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.
