windthread

if you double click you can see  3  spindly grape vines.  They were from the sale table at Home Depot mid summer last year.  So,  planted late.  After getting their vines a little walked on and Goat chewed.  They then were given water.  Diligently.  And also benefiting from the water,  the Vetch which became luxuriant  and  mesmerized us with its tiny orchid like blooms.  As it went and at the end of summer,  the grapes had disappeared.  Then,  all winter.  Under dried Vetch vines.  Spring.  but….Rattlesnake season down there.  Hesitance. 

 

Alyssia Emrie and i went down yesterday and made our sounds of Presence,  just in case,  and with our hands cleared away the matted Vetch.  Lo and Behold….Grapes.  Never pruned as grapes like to be,  this one wandering one trailing vine far from it's plant of origin,  but…..Grapes.   They all made it.   Better,  more knowledgable  and conscientious care should have and could have been taken.  But they made it.  Success or Failure?

 

once again,  we let the A yard meadow go wild.   Because of beings like these.  For "Defensible Space",  a term in much use in Fire Prone lands,   that should not happen.   Success  (wild flowers)  failure….

 

the Hydrangea,  given to Daughter Jenny by her son for last year's Mother's Day.  Planted but subsequently eaten to a nub by Goats.   Dug up and repotted.  Sitting in pot through summer, fall , winter and spring.   Down at Campsite A.  No one was clear about where to plant it.   Yesterday (and today) it sits in the pot and developes it's first bloom.  S or F.

 

 

and a single chicken.  We began with 4.  One seemed to die of natural causes.  Two,  probably Tay.   One.  People don't have a single chicken.  We do.  We can't decide whether to get more.  How to deal with more.  Chicken Limbo.  But we have an extraordinary Chicken.  one more example of S or F.   

These are just small examples of many things here on this Hill where what was Planned and Imagined didn't quite happen.  There is sensitivity to this as to why.    Back at the other home in New Mexico,  the Place with the Raft,  similar things.  Things not working out.    Other cases of S or F.,  mostly F.  and i was going to write a lot of thoughts about all this yesterday….i had a lot of thoughts,  but as i was uploading these pics here,  successfully, today…..,   a very  INTENSE  Electrical Storm.  HAIL.  The phone bleating flash flood warnings.    BIG STORM.   and now its passed through and a gentle rain and i think…what does it matter.    We do what we can as we go.  We do what we can as we go.  OK.   

May is the month of reckoning.  The last day of it,  the time of Turning to Just Go.  Once again,  doing what we can.  Whatever that means  to many varied sensitivities.  

 

 

i have spent 2 hours on this post.  First trying to upload 4 more pics.  Giving up.  Writing,  what was important to me things.  Heartfelt and genuine.  All to no avail.  Lost. lost for no reason i know.  Just won't post.  so ok.  Enough.  Done.  I say,  Fail.

at about 10:00…do you see the chrysalis?   A caterpillar chose this Water View….how beauty FULL it will be for the Butterfly that emerges…I love thinking of this.  And  an egg sac of something for a neighbor…spider?

 

same culvert but different view.  There is some kind of algae spreading across the bottom,  side to side.  Thick.  Textile like.

Double click for the full sense of it.

Alyssia's photographs.

the FLU is gone.  Today,  a great day.

watch Goats through the window on an overcast day

 

 

sort scraps.  Read  Finding One's Way With Clay….Paulus Berensohn   for the millionth time.  Watch him on Utube.  For the millionth time.  Know that tomorrow there will be 

SUN  and the little creatures in my stomach will have found their way Out.

 

These are broccoli stalks.  There's also some cauliflower stalks.   They didn't grow any broccoli or cauliflower florettes to speak of but they did have magnificant stalks and magnificant leaves.  We weren't sad about that.  It was the leaves we loved in the Morning Stir Frys.  You might remember they were beset by aphids.  And that Kristen suggested planting with Hops to avert the aphids.

Gardening with Alyssia is interesting.  She loves the whole process of the plants and continued to love them into the winter when they maintained life continuously,  or a  form thereof.  As you see here.   Stalks with some leaves.  But in the last weeks,  at the bottom of these stalks there are NEW leaves rising from their earth.  I had planned to thank them and pull the stalks.  But i knew how she would feel,  so told her what i planned,  but asked for her input and all i ever got was watching her gaze go off to somewhere in the sky.  There's no way she could pull a plant that was not completely totally dead.  Even weeds.  So today,  i trimmed them and looked and thought we can plant new seeds in their midst.

the same,  or similar with the Gigunda Parsley Forest.  THICK and the leaves tough now but so so GREEN.  What to do?… they take a lot of space.  So i pulled some and left the biggest Mothers in the back.  I see that there too,  at the bottom of the stalks,  there are new shoots.  There is one complete new plant,  just a ways away.  You might imagine there would be a zillion.  One.

I planted green beans.   And  tried to decide where to put the Kale.  the Spinach.   What seemed to be a huge garden space last spring is not so much this time.  This time we know that whatever we plant will grow.   So we are thinking to try to plant what we actually will eat and in quantities we can consume.  Like…not acres of Parsley,  although the Parsley was an excellent and nutritious  component of the stir frys and will be again.  So,  this was today.

All the while i thought of that phrase  AS IS.  How back when i moved from Ann Arbor Michigan to first Oregon and then New Mexico,  how i wanted to change my name to As Is.  Legally.  Like for real.  I talked and wrote about it a lot.  

AS Is.  There is something about the concept.   that dictionary definitions don't cover.  But if you like it,  you can extend it in different ways.   As is….not new.  not perfect.  having flaws?  or,  discrepancies?   But there.  Standing.  Firm.  WITH those flaws, discrepancies and nonetheless of Good and True USE.  Good and true Value.  

and it took me back to the days of my 20's and early 30's in Ann Arbor.   My great pleasure was walking into town to a Resale Shop….Treasure Mart.  By the Farmer's Market.  A 3 story building.  Large.  The first floor was just a variety of things,  furniture,  antiques of all kinds.   Upstairs things like paintings and china.  Curios.  The basement,  things of less value and in the far back left corner of it  was the place where the textiles were.  Some tables of things…larger things and then a wall of small containers of  threads and i can't think o the word,  but stuff having to do with sewing….?     I would save that for last.

and on everything,  a tag with description and consignment info and then….often….the words   AS IS.  Sometimes it was obvious.   a chip.  but sometimes you would have to look closely to find it,  the flaw.   The textiles,  maybe a loose binding or a small hole somewhere?   Always a very reasonable price for things  As Is.

Treasure Mart is still there.  I wonder what they have now?  30 some years later?   This is me,  the kind of thing i'd do…if i traveled,  i'd fly to Ann Arbor and go to Treasure Mart.  Fly back.  Could do it in a day,  right?

So….As Is.  I'm thinking of my Self as    AS IS.  It's good thinking.

 

 

 

 

Madder

 

Indigo!!!!!!

I had started both of these inside,  care FULL y   following instructions.  Peat pots.   They sat in the window.  And grew.  And the rain didn't stop when expected.  So they grew inside longer.  Their stems became spindly and leaned and leaned toward the available sunlight.  There were days when it was so dim.  But they grew.  And then there was that Glorious week when the Rain stopped.  It was warm and the sunlight was like honey.  I hadn't hardened them off,  but  their leaning to the light had become precarious so…i put them Out.   Where they sat,  quietly in the dye garden place.  Were just quietly there.  and then

Rain again.  and Rain.   I quit going to look.  What would be would be.  The nights of the downpours,  heavy rain.   Hard rain.  But today i looked and here they are.  Growing.  Their stems,  particularly the Indigo are sideways but their leaves are leafing.  The Madder is taking hold.  Madder being a perennial.  3 years at minimum before any harvest for Dye.  But they are Good.  I thought about how 3 years is a long time.  I thought about years being components of someone's last years.  Not so much before,  but when of a certain age,  a year becomes a significant component…like in Cloth.  I sat with them and fed them water with a cup.  They drank.  But their soil was good and moist and alive.  The  B gardens are well placed and more gentled than the Wall Garden that receives much more intense Sun as the season goes on.    The B gardens,  a horizontal sweep of SUN.  Perfect.

 

 

the Grass People are seeding.  These Purple grasses…i don't know their names,  but their Beauty is elegant and so just the Purples is enough.  The Rattlesnake Grass that Emrie likes to eat…all now in their Glory.  Double click this for sure.

 

and I FOUND IT!!!!  I'd been so forlorn.  It was nowhere but then today,  it was Right There.  The hand made Spoon which is perfect to dip deep into the walnut or oak gall vats to retrieve a bundle of cloth.    I remember when i found it at the shop in Magdalena, New Mex.  Loving it's perfect Beauty and that it had been made BY HAND but thinking that i didn't know what use it might have.. ..did i NEED it?     And here,  those pots deep all winter,  so much sludge at the bottom.  A hand can do,  but the spoon,  oh,  the spoon.  

What a day.  There was more.  but this is enough.  I am so glad to be Alive.  Here.   As Is.

not quite the size of a dime.   The pleasure of  fragments,  their wild threads.   The symbol of Wind,  Spirit,  Essence.

These keep me where i need to be.

no rain today and Talkie could resume her habits.  One of which to come to the Janet Chair right outside the door at her appointed time of early evening.  It's her Beauty Shop.  She sits and grooms all her feathers,  it takes about 45 minutes.  She's very precise. Feather by feather.  Taking time to look around,  too.  No hurry.

i spent the whole day at the Wall Garden.  The only evidence of the downpouring Rains being that the snow pea vines were leaning.  I added string and all is well.   There was a generous harvest.  We added them to a Thai  curry this eve.   I worked my hands through the earth to loosen  all the roots of the clover that has planted itself there,  dominating,  and felt some sadness about not wanting it.   But instead i planted two long rows of beets.  A little late,  but not as late as last year.  Late this year because of the prolonged rain.  Thought about how over so much of this country,  planting seasons are changed.  How we will need to learn to work with that.  as it continues.