Blue-spotted birches
It’s such an outrageously beautiful day here. What a blessing an autumn day like this is! There are big fat spiders hanging all around my garden like fuzzy brown Christmas ornaments, protecting us from mosquitos; several of my roses are in bloom; and the sky is heartbreakingly blue. I wish I could spend the whole day gardening!
It would be the perfect day to plant a dozen new plant-babies, spread compost, and prune and whack to my heart’s content. I haven’t had a day like that in toooo long, and I wonder if that’s part of why I’ve been so lost in the dark? The Bible talks about ‘the long dry desert of the soul’, and most Christian teachers believe that it’s referring to the feeling of being separated from God that we all experience at one time or another…
I think that’s probably correct, and for me it’s shown up as a literal desert in my life. The total inability to nurture my garden, feeling cut off from the plant and soil-life that The Greatest Gardener has entrusted to me, and the renewal and spiritual connection I feel when I’m working… some people seem to get that from meditating, or doing yoga or studying their religion, but for me it’s getting down and dirty with the crawlies and weeds and flowers and trees.
This is a non-exclusive blog! I strongly respect and honor all life-affirming beliefs and cultures. Whether I refer to God, or The First Artist, or The Greatest Gardener, my intent is to gently share my belief that our universe was created by some sort of organizing intelligence. At the same time I do not want to exclude those who do not share this POV, as it’s not part of my life mission to debate anyone nor whack them over the head with my beliefs.
What makes me saddest about leaving this garden is that it never became all that I’d imagined. There’s just never enough time, energy or resources. Had I lived here another five or ten years? Maybe… maybe not. A garden is never truly finished, but perhaps it would have come close enough to maturation that I wouldn’t feel like I was abandoning a vulnerable infant… all that potential, unrealized. I feel as though I’ve been given something fragile and precious to care for, to bring back to life, and that walking away now is a violation of that trust. It can’t be helped, I know that – we have to do things sometimes that our hearts don’t understand. But that doesn’t always mean it’s easy.
At the same time, I’m positively hungry to start over at another patch of soil! To bring what I’ve learned in the last 10 years, to eliminate the mistakes I made here (and undoubtedly make new ones), and dream new dreams of what it can become.
I have no idea what the next few months will bring. Right now my mantra is “one day at a time”. But I have learned one thing – that whatever comes along will certainly have to include some form of gardening in order for me to stay healthy and happy and strong!
Cuddlebug chooses his first pumpkin, 13 months
Cuddlebug chooses his first pumpkin, 13 months
I haven’t been able to post much (okay, at all!) lately, and I really miss it. So I thought it might be fun to share some of the creepy galleries I’ve put together on Flickr in honor of the upcoming holiday. A gallery is a themed and annotated collection of other people’s photos. I don’t own the copyrights to these photos, so it’s okay to post the links elsewhere, but not to re-post the photos themselves. Enjoy!
A Bit o’ Creepy
Monstrous Fun!
Don’t Go Down To the Basement
Scared Silly
Mostly Ghostly
Have you ever heard that ancient Chinese curse, “May you lead an interesting life”? Well, my life has been exceedingly interestingly lately, LOL! I know I promised the second part of our look at Trees a couple of weeks ago but lots of interestingness has gotten in the way. Work has been happening in the background, though, and now I’m just waiting on a few more permissions for photos and a little bit more goodness and then we’ll roll!
Bright Green New Soul Growth – Dawn Questions
The antique rose in my little patio garden was looking pretty sickly. Yellowing leaves covered in black spots and little holes, sparse and sickly. Brave new rose buds covered with tiny green monsters sucking the life and juice from the bloom. I switched out the end of my hose from sprinkler head to the fertilizer dispenser for a week, just three or four waterings. The following week I switched back to plain water as our temps went to triple digits.
It’s now been two weeks since I fed the rose and all the other wonderful plants that live in containers in my little jungle with the miracle food. The rose is now covered in new healthy bright green leaves and has even produced one perfect, unmarked bloom with several more to come. The changes are everywhere. The brugmansia has twice as many leaves (no blooms yet) and the black ick has left the ponytail palm.
As I’m watering this summer morning, squinting in the weak dawn light to see the changes on each thriving plant, I’m struck by the thought: where did the disease go? Did the aphids fly off to a neighbor’s nutrient-poor plants? Did they dry up and fall off? (no evidence on the patio floor or the base of the plants) And where did the disease come from in the first place? Like cancer cells within our body, is it always there just waiting for weakness to emerge and reproduce at will? Or does it sense plant distress and fly in with the wind to take advantage of a lapse in good gardening protocol? These early morning questions have my mind spinning as I continue to water, pluck, pat, smell, and enjoy my wee garden.
Can I draw a further parallel between garden health and my own health — when I do the right things with discipline, day after day, such as picking up my junk and putting it away, doing laundry, keeping the floors clean, and shopping at farmer’s market for whole foods, life seem to go better and my mind is more clear. When I begin to put things off, procrastinating with bill paying, clutter, even relying on take out, frozen dinners, and cheese sandwiches instead of preparing healthy meals, my mind and my spirit and therefore my life start feeling like that poor sickly rose. Since I know this absolutely, I wonder why it’s such a struggle every day to do “the right thing.” Which came first, the disease or overall systemic weakness? Is there a quick fix for my life, such as using Miracle Grow, that will help stamp out my internal aphids, black spot, and powdery mildew, and produce bright green new growth in my soul?
Either way, I’ll switch back to the fertilizer wand as soon as the weather breaks. And enjoy my healthy happy garden as long as it lasts.
One of my favorite bloggers — and favorite people — Margie Oomen of Resurrection Fern shared a site where you’ll find an audio file called ”A Singing Yeast Cell”. Relatively new technology has enabled scientists to record the sounds that individual cells make as they go about their normal life processes. It is as enthralling as any humpback song I’ve ever heard, and eerily similar. There’s something about it that is completely familiar — I feel as though I know that song in my very bones, hard as that may be to accept on the surface.
And I suppose I do know that song in my bones. One of the reviewers at the site says, “Every living being has a voice”. The question has always been what constitutes a being? Until recently, the only answers available were faith-based. Now, however, science is gathering a rolling snowball of evidence that perhaps all things — literally every thing — may well be, in its own way, sentient. Able to respond to, interact with, and even shape its environment. Never hard for me to believe but how I love the mounting scientific validation!
What astounds me is that so many don’t hear the songs. My sister, Judi, stood as witness this week to the cries of trees:
“As soon as I rounded the corner of my shop and noticed the city’s tree-removal equipment and a half dozen men with chainsaws, I began to feel sick in the pit of my stomach. By the time I got out of my car, the feeling was full-blown nausea and a serious flight reflex. It was all I could do to walk up the sidewalk, averting my eyes from the devastation going on across the street. Three gorgeous old ficus trees were slated for removal because they were too big, too old, with too many roots misbehaving. The sick feeling I was having could have been stress — I seriously didn’t want those trees removed. But when I “listened” to my body’s reaction, what I believe I was reacting to was the trees crying out for help. Sounds goofy, like new-agey tree-hugging BS. However, if it’s true that all living things have a voice, than it makes sense that these trees were sending off distress signals — very loud and powerful tree-frequency screams at having their limbs systematically chopped off, the sense of doom and inevitablity creating a sound that could not be heard by the human ear but by the place we all feel fear — the stomach.”
“Two days later, the deed was done. The trees and their offending roots were gone and so was the sick feeling. I had a lot going on in my head about the newly bleak, bare corner and the brutal end of life for those beauties, but my stomach was fine.”
Judi is one of those gardeners who has such a finely developed empathic sense that she cannot throw out even the barest, deadest twig of a plant. She feels the life within and will continue caring for it in every way she can, for weeks, months, even in some cases years. I’ve teased her about it for years, but the truth is that she’s been right and I wrong more times that I care to count, so it doesn’t surprise me at all that her body was reacting to the violent death of the gazillions of cells across the street.
She literally had to lock up the store and go home; it was more than she could bear. And please note, for the disbelieving, that this took place not because Judi has ever believed in the idea of sentient trees, nor even examined that idea. In fact, she refers to that sort of thing as “goofy, new-agey tree-hugging BS”. And yet her body knew the truth.
The Forest Primeval — the persistent, world-wide, cross-cultural idea that the world was once covered with a solid canopy of trees — trees who were ‘alive’ and actively communicated not only with each other, but also with at least some humans — is an archetype I ran across many years ago, and accepted as a version of truth. However, I thought that it was a far-from mainstream mythos that most people weren’t even aware of, and would probably disdain. Then I began doing some research for this post and was very surprised to find out how wrong I was! “One of our most popular, strongly held images is that of the ‘forest primeval’. We imagine a blanket of ancient forest, which nature maintained in equilibrium with the environment,” says James Kate, author of Planning a Wilderness.
It turns out that an amazing spectrum of people hold similar views, as demonstrated by Lisa Alpine at her site The Living Spirit of Old-Growth Forests, where she documents a series of interviews on the subject. I’ve excerpted a sampling of the interviews here, but it’s well worth spending some time on the site to read the much more in-depth interviews:
“It is important to realize that the forest is really more than the trees.” —Paul Hughes, Executive Director of Forests Forever.
Do you believe trees have a spirit or soul? I believe they have tremendous spiritual power. It is important to realize that the forest is really more than the trees. It is all so interconnected and interdependent. The trees are the most visible part, the most glorious part. Nowhere else but in a cathedral forest can you find such deep solitude and the silence.
Do you believe trees are living entities? Some redwoods are 2,500-years-old. Any time you have a living being who has aged and grown that much, you are talking about a reservoir of energy beyond human comprehension. How can you deny that when you walk through the forest and feel that magic and energy? There is much that science hasn’t taught us about these ancient forests. There is an extra dimension there we haven’t plumbed yet.
“When I walk in an old-growth forest the feeling is the closest to a real religious deep-seated meaning I’ve ever come across.” —Larry Eifert, world-renowned naturalist painter
Do you believe trees have spirits? Yeah, I do. I am not sure they are the same spirits we have… I think they must have great experience and the fact they all join their roots together suggests a community or family.
“You cannot have sanity without sane relationships with your environment.” —Leslie Gray, a clinical psychologist whose work in ecopsychology links modern psychotherapeutic practices with shamanism. She has taught at UC-Berkeley and the California Institute of Integral Studies. She is of Oneida and Seminole heritage.
What is your connection to trees? I always include the tall straight people in my prayers and am acutely aware of how much I have to learn from them. I have a reciprocal relationship with them. I leave offerings for them.
Do you think the older trees or ancient forests have more wisdom than the younger? Those trees are our elders.
Have you spent time in old-growth forests and what feeling do you get from them? A real sense of ancestors. One of my first teachers in shamanism taught me a way of journeying where you sit at the base of an old tree and stay there for 24 hours without food or water. You sit and allow yourself to receive. It is quite astonishing what happens. Trees start talking to you. Many shamans say the best way to apprentice yourself is to a tree.
“A forest without elders is a very empty forest. It is like a child without parents left there to fend for himself” —Tim Corcoran, Director of the Headwaters Outdoor School in Santa Cruz.
Do you believe that trees have souls? I believe that trees are living beings that have all the same types of experiences we have. They are feeling beings. They experience the world very differently because of the way they live.
I also notice that the older trees teach the younger ones. A forest without elders is a very empty forest. It is like a child without parents, left there to fend for himself. People who are in tune with trees will feel this difference.
Part II, examining what deforestation does to our souls, tomorrow…
1. Bunny Transport by Sarah Ogren, 2. Top of Stool by DottieAngel, 3. Butterflies on the Wall by EclecticGipsyland, 4. Garden Landscape by TinyHappy, 5. The Sun by Linda McPherson, 6. Buttons by Loretta Grayson, 7. Potholder by Mieke Willems, 8. Orange Wheat Squircle Design by Monceau, 9. Planet Squircle by Bill Ballantyne, 10. Pink Anenome and Fish by Vicky Brock, 11. Spiral Voyage by Redgum, 12. Vintage Black Button Assortment by Beautiful Living, 13. Baby Bowl by Robyne Jay, 14. Turquoise Ceramic Buttons by Lynae Straw, 15. Embroidered Button by Birthine, 16. Tourists Often Say The Cutest Things Very Loudly. That’s Why Virginia Beach Needs These Signs by Bill Barber, 17. Paperweight Squircle by Cobalt, 18. Rockpool by Paula Hewlitt, 19. Untitled by Eclectic Gipsyland, 20. Butterflies on the Wall by Eclectic Gipsyland, 21. Top of Stool by DottieAngel, 22. Purple by Angie Crowe, 23. Burr Gherkin Cucumbers by Lori Imeson, 24. Red House by Karen Foster 2, 25. Pretty button, 26. Seeds by Redgum, 27. #014 Finished by Isabel Freire 28. Circles by James Neeley, 29. Kaleidoscope by Karen Foster, 30. Lanterns by Nina van de Goor, 31. Woman of Asian Descent, 32. Adapt by Paula Mills, 33. Spinning Tops Collection by Les Fabulations de Nanou, 34. Circles in Progress by Lupin, 35. Bunny in a Blue Dress by Sarah Ogren, 36. Zingy Citrus Colours by Carolyn Saxby
I love circles. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the circular nature of life today, which is what prompted this mosaic. My dad abandoned us when Iwas three and my sis was 2. Or, at least, that was my belief growing up. Later my mom said that it was a combination of intermittent abandonment and her decision that he was just not a good dad nor behaving in any way positively, so she cut off all communication with him.
It was really really hard on me as a child. I was convinced that everything that was wrong with me (and I thought there was LOTS of that) was because I didn’t have a dad. This was early to mid-sixties, when I was forming these ideas, and most of the kids I knew had intact families. I was different, and I felt it deeply.
And — kids NEED two parents. That way there’s a refuge when one parent is tired or out-of-sorts. Having two available adults ups the odds that one will be available when needed…
Well, anyhow. These are just some of the memories and reasons that have driven me to work so hard at keeping my darling Wart’s dad in his life, in spite of all the evidence that I shouldn’t allow him within miles of us… for three years I have taken extraordinary measures to promote and to further their relationship in the face of all odds. Even in the face of the judicial system, which had limited visitation to an hour a week supervised by professional supervisors. All because I wanted The Wart to have what I didn’t; because I didn’t want him to be haunted by the same ghosts, the same pain and anger…
And this week it has become oh-so-painfully clear that his father is not worthy of one more minute of The Wart’s time and attention. He’ll always love his dad, I’m sure. We’re wired for that, and I wouldn’t even think of trying to change it. But I’m done. Really, really done. Ghosts be damned. I just can’t convince even my child-self anymore that this is a worthwhile battle. What a sad mess.
I feel so bad for my Wart. I took him to his counselor tonight, and after a few minutes private talk with her, she suggested that we talk with him together to explain that Daddy’s on time-out because he’s been very, very mean to Mommy and needs to learn to behave better. The Wart knew exactly what we were referring to, and even added other examples of intolerable behaviors… but he was still broken-hearted, tears leaking down his little cheeks.
And here we are, forty years later, having come full circle. As I look into the eyes of my devastated child, I realize once again he has my eyes. And I have my father’s eyes. It’s like looking through a time-telescope forty-some odd years backwards, into my father’s eyes. I wonder if he cried, as The Wart and I have?
Psychologists tell us that we’ll marry our fathers. I used to laugh at that, saying that I have free choice among all the planet’s available men, because I don’t have a father… how not-funny it is that, in the end, I found another just like the father I didn’t have, to be a non-father to my son.
Circles inside circles inside circles.
I can share with you the great fun I had trying to win an Eames chair for my sister in this giveaway at Something’s Hiding in Here:
The Rules:
They asked that we leave comments explaining who we would give the chair to if we won, and why. The winning entry would be the one they liked best.
My Entry:
“I would give this gorgeous wonderosity of orange modernity to my darling sis, who loves modern design, who has laboriously taught me the diff between modern and contemporary, who would absolutely PEE herself from sheer joy of owning an Eames chair by Herman Miller – and who absolutely, totally, unconditionally 100% HATES orange.
LOL
She would love the chair. In spite of herself. She would die laughing. And she would love me and never forgive me all at the same time. And when you sum it all up, isn’t that what sisters are for?”
I can’t understand why I didn’t win. Seriously. Wasn’t that a great post? 
This gal does some of the most amazing, thought-provoking art projects. It’s worth spending some time on her site just poking around. However, the point and purpose of this post (say that three times fast) is to share one particular project, her Mended Spiderwebs:
http://www.ninakatchadourian.com/uninvitedcollaborations/spiderwebs.php
Great fun, very cool. Enjoy!
I just saw an amazing vintage hankie that Margie has embroidered with a gorgeous spider web… and dangling down below is the big fat spider! Really pretty, really fun! She sent it as a gift to the sweet Mathyld, with whom I have fallen in love.
And Margie’s embroidered spider looks exactly like “my” spiders! My garden is now filling up with young orb weavers who are growing daily. They spin the most beautiful webs. By October/November they’ll be big and fat, some as big as hazel nuts! They are very gentle and NEVER bite. I love them so much. I know, odd, huh? lol! But think of how many mosquitos they eat. And I get to watch them grow from teensy tiny orange dots in the spring, to big old ladies in the fall.
When I began gardening on this then-barren lot 9 years ago, there was almost no life to be found… the next year ONE lonely orb weaver found my young garden. I started my Annual Orb Weaver Count on Labor Day of the third year, and found 18. The fourth year there were 52. I quit counting last year because I got confused and lost track after 400…! I think that’s the sign of a healthy garden.
In order to keep them safe (because they don’t recognize human eccentricities like fences and property lines), I’ve spent quite a lot of time educating, threatening, and “superstitioning” the neighborhood kids, lol! In my lexicon, “superstitioning” means ‘the purposeful installation of superstitions into empty-and-often-quite-violent young heads’, as in “Killing an Orb Weaver is horribly bad luck! You’ll be bitten by every single one of the mosquitos and ticks and wasps that it would have eaten during the rest of its life – and all of the other bad things, too…”
Thankfully, the two Darling Young Things that required this treatment have moved out of the area (I wonder if it had anything to do with me? lol!). Lots of education and a few (very few) threats worked on the rest of them. Now I hear them spreading the word to the littles coming up – “No! Don’t kill that spider, it eats mosquitos! Besides, that mean old garden lady gets really mad if you kill them…” LOL
Common name: Cross orbweaver
Scientific name: Araneus diadematus
A European invasive, this spider can become quite imposing in size and density in the late fall. Makes a large vertical orb-web.
