Category Archives: Awake to Earth

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.

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.

Fighting with Squirrels (and Chipmunks)

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White netting draped over two blueberry bushes, using fence stakes

The intent of our permaculture gardening is to create a mutually beneficial relationship with the earth and all her creatures. But lately, it feels like a little backyard battle. The squirrels have literally eaten all of the green peaches off our peach tree. (Last year there seemed to be enough for all of us.) They have been also eating raspberries, hazelnuts (still green) and mulberries, but I sort of gave up on all of those. I have tried to protect these two blueberry bushes by covering them with netting, garden-stapled down, and using clothes pins to close the side opening. I have actually harvested some blueberries. But the last couple days, they’ve pushed their way through holes they make in the netting. When I see them, I run out yelling and clapping, and they dart around the edges to find their way out and run away.

To be fair, there is another variable this summer. I stopped filling the bird feeder some weeks back because the chipmunks would immediately climb up, fill their cheeks, climb down, and transport the seed to their underground lairs; and then repeat until all the seed was gone. The squirrels also took a fair amount. I wonder if the sunflower seeds were the tribute I had been paying to our little neighbors that ensured that they’d save us a few peaches? But yesterday, perhaps I upped the ante, because I installed a baffle on the feeder, and coated the pole with coconut oil. I really do want to feed the birds, not all the greedy chipmunks and squirrels. So here is the new set-up, (the bush is at least five feet away–I pruned it to make sure):

Green metal bird feeder with clear plastic baffle a few inches down, in front of a green bush background.

Margy and I have a little side bet going as to when they might be able to breach these new security measures. It has been up for twenty-four hours so far. No squirrels, chipmunks so far. But the birds haven’t come back yet either. The next few days will tell. And in case it isn’t easy to see, the original bird-feeder is also “squirrel-proof,” with a weight dependent bar that drops down to close the seed opening. But they figured that out long ago. They are so smart, and acrobatic. In many ways I love them. But I don’t love that they take all the fruit in our garden.

Anyway, I just needed to write about this other side of gardening. I am so impressed by the work farmers do! If we relied only on our own gardening skills, we would go hungry. But perhaps this is one of the lessons I am learning about how to be in a mutually beneficial relationship with the earth, and during climate warming too. We are all under a lot of stress, trying to survive. We don’t have complete systems in place, we don’t have our own ancestral knowledge, we are trying to recover from great imbalance. So we keep showing up, keep going outside, keep being grateful for the gifts of the earth.

And these days, I can’t write about anything food-related without also expressing rage at the intentional starvation of the Palestinians in Gaza by the state of Israel. They destroyed their farms and gardens, and destroyed access to water, and access to help from outside. How many more people will die before the world powers stop this genocide?

Monarch and milkweed

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Orange and black monarch butterfly is flying above milkweek plants with green leaves and pinks flower clusters.

Today a monarch butterfly finally found our little milkweed patch in our roadside garden bed.

Last year, three plants appeared there on their own, and in late July we saw a caterpillar. In the spring we scattered some fluffy seedpods in the soil hoping to expand the numbers. This year we have a patch of about a dozen. As they grew and then bloomed, I’d look out the front windows, hoping to see a monarch. But nothing until today. It is amazing that the monarchs can find such tiny patches of milkweed, scattered in city neighborhoods.

In the midst of all that is heavy, it feels good to support these far-traveling little migrants.

Robin survivor?

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This morning there was more excitement concerning the sole surviving baby robin. It had walked out from the nest onto the nearby beam, even into the next section of beam. So it was alive! But the parents went back and forth calling several times. I was watching through the glass of the back door, hoping that they would find it and feed it. Then, finally, one of the parents brought the baby a big mouthful of worms–and just as it got them it its mouth, it fell down to the deck below. There it sat, seemingly stunned for a long time. I kept watch, not wanting it to be gotten by some predator, but also not knowing what to do. I even put in a call to Avian Haven, but it was before business hours. (8:30 a.m.) I wondered if it was injured.

Finally, I went outside, and went near to it, and it started to walk away. It seemed able to walk, but it never flapped its wings like it was trying to fly. Too young I think. Only 9 days old. So I gently picked it up and put it back up into the nest. And it seemed like that might work, and the parents came back and forth, and fed it up on the ledge, where it had once again walked on to. The parents were both very solicitous and sometimes called to the chick, and sometimes scolded at me. When Avian Haven called back (after I had put it back in the nest) they suggested that if the parents were still attending to the chick, it was best to leave it with them, and not take it away.

However, would you believe it? It once again fell or jumped from the beam and landed on the deck again. It was lying on its side but then righted itself quickly and literally walked over to our glass door and looked up at me. As if to say, “help, here I am on the deck again.” So fierce its little face!

Margy was here by now, and we knew a grocery delivery would be coming soon to the back porch, so there was that pressure. So finally I went out on the deck with a shoebox, thinking to put it in that for safety, but it quickly walked away along the wall and jumped off the deck (about 2 1/2 feet down maybe) and was in a little side corner near the steps with no way out. I thought I’d try to get it to jump in the box–but by now it was acting more lively. When my hand came over its head, though, it opened its beak as if I might feed it. I was able to shoo it toward the open box, but once in the box it did not like that at all, so I quickly brought it over to the other side of the porch steps and set it onto a patch of ground cover plants. Then it decided to walk under the deck, out of my sight.

The whole morning I was never sure what to do, to leave everything alone, or to help, and in what way. I don’t know why the parents kept calling to the chick. It reminded me of when they were trying to get their previous set of chicks to fledge, but this one was obviously too young to fly. I wondered if whatever trauma had happened the night before, that left two chicks dead, and one missing, might have freaked them out so they wanted to get their chick away from that nest. Or maybe they were giving protective warnings to whatever might have disturbed the nest before. (For example, the chipmunk that frequents the area.) As a human neighbor, is my presence helpful or harmful?

The parents have come back now and are calling repeatedly, but at least one of them was down on the ground, so maybe they’ve figured out that the chick is underneath the deck. I hope so. It is too dark under there for me to see. So I may never know the fate of the chick. But I do take comfort in how fierce it was in those last moments of our interaction. It probably only needs a few more days to grow before it would be ready to fly.

Heartbreak among the robins

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Something got at our baby robins… of the four in the nest, we just found three on the deck floor, two were dead, and one still alive–I gently put that one back in the nest, but not sure if it is really okay or how it might survive, we hope the parents will come back for it. They were calling loudly, but not around now. We don’t know what happened. One had disappeared entirely. So heartbreaking… We wondered if it might have been a chipmunk.

This is not the way I hoped to mark the Solstice. How fragile all of life is right now.

Garden Blue

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My favorite color in the garden is this blue/purple of the Siberian iris. They’ve multiplied in the roadside garden bed, and blossomed all along the way. And now they are gone. So we had maybe a week to enjoy their beauty. I feel the time rushing by with all these spring and early summer flowers. Nothing goes on and on. With photos we try to capture the moment and make it last a little longer, but nothing really lasts in that way. If we don’t pay attention to the moment, we miss it.

It is easy for me to get caught up in what needs to be done, the projects, the planting and watering, the weeding, the holistic sprays for the orchard. But probably what is most important is to walk around the yard noticing the flowers and plants and critters, noticing the birds and frogs and tadpoles. When we came to this yard, our hope was to nurture our relationship with the land, with all of the wisdom it had to teach us, with all of the tending that it asked of us. It was the tangible finding our way home that my spirit was hungry for.

We’ve been tending this particular small place for about nine years, and we feel such a bond with it. In these times of wars and rumors of wars, walking through the yard restores my soul. What must it be like to live for generations in a place? I can only begin to imagine. One of the crimes of the destruction of Gaza, along with the horrific killing of human beings, is the destruction of the land, the olive trees, the plants, the gardens. All those homes. It makes me weep.

I walk around the garden in the mornings, and I pray. I give thanks for another day of living. Not just my life, but the life all around me, of which I am a part. I am happy to see that the spiderwort plants are blooming, another in that shade of blue/purple. This seems to be the very favorite flower of the bees, and it lasts for a long time, with multiple little buds on each stalk, taking their turn to shine. It is the very diversity and multiplicity of the plants that bring abundance to life in the garden.

Balance in the Garden

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Raised bed with wooden sides, on left are pea plants on string and bamboo, middle is broccoli seedlings surrounded by pine cones, wire fencing around edge.

This earth love is a balancing act. We love critters in the yard, after all, they live here too, and have the right to be here. They bring so much joy to us. But we want to grow food too. The last time we bought organic broccoli at Hannafords, it was $8 for one crown. These twelve broccoli plants in this raised bed will be very valuable food for us. I’ve also planted cucumber seeds here. So we try to use gentle methods to discourage the critters from eating the plants we want for our food.

Margy saw a groundhog poke its head up out of a hole in the grass, over near the fence. There was a burrow underneath where a spruce tree fell before, and after it was removed there was still a mound of old roots and dirt. Groundhogs can be the worst for eating garden food, despite how cute they are. At times, we’ve used human pee to mark a line around the beds. Last year, we covered that bed with an old screen tent to protect the kale–and it did. All of it is a kind of communication, with respect.

This year, I am trying out a new method for deterring critters from the garden bed–putting pine cones in between the plants as mulch. (I saw it on Facebook.) Apparently many critters do not like the prickly feel of the pine cones under their feet–and these pine cones are very prickly. They come from our pitch pine, and we have tons of them everywhere. Margy had a bag full of them in the garage, so I used those first, and then started twisting them off fallen branches under the pitch pine. I had to wear gloves to do it, that’s how prickly they are. I’m putting them in the hugel mound as well.

We’ll see how it works.

In the meantime, in critter news, a few days ago we saw a mother turkey walk through the yard with about ten baby turkeys. Ducks stop in to take a dip in the pond. The frogs hang out there, and the tadpoles are getting big. They like to linger under the lily pads. The robin has four new eggs she is incubating. The chipmunks fill up on sunflower seeds at the bird feeder, but are also eating the maple seeds that blew all over the yard.

And sometimes, beauty emerges in unlikely ways–this is a dandelion after the rain washed away all the fluffy seeds. A perfect star.

a white star shape of a dandelion plant, surround by angular green iris leaves.

Even the Humblest of Beings

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trout lilies in old leaves, with mottled green leaves, and yellow and brown blooms

The trout lilies bloomed last week before several days of rain. This photo was from May 5th. Today the blooms are already fading or gone. The trout lilies live near a path by the Capisic Brook that I visit most mornings, though I don’t always make it as far as that path. I was glad to walk a little further to see these lovely small beauties.

I want to continue to post from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which I started a couple weeks ago. It is such a good reminder that every person, no matter how humble, or seemingly insignificant, is worthy of dignity. (In this quote of the declaration from 1948, for simplicity, I am using the original language, in which the pronouns he/his/him were understood to refer to all people).

Article 12: No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home, or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honor and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

Article 13: (1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state. (2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.

Article 14: (1) Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution. (2) This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from nonpolitical crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

Article 15: (1) Everyone has the right to a nationality. (2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.

Can you read them again? So important in the light of what is happening to migrants today in our country. Everyone has the right to seek asylum. Every one has the right to a country, or to leave a country. Everyone has the right of return. And yet so many are denied that right. We have to keep speaking up for what we know is right, even if our societies have never fully lived up to these values.

Robins building nests

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clear ceiling over deck beam with robin in nest on beam

We have robins nesting again in the beams of our deck! Two years ago, a pair of robins raised three broods of chicks over the course of the season. The year before that, in 2022, they had tried, but failed, and it seemed the clear ceiling raised the heat too much for the babies. So I created a shade from cloth to go over them. That worked for 2023. Last year, no nests on the deck. But this year, they were rooting around again on the beam. Imagine my chagrin when a robin starting building a nest in a different section of the beam, with no shade cloth. I could already see her with her beak open on a warm sunny day. One day when she was gone from the nest, I counted three blue eggs.

So I tried a different solution. It was a bit of a risk, but I went out with a ladder and painted the ceiling above the nest with some white primer/paint. She had flown off when I got close, but after I finished she came back, and I am happy to say has continued to sit on the nest every day. I hope this helps her babies to thrive, as I wish for all babies to thrive. I am thinking of the babies in Gaza who are being starved right now.

Robin in nest with shade from painted ceiling

Another joy is that there is also a robin nesting in the bush near our front door. You can just barely see her from our living room windows–she is so well camouflaged from above. But she too is still sitting.

Spring is bursting all over. The cherry trees have some blossoms and the peach tree is starting too. I just hope all this rain we are getting this week doesn’t prevent them from being pollinated. The rain is much needed because of drought, but I miss the sunny days we had last week. I did a holistic spray for the trees the week before. Our trees struggled last year so I am trying to be more attentive this season.

Cherry blossoms against blue sky

Being in the garden is so healing in light of all the devastating news each day from our country, and from the world. One more photo of beauty, daffodils Margy picked from the garden. May the beauty be a prayer for peace.

yellow and orange multi-layered daffodils