Category Archives: Plants

Anoka County, Garden, Great Wheel, Hydroponics, Jefferson County, Memories, Minnesota, Mountains, Our Land and Home, permaculture, Plants, Science, Shadow Mountain, The Move, The West, Third Phase, Weather +Climate

Gardner Me

Leave a comment

Fall and the RBG Moon

Kiss the Ground. Netflix. Not a huge fan of documentaries. Not sure why. I love fiction, not non-fiction books though I read them from time to time.

But this one. Recommended by long time friend Tom Crane. Didn’t say much new, maybe nothing for me, but it pulled my heart. Reminded me of who I’ve been. Who I’ve left behind.

Gardner me. That guy that used to spend hours planting flowers, amending soil, weeding the onions and the beans. Cutting raspberry canes back for the winter. Thinning the woods. Thinning the carrots and the beets. Lugging bags of compost. Bales of marsh hay. Planning flower beds so there would be something blooming during the entire growing season. Hunting for heirloom seeds.

I had plans. I read books about adapting gardening techniques in xericulture. Thought about this idea and that. Read a lot before our move. But, then. Prostate cancer and a cascade of other distractions. Divorce. Arthritis. Kate’s troubles.

The whole horticulture act slipped into yesterday. And I miss it. Even the cussing at the critters. A notable reminder. Heirloom Tomatoes. Oh, my god. I buy them when they’re good. Five bucks a pound. I eat them like the fruit they are as a fruit. The taste. So good. No comparison to those raised for mechanical harvesting. Not even the same thing, imho.

Our carrots and beets and leeks and garlic and beans. Our honeycrisp apples. Granny. Plums. Cherries. The onions drying on the old screen door in the shed Jon built. A basement pantry filled with canned vegetables, canned fruit. Jars of honey from Artemis Honey.

A greenhouse. That’s the only way I could return to gardening. I’m no longer strong enough for the kind of gardening we did in Andover, Minnesota. I’d need plants on a bench about hip height. But I’m seriously considering it. The dogs. Yes. Kate. Yes. But, plants, too. Our own food on our table. Nurturing plants. I’m sad I left it behind.

We’ll see.

Aging, Asia, Beyond the Boundaries, Commentary on Religion, Great Wheel, Holidays, Humanities, Mountains, Myth and Story, Original Relation, Plants, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, Weather +Climate

Courage and Sadness

Leave a comment

Mabon (Vernal Equinox) and the RBG Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Kate resolving the missing $5,500.Rigel eager to get up this morning. Orion in the south. Mars in the west. Venus in the east. Sirius in the southeast. Small bursts of color. The Great Wheel, turning.

The vernal equinox. When the night hours increase. Daylight shortens. Crops come to fruit. The Earth begins to gather back to itself the plants that grew in fields and meadows.

The Elk rut. That strange strangled cry of the bugling bull Elk. The cough of the mountain lion as they hunt in the dawn and twilight. Bears in their hyperphagia phase (a new word for me), 20,000 calories a day. Preparation for hibernation. Upturned trash cans, detritus on the roads.

Orion returns to the night sky. Getting the paper while feeding the dogs. In the dark now. Seeing the stars. Or, rather, their cataract driven explosions of light.

Earth/Sky, a favorite website, has a fascinating short article about the Chinese sense of autumn. This observation I found significant: “…it’s part of Chinese culture to maintain and add to ancient wisdom. In contrast, we in the Western world tend to replace old ideas with new ideas. So – although our Western way of thinking encourages advances in things like technology and economics – the Chinese understanding of natural cycles remains far deeper than ours.”

The emotions associated with autumn for the Chinese, courage and sadness, rise in full measure this 2020 harvest season. Sad. The feeling of Leaves falling, Grasses withering, light diminishing, the Sun’s angle shortening. RBG’s tzaddik death. The pandemic. Our beleaguered and chaotic nation. Isolation and its discontents. Courage. Facing the election, doing what’s necessary. Mourning, then fighting. Going on as the Vegetative world dies, changes. Living with the pandemic instead of in spite of it. Leaning into the third phase for those of us old hippies and radicals still here.

The Great Wheel is ancient Western knowledge. I have chosen to maintain it and, I hope, add to it. As the Earth/Sky article notes: “To the Chinese, nature means more than just the cycling of the seasons. Nature is within and around us…” It used to meant that in the West, too, but our emphasis on reason, on results, on arriving at destinations, on a monotheistic creator who controls nature, have become mature cataracts for us, occluding our vision.

We see what we believe useful. We find the laws of nature, then proceed to own them, use them. This gives us the impression that, like magic or miracles, we can control nature. The rapid warming of our planet gives the lie to that.

I’m neither a Luddite nor anti-reason, anti-science. I am sad about what we’ve lost in our rush to understand and after having understood, manipulate.

I find comfort in knowing as autumn comes to the Rockies, it has also come to me. My life has matured, has headed for the fallow season, the long season in which I return those borrowed elements, become again one with the universe. Though of course I’m one with it now, too.

Which makes me feel the turning of the wheel, it tugs on me, pulls me toward not only death, but also spring. The cyclical renewal. Who knows? Maybe autumn prepares us not for annihilation, but transformation and renewal. It does for Mother Earth. Why not us?

Colorado, Denver, Family, Great Wheel, Great Work, Jefferson County, Minnesota, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Park County, Plants, Shadow Mountain, The Move, US History, Weather +Climate

Bloody Sun

Leave a comment

Lughnasa and the Labor Day Moon

Tuesday and Wednesday gratefuls: Kate’s DEXA scan for bone density. Ruby’s a.c. for the drive. Euphoria on HBO. Ruth’s new favorite show. Rigel’s improving appetite. Amber. Mountain Waste. The blood red morning Sun. Teenagers. The complexity of their lives, made even more complex by Covid. The orange excrescence and what he’s showing us about our country.

The dawn Sun here bleeds for the Fires burning through the West. The clouds show their concern with reflected color. Northern California and the Western Slope of Colorado are aflame. Their smoke and ash foul the Air we breath even up here on Shadow Mountain.

We live in the Arapaho National Forest, filled with Lodgepole Pine and Aspen stressed by drought, valley meadows with a summer’s growth of Grasses, also dry. The National Forest Service warning signs have pegged their highest mark, Extreme, for weeks now.

Western life. Punctuated by drought. Rejuvenated by Fire. Relieved by heavy Mountain Snows. For thousands of years. “Go, West, young man.” We did. But we white folk are not nomadic. We do not know where a village can be safe. We just build. Glass and steel. Hardie board and shingles. Permanent. As if there were no fire. No drought. These are strategies of the humid East, dangerous in the arid West.

As Greeley’s famous invitation flooded the West with people from the East, pushing out, slaughtering the people who knew how to move with the seasons, we made the same mistakes over and over. I’m living in one right now. It’s beautiful here on Shadow Mountain, but this house will burn. And that’s what Lodgepole Pine Forests do. They burn. All the Trees. Leaving fertile ground for a new Ecosystem.

Humans make mistakes. Often. And the consequences are sometimes horrific. Sometimes wonderful. Human life is one long unintentional adventure in empiricism. Oh, if we do that, this happens. Some of our mistakes lead us to lives otherwise impossible. Like our life here on Shadow Mountain.

Kate and I understand that we might be living here when the Forests catch Fire. That our home may be temporary. We choose to stay for the same reasons populations of us Eastern folk spotted all over the Mountains and Intramontane regions out here do. It’s beautiful and close to the Wild Life, a reminder of a world not controlled by humans.

Oh, yes, there’s a paradox. Live where it’s not safe. Why would we do that? We’re mistake makers, non-linear decision makers. We’re human.

Colorado, Cooking, Denver, Dogs, Family, Feelings, Health, Jefferson County, Memories, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Plants, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, US History, Weather +Climate

Water

Leave a comment

Lughnasa and the Labor Day Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Jon, Ruth, Gabe. All here to celebrate Grandma’s birthday. The specific Animals that gave their lives for our meal: scallops and a tri-tip steak. The heat. When it leaves. Jon and Ruth’s happiness with the gift of Ivory. (our 2011 Rav4). Gabe’s “Air hug. I love you Grandpop.” Rigel at home. The chance to cook for a crowd. Kate. Always Kate.

Didn’t do much for Kate’s birthday on Tuesday. Lots of stuff going on before, that day, and after. But we hit it yesterday. Grandkids. Scallops. The gift of empanadas from Jon and the kids. Rigel up and about. When they left we both collapsed, as usual. A good exhaustion. Happy to see them come. Happy to see them go.

Record heat in Denver. Hot up here, too. Not by other spots standards, I know, but we’ve become acclimated to a cooler day.

You can’t see the Mountains from Denver. Jon. All this smoke and haze, heavy particulates has obscured us. We’re still here. The haze is here and the smell of smoke hangs in the Air like a harbinger. It’s bad further west, but the Wildfire threat is extreme here, too. Humidity at 16. The Ground Water evaporates. The stress on Trees and Grasses grows with the lack of precipitation. A grim reminder that we’re all part of this Ecosystem.

Ruth said that Animals from the Foothills are fleeing into metro Denver. People have been asked to leave water out for them. Can’t do it here. Habituation. Which kills Animals rather than helps them.

The arid West is not the humid East. The Mountains are not the Plains. Whether we realize it all the time or not, our lives have Water as a disruptive actor. The lack of it. Water from the Western Slope, for example, goes to Denver through huge tunnels and pipes. The southern burbs of Denver have depleted much of the Aquifer that sits beneath them. Long periods of dryness lead to extreme conditions for agriculture, Wildlife, and our Forests. The Colorado River Compact promises more Water to its downstream users like Las Vegas, Arizona, and Los Angeles than actually flows through it.

Diane, my San Francisco based cousin, told me about the book, Cadillac Desert, long ago. That piqued my interest in Water. I’ve been fascinated ever since. The way the Plains states like Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, and even parts of Oklahoma and Texas have based their economies on the Ogallala Aquifer, an enormous reservoir of mostly ancient Water that underlies them. No Aquifer, no amber waves of Grain, no fruited Plains. The Great Lakes. Now, the Colorado River.

Consider the Water where you are. It is Life itself. Worthy of your attention.

Anoka County, Bees, Dogs, Family, Garden, Great Wheel, Hydroponics, Memories, Minnesota, Our Land and Home, permaculture, Plants, The Move, Third Phase

Greenman

Leave a comment

Lughnasa and the Lughnasa Moon

Tuesday grateful: The Lughnasa moon just setting below Black Mountain. That one violet volunteering near our front steps. The daisies. The faint whoosh of folks going to work. Ruth. Her eagerness to see us. Their garden and her joy in it. Seeing Patty yesterday. Banking. Socrates, the teller.

Gardening. At the end of my time on the Ancient Ones zoom, I surprised myself by summing up my life as having one regret. Gardening. That we hadn’t pursued it here on Shadow Mountain. I miss, I said, growing our own food. Working with soil and plants. I do. Miss it.

Once Kate and I moved to Andover a transition began for me from city boy to horticulturalist. I wouldn’t have predicted that necessarily. We’d done some perennials at our home on Edgcumbe road. Starting with the small bed I planted in the front yard, finishing during the great Halloween blizzard of October 31st, 1991. Daffodils and Iris, if I recall correctly.

It’s true I had a big garden back in 1974 on the Peaceable Kingdom, my failed attempt, with Judy, to develop a spot for the movement to have respite care. My only Psilocybin journey happened there. I watched our Potato plants growing. But the Peaceable Kingdom did not last and neither did gardening.

A bit of gardening at the first house, the one on 41st Avenue, but Slugs took over. There was no gardening at home in Alexandria. A few Flowers maybe, but nothing to remember.

Andover, though. When we got there, the front yard was bare, as was a sloped area behind the house in the back. About an acre of Woods were doing fine, as undisturbed Woods will do. In between was a large patch of weedy, scrubby Grass with a large grove of Black Locust. They didn’t look good, some of them were dead. BTW: many of the Weeds were actually Hemp plants seeded during a World War II field planted in it.

We hired a landscape architect who helped us with the bare Land. I wanted to sow a Prairie on all of it. Kate said no, we could never sell it. We settled on two large areas of Prairie with sod and some new Trees in between them, directly in front of the house. On the sloping area behind the house we decided to do a terraced garden. Irrigation went in with all of it.

In the beginning I wanted to do only perennials. I imagined our house overflowing with fresh cut flowers throughout the growing season. I had a lot to learn. Having flowers blooming from spring into fall requires so many skills.

I did not want to do annuals. And, I didn’t. Along the way I learned about soil amendments, spading forks and gardening spades, trowels, and hori-hori. Killed a lot of plants. Cussed at Rose Chafers, Japanese Beetles, Colorado Beetles. Along the way I fell in love with the families Lily and Iris and crocus. Learned the amazing recovery powers of Hosta.

The Black Locust and their small swords taught me caution and how to use a chain saw, a commercial grade chipper, a Peavey, a Swede saw. Hired stump grinders. I cleared, with Jon’s help, enough area that we could imagine a vegetable garden. Jon built us raised beds from the start, anticipating the day when bending over would not be easy. He made some in whimsical shapes, others square, some rectangular. I filled them with top soil and compost.

We had various compost piles, none of which worked very well. We built one that used split rail fencing and a large metal gate to keep the dogs out. Tully, one of our Wolfhounds, kept finding her way in. But she couldn’t get back out. Strange.

Speaking of Wolfhounds. Jon built a fence around the raised beds to keep them out. They loved to dig in soft garden soil.

More on this later. This has gotten long.

Commentary on Religion, Commentary on the news, Coronavirus, Friends, Great Work, Health, Memories, Minnesota, Mountains, Plants, Politics, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, Torah, US History, Woolly Mammoths

A New Covenant

Leave a comment

Summer and the Moon of Justice

Wednesday gratefuls: Mountain Waste. The Claussens, coming for my pallets. The much improved back. Mowed. Most of the detritus picked up and moved. Photographs from Scott of the Woollies at George Floyd’s death site. Sjogren’s, not Covid. Pork ribeye. Napa Cabbage. The heat. The coolness of the morning. Garbage bags.

And then the world came crashing back into my consciousness. Been following the coronavirus spikes, unable to shed the schadenfreude that accompanies the horror. All those people sick and dying because of Trump, Fox News, sychophancy. The Master Race putting its own head on the guillotine. Fixated on this, like looking at a fire in the fireplace or a gently moving fan.

Opened up the email from Woolly Scott. Pictures of my long time friends at the site of George Floyds’ death. Long arcs of dead and withering flowers freshened up by new bouquets. A line of soft toys, teddy bears and rabbits, looking both sad and sweet. Mark Odegard in an orange shirt, a mask, looking at the George Floyd mural. These are friends who lived through the sixties, who understand this holy site in the context of MLK, Malcolm X, the Civil Rights Act, The Voter Registration Act. All that.

Statues falling. Folks going after not only the Confederate memorials, but Founding Fathers like Washington and Jefferson. Or, later, Woodrow Wilson. The screeches of foul play coming from the dotard in chief. His allies revving up their motorcycles, donning their leathers, taking their automatic weapons off their racks and out of gun safes. Heading out to protect the constitution and their way of life. Their white privilege. A complicated time.

Here I am on the mountain top. Moved, but unmoved. A latter day Noah on his ark, Ararat below me. Can this earth flooded with hate and hope create a new world? Maybe I need a dove.

What might be the sign of a new covenant? A bonding among all humans agreeing to live sustainably on our only home, in peace with each other. I can still see the double helix as the trunk of a tree of life, its crown, its keter, in the heavens, its roots dug deep below the soil. This covenant I can feel.

Let’s all cut our fingers, slash our palms, swear a blood oath that we will live as if all of it, you and me, the Lodgepole, the Whale, the Mountain, the Ocean are holy. Worthy. Precious. Loved. That should do it.

Aging, Anoka County, Coronavirus, Denver, Dogs, Faith and Spirituality, Feelings, Friends, Great Wheel, Health, Jefferson County, Kabbalah, Mountains, Myth and Story, Original Relation, Our Land and Home, Plants, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, The West, Third Phase, Weather +Climate

At Her Funeral

Leave a comment

Beltane and the Moon of Sorrow

Thursday gratefuls: Gauze sponges. Wax o-rings for Kate’s leakage. Stoma powder. The chance to care for Kate. A forty degree morning on Shadow Mountain after 92 degrees in Denver on Monday. That silly Rigel, not acting her age. At all. Kep, the serious. Dog groomer today. The Kabbalah class. Folks liking my presentation. Workout yesterday.

Pine pollen season. Yellow streaks on the asphalt. Pollen lying on wooden tables, adding some color. The winds rushing through the Lodgepoles, shaking loose enough for a yellow storm. Part of the turning of the Great Wheel. That I could do without personally. But, how would we get baby Lodgepoles otherwise? Sneeze and bear it.

Wildfire danger remains high. Dry, Windy. Yesterday the Humidity in the loft was 2%, outside 6%. The arid West. A positive note. It was 80 degrees up here and a slowly rotating fan was all I needed to stay cool. Rigel, we’re not in Andover anymore.

A woman in my kabbalah class wants my Grammar of Holiness read at her funeral, “…whenever that may be.” A strong positive reaction to it from the class. Rabbi Jamie’s going to reprint in the synagogue newsletter, the Shofar.

Always thought my reimagining faith project would be a book, a radical theology with chapters and footnotes and acknowledgements. Nope, two pages. There it is. It feels said to me. We’ll see if I continue to feel that way.

After reading several pieces about Covid and underlying medical conditions, Kate and I have decided to become coronavirus hermits. Our hermitage, Shansin, on top of Shadow Mountain. We’ll ride it out with as little flesh and blood contact as we can stand. Would sound bleak, but Zoom helps, and we’re introverts, happy with each other, ourselves, and our dogs.

And, given recent news, I will add: white, privileged, financially secure, and aging with good medical care.

Still no word from the Singapore government. Seoah may fly there next Tuesday. May not. Covid has impacted lives in so many different ways. This is just one of them, but it’s personal, right here.

From Shadow Mountain, where the sun is rising and the morning is cool.

Dogs, Family, Friends, Health, Jefferson County, Mountains, Myth and Story, Original Relation, Plants, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, The West, Third Phase

Sanshin Speaks

Leave a comment

Beltane and the Moon of Sorrow

Sunday gratefuls: Two Elk bucks, eating dandelions in our backyard. Kep, stepping on my eye in his surprise at seeing them. Seoah, bleary eyed, “I got video!” Sanshin reminding me of the reassurance he sent last June, just before I started radiation therapy. Reassuring me now. Wild neighbors. Who go where they want, when they want. For whom humans are at best a nuisance. For my heart, which follows my wild neighbors

Kep likes to get up, then lay down on me in the morning. It’s part of our getting up ritual. When he does, though, he can see out our bedroom window. This morning he let out a bark and lunged forward, putting his right foot on my right eye. Ouch. Good thing eyelids move fast.

As I let Rigel and him outside, I saw what had caused Kep to react. Two Elk bucks stood on our drainage field, eating dandelions. Talk about the web of life. They are huge, as big as the Cow Moose I saw last week, perhaps a bit bigger.

Neither Rigel nor Kep barked at them. The two Dogs and the two Elk eyed each other. Kep and Rigel went off to pee and wander around the yard. The Elk continued eating dandelions. Elk Bucks, healthy ones anyway, can fend off Wolves and Mountain Lions, so Kep and Rigel were no threat to them. Kep and Rigel seemed to get that, too.

At first I thought these couldn’t be the two who came last June 17th to reassure me before my radiation therapy started. One of those had only one antler. Then. Oh. Yeah, the horns grow back each year. Could well be the same two, back to their secret stash of the yellow flower. Right now they’re resting among the lodgepoles in the northeast corner of our property. Last year they stayed the night.

Yes, the radiation has been on my mind. It was a year ago this month that my imaging work was complete, the new diagnosis finished. I knew the radiation would start, but I wasn’t sure quite when.

These two Elk, come again for our dandelions, have also come again to soothe the part of me that remains anxious, uncertain. No definitive news on the effectiveness of the radiation until November. Dave died last week and a needleworker friend of Kate’s died last week, too, also of glioblastoma. Cancer always wants to kill you.

Commentary on Religion, Coronavirus, Health, Judaism, Mountains, Mussar, Our Land and Home, Plants, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, Weather +Climate

A Red Flag

Leave a comment

Beltane and the Corona Lunacy II

Thursday gratefuls: Kate, sewing. Seoah, laughing. Rigel, sleeping hard. Kep, eager to get up, get breakfast. 34 degrees this morning. High Winds, low humidity, lots of sunshine=red flag warning. Masks. The Lodgepole blown over yesterday. Equanimity. Mussar. Kabbalah class yesterday. Missed opportunities for exercise. Dave and Deb.

High Winds yesterday. Up to 40 mph, gusting lasted most of the day yesterday and Tuesday. Both were red flag days. Occurred to me that these are the original red flags. When they show up, those of us surrounded by the Arapaho National Forest pay attention. Not a metaphor.

A Lodgepole pine blew over in our backyard. Pines tend to have shallow roots. Fortunately it blew over away from our house. It could have hit the upstairs balcony had it gone south instead of north. An unintended consequence of fire mitigation, I think. Lodgepoles grow close together up here, an area clear cut for Denver early last century. I removed this Individual’s companions, left it to deal with the gusts of Wind all on its own.

Gotta get out the limbing ax. There’s other limbing work to be done on Trees felled last fall. And, there are still Trees to remove. Shallow roots are a good adaptation to thin Soil, rocky Soil, but they do have their risks. Wondering about other reasons for shallow roots.

In people shallow roots can lead to problems, too. The strong winds of the coronavirus can lead to a fall. The middah of equanimity, the topic for MVP mussar next week, is the psychic equivalent of deep roots. When life pushes us hard, say isolation or lockdown for an indeterminate number of weeks, equanimity can keep us upright. We will feel neither the need to run out and fill up the car with toilet paper, nor will we hunker down, go still, bury our fears.

Judaism has a clear view of the human experience: “Your spiritual experience will give you many gifts, but don’t expect it to relieve you of your human nature.” (Everyday Holiness, Alan Morinis, p. 99) Yes, practice equanimity, but don’t be surprised when life sends you a fire, or a virus, or a serious illness and you lose it. Notice that, congratulate yourself perhaps on a less severe reaction than you might have had in the past, and learn what you can from it. Mussar is an incremental practice that does not have an endpoint.

Coronavirus, Dogs, Family, Health, Mountains, Plants, Shadow Mountain, Talmud, Third Phase

To Rigel

Leave a comment

Beltane and the Corona Lunacy II

Tuesday gratefuls: Rigel, our amazing 11 year old. “She could pass for five,” said the vet at her physical yesterday. Cool mountain nights. Blue Colorado sky. Being home, having a home. Rocks piled up high, high, high. Streams racing to the leave the Mountain top, to carry its message to the sea.

Busy Tuesday morning. 7 am meeting of the Clan. Clan Keaton. We celebrate and continue my mom’s family. Right after I took Rigel back to the vet for another tooth removal. Cracked. She comes home in about an hour. High intensity workout. Read Talmud. Nap. The morning.

Kate goes in tomorrow morning to see the reconstructive surgeon who worked on her fingertips. The scars have mostly healed, but they hurt at the tips and her sensitivity there has not returned. She can sew, but with less dexterity.

A Mountain spring is here. The forest service moved our wildfire danger from low to moderate. There have already been two smaller fires in Conifer. Covid will impact fire response crews. Those fighting difficult fires are often bunked close together, share equipment, and dining space. Not to mention exhaustion, dehydration. Whatever the impact it will not be positive.

Another clue about spring. The fine yellow mist shaken from new Lodgepole pine cones has begun to spread on Mountain Winds. There’s a faint layer on my computer keyboard. Animacy is in the air.

Mark and Mary have finished their terms, but there’s a two week grade challenge window which keeps them at work. Grade challenge window? Geez. Education has changed, eh? Diane’s choral music class from San Francisco’s Community Education program has moved online. She seems resigned to eventually getting Covid. She tested negative in a community testing program last week. The clan wends its international way through this international pandemic.