woke to frozen water.  pipes, house pipes,  Frozen.  i had forgotten to let the tap in the bathtub drip.  a work away day.  but i hung around, waiting,  listening to the smallest sounds for some sign of thaw.  waited till 11 am  which put the day in another time frame.   but when i got back, they were running and nothing broke.  OK.  January.  the tap in the bathtub MUST drip through the night.  OK.  Water MUST be daily changed and broken for the Goats.  no putting it off till morning.  Every day.  OK.  January.  the month of Winter.  

 

IMG_7811f

This is where i was when i found Spirit Cloth.  i guess 5 years ago or so.  a LOT led up to it, permaculture.  and it's no small thing, permaculture.  but it's a deep and wonder Full place to go.  and now…here i am.  back around.  i realized how lazy my mind has become.  and it could STAY lazy unless i intend to continue this daily blogging on beyond the 365 days.   if i continue,  i will need to talk about it.  because it will be The Days.   i take a deep breath and breathe out.  

an example.  the worms.  those worms that i discovered when digging out the Way Back gate.   

There are worms everywhere across the planet it seems.  but there are places where they are never seen because they stay to a depth that they are not exposed to the human view.  they rise close to the Earth's crust only when conditions are right to support that.  moisture, mostly.  Water.  and then secondarily, vegetation of some sort.  which occurs with moisture.  Water.  they then live.  and mate and reproduce and aerate the soil by this living and reproducing.  and they shit.  this byproduct of living and mating and reproducing adds nutrients to the soil.  Everything benefits.  the worms, the soil, the plants, the four leggeds, the wing~ed and the 

human beings.

Worms.  

i can't remember which year it was…it's documented somewhere in Picasa with pics…but i was here a long long time with no sign at all of a worm.   Coming from Michigan, i just assumed that there are no worms in the South West.

i was talking one day to the old man who sharpened my hoes for me.  i was talking about my sadness about no worms here.  he listened without looking at me, he was watching the edge of the hoe on the grinding stone,  and after a while he said…"they are waiting.  it's not time yet.  worms are under the whole earth.  you need to make it right for them."   maybe a year or two later as i was turning the soil for planting i SAW A WORM!!!!   it disappeared,  i searched and cupped it in my hand.  A WORM!!!!!  a WORM!!!!!!!!  

from then on,  not only for growing good vegetable plants,  but also, JUST FOR THE WORMS,  i hauled home so much manure from everywhere i could.  i mulched.  i double dug.  for the worms.  and there, in the Front Gardens, there came to be many.   i got used to them being there.  not so much a big deal anymore.  worms.  But when i dug in the Way Back which has remained all sand, all as it was from when i came here except for the Oasis in the middle…when i dug for the gate….i saw how the Goats living here is changing the Earth.  their scrap feed, their shit, mixed and pounded in with their hooves…everything here is undergoing a HUGE CHANGE.    

i can participate in that change, as a human being, or not.  Choice.  only human beings have

Choice.

Why?

i don't know.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in

34 responses to “311”

  1. Valerianna Avatar

    Mystery… is all such a mystery.

    Like

  2. Valerianna Avatar

    ITS all such a mystery, I meant.

    Like

  3. grace Avatar
    grace

    yes…but a Mystery PLAY. we are IN it. not just watching.
    IN it. playing our parts….as is everything else.

    Like

  4. handstories Avatar

    What I take from this post…that our efforts, small and big, filled with desire, make a difference. One of my favorite poems of emily dickinson…”our little kinsmen, after rain, in plenty may be seen. a pink and pulpy multitude the tepid ground upon…..”

    Like

  5. grace Avatar
    grace

    this is beautiful, Cindy…
    “our little kinsmen”
    and rain…the tepid ground upon…in this case is
    Goat urine. i don’t water there. little rain falls.
    so…as i consider your words here…
    i have to know that it’s Goat urine….
    How AMAZING is that???????????????????????????

    Like

  6. handstories Avatar

    absolutely amazing, there is no end to wonders, if we notice.
    Here’s the whole poem, you will see that I did not remember the punctuation right, oh well, it’s the sound of the words & thoughts of the worms that matter.
    http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/our-little-kinsmen-after-rain/
    xo

    Like

  7. Michelle in NYC Avatar

    GLAD the water released! When I lived upstate. in Winter, I remember that…Making SURE the pipes dripped to prevent freezing, was critical. Here in NY I have to rely on the owner to assure the same result…have enough fuel and having all the settings right. When one doesn’t OWN the land or home, one’s options for affecting how it is, are reduced to complaints, or activist actions, or law suits, or making do. Even when I did the church garden, though I could control what was used and planted, I did not own it, so when it was violated, I left. Most ordinary City folk get pretty detached from the big picture. They have to move so fast to keep up with the current culture, I’m surprised more of them don’t just pass out in the middle of a text message, while sprinting across a busy Avenue, looking down, NOT at the earth, which has become invisible in the blinding light of the bright screen, but at electronic print.
    To visit here, oh my dear fellow thinkers, and keep-going blog friends, is to enter another world where mystery waits to be discovered again and again.

    Like

  8. grace Avatar
    grace

    Michelle…this COMMENT is IT!!!!
    why, why on earth would anyone really CARE about a worm????
    WHY?
    this is perfect. and i can go from here, maybe, if i have
    it in me to GO.
    this is perfect.
    and i LOVE you. not just for this, but…because i do

    Like

  9. Wendy Avatar
    Wendy

    I like things that take a long time. This change is that kind of thing. Makes me realize how important it is to pay attention over for a long time, not expect to figure things out all at once. Yep, this is just beautiful. And I have to go open a tap, thanks for the reminder.

    Like

  10. ² Avatar
    ²

    Thank you to Michelle in NYC
    and you Grace
    keep going the mystery of energie
    of human and other living animal and…
    and working together with them
    speek with them have attention for al there is
    it is so huge even there on our little places
    the places were we have to do our little thing
    our learning our loving
    wath a mystery
    even this conversation on the blog
    day 311
    wath a every day of maintain
    wath a kind of support on our live
    a ” worm ” thing
    it works when we make it right for it !!!!
    thanks women from over the ocean
    even so close by

    Like

  11. yvette Avatar

    that book is in dutch on my shelfwi
    wisdom is responsibility
    ( i’m still in the flow of the conversation about friedship and being a friend
    also resposibility for each others needs)

    Like

  12. jude Avatar

    i am so much into these things but with out a real conscious effort to explain why. after composting for so many years, a shovel full of dirt is a shovelful of worms. i think it was Dad. He taught me to care for earth as life. to understand the slow change in care.

    Like

  13. Marti Avatar
    Marti

    Like Jude, I first learned from my Dad. This noticing, doing, acknowledging the gifts from the land, creating compost, permanent dirt under fingers, comes from years of listening to my Dad, from the kind of husband that I am married to, from realizing that the connection has always been there. A long tap root that extends from my Father to my husband to our daughters who although live in apartments in CA, grow herbs indoors to cook. It extends to our grandchildren who care for the herbs, to my grandson who one day while eating pumpkin seeds at preschool told his teacher that they should plant the seeds so they did and for a brief time, had a little pumpkin patch.
    When we take care of the earth, whether it be our own land, or land that we hold sacred from our landlord, we give and it gives and we are one. We no longer own land but we are stewards. In the many years that we have traveled this country, we have become renters and the first question we ask, at times, even before looking at the inside of a place is this: Can we take some of your land and create a garden? Sometimes, the garden is there waiting for us, other times, we create it…if the answer is no, we move on. Noticing what is around us, giving our best effort to making it thrive, harvesting, sharing bounty, comes as natural to us as breathing, it is a cycle, the cycle of life.

    Like

  14. Judith of N. CA Avatar
    Judith of N. CA

    You all have expressed yourselves so beautifully so all I can say is…yes, yes and yes.

    Like

  15. Deb G Avatar

    I have that book out right now on my table. With a few other garden books and my seeds… I’ve loved watching your days unfold.

    Like

  16. ² Avatar
    ²

    Dag Yvette , is het voor jou mogelijk dat ik via deze weg de nederlands talige titel van het boek mag te weten komen .
    grace heeft m’n adres , via jouw site lukt het me niet
    groetjes maria

    Like

  17. Mo Crow Avatar

    my old gardening friend Pete Webb worked with Bill Mollison back in the 70′ s and worked as the seed collector for the Botanic Gardens in Melbourne, in the early 80’s he studied biodynanics in England then became a goat herder for a while in Switzerland before moving to Brazil where he has developed his permaculture ideas working at restoring rainforest and developing a seed bank, he is now helping people deal with the changes with his partner Bel Cesar at their soul retreat Vida de Clara Luz
    http://www.vidadeclaraluz.com.br
    this is where I will go when it is time to die

    Like

  18. Cynthia Avatar
    Cynthia

    so many memories touched here..my father working his magic in the earth…and when he was so sick and in a wheel chair i would take him outside and try to make the mixture of compost and turning earth exactly right and watching the battle on his face ..love for me ..hatred of illness…making a garden rich with lowers and vegetables..and such a mix of worms…
    making my first long garden row in this house when i was turned down for a program that i had longed to be in…and when i found i was not going to be there and went out and dug and dug..a row three feet by fifteen..not a worm in site, digging my anger and frustration out through that overgrown turf and by the end of the day so thrilled with that barren patch..
    composting up the other end of the yard with my husband …over the years making a three foot gradient that has delighted small children and adults with its wandering paths and ooh the worms…
    now watching this first year in vermont . learning the way the land is over the course of the seasons….only there .part time but the seeds of a new orchard in my head..we have never had the space or the sun or the time before..the earth so totally different from california or seattle or delaware..
    being small and living in san francisco and our playground…we lived in an apartment…was shakespere’s garden in golden gate park and if you played under the bushes..there was amazing dirt, soft and sandy…
    but the best of all memories..of dirt and connection..being an 8 year old city child suddenly to me displaced city child in the newly being built suburb..construction all around and my a teacher…a man…unheard of in my life..talked of us of native americans and we built different kinds of shelters out on the field beyond the playground and i came home determined to make an adobe hut with the thick unyielding clay soil that my parents were turning into an amazing yard and garden…i had my space …and i knew that we..i roped my little sister into this…needed to mix in sand to make the bricks properly…and so every late afternoon we would boldly sneak onto the unfinished housing sites and take buckets of sand back and mix and mix and build..we made the structure several feet across and round and waist high before the construction gys asked my parents to please have us stop playing in their cement. (who knew )..my adobe hut lasted for years…we played in it so happily and i was so proud…no worms but i so felt like a girl of the earth…
    and then yesterday surprise. books from vermont..a series of children’s books ..the gaia girls…some days are very very good

    Like

  19. patricia Avatar

    there’s good reason, yes?, why we call her “mother” earth.

    Like

  20. KAMFreeman Avatar

    Marti, there is something of a most special, delicious opportunity when we can till, plant and grow on land that has another owner…that act of giving to the earth is one delight that never loses the gift of warm pleasure that comes to the doer and giver…earth is an amazing, wonderful and ever so surprising “cloth” in the hands of the gardener. Watching our treasured gift fly on wings of bees, butterflies and birds who come to visit and enjoy this loved piece of mother earth – the visual delight fills every pore of the gardener..

    Like

  21. grace Avatar
    grace

    your words from you Heart help me, Maria

    Like

  22. grace Avatar
    grace

    it’s like you…with your rocks and stones for the
    snakes
    it’s how the cloth you use lies quietly somewhere,
    until you find it

    Like

  23. grace Avatar
    grace

    yvette…i went back there

    Like

  24. grace Avatar
    grace

    Maria…i love that you put your Mother Tongue here to
    Yvette…thank you for doing this. it is very beautiful
    to me

    Like

  25. grace Avatar
    grace

    i think that your Place, where you live there, IS
    Permaculture
    it IS that…even those scary tree worms

    Like

  26. grace Avatar
    grace

    i have such enormous respect for your care of your Place
    where ever you find it…

    Like

  27. grace Avatar
    grace

    Earth asks. Earth is answered. it’s very Elegant

    Like

  28. grace Avatar
    grace

    LOVE to you

    Like

  29. grace Avatar
    grace

    i think you too, as Jude, have created Permaculture
    in your space…do you agree????

    Like

  30. grace Avatar
    grace

    i am going to spend TIME at this link tomorrow….

    Like

  31. grace Avatar
    grace

    to dig the long row.
    to dig the long row.
    to dig the long row.

    Like

  32. grace Avatar
    grace

    yes…but to me she is SAME. she is ME. so, i guess
    i am mother too….
    but Earth is Sister, Same.

    Like

  33. Deb G Avatar

    Yes, I have. I’m glad that is what you see.

    Like

  34. grace Avatar
    grace

    i see it. and it is no small thing. it is a very
    LARGE and ELEGANT thing.
    here…i am still working.

    Like

Leave a comment