The rain and cool temperatures have arrived. It is lovely to have open windows and a house that is breathing again. I’ve never thought of it that way; but in our early 1950’s, no-central-air-conditioned-home, the house has been kept closed, curtained, shaded, and with our bedroom door kept closed to hold the cool air in for weeks. It has felt like the house is holding its breath, just trying to keep its cool, and the inside air has felt manufactured and stale: blessedly cool, but without freshness.

In the heat just past keeping the house cool with portable units was an exercise in futility. At the worst of it, the upstairs hallway thermostat (no air conditioning there) sat at eighty-nine degrees Fahrenheit. We managed to keep the main floor about ten degrees cooler than that by running one unit in the kitchen and another in the living room for most of each day. At the end of “the worst of it” the machine in our bedroom iced up and died. It ran itself to death. A new model will be delivered today.

We are expecting three inches of rain in the next thirty-six hours or so and the ground and plants will soak it up and drink it in. I mulch heavily and plant densely in all my gardens, therefore the soil has not become dusty, and the plants have not suffered unduly from the heat and drought.

The raspberries have got sun scald where the sun hits the berries directly, their drupelets (isn’t that a great word!?) turning white and hard in those spots, yet staying red and juicy everywhere else. The sprouting broccoli is sprouting and wanting to bolt, though I clip the blossoms every other day or so, and eat them sauteed with olive oil, garlic, and red pepper flakes. The tomatoes and eggplants are getting huge and flowering like mad in the greenhouse; the cucumbers and pole beans are climbing their trellis and beginning to flower; the milky oats I tried growing for tea are a flop: sparse and stunted; the new potatoes are maturing; the tulsi basil (which I dry and use for tea) is ready to harvest yet again; the blackberries struggle on; the rhubarb is recovering from the heat and my neglect (I ought to have divided them in spring.)

I found a second volunteer witch hazel, Hamamelis virginiana, growing quietly among the kale. I have verbena bonariensis growing like wildflowers among the parsley. I dug a few out and moved them to the front gardens. I have baby chestnut and oak trees emerging in the raised beds; I will dig these out early next spring before they break dormancy, and pot them on for sharing at the Free Little Garden Shop. I have red raspberries sprouting from the lawn that need digging up and potting on before my husband starts the lawn mower again.

Nonsense, cruelty, greed, and violence are stratagems that seem to serve only the obscenely wealthy and powerful. Perhaps this tendency is what Rabbi Jesus was speaking of when he spoke about rich men, camels, and narrow gates.

For the rest of us, courage, honesty, respect, kindness, generosity, and community, are what is needed to survive and thrive as we bend to tend and heal the soil, plant trees for shade and food, take down fences and build tables, make birdbaths from our armor, and shovels from our swords, to turn battlefields into gardens. That last bit must happen within our hearts if it is to happen upon the earth. As it is within us, so it will be in the world.

Courage my dears. Love one another.

Today will be a bridge-day between the departing heat and the arriving rain event. By this afternoon the rain will move in and stay until sometime mid-afternoon on Tuesday. There are flood watches posted, though it has been so dry here that the rivers are low enough to handle any run-off from streams and storm drains.

The weather is become more extreme than temperate. This is due to the behavior of human beings.

Yesterday, as the heat bore down upon the world, and kept me home, indoors, and quiet, racists donned their masks and paraded around the U.S. Capitol shouting about immigrants. Other masked men, deputized as agents of violence and cruelty by the regime, terrorized and abducted our neighbors from U.S. streets. More than one neighbor in my purple-town lined their front yards with U.S. flags placed a foot or so apart as some sort of statement. To them it might feel like pride and strength; to my eyes, it shows that they struggle with hubris and fear.

When I was young so many of my classmates were what we called “Jesus Freaks.” I have always had faith, always loved what I knew as God, even as the “what I knew” has always evolved and expanded. I have always loved, and known myself to be loved by, Mystery, and I have always been quiet about it because I am quiet about most things. When I am serious, my voice gets low and soft.

For many of my peers, Jesus was spoken about often, and often without context, as some sort of magical being who would take care of them if only they completely sublimated their human curiosity, will, mind, and spirit, to the will of an angry, judgmental, violent, and exclusionary god they called “The Father.” They didn’t talk about The Beatitudes, Holy Spirit, discernment, or wisdom; they talked about purity and obedience. Even then, I just didn’t understand their faith.

I have a sense that much of the nationalism we are experiencing now is rising out of that same group of people, disappointed over and over again, that the Jesus they wanted and made in their own image, has not done his holy-magic to save them from having to live life with all its challenge, difficulty, and dashed-hopes. They don’t really want life; they want God to save them from life. The poor souls (and they are poor souls) are just realizing that God will not rapture them away, will not lead the brown people out of their white neighborhoods; will not make a high school diploma as valuable to an employer as a Master’s Degree; will not make their women submissive to their men. So, this being the case, they recreate God in the image of Zeus/Jupiter, and Christ in the image of Ares/Mars, and they think they can cheat, steal, lie, bully, and bulldoze their way to righteousness without ever experiencing a conversion of spirit, an awakening of conscience, or a reckoning with themselves. Whatever that faith is, it is not the faith taught by the gentle man from Nazareth who stood peacefully and lovingly against empire.

In a few minutes Luna and I will head out to the gardens (which do not need watering this morning, though the greenhouse will.) The gardens are growing along despite the weather and despite the human world’s insanity. Here the vegetables are surrounded by flowers, and the fruit is surrounded by vegetables, and the flowers are surrounded by bees, hover-flies, butterflies, lightning bugs, birds, and mammals. Here, the soil is deep, rich, and alive. In the gardens is Life in all its forms and stages: Life which transforms seed to stem, to flower, to fruit, to seed that falls to the ground (John 12:24,) and it all begins again.

Courage my dears. Love one another.

I thought I planted only a bit more garlic last fall than I usually do. I finished harvesting it yesterday to have it indoors and curing before the HEAT roasts it in its own soil. Evidently, my “garden-eyes” were bigger than my drying-room.

This is what my sewing and drying room looks like this morning. The giant pile of bulbs and leaves? Yes, that is my sewing table beneath the newspaper and harvested bulbs. The table has been conscripted into service as a drying table and there will be no cutting of patterns on that table for a couple weeks at least. At some point in the process of laying out of the garlic to cure, I thought I should count the bulbs. I stopped at 170. I was almost done. I need to purchase a couple more drying racks from the hardware store today. This morning the house smells slightly pungent with some good earth mixed in.

If garlic is a ward against evil, as many of the old ways taught, my house should be safe for awhile. May it be so.

If the ingestion of garlic keeps human hearts and immune systems healthy, as science teaches, my family and friends may feel a benefit. May that be so, too.

Once the garlic was safely out of the garden beds (thus freeing up some space,) I planted the sixteen more Genovese basil plants that had been sitting patiently in their pots, but wanting to get into the ground. I also finished planting the Echinacea pallida, Pale Purple Coneflower, seedlings into the newly cleared-of-other-perennials, nursery bed. The little Monarda fistulosa, Wild Bergamot, seedlings will need to wait in their pots until the HEAT passes next week. Until then all I will do outside is open the greenhouse and water the tomatoes and eggplants growing there, water the outdoor beds if there has been no rain the day before, harvest what raspberries and blueberries survive, and get in a quick walk with Luna. Thankfully, we had a thunder storm here just before dawn this morning, so I don’t need to linger in the humidity early this morning.

I read here on Substack that there are terrible wildfires raging in Colorado, and that the people there are, as the trusted-by-me author stated, “not okay.” I did not learn about this first from national news. It wasn’t a headline in the New York Times. I finally found an article about this in the British newspaper, “The Guardian,” which I have been going to now and again as a source for reliable coverage of world news. Yesterday I became a financial supporter of their journalism; I ought to have done so long ago. I am old enough to remember when the US news outlets were independent and had integrity. Most of them have sold that integrity along with their journalistic principles to the highest bidder now, though. We will need to rebuild a trusted press again. We should add that to our common-list, right along with a functional Congress, Medicare for all, education for all, parental leave for all, and a SCOTUS and justice system that actually follows the law. We have a lot to do.

I was thinking how grateful I am to follow so many writers from so many diverse places here on Substack. People “on the ground” are sharing what is happening in their communities, cities, states, and nations. It occurs to me that we are building our own networks of information and news from citizen journalists. This, of course, carries risk, takes discernment, and fact checking. Still, human voices telling human stories of living through unprecedented heat in Paris; of breathing the particles of immolated trees and countless creatures in Colorado (as we did here in Southern New England as wildfires raged in Canada a couple years ago;) of trying to keep saplings alive in a newly planted orchard in Central Europe by carrying buckets of water to pour over their roots once the sun has set there; of farmers struggling to farm in systems built to feed the rich more riches, instead of feeding the people good and local food; of people helping, hiding and feeding their neighbors even as deputized thugs kidnap and murder them on the streets of US cities. Human stories of heartbreak and help, of coming together rather than splitting apart, of truth and consequences; these things inform and feed me: heart, mind, and spirit. Perhaps this is true for you, too.

If so, add your voice, your cry, your joy, your medicine, your wisdom, your knowledge, your prayer, your song, your grief, your actions, to the story of these times. Do it in words, or paint, photographs, gardens, sidewalk chalk, kindness, or song. We ought all become diarists of sorts, like the little girl hiding in an Amsterdam attic. We ought all be telling the real story of these times so that history is not erased by propaganda and fear.

Courage my dears. We are all here now on purpose. Love one another. Tell the stories of that love.

I have a pretty decent vocabulary (loving words as I do,) and the most expressive word I can come up with as I blink my eyes awake and sip coffee is “ugh!”

Being a gardener, being a woman of a certain age, and being a human who has managed an inherited auto-immune disease for decades, and for whom that disease has still affected my body’s ability to control its own temperature, “ugh!” works pretty well.

My plans this week will include rising as soon as I wake (usually at 5:00,) having my coffee, feeding Luna, and heading (with her, of course) out to the gardens to water, harvest, and tend, then walking with her and being back indoors for the day before 9:00. I am adapting to being an elder. I am adapting to the difficulties of the climate we have created for ourselves. I am hoping my gardens do the same.

So far this year, so mostly good. The flowers are blooming (above is a perennial rudbeckia I grew from seed three years ago; I find it gorgeous.) The raspberries are ripening. The blueberries, too, though this year the chipmunks have devised a new strategy and have burrowed under the mature bushes to pop up under the bird canopy, climb the branches, and gobble every ripe berry they can find. Sigh. It will be a much smaller home-harvest this summer and I will need to make up the difference by picking at local farms and orchards to have enough to freeze for smoothies and baking all year. After the harvest, I will be clearing “the fruit guild” of lemon balm, asters, spring bulbs, etc., from the ground beneath the bushes and laying an “agricultural wire mesh” on the ground to keep the very cute and very greedy creatures from doing this again next summer. This will be the first summer in at least five that I have had to purchase blueberries, but it is what it is, and there is always next year.

Two nights ago I dreamed I was trying to stay safe in a world inhabited by dinosaurs. In the dream, there was a Tyrannosaurus Rex on the rampage, and I, and several others, were all hunkered down until it moved on. We weren’t frightened in the dream, we were determined not to be consumed if we could help it. Dinosaurs represent primal and ancient energies and ideas. In Jungian thought, Tyrannosaurus Rex symbolizes The Shadow, The Destroyer, The Devouring Mother, and monstrous energies. There are plenty of those to go around these days, aren’t there? They live and roar and stomp right through all our norms, conventions, systems, and ideas about ourselves and the world we thought we created, and the world we actually created.

Now we are where we are. The veil is lifted. It is time to turn towards one another; to acknowledge what we have wrought; to put our energies back into life; to stop feeding the energies of death. We can honestly name the monsters we have unleashed, and thus reclaim our power.

We can take ourselves off their menu. We can stop feeding them with our bodies, our attention, our money, our future, and our hope. Let us starve them as we feed the hungry, the depleted soil, our aching planet, our meaning-starved human world, our beloveds, our friends, and neighbors, and even the dastardly-chipmunks. Let us turn towards one another in love. May it be so.

Courage my dears. Love one another. Stay cool, stay well, stay kind.

Our sisters and brothers in Western Europe and Great Britain are sweltering in the grip of a terrible heat wave. The heat is a consequence of the way we live, of the carbon we take from the ground and spew into the atmosphere. That science (no matter what the ignorant say) has been settled since the 1970’s. It has been settled in my mind since the 1990’s, when I learned about it. Now, animals (human and nonhuman) are suffering and dying from it. Now, trees, and whole ecosystems, struggle to survive it. Now, the heat-storing oceans are flipping the script and releasing the heat back into the air. Now, we are reaping what we have sown.

Once, summers were the season of abundance and thriving. Now, they are becoming the season to survive: seasons of fire, scorch, and heat. We have managed to do this by trusting money-makers over our common-sense and communal well being. I hope our children are taking a lesson from our failure. Their future depends upon it.

Often, it seems that the things I can do to set the world aright count for nothing. My votes are often cast for someone who does not attain office; and even when they do, they do not tackle the roots of the issues, but only cover them with small bandages and call it progress. Our politics are become defunct through their own corruption.

The small acts of building resiliency: like growing and sharing food, choosing love instead of hate, practicing courage, supporting local farmers and markets, and not using poisons and chemicals on my property, may help my family and friends a bit, but do not inspire my neighbors to change, do not clear the poison from the rivers and streams or public discourse. I am a only a blip in the matrix of the human world. If you read here, you probably are a blip, too. Maybe blips do more than I can see. Maybe. I do have faith even when I cannot see.

What I know is that I will continue to blip, because that is my nature. I will continue to be a haven for Mother Nature, and a human-heart-home for Mystery, a woman guided by her ancestors. I will continue to listen, learn, and practice a grounded, embodied, love for as long as my soul is embodied.

Just before waking I dreamed a dream that ended with someone I love deeply calling me a cab because it was time to leave our relationship as it has been, and begin the relationship as it will/must be. Before I could go, though, I had to put on a new pair of shoes. I had to walk into a new relationship in new shoes. The old, comfy ones would not take me there.

That is where a “dream for the dreamer,” became, in part, a “dream for the people.” We must change our shoes and walk as changed people into a future we ourselves have made harder. Our old, comfortable shoes/ways have brought us to this time and place; they will bring us no further.

Courage my dears. May we lace up our new shoes and walk with one another. May we love one another. May it be so. May it be so.

On my work-room/office side the bed is overrun by lily of the valley; a rose that grew up to be a rambler; bindweed; and bittersweet. That bed is truly what my mother would have called “a mess.” It needs a real makeover, as do the borders at the back of the house, and the bed that borders the back fence with my northern neighbor.

Yesterday, I began deconstructing the work-room-window front garden. I had decided that it is beyond the point where I can just clean it up. It needs a rethink and a reset. The bed has three anchor plants; plants which define its colors and pattern and weave it into the other front beds: at the far corner is an acer, or Japanese maple; in the center is the pruned-back red rose; closest to the front door is a hydrangea macrophylla, or blue, mop-head hydrangea. Those are staying. Everything else is getting dug up, having its roots washed (because they are entwined with roots of grasses and weeds,) and potted or planted on. This is a big job.

Yesterday, I pruned the spent salvia back to the soil. It will regrow and blossom again in a month or so. Salvias are one of my favorite perennials. I love blue flowers, and these have a lovely, sage-y, scent to their flowers and leaves.

I dug out the crowded patch of bearded iris, replanted four tubers, and carted the at least sixty (!!!) others to the back work-area to be cleaned and potted. I dug a beautiful heuchera, or Coral Bells, out from the shade of the hydrangea, replanted half of it where it will get more light and air, and brought the other half back to be repotted. Finally I dug out the roots of one of the big, old, bleeding hearts (Lamprocapnos spectabilis) and divided it and now have twelve potted plants that will not reemerge again until next spring.

First this morning after opening the greenhouse and picking any ripe raspberries, will be to pot up all those bearded iris, set aside one set for a beloved, three more for a garden friend, and get the rest of the plants out to the Free Little Garden Shop. Then, I will clear another couple feet of that front bed.

I lay awake during the wee-hours this morning thinking about all the work I want to get done in all these borders. I came to the conclusion that the gardens, as they are now, and as my life is now, are too much for me to tend in the way I want to tend them. So, I have decided that they all need that reset and rethink. Then, I realized I have been doing just that, though I hadn’t articulated it to myself as such.

The front of the house beds are going to become much simpler in their planting, which will allow me to focus my energy on the perennial beds that get the most sunshine.

The back of the house bed is going to be deconstructed and become a simple, tidy, kitchen garden with five beds for lettuces and annual herbs for use in daily cooking.

The northern border bed is going to become a simple yew hedge which will grow up to provide my northern neighbors (whose back gardens are very manicured) with a screen from my wild and life-full gardens. Plus, yews are hardy, and provide food and shelter for the birds.

My first attention in the gardens will always be the food. I am like my dad in this … the fruit and the vegetables come first because they feed my family. The food takes a lot of time and energy in spring and during harvest. The flower gardens need to support that, and thrive during my time away from them.

I have been watching the political news out of New York City. It heartens me and reminds me (as most things do) of the gardens. Mr. Mamdani is like a gardener working to return to the basics of his particular garden (the City): care of the people, and the systems that support them. He is rethinking the way things are; digging out the weeds; repositioning public-servants and services; and getting things done. It is early days, and so far, I am impressed. May it continue. May it grow. May the city and her people, thrive.

The Mayor is doing what he said he would do, and the citizens of the city are benefitting. They can focus on what needs their attention in their own lives because the person they elected to run the city is doing his job. This is something we do not currently experience nationally.

Nationally, the only things growing are alga in the Reflecting Pool, the national debt, poverty rates for regular citizens, the wealth of the billionaires, unemployment rates, the number of data centers, and bankruptcies. We have been overrun by bittersweet and bindweed.

It is time to put on our garden gloves, imagine and envision better systems for a more perfect union, vote, protest, plant seeds, feed our neighbors, and just get on with the work of being citizens in a participatory democratic republic. May it be so.

Courage my dears. Love one another.

I had been watering everything of course, and it has kept things alive. For this I am grateful. All plants respond better to the soft, balanced, and nitrogen-rich water from the clouds than they do to the harder water from a hose or sprinkler, though. They thrive instead of merely surviving. They evolved with the rain, as did we.

Here in my central Connecticut garden the chestnut tree is in flower, which is mildly unpleasant in aroma to my human nose, but very seductive to the bees, flies, and other pollinators. I was worried about the tree after a tough summer last year caused by a decreased sap-flow when the sapsuckers overindulged. Yet, the tree came through the winter and has a stronger canopy again this summer. Someone once told me that “life wants to live,” and all we need do is let it, and tend it. They were right.

The orange raspberries are beginning to ripen right along with the blueberries and gooseberries. I have harvested the red currants, though I noticed that the birds had gotten there first this year, so I will be covering them with netting next spring. I always leave berries for the birds, but the birds do not always leave berries for me, so I will net them now as I do the blueberries.

The blackberries are struggling on. Regular readers might remember that most of the primary canes were infected with a fungus after the hungry bunnies stripped the bark in desperation last March. The new canes appear healthy, and are loaded with blossom and newly set fruit, so I will wait, whisper encouragement, watch, and let life live.

For two years I have tried to grow nettles in certain spaces and they do not come up. I drink a simple nettle tea every morning, and I have been thinking of them as a crop, but maybe nettles are not a crop. Maybe nettles are wild and need me to understand that; perhaps I can only invite them and then wait and, if they visit, respect how they want to live their lives, give them the freedom to be themselves, and be grateful to know them. I will let you know if and when they accept my invitation to share the gardens here.

Life wants to live.

Live and let live.

Once and future wisdom. Not just for gardens, either.

Courage my dears. Know what is happening in the world, but do not ingest what is not healthy for you. Pray for what is good globally. Act for justice locally. Do not feed fear, but grow your courage and compassion right along with your greens and roots.

Love matters. Let love infuse and imbue you. Let it. Love one another.

Here is a little poem in sister-squirrel’s honor, and a blessing before I set out to plant a few seedlings that have been awaiting a rainy day to get moved into their permanent homes.

Blessings upon us all this mid-summer day in the season of Litha (north,) and mid-winter day in the season of Yule (south,) and the month of June for us all. May we know peace and only good this day and all days. May it be so.

The rain is coming
with its life giving drops
moving in on dark clouds
to fall and to plop
upon dry, dusty, soil
and droopy-leaved flowers;
it will start as sprinkles,
and then become showers,
then (may it be so!) pour
gently from the heavens 
to green the dried grasses; 
to show us the powers,
of life and of elements,
which in combination,
become weather, and 
thus, the foundation
for life for we humans
and all of creation.

And, thus, may we:
Bless the rains that fall; the water that flows in rivers and clouds.
May we bless our moon and the pull of the tides in our oceans, which are the wombs of life.
May we bless our day star that shines and brings warmth, light, and seasons of emergence, growth, harvest, and rest.
May we bless the soil and the life she provides.
May we bless the food that sustains us with such delight as the bees must experience when they sip nectar from beautiful flowers.
May we bless this planet, this solar system, this galaxy, the whole of the multiverse with our care and respect. 
May we bless ourselves to the work of goodness and mercy.

May it be so. Courage my dears. Love one another. Love all.

This is a photo of a tiny (very tiny) rosa rugosa that I started from seed in early April. It, and three siblings have germinated (so far) in their seed tray. The seed tray has moved from the greenhouse when it was chilly, to the potting section of the garden now that it is warm.

I have a vision of a rose “orchard” scattered in sunny beds in my back gardens, and maybe one for the front, too. Rugosa’s are simple roses with five petals and an open center that makes bees swoon. Once romanced (fertilized) by pollen from the bees, the plants produce large, bright red hips as fruit. Roses are related to apples and Hawthorns (which I am also trying to grow from seed, but so far they remain seed,) so their fruit reminds me of the apples growing nearby. Like apples, rose hips are bursting with nutrients, and they make a lovely, vitamin c rich tea for winter sipping. Here is a photo of a mature blossom, with a bee of course, on an existing plant.

Organically sourced and grown rugosas are selling for at least $40-$50 dollars at trusted nurseries. I would like at least eight to ten plants. Seeds may get me there without financial pain, though it will take a couple years to see. Since I am planning to still be pottering around my gardens for a good couple decades, I will be patient and wait.

I have also started growing biennials and perennials from seed. Below are a rudbeckia “Campfire,” and a foxglove I started from seed last year.

This year, I have echinacea pallida and wild bergamot seedlings to grow on and plant (or share at the Free Little Garden Shop) in early fall. They are both a pale blue-ish-purple when they flower. The coneflowers are distinctive because the cone and petals are more elongated than the iconic echinacea purpurea I have growing all over the gardens.

Seeds teach patience. Seeds and plants take their own time. I started tithonia seeds in the greenhouse early this spring. I had collected the seeds from this plant at the end of last summer.

They sat in their seed-starter-soil. They did not germinate. Then, weeks and weeks later, one seedling emerged. Weeks and weeks after that, another followed suit. They needed the time they needed; and each seed needed different time. Those two seedlings are planted at each end of the vegetable garden. I am hoping they take to the soil and grow. We shall see. Some plants are reluctant and sensitive as seedlings, and then grow strong as adults. Tithonia do that. Whether these particular plants do that, time will tell.

Seeds are surprising, I never know where one is going to fall or be planted by the birds or small mammals. I have a bunch of red cedar saplings growing in the borders and hedgerows; I did not plant them there. I have two baby gooseberries and a red currant planted by birds who gobbled berries and pooped out seeds into the herb garden. Every spring I share dozens of small fennel seedlings with my neighbors and friends.

In times of uncertainty saving seeds, sharing seeds, planting seeds, and then saving more again, is a practice in resilience and abundance.

Right now, the wars directed by frightened old men are raging on, a monster of an El Nino has spawned in the Pacific Ocean and its effects upon the equilibrium of stable and predictable weather patterns will be some terrible level of terrible. Farmers with GMO seeds, dead soils, and a dependence on fossil fuel fertilizers are struggling. People trying to pay their mortgages and healthcare premiums, and buy food are struggling. The pollinators are struggling. The trees are struggling.

There are seeds for news ways of being, seeds for a new human-world gestating in human hearts and minds. Some of them will be seeds that promise a just and shared future. Some are seeds meant to take, and take, and never give. Some seeds will fall to the wayside, some onto the rocks, some into choking weeds, and some on good soil.(Matthew 13)

In these times, may it be that good seed falls into good soil and produces a good harvest. May we be a part of bringing The Good into the human-world. May it be so.

Courage my dears. Love one another.

I have been in “a pause” of my own for a week or so. I have been still and quieter even as I love and garden and live. I have been listening to Mystery, to Life, to the gardens, the seasons, my seasons, the soil, the wind, the water, the longings for wisdom, joy, peace, integrity, agency, of my heart, my family, and friends. I have been listening to bird song by day and fox song by night.

I have been reading a lot. A lot. The television has lost its role as my primary source of entertainment just because it is easy. I have turned away from the screen and back towards my beloved books. I have read The Correspondent by Virginia Evans and enjoyed it so very much. I have read Maggie O’Farrell’s new book Land: A Novel and been entranced (as I have been by her Hamnet and The Marriage Portrait.) I am reading now The Little Shop of Found Things by Paula Braxton and enjoying a good story of strong women through time and space.

I have been reading here on Substack: so many voices of concerned hope, of courage, of writing truth to power for those with the eyes to see and read, and with the ears to listen and hear. I read what is written by those growing food and standing for resilience and the healing of land, climate, people, and policy, in Britain, Austria, France, Canada, Sicily, Australia, and here in the not-so-United States. I read of activism, community-building, aging, illness and health, and other author’s dances with Mystery.

I read headlines of the news. I read of atrocities committed on US soil in detention camps and data centers. I read of atrocities committed on the people of other countries and continents at the behest of powerful old men who fear their own endings. I read how criminals in the halls of power around the world entice one another into greater sin and depredation as if sin can wash away the stain of sin and repair their legacies. I watch as dignity is replaced with crassness. I see how the rich (determined as they are to stay that way) ensure that the stock market rises even as our sisters and brothers struggle with the basic needs of life.

I watch as the ending of Oscar Wilde’s, The Picture of Dorian Gray, becomes real in my nation’s capital for the man inhabiting the people’s house: the man’s sins are showing in and on him now no matter the orange make-up or distractions his masters and handlers devise. He and the cruelty and criminality he stands for cannot be painted, gilded, or plastered over. Thank heavens that even those whose eyes are focused only on their own wallets are beginning to see the lies behind the bluster.

What is coming clear to me is the dying of the old and the birth of something new. The cycle of birth, death, and rebirth, is woven into the continuum of time and space. It is wisdom and mercy and abundance even when it hurts; even when we must let what we have built on sand pass away, so that the next generation can set themselves on what is real and true.

I do not know my own role in the future, and I do not know how long my future is in this little body.

I have led countless wisdom circles; created formative programs in leadership and spirituality; written, published, and taught contemplative writing. I have familied (new word) all my life: I have raised children, loved my spouse, cared for my elders, shared my life and home with those I love.

Some of those things are surely passing away now. Some of them may resurrect in new forms, I don’t know. I do know that trying to begin them the way I always have makes me tired just to think about.

Yesterday I was so tired my head ached. I was tired out. I went to bed long before the sun set and right after a very light supper. I lay down. Maybe I was laying down more than my body. I am waiting to see and hear. When I closed my physical eyes, I prayed to be held in the arms of Love, to rest, and refresh, and the eyes of my heart saw green vines growing upward, growing in a time of night (darkness,) and while seeking, still vital and so vibrant they glowed. They rose where, just before, The Holy One responded to my prayer, and turned Her featureless face towards me in love.

So, I am pausing, though I may have returned to writing now. Maybe I am writing about the pause, about being between the worlds again: between this and that. The between is like the solstice, like the moment when the tide is neither rising nor lowering. There is a moment when there is no tension, no push or pull, no movement to or fro; a holy moment of just being before the laws of the physical world begin to tug at us again and we give birth even as, and perhaps because, we are letting go, and letting what needs to pass, pass. May it be so.

Courage my dears. Fear nothing. Become. Love one another.

One of the things the garden has taught me is that houseflies are pollinators, too. Yes, they do walk around on animal droppings. Yes, they lay their eggs on dead things. Yes, they tend to congregate around trash bins. And, yes, they also pollinate flowers that we humans either cannot smell at all, and some that we wish we could not smell at all.

Another thing I have learned is that chestnut trees have very smelly (not in a good way) blossoms. I have a large chestnut tree in the back garden. It has just started to flower. It’s bloom will last about ten days. For ten days it attracts houseflies along with bees. Those houseflies bring their friends and family to the feast. Some of those friends find their way into my house. This is an issue for me.

I do not care about flies that stay outside. Flies inside? No. Not welcome here. I find myself taking to them like Gandalf spoke to the Balrog deep in the Mines of Moria. I have walked around my living room, dining room, and kitchen proclaiming that houseflies “shall not pass” through the screens or around the doors. My husband and I have brought the swatters back out and we wield them like swords, we are searching for the electric traps we bought last summer, and have put sticky paper up on the windows they seem drawn to.

I have scrubbed the kitchen, poured boiling water down the sink drain, emptied the trash, recycling, and compost bins and kept them that way. I hurry Luna’s plate from the floor after she eats. Her dog door is inaccessible to her right now, and she must wait for us to open the solid door to let her in and out. I keep the dishwasher running or clean. Still, they come in. Today, I will purchase some peppermint essential oil, mix it with water, and spray it around the doors and windows.

As long as the chestnut tree is flowering the scent of it rises and disperses in the hot air, and the insects come. Of all the insects it calls, only the houseflies seem to want to add a tour of my house to their after-dinner entertainment. After ten days the flowers wilt (pollinated or not) and the flies go elsewhere (thank goodness!) Until then, I try to hold them away from my house. It is a battle. I become a warrior defending my own. I warn them, I usher out any smart enough to heed my words, and then I squish any that don’t. I don’t take any joy in this; but, honestly, I do find satisfaction in it. I have studied, taught, and still practice non-violence. I guess I still have some way to go with that: especially with ticks trying to suck the blood from anyone I love, and houseflies or ants trying to be squatters in my house.

If I knew then what I know now, I would not have planted the little chestnut sapling so near my house. I would have thought twice about planting it at all. Not only are the flowers stinky, but the nut hulls are spiky, indeed. I need leather gloves to gather them from the lawn each autumn. All this said, and my warrior spirit awoken, the tree is a living being who is part of my life. She is a neighbor. She shades the gardens from the worst of the summer sun; provides pollen for bees; an insect buffet for hungry, nesting birds; and many chestnuts for the neighborhood’s small mammals. The tree, like all we humans, is a living being and a big part of the ecosystem here in my gardens. Her life intersects with mine, and how I feel about the flies and the prickly-shells on my lawn are about me and my human concerns. The tree is tree. The human is human. We must find ways to live together because living together is how nature works. Now … where did I put that fly swatter?

Courage my dears. Live and let live within reason. Love one another.

The gardens I tend are looking well and growing along happily at this stage of the summer. The potatoes are beginning to flower (which means happy little tubers below the soil are “bulking up” now.)

The gooseberries are getting round.

And swallowtail caterpillars are munching the fennel in the front garden border.

Here, in the gardens I tend: in the life and death, flowers and roots, fruiting trees and invading vetch and bindweed, on the soil that I stand in and upon every day, neighbors and passersby stop to chat, to tell me how much they appreciate seeing the flowers, or going home with something from the Free Little Garden Shop. Here, the birds nest, fly around, eat insects, drink and bathe in the baths I keep filled for them. Here, the woodchuck risks his life to nibble the echinacea leaves (Luna hates woodchucks,) and the chipmunks tease her by popping out of one little tunnel only to drop down into another moments later.

Here, almost at mid-summer as measured in the old ways, one can forget for a few hours that the government of this nation of which I am a citizen, and in which I stand, is no longer really a government of the people. It is, right now, for all intents and purposes, an oligarchy and a kleptocracy. It serves the few as it sucks life and resources from the many. It does not need to be this way, though this is always the desired goal of patriarchal systems: preserve the status quo of who “has” and who “has not” by enriching the wealthy; empowering the powerful; glorifying violence; making Mystery in your own image; impoverishing the poor; doling out hope, entertainment, and social benefits in just the right amount to keep the citizenry quiet and content; victimizing the vulnerable and blaming them for what the elite are doing. It is a very unnatural, extractive, predatory system and it has had several millennia to perfect itself. It has done a good job of it, too. Many of us accept the lie that the way things have been are they way things must be. I pray we become accepting of the truth that the way things have been are not good for most, and we can make a future that is better than the past if we put our hearts, minds, and strength to doing so.

Democracies are like gardens in many ways: they need constant tending and reimagining. We have let our democracy go to weeds here in these not-so-United States. We need to rethink, re-envision, and re-energize a government of, by, and for all the people. We will need patience, persistence, and perseverance. We will need soil that does not support corruption at any level. We will need the people to participate; we will need leaders who listen deeply and represent their constituents and not their own self-interests. We need a vision that is big enough for all of us, and systems small and organic enough to ensure that no one is discounted or robbed of their agency.

When I garden, I start in one small space, and do as much as I can do well at that time. I collaborate and cooperate with the life of the garden: with the weather, the soil conditions, the pollinators, my own body’s reserves of energy. Then I rest, and then, I return to the work of the garden. This we must do with our own country, I think.

I believe it would be wise to start in our own backyards and grow our edges out into our neighborhoods, our towns and cities, our states, our nation, and the world we are a part of, though many wish to be apart from. Alas for them, it doesn’t work that way. We are one planet, one natural-world, one human-consciousness. E pluribus unum whether we like it, or not. We are all one. When our governments drop bombs, support genocides, despoil ecosystems near or far, we are harming ourselves right along with “others.” (Really, there are no “others,” there is only “us.”) May we awaken to this truth soon. May it be so.

Courage my dears. Love one another.

It always thrills me to see them emerge in early June and then, within days, twist and curl in and around themselves. This is the time to harvest: well before the flower opens and once the stem has had time to elongate. Then, of course, they must be chopped and frozen, or blended into a very potent, very garlicky, pesto. I did a lot of that yesterday until I ran out of steam around seven pm. I also ran out of ingredients for the pesto (pine nuts and Romano cheese) which I will purchase more of today.

The mother plants, deprived of their flowers, will now put all their energy into their bulbs. They will sit in the soil and photosynthesize. The bulbs will swell with water and sunshine which will alchemize into garlic which I will probably harvest next month when the leaves yellow and flop over. A taken-for-granted-miracle as absolutely profound as the multiplying of loaves and fishes. May we have eyes to see what is all around us. May it be so.

I have some “extra” garlic growing in the herb garden (it is extra only because I ran out of room in the vegetable garden) that I am going to let flower. From what I understand, the flower will mature and create “bulbils” which are tiny clones of the mother plant. The plan is that the bulbils will eventually fall to the ground and create “new garlic” which can be pulled in late spring next year when I am out of this summer’s abundance. Perennial garlic is something to celebrate.

When the garlic flops over, I know it is time to harvest. When the rhubarb flops, (and some of mine is doing just that) I know I have not given it the care it wants. Rhubarb, when stressed, just lies down on the ground, like an opossum. Several of my plants are lying down now. I will not be able to harvest tasty stalks from them again this year, and my harvest will be smaller (though still enough) this season. I ought to have divided them earlier this spring, but it was so cold for so long, and then there was so much else to do, that I didn’t get to it. So, when late September rolls around I will be digging and dividing, replanting and sharing.

Last night I was so tired I flopped down into bed, just like the rhubarb does. This is a busy season for gardeners. I visited a friend about my age late in the afternoon to help her reimagine her perennial border and consult on blueberry bush placement. We spoke about making the gardens in ways that naturally work well so we can continue to garden as we age. We spoke about growing and maturing right along with our gardens.

My gardens and I are getting there. Since today starts a short heatwave, and my body no longer handles heat well, I will be heading out the door with Luna in just a moment or two. I will water the zinnias, coreopsis, and echinaceas I planted yesterday. I will water everything in pots. I will refresh the bird baths. Luna and I will walk the neighborhood. Then I will come home, indoors, and give my body a gentler day or three. May it be so.

Courage my dears. Look around and know it is all miraculous. Love one another. Perhaps that would be the greatest miracle of all.

Some mornings my coffee cup empties way too soon. This morning is one of them, mostly because I slept fitfully, and dreamed that people I love are sick, and there is nothing I can do about it. Sigh.

There is so much to mourn, grieve, and be concerned about in our aching-world. It comes to me that Mystery, knowing this, gave us the huge souls (I believe our souls are immense, and that they hold our bodies and not the other way around as I was taught in Catechism;) big and tender hearts; and eyes that can see clearly only in our own immediate vicinities, in response.

Souls are unbound by time and space; hearts can be opened to compassion for all; eyes see what can be done right here, right now. This seems, to me, to be a trinity of wisdom we might all enter into. Certainly it changes everything for the one who enters into it; of course, it changes anyone touched by such a one; and, eventually, it changes the entire world just as the sea changes the shore.

May our souls hold the universe in the love in which they were created.

May our hearts cry, soothe, hold, hear, reach out, take in, tremble in awe, and love all.

May our eyes behold what is ours to do this moment, this morning, this day, this life.

May the three in the one of each of us, meet the moment, the morning, the day, our lives with courage. May we love one another. May it be so. Amen.

In the short dash between driveway and front door my husband and I were drenched in the pouring rain. The plants all loved it. Luna was glad we were home. This morning the world looks and smells fresh. I am not going to look at the news until later.

I did read the gospel story that Matthew’s book tells about his call to follow Jesus, the healing of the woman who had been bleeding for years, and the raising of Jairus’ daughter. Such good stories to start a day with, so full of miracle in situations that seem set and determined to end in ignominy, shame, and grief.

Then I thought of my own callings (we all have many more than one, I think.) I thought of my gardens as one of them, and I remembered some photos I took of a few plants and spaces I tend this week. I realized that all of creation is Mystery still writing sacred script into, onto, through, around, and within this world. Into, onto, through, around, and within us all. Yes. You and I are God’s artistry and expression in matter, time, and space if we choose to be so. We always have choice, and we all, sometimes, choose poorly, yet we all still have choice in every moment we still live.

These are the photos that helped me remember the commonplace holiness that is so easily overlooked only because Mystery has saturated us and this world with it.

“God said, let the land bring forth plants…. And it was so.” - Genesis 1:11

Above: Ninebark showing off her flowers by peeking through the railing on the back steps.

Above: Nepeta growing from the soil near the low deck that has become a potted-plant garden.

Top above (I cannot seem to type into that space): Clematis and astilbe.

Directly above: Peppermint in the same potted garden.

This world is sacred; this world is holy; this world is infused with miracles waiting to be seen, to be felt, to be heard, to be sensed in every way. All we need do is open our eyes, ears, minds, and hearts to what is already here, already happening, always waiting for us to notice. It will change us, it will call us from our busyness collecting what we say is owed us, to a richness of being that is already ours if we choose it.

May we choose it. May it be so.

Courage my dears. Love one another.

Radically Local

THE HUNGER GAP IS COMING (2 of 2)

The hunger gap exposes how fragile even small systems become when knowledge and responsibility are held in one place. What follows is not failure but redistribution: a collective learning how to carry food, trust, and continuity through hands that are no longer singular, but shared…

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a month ago · 33 likes · 4 comments · Margi Prideaux, PhD

I like to get things done. I need to trust a more organic, social, shared, and consensual approach to “getting things done.”

I need to remember that community is not about tasks and getting things done; community is about human beings, relationships, and life itself. Oh, my task orientation is sputtering with a million justifications of itself, but eventually, it must bow to this truth. Hopefully the bow is graceful instead of grasping. We shall see.

My inner and the outer worlds are shifting in tandem. It is a bit unsettling, as growth and realization always are. It leaves me feeling woozy in time and space; ensures I pay attention and step purposely onto solid ground.

Many of us are feeling world-woozy right now, I think. Our nation has moved from a model of democracy to a flailing kakistocracy in under two years of the current regime. Corruption rules. Ignorance is lauded. Science is disregarded. Education is no longer something to seek and be proud of. Women, girls, people of color, and anyone with a different opinion, are losing their rights, and some their very lives. Meanwhile, other autocrats from other countries manipulate our country into doing their will, and artificial intelligence infiltrates the world’s systems unchecked.

The human world is in flux. The natural world goes on being natural, goes on finding ways and spaces to live and thrive despite out extractive, destructive, systems. The world will go on long after the animals now populating it have become fossils. That includes us. That said, we are not all fossils yet; we are living beings, human beings, creative beings, communal beings.

I am praying this morning that our steps, our visions, our actions and words and prayers, become very intentional now. May we imagine a human-world worthy of this beautiful planet we live on. May we have the courage to see that every human system of power and governance is made by human beings, and can thus be unmade and/or remade. None of it is real or inevitable. Patriarchy is a human construct. All economies are human constructs. Governments, militaries, religions, food-systems, school systems, medical systems, social systems; all created and managed by human beings who, like me, can get caught up in tasks, processes, and power-holding.

May our sight come clear. May we see through our own blind-spots. May we become fully realized human beings. May we have courage and love one another. May it be so.

I met a neighbor yesterday. Her ancestors and mine lived in neighboring towns on a volcanic island in the Mediterranean Sea, and now she and I live half-way around the world, half-way around a spacious block of streets from one another, in a suburban town just south of Hartford, Connecticut. Small world.

She walked from her home to mine with an envelope on which she had written her first name and street address. She (brave woman if she is an introvert like me) crossed the property line of the sidewalk, walked up the path to my front door, climbed two steps, and rang the doorbell. Husband opened the door, and the brave woman said, “I have something for the person who makes these gardens.” My husband called for me.

When I greeted her and stepped onto the front porch with her she told me her first name, pointed to it on the envelope, and then opened the envelope and handed me an index card with four tiny plastic bags of labeled seed: 50 strawberry seeds, 50 blueberry seeds, 50 raspberry seeds, 50 blackberry seeds.

“My son sent me these seeds. I don’t know how to make a garden, I don’t know how to start seeds.” She looked out at the blooming front borders then back at me. “You do. These seeds are for you.” She smiled and handed me 200 gifts.

“Thank you. Where are they from?”

“My son lives in Florida, and the seeds are from Texas somewhere.” That was all she volunteered, there was no why or how, it was just enough to give me some provenance.

She looked at the gardens again, “So, you are an expert?”

“My dad taught me to garden, and then I just kept learning new things and trying new things.” She nodded and asked my name.

“Melina,” I replied.

“Are you Italian like me?”

“My father’s people are from Sicily. My mother’s from Ireland and France.” Her eyes lit up when I mentioned the island.

She told me the name of her own ancestral town (which is a very long name that I cannot now remember) and where it is located (somewhere in the eastern half of Sicily near the volcano.) I told her that my own kin hailed from nearby hers in the tiny town of Melilli. We shared our ancestral names, and a thread was spun between us: two elder-women whose ancestors maybe knew one another, but who themselves had never met even though we had lived within a quarter mile of one another for decades, brought together by two hundred tiny seeds sent by someone I do not know to a mother who does not garden but who has been moved by the generosity of a Free Little Garden Shop by the sidewalk she walks down most days.

The serendipity of this feels like Spirit at play. I wrote yesterday (in different words than these) that I am realizing that the dimensions of the community I desire are much larger and wider and more inclusive than I have yet imagined. I, the introvert, am a bit hesitant, so someone I didn’t know has an idea to walk from her house to mine with four tiny packets of seeds, ring my doorbell, and gift them to me based on nothing but what she has seen from the sidewalk, and a feeling she has. This, in my experience, is exactly how Mystery does things. What a wonder.

Courage my dears. Love one another.

I will write about this in a day or two: the phone; and also a bout of “cyber-sickness” I recently experienced, a form of motion sickness which is an actual thing apparently; and a realization that my desire for community is calling me into increased vulnerability. I still need some perspective. I need to see my friend and make amends. I need to see myself more clearly. I need to walk my own talk. Those last two, especially.

Until then, I will share a link to a reflection I wrote for the most recent issue of Intercommunity Peace and Justice Center’s quarterly publication, A Matter of Spirit. The current issue focuses on housing justice. Check this wonderful organization out and, if you are social-justice-oriented, sign up for their emails.

Here is the link. May the articles within it give you clarity and heart. May it be so.

https://ipjc.org/a-matter-of-spirit/

Courage my dears. Love one another.

Post Script: an old bio of mine was used by the publisher in error. To be clear, I am now retired from the seminary.

(Read with apologies for a gravelly voice and a few verbal stumbles.)

When my sibling and I were little children he was terribly affected by spring pollen. I was not. He had red, itchy, eyes. Not me. His nose was stuffy and runny. Not mine.

The Universe, in its mysterious ways, has since flipped the script on us both. He no longer struggles with the symptoms of seasonal allergies and I do. I am glad for him and enduring it for myself.

For the last few days my eyes have been itchy. Really itchy. My under eyes are puffy. My body seems to find pollen as an invader of sorts when it never used to, creating a histamine response to the lovemaking between plants and pollinators. It is at its worst for an hour or so after I rise, and gets better during the day.

The vegetable garden is fully-planted except for the cucumbers which I will plant in today now that there are no more chilly nights on the horizon. Once I pull the garlic and shallot bulbs and early potatoes from the soil in mid to late July I will have space for some late-sown bush beans, carrots, and fall greens. I am watching for the pole beans, amaranth, and sunflowers to emerge; I sowed them as seeds direct into the garden. So far any signs of life are still below ground and I must wait and walk slowly beside the rows peering intently at the soil.

The tomatoes and eggplant are all potted up and in their places in the greenhouse. I gave them a good water and liquid seaweed feed yesterday, and they actually seemed visibly taller by the end of the day when I checked on them and closed the greenhouse for the night.

The Free Little Garden Shop has given away all the vegetable seedlings it had to share. except for two pots full of very tiny tomato plants left; I will continue to baby them until they, too, go to a new home.

The very pretty young oak tree was adopted. I found this little tree hiding next to the lace-cap hydrangea last summer, and I waited until this spring (while it was still dormant) to dig it up from the garden and pot it on. Once it leafed out I noticed it had developed oak leaf galls, so I waited some more. These galls are harmless to the trees and house the larvae of Oak Gall Wasps, benign little creatures that have no stingers, cause no damage, and are part of the native ecosystem. This photo is from Wikipedia.

Once the galls were split open and dried (which means the larvae had dropped to the soil for a year underground) I nipped them from the tree and put it out for adoption. I hope it provides some shade for its humans, nuts for the squirrels and chipmunks, and food and shelter for countless generations of birds as it lives out its long life. May it be so.

I think what the Free Little Garden Shop does best, though, is build connections. It uses plants to connect humans. People I know slightly, or don’t yet know at all, stop. They browse; and if I am in the front gardens, we wave, or speak. Some folks call blessings from their cars as they drive past, or leave notes of blessing weighted under an empty pot they have returned. People tell me their stories, their worst fears and greatest hopes, all as we stand on the sidewalk or walk through the gardens I invite them to see more of.

Now this has always been the way for me. I am a story-holder by nature; a spiritual director by training and practice. I am become a plant-woman. My hands are green beneath the dirt and skin. Somehow, Mystery in all goodness, has woven my gifts together. I am a braided being: story, soil, and soul, all of one elder-woman in a suburban space a friend once named “Generosity Gardens.” I am a most fortunate woman.

It seems so natural to me (if you will forgive the pun.) These are some of my gifts and growing edges; things that seem easy to me (like growing and sharing plants,) and things that stretch and scare me a little (an introvert reaching out into the community.) What is it that is natural for you?

May we all live into the ways that give us life. May it be so.

Courage my dears. Be Who You Are. Do what is yours to do. Love one another.

This, of course, made me clear space for them in what has been a rather untended herbaceous perennial bed. I pulled out many bittersweet vines trying to grow there (they try to grow everywhere here, seemingly intent on strangling all their green sisters, brothers, and cousins, as they chase life - sort of like the would-be-oligarchs of our own current politics (right down to the color of the president’s makeup.) I recognize the leaves now, my eyes trained to spot them among all shapes and hues of foliage. Actually, bittersweet has taught me that many plants have roots the same color as their fruit: bittersweet berries and roots are bright orange, beet root stems and leaves mirror their sweet and earthy root bulbs, purple potatoes have purple hues inside their flowers, and white potatoes have white-only flowers. As above, so below.

I also dug up a couple of baby coneflowers, Echinacea purpurea, and then my eyes lit on a leaf that I knew I knew, but couldn’t name in the moment. I knew I had seen it before, but not there, so where did I know it from? I used the app “PlantNet” and it told me I had come across a volunteer Witch Hazel, Hamamelis vernalis. The Witch Hazel, from the Old English, “wych” “bendable and pliable,” is used for dowsing rods, and was honored as being a tree of knowledge and protection. My large Witch Hazel had gifted the gardens with an offspring. I dug the baby out, potted her on, gave her a drink, and today I will place her in an empty space along the back fence where she can grow happily (I hope) to the end of her days. Here is a photo of the mother-hazel blooming in February.

After clearing spots for the bushes, I dug into soil I haven’t disturbed in a couple years now. It was rich, damp, full of worms, and smelled clean and slightly sweet (you do pick up handfuls of soil to hold to your nose and inhale deeply, don’t you? Doesn’t everyone?) It also contained tiny white filaments: mycorrhizae: the stuff of life. I always feel like I have uncovered treasure when I find these fungi in my soil. Truth be told, I held this handful of soil carefully and interrupted my husband’s lawn mowing to show him. He, with interests elsewhere, was less impressed than I was though he nodded and smiled patiently, but the soil cares little about what either of us think, after all. I brought the mycorrhizae back to its neighborhood to let it get on with its life.

The wind-chill temperatures yesterday were in the mid-thirty degrees Fahrenheit where I garden, and the wind brought in showers and some down pours. Luna and I spent the afternoon indoors, tending the fire in the wood stove.

This morning is bright, calm, and beautiful. Finally a weekend day with good weather. I am going to finish my coffee, get dressed, and head out to check on the gardens, stock the Free Little Garden Shop, harvest some rhubarb, chives, lovage, sage, tarragon, and red raspberry leaves, then tidy, plant into, and move around some of the plants in the front gardens. All good things.

Today, may the ground hold us, the soil feed us, the sky give us rain or shine as we need it, the water quench us, and the fire in our souls and bellies warm us. May it be so.

Courage my dears. Love one another.