windthread

 

well….here we are.  I think Verizon has erected another tower.  This is posted from This Table,  in This Travel Trailer.  If it's true,  and if it holds,   things will be Glorious.

She was under the tarp over the bales of feed when we drew it back.  Still.  Waiting.  Still.  We exchanged  loooong gazes.  

I'm pretty sure she is a Huntsman Spider.  Who carries her egg cases.  Who protects her young once they are born from those cases.  The size of a large penny.  Here,  in the stance to indicate readiness to defend herself if necessary.  It was not necessary.  We regarded each other and went on along with the work of the day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

i have hesitated with this.  Even though the photograph was taken some days ago,  i was hesitant.  I know a little of the Why now.  There is more of Why that i am yet to learn.  Part of why it's here today is my words of the last post.  I read them over and over and have sat with them, waiting for some understanding.  It's coming,  I need to be quiet.

I don't even know how to tell this.  Have spent already over 2 hours this morning,  from before first light,  trying to begin.

As Alyssia and i were working in the beds of the wall gardens,  pulling plants to make space,  we BEHELD a strange sight.  And Beheld is not an extravagant word for what was happening,  in the exposed soil,  right before our eyes.  Many.  Many things were MOVING.  It was startling….at first brain said they were some kind of strange insects,  unlike anything i'd ever seen, and really frightening in that there were so many and all moving in such a slow and deliberate way, hard to tell if they were coming up out of the Earth,  or going  back into it.  As we watched we made the connection.  These were the seeds of the very amazing plant,  Large plants we'd been watching, had identified as Storks Bill.  Erodium cicutarium.  We confused it at first with saying Crane's Bill.  But Storks Bill.   

Since the complaint of Frustration,  i have spent time reading about Storks Bill.   What we were seeing were many many of its seeds,  planting themselves.   "a drilling appendage that resembles a corkscrew that twists and untwists first clockwise and then counter clock wise in response to changing humidity.  I refer to plants as beings.  sometimes plant people.   And i am stricken by the brilliance of what i witnessed, by how little i really am aware of,  how little human beings are aware of.

as i said.  it's hard to talk about.  It's so surreal.   And then,  everyone was here yesterday,  Jenny's man, as usual was sheperding their dogs around,  training them around the chickens,  which i haven't said much about,  and suddenly called out,  a nest!  A hollow in the tall grasses,  just at the edge of the drivewayroad.  With EGGS.  10 of them.  His dogs flushing the chicken from where she was hiding to protect them…the chicken that had appeared a week or more ago,  just one morning, there,  outside the little chicken coop with the kids four hens,  then seeming to have disappeared for a couple days,  suddenly found to be still here,  a chicken,  who had come from somewhere,  and walked a distance,  like, acres,  from somewhere else to make a nest.

????

and i read that Storks Bill gives a green dye.  Needs no mordant.

 

 

 

 

it is hard.   Every day there are new and totally different plant people rising and thriving.  Some with flowers,  some with seed heads,  every day…a new one,  not seen before.    The frustration at not being able to get the pics on here is enormous.  I feel it in my body…

in the past,  i could post maybe 6 or 7 pics a day.  could document this Amazement but now…just posting a single pic takes 2 people and 2 days work.

I can tell you that amazingly, the little oranges are appearing everywhere,  that the incredibly TALL purples are rising on a single stem from what looked to be iris.   the new and close to the earth grass being,  the tall and fierce grasses.    The tiny,  like really tiny yellows.  All the many forms of what are kin i think to sweet peas.  Every where.  Every where,  things arise and go to the SUN.

I can say how there was a disruption in the soil at the close end of the experimental planting bed,  that at first looked to be maybe a gopher?,  but then there were minions of ants for a day but then only for a day and now today a hollowed out doorway for some being.  If i could,  i would show that here.  Document it.  I can't.  I feel this as a tangle in the center of me.  And i think about this.  This physical feeling of a tangle in the center of me.  How do i work with this?  I can't and won't be able to "go back to how it was".   It's not possible.  So how do i go from how it IS now?

Tay is doing well.  Very well.  4 and a half days.   No side effects to the chemicals they prescribed.  Swelling almost non existent.   No discoloration of the wound site.    I knock on wood.  She took the Hit for us.   the Alert.  Now we go.  

in order to go,  forward,  into what is completely new,  Unknown,  it is good to be OPEN.  What HAS BEEN will remain as container,  as form to Hold the new as it arises.  There is no need to do anything but remain Open.  Curious.  Willing.

So, she goes.  Steady.  Spirit Crow accompanies her.

 

 

 

 

so far:

there are 4 kinds of lizards,  this one the largest, maybe 8 or 9" long.  Another with copper eyelids.   A skink.  Each day, more and more butterflies,  caterpillars, one looking like a Chinese festival dragon.  Moths.  Bees, 3 kind,  wasps, earthworms, horsehair worms,  child of the earth, spiders,  squirrels, wild turkeys.  All  manner of birds, songbirds, finches,  woodpeckers.  a Crow passes above.   tree frogs.   More things, still unseen but leaving evidence of their presence.  And,  a snake.  Alyssia and i were choosing the spot for the second Hummingbird vine.   and then,  looking just to the right,  coiled neatly at the base of the fence post,   snake.  We were silent and looked.  Snake was still,  looking back.  We wanted to be seeing a Gopher snake.   We leaned in,  close,  holding the camera as close as we could but the shape of the head was obscured by blades of grass and the coiled position.   Got a stick,  but too short.  With the tip of the shovel, gently touched.   No response.  Alyssia then nudged it.  No response.  But we had the pictures that clearly showed the design of the face…those white stripes at the eye.  Not much conversation and we moved a ways down the line and planted the second vine.   Time for the kids to come home from school and all of the evening activity of Goats and Chickens,  dinner.  Early evening i noticed that Tay was limping slightly.  Left front foot,  i felt it for maybe a thorn,  Alyssia felt it also…nothing.    That was Thursday.  Friday it was swollen,  foot, ankle…some but not a lot.  Not painful to touch.   Maybe a sprain.  Wait and see.  Saturday morning was swollen like a club….a substance oozing from a spot she had licked.   She would not bear weight on it.  The only Oroville vet open with Saturday hours was booked and advised to go to the Emergency Clinic in Chico.   Tay and I set out.

Vet walked in the exam room and stood looking.  Asked if there were rattlesnakes around.  She did the usual vitals check, heart and lungs good,  a fever.  Palpated the pads, all the bones.  normal.  Shaved the area that Tay had licked and there, the two puncture marks.   Because too much time had passed, the antivenom would not work.  She is on 10 days of a HEAVY  Cephalex dose,  Gabapentin for nerve inflammation and pain and an anticonvulsant.  Rovera a general antiinflammatory.  I am to watch for any side effects,  which can be severe.  I am to watch for any discoloration in the shaved skin and between the pads.   It's hard to predict how it will go.  She's healthy and strong.

So.   We are all ummm,  subdued.  Thinking our own thoughts.  

as i was leaving the exam room,  the vet,  a  young woman,  offered that her parents live in Red Bluff and as always,  there are many  rattlesnakes on their farm.   Said there are grandchildren and dogs, cats, livestock.  I said…what do they DO?   She said, remain vigilant.  always vigilant.  Teach the children.

 

 

 

 

a few days ago,  before i brought the baskets here,  i'd taken off two scraps.  they didn't belong.   they were what was at hand, but had nothing to do with this story.  the  Cloth then, was very plain.   

immediately,  without even looking, the two purple/blue scraps surfaced from two separate baskets and as i set them down, the juxtaposition of the forms  and placement  at first was seen as awkward…. but Felt right and continued to feel right as i watched it from some distance,  pinned to the wall.  

they are of the same "place".  But the horizontal piece somehow is a passage of some sort….that needs to be gone through, in order to "get there".    Some kind of Initiation.

 

 

 

 

Enough waiting.   I realized i was waiting,  and waiting negated Now.  All the days of Now.    So i went to that storage unit and brought back some of the baskets.  Hard to tell,   well, impossible to tell,  exactly What was in those baskets that were covered in black plastic garbage bags.  But some.  At least some.    Unloaded them at the bottom of the Road Up.  Reloaded them into Alyssia's vehicle and

here.  They are here.    On the bed in what is the bedroom here,  which i don't use because it feels so claustrophobic.  The baskets rest there.  Are quiet there.  Already,  in their first moments there,  two fragments rose.  OK.

ADDENDUM  4/25

that first pic.  Taken from INSIDE ,  looking down  at the gate,  at the parked car,  at the little road of Carefree Way.  Across, in the distance is the farm across.  You can see that it is cleared,  unlike this Hill.  They have horses,  burros, sometimes some cows grazing.  sheep.   They cleared all but the Live Oak.  Most people do that.   This Hill remains in it's natural state.

 

 

for

since that post of April 1,  the MOON post,   Fixed,  i have thought.  Slowly.  Thought by thought.  slow.   going back,  then going forward.  I said i was fixed.  grounded.  HERE.  Finally Here.   What did i mean?   and there is an immediate and easy association to that meaning "home".  Am i  feeling  "home"?   

that word.  Home.  what exactly does it mean if you stay with it for a long slow time?   Home.  and no,  i don't think i have a feeling of home.   And if i go slowly back,  there is that Other Place.  If i go back in my mind's eye to that Other Place,  is it "home"?   Was it "home"?  if it was,  why?  

Am looking at that word,  and all it conjures,  which is huge,   wanting to really understand it.  And maybe "home" isn't something at all 

necessary

in the ordinary sense of the word?  

Maybe i would like to be fully Present,  in each moment,  in this Place.  Maybe i like feeling Fixed.  Grounded.  To this earth.   I would like to be fully Present,  with a curiosity and Openness to what it is that is evolving every day?   and not give it the name of home,  which somehow feels like i am reducing it to something Known,  something of the past?   What if i don't need to name it,  but just live it?

Related articles