Category Archives: Family

Dogs, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Feelings, Friends, Our Land and Home

Kona

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Summer                                                                  Moon of the First Harvests

Kona died this morning.  Both Kate and I spent time with her just before she died.  She was alert and responsive to the end.  She died knowing we loved her and in the crate she knew as her safe place.

(Kona)

We cried, both of us.  Yes, in spite of an end obvious long ago, the actual loss still opens a chasm between the living dog and the dead one.  That chasm represents the never will agains.  And those made me cry.  I would never again feel her nuzzle into my hand.  Never again see her smile.  Never again see her run the trails in our woods.

Her corpse no longer retained her; it was a symbol now, not a reality.  This is a wonder to me.  When I spoke with her about a half hour before she died, she looked at me, put her nose in my palm, caressed me with her muzzle.  Kona was 100% there.  Then, she was gone.  The light left her eyes and her body no longer moved.

The wonder is this, that life has a magic about it, seen most clearly after it is lost.  That which was Kona was there, then not.  Yes, her memories live on, that’s true.  But Kona does not.  The personality, the somewhat aloof I’m living life as I intend to personality of the sighthound, has vanished.  Just like that.

(Rigel, Gertie, Kona)

Life is a miracle, ordinary in its profusion and ordinary as long it exists, yet when it has gone, then we know.  So, each death gives us a moment to reflect on the precious gift we have.  The one carrying us forward into tomorrow.  A gift others give to us, too.  Each death is an opportunity to affirm and celebrate life and living.

Kona’s father was a whippet champion named Drum.  When we picked up Hilo and Kona from the breeder, the puppies and the parents were watching Animal Planet.  We brought them home and they began a series of escapes from the property, going under the chain link fence in pursuit of prey or delight, often both.

We held them on our laps when they were young.  Hilo would squirm, sit up, stretch, jump down.  Kona, the much larger of the two, would lie quietly, happy to be there.  

In her early days Kona was a predator.  I remember one day Kona came up on the deck, dropped something there, then ran back out into the woods.  The something was the still warm and clear eyed head of an adult rabbit.  Why she brought it to the deck I don’t know.   Over a long period Kona would kill rabbits and we would pick up the dead rabbits, put them in a plastic bag and dispose of them.  This never deterred Kona.  She just kept at it.

Hilo died three years ago of kidney failure and was never much of a hunter.  She liked to be with her people.  Kona kept to her self, finding places to sit nearby, sometimes with us, often not.  She kept her own counsel and determined what her day would be like, pretty much independent of us.

After her death this morning, I went out into the garden and sat on one of the raised beds.  Gardens heal.  Surrounded by life and life producing food, the cycle of life was concrete.  Kona fit into this cycle.   It helped me remember that at some point the light in my eyes will go out, too.  And, more.  That will be fine, it will fit into this cycle.

(Vega and Kona)

Kona had privileges the other dogs didn’t.  She would go with me into the garden, mainly because we could count on her not to dig holes in the garden beds.  She would also be outside on our brick patio with us because we could count on her to stay around the house.

She has been part of our lives for 12 plus years, as real and regular a part of our lives as we are to each other.  True she was a dog, but as a companion and fellow traveler on this pilgrimage she was with us, part of our pack as we were part of hers.

We travel on now with one less pilgrim immediately in our presence, yet at the same time, the whole pack with us, all 17 dogs, two parents and two sons.  Amen.

 

 

Dogs, Family, Writing

Sew What

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Summer                                                          Moon of the First Harvests

Kate’s in Anoka at an all day quilting retreat, sewing and talking.  She took along fat quarters with Halloween themes, so she’s feeling her way into the fall season, too.  Her sewing day friends come to these retreats as have a few people she knows from the now defunct Fat Quarter Quilting.  There’s skill building and a chance to get focused and make progress on a project.

The revision is on the last lap.  I’ll finish either this afternoon or tomorrow.  Then all those putzy things I mentioned a while back and I’ll be ready to move on for the time being.

Kona’s in serious decline now, most of what she eats feeds her tumor and she is listless.  This is when the vet advises euthanasia but I discovered with Buck, well over a decade ago, that euthanasia violates some primal norm in me.  So we keep our dogs comfortable, as comfortable as we can, hospice care or as near as we can replicate that, and wait with them as death comes.

Kona’s illness and decline has come when third phase issues are very present to me and at some point after her death, I plan to reflect on what she has taught me.  And all the others, too.

Family

Grandpop Files

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Summer                                                                   Moon of the First Harvest

Our youngest grandchild, Gabe, has hemophilia.  Hemophilia puts a lot of demands on his parents and on his older sister Ruth, but they all handle it with the same kind of grace that Gabe displays.  The goal of course is for Gabe to have a normal childhood, as normal as possible, and to that end Jen and Jon inject him with factor three times a week to prevent bleeds.  He takes this with a kind of stoicism not normally found in five year olds.

There is a regional branch of a national hemophilia center in Denver not far from Jon and Jen’s home and they do a lot of education and outreach in addition to clinical management.  Each year the center and their volunteer support group has a camp in the Rockies for kids with hemophilia and their siblings.  Ruth went for the first time this year.  Gabe’s not old enough yet.

 

 

Family, Friends, Our Land and Home, Woolly Mammoths

Home Olympics

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Summer                                                        Moon of the First Harvests

Noticed as I did my second round of foliar spray today, vegetative and reproductive plants separately, that we have tomatillos, eggplant, many tomatoes and green peppers.  None ready for harvest, but they’re on the way and it’s only mid-July.

A few last minute things for the Woollies.  Have to move more ash sections to serve as seats and go over the fire pit area one more time.  Kate began prepping for today over two weeks ago.  Between the Woollies and the kids plus Mark in June, we’ve done a lot of spiffing up and getting things ready, things that will last past the events that triggered them.

Sort of the home equivalent of the Olympics.  No bird’s nest auditorium, no fancy velodrome or natatorium, but the fire pit and the cleaned up orchard (which didn’t get scheduled until after the Woollies, but we planned it before), the hung chandelier, Kate’s familiarity with certain recipes and her finely-tuned entertainment acumen, the cut firewood, the lights in the fire pit, not to mention all the reflections on home I anticipate and the memories from June and tonight will vibrate here long after everyone goes to their home while we remain behind, here, in our own.

 

Aging, Dogs, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Memories, Our Land and Home, Third Phase

Home

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Summer                                                       Moon of the First Harvests

Home.  Back in the early 90’s when we lived on Edgcumbe Road in St. Paul, I felt a sense of homecoming when I crossed Ford Parkway.  I had crossed into home turf.  It’s taken a long while for a similar feeling to take hold here in Andover, but now, as I turn off Highway 10 onto Round Lake Boulevard, that sense of homecoming greets me.

Yes, it’s marked by Baker’s Square, Wendy’s, Conoco, Burger King and a Holiday station, but, they’re our franchises, there for our use.  The feeling gets even stronger going up Round Lake and begins to thicken at Round Lake itself where the water is on the left and the peat bog fields of Field’s Truck Farms are on the right.  Those fields are the remains of an old lake, eutrophied completely, a process that has advanced a good ways in Round Lake.

As I turn onto 153rd Ave NW, our property shows up about 1,000 feet in and I see the 6 foot chain link fence we had installed because Celt, our earliest Irish Wolfhound, climbed the four-foot fences to go greet passers-by on the street.  This particular fence was put in place after a derecho felled a large poplar and destroyed the one we had originally extended from four feet to six.  There is, too, the truck gate, 10 feet wide that we had installed because we wanted to get trucks from nurseries and our own trucks back onto our property.

The trees have grown up, grapevines have covered them, the prairie grass has morphed over time but has a pleasing current configuration.  On the six foot fence itself, the border of the prairie grass, grows our wild grapes.  Wild grapes that we pick in the fall for jams and jellies.

The driveway, the sloped driveway that creates its own stories in the winter, goes up to the three car garage that makes our house look as if we live as an adjunct to the garages.  On the right going up is a rusted and unused basketball hoop, an emblem, as at so many homes, of a boy, now gone.  In the garage itself we have a unique five stall dog feeding set up that we used when our pack was at its peak and we had five Irish Wolfhounds at once.

Do you see what I mean?  Home has an accretion of memories, memories attached to physical things like lakes and peat bogs, fences and basketball hoops.  This is not somebody else’s memories but our memories, our family’s memories.  It is those memories, those thick layers of past embraced constantly in the present, that make a home.

Inside the house are the same layers of memories, of guests and friends and immediate family, of dogs and workmen, nights and days, meals and passion.  It is the thickness, the particularity of it all, that makes this our home and not someone elses.  After 20 years, we have laid down many layers of smiles, tears, hard work and love.  That’s why this is home.

Family, Our Land and Home

Chainsaw

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Summer                                                                           First Harvest Moon

Tomorrow is chainsaw time.  Gotta get firewood cut for the big Woolly fire on Monday.  Weather says thunderstorms possible, but I’m going to proceed as if they were not.  Can’t hurt to have too much firewood.  There’s always Samain.

Got word from brother Mark that he is in Indianapolis, getting more and more work done on his visa.  Physicals, FBI check, that sort of thing.  He plans a trip to Alexandria (our hometown) soon.  It will be his first time back in a very long time.

Kate’s set aside the pots and pans today to work with needles and thread.  She finished one quilt for Sarah, our housecleaner’s daughter and has begun one for Margaret Levin, both of whom have due dates in the near future.  Margaret is the executive director of the Northstar Sierra Club.

 

Family, Memories

Home Again?

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Summer                                                         New (First Harvest) Moon

Brother Mark has been traveling the nostalgia trail of late.  He landed in Bloomington, Indiana last week, where both he and Mary went to college.  Now he’s in Indianapolis and I imagine his next stop is Alexandria, not far from Naptown, as Hoosiers refer to Indy. He visited Tom Wolfe’s grave outside Asheville, North Carolina a couple of weeks ago and You Can’t Go Home Again might be on his mind.

It is on mine every time I return to Indiana.  Alexandria was our home during our growing up years and it has that charged, magical valence that only the spot where childhood came alive can have.  Yet the heart has its own rules, its own inclinations and prejudices and for me Alexandria simply does not mean home for me as an adult.

I’m looking forward to the conversation with the Woollies about home.  At mine.

 

Faith and Spirituality, Family, Garden, GeekWorld, Our Land and Home, permaculture

Garden Diary: Beginning of the Soil Drenches and Foliar Sprays

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Summer                                                            New (First Harvest) Moon

When we installed the landscaping, we asked for low maintenance.  I still remember the skeptical look on Merle’s face.  “Well, I can make it lower maintenance, but there’s no such thing as no maintenance.”  In those first years I deadheaded, sprayed Miracle Gro, pruned the roses and planted a few bulbs.

Gradually, the land drew me in and I got more interested in perennials of all kinds bulbs, corms, tubers and root stock.  Fall became (and remains) a ritual of planting perennials, most often bulbs.  Fall finds me on a kneeler, making my prayer not to the Virgin Mary but to the decidedly unvirgin earth.  Receive these my gifts and nourish them.  And yes, I agree to help raise them.

Kate always planted a few vegetables but at some point we merged interests and expanded our vegetable garden.  That was when organic gardening, permaculture and now biodynamics began to interest us.  We futz around using some organic ideas like compost and integrated pest management, some permaculture design with plant guilds and productive spaces closest to the building that supports them and now some biodynamics (or whatever the right term is).

As I understand it, biodynamics works to produce the highest nutrient value in food by moving the soil towards sustainable fertility. This requires applications of various kinds of chemicals, yes, but in such a way as to increase the soil’s capacity to grow healthy, nutritious food and to do that in a way that maintains the soil’s fertility from year to year.

This is very different from modern ag which has a take it out and put it back approach to soil nutrients.  In that approach modern ag focuses on nutrients that produce crops good for harvest and the farmer and food company’s economics, not the end consumer’s dietary needs.  Biodynamics works at a subtler level, looking at the whole package of rare earths and other minerals necessary for healthy plants and the kind of soil conditions that optimize the plants capacity to access them.

Today I did a nutrient drench called Perk-Up.  A nutrient drench goes onto the soil and encourages optimal soil conditions, a large proportion is liquified fish oil and protein.  I also sprayed on the leaves and stalks of all the reproductively focused vegetables a product called brix blaster which encourages the plants to focus their energy on producing flowers and fruit.

The whole vegetable garden got Perk-up.  The reproductive vegetables in our garden are:  tomatillos, tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, sugar snap peas, cucumbers and, for some reason, carrots plus all the fruits.  I only sprayed the vegetables since the strawberries have just finished bearing and I haven’t decided whether or not to spray the orchard this year.  Since I made up more than I needed, I also sprayed all the lilies which are heading into their prime blooming weeks just now, plus a few other miscellaneous flowers blooming or about to bloom.

Tomorrow I will spray another product that encourages vegetative growth on the appropriate vegetables:  kale, onions, chard, beets, garlic and leeks.

This year my overall goal has been to jump up a level in the production of vegetables, increasing both quantity and quality without increasing the area planted.  Next year I’ll continue what I already think is a successful program for them and expand to the fruits and, maybe, at least some of the flowers.

As I’ve said elsewhere, horticulture is a language and it takes time to learn.  The plants and the soil speak to me all the time.  I’ve had to immerse myself in a lot of different disciplines to learn their language.  I’m not a native speaker, nor am I completely fluent but I’m well past the beginner stage.

 

 

Family

Done

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Summer                                                                    Solstice Moon

One of those get things done days.  They always seem good to have to have had, but to me, they distract from the work.  You know, little things.  Business meeting in the morning.  We have had a good year financially so far, even though we experienced some strain early on with three large vet. bills.

I researched bird netting for our orchard.  And decided, I think, to ride out this year and see how much predation we have from birds.  Might decide to cover one tree as an experiment.  The stuff’s not cheap, clumsy and not durable.

Did the carrots and the beets planting in the am, plus the chard and kale harvest.  Wandered around on the internet trying to find a gift for Jon and Jen’s 9th anniversary.  9th!  Finally found the French restaurant they used for the groom’s dinner.  Gift card.

None of this stuff takes a lot of time by itself, but clump them together and a day’s gone by.

Bees, Family

Bee Diary: June 29, 2013 An entry for Ruth

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Summer                                                                          Solstice Moon

A set of photos for Ruth, my bee helper.

Ruth, I was sure glad you and Gabe and your Mom and Dad came to visit.  I’m going to be putting those stones in place for steps in the fire pit as you suggested.  You might also be interested to know that we got the lights working for the playhouse.  A little late, but soon enough that your grandma plans to hang the chandelier crystals.

Here’s a few photographs to explain what happens next with the bees.  You might remember we used the smoker, right?  The smoke calms the bees down.

We also used the hive tool to separate the frames and to lift up the hive box to check for swarm cells.

This week, a week after you and I checked the bees (well, a week and a day), the nectar flow is about to start.  That’s when the bees make honey to store over the winter.  Lucky for us they make way more than they need.  That’s why we can harvest honey in September.

To collect honey to harvest in our honey extractor we first have to put on boxes called honey supers.  They have frames smaller than the hive boxes that you saw.  Here’s a picture of both of them.  Which one is the honey super frame?  The one on the left or the one on the right?

The honey super is smaller than the hive box.  It’s half as big.  How many honey supers would make up one hive box?  Here’s a picture of both of them.  Which is which?

This is a picture of the colony (3 hive boxes) with two honey supers on it.  It’s as tall as you are now!  In some years we can put as many six or eight honey supers on.  Imagine how tall that would be.

Here’s Grandma and Grandpa saying we love you all!!!