Yearly Archives: 2009

Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel, Myth and Story

It’s About Time

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Fall                                      Waxing Blood Moon

On the I-Google page there is a widget that shows the progression of night and day across the globe.  In Singapore it is Friday already, 12:30 p.m. Lunch time.  Here in the middle of North America we have blackness.  This is another of the rhythms of nature, the one so familiar it can come and go for weeks, months, even years with little remark.

Yet imagine a 24 hour period when the day/night cycle changed in some unexpected way.   What if at 12:30 p.m. it became night?  Or, what if, at midnight the sun came up?  No, I don’t mean the poles, I mean right here on the 45th latitude halfway between the equator and the pole.  Earthquakes challenge a core assumption we carry unknowing, especially those of us in the relatively quake quiet Midwest.  The assumption?  That the earth beneath our feet is solid, unmoving.  The regularity of day and night is also a core assumption, one we carry unaware.

It is these rhythms, day and night, the changing of the seasons, the growth of flowers and vegetables, their constancy that gives us stable hooks on which to hang the often chaotic events of our lives.  Even if a death in the family occurs we say the sun will come up tomorrow.  Flowers will bloom again.

Bringing these changes into our consciousness, the moon phases for example, can give us even firmer anchors.

They give me a feel for the continuity that underlies the messiness of human life and the apparent vagaries of time.  It is a continuity of positive and negative, yin and yang, dark and light, the dialectical tension between these opposites which cannot be without the other.  Taken all together they can give us a confidence in the nature of the 10,000 things.

They make understanding space-time possible for me, in spite of my lack of mathematical sophistication.  That space and time create a matrix which holds everything makes sense in a universe where day follows night and winter follows fall, then happens all over again in the next cycle.  This is not a linear model, it is not chronological, it is deeply achronological.

Dogs, Faith and Spirituality, Family

Surgery, Money and the Electric Fence

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Fall              Waxing Blood Moon

Saw Ruth Hayden again, today.  She has guided us since a stressful period in our finances over 7 years ago.  As Kate’s retirement comes closer and closer, Ruth helps us with fine-tuning our retirement budget and preparing our holdings to manage the inevitable ups and downs of the market.  Her help is practical and wise.  Everyone should have a Ruth in their life.

Kate has scheduled her back surgery.  It will take place on October 19th.  She plans for 8 weeks of recovery, 4 of pretty low key activity.  That means extra care and nurturing.  I look forward to it.

The electric fence has become part of our property.  I check the l.e.d. two to three times a day and walk the property after heavy winds.  Thanks to the fence, Vega and Rigel now run and romp, tumbling over and over in the way puppies will.  The electric fence teaches a strong life lesson about freedom within  constraint.  Once our limits are clear, we are free to act as we are.  This seems like an oxymoron, but in fact life has limits at every turn.  Like Rigel you may be inclined to climb the fence and run free.  Like Rigel you may find that exhilarating.

Consider this, however.  She has a secure place in which to play with her sister, get fed and hang out on the couch in the evenings.  She risked losing that when she climbed the fence.

Not a conclusive argument and I don’t mean it to be, but it’s worth thinking about.

Faith and Spirituality, Weather +Climate

Spelunking

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Fall                                           Waxing Blood Moon

Rainy and cold, October has come.  Though most don’t realize it, the rain of early fall is as important to spring as April’s showers.  The plants drink deep, ready themselves for the dry, desert like conditions of winter.  Without adequate moisture in the fall a plant can die of thirst even while the earth is white, covered with frozen water.

These days come as elixirs to my soul.  The outer becomes the inner.  Spelunking the caverns within has  a seasonal aspect for me, one I wrote about a week or two back.

Gotta go meet with our financial adviser.   Later on.

Faith and Spirituality, Family

Live Your Own Life

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Fall                                      Waxing Blood Moon

“There is only one success – to be able to spend your life in your own way, and not to give others absurd maddening claims upon it.” – Christopher Morley

It’s not the only success, but it’s sure right up there with love and family.  Self-direction has always been at or near the top of my list and I’ve been lucky enough to find significant folks, Kate especially, who’ve honored the way I choose to live my life.

Long ago, before college, I decided I would never do anything that violated my own values.  Never was a young man’s word, but the spirit of that vow has guided me well enough for over 45 years.  Have I violated my own values?  Of course, I have.  Life happens.  The essence of that commitment though is what Morley says, the ability to spend life in my own way.  That means accepting the consequences, bad and good.

Sad news tonight.  My aunt Barbara, my mother’s sister, had one child, Melissa.  Barbara suffered from bipolar disorder and spent most of her life in state hospitals.  She had a run of stable years during which she gave birth to Melissa.  That was 40 years ago.  Melissa died a a couple of days ago.  She had re-entered family life only recently, we didn’t know where she was, so I did not know her well, but she was a first cousin and the first of us to die.  There were 12 of us, now there are 11.

She leaves behind a son, John, and husband, Paul.  Her mother’s life was difficult from the very beginning and my sense from the brief contact I had with her is that Melissa’s life was not easy either.

Bees, Garden, GeekWorld, Great Wheel, Great Work, permaculture

Fall Clean-up

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Fall                                         Waxing Blood Moon

Out in the garden this morning taking down plants that have finished their labors.  Large cruciform vegetable plants grew from the seeds I started inside, but they never developed any fruits.  They’re in the compost now.  All the tomato vines save one have come down.  The last tomato harvest went inside today, too.  A few straggling yellow and orange tomatoes and a cluster of green tomatoes for a last fried green tomatoes.

A new crop of lettuce, beets and beans are well underway, lending an air of spring to the dying garden.  While examiningdieback091 carrots I have in the ground awaiting the frost, I discovered golden raspberries large as my thumb.  A real treat at this late stage in the year.  They await the vanilla ice cream I’m going to buy when I go to the grocery store.

The 49 degree weather made doing these choirs a pleasure.  Odd as it may seem, I like the fall clean-up part of gardening as well as I do any other part, perhaps a little bit more.  Most of these plants I started as seeds in February, March or April and they have matured under my care, borne their fruits and run through their life cycle.  From some of them I have collected seeds to plant for next year.  The clean up then represents a completion that goes one step beyond the harvest.  It honors these living entities by caring for their spent forms in the most full way possible:  helping them return their remaining nutrients back to the soil.  I want no less for myself.

Got a new toaster and a new ladder in the mail yesterday from Amazon.  Boy, shopping has changed.  I rarely go to a big box store anymore, once in a while to Best Buy to check out DVD’s or for some computer accessory.  I still go to hardware stores and grocery stores, the things you need weekly or right now or fresh, but everything else I buy online.

The bee guy, Mark Nordeen, had to cancel again today.  His wife, Kate’s colleague, got kicked in the head by her brand new black mare.  E.R. and a concussion later she’s home off work.  Guess I’m gonna have to figure out how to over winter my bees all by myself.

Cooking, Family, Garden, Great Wheel

Kate the Earth Mother

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Fall                                         Waxing Blood Moon

Kate made pasta sauce(s) from our tomatoes.  She also made an eggplant (ours) parmesan that we had with one of her sauces along with a toss salad of our tomatoes, basil and mozzarella.  Pretty tasty.  Kate has preserved, conserved, cooked and sewed on her two days off.  In this environment where her movement does not have to (literally) bend to her work her back and neck don’t flare as much.

After the 40 mph wind gusts I went out and walked the perimeter again, checking for downed limbs.  Just a few stray branches, none big.  I did find an insulator where the rope had pulled away.   I used the insulator itself and plastic case to nudge the  hot wire back into place.  The fence does its job, but it requires constant surveillance.  Fortunately, the energizer has an led that flashes while the fence is hot.  That makes checking on the juice much easier.

Friend and Woolly Bill Schmidt said he enjoyed the fence saga from his apartment.  He said he spent many nights, often at 2 am, shooing cows back in the field.  Electric fences are part of farming and he had many helpful hints.  He didn’t seem nostalgic for installing or maintaining a fence.

Both grandkids are sick.  Jon and Jen face the dilemma of all working parents, how to handle sick kids and work.  This is never easy and can create unpleasant situations.

I’m grateful for the rain and the cool down.  Cooler weather means plants ratchet down their metabolism so they need less water and food.  It’s time for that.  The rain helps our new shrubs and trees.   They’ve got the rest of the fall to settle in and get their roots spread out in their new homes.

Sport

A Win

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Fall                           Waxing Blood Moon

Oh my.  With 2 seconds left on the game clock, Favre hits Ray Lewis in the end zone for a touch-down.  That put the Vikes ahead by 2.  The point after made it 3.  They’re now 3-0, but it was a good game.  Not sure what it says about the quality of the Vikings offense, though the 49ers played very tough defense.  A W as they say is a W.

Sport

Vikings Game Day

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Fall                             Waxing Blood Moon

The Vikings have not looked great against the 49ers, but they did get started in the first half this time.  A blocked field goal in the closing minutes of the half gave the 49ers the lead.  We’ll get’em in the second half.

Sport

Putzing

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Fall                               Waxing Blood Moon

More putzy stuff this morning.  Lug the 280 pounds of salt down stairs and put it in the water softener.  Wire up the fencing around the compost bin built from straw bales and create a make-shift gate.  Reset the irrigation clock.

Then the 49ers hit the MetroDome.  My sense is that the Vikings run defense will step up big against Gore, a challenge that will inspire them.  Favre will throw a few longer passes to break up the run blitz and Peterson will have a big day.  Again, he has a challenge because he had the worst game of his young career against the 49ers, 0.2 yards per carry.

A slow day, Sunday.