Cherry Tree Surrender

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Cherry tree with multiple yellow leaves with brown spots.

I planted this Lapins Cherry seven years ago, and did all kinds of care for it over the years. Holistic sprays, pruning, copper spray this spring. But we only had one cherry ever to eat from it, and each year it continues to have problems. Each time, I looked up what to do, and tried all sorts of things. It seems to be a fungal disease. The latest advice I read was to pick off all the diseased leaves from the branches and the ground. I seem to remember trying that last year. But you can see that would be an enormous amount of work, and maybe it wouldn’t even fix the problem. We had very few blossoms, and saw very few green cherries, maybe two or three.

close up of yellow cherry leaves with brown spots

So today I made the sad decision to give up. Some things in the garden seem to do well, even on their own. The raspberries just started ripening. The chives are perennially yummy. Even the peach tree has given us a harvest some years. Today I ate a mulberry from our mulberry tree! The third principle of Permaculture Design is “Obtain a Yield.” But this tree has never given a yield, no matter how much time and energy I put into it. I probably hung on too long, and tried too hard over the years. I don’t tend to give up easily. Sadly, this also means giving up on the other cherry, with similar problems. While the Lapins can be self-fertile, the Black Tartarian needs another cherry for fertilization. It too has issues, though I don’t see it as often because it sits behind the Lapins when I look out my window. One more thing I feel sad about is that the birds love to perch in the tree on their way to the bird feeder or bird bath.

Because the diseases are fungal, we won’t want to compost the leaves or branches. So my current “plan” is to prune off smaller branches one by one and bag them to go out in the trash. It takes quite a bit of energy in any case, so I will work on it bit by bit over the summer. I started today.

cherry leaves and branches in trash bag

So this post isn’t like the many websites that offer suggestions for saving dying cherry trees. This is about letting go. This is about accepting failure. This is about sadness and grief, and recognizing our limitations. This is about surrender to the larger forces in the natural world that determine which plants thrive in which places, and which plants cannot. This is about humility in our relationship to the earth community.

I am reminded of a song that meant a lot to me when I was wrestling with chronic illness and the decision to retire from work. Colbie Caillat, Try. In the lyrics is this constant refrain, “You don’t have to try so hard, you don’t have to bend until you break…” The song is mostly about trying to get other people to like you, but it spoke to me about trying so hard to keep up with work that I loved, when I truly did not have the energy for anything like full-time work anymore. It was okay to let go. I was lucky. I had reached the age of 65 where I could access Medicare and Social Security. I feel for all of my fellow chronic illness buddies who have had much harder survival journeys. We live in such a cruel society that offers so little support for people with illness. None of us should have to try so hard, to bend until we break.

Tree frog tadpoles

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With the heat, and the need to tend the vegetables, I’ve rather neglected the pond this year. I haven’t spent as many hours just sitting nearby looking for frogs and enjoying the plants. Today I walked back to take a look, and discovered that we have tadpoles! And I hadn’t seen ones like this before, with orangish tails. Doing a little internet research, I discovered that these are tree frog tadpoles. They have the capacity to color their tales when they are exposed to predators like dragonfly nymphs, which we are also likely to have in the pond. Amazing! According to researchers, the orange tails protect them by the tails being targeted by predators, rather than more vulnerable parts of their bodies. I do remember when the tree frog was calling its distinctive song from the pond earlier in the season.

very round tadpoles with orange tails in greenish water

Meanwhile, our water lilies have been really healthy this season, and another strange color phenomenon has taken place there. We have white water lilies, but one has turned pink around the edges. I couldn’t find any explanation for this color change.

water lily, white petals, yellow center, and pink lower petals, surrounded by green round leaves in water

Despite my neglect, the pond seems to be thriving this season. We’ve had lovely marsh marigolds, and blue flag irises in their turn, as well as sweetflag, and the arrowhead plants are abundant. They bloom later. The lily pads are more numerous than in prior years, which helps to cool the water and make safe places for tadpoles. These mysteries of life and beauty feed my spirit during troubling times.

pond with abundant green lily pads and a few flowers blooming, with reed like plants behind.

Birth Stories

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This month I am experiencing my first birthday without my mother, Mitzy. She took her final breaths on June 1st at the age of 92, surrounded by five of her nine children. She had been drifting away for several months, and we could no longer communicate over the phone. I haven’t been well enough to travel, so I relied on my siblings to communicate my love to her. I feel so grateful that she had such a long life, and a peaceful gentle death.

It is really quite amazing that I had 72 birthdays while she was alive. She would love to share with me the stories of my birth, her first born. How my dad didn’t make it because he was in the army and I came before my due date. He arrived a couple days later after driving through the night from his base down south. My mom was living with her mother while he was away, and my aunt Nancy and uncle Jim brought my mom to the hospital. In those days, it was common to sedate women giving birth, so even though I was born about 10 p.m., I didn’t really meet my mother face to face until the next morning. She would describe her astonishment at this “little Mitzy” in her arms. She was hoping for a girl, and decided to name me Mike, because she’d babysat a little girl named Mike, and thought it was a cute unusual name for a girl. (I changed the spelling later in life.) In those early days, before I could remember anything, I know that I was loved and cherished and welcomed into this life.

Black & white photo of Mitzy and Rich smiling , holding baby Myke who is smiling too, looking at a little mirror held by MItzy.
Mitzy, Rich, and baby Myke (age about 9 months old)

So now that I have reached my 73rd birthday, I suddenly realize that there is no longer anyone who was present on that day. That cloud of witnesses have all passed beyond this world. My aunt Nancy died only last November at the age of 100. My own siblings were not yet born. Such a strange feeling–to be the holder of these stories without the others who lived them and told them to me. And I know how lucky I am, that I had so many years to share the stories and the love held within them. I think that is why I needed to tell the stories to myself today here in writing, to remember.

I imagine that this moment comes to everyone who lives long enough say goodbye to their parents, and to be the oldest in the family. A kind of entry into another layer of elderhood. I am not a mother or grandmother, but I am an aunt, a great-aunt, and even a great-great aunt. And always, the oldest sister.

Here is another picture of my mother and me, from 2010. We certainly had our challenges over the years. There were many things about my life that took me far away from hers, both literally and figuratively. But there was always at the root, love. Here is a link to her obituary that describes more of her life as she understood and lived it. https://www.leavittfuneralhome.com/obituaries/Carol-Louise-Mitzy-Johnson

Smiling white women with reddish brown hair, one middle-aged, one older, with floral-pattern shirt, and turquoise shirt, sitting next to each other. Trees in the background.

Thanks mom, for giving birth to me, for welcoming me into the world, and into your heart, for always keeping the doors of your heart open for me and so many others, too. You taught me hospitality, fairness, warmth, kindness, and always sticking up for the underdog.

Solstice Fledging

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Four nestling robins on a beam next to their nest.

It is Solstice morning, and as always these days, I look out the back door to check on the robin’s nest. I find the four nestlings have all jumped out of the nest and are perching on the beam. They preen their feathers and move around.

Parent robin with the four nestlings on the beam.

Parent robin flies in to join them. We can’t tell the difference between the mom and the dad–they both come round to feed the babies.

One baby robin perches on the edge of the beam, its claw like feet over the edge. The other three are in the background, two back in the nest.

One of the babies is perching on the edge of the beam, eager! A moment later, they take the leap and fly down to the deck.

Blurry image of baby robin taking flight down from the beam. Others watching from background.
Baby robin now a fledgling poised on the floor of the deck.

“What am I doing down here? I did it! I flew. I think I will fly some more. Up to that little table with a pink rose.”

on the left is a pink rose flower in a turquoise vase. the fledgling is posed to the right of it looking right.

“Now what? I think I will fly some more.”

Fledgling on top of gray canvas cover, green blurry background.

The fledgling sits on top of the woodpile cover, a few chirps that I imagine are saying, “Mom, Dad, where are you? I’m out here in the big world. Help!”

Small fledgling seen through deck rails with backyard in the background, netted raised bed, trees, grass.

Eventually, the parent robins come nearby, enticing the baby with juicy worms, calling to them from nearby perches, and even coming to the woodpile cover to encourage them. Finally, one of them calls from the garage roof, and the baby flies up there to be with them. But quickly flies up to the deck roof, and then somewhere else, I don’t see it.

Adult robin perched on garage roof, and you can see the feet and part of the body of the fledgling coming into view from above.

I lost track of them then, and went outside to look around the driveway, and then I see what turns out to be another fledgling flying toward the neighbors house, and trying to grab onto the side, but floating down. Later, it emerged from their flower bed onto the grass, and the parent went to that one to lure them into a safer place. They seem to want them to be in hidden places, no doubt.

The other two nestlings decide to huddle in the nest to recover from all this excitement. Meanwhile, I come inside to eat breakfast and marvel at the miracles of birds and growth and life. So this is my gratitude for this Summer Solstice of 2026. May life and growth and wonder fill your hearts today. May this season be filled with such moments of wonder.

Beauty of the Roadside Border

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Roadside flower bed with purple siberian irises blooming, and yellow turkish rocket, and many other plants crowded together next to a sidewalk.

The border I created next to the road is perhaps the most beautiful it has ever been. Right now, Siberian Irises are blooming in their blue-purple glory, set off by the cloud of yellow of the Turkish rocket, volunteer white daisies and a patch of white irises, along with the green of other perennial leaves filling in the gaps. The purple is reflected in 3 patches of Bachelor Buttons/perennial blue cornflowers, and 3 patches of Spiderwort. I just love looking out our front window and seeing this flourishing of my favorite color. Later, there will be a lot of yellow flowers. That was the original theme–yellow and blue/purple hardy perennials. We also encouraged milkweed to seed itself in the in between spaces, hopefully offering nurseries for monarch butterflies.

close up of purple Siberian Irises.

I’ve been trying to garden this spring, bit by bit, with what energy I can muster. For the roadside border, that just meant some weeding of crabgrass this year. I appreciate plants that take care of themselves and give so much! We also harvested sea kale earlier on, and chives, and asparagus. But something about the state of the world inspired me to plant more vegetables from seed, so now we have kale and carrots in one raised bed, broccoli and beets seedlings in the hugelmound, snap peas and zucchini in one raised bed in the front yard, and beans and yellow zucchini in the other. We also have potato plants in a grow bag on the patio, and cucumbers in a pot on the deck.

What has been harder to plant, I am not sure why, has been the seeds of ideas for writing in this blog. But this week I have been reading a book by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, “Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice.” Perhaps it is her stories of trying to write as a chronically ill queer femme of color, her openness about the ups and downs of activism, creativity, and survival. Perhaps it is the feeling of a community of writers that once upon a time I felt connected to. It is a great book for so many reasons other than those. The kind of book that sparks one to think differently about disability and justice and care. Please do check it out. But for whatever reason, each day when I read a section, I find wisdom for living the life I am living right now.

There is so much that is horrific happening in our world these days. It all feels overwhelming to me. I don’t have the capacity to write about all of that. Perhaps that is part of why I haven’t been able to write here. I can bear witness, I can pray. But it is so overwhelming. Or perhaps I can’t write because of the further diminishment of energy in this chronic but always variable illness that surrounds my living. It seems to rob me of motivation and the urge to create. Perhaps I am not sure of the connection between illness and “the spiritual journey to earth community,” which I defined as the guiding topic of this blog site. Leah Lakshmi’s voice somehow affirms the validity of illness as a topic for writing, for activism, for imagining.

So who knows if I will be able to blog some more, but for some reason, today, between the beauty of the roadside border and the beauty of Care Work, I found some inspiration, and I am grateful for that.

Stirrings of Life

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Deep snow in and on a ranch house with dark grey cedar shingles and white shutters. In front of the house are yew bushes, and in the snow are several tracks crisscrossing the yard. A sign that says Wildlife Sanctuary.

Today is Imbolc, the cross-quarter day in the cycle of the year between winter solstice and spring equinox. It celebrates the new stirrings of life under the cold of snow. When I took a walk this morning, I saw the well-traveled paths of deer in our back and front yards, and decided to follow the road where I could see them also in other yards. So my walk took a different direction, and I noticed that most of the deer paths led to yew bushes, in our yard and in other yards. Winter food. I am happy that our little sign marking us as a Wildlife Habitat is still true in winter. I notice they also visit the bird feeder, and drink from the water we leave out there in a heated bird bath.

This winter has been more like old winters with lots of snow, and temperatures below freezing for days on end. For some reason, the deep snow comforts me in the face of another kind of ICE, the cruel and relentless attacks on immigrant neighbors, especially in Minnesota, but then for the last couple weeks intensifying here in Maine as well. Just a mile from our house, an 18 year old boy was taken, Jean-Pierre Obiang, a student at the University of Southern Maine. I am one of those radicals that believe borders are not the way, but even so, most of the people ICE has detained, including Jean-Pierre, are fully documented and following the legal process for being in the United States.

Like so many others, I have been devastated by the murders of legal observers Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis and the lesser known murder of Keith Porter, Jr. in Los Angeles. But I have also been inspired and heartened by the up-swelling of community resistance and mutual aid that have filled the streets of Minneapolis and spread across the country. I have been inspired by my clergy colleagues here in Maine who have stood out in the cold to protect immigrant workers on their way in and out of their jobs. I follow along on social media, and try to spread the word.

And today, in another stirring of new life, came the news that five-year old Liam and his father Adrian were brought back safe to Minnesota by Congressman Joaquin Castro. They should never have been taken, and Liam’s face, in his little blue bunny hat, as ICE was trying to use him as bait to capture other members of his family, was seared into my heart. I prayed every day for them to come home from where they were held in Texas, and now I am so grateful that they are home. But how long will it be before all the children, and all the families, and all the people are set free? May the stirring of Imbolc light the fires of resistance and interconnection for all of us.

Stillness

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Snowy setting, dark green bird feeder with three birds, a chickadee and two finches.

I have much less energy than I used to. I notice it in my spiritual practices. I don’t seem to do rituals anymore such as lighting candles or building a fire in the yard. I haven’t written a blog post for a month. All that I still do is to write in my journal each morning, and if I can, take a short walk to the nearby Capisic Brook. During each of these, I express gratitude for my life, and sometimes I ask for help. This is my spiritual practice now.

I am grateful for a new day of living. When I reach the brook, I turn to the four directions. To the East, I express my gratitude for the sky, for birds, for their singing. To the South, I am grateful for the sun, for fire, for plants. To the west, I am grateful for water, for the brook, for snow on the ground. To the North, I am grateful for soil, for animals, for the earth.

I am still trying to learn and speak Passamaquoddy/Wolastoqey, so I speak these gratitudes in the Wabanaki language of this place. I can do these sentences, but I’ve reached a point in my learning that is very challenging. I don’t know if it is my tired brain that can’t move forward, or if it is the differences between the shape of the language and the shape of English. My teachers seem pleased with my progress, but I can’t seem to get my mind to think in the language even when I am listening to the language. Still, one of the primary lessons I have learned is the importance of gratitude, so perhaps that will be enough if I can’t do more. I am grateful for the gift of learning the language.

I still have my questions about what this time of my life is all about. The limits of illness keep me from activism in a time of great oppression and cruelty in our country. Genocide continues and my heart hurts with not being able to do anything. I count it a good day when I can bring fresh water to the birds, fill the feeder with new sunflower seeds, and then do our dishes and prepare meals to eat. Still, the birds continue with their small lives, happy to eat the seeds and drink water. So perhaps they are my teachers. Grateful for food and water. Can it be enough?

Two bluebirds perches on a circular heated bird bath.

What Is Hidden

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gray day photo, snow covered ground, dark green bird feeder on pole, bush branches nearby, faintly visible tracks in the snow

At 4 a.m. this morning, I woke in the dark of the night to pee. On the way back to bed, I saw a shadow outside the window. It was a bright night, with white snow on the ground, and a clouded sky backlit by a full moon. I opened the curtain and saw that the shadow was a small deer by the bird feeder. It was investigating the seeds on the ground below, and perhaps the water in the heated bird bath. Then it walked toward me and made its way through the orchard, passing over to the side of the house and then toward the road.

So beautiful. Things that are hidden, and then revealed. I had seen deer tracks since the snow fell a few days ago, but we rarely see the creatures themselves as they pass through our yard. What a thing to be awake at 4, and gazing toward the windows. As I lay back down in bed, I wanted to remember the blessing of the moment, not lose it to sleep. So I fed phrases to my mind, like “that which is hidden” and made associations, like, “I should pull up the small green fence around the licorice patch, so the deer won’t get caught in it if the snow covers it.” I took this photo this morning. Of course, the deer is gone, hidden again. But some tracks remain, reminding me of all that I cannot see.

All of this also made me think of a photo I recently discovered, that I had never seen before. One of my relatives had posted it. It is a picture of my grandmother Yvonne (née Tremblay), with grandfather John Hochreiter and their two oldest children, about 1921. I had seen a photo of Yvonne when she married, in 1916, and a photo when she was holding me as a baby, sometime before she died in June of 1954. But this one brought to life a young woman in her early twenties, surrounding by her family. So much of her life was hidden from me, not by any conscious decision by anyone. My mother was the youngest of eight children, so perhaps this time before her birth was hidden from her as well. What a gift to get a small glimpse into their lives, over one hundred years ago now.

sepia toned photo of young woman and man seated on a park bench, holding two boys, one next to woman on the bench, and one on man's lap.

Last night before I fell asleep I prayed to the Spirits I have known. The moon, the cardinals, the frogs, mother Earth. Is seeing the deer a sign of connection? That my prayers are heard? Spirits, thank you for the gift of seeing that which is usually hidden. May we always remember that so much is hidden.

No Kings

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Three inflatable frog people standing in front of a building at an anti-ICE demonstration in Portland, OR. Text: Exodus 8:2-6 "But if you refuse to let them go, I will plague your whole country with frogs... The frogs shall come up on you and on your people and on all your officials."

In the midst of cruelty and oppression, where does hope emerge? For me, it was seeing the protesters in Portland, Oregon dress in inflatable frog costumes, exposing the lie that Portland was a war zone, or that protesters were violent. In the face of armed and masked ICE agents, people responded with this creative and playful spontaneity. First there was one frog, and then it expanded to many frogs, and other silly costumed beings. Then someone else remembered this quote from Exodus about the plague of frogs. Perfect.

October 18th is NO KINGS day, and thousands of peaceful protests are planned for across the country. I can’t go out to one, but I can voice my support here. Support for democracy, support for the beautiful diversity that can make our communities full and alive, support for immigrants, support for trans siblings, and all queer people, support for disabled people and black people and indigenous people, Asian and Latino/a/x people. We need to keep expressing our vision of a multi-cultural country bound together by equality, justice, and full participation.

May the frogs multiply and spread the good word. Keep hope alive!

Green frog sitting in pond water, nearby there is a bee on a rock, and black tadpoles swimming around, and maple seeds floating.
Three frogs sitting on slate rocks
three more frogs on rocks and in water

September Musings

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Four huge turkeys in the shade of some green grass, behind leaves of zucchini in the front corner of the photo

The summer garden had some successes and some fails. And it is sometimes hard to tell which is which. This turkey family visited the yard many days, and walked through the garden beds in the back. They mostly left the veggies alone, except they liked to eat the tops off the bean plants. We still got a few beans even so. And they left alone the zucchinis, which did well, the cucumbers which did fair, and the broccoli, also fair. We appreciated their visits–we want to support wildlife after all.

However, we tried to lessen our support for the chipmunks and squirrels that became such little rogues. Despite netting over the blueberries, once they figured out they could squeeze holes into it, they got the rest of the blueberries, though we did get a bunch before that. I am happy to say that the baffle on the bird feeder totally worked. They never got up to the feeder after the baffle was installed. So I am hoping that without all that extra food to stash, the population won’t explode like it did this year. The long game. And the birds keep coming back to the feeder.

In the front yard, we never had monarchs lay eggs on our milkweed plants, despite their visit. Maybe next year? The netting on our kale and carrot bed was a great success. It protected the kale from cabbage moths, and no one tried to get into it. We have a ton of kale harvested and still to harvest.

Rectangle garden bed filled with green kale of two kinds, covered over with a translucent net on white metal supports.

The robins never came back to their nest on our back porch after the babies had been attacked. Still so sad about that. We’ve had some lovely visits with human friends out by the pond. The pond water level went down with the drought, but this weekend’s rain helped, especially after adding water from the newly filled rain barrels. Still a few frogs, though I am not sure about the tadpoles. They hide under the lily pads, and it’s a lucky day to see them.

And… and… and… Gaza is still being attacked night and day, and starved by blockades. International resistance is growing but too slowly for the people killed each day. I keep bearing witness, and praying. It’s the same with the rising fascism of our country, and the attacks on immigrants both documented and undocumented, and citizens who are brown or black or speak Spanish. The only thing that gives me hope are the multiple levels of resistance from huge demonstrations to lawsuits to governors who slap back. Here we do the best we can to get by, day by day, accepting our situation as elders and those who are chronically ill. In the face of so much cruelty and hate, we add our little love to the mix, hoping to be part of the larger Love which is our only real hope.