up and go to the bathroom or just go back to sleep when I remembered that I wanted to see the meteors. A crisp hazeless, moonless night in mid-August is not that common and I was rewarded with the sixty or so promised each hour. Most were very short and many were faint and of course they always seem to appear where you’re not looking, at the periphery of your vision. But there were a handful of long bright ones leaving lasting images. What struck me most though was recognizing how speeded up even my intentionally slowed down and simplified life is compared with an activity like just lying there watching the sky. (Do people even do that anymore?) I was thinking that if you didn’t know better, you could believe the sky was a flat lid over us and the stars pinholes in that solid sheet letting the light from the ‘room’ beyond leak in. Then someone could teach you what people now believe is the reality and while your eyes would perceive exactly the same picture, your understanding would have completely  opened. That is what it must be like to shift into seeing four dimensions

August 6 - August 10 Nectarines

2010-
Shivering poplar,
And the ash keys soft clicking
Give the wind its voice.

Of the dozens of nectarines that formed on the tree, I have tasted not a single one. Most of them fell prey to a mold when they were little more than a pit with a skin.  The tree is abnormally dense, almost genetically mutated in appearance, and I’m thinking I should, in future, prune it back to open it up.  The few fruits that escaped the mold grew to ping pong ball size and fell victim to the resident chipmunk before they were even ripe.  He liked to bite into them and test for ripeness and then leave the ruined fruit lying on the deck. I finally picked the last four and brought them into the house to ripen but they seem to be just shriveling up. I bought the tree for its flowers and told myself that the fruit was just an unnecessary bonus, but to have seen so many form and to have lost every one is definitely frustrating.
The hummingbirds are in full force and charging at the feeder all day long.  It is too early for stoking up to migrate, it must be that the heat makes them extra thirsty.  With their constant buzzing, dive-bombing and u-shaped shrieking commotion, they seem the very essence of pure life force highly concentrated in that tiny feathered form.  Then every so often when one sits quietly on a branch tip, it seems unbelievable; and the stillness doesn’t last long.
Last night I saw two monarch butterflies mating in the grass. After several minutes, they clumsily flew up into the ash tree, still joined.  I hope it is a sign that their numbers will increase and that the warnings about their sudden population drop was just a misunderstanding of some natural cycle.  Though can anything now be said to be natural (if what I mean by that is ‘untouched by man‘)?
2011- I’ve since learned that the fruit needs to be thinned out on nectarines though this year none formed at all.  The monarchs do seem to be slowly building their numbers though I haven’t seen one bat. Can they disappear without the whole circus collapsing?
2012-No nectarines this year either though I blame it on the early frost just after they had flowered. I have had an insight into what an affirmation feels like when you take it inside and are not merely mouthing it. Very tentative though and it feels like I might lose it. An explosion of hummingbirds this year too-perhaps the babies.
2013- More nectarines than ever before this year, even after thinning them out. Waiting for them to ripen, I watch one after another fall prey to shriveling, rotting, molding or cracking. Will any survive to harvest?

August 1 - August 5 Un/Fruitful Humidity

2010-I am longingly anticipating a great rain as I write this, for this summer has been very dry.  The sky is darkish grey and the air is warm and wringing wet but, so far, nothing. (I am leaving the chaise cushion out hoping that will help things along.)  Last week I read Carson MacCullers’ The Heart is a Lonely Hunter and yesterday took out her complete novels.  I am now in the middle of Reflections in a Golden Eye, a very different book but with the same sensibility.  Summer, for me, is the time to read these southern writers.  Experiencing the same humid languid heat as the characters makes it easy to enter those inverted but passionate emotional states, (no stretch for me anyway.)  She is so similar to Tennessee Williams-what was in the air then? This penetrating, oppressive humidity creates an emotional urgency that, too hot to act upon, cooks the nerves.  But something in the soup seems the very source of life, of biology.  Desire, in this case, for a cooling rain.
2011-Summer is passing, the fireflies were magnificent this year but are nearly gone. The summer rush of family visits did not allow time for writing-that, and with my car in the shop I had to take rides when I could get them and not keep my own schedule. This feels so far like a strange summer, I.e. not like summer at all. With the visiting, summer watering and gardening and the breakdown in infrastructure-car, septic/plumbing, lawnmower, I have not had time to feel. The heat and humidity, which I’ve always loved, feels like a burden; the shortening days barely register. I actually find myself looking forward to the quiet empty days of winter and their peaceful inwardness.  What a turnaround!  One more trip-to DC and Boston with F, out to Nantucket and then home-about ten days- and then hopefully a chance to savor the end of summer. I am looking forward to a last late summer trip to the shore with J and E.  Somehow I could barely take it in last month.  I hope it works out.

2013-The hummingbird feeder needs to be refilled every day. We are having hot sunny days and cool nights. The rain amounts are just right and the garden is producing prolifically. If there is any activity more satisfying than visiting the garden and making dinner from what one find’s there, I have not discovered it. (Except for making art.)

July 26 - July 31 Blue Summer

 
2010-Suddenly the chicories along the roadsides have come into a second, fuller flush of bloom, accompanied now by the delicate Queen Anne’s Lace.  Great clouds of deep lilac blue that always suggests something Virgin Maryish to me.  At the same time, the blueberries are in full fruit and, having with constant vigilance and frequent repair managed to keep the bird netting functional, I am picking almost a quart a day. The two blues together fill my eyes and I feel, in that color, I am touching the true heart of summer.
2012-Getting ready to go to the beach for a week just as the garden has come into full-tilt production. We’ll be leaving many blueberries behind as well. The rains have brought everything out of a kind of heat stressed hibernation and everything-the corn!- just shot up a foot and has become thick and lush. The hummingbirds are going wild and I can barely keep the feeder full. My experiment in summer bird feeding ended when a bear came and crunched my feeder into little pieces.
2013-The blueberries, apples and wild plums are plentiful this year. This fall L and I will get a chance to try out our new cider press and I’m hoping to make plum wine.
After recently being assured that science was just a step away from completing our understanding of the universe, I read that a modified gravity theory threatens to force us to rewrite our understanding of cosmic structure from scratch. So it seems this world invites us to discover endlessly, but never, or only foolishly, to know. Can it be that falling in love with not knowing is the key to happiness here?

July 21 - July 25 Summer Turns Yellow

2010-The  goldenrod is blooming (also early?) and the garden is over-arched by a giant pale yellow sunflower tree that seeded itself. Even the leaves seem yellowish, having lost their early summer emerald. it’s a color that suggests maturity and the hard won peace that comes from weathering experience: not by any achievement but just by dint of surviving.
I can’t stop thinking about time, sitting staring at my embroidered perpetual calendar, running my eyes over the circling round of months. I feel time just flowing through my fingers-it’s an actual physical sensation, a rushing that won’t be stopped. And the fruitless endless pondering of what might be the point.
2012-Finally a whole night and day of steady drenching rain. Having achieved some success in the garden I can begin to see the struggle against nature that earlier this season seemed like a war, as a struggle with nature-an intense form of interaction. So the garden becomes the fruit of this collaboration.
The daylilies are over, a shorter season no doubt due to the week of intense heat. It looks like we are in for a week of normal summer weather-hot(but not too) days and cool nights. What a treat.
I saw one little bat last night before I was driven inside by mosquitoes.
2013-
In wet grass, Frog meets
Impersonal lawnmower.
Sun’s indifferent face.

July 16 - July 20 Black-Eyed Susan Blooms

2010-I am preparing to go to the beach for a week, our family’s annual collective excursion.  The timing is good this year.  There is something about the seaside in summer, most likely the seeming constancy of sand and sea and sun, that appears to hold time suspended and lets me at least sample a small taste of what used to feel like endless summer.  At the same time it feels hard to leave behind the vegetable garden, just beginning its peak production, the nectarines that are threatening to ripen all at once in my absence, the potted plants that require daily watering and the lawn that so easily grows out of control.  Also this year I am way behind in my principal chore of scraping and painting the garage. It is a strange idea this vacation from one’s life, but probably a good exercise in focusing on the moment, in letting go.  And come on, it’s not exactly a hardship.
2012- We finally had a decent night of rain and now the hot weather has resumed. There are more chances of rain in the forecast but no way of knowing I they will really occur. Still I have a small break from the constant watering. A yellow swallowtail on the purple butterfly bush; three monarchs on the Echinacea. Something in me says “trust nature”. Can I do that?
2013-Thinking about cycles and patterns.  There’s this pattern of  hot humid spells followed by more typical summer weather, the pattern of rainy summers over a couple of years then back to dry--seeing weather as all about the planet self-regulating. If the more frequent and violent storms are part of  Gaia’s effort to regulate what is being pushed out of whack. the question is can the earth regulate what we’ve done/are doing? Or are we seeing the wobbling of the top as it loses momentum?

July 11 - July 15 Much Ado About Strawberry Preserves or Less is More

                                                               Indigo dyed yarn drying


2010-Either the chicory was early this year or the Queen Anne’s Lace was late, but finally they are appearing together along the roadsides.  Some years they are accompanied by purple loosestrife which is one of my favorite nature made arrangements.  I saw some loosestrife along the road on the way back from Boston, but not around here.  Perhaps the non-native eradication program is working.  In any case, the Mary-blue and frilly white roadsides are the wall paper for high summer. The desire to stretch these days out o their maximum is accompanied by a sort of growing horror at the shortening of days.  Only twenty minutes less than the maximum of the solstice, I try to reassure myself, but I know that the pendulum is gathering speed. There is an actual ache in my heart in anticipation of summer’s end. It is certainly partly a product of the school calendar and now that I am free of that I would like to be able to accept the movement towards winter, the ‘rising yin ether’ with more than good grace; actual full acceptance.  Meanwhile, I try to spend every possible minute outside.
2013-Hardly any Queen Anne’s Lace yet, this year it’s chicory with something low and yellow-hop clover maybe. I never saw the two together before.
When you finally ‘grok’ something, it’s hard to communicate because everything you can think to say about it is a cliché or at the very least, self-evident.  You are what’s different because now you get it. This was all precipitated by a batch of strawberry jam I made after gathering quarts of berries at an organic farm a couple of weeks ago. I don’t really have a sweet tooth and prefer bitter marmalade to jam when I use anything like that at all. But here were all these berries and I had to do something, so I tried a low temperature, low sugar, reducing method-kind of like sun preserves but in a low oven. It was absolutely incredible, concentrated strawberry flavor, dark in color and with some natural tartness still remaining.  So I had a jar of this amazing stuff that I made myself from berries I picked-special and unique in a way money can't buy. All the wanting people have for stuff was revealed to be exactly because they don’t have it, once it’s acquired, the next thing has more allure. But this was the preserve I had and at the same time the only one I wanted and it struck me so deeply as a lesson in how to look with gratitude and appreciation at everything I have. It actually felt like a miracle.

July 6 - July 10 The Earth Shakes

                                                           
                                           Bucket o' slugs handpicked from the garden 2009

2010-There was an earthquake in Canada that was felt all the way down here.  But not by me.  I didn’t even hear about it until a week or so later. We forget that the earth is neither solid nor stable and easily manage to live as if it were. Also as if our self important little lives were never going to end. What, if anything, about our existence is not illusion?
2011-Two more days and it will be a month without significant rain. Once a day (rarely twice) is taking care of things-doing much better this way than with too much rain. The potatoes and favas are ready to harvest though I’ve been too busy with company to get to them. The blueberries are excellent this year-huge and abundant.
2013-
Four slugs meander
Through window condensation.
Wipe off that message!

Two plus surplus inches of rain this month, over seven for the year (which started with a deficit). The slugs in the garden have been entirely replaced by snails. These pale gold creatures do as much damage as slugs but are much more attractive to look at. But there has been a slug problem in the garden here for over twenty years and suddenly they disappear to be replaced by something new. Why? What a mystery.

July 1 - July 5 Daylilies Flourish

 2010-Daylilies of every kind, both wild and cultivated are exploding in garden and roadside.  The variety of their color diverging from the original orange speaks to man’s involvement, while the form of their flowers suggest the trumpeting of summer.  At the same time, a handful of crimson ash leaves strew the ground down at the studio.

Tiny gold birch leaf
Nestled in fragrant leaf mold,
So early to fall.

It came to me in meditation, that all our seeking, both scientific and spiritual, is really the desire to expand our seeing and understanding to the next or fourth dimension.  Our ‘sin’ is really just our limitation. Like the mosquito’s ignorance of the hand that strikes it, or the hummingbird’s of the being that supplies and fills the feeder, we see so little of what exists.  I used to know this all the time but I keep forgetting.
2011- The fern seemed to suggest that things are more simple with it than I was trying to discover.  It’s just happy to see me.

I’ve been photographing the nest whenever the mother leaves in order to know when the eggs hatch. Yesterday evening I noticed the bird seemed more active than usual and I reached in and up to snap a picture (it’s over my head). They’re hatched. The light was already dim and they’re a little blurry but today I should be able to get a clear picture.
Five inches more of rain than normal this season.  The vegetable plants seem lusher for it but I wonder if they will produce without more sun and heat. The lettuce has been perfect and still not bitter though it is beginning to bolt.
2012-Now that the garden is beginning to produce-collards, fava, kale, chard, lettuce, arugula, even the first baby patty pans-I feel that the war has subsided into an uneasy co-existence. I still go out to the garden with my heart in my stomach, fearful of what damage I will discover today, but it has been minimal though there are tunnels underlying everything.
There has been one perfect summer day after another, lovely cool nights, but when even perfection goes on and on it becomes too much. There was no rain for well over a week- not one of the constantly predicted intermittent thunderstorms actually materialized and the ground contracted into a parched, cracked cement. Last night finally it rained a bit-not enough to leave any water in the container dishes, but enough so that the surface soil in the garden was damp all over this morning. A feeling of relief for all sentient creatures.
2013-
A golden child danced.
When did I forsake myself?
Tiger lily nods.

June 26 - June 30 Cicadas Sing

                                                   Help!


2010-If not for this period’s designation, I would not have recognized the cicada’s trills for what they are--they just blend in with the general bird sounds. A case of useful knowledge that increases the beauty and complexity of the world and enlarges my connection with it.  Not so with most of what passes for information these days; more background noise.
The chicories are glowing Mother Mary blue, celestial, all along the roadways.  I remember that they are usually accompanied by masses of Queen Anne’s Lace, but not this year.  Generally I see them standing alone, occasionally mixed with daylilies.  It strikes me as though some master hand was constantly experimenting with new arrangements.  And where are the Queen Anne’s Lace?  What are they waiting for?
2011- The new arrangement for this year is orange daylilies amid armfuls of elderberry flowers.
I have been watching and photographing a nest of robins in the yew bush.  A pair first came a month ago and built the nest and while the female sat the eggs the male was constantly back and forth with food.  The babies hatched and in ten days were fledged and gone.  Then, a week ago, I noticed more robin activity around the nest and thought maybe the babies had come back for a visit.  But it was the mother laying another nestful of  eggs--I didn’t know they did this.  This time though she seems to be on her own; no male bringing food and so from time to time she needs to leave the nest to find some for herself. (I took advantage of one of her trips out and got a beautiful photo of three blue eggs.) Single parenthood in the bird world?
I got a slight impression from the fern which I think is real because its so different from what I would have expected; a kind of airiness and lightness.  I’ll try sleeping with a piece and see if I can dream something.
2012-The scale attacking the citrus trees has become severe. The honeydew they leave has all turned black with mold and the stems and backs of leaves are studded with scale of all sizes. Apparently, without treatment, the infestation will worsen even to the point that the plant dies. How can this be part of a plan-how can it help the scale if they kill their host? I treated them with a pyrethrin spray and tried washing one with alcohol soaked cotton balls-a tedious process, but maybe I can save them. They, along with the bay that was the original host, have put out masses of new leaves and buds and show every sign of wanting to live.
2013-A little drama on the lawn. One of the fledglings made it to the ground but apparently couldn’t figure out how to get back up (and their nest is way high up in the ash tree). With all the feral cats around here, it’s not a good place for a stranded baby bird. Luckily, Mom came along and with a little encouragement got baby back in the tree.
It is a seventeen-year cicada year. They were deafening in Kingston and on the other side of the river but, although I remember them here last time, there are none now.

June 21 - June 25 Ferns and Blueberries

2010-The summer solstice marks the widest path of the sun’s travels, rising north of east and setting right into High Point Mountain, seeming just short of ninety degrees north of its winter afternoon couch.  I follow the sunrise and sunset announcements on the radio just  as avidly as I do the weather reports; I became confused when on June 18th the weatherman announced that the sun had set one minute earlier than the day before.  Before the solstice?!  But I made sense of it when I remembered reading that the ancient calendar no longer coincided exactly with the movements of the heavens as observed by the ancients. Embarrassing myself by sharing this news with everyone, it became apparent that he (and I) had made a mistake when the next day, and the next and next, the sun ‘again’ set at its fifteen hours and twenty minutes maximum.  What I was recalling actually referred to the zodiac.  The solstice is an actual event, a measurement of the sun’s position in regard to the earth on its axis.  However, at the core of my falling for his mistake was the knowledge that hidden in the very moment of summers achievement is the seed of its demise. Starting today/tomorrow, the days begin to shorten. I actually feel a frisson of dread at the realization, intuitively sensing what Dalby affirms; that “The shortest night of the year was magical but not necessarily benign.  Bonfires were lit in celebration of summer bounty, but also to keep the fairies and sprites of mid-summer night’s eve at bay.”
The blueberries are ripening, starting with the bush at the southern end that gets the most sun.  My effort to get rid of the shading ash by girdling it will apparently take more than one season to succeed.  In fact it is branching out even more energetically under the cut.  At least I have blueberries, having achieved some expertise at netting them off from marauding birds.  I still need to work at improving the arrangement because, at this point, the netting is so snug and well fastened, I have trouble getting in myself.
2011- Somehow I neglected to repair the netting situation in time and now that the berries are starting (just a day after the strawberries finished), the branches and fruit are all entangled with the netting and the tops of the enclosures I made are open to the sky and the happy birds.  When the rain stops I will try to fix it up, but it is probably too late to do much about it without pulling off clumps of berries and the harvest doesn’t seem that good this year anyway.  Girdling the ash does not seem to have restrained its overshadowing growth at all and I feel like an attempted tree murderer to no purpose.
The ticks seem to have abated somewhat but I had already decided not to kill anymore but just return them to the bushes with their friends.  I felt my karma was suffering.
And speaking of happy birds, I passed two ducks along the road in the rain yesterday that I swear were smiling as they splashed along. 
After reading a book about medicine plants I am attempting to contact a fern outside the back door.  I felt it reach out to me during yoga the other morning and I took notice of it. I made some photos and have just generally been appreciating it.  When the rain stops I will try a meditation next to it.
2012-I was sitting in a chair on the deck next to the ferns when I felt it come into my consciousness. It was like it was saying ‘hello, remember me? ‘There is something so gentle and positive about how it feels- like it means me well.
On the murder front, I’ve continued to set the small live trap though I gave up on the kill trap after it was set off with nothing in it. Too many grisly possibilities. But then I found a small mockingbird dead in the so-called live trap and I can’t set it anymore. I found holes near the fence where something relatively small is tunneling in so I stuffed the holes full of compost bones. Maybe voodoo will work.
Though the long spell of cold wet weather was the worst thing for eggplants, they seem to be recovering and beginning to grow. They have few flea beetles which is astonishing to me given the problem they have been in the past.
2013-A spell of hot humid weather and vegetables that were just hanging out in the cool spring are growing riotously. The kittens made a jailbreak out of the back room, right through the improvised gate. They are racing up and down the hallway riotously. Is the desire for freedom innate in every thing living?

June 16 - June 20 Two Snakes in the Grass

2010-Along the roadsides, orange daylilies have begun to bloom next to blue chicory.  Something about that color combination synthesizes everything about early summer for me.  I once wrote in a poem about chicory foreshadowing fall, but I have lost that feeling, maybe because things seem so early to me this year though I don’t know, factually, that they are.
Sitting here at my mountain view window these past three years, I have begun to sense the whole compass of the year inside me.  There is a physical sensation belonging to every portion of the circle; the internalized withdrawing with the waiting of winter, the tumbling of spring falling over itself, the still but filling feeling of summer aging to ripeness, and the sense of completeness in the rich dying away of fall.  With all this comes a sense of being able to be more present with each stage and at the same time, more aware of the stillness at the center of constant metamorphosis.
2011-I thought I heard a whip-poor-will’s cry yesterday but it was afternoon and not exactly right.  Could it have been a mockingbird’s imitation? If so, where did it learn to sing that song?
One of my favorite sounds is the buzzing of the hummingbirds, zooming in and out of the feeders.  It’s a background constant, sunrise to sunset; the motor of summer’s progress?

Hummingbird scolds while
I refill the empty feeder.
Sips and darts; Away!


2012-I am seriously considering setting mouse-type killer traps in the garden to kill whatever is eating the plants. It’s discouraging. The daylilies are blooming emphatically in the garden this year-haven’t seen any along the road yet. Yesterday I watched a mockingbird drinking out of the ceramic dish. The nectarines have some weird disease/pest/blight causing clear jelly to form all over them. I have to look it up. There weren’t many anyway and I’ve seen no apples at all besides some fallen little ¾ inch aborts. Summer solstice tonight accompanying possible record setting hot and humid weather. Yesterday morning I felt cold as the humid heat came in, the two streams of air mixed and affected me like a mistral. I took an hour getting dressed because my temperature was off- I felt hot and cold at the same time and couldn’t stand the feel of fabric on my skin. And a strange restlessness…
2013- It’s shaping up to be a good fruit year. The nectarine has set so many fruits I think it needs thinning out. They couldn’t possibly all mature. Even the yellow apple is bearing more healthy looking fruit than I’ve seen on it before. Will they drop prematurely as usual?

June 11 - June 15 Summer Arrives

2010-Everything is a hundred shades of green.  After the riot of budding and flowering, there is a sense of natural things having attained the peak of energy that is summer.  Flowers continue to bloom of course but it’s the thick green foliage that threatens to engulf all else. The stage is set for ripening; I notice the blueberries and raspberries are starting to color up.  The days continue to lengthen, but barely, only a minute or less every other day.  The peak, maximum daylight, is here. (The actual peak of 15 hours and twenty minutes happens on June 17 and lasts until the ? when daylight, ever so slowly at first, again begins to decrease). The pendulum, at its height, briefly pauses. 2011- I’m elected to the task of shrub trimming while spending the weekend with J and E.  What is it so satisfying about cutting back the rampant forsythia with an electric saw?  The elemental form of man against nature-satisfying but embarrassing.  What’s next?  Firing off guns?
2012-Another cool, rainy, dark day. The overgrown greenery is feeling out of control, threatening to engulf us in some rampant tidal wave of fecundity, though at the same time it feels strangely sterile. The flowers turn to mush before they seed; there is little fruit this year and blight is incipient in the vegetable garden. It occurs to me that I have been in love with nature-with all the of the romanticizing and overvaluing (not the right word) of the beloved that implies- and now I have fallen out of love. I see the ‘real’ nature-the war for survival and supremacy on all levels. A battleground where I begin to see man’s struggle against nature in a new light, with sympathy of all things! This would be when the couple starts talking about divorce. If that is not possible will there be a third stage of newfound appreciation of the beloved’s real nature and value?
2013- It is evident, looking at the field moving in the breeze, that it is alive, not some clockwork machine set going at the Big Bang. The rabbit surprised in the garden yesterday, flinging itself desperately against the fence having forgotten in its panic where it came in , wanted to live. The spider I caught in the kitchen this morning wants to live. Life itself, moving through forms, is unstoppable. Death doesn’t stop it. The feral cat I am going to catch to neuter and release suffers as much in the trap as the rabbit in the garden and the animal caught for slaughter. One dies, one doesn’t, and one frees itself, but the outcome doesn’t change the nature of their suffering except in our way of thinking.

June 6 - June 10 Harvesting Strawberries

Even two sets of netting can’t keep out whatever is eating the strawberries.  Can it be the thrashers I see constantly back there who are getting underneath and wastefully picking at both ripe and unripe berries, then leaving the rest of it to rot?  I don’t think slugs could pull them off their stems like that.  The other afternoon a chipmunk stood atop the cinder blocks of the melon bed eyeing me with some concern.  When I got closer he slipped between the blocks, but as soon as I turned my head he reappeared.  Was he, with his air of owning the place, the culprit?  I have an idea for next year of building a net covered box that I can lay over the berries which would keep out birds but be no barrier to something burrowing up from underneath.  Meanwhile I have learned to collect the berries as soon as they begin to show color and let them finish ripening inside.  I don’t mind sharing, but I hate the waste.
2011-Can it be possible to live in paradise and not be happy? It may possibly be the most beautiful morning in the history of the world; a soft sun shining, the air heavy with the perfume of wild roses, robins gathering worms for nestlings, bunny hopping through the grass, pleated woodpecker digging in the old apple tree’s bark. Is it paradise for the worm? Is it wiggling in ecstasy in the robin’s beak? And what a year for ticks-I’ve never in 25 years here seen anything like it. Every day I pull a dozen wood ticks off, find them clustering on the wood trim around the doors, crawling on the deck chairs. This morning, still in bed, I pulled one off my scalp a piece of skin between its mandibles. I dispatched him like the rest-sliced in half between my fingernails-but it bothers me. 
Can you practice ahimsa but leave some creatures out? I think it must be universal and that is hard. Meanwhile ants are crawling all over the kitchen counters-am I Saint Francis? Is my joy there? Because, even here in paradise I am not feeling it.
Meanwhile Massey Energy has changed its name thinking that will change its essence though it continues to eat the mountains of West Virginia, spitting out money for its corporate heads and investors and the corpses of its victims.
2013- Finally worked out the strawberries. Better netting is keeping the birds out and slugs have been minimal this year. If it keeps raining I suppose that will change. But it is interesting that in twenty years of gardening in the same spot where slugs have always been a problem to some extent, last year for the first time I noticed snails. This year there is a great increase in snails. Could that affect the slug population? I much prefer snails because they seem to do much less damage. And then there’s always escargot.

June 1 - June 5 Colors

 

2010-This essay will just be a list of all the flowers that are blooming right now, this paradisiacal abundance the very essence of late spring.  In the front garden there is a lily, the false indigo just finishing and the evening primrose just starting, the pelargonium and the budding astilbe.  They are all in the category of local perennials if not natives. Then there are the visitors or annuals just brought in; pansies and a pot of purple petunias, somewhat the worse for wear after falling out of their hanger, but recovering.
In front of the fence there are the pink climbing roses, foxgloves and cosmos. On the houseplant bench are two pots of stock and a lime tree in bloom. All around the yard are the wild roses already mentioned and in the yard blue and yellow flag irises, white and pink peonies, more geraniums, chives, wild lupine, the first daylily, comfrey, the tail end of the bleeding hearts and wisteria, the aggressively spreading angelica, and the two shades of yellow Siberian irises.  In the hidden bed there is a riot of sweet William in many shades and combinations, but only one fragrant orange wallflower came back this year. 
In the garden the bok choy, broccoli rabe and arugula have, to my consternation, all flowered out. The peppers from the garden store have flowers, one has even set a little fruit.
In a nursery box waiting to be planted are heliotrope, more pansies, marigolds, a blood red shade of dianthus and white and red nicotiana. And an eggplant with a bud already formed.
Then there are the ‘weeds’; buttercup, mustard, orange hawkweed, blue flowered chickweed and a last stray dandelion.
PS
And what I didn’t think of yesterday; double begonias, clematis, honeysuckle, wild yarrow. Dutch iris, white and red clover, three kinds of spiderwort, and, yes, all the grasses nodding their heavy, grainy heads.
2011- Down in the forties last night and more predicted for tonight though the days are very pleasant high sixties-this after four days in the nineties and the list of flowers is very different.  The lily in the front garden did not even have an evident bud, the indigo is just beginning.  The wild roses and geraniums are just beginning, the pink rose has a few buds though it did very badly this winter and had to be pruned way back. The peonies, daylilies and lupine are still in bud though all the irises are at peak. The sweet William is just beginning and the wallflower came back.  While mowing I saw just one white clover flower. So even in the repetition of the cycling seasons there is the uniqueness of each individual; never to be repeated in exactly the same way.
2012-The fifth mouse in the trap the other day, and then, mysteriously the body of a newborn baby mouse just lying in the doorway to the back room. I could not imagine how it got there (many scenarios-non plausible) until I went into that closet and found a nest built partly upon the hem of one of my dresses long enough to trail on the floor. In it were three more babies-all dead. So the mother being killed, the babies starved and the one on the floor pathetically venturing out (to find her?) before meeting that fate. This is our world. I would not want a nest of mice in my closet, but…
Against the list of flowers of the past two years this year is very different. Much has bloomed already and as things come out they are turned to mush by extremes of cold, hot or wet. The wild roses, irises, peonies, clematis, wild honeysuckle-all over.  There is much heavy greenery because of the moisture; the effect on me is oppressive. The pink roses are beautiful though and twining all through the fence as I’d hoped. The Sweet William, daylilies just starting, the indigo, the geraniums-all kind of unenthusiastic.
2013- Yesterday in the garden I found a hummingbird who had got his beak inpaled in the screen part of the fence. I guess he had not been there for long because I was able to ease his beak out of the mesh and he flew off. I keep thinking about a video I saw about cicadas (Samuel Orr's beautiful work) that showed how out of the millions that hatch, only a certain amount make it through the whole  hatching, tree-climbing, molting, mating egg-laying, hatching, falling out of the tree, digging underground cycle. Most either get eaten or fail to accomplish some step of the process. The huge numbers are to insure success for the species as a whole, but the individuals seem to be just grist for the mill.

May 27 - May 31 Roses

2010-There is no verb following the word roses because no one verb is adequate.  Roses (the wild ones) not only are blooming but have permeated everything with their perfume.  Even my dreams have been beautifully and romantically affected.  Lucky for them they have this one magical (albeit short-lived) attribute, because without it there would be no reason to tolerate their sprawling, invasive, clothes-grabbing, skin-scratching existence. The pink tinged flowers are not particularly beautiful, except their fragrance makes them so.  Last year I gathered them up and made rose petal wine.  When it was new the rose scent was overpowering, but after aging a year it became pleasantly subtle.  Unfortunately, an unpleasant bitter aftertaste also developed.  Perhaps after another year it will dissipate.
2011-Summer has come all of a sudden; high 80’s hot and humid. But the changeableness still says spring. I was able to finally plant the seedlings I started (tomatoes, melon, cucumber)but they have suffered much from lack of light and I don’t know if they can recover.  I will plant more seeds alongside and they will probably catch up in a short time. The roses are behind this year, looking to need a week still before they open. The wine was not a success, but it did make a nice flowery vinegar.
            Storm
    How the maple tree danced
    With the wind last night!
    I didn’t know the old girl had it in her
    (Suppleness molded to majesty)
    The lightening burst on a wanton self  
    Usually hid in verdant maternal embrace.
    Were the robins shocked
    In their wildly rocking nests?
    Or did they just forget
    When the morning came, soft as May
    And nothing to show for the night but a leaf
    Here and there
    Hanging all askew.

2012-Suddenly I feel at war with nature. A rabbit (I think) is eating much of the garden. After fence fixing, deterrent spraying, trap setting, and milk carton cages something is nibbling plants. After finding a deer tick on my arm I am creepy crawly feeling all the time and slugs are gaining the upper hand, in spite of  conscientious Sluggo applications. Four mice so far dead in the kitchen traps; the weather swinging abruptly back and forth between hot and cold, wet and dry extremes. It’s all so adversarial, not my sweet gardening back to nature fantasy at all. Is every human endeavor on this planet bound to be shown up at some point as just another form of battle? What are we fighting, really? Is existence just struggle after all, or is it a sign that I am not aligned with what is?
2013-The roses seem still at least two weeks away, but; I’d saved one bottle of rose petal wine from the vinegar experiment and was shocked-shocked I tell you-to discover that it had evened itself out, lost the bitterness, and turned delicious with the faintest flower scent. And now that last bottle is gone.

May 22 - May 26 The Force That Through the Green Fuse...

2010-I love the dandelion plant.  Alongside the driveway, left un-mowed, they are now at least a foot high, fully seeded out and gradually releasing their little airships to the wind.  I think it is through their usefulness that I have come to appreciate them, but it is their striking robust vigor I’m appreciating now. Is it the intensity of their energy shining through the form that makes them seem so beautiful?  By the way, dandelion flowers dredged in a mix of corn meal and chili powder, then fried in olive oil, are absolutely delicious. 
I love robins as well. With their plump rusty breasts, hopping gait and beady black eyes, they seem the very emblem of cheerful curiosity as they scrabble around throwing up leaves and uncovering fat worms.  Has anyone ever seen a thin, depressed robin?  How fortunate I feel to take such pleasure in these common things. 
2011- Because of the continuing rain and the scoring job, I was unable to keep up with mowing and things got out of hand; the lawn became a meadow and how beautiful the seeding dandelion stalks looked!  Not to mention the birds enjoyed them immensely. One day I watched a rabbit suck in a dandelion stalk like a strand of spaghetti. Finally able to begin the lawn mower assault, I hesitated at the sight of so many different kinds of wild flowers ready to bloom, but I know from the areas that I have let go to meadow, the grasses, in one season, take over pretty much everything else.
The wet, cloudy, cool weather continues almost without a break day after day. Even when it isn’t actually raining the mist is so thick you end up soaking wet anyway. The plants seem to love it, growing in jungle like thickness but the lilac flowers that bloomed so heavily and profusely quickly rotted on their stems. I can’t put in the hot weather things I started, or even put them outside for more light and they are stunted and pale. it’s a pity and I don’t think they will be able to recover.  I might re-start some directly from seed if it ever warms up, but they will be so far behind.

The distant chainsaw               
And the hummingbirds’ buzz prune            
This May miasma.


Only the tangled shrubbery's
Need of shears motivates me.

2012-The wild roses are beginning but as I walked around the yard burying my face in the opening buds, I realized it was queerly silent. They should be vibrating with the buzzing of bees but I could find only one-a bumblebee. There were some honeybees in the crocuses earlier this spring and I felt hopeful, but today--not one. How can this be? What does it mean? Is it Silent Spring? The ash tree-the centerpiece of the yard, the only shade in summer-appears to be dying as well. Emerald ash borer? A disease it’s seemed to have on and off for years? A hummingbird habitually sits on one of its bare little twigs-today even it is gone.
2013-Amazingly, a few of the pumpkin plants have survived the frost, (after being turned to slime all the way back to the first leaf node) shooting out new leaves with a vengeance. Yesterday one actually produced a flower. The apple trees and the nectarine seem unharmed as well, and covered with tiny green fruits.