Category Archives: Plants

Dogs, Fourth Phase, Greenhouse, Health, Judaism, Paganism, Plants, Seed Keepers, Tarot, Torah

Artemis Blends My Pilgrimage

Leave a comment

Summer and the Greenhouse Moon II

Wednesday: Mezuzahs. Rabbi Jamie. For the greenhouse. For Artemis. Shadow coming in last night. Steroid injection. Ruth bringing my credit card. Cards We Were Dealt. New tarot class, taught by my friend, Luke. Halle, limiting my exercises yesterday. Trumpeter of his own doom. Tomatoes. Squash.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Mezuzah hanging

Year Kavannah: Wu Wei. Find the chi, the creative advance into novelty. Work with it.

Week Kavannah: Hearing on the side of merit

One brief shining: Sarah, the orthopedic p.a., had a sonagram wand in her hand as she asked me, “What fills your cup?” before she checked out my arthritic, labrum torn right hip, sprayed it with a cold numbing liquid and injected yet more steroids into my body. Ah.

 

Yesterday was an eventful day in the neighborhood. It began the night before…

Dog journal: Natalie offered to come over around five with her dog to help me get Shadow in. Monday evening. I tried turkey hot dogs. Shadow ate them eagerly outside, but when I put them on the floor inside, she turned away. I decided I’d need Natalie so I went upstairs.

When I turned around, there was Shadow. In the house. I closed the door downstairs, texted Natalie.

Before all this I had heard her barking her intruder bark. I went to check, thinking another Mule Deer might have been in the yard. Nope. Beautiful yellow Swallowtails dining on bright blue Penstemon, a front range Wildflower. As one left, another fluttered down while Shadow chased the one leaving. Barking.

 

Hip, leg, back pain: Drove over to Panorama Orthopedics in the morning. Ruth met me there to return my credit card. She and Gabe had gone to pick up pizzas for us and she forgot it in her purse. I told her I’d gotten under my patched duvet (her work) without a blizzard of Goose feathers. She smiled. We hugged and went our separate ways.

The injection took all of ten minutes. Same caveats as the spinal injections. Sometimes works. Sometimes doesn’t. Wait 7-10 days. No immersion in water for thirty-six hours. Why? Dunno.

 

Tarot: Restarting my Tarot practice by taking a class originally offered by Rabbi Jamie and Luke, now taught by Luke alone. I took the first one, got heavily into Tarot and Astrology for a beat. Figured a class would help me get back to regular readings.

A big class. Maybe eight at the Kabbalah Experience classroom, seven (like me) on zoom.

 

Artemis: Scheduled Rabbi Jamie to hang a mezuzah on Artemis this Friday at 2:30. Invited a few friends.

A mezuzah contains a tiny scroll with the full Shema written on it. If it’s on vellum and done by a sofer, a scribe, it’s considered kosher.

I want one on Artemis because it will blend my major sacred paths: paganism, Taoism, Judaism. The pagan path follows the seasons, the changes in Plants, Animals, and Climate that repeat in the cycle known as the Great Wheel.

Taoism encourages working with those changes, leaning into their subtle power, knowing the changes as the here and now expression of the sacred (or we might call it chi).

Judaism and its mystical path, Kabbalah, sees the movement of the sacred as a constant flow of divine energy that begins in the ayn sof, the great emptiness, proceeds outward toward the malkhut, this world of appearances, then travels back up again. Here in malkhut, the Shekinah, or the feminine expression of the sacred has her clearest presence. A process I see in miniature each time a Seed sprouts, a Plant grows, and I am fed by this true miracle.

Artemis blends my pilgrimage into one small building, especially when I’m accompanied by my Shadow.

 

 

 

Dogs, Feelings, Greenhouse, Judaism, Plants, Science

Learn From It

Leave a comment

Summer and the Greenhouse Moon II

Sunday gratefuls: The Second Law. Entropy. Shadow and her wiggly, huggy ways. Happy Squash and Tomato Plants. Greenhouse in the Tomato zone. CBE Men’s group. Suffering. Jamie. Joe. Jim. Bill. Irv. Bailey and Babe, Bill’s Pugs. Floods. Wildfires. The Way of the Natural World.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Shadow crosses the Threshold

Year Kavannah: Wu Wei

Week Kavannah: Hear on the side of merit.

One brief shining: Went out to Artemis to retrieve my watering can-which I use to fill Shadow’s water bowl-and went inside, feeling as I did the warmth of the heater Nathan hung over the door.

 

Artemis: My temperature sensor showed no more than 90 degrees during the heat of the day and no less that 61 degrees late yesterday evening and this morning. A bit outside Tomato temperature preferences of 85 to 65 degrees so I’ll have to adjust them. (OK. I admit I just checked. I remembered them incorrectly.)

The good news. Between the exhaust fan during the day and the heater at night I’ll be able to maintain optimum temperatures.

Nathan gave me six Tomato Plants, all doing well. He also gave me two Squash Plants which I planted in the outside raised beds yesterday. They are much happier in Soil. They needed to be outside because, well, they are Squash and throwing out Vines is their thing.

Artemis lives.

 

Dog journal: We’re inching toward leash acceptance. Shadow is less reactive, but she still won’t let me easily touch her collar, clip on the leash. Slowly, slowly.

Yesterday afternoon she was outside. I was about to leave for the CBE men’s group and wanted her inside. Calling to her from inside. She came in! The first time she had crossed the threshold when I called her. Slowly, slowly.

She’s sitting right in front of me watching me type, seeing if she can will me into feeding her early. With those eyes? Almost. But no. Dog’s prefer regular feeding times. I’ve been fussing with her second feeding, moving it later in the day so she may think anytime is the right time. That will fade.

She gave up and went to chewing on one of my old socks. She likes to throw them in the air.

 

CBE Men’s group: I led an evening on the theme of suffering. Based on a chapter from David Brook’s book: How To Know A Person. My aim was to take the conversation out of the head and into the lev, the heart/mind.

I opened with this Brooks observation that he cited as the subtext of the book. Experience, Brooks says, is not what happens to you; it’s what you do with what happens to you. This is a big idea.

It fits with suffering. Rabbi Jamie offered this Buddhist thought. Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional. I don’t agree. Yes, pain is inevitable. But. Grief is suffering. Anguish and despair during and after a divorce. Suffering. Rejecting suffering pushes away an opportunity to grow, to change.

The question I believe is what you do with your suffering. Do you let it overwhelm you, diminish you, or do you learn from it? Hear what it has to say. Allow yourself to change, become a new person in light of what you’ve learned?

Suffering teaches us; offers an opportunity for change. Neither fear it nor get stuck in it. Pay attention. Learn.

 

Dogs, Greenhouse, Plants, Seed Keepers, Weather +Climate, Wild Neighbors

She Also Kills

Leave a comment

Summer and the Greenhouse Moon II

Shabbat gratefuls: Nathan. The heater. The fan. The drip irrigation. Tomato plants thriving. Squash and seeds. The Fourth of July. Shadow, chewer of leashes. Render of sheets. My sweet girl. Kate, always. Death. Life. The time between a sleep and a sleep. Rock and Roll. Give me the beat, boys. Tara and Eleanor. Choosing Granite. Kitchens.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Photosynthesis

Year Kavannah: Wu Wei. Feel the One moving in and through my life. Flow with it.

Week Kavannah: Hear on the side of merit

One brief shining: Nathan hung the heater from a greenhouse rafter, cut a hole in the Cedar siding for the fan, ran an extension cord from my outdoor plug and threaded it into the greenhouse interior, set the fan to come on at 90 degrees to exhaust air and the heater at 60 degrees to warm it on cool nights. 65 degrees inside the greenhouse on this 48 degree morning.

 

The Greenhouse: Yes, Nathan came on the afternoon of the Fourth to work. He’s a man of his word and I appreciate it.

The exhaust fan will draw air through the windows and into the greenhouse when the temperature inside it goes above 90 degrees. It hit 104 this week. The heater will come on now in the night if the greenhouse dips below 60 degrees as it did a week ago, going down into the low forties.

This is all to make the Tomato plants glad. As my good friend Rich said, “A six hundred dollar salad.” Even so.

Having another living organism here makes me so happy. The greenhouse fills my heart in the same way Shadow does. I guess that’s my little family now: Shadow, the Plants in Artemis, and me.

Again. Live until I die.

 

Dog journal: The leash saga. I bought a yellow neoprene leash. 10 feet long. Attached it to Shadow’s collar. Not easy. She went into an immediate sulk.

The first night I unclipped it, remembering her chewing up her leash from the Granby shelter. The next day near evening I got it on her again. Left it on that night and, wow, she did not chew it off. We went outside. She peed. Wrapped me in the leash. We came inside over the devil’s threshold.

Left it on her that night, too, as Natalie suggested. Oh. Well. One neoprene leash severed from its clip. I had also purchased a pull tab leash. About 9 inches long they clip to the collar and make putting on a leash easier. Pick up the tab, clip the leash onto its ring.

Never got a chance to use it because I got the original leash I bought for her clipped on using turkey hot dog treats. High value treats.

Left the pull tab on her last night. She chewed it off. I’m not sure, but I think we got past the leash jitters yesterday, so it might not be necessary. Useless now anyhow.

Just a moment: Mother Nature feeds us, keeps us warm, provides material for our homes and the things we put in them.

She also kills people. By Flood and Fire, Tornado and Hurricane, Volcanic Eruption and Earthquake. By extreme Heat and Cold. By Tsunami and Drought. By poisonous Snakes and disease bearing Insects. By Grizzly Bears and Mountain Lions.

 

 

 

Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Greenhouse, Memories, Plants, Seed Keepers

A Family Tragedy

Leave a comment

Summer and the Greenhouse Moon II

Monday gratefuls: Keaton Cousins. Tanya. Kenya. Carla. Lisa. Cathy. Diane. Richard. Kristen. Ikie. Melinda. Annette. Sibs. Mary and Mark. Joe and Seoah. Ruth and Gabe. Shadow. Fire. Water. Earth. Air. The Greenhouse. Tomatoes. Squash. Planting today. Seeds. Beets. Radish. Lettuce. Kale. Chard. Salmon for fertilizer for the Tomatoes.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Tiny irrigation system

Week Kavannah: Wu Wei. Work with the chi.

One brief: She was my age, Tanya, one of the five Steffey girls who lived in Arlington when I was young, slender and delicate, pretty in a country girl way, married to David, a farmer, and she died two nights ago trapped in the garage during a house fire.

 

Family: Got an email from Diane yesterday with the news that Tanya, a first cousin also born in 1947 like me, had not escaped a house fire in her home in Rush County, Indiana.

We are close, we Keaton cousins. My mom convinced my dad to move back to Indiana from Oklahoma so she could be closer to her family, the Keaton side.

While I’ve not seen most of them in a while, except for Diane, all those Thanksgivings, summer family reunions, overnight visits, we knew each other well. And care about each other.

We lost Lisa, the youngest Steffey, a while back to a stroke. Ikie to complications from a spinal problem and Annette to the end of a tough life. Now Tanya in a house fire. A large extended family withering away, one by one, as the seasons come and go.

Sadness, loss, disbelief. Faraway from the Rockies, yet so close in my memory. My heart.

Since moving to the Mountains, I’ve not made it home much. The last time September of 2015, my 50th high school class reunion. Not long after my prostatectomy. Don’t remember if I saw Tanya on that trip or not. Mary saw her this summer while visiting.

I’ll miss her.

 

The Greenhouse: Planted the Tomato Plants yesterday. In the Greenhouse because they like/need heat. Had a large Salmon fillet I had cut into portions and frozen too long ago. Unthawed them and put Salmon beneath each Tomato Plant.

Nathan came later in the day and topped off the outside raised beds with compost, installed a nifty irrigation system, picked up his trash. We shook hands, wished each other well.

He’ll be back because he has to install the black mesh fencing to keep out the Deer and Elk, the heater for the winter, and Cedar lap boards to seal the bottom of the greenhouse. I enjoyed working with him, getting to know him.

This morning I plan to Plant seeds in the outside raised beds. More salad fixings. Radish. Beets. Lettuce. Arugula. Kale. Chard. Nasturtiums. A few Marigolds for companion planting.

The Greenhouse has come to life.

 

Dog journal: My Shadow spent her fifth night in a row outside. Protecting us from marauding Mule Deer who would eat our Grass during the night. She protected us all. Damn. Night.

 

 

Asia, Dogs, Family, Fourth Phase, Greenhouse, Plants, Travel

More Pics from Ruth in Korea

2 Comments
An example of Nathan’s work. 10×12 mine will be 8×8 with raised beds outside, a raised bed inside, and benches

Beltane and the Greenhouse Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: My very sweet girl, Shadow. Natalie. Alan, on his way to Las Vegas. Back pain less. Why? No idea. Hip and leg pain. Reading. Listening to Hard Fork. Money from the Jangs. My son, now commander. Cool night. Mary and Guru. Ruth. Seoah and her sister, her husband and their two kids. Raeone. Alan’s gift. Hate never made anything great on a hat.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Hugs and kisses from Shadow

Week Kavannah: Zerizut for p.t. and resistance work

One brief shining: As if making up for lost time, Shadow leaped onto my legs, put her head under my chin, snuggled in close, then gave me kisses, kisses, kisses our relationship transforming in days from skittish indifference to loving companionship.

 

Dog journal: No, all is not fixed. But the most important part is. We’re buddies. Companions. No longer caretaker and uncertain animal.

She still wants me to leave the backdoor open and when it’s 40 degrees outside, I want it closed. She still may run when I get up. But we both know that will fade.

Natalie got a harness on her yesterday. Perhaps today a link with a section of rope to simulate a leash.

 

Greenhouse diary: Nathan finished the greenhouse above last Friday. About a half a mile from me. He came by yesterday to level out the foundation area for the greenhouse.

I plan to order seeds and transplants today. Some Marigolds. And some other flowers. Lettuce. Chard. Kale. Tomato plants. Beets. Carrots. Onion sets. Maybe Sugar Snap Peas. Peppers?

An electrician will come when Nathan’s finished to run electricity to it. Still have to find a sign maker. I haven’t been this excited about something in a while. Miss gardening.

A lot of zerizut for Shadow and the greenhouse.

 

Jang travelogue: Received a wire transfer from Korea so I can start paying bills for the upcoming Korean invasion of the Rocky Mountains. August 1-7. The trip of a lifetime for Seoah’s brother, sister, her husband and kids, her parents.

In other Korea news. My son now commands a squadron. The ceremony has been completed with many family in attendance.

 

Ruth in Korea:

I don’t yet know where they got the outfits, but Seoah and Ruth are in hanbok, traditional Korean formal attire. I imagine my son is in a guard costume from the days of the Joseon dynasty.

Garden, Great Wheel, Mountains, Plants, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Talmud, Torah, Wild Neighbors

Artemis: A Riff on Tactile Spirituality

Leave a comment

Beltane and the Wu Wei Moon II

A Tactile Spirituality

“I live at 8,800 feet in zip code 80433. I’m having a greenhouse built in my backyard. What vegetables will grow well in it. Look for heirloom varieties. Include recommended planting dates. Mostly I want salad ingredients and greens. Tomatoes.”

This is the prompt I gave chatgpt for a quick assist in knowing what to plant. I got back 21 pages of detailed recommendations, including specific heirloom varieties of Tomatoes, Lettuce, Radishes, Carrots, Beets, Onions, and Herbs.

Spirituality has the curse of the three-story universe, René Descartes, and destructive deconstruction. That is, Abrahamic prayer and devotional practice has historically “aimed” its prayers up toward the heavens and away from the corruptions of the flesh. Descartes’s dramatic division of the mind from the body reinforced a religious path focused on the immaterial mind, released from the body. And, in turn, Mother Earth. While deconstruction did unveil the power dynamics involved in how our agriculture works, how choice of books for a syllabus reflected white privilege, and the patriarchal symbolism of the three-story universe, it also made demythologizing a knee jerk way of removing mystery and grace.

As a result a tactile spirituality seems, at first look, an oxymoron. The mind. The heavens. Transcendence. Those are the domain of spirit. Not the soil. Not the forests. Not the feet or the hands. Not the world of this reality, this busy, noisy, fussy, often bloody and violent reality. How can we gain the peace, the calm, the centeredness where spiders crawl, illness ravages, and death dominates?

That’s where Artemis Greenhouses comes in. About as down and dirty a human activity, or I should say, human aided activity as I can imagine. Soil (no, not dirt) under the fingernails. Nurturing small plants. Beets. Spinach. Lettuce. Radishes. Plucking off predating insects. Blocking out Deer and Elk. Harvesting the red and white Radish. The red Beet. Rainbow colored Chard. Green Kale and Spinach. Eating them.

Fuel for the body. That most inelegant of spiritual residences, the body. Full of blood and waste, nutrients and foreign matter. Under some understandings only a vessel for the soul, a way to keep the mind alive.

No. Souls are us. Our living flesh ensouled. Sacred. Hardly ordinary unless you call, as I do, the ordinary sacred. What we touch feels the hand of a god, the god. What we embrace knows the warmth of a god, the god. The soil in which we plant seeds quickens when we work it.

The Mule Deer Doe who feeds her newborn fawn feeds a divine presence, a unique and precious never to be repeated instance of god made flesh. Maxwell Creek filled with Spring Rain pulls bits of Rock and Earth from its bank as the god-in-water, returning the Rocky Mountains to the World Ocean.

Sure. The Torah. Yes. Talmud Torah. The hands of living gods have written it and the minds of living Jews finds god within, upon its pages, in its stories. It teaches us. Yet, it teaches the same message as Maxwell Creek. That god rushes to the Sea. That god fills every molecule of Water.

I read the scripture written in the bark of my Lodgepole companion. I see the yellow Flame of the Aspen Catkin against the blue Flame of a Colorado Sky and read of life’s elegant and graceful re-emergence in this, the wet season.

In my world all spirituality is tactile. In Shadow jumping on my legs. In turning the pages of a Torah commentary. In hearing the voice of Luke or Ginny or Janice. In tasting a bit of Lettuce, an Onion, a fresh heirloom Tomato. All of the tactile is spiritual.

Great Wheel, Mountains, Paganism, Plants, Weather +Climate, Wild Neighbors

It’s the Merry, Merry Month of May

Leave a comment

Beltane and the Wu Wei Moon II

Thursday gratefuls: Mary coming to visit. Beltane. Snow. 32 degrees. Gnawer of Bones. Slow to trust. Shadow. Roxann who knows. Tom. Tramadol and two acetaminophens. Helps. Fantastic Four. Adam and Eve. Mordecai Kaplan. Abraham Joshua Heschel. Learning. Staying mentally sharp.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Amy

Week Kavannah: Persistence and grit. Netzach.

One brief shining: We float sometimes above our life, hovering over it like some household God, hoping to change directions or circumstances with a twist of the divine hand, a twirl of the sacred finger but we know all along that only our body bound to the earth can achieve miracles.

 

Beltane. When those crazy Scots and those blue-eyed Swedes take off their clothes and dance naked around a bonfire. Enacting the magic of sympathy for Mother Earth as she takes in seeds, embraces them in her fertile womb, and kisses them into growth. Why not? She provides for us. Sustains us. Gives us water to drink and gravity to keep us grounded.

I’ve not written many Great Wheel posts in the last few years. Like Taoism and now Judaism though, the pagan in me never sleeps. I stay alive to these seasonal changes, to their meaning for our daily lives. Even if we get Snow and freezing temperatures here on Shadow Mountain. I know the Lodgepole catkins, the Aspen leaflets, fawns, calves, kits, bunnies will emerge, small flags of life’s own Great Wheel waving the colors of renewal.

Beltane honors the marriage of the Lord and the Lady. A maiden no more the Earth takes a lover who warms and quickens her. On Beltane ancient Celts would make love in the fields. Leap over small fires. Drive their cattle between bonfires. All to advance fertility.

Love realizes its biological imperative. Souls join as bodies dance together in the rites of Spring. Are we ever more than then? When our hearts fill with passion and our senses brighten to the other. The one who shares our oneness. As the One shares with us all. What an orgasm. Can you imagine how it feels to be Mother Earth in the Spring?

We cannot stay sad about death. Not when green shoots up from black Soil. As the Spring Ephemerals throw up their colorful flowers. As the Cherry and Plum offer their delicate blooms only to shed them in Snow like Storms so Fruit can grow. As the Honeybees leave their Winter Hives seeking Nectar and spreading Pollen, these matchmakers of the Sky. When Cutthroat and Rainbow Trout push out their Roe for the milky Semen’s discovery in cold Mountain Streams.

Death does not mark a finish, rather a continuation howsomever it might be. And Beltane marks Nature’s covenant that this is so.

We know not how it is. We mortal creatures. Beltane celebrates mortality with its promise of living abundantly. If only we care for ourselves and the land.

Get outside and visit the marks of this glorious, this wondrous, this most yes of seasons. You deserve the lift.

Art and Culture, Bees, Cinema and Television, Fungi, Garden, Mountains, Plants, Wild Neighbors

All. All of it. Sacred.

Leave a comment

Spring and the Wu Wei Moon

Ramses II. By Djehouty – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0

Tuesday gratefuls: Needles into my spine. 11 am. Paul in Salt Lake City. Mary in Eau Claire. The wide world. The newly opened Grand Egyptian Museum. The National Museum in Taipei. The Frick’s renovation. The Isabella Stewart Gardener museum. The Phillip Johnson. The MIA. The Walker. Being a dramaturg.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: All the art in all the world

Week Kavannah:  Sensibility. Daat.

One brief shining: So many museums, the quiet time early in the morning before the crowds come, walking into the Bruegel room at the Kunsthistorisches, or the Botticelli room at the Uffizi, even walking with the crowd into the Sistine Chapel, the Sistine Chapel!, my favorite moment to spend time with the Dr. Arrieta by Goya at the MIA, there are raptures and revelations there for those who can see what they are looking at.

 

Imagine a street in any major city. Bangkok. Kuala Lumpur. NYC. A busy street filled with pedestrians on their way. Somewhere. Vehicles in the street. Bicycles. Taxis. Private cars. Delivery trucks. Businesses fronted on the sidewalk. With offices above them.

All those vast inner worlds. As vast your own. Never to be known. Not by you. Not by anyone else. Unless. Perhaps. A lover or therapist. Or, if one of them is an artist. Doesn’t matter what kind. Painter. Writer. Musician. Dancer. Playwright. Sculptor. Artisan. Any.

Artists need to, have to reveal themselves, their inner worlds. Can’t help it. It’s not quite the same as conversation between lovers, but it can be pretty damned close.

That Goya above? That’s the painter himself being treated. For what was apparently a not very serious ailment. Did he know that at the time of his treatment? Doesn’t look like it, does it? Vulnerable. Needy. Confident doctor.

Or, that statue of Ramses II. The sculptors, I imagine there were many, knew they had to give this work all the power and majesty they could find within themselves. Only then could it meet the demands of their God-King.

Doryphoros

I cherish those times when I can be with an artist and their work. Why? Because then like speaks to like. Inner worlds connect. Oh, yes. Anguish. Despair. Shame. Grief. Joy. Celebration. Deep contemplation. Reacting to surface beauty. Or, the lithe musculature of a Panther, the mystery of time caught forever in the Doryphoros as he steps forward.

Reading. Listening. Seeing. Tasting. The artistry of a well-made meal. What a wonder, the world of the arts.

And even so. My Lodgepole companion. My friends at CBE. Black Mountain after a heavy Snow. Maxwell Creek filled with Snow Melt. A bull Elk in the rain. Yes. These, too. Reveal the inner world of the whole wide world. In those moments before a painting or listening to an orchestra or sitting on a Rocky overhang in the Arapaho National Forest. When a newborn Fawn looks up from its first meals of tender new Grass. We get that jolt, that moment of knowing. Oh. Yes. It’s all sacred. I remember. I’ve known this all along. The press of life sometimes makes me forget. But I know it. Again. Now.

 

 

Commentary on Religion, Kabbalah, Mountains, Myth and Story, Plants, Torah, Wild Neighbors

Wildness in the Garden

Leave a comment

Spring and the Wu Wei Moon

Friday gratefuls: Select P.T. Rick. Ginny. Luke. Jamie. Marilyn. Ratzon. Mussar. Shadow, the eater of bones. Kate, always Kate. Breakfast for Shadow. Cookunity. Vegetables home grown. Nathan. Marilyn and Irv. Steroid injections. Anavah. Diane’s healing. Mark and his ESL students in Al Kharj. Snow, a lot. Easter and resurrection.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Snow

Week Kavannah: Joy. Simcha.

One brief shining: A Mountain Spring includes 70 degree weather yesterday and 19 this morning; Sunshine and greening grass yesterday and Snow coming straight down, already covering my backyard this morning; at some point a sudden shift will occur and a Mountain Summer will have begun.

 

My Wild Neighbors like to eat Garden produce. My new Greenhouse will have net covering to foil them. Besides I let my Dandelions go to seed and multiply offering dainty treats for the Mule Deer and Elk who love this briefly available food. I also offer plenty of Grass and other Plants desired by my Ungulate friends over the course of the growing season.

Shadow’s amusement will include this year Voles, Mice, Rabbits, Chipmunks, and the occasional Squirrel, either Red or Aberts. My guess is that she’s not the predator Rigel and Vega were, but she’ll still have fun chasing these Mountain Mammals for whom speed is safety.

I’m not fully in the Wild, but I am fully in the Wildlands Urban Interface and the Arapaho National Forest. No Grassy yard expected or desired. Only what grows on its own. My happy place.

 

chatgpt

Third new human story class. Holding the Genesis accounts of creating humans to closer account. For example. You can’t eat of the Tree of Good and Bad. How would either Eve or Adam know what that meant? They have no experience, no prior knowledge of those words. Good and Bad are empty vessels.

The voice, as Twain calls God, may as well have said don’t eat of the Tree of Rocks and Scissors.

And that Snake that gets all the blame? Well, guess who made him. Why make a sneaky Snake in the first place. Then to blame and punish him for acting as the Snake God created him to be? Doesn’t really seem fair, does it?

I wonder, too, about God’s observation about the human (adam). It’s not good for the human to be alone. Hmmm. From a Kabbalistic perspective that sounds like God’s contraction in the ayn sof, the emptiness that preceded everything. God pulled back to leave room for the universe. Was God lonely, too?

There are more, many more questions about this old, old story. All of them echoing down the millennia since it’s inclusion in the Torah. Original sin, for example.

Here’s a new take on original sin (in which I have never believed) that came to me yesterday. When Adam and Eve eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Bad they become self-conscious. They need clothes. Might the original human sin have been self-consciousness?

That is, could the awareness of themselves as beings separate from each other and the rest of the Garden’s plants and animals, be the fall. The illusion that our separateness is real and total. That we are somehow wholly independent from the natural world and other humans, too?

I could easily draw a line through all of human history that would link this fallacy with all the major sins our flesh is heir to.

Dogs, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Garden, Great Wheel, Health, Judaism, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Paganism, Plants, Politics, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, The West, US History, Weather +Climate, Writing

Living. Not dying.

Leave a comment

Spring and the Wu Wei Moon

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.