Daily Archives: April 1, 2011

Dogs, Garden

Big D

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Spring                                                                Waning Bloodroot Moon

The weekly let down after my round of Ovid has set in, exaggerated by the two day drive-a-thon to Lincoln, Ne and back.  Let down may not be the best phrase.  An easing up, a lull, a caravan serai.  All better.  An internal nod to the energy of the week and the things accomplished, a time to enjoy, not focus.

The Sollie-Rigel wars have not yet fully waned, but they will.  Rigel rolled Sollie over on his back last night in the living room.  I thought that would settle things, but not wholly.  Dogs love to defend passage ways, a door, a cage entrance, a passageway around the couch, a gate.  Sometimes that defensive trigger gets punched and restraint soon flies away, giving way to bared teeth, raised ruffs and lots of snarling.  Very primal.

It is, I noticed, much easier to step into the midst of a fight when the contenders all weigh 100 pounds or less.  When the Wolfhounds fought, Tor and Orion for instance, it was 180 pounds against 180 pounds.  Puny human of not much account.  That’s the time for buckets of cold water.  Works surprisingly well.  When I got tired of the posturing last night, I barked myself, put a hand on Rigel’s collar and another on Sollie’s and finished it.

My leeks and herbs have not started.  Not sure what I did wrong, I might have fouled up on getting the potting soil wet enough.  Or something.  But, I have to start over at any rate.  A weekend task.

Each domain, vegetables, dogs, perennials, bees, Latin, art, politics, friendships, family has an inexhaustible number of lessons to teach us.  Staying open to learning is so important.  And sometimes pretty damned hard.

Aging, Commentary on the news, Family, Weather +Climate

A Jinn Out of the Bottle

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Spring                                                                Waning Bloodroot Moon

Round Lake still has ice, April 1st.  Ice out is way late this year.

Put Kate on the Northstar this morning, headed for MSP, terminal 2, for her Southwest flight to Denver and granddaughter Ruth’s 5th birthday.  Kate gets a real kick out of visiting the grandkids, a sort of grandma thing.  It’s great to see.  Being retired makes all this much easier for her.

Fukushima nuclear disaster appears to grow worse though sorting out the news reports is difficult.  The utility company appears less than forthcoming with data and the Japanese government has been unusually slow, too.  As Bill Schmidt said at Sheepshead, the tsunami and the earthquake have created much greater human tragedy so far.  Over 10,000 dead found and probably and equal number sucked out to sea never to be found.

Those folks need our attention and our care, as do humans experiencing disasters natural or manmade anywhere.

And yet, the media focuses on the nuclear story.   This is a genie that we know, one loosed from its billions of years old bottle, a source of energy confined to the bright heart of stars until the last century.   We say we control it, but like fire, if it gets away from us, its elemental nature can overwhelm our defenses, poison our world.  The record is mostly good, consider all those reactors functioning all these years without an accident, but three, three acknowledged accidents, roils the psyche.  What have we done?  Could such an unusual confluence of events happen here or over there, or over there?

This is a story whose end is not yet written, one whose significance will become clear later, perhaps years, maybe even centuries from now.