saturday morning

cool and grey. i sat by the pond today and drank my tea watching the red winged black birds land on lupin stems only slightly bending under their perch.

the dogs roamed in the underbrush as i wondered if the blooming, thorned arms below me are multiflora rose or blackberry. i looked it up and i have to go back out to the pond to see what color the inside of the blooms are, i’m hoping for green; blackberry.

the fish were not as active as yesterday but they are there and i am enjoying their breakfast hour on the rocks, listening to the frogs and birds.

most all of the garden is in. a few stragglers left to put in, marigolds and a random millet i picked up somewhere, not sure how or why. none the less they want a hole dug and so i will dig. maybe in this light rain. although my garden clothes are in the wash.

its not quite 8am and i have been awake for hours. i picked four stems of the fragrant white peony so the petals would not all fall in the rain. i looked up camping sites for our anniversary camping trip in october. its so quiet and there is no one else in the house except dogs, and cats. mornings like this feel like secrets.

the blooming meadows have been stunning this spring. the lupine, chickweed, and buttercups become anonymous in the big picture; swaths of color accentuating the contours of the hillside and fields. the grasses are stupendous. each seed head alive and dancing with pollen gently suspended and vibrating. i have always dreamed of the prairies in the middle of the country before the white people arrived. in my imagination they are undulating waves of grass meeting the sky as far as i can see. here the meadows end at the fields edge, woods and forest beyond.

yesterday i had a conversation about awe. apparently it is good for you to experience awe, there is a group in a nearby town organizing walks to inspire awe.

i am in awe every day. my stroll through the yard with my cup of tea as the dogs welcome the day, is a meditation in awe. just yesterday i found a collection of butterfly wings on the side of the driveway. maybe 10 butterfly’s worth of wings, their little body’s food for the swallows.

earlier in the week i watched a bird catch and eat a butterfly, but i did not realize they eat only the juicy body.

pay attention, be astonished, tell about it. i wrote these words on an index card that has been taped to the wall in my office for years. i think they were from a podcast with adrienne maree brown talking about octavia butler. they echo one of my favorite mary oliver lines; attention is the beginning of devotion.

these two phrases, mantras, prayers, illuminate why i want to write, because i am in awe of this earth and subsequently how we humans are throwing it away. it is our home, it is who we are. we do not exist with out the earth. it is hard to imagine that me reconnecting with my home is somehow going to help sustain our existence but i have to. otherwise it’s too fucking terrifying and i feel obsolete. on my gas powered car i have a bumper sticker that says: plants heal. its true, they do. they create powerful medicine for our bodies and souls, but more so the relationships we cultivate with plants have immense potential to heal.

to begin again and again = showing up

to be humbled by the fear of having to start over. as if the maintaining is the prize. the repeated practice. tending the creative void. the practice is the vessel that the creative magic is drawn to because we all know that magic loves a void!!!

my life has changed drastically and not at all.

my wife retired, i shut down my coaching practice, we sold our house and moved to my childhood home in the middle of the southern vermont forest.

writing is one of the ways that i have been able to ground myself in this process of moving home. writing is always the thing i have time for and crave as a way to process what is happening around me. most of it is an exercise in taking the clutter from my brain.

occasionally i learn something about myself. something interesting that stops me in my tracks and floats through the rest of my wake hours. fretting my imagination as i cook dinner, or troubling my focus as i practice asana.

since i have left my coaching practice i feel more free to express my creative experiences. {i haven’t completely unpacked this strange permission granting thing that happened but hey} this process of showing up, of creating a ritual practice is what i am the most interested in. i want to share the process here and hope it leads me to what is the next step in my own evolution.

to begin again and again. to be the beaver rebuilding her dam, the caterpillar within their cocoon.

i am in constant awe of the minute world around me: the lichen, the mushrooms, the red efts, the dew drops on blades of grass all catch my attention and take hold of my imagination. writing after my imagination has been lit by a walk, or quiet sit on a rock allows me to recognize myself amidst change, recognizing the change as part of who i am. not as an experience that takes me away from myself. and from a more practical perspective a life built around being outside, tending the natural world seems to be tantamount.

i am cataloguing these moments of self aware insights so i may realize a life from this transition that brings me great joy and creative abundance.

plants teach us so much

i am my mothers daughter. every year in the beginning of january i have forced narcissus bulbs. also known as paperwhites narcissus bulbs can be forced to bloom indoors, rather than waiting for their arrival in the beginning of spring. my mother and my grandmother both forced bulbs in the darkness of their cold pantrys while we waited for the snow to release its frozen grasp on our imaginations. february in vermont is a special kind of torture; the season thick dirt of snow banks and the mud of sun thawed dirt roads makes february seem as if it is the longest of months. so forced fragrant blooms inside bring hope.

in the last two years i have started to give narcissus bulbs to family and friends over the holiday season, so they too can have a harbinger of warmth bloom on their coffee tables and kitchen counters. i relish this gift because to be in contact with others as they recognize the joy of plants is a true miracle.

here are a few of this years narcissus joys.

the anticipation of the bloom.

pure joy.

marbles drying on a linen dish towel after serving as soil medium for the narcissus bulbs.

tea and tarot

i have been studying tarot for seven years. i know quite a bit and absolutely nothing at all. i love tarot as a tool of self inquiry because the cards always provide prospective. i love to pull cards with friends over a cup of tea. so i am offering this service, tea and tarot, to old friends and new friends i have not met yet…you?

right now this is zoom, unless we are geographically close and can meet in a park or other outdoor public space.