i didn't set any time aside for quieting today, but my husband and i did enjoy visits from two lovelies. bear with me as i figure out how to use our camera...
feeding at their feeder:
and at the hummingbird feeder:
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Grosbeak & Orioles
no sit today.
i didn't set any time aside for quieting today, but my husband and i did enjoy visits from two lovelies. bear with me as i figure out how to use our camera...
feeding at their feeder:
and at the hummingbird feeder:
i didn't set any time aside for quieting today, but my husband and i did enjoy visits from two lovelies. bear with me as i figure out how to use our camera...
feeding at their feeder:
and at the hummingbird feeder:
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Sun Gallery
morning sit.
bright, breezy, gorgeous. our pine was holding the sun lightly on the end of a branch as we sat, cradled like a small, shining creature in a great hand. the needles themselves were galleries of the sun's light, catching and showing it to every direction.
baltimore oriole arrived today, investigating our feeder stations. last year, i put a screw in a porch railing and speared orange halves onto it when we saw them come by, and they and little red squirrel shared. this year we have a snazzy new oriole feeder from family, so today i cut up a grapefruit my mother conveniently "forgot" here during her visit last weekend, speared it on either side of our oriole feeder, and placed it outside. i put the hummingbird feeder up last week, not remembering exactly when they return, but haven't seen any yet.
a lot of garden work today, most of it weeding. thinned mustard greens, weeded peas, which are about an inch and a half high now. planted kale, parsnips, cabbage, a second successive planting of lettuce, and 150 onion sets. trying to make it further through the winter with our vegetables this year than last. just got some yukon gold and red potato seeds from a friend, will be trying a new technique with them this year: growing them out of trash bags. admittedly not an elegant idea, but it will free up garden space and make hilling them easier.
bright, breezy, gorgeous. our pine was holding the sun lightly on the end of a branch as we sat, cradled like a small, shining creature in a great hand. the needles themselves were galleries of the sun's light, catching and showing it to every direction.
baltimore oriole arrived today, investigating our feeder stations. last year, i put a screw in a porch railing and speared orange halves onto it when we saw them come by, and they and little red squirrel shared. this year we have a snazzy new oriole feeder from family, so today i cut up a grapefruit my mother conveniently "forgot" here during her visit last weekend, speared it on either side of our oriole feeder, and placed it outside. i put the hummingbird feeder up last week, not remembering exactly when they return, but haven't seen any yet.
a lot of garden work today, most of it weeding. thinned mustard greens, weeded peas, which are about an inch and a half high now. planted kale, parsnips, cabbage, a second successive planting of lettuce, and 150 onion sets. trying to make it further through the winter with our vegetables this year than last. just got some yukon gold and red potato seeds from a friend, will be trying a new technique with them this year: growing them out of trash bags. admittedly not an elegant idea, but it will free up garden space and make hilling them easier.
Monday, May 5, 2008
Priorities
brief afternoon sit.
warm, sunny day, cool shadows.
during our sit today, the wind made things dance. the boy spent the sit studying our pine's trunk and the blackberry stems growing around it, just now sending out leaves.
planted larkspur seeds today, in preparation for my cut-flower garden. i'm planning to make bouquets from the garden this summer and sell them at the end of our driveway, to try and earn a little extra grocery money. strawflower, dahlias, statice, mexican sunflowers have been growing on our plant shelf inside.
(sorry about the messy state of this next paragraph; i'm tired and don't have the time to edit it now. yes, i see the irony...)
a few weeks ago, a church in town posted a quote regarding the notion that we spend our lives the same way we spend our days. I've been reflecting on this idea for a while, and it's motivated me to make a couple of small changes here and there. i've been struggling a lot lately with accomplishing the things that i need to do each day before the day is over. of course, this is always a struggle, but lately it's been heightened for me for a variety of reasons. after having an argument with my husband last night fueled by my stress over the situation, i woke up today with a new idea, a furtherance of the church's quote. i remembered reading tuesdays with morrie, being struck at how powerful it is to learn the lessons that a dying elder has learned; in particular, i was reminded today of the practice of imagining that i one is on one's deathbed and is looking back on their life, reflecting on how they spent their time. this practice always helps me get clearheaded about what is truly important to me in life, and helps me to shake off the things that i get caught up in day to day that don't really matter to me in the long run: keeping the house clean and organized, worrying about what other folks think of my decisions and lifestyle, etc. i practiced this today, and it jarred me out of my eternal struggle to organize our house and made me focus instead on so many more moments with my son, times when i was present with him instead of blindly moving through them because of my mind being elsewhere.
warm, sunny day, cool shadows.
during our sit today, the wind made things dance. the boy spent the sit studying our pine's trunk and the blackberry stems growing around it, just now sending out leaves.
planted larkspur seeds today, in preparation for my cut-flower garden. i'm planning to make bouquets from the garden this summer and sell them at the end of our driveway, to try and earn a little extra grocery money. strawflower, dahlias, statice, mexican sunflowers have been growing on our plant shelf inside.
(sorry about the messy state of this next paragraph; i'm tired and don't have the time to edit it now. yes, i see the irony...)
a few weeks ago, a church in town posted a quote regarding the notion that we spend our lives the same way we spend our days. I've been reflecting on this idea for a while, and it's motivated me to make a couple of small changes here and there. i've been struggling a lot lately with accomplishing the things that i need to do each day before the day is over. of course, this is always a struggle, but lately it's been heightened for me for a variety of reasons. after having an argument with my husband last night fueled by my stress over the situation, i woke up today with a new idea, a furtherance of the church's quote. i remembered reading tuesdays with morrie, being struck at how powerful it is to learn the lessons that a dying elder has learned; in particular, i was reminded today of the practice of imagining that i one is on one's deathbed and is looking back on their life, reflecting on how they spent their time. this practice always helps me get clearheaded about what is truly important to me in life, and helps me to shake off the things that i get caught up in day to day that don't really matter to me in the long run: keeping the house clean and organized, worrying about what other folks think of my decisions and lifestyle, etc. i practiced this today, and it jarred me out of my eternal struggle to organize our house and made me focus instead on so many more moments with my son, times when i was present with him instead of blindly moving through them because of my mind being elsewhere.
Sunday, May 4, 2008
Bird Meeting
afternoon sit. my brain didn't want to be quiet today, so very few observations. the boy talked about the world as we meandered through the yard on the way to the sit spot, then was quiet and just looked and looked around, until his little head slowly drooped and he ended up asleep in my arms.
three-legged gray came by today with a mate! the mate was larger and fatter than gray; i haven't done the research on squirrel gender sizes yet, but i'm guessing that the mate was larger because it's a male and fatter simply because it has one leg more than gray does, and so can access food more easily. three-legged gray experimented briefly with breaking in to our black oil sunflower feeder, but gave up shortly.
normally we have one or two kinds of birds at the feeder at a time. during a span of five minutes this rainy afternoon, we had at or on the ground under our feeder: little red squirrel, four mourning doves, four red-winged blackbirds, two juncos, a male & female cardinal, goldfinches, sparrows, a grackle, starlings, male & female purple finches, and a downy woodpecker. towards the end of it, my husband and i were just chuckling. it was as though all the birds in the area decided to hold a meeting at our feeder for five minutes.
three-legged gray came by today with a mate! the mate was larger and fatter than gray; i haven't done the research on squirrel gender sizes yet, but i'm guessing that the mate was larger because it's a male and fatter simply because it has one leg more than gray does, and so can access food more easily. three-legged gray experimented briefly with breaking in to our black oil sunflower feeder, but gave up shortly.
normally we have one or two kinds of birds at the feeder at a time. during a span of five minutes this rainy afternoon, we had at or on the ground under our feeder: little red squirrel, four mourning doves, four red-winged blackbirds, two juncos, a male & female cardinal, goldfinches, sparrows, a grackle, starlings, male & female purple finches, and a downy woodpecker. towards the end of it, my husband and i were just chuckling. it was as though all the birds in the area decided to hold a meeting at our feeder for five minutes.
Saturday, May 3, 2008
Mist
afternoon walk with my mother out back.
light mist as we walked, raw chill in the air. grass, lush and thicker every day now, was covered in a gray mist. pines misty-green, everything softened from the rain. sky steel gray, but such birdsong from all about that the ground itself seemed to be singing. i'd imagined that we'd miss the birds' songs once the trees were cut down, but instead i hear not only the birds from our remaining trees, but even from the forest on the far side of the opened land.
a red-winged blackbird visited the ground beneath our feeder today, as did little red and the usual doves and sparrows. so good to see that our old friends are still finding their way on this land. still hoping to see our three-legged gray sometime.
peepers have been singing every night from our frog pond. from within the house, i only hear the usual predictable chorus, but when i go outside to take in the night, i'm able to hear the quieter ones that are not quite getting it right. it sounds like there are two of them, and they make funny little bubbly peeper sounds. in amongst the "dwee!", "dwee!", "dwee!" of the peepers, there erupts a sudden "per-der-der-der-dwee!" , a rising call just like the usual ones, but with a kind of bubble in his throat. i heard them like this two years ago as well, when we had enough spring rain to support a peeper population in our pond, and i wondered then and now whether these could be a different kind of frog. but because they started singing on the same night as the peepers, and because they sing the same notes, i'm guessing that maybe they are simply peepers with some mild deformity that makes it harder for them to get the words exactly right. actually, that's a little worrisome; aren't frogs indicators of environmental health, being prone as they are to develop deformities from toxins?
light mist as we walked, raw chill in the air. grass, lush and thicker every day now, was covered in a gray mist. pines misty-green, everything softened from the rain. sky steel gray, but such birdsong from all about that the ground itself seemed to be singing. i'd imagined that we'd miss the birds' songs once the trees were cut down, but instead i hear not only the birds from our remaining trees, but even from the forest on the far side of the opened land.
a red-winged blackbird visited the ground beneath our feeder today, as did little red and the usual doves and sparrows. so good to see that our old friends are still finding their way on this land. still hoping to see our three-legged gray sometime.
peepers have been singing every night from our frog pond. from within the house, i only hear the usual predictable chorus, but when i go outside to take in the night, i'm able to hear the quieter ones that are not quite getting it right. it sounds like there are two of them, and they make funny little bubbly peeper sounds. in amongst the "dwee!", "dwee!", "dwee!" of the peepers, there erupts a sudden "per-der-der-der-dwee!" , a rising call just like the usual ones, but with a kind of bubble in his throat. i heard them like this two years ago as well, when we had enough spring rain to support a peeper population in our pond, and i wondered then and now whether these could be a different kind of frog. but because they started singing on the same night as the peepers, and because they sing the same notes, i'm guessing that maybe they are simply peepers with some mild deformity that makes it harder for them to get the words exactly right. actually, that's a little worrisome; aren't frogs indicators of environmental health, being prone as they are to develop deformities from toxins?
Friday, May 2, 2008
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Quiet Night
no sit today.
still in a little bit of my funk from yesterday. recognized that it's akin to the feeling i used to get during summer vacation from school; after the thrill of endless free time passed, i would sometimes get a sense of excessive laxness, all of the tone gone out of my days. aside from using the boy's nap time to study, the rest of my time is unscheduled. there's no lack of things around the house and the yard that need to get done, but having endless time stretching out in front of me leaves me feeling like i'm in a swamp of time, nothing solid to work off of for the forseeable future. though it may not explain it entirely, this somehow contributes to the feeling of dullness i've been having lately, like there's a veil between me and my life; i see everything happening, but nothing really touches me.
actually, i remember this being one of the feelings i had after we miscarried our first two babies; like life could just go on and on, but none of it really mattering. so perhaps, then, some of this is grief. grief for our land as it was, for the animals and plants, for the trees, the beauty and companionship that was lost with them.
in that light, here is a picture in celebration of what we had:
the little roundish pine standing alone and our apple, peeking in from the right, remain.
still in a little bit of my funk from yesterday. recognized that it's akin to the feeling i used to get during summer vacation from school; after the thrill of endless free time passed, i would sometimes get a sense of excessive laxness, all of the tone gone out of my days. aside from using the boy's nap time to study, the rest of my time is unscheduled. there's no lack of things around the house and the yard that need to get done, but having endless time stretching out in front of me leaves me feeling like i'm in a swamp of time, nothing solid to work off of for the forseeable future. though it may not explain it entirely, this somehow contributes to the feeling of dullness i've been having lately, like there's a veil between me and my life; i see everything happening, but nothing really touches me.
actually, i remember this being one of the feelings i had after we miscarried our first two babies; like life could just go on and on, but none of it really mattering. so perhaps, then, some of this is grief. grief for our land as it was, for the animals and plants, for the trees, the beauty and companionship that was lost with them.
in that light, here is a picture in celebration of what we had:
the little roundish pine standing alone and our apple, peeking in from the right, remain.
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