Shabbat gratefuls: United flight 806. An hour out of San Francisco. United flight 1702 to Denver. Cool night. Rain. The Monsoons. Shadow out at 3 am. Now inside and hungry. Family. Friends. Alan and his Hawaiian shirt. The Bread Lounge. Artemis and her beds. Shadow Mountain high.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: My son and Seoah here tonight.
Year Kavannah: Wu Wei
Week Kavannah: Ahavah. Love.
Tarot: The Pole Star. #17* What do the cards have to say to me today?
One brief shining: According to Flight Tracker United 806 has crossed the wide Pacific to within 46 minutes of San Francisco and the continental U.S., bearing within itself loved ones from far away Korea, all seated near each other some old, some young, all on an adventure of a lifetime for the Jang family of Okgwa.
Artemis: Had to rig a twine support for another fast growing Tomato Stalk. Will have to do more once Fruiting starts, heavy. I’m ready. I have Tomato metal and plastic supports, more twine.
Nathan comes today to finish work on Artemis. He’ll be tidying up electrical cords, adding cold frames, lapping the Cedar shakes. If he thinks it will work, he may also drill holes in the hail protection overlap from the greenhouse roof. My idea. Let some rain through while still blocking hail.
Together we’ll have to come up with some solution for irrigation on the east facing raised bed. All in the process of learning how to make Artemis function best. This is a shake-down season. Though. I’d say the greenhouse has already proved its mettle. Go Tomatoes!
Exercise: Once again up to 150 minutes of moderate exercise. Feels so good. Improves my mood and, as a new study shows, also fights cancer.
A combination of cardio on the treadmill, p.t. exercises aimed at my aching back and legs, plus upper body workouts designed with the help of Chatgpt.
Moving my treadmill, mats, weight bench, weights and kettle bells down to Kate’s old sewing room has helped. In fact, I got in 30 minutes of cardio yesterday in 10 minute increments. I set my timer for an hour. When it goes off, I get up and go to the treadmill, walk for 10 minutes. Easy peasy.
Tarot: The Pole Star, one of the major arcana marking the wanderer’s journey through the Wildwood. Offering guidance toward the end of the pilgrimage.
Could be, probably will be, the start of a new phase of my life. Shadow and I have made great strides. Artemis has already got my full gardener’s attention. I know what’s next for my back and leg pain. These all represent a strong move into a more co-creative life.
With my son, Seoah, and her family here for a week starting tonight I can see the outlines of a new relationship to the Jangs. Closer than before.
I also plan to talk to my son and Seoah about family matters, discuss what might happen if I go into a decline (not planning on it, but then do we ever?), remind them of the estate, the living wills, the medical power of attorney.
*Spiritual Guidance:
It signifies a connection to universal wisdom and the power of your intuition. The card encourages you to listen to your inner voice and trust the guidance it offers.
Healing and Integration:
This card represents a period of healing and integration, where you can…embrace wholeness. It’s a time to let your guard down and allow yourself to be nurtured by the holistic energy of the universe.
New Beginnings:
The Pole Star can also indicate the start of a new phase in your life, a time to step forward with renewed optimism and a sense of purpose.Gemini
Friday gratefuls: At 8:30 pm tonight, MT, the visit of the Jangs leaves Incheon. 11:30 am tomorrow, KT. Alan. Bread Lounge. Shadow. Artemis. Morning Darkness. Lughnasa. Christmas in July, Melbourne. Mary settling in. Mark in Al Kharj. Family, far far away. Loved. The Sprouts, Seeds making good on their implicit promise.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: My son and Seoah here tomorrow night.
Year Kavannah: Wu Wei
Week Kavannah: Yirah. Awe.
Tarot: The Seer, #2 in the major arcana. What do the cards have to say?
One brief shining: Forgot the excitement of watching Plants emerge from Seeds, checking each day to see the progress they’re making, often a Seed Husk hangs on a bit, discarded after protecting the vitality of the green Emergent, like a body left behind after death.
Artemis: I suppose you could call it a hobby. Growing things. But, it doesn’t feel that way to me. Each day is a small Christmas with yellow Tomato Blossoms fattening out into green bulbous beginnings of Fruit. With Sprouts reaching further above the Soil, their new chartreuse already shading toward a darker hue. Their Leaves, at first only two, then a stalk, then more Leaves. Artemis pregnant with so many children.
I love these early days of Plant growth, coming out of hard shelled Seed with vigor, piercing the dark, reaching toward the nutrition of Great Sol, light eaters hungry for their first meal.
The miracle of photosynthesis. Eat Great Sol’s rays, produce carbohydrates, give off O2. Grow more. Grow more. Until a red Tomato lies in hand. Or, a Leaf of Chard, of Spinach, a blood red Beet.
If there’s a category above miracle, and there must be, it would include this oh so ordinary magic that most ignore. Celebration of life its very self. We can train our eye to see it. Our hands to pick it. Our nose to smell it. Our tongue to taste it.
The Midwest, the Central Valley. Vast lands devoted to farming. Yet most of the farming now done by mechanization, fertilization, irrigation. No celebration of the miracle until it produces the other green, profit. Measuring the worth of photosynthesis against its value to the bottom line may be the ur-evil afoot in the World. That metric drains Aquifers, strips away Top Soil, erodes whole Landscapes.
Maybe I am. Maybe. A broken record on this point. Only because my joy in growing things is so great, my closeness to the Plant Kingdom one of delight, not monetized as the tech bros like to say.
Yes. Growing things, eating from the bounty of Mother Earth’s vast collection of foodstuffs, can harmonize with the needs of Soils, of available Water, of sustainable harvesting. It can be the basis of human life, a human way of being that lives long and prospers. But it sure isn’t right now.
Those Beets pushing down roots that will develop into a tasty salad fixing, the Spinach ready to spread its wide Leaves, the peppery Arugula tentative in its early growth testify. They preach in the oldest language of all, the language of life sustained by life, of life sustained by the heat of Great Sol, the much recycled Water, the nutrients in the Soil. Hallelujah. And, amen.
Wednesday gratefuls: Radical Roots of Religion. Shadow. Her voice. Her presence. Natalie. Her injured Dogs. Nathan. The Greenhouse. Halle. Her grandfather. Judith. All Jews. Anti-Semites. Cousin Donald. Back and leg pain. Cancer results. Beltane. Summer. Lughnasa. The Shema. Being comfortable with who I am and what I have.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: Halle
Week Kavannah: Gratitude. Hakarot Hatov. (recognizing the good) “Who is rich? Those who rejoice in their own portion.” Perkei Avot: 4:1
One brief shining: Nathan constructs the Greenhouse with care, offering to design a Japanese style door, working with only a few tools and a small stepladder, headphones on listening to podcasts about science, his focus intense.
An example
The Greenhouse: The frame of the Greenhouse went up yesterday. A skeleton in four by fours and two by fours, all wood burned in the way of shou sugi ban. When construction finishes Nathan will coat all of the shou sugi ban wood with clear lacquer.
Made a seed order on Sunday with Seed Saver’s Exchange, my first in a decade. Fun to go through the online catalogue, looking for the varieties chatgpt recommended for 8800 feet. I didn’t have an AI companion the last time I gardened.
Nathan says he will do all the labor with the soil for free to make up for the delay in construction. He will also give me some Tomato transplants. He’s a good guy, wanting to do right by me. Even though it was FedEx that delayed the shipping on the plastic foundation pavers. Sound business on his part.
Found Zuni Signs on Monday. Evergreen. Will have them make my Artemis sign once the Greenhouse is complete. A link between Andover and Kate.
While talking to Nathan yesterday, I heard, “Charlie!” My neighbor, Jude. Recently retired from his welding business. “I’m getting fat.” Oh, yes indeed. His white t-shirt ballooned out with a substantial gut. “I have a bicycle. I look at it every once a while.” He laughs.
He asked me if I was building something. I said no he is, pointing to Nathan. “Are you paying for it, Charlie.” Yes. “Well, then you’re building it.”
Rigel and a bull Elk in our back a day before my first radiation treatment.
Wild Neighbors: Had several Elk come by yesterday in the utility easement. Though they didn’t come in the yard, a large Mule Deer Doe did later in the day. My Dandelion crop attracts ungulates. They come for the Dandelions and stay for the Grass.
In 2019, on June 6th, I started my thirty-five sessions of ineffective radiation. On that day, before I left for Lone Tree, three Elk Bucks jumped the fence and dined for a day and a half on Dandelions and Grass. They came back every year until last year. The Does I saw earlier were the first Elk I’d seen up here for a couple of years. I see them often in Evergreen.
(BTW: Just now Shadow tried to herd the Mule Deer Doe. The Doe looked at her, did not move. I called Shadow and she came. Mule Deer and especially Elk can kill a Dog.)
In the Garden Andover
Kate: I stopped by Kate’s Valley to see if her Creek had Water. Very pleased to see it running full. Early last fall it had gone dry. Made me sad.
Monday gratefuls: Less back pain. Morning darkness. A Shadow next to me when I woke up. Tara and Eleanor. Alan. Ginny and Janice. Luke. My son. Seoah. The Jangs. Colorado. The Rockies. The Shaggy Sheep. Guanella Pass. Georgetown. Georgetown Loop Rail Road. Pikes Peak Cog Railway. A world class location.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: Family
Week Kavannah: Gratitude. Hakarot Hatov. (recognizing the good) “Who is rich? Those who rejoice in their own portion.” Perkei Avot: 4:1
One brief shining: The Rocky Mountains rise in Southern Colorado, extending north well into Canada, a spinal column for the American West, filled with Mountains and Valleys, hotsprings and wild neighbors, remnants of indigenous peoples, ski towns and mining towns, rugged wilderness, high Mountain Lakes, and Glaciers all near to my home here on Shadow Mountain.
Dog Journal: Woke up this morning to find Shadow curled up next to my head. Don’t know when she got up there, but it made my heart go pit a pat. Another bit of good news in a half year that has needed some.
The whole Shadow experience has been an exercise in humility. There were times when I didn’t think I could handle her. That I’d made a mistake. Perhaps been unethical. Adopting a puppy at 78? With cancer and a bad back. What was I thinking?
Yet now. Now that she played all afternoon with Tara’s Eleanor. Now that twice unbidden she has chosen to sleep in my bed. Now that she’s close to accepting the leash. Now. So sweet.
The ethical question. Competing goods. Little Shadow needed a home where she could be loved. I needed a companion, or at least badly wanted one.
However. Shadow will live into her teens most likely. I don’t know how much time I’ve got, but I imagine it’s less than that. Cattle dogs bond to one person. Also, her energy level far, far exceeds my own. Does she get enough stimulation here?
It was not, all in all, a perfect decision. It may have been, may be a selfish decision. I hope our mutual journey towards and with each other will compensate. Most relationships are imperfect in some way. I do have that codicil in my will that ensures her care in a new home if that becomes necessary.
The Jangs: The plane tickets have been purchased. An air BnB booked. Plans for excursions being tossed about. Between August 1st and 7th Seoah’s mom and dad, her brother, her sister and her husband, and their two kids will join my son and Seoah on a trip to the Colorado Rockies.
The air BnB is in Evergreen. I haven’t seen it. My son and Seoah chose it. I’m looking forward to their visit especially since I haven’t seen my son since his promotion or in person since February.
Also, I’ve been to the Jang’s home in Okgwa twice. Returning the favor is a family thing. I’m happy to help make it happen.
Wednesday gratefuls: My son. Shadow. Natalie. Mary. Guru. Seoah. Ruth. US Air Force. US Navy. US Army. US Marines. Warriors. Korea. Ruth in Seoul. Jamie and the radical roots of religion. My back. Lawn furniture. Nathan. The Greenhouse build. Living, not dying. Nothing hard is easy.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: Plants
Week Kavannah: Zerizut for p.t. and resistance
One brief shining: Learning from Natalie as she explains reading a dog’s mind and feelings, head to the left or right, processing, as is walking away, not stubborn, figuring things out, wait, panting as a sign of worry, consent to hug or pet when Shadow comes up to me and stays or leaps up on my legs while I’m sitting down, two species, 15,000 years of partnership, much better understood by the one with the smaller brain.
A lot going on here on Shadow Mountain. A series of dog training moments, an hour or so, with Natalie. Nathan getting my greenhouse foundation ready, treating the Wood at his place for Shou Sugi Ban, delivering things he’ll need for his work. Two Kabbalah Experience classes nearing their end. Two hip MRI tomorrow. Keeping track of my son’s promotion and his visitors. Ruth in Korea. Receiving the money for the Jang family visit in August. Spring. Rains and Thunder.
Live until I die remains my mantra. Moving into tomorrow not as one less day, but as a time to anticipate, to savor, to enjoy. Natalie made an offhand comment, for example, about my needing outdoor furniture to enjoy my backyard. Oh? Well, duh. Looking through online catalogues. Probably go look in person somewhere.
This is, you see, my life. Not the anteroom for my death. No matter what’s going on. Not even if I ever need to move into hospice. Learning. Loving. Growing spiritually. Right. Up. To. The. End.
Dog journal: Natalie has skills. She’s deeply read and connected with other trainers in online chatgroups. She’s dedicated to positive training. No shock collars. No harshness. Rather. Learning the heart and mind of dogs. Applying that in problem situations to recognize, then shape behaviors.
An example. Using feeding time to increase trust with Shadow. Feeding her from my hand makes her associate me with her food. “It’s all about the grub,” Natalie says. The walk, drop a treat behind, change direction game gives Shadow the choice to follow me. At some point she’ll just follow me. Working next on getting her to come inside voluntarily and like it. Walking on a leash.
I recognize and admire Ana’s house cleaning, Natalie’s training, and Nathan’s careful work.
A lot of dystopians imagine a world where A.I. puts humans out of work, yet makes enough cash available for a no work life. This will be awful, directionless, purposeless.
No. I don’t believe it. I believe the essence of the human experience lies in relating to each other, to animals near and far, in growing our own food at some level. In painting. Sculpture. Dog training. Construction. Cooking. Conversation. The joys of retirement.
Friday gratefuls: Morning prayers. The Siddur. Bird song. Shadow running, running, running. Halle. Physical therapy. Kylie, my pain doc. Nerve ablations and Sprint. Sciatica. Ruby still with her Snowshoes on. Diane. The Jangs in August. Ruth in Korea.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: Kate, always Kate
Week Kavannah: Enthusiasm. Zerizut. for P.T. and resistance.
One brief shining: Brief time with Halle yesterday, my back pain flare made her not want to push me; following her later in the day a visit to Kylie, my pain doc, in which we added her hip MRI to Buphati’s which means I’ll get both hips done on the 29th.
It’s odd, seeing my cancer and its stage 4 realities written about on the front pages of the NYT and the Washington Post. From many perspectives. Each situation, each person’s cancer has its own individual path. I am neither Biden nor Scott Adams. Yet we share this: in Stage 4 our cancer is incurable.
Unless we die of something else first, prostate cancer will, as Kristie, my urological oncologist, said, run its course. Which means it will kill us. We can opt for dignity in dying in Colorado and if mine proceeds to its end point, I’ll consider that if the pain becomes too much.
A hospice nurse wrote an op ed about her Dad’s prostate cancer. She spoke gently. About physicians often wanting to go on, on beyond a life with no quality to a life continued because more treatments, more scans are available. About how hospice offers another alternative. About a peaceful death versus one strung out by procedures and medicine. I’m inclined to her way, yet how to know when that moment comes?
My life has purpose, meaning. I’m a family man with siblings, a son and daughter-in-law, grandkids, a dog, friends, a community. I’m a spiritual seeker with writing I want to do about Judaism, about a tactile spirituality. I enjoy a good book, a good movie, good food. I have a home I love and feel comfortable in. I’m embedded in the Rocky Mountains with wild neighbors. Not at all ready to sign off.
However. This next two weeks I have a long MRI on my hips and a PET scan. Then a visit with my oncologist to see if further therapies make sense in light of the findings. I had a visit with my pain doc to try to gain a handle on my back.
I’m in the scans and imaging, let’s try this phase of both prostate cancer and back pain. It gets old, tiring in and of itself. Arranging rides. Appointments. New meds and procedures. New doctors.
Having all these news articles has made me think a lot about my own situation, as you can tell. More than I would on my own.
Another wrinkle rises up with the back pain. As it aggravates me, it reduces my resilience. Which means I have to sort out moods created by pain from moods created by cancer. So I can be clear about what’s affecting my judgment.
Monday gratefuls: Stevinson’s Toyota. Snow and rain. Now 8 or 9″. All moisture accepted and appreciated. My son. Shadow, the regresser. Her 15 minutes on the treat (shh. Leash.). Common Ground. Heal the soil. The Great Work: create a sustainable presence for humans on Mother Earth.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: Rain and Snow
Week Kavannah: Enthusiasm. Zerizut.
One brief shining: A cold rain has fallen; on its cool breath came a good night’s sleep, up at 5 am with a lick of Shadow’s tongue, a deep whine, unusual for her, so I moved as creaky quick as possible to get her outside.
The coming Snow. Leaving her Snow shoes on. Ruby will still get her 60,000 mile service with all fluids replaced. Means I will sit. Wait. Not easy, but necessary. Keep Ruby on the road. She’s already been built. I’ve gotten at least 250,000 miles on the Toyota’s I’ve driven. Probably my last car. Now seven years old.
A devil’s bargain I didn’t know I made back in 1963 when I got my first driver’s license. A carbon footprint, cabrón. All those years on the road. Helping send carbon up, up, up. Insulate Mother Earth.
The freedom of driving carrying such a high cost, higher even than Dead Man’s Curve or Teen Angel. Back then car wrecks were the worst we could imagine. Now: each car a tiny Chicxulub meteor. Death by a thousand infernal combustion engines.
Kate used to talk about an adrenal squeeze. Saw in my USPS advance notice I had a letter from Traveler’s Insurance, carrier for my home, auto, and personal liability. Stamped on the outside of the envelope: IMPORTANT INSURANCE INFORMATION.
Was it my turn to scramble for another carrier? The envelope didn’t show up that day. I checked online. Found nothing. It came the next day.
Conditional renewal. I have to accept a $5,000 deductible for Hail and Wind damage. Well, all right. I can do that. I’d read that insurers for Colorado homes see our hail threat as much more dire than Wildfire. Here’s proof.
Just a moment: Do all people deserve due process? I don’t know, said our President. It might mean, he went on, one million, two million, three million trials. What was that oath again?
Perhaps he thought then, right at that moment. What if I could be Pope? Hey, let’s get AI to see how I’d look. Tone deaf doesn’t even begin to describe that. It’s the religious equivalent of saying if you’re famous you can grab them by the pussy.
On a more upbeat note. I watched, at Tom’s suggestion, Common Ground. A documentary on Prime Video. I felt tears well up often at the savage rending of our most important resource: top soil.
Joy with the clips of regenerative farmers growing corn in fields with legume cover crops. With the 7,000 acre farm in Williamsport, Indiana. Disturbing the soil with cattle grazing, mimicking the buffalo. Turning a profit by not feeding Monsanto, Bayer, John Deere. Lower input costs. Higher return on investment. This is the way.
When I am on task I get a lot done. When I waste time, it clears my mind of all the things I need to accomplish. Wasting time on the internet, reading a good trash crime/detective book, taking a long mid-day nap, staring out the window at birds, all these things keep me from the task at hand. But is it bad, or a needed outlet?
A few resources below. The etymology of productive, waste, and sloth.
I offer them because Ode’s theme rests in a labyrinth of Protestant work ethic hedge rows. There was a time, now long past, when productivity mattered to me. When I made pound cakes in the bakery. When I moved eight-hundred pound bales of cotton underwear cutouts for rag-cutting. When I had to have something to show for my work in the West Bank Ministry. When I wrote 1,000 words a day.
Andover found me active, working at many different tasks. Amending soil. Planting Vegetables. Caring for our Fruit Trees. Inspecting the Bee hives. Feeding and Watering the Dogs. Cooking. Yet I never felt a need to be productive. I worked at this, then that. Doing what was needed.
Even my writing took on this patina. I did it as an act of self-giving, an expression of my love for the imagination. Since moving to Colorado, I extended this approach to fire mitigation, caring for Kate, being with friends and family.
Now in what I count as my fourth phase, with a terminal illness, retirement in the past, I find myself leaning into relationships, to reading and watching TV, learning with my friends at CBE. Caring for Shadow.
Not to say that the productivity demon doesn’t raise its hoary head now and then. It does. Yet I see it for what it is. Old pathways, deep ruts from past eras. No longer what I need now. Or, desire.
produce(v.)
early 15c., producen, “develop, proceed, extend, lengthen out,” from Latin producere “lead or bring forth, draw out,” figuratively “to promote, empower; stretch out, extend,” from pro “before, forth” (from PIE root *per- (1) “forward,” hence “in front of, before, forth”) + ducere “to bring, lead” (from PIE root *deuk- “to lead”).The sense of “bring into being or existence” is from late 15c. That of “put (a play) on stage” is from 1580s. Of animals or plants, “generate, bear, bring forth, give birth to,” 1520s. The meaning “cause, effect, or bring about by mental or physical labor” is from 1630s. In political economy, “create value; bring goods, manufactures, etc. into a state in which they will command a price,” by 1827. Related: Produced; producing.
waste(v.)
c. 1200, wasten, “devastate, ravage, ruin,” from Anglo-French and Old North French waster “to waste, squander, spoil, ruin” (Old French gaster; Modern French gâter), altered (by influence of Frankish *wostjan) from Latin vastare “lay waste,” from vastus “empty, desolate.” This is reconstructed in Watkins to be from a suffixed form of PIE root *eue- “to leave, abandon, give out.” Related: wasted; wasting.The Germanic word also existed in Old English as westan “to lay waste, ravage.” Spanish gastar, Italian guastare also are from Germanic.The intransitive meaning “lose strength or health; pine; weaken or be gradually consumed” is attested from c. 1300; the sense of “squander, spend or consume uselessly, expend without adequate return” is recorded from mid-14c.; the colloquial meaning “to kill” is from 1964.
To waste time “act to no purpose” is from mid-14c. Waste not, want not is attested from 1778.
Sloth refers to many related ideas, dating from antiquity and including mental, spiritual, pathological, and physical states.[29] It may be defined as absence of interest or habitual disinclination to exertion.[30]
In his Summa Theologica, Saint Thomas Aquinas defined sloth as “sorrow about spiritual good”.[28]
The scope of sloth is wide.[29] Spiritually, acedia first referred to an affliction attending religious persons, especially monks, wherein they became indifferent to their duties and obligations to God. Mentally, acedia has a number of distinctive components; the most important of these is affectlessness, a lack of any feeling about self or other, a mind-state that gives rise to boredom, rancor, apathy, and a passive inert or sluggish mentation. Physically, acedia is fundamentally associated with a cessation of motion and an indifference to work; it finds expression in laziness, idleness, and indolence.[29]
Sloth includes ceasing to utilize the seven gifts of grace given by the Holy Spirit (Wisdom, Understanding, Counsel, Knowledge, Piety, Fortitude, and Fear of the Lord); such disregard may lead to the slowing of spiritual progress towards eternal life, the neglect of manifold duties of charity towards the neighbor, and animosity towards those who love God.[18]
Unlike the other seven deadly sins, which are sins of committing immorality, sloth is a sin of omitting responsibilities. It may arise from any of the other capital vices; for example, a son may omit his duty to his father through anger. The state and habit of sloth is a mortal sin, while the habit of the soul tending towards the last mortal state of sloth is not mortal in and of itself except under certain circumstances.[18]
Emotionally, and cognitively, the evil of acedia finds expression in a lack of any feeling for the world, for the people in it, or for the self. Acedia takes form as an alienation of the sentient self first from the world and then from itself. The most profound versions of this condition are found in a withdrawal from all forms of participation in or care for others or oneself, but a lesser yet more noisome element was also noted by theologians. Gregory the Great asserted that, “from tristitia, there arise malice, rancour, cowardice, [and] despair”. Chaucer also dealt with this attribute of acedia, counting the characteristics of the sin to include despair, somnolence, idleness, tardiness, negligence, laziness, and wrawnesse, the last variously translated as “anger” or better as “peevishness”. For Chaucer, human’s sin consists of languishing and holding back, refusing to undertake works of goodness because, they tell themselves, the circumstances surrounding the establishment of good are too grievous and too difficult to suffer. Acedia in Chaucer’s view is thus the enemy of every source and motive for work.[31]
Sloth subverts the livelihood of the body, taking no care for its day-to-day provisions, and slows down the mind, halting its attention to matters of great importance. Sloth hinders the man in his righteous undertakings and thus becomes a terrible source of human’s undoing.[31]
Thursday gratefuls: Shadow. Her kindness. Amy. Her understanding. Cookunity. Colorado Coop and Garden. The Greenhouse. Gardening again. Korea. Malaysia. Australasia. Wisconsin. Saudi Arabia. The Bay. First Light. 10,000 Lakes. The Rocky Mountain Front Range. Where my people live.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Greenhouse
Week Kavannah: Joy. Simcha.
One brief shining: Nathan and I wandered in my back yard, his app that shows Great Sol’s illumination searching for a good spot to plant my greenhouse, until we neared a spot close to the shed, that was it with decent morning Sun and an hours worth of afternoon Sun more than anywhere else.
That picture is not quite what I’m getting. Mine will have an outdoor raised bed on either side and shutters that move themselves as the greenhouse heats up and cools down. It will also have an electric heater for Winter and a drip irrigation system inside and out.
This guy Nathan, a Conifer native, started his business Colorado Coop and Garden to give folks like me an opportunity to grow things up here. Working a garden at ground level is long past for me. But Nathan can build the raised beds at a height where my back is not an issue.
Guess I’m regressing here in some ways. A Dog. A small Garden. Andover in miniature. The greenhouse will have a sign: Artemis Gardens. Artemis Honey was Kate and mine’s name for our bee operation.
I’m loving my classes at Kabbalah Experience. Reaching deep into the purpose of religion and Judaism in particular. Reimagining the story of Adam and Eve. My life, my Jewish life and my Shadow Mountain life, have begun to resonate. Learning and living an adventure in fourth phase purpose.
No matter what the near term future holds for my health I will not succumb to despair or bleakness. As I’ve often said, I want to live until I die. This life, I’m coming to realize, is me doing just that.
If I were a bit more spry, I’d add a chicken coop and a couple of bee hives, but both require more flexibility than I can muster.
I’m at my best when I’m active outside with Mother Earth and inside with a Dog, books, and new learning. All that leavened with the sort of intimate relationships I’ve developed both here and in Minnesota and with my far flung family.
That’s living in the face of autocracy and cruelty. I will not attenuate my life. Neither for the dark winds blowing through our country and world, nor for that dark friend of us all, death.
Just a moment: Did you read Thomas Friedman’s article: I’ve Never Been More Afraid for My Countries Future? His words, served up with a healthy dish of Scandinavian influenced St. Louis Park Judaism, ring more than true to me. They have the voice of prophecy.
We are in trouble. No doubt. Trouble from which extrication will require decades, I imagine. If not longer. Yet. I plan to grow heirloom vegetables year round on Shadow Mountain. To have mah Dog Shadow with me in the Greenhouse.
I also plan to write and think about the sacred, the one, the wholeness of which we are part and in which we live, die, love. I will not cheapen my life with bitterness, rather I will eat salads, read, play with Shadow and dine with friends, talk to my friends and family near and far.
Shabbat gratefuls: United flight 806. An hour out of San Francisco. United flight 1702 to Denver. Cool night. Rain. The Monsoons. Shadow out at 3 am. Now inside and hungry. Family. Friends. Alan and his Hawaiian shirt. The Bread Lounge. Artemis and her beds. Shadow Mountain high.
Artemis: Had to rig a twine support for another fast growing Tomato Stalk. Will have to do more once Fruiting starts, heavy. I’m ready. I have Tomato metal and plastic supports, more twine.
