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the blossoms were still here this evening.   

Cal Fire.   I thought about this today.   Butte County  "contracted" with Cal Fire this year.   There is a new "fire app" called  Watch Duty.    These two things.   I hear the sirens going up Olive Highway….i click into Watch Duty.   if it's a fire,  info is there.  Sometimes its vehicle accidents or small incidents of different kinds.   But with Watch Duty i can track a nearby fire almost immediately and they update every 15 min or so.  Cal Fire does not hesitate.   They have totally consistently been On It.   i thought about how it has made a real difference this season.   i feel now like we have a good chance.   And that's enough.  

and back to the blossoms.    i sat quietly there,  just looking at EveryOne.    How it's not a lush garden.   but a garden.   a garden of many plants,  growing.   I looked at the two Hopi Sunflowers that face me as i sit in that plastic adirondack  chair,  their small and complete perfect  faces high atop spindly stalks and they Asked:    Why are we not enough?    

I realize i imagine a midwest garden….here.    on granite with the minimal amendment i have supplied so far.    I have made no raised beds.   there is  way more rock and stone than earth.   I see them.  those SunFlowers,  see the bell pepper,  crookneck squash.  tomatoes,  cucumbers,  the one green bean and Malabar,  the patty pan that can manage one at a time.   They are so much,  enough.    If i give them more,  they can give me more.   WE.   US.   Together.  They do their Best.    And very clearly,  the   "statement    "….i need to save their seeds.   Their seeds will remember this summer of 2022.

fact:   it's 11:22 p.m .   84 degrees.   typical.

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11 responses to “reason for optimism”

  1. Liz A Avatar

    after no rain for over 50 days, the rain finally came … too much and too fast in some parts of Texas, but we got just enough … the triple digit heat finally broken, so it is now “only” in the 90s
    we tried sunflowers this year … not thinking that the garden is on the south edge of our fenced yard … all the flowers turned their heads away from us, toward the sun, looking at the fence which has Don’s assemblages hung on it … ha!

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  2. Margery Avatar

    Being Enough…. Important to ponder. Thank you.

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  3. Marti Avatar
    Marti

    As I noted before here, we had a wild, thunderstorm and hail event here a few weeks ago that tore up mostly everything in this postage size stamp of a garden…BUT
    still, Swiss chard hung on; tomatoes hung on barely but we lost a lot of them in the wild winds BUT
    what remained was cracked on top, too much rain, still they turned red and gave us all they could. When my family was here, we checked every day and my daughter Erika said,”Mom, we can still enjoy them, when we pick ,we cut around the cracks, enough for each of us to take a bite, they are giving all to us, we honor them in return by savoring them”.
    AND I thought, yes that is how it goes. We do all that we can, the land gives what it can, the seeds and to deal with the thrashed assorted lettuce, I planted arugula seeds before Erika and Adrian came to visit and now, the seedlings are up, almost an inch tall- pushing up, telling me that we go as best we can…each doing and giving what we can; it is what we do and it is enough.

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  4. Jan Rowan Avatar
    Jan Rowan

    We, too, are grateful what the plants and the earth can provide this time….tho truthfully I had other visions of a bountiful garden at the beginning…….but we are all trying, caring, learning and celebrating what has been given ……I wonder if the earth in the garden is saying “look, look at what I did….look at what grew….aren’t you excited? I am…..I brought forth from the little seeds these delicious offerings! Let’s celebrate!”

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  5. Nancy Avatar

    He had an audience! ha

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  6. Nancy Avatar

    That bit of comfort of knowing. Yes. Sharing space here on this earth. Yes.

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  7. grace Forrest Avatar

    i love this…just makes me SMILE the many times i read it

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  8. grace Forrest Avatar

    it’s BIG. for me anyway in this moment of time….
    Garden is continuing on, showing me….tonight it’s
    the Fig tree

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  9. grace Forrest Avatar

    it is a BIG Teaching, isn’t it. BIG. I want to
    know this….inside me. To know it to its fullest.

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  10. grace Forrest Avatar

    it’s humbling.
    the Effort. to grow a whole Being self for a season to
    GIVE
    to grow a whole Being self for a season
    to give

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  11. grace Forrest Avatar

    am looking for words for it. the Thing of it
    eludes description

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