A Spring Ditty...

Started seeds for tomatoes (14 varieties) peppers (11 varieties) and eggplant (2 varieties) yesterday. With the cooler days and sunshine I hope to cloche a couple of the insulated raised beds this morning with greenhouse poly and let the soil warm. Preparing for direct seeding of brassicas, ie broccoli, cauliflower, cabbages, turnips, kohlrabi, rutabaga, collards, brussels sprouts...and for carrots, beets, and assorted other greens...yes, gardening season is upon us, even with our cooler temps. April through October and into November we could have edible plants outdoors. That's a good 7 months plus of growing season here in the Siberia of the United States.
When the tomatoes, etc get ready for their first transplant it will be directly into the pit greenhouse bed...where they thrive until I set them out around Memorial day. I've learned not to set out tenders too early...all I end up doing is fussing and covering, late frosts are killers. Go with the flow. The direct seeded plants in cloches can have remay cloth pulled over them to protect from light frosts and even short freezes.
Hope you all are enjoying the spring. A good friend spotted a red throated loon on her lake yesterday...I've had herons, both great blues and greens, and numerous water fowl on our pond...and the birds are singing the trees and plants to come out of their dormancy, but not too soon, please. Rhubarb is covered with pots to force them to stretch their stalks seeking sunlight...small leaf, long tender stalks.

Kudos to Walt Whitman

In the 70s I spent a great deal of time with a group of people who were adherents to the Sufi Islam tradition, one of whom I was particularly close and intimate with. In the 80s I spent 2 months at a remote hot springs in the mountains of Mexico, practicing asceticism...mostly because I was in extreme poverty, although I wanted for nothing. I met three Gnostic Christians, two initiates and one teacher...the two intiates were preparing for their life together.

I followed the principles of Taoism, especially just before and for a number of years after Cheryl and I joined in union. She, too, was on the same path.

I mention these people because they are all adherents of different philosophies, religions if you will...and yet were beings of great peace and wonder, of celebration of the physical world and bodies into which we've been born. No jihads, no condemnation, no threats of violence nor judgments...

Be in peace and wonder, feel your body pass through the air, smell the scents all around, listen to the birds singing spring alive. Smile and fill your hearts and souls with wonder.

~A song for myself, of myself

Partly Truth, Partly Fiction

The cooperative model, living near or where you work, using human power to get from point A to point B, building soils in a permacultural manner, cluster housing for community and cooperation...all are possibilities. (all of which we've been doing for the past 3 plus decades) But, here I am typing on a piece of electronics which has so much embodied energy in the extraction, production and transportation (many of the pieces parts "blood diamonds"), does it really matter that a beam of sunlight is powering it? We are all walking contradictions, partly truth and partly fiction...

Thinking of summer and changes.

I've lived for times in villages, Central America, Mexico, SE Asia, which had communal wells far from the village, there would be a morning pilgrimage to them. Mostly the women with buckets or some types of containers carried on their heads. Cheryl and I had "walking" water here for decades (still do, but have added an electric pump driven by the sun), a hand pumped well in the kitchen, during periods of drought (when rainbarrels were empty) we'd pump five gallons at a time and carry them up to the garden. I recall one year when we put a 100 gallon galvanized stock tank into the bed of the pick up and drove down the township road to a stream crossing. From there we did a bucket brigade from the stream into the tank...we garnered a lot of 1 gallon plastic jugs from various places (empty milk containers from the dump), filled them with water and poked a pin hole in the bottom of each...we placed them each next to their own plants to trickle water over the course of the day....access to water is our most important need (along with shelter, food and love)...

A Hopi Elder says about these times:

"You have been telling the people it is the eleventh hour, now you must go back and tell the people, this is the hour, and there are things to be considered. Where are you going? What are you doing? Are you in right relation? Where is your water? Do you know your garden? It is time to speak your truth. There is a river flowing now, very fast. It is so great and swift, there are those who will be afraid. They will hold on to the shore, and they will suffer greatly. The elders say, 'Push off of the shore into the middle of the river, keep your eyes open and your head above water.' And I say, 'See who is in there with you, and celebrate! For at this time in history your are to take nothing personally, least of all yourselves. For the moment that you do, your spiritual journey has come to a halt. Gather yourselves, banish the word struggle from your attitude and your vocabulary. All that you do must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration. We are the ones we've been waiting for.' "

Shelter from the storm.

When I lived at an old schoolhouse the next township to the west, I chose to not go to town for a full year. I did go to a small store in a village near me, and I'd go to an old "resort" bar to play trivia on Friday nights. Bicycling distance. I'd also keep my dollar labor local, biking distance, repairing screen doors, doing general maintenance at lake homes...Consequently I had very little "money", but a lot of time. A bundle of cast off slab wood from the local mill, costing 10 dollars, built a barn for two milk goats, a dozen chickens, storage for hay and my garden tools. It also fenced a large corral for the goats...which kept them from wandering. It also fenced my garden, along with a length of 1" chicken wire which someone gave me. Here's an example of what very little money can get you...shelter from the storm. This is not my build, but a good visual. The second photo is me in front of my garden at the time, with the slabwood fence and gate...

Earth and Fire

All the materials are readily at hand without major extraction or damage to the environment...the natural world provides. This and wilderness basket making, simple elegance.

Our Thoughts Make the World

Change requires action, but the place within which that action comes from is most important.

“We are what we think, all that we are arises with our thoughts, with our thoughts we make the world.” – Gautama Buddha

Physics is pointing to the fact that the observer shapes the reality. The way we think and perceive could be responsible and play a vital role in the physical construct we see in front of us.

“No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.” – Unknown

Let's try to remember this in all our social constructs. Our thoughts do make the world.