windthread

 so…Ultra Competent Me has reconnected the swamp cooler.  Replaced all the pads.  chipped and scrubbed off the sediment from everything.  Re hooked up the pump.   Discovered that the tubing that delivers the water to the drip system has cracks and needs to be replaced.  Easy Peasy, tomorrow i'll get some.  Change it out.   Added water to the water pan with the hose to give it a try out and…..

TA DA!  COOOOOOOOOL AIR !      but the Goldilocks hitch is that it is

noisey.  The fan,  that is a barrel fan inside,  whirls furiously and well but is     noisey.  I'd forgotten how noisey.   However.  There is cool air.   AND i did it myself.   Instead of standing there, starring at it until someone else came to check it out.  

It's really quite a wonderful system for DRY places,  no humidity.  

There are panels on the sides,  that always were shredded aspen,  now, made of other things.  Am trying out one of the other things because the aspen sags half way through summer.  But my guess is that i'll go back to that because half way through summer,  the sediment in our water builds  up on whatever pads are there.  Need replacement.    Anyway…there is an electric pump that pumps water up and into a spidery arrangement of tubes at the top which sends water dribbling down the pads.  As the noisey fan pulls air through these wet pads,  COOL AIR is blown in.   It's a very rudimentary affair.  Very inexpensive,  uses very little water,  and works.   I should have taken pics but was too intent, too sweaty.  But i did it.  SMILE.

Morning through Hollyhocks

 

one of the Toad spas.  Evidence that it had been used during the night.   more SMILE.

 

LAter:

Alz B's son came to check my Ultra Competence and pointed out that one of the three panels was partially dry.  So ok.  Tomorrow i'll figure out a way to clean the little slits that allow the water to drip.  ok.  So…well,  sort of Ultra Competent.  But he also brought me this

a Tananger that was found during the reroofing of Alz B's home.  Lodged between things,  perfect,  so light of form it weighs Nothing in your hand.  Nothing.   Form from which Spirit has flown.

 

and i Gave Water tonight totally by heart.   When i got to it,  it was dark.  Dark.  So, i moved slowly.  The sound of water from the hose and WIND who came to cool the earth after such a long hot day with Plant People limp with effort to simply maintain,  let alone grow.  

 

 

 

 

 

nothing much to show.   just going slow.  slow.  slow. slow.

 

for awhile, like a few days,  have felt like i can't let this one go.   Needed to KEEP it.  but today,  waking from a nap,  that was gone.  I don't need to keep it.    And i wondered why i thought so much i did?,  and it turns out that it is the smalle doodle here,  in the middle….just ink markings on muslin.   It's been floating around for years,   just as is and i have loved it.   It was suddenly The Thing to place here.   So, it's letting go of that.  But also letting go of the All that made it right in this Cloth.    I know tho now, that the Making is now Inside me.  Has become a part of me.  and it's Good.

 

today, mostly, it's the SKY.  This Cloth has "asked for" things, all along.  Things i didn't think of as necessary,  and to day it wanted Sun.  ok.  Deb Lacativa's thread…and there was such a good sense of Rightness to this.  ok.

7:40 p.m. and i am sweating.  Naked again.  Sweating.  Neighbor Sydney and her daughter Talulah came a while ago to get some FRESH  Goat manure for a poltice Sydney is making for some woman's fruit tree that has borers.  I had to put my Water Dress on.   or…???,  maybe i didn't???,  but i did and we gathered it as it came out.    The recipe called for a "scoop".  How much is a ….scoop?…..

so, we collected that.  Done.  and  Sun is just now heading for the Rim.   There's some WIND and i got word that my granddaughter Alyssia,  her half sister Veronika and my greatgrandson Julian will arrive here on Saturday for three days.   I think of this as i wait a while more to Give water.

 

GIVING WATER.   

Sun approaches the Rim and i go out.   Letting the water run slow,  on the Seep function of the nozzle.

 

at the base of the Young Cottenwood.

 

sitting on the log of the cucumber bed,  which is mostly eaten up by Something now, but replanted yesterday.  Sitting and looking at this Old Mexican Elderberry which is ….uhhh,   well, lets just say Quiet this year.

 

 

and looking Over,  thinking again how i might make a passage way for the Goats.  From the Way Back,  Through,  Through to the Middle.  How it would give them a Choice.  Of their own accord.  Where to be.  

 

 

it would be inconvenient for me.   I would have to have the helper guy who has lead in his balls build me two more gates.   So i could bring wood over in the winter.  In the winter,  when Wind is Sharp and Hard,  it would be ….inconvenient.   But i am looking.

 

 

 

 

Snowbunny listens to me Thinking

 

 

and i am back to where i started.   I finished Giving water.  I filled the Goats water bowls and tubs.  It's so dark now,  i was working by memory.  Time goes fast.  and i think….What is Time FOR?  What's it all FOR?

and if i did this,  this corridor from Way Back to Middle,   how for sure it would exclude me from ever having a beautiful……………yard.   But then,  how much happiness it would give them to suddenly decide to go somewhere else????????????????????

so after a longer than imagined day with the Old Cowboy,  and then the laundromat,  where the washer got stuck on prewash while i went to feed store, grocery store and got gas,  young man readjusted it and i went to hardware came back and it was stuck on rinse.  oh well….

 

 

 

and as the swamp cooler is not yet working,  a naked lady sat in front of the Oscillating Fan named Owen and finished the earth,  began the sky.

 

 

 

 

and this email photograph just now from Cynthia

 

and i'm thinking of the word  Numinous.  Numinous….in communion with the holy other

This is the month. Nothing forcast less than 97, with some of those over 100 degree days. And how it is. I'd like to watch this more closely than i have. Watch how the Use of the Day differs now. How early Morning becomes so critical. I'd like to watch more closely how the Goats work it. This might become important to know. The Goats had company today. Alz B's daughter came. From Seattle. She set up in their rain shelter, just sitting in there, as it was the only real shade at that hour and they came and went from her. She was happy as a clam in that poopy straw place (dry poop) but it inspired me to continue looking for someone around who might really like being with them. So…soon, i'll put up another flyer at the grocery store. I KNOW there's someone. And Bill offered some good ideas about resurrecting the Salon.  They had enjoyed rubbing against it and it had collapsed.   So,  i'll try again soon.

 

and i began the morning going back to Joan at CopperCreekers blog to listen more to Rising Appalachia  Sunu and got all energized by that AGAIN,  and remembering how in my other lives i used to Decorate myself and got as far as 

 

this.  Two little braids of the hair that is so ALMOST long enough to be captured in the barrette but not quite but also doesn't seem to want to…. so i braided them.   But then ran quickly out of interest.  It was nice in the moment tho.

 

and some more birds.   Maybe enough birds.  

Finished The Soil Will Save Us and yes,  i do have HOPE.   It is an excellent book and the last half is a clear and great picture of how more and more dyed in the wool Agriculturists are looking at these practices with Interest.  All around the Planet.  Some for altruistic reasons,  but many others, because it WORKS.   So,  it looks to me like a Win Win and might at the very least Buy some time.

and maybe the best of reading it is that there is a whole  new and renewed sense of what i am doing Out There as being more than what meets the eye.  Photosynthesis.  Photosynthesis.  Even the "weeds".  I look at how GREEN the "dread" Kochia is.  Photosynthesis.  Healing disturbed earth.  That's what weeds are for.  Healing.  Many new and very good thoughts.

finally.  Opened this up again after having just begun, last week.  And not being able to put it down.  I was not expecting this.   I had said a while back that maybe i'd read a little at a time and then write about it here.  But that's impossible.  Every sentence builds upon another and to take any of them out of context is just that…taking out of context and it's CONTEXT that it's all about.  But this one small thing:

"The world under our feet, the dark kingdom of which we're astoundingly unaware;  the down under that may account for up to 95% of our planet's species diversity.  This is the world of  soil microorganisms.  Dig up a teaspoon of healthy soil from your garden or from a city park or from the weedy strip along side a highway, and you're looking at something like 1 billion to 7 billion organisms,  depending on the health of the soil.  Scientists guess that as many as 75,000 species of bacteria could be in that teaspoon, along with 25,000 species of fungi, 1,000 species of protozoa, and 100 species of tiny worms called nematodes…and the count of microorganisms keeps rising, as scientists figure out better and better ways to look for them."

It's a truly WONDER FULL book,  extremely readable Science with many many leads to follow up in the real world of farming around the planet.    So i read.  and inbetween, stitched more on the Cloth.  More microbes.  a nematode or two.   And i looked and looked at how it was important when i placed it,   that the Soul's "toes" touched this earth.   Then,  things Out Side….

 

 

the Woad.  Going to seed.  How each cluster has the one single "seed?" that looks like a feather…

 

 

 

hollyhocks.  lots,  LOTS of pollen

 

first tomato

 

 

a Chatalpa.  Cross between a Catalpa and Desert Willow.  Don't know why,  but the hummingbirds like it very much.

 

Native Olive.  Burgeoning with fruits this year.  For birds and small seed eating beings.

 

and this grass,  a clump grass,  as is all the Native Grasses that i love and depict on cloths…i don't know what this is.  There are two clumps.  Near where i empty the bucks water bowls.  I need to find out.  There is a grass that is Foxtail that looks like this that is very dangerous to livestock.  i hope it's not this.  It's incredibly beautiful in the wind.

and one more thought about the above.   The reason that i am so hopeful about the possibility of the Soil Saving us is…that it has already begun to be accepted by even the larger more willfully ignorant world of Agriculture as we know it.   There is interest.  There is interest because more and more thousands of acres of farmland are dead and dying due to really,  almost innocent misunderstanding about How Things Go.  More mainstream farmers are turning to no till farming, turning to "organic" farming which means no pesticides, no chemical fertilizers, no herbacides,  only because they can no longer afford them because their land is DEAD and they have no money.  It takes about 5 years of the no till to begin to see great and unmistakable HEALTH and production of crops.  Livlihood.  5 years to see the return to Livlihood.  and this is Documented by farmers like Gabe Brown in North Dakota.  They are TALKING  and being invited to TALK.  and 5 years….we have 5 years.   Maybe the vast majority of citizens of the planet won't be able to take to heart what needs to be done.  But Farmers.  Farmers fill our grocery stores with food.  Farmers and Ranchers are a HUGE and POWERFUL lobby with polititians who have no personal will.   Food is a bottom line.   maybe……………

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

grasses.  one more worm.

 

and microbes.

 

Plowing damages the soil structure, exposing soil carbon to the air where it combines with oxygen and  "floats away as carbon dioxide".   There is a growing movement among small farmers who are calling themselves soil farmers, microbe farmers, carbon farmers.   
This is no till agriculture.  The soil, instead of being plowed,  is planted with a machine that punches slits in the soil through the roots and debris of last years crop,  dropping seed in those slits.  The residue of a season's crop is chopped, spread and left there which reduces erosion, keeps soil temperature cooler during hot months,  and provides food for earthworms and other creatures that aerate the soil, enrich it,  make it porous and absorbant.

An earthworm can drag a leaf down more than 3 ft into the soil.

Paraphrased from  the Soil Will Save Us …. Kristin Ohlson

Today was GOATS.   

 

this morning, Giving Water to the Buck Goats,  i see this.

 

a Diamond web.   a sign.

Today,  the Other vet.  they call it a Ranch call.    He was late,  but he arrived and he arrived WITH A GOOD AND STURDY YOUNG WOMAN VET TECH!!!!!!!!!!!!!   oh hooray and Tra La…   When i had stopped there on Tuesday to make the appointment and speak with him,  i underlined the fact that Magic is a Strong and Headstrong Goat.  No lightweight, her.   So…here they were.   i  brought them through the house,  out the back door so They would know they were "house people".   They however gathered in an arc,  staring.  Still.  gathered,  staring and still.  So we just stood there for a while,  watching them,  i'd given them their evening grasshay early.  They went back to eating,  but the minute i said Magic's name and walked toward her…….no Fooling them….something was UP.

but she didn't run and i got her collar and they moved in.   She began trying to get away and i put my body behind her while hanging onto the collar,  they arranged their stuff and at some point he told the Tech to straddle her.   Long story short as i can,  he marked the cut with a small saw,  enough to hold the thin blade of the Gigli Saw,  my body is at her rear so she can't move back,  she is rearing and yelling,  her tongue hanging out,  making those horrible huffing sounds Goats make,  expelling burts of air,  and the Vet begins to saw,  just a few seconds,  and half way through,  the whole Scur pops off.   Just like the last time with Barbara's scur.   A little blood.  not much.  and we let her go.   They gather up their stuff and leave.  

There is maybe an hour of …… of,   what?.   an hour of UnSureNess.  Much movement.  Much headbutting.   Comotion.  No one eats.  They just mill around.   a Lot of vocalization.  and i sat on the porch and watched.  For sure,  now,  it's Onday that is the Alpha Goat.  Snowbunny,  the Matriarch has deferred to her daughter Onday.   For a while,  Onday follows Magic.  There is no overt behaviors.  All she has to do is look in Magic's direction and Magic moves.   As time goes by,  it eases.  Magic is allowed to eat,  unlike Barbara,  who was kept away for 3 days.   I think this is because of Magic's standing in the Herd.  She is a strong Goat.   But i don't really know.

and just before the rain storm,  i took advantage of all the ify feelings out there and filled my pockets with peanuts (in the shell)  and had the wisdom to use the moment in a good way.  i called the name of each Goat,  clearly, with direct eye contact and when that Goat came forward through the throng,  i gave the peanut with a closed hand to mouth and said the sound that the Mustang Woman taught me…the sharp !D!.   Over and over,  each Goat,  each name, !D!Peanut!   until  everyone had several chances,  including Magic,  Magic 4 times, !D!.

so we survived another Event.  and i understand more and more that it's how it is.  and all there is is  Just Going.  Doing what needs to be done.  We Just Go.

 

you can see where the cut was Supposed to be

 

 

 

 

and stitching….well,  only this one worm.  There will be many.

 

and this one bird.  There will be many.

 

This.  

Querencia:

"The word doesn't translate.  It is used in Spanish to designate that mysterious little area in the bullring that catches the fancy of the fighting bull when he charges in.  He imagines it his santuary.  when parked there, he supposes he cannot be hurt…..So it is,  borrowing the term,  that one can speak of one's "querencia" to mean that little,  unspecified area in life's areana where one feels safe, serene."

William F. Buckley     Racing Through Paradise

 

i swore i wouldn't do this,  but…..

my son's daughter.   Giana Lily,  but who i wanted to name Alluvial Fan.  here on in,  Alluvial Fan.  This is her.  in the tent.  First camping trip.

 

the View from the tent door.  Her mother's toes.  Colorado.

 

While i stitched,  the soul rested in the small bowl.   and while the soul rested,  and i stitched,  i thought about what the difference is between a Spirit and a Soul.   i have no real answers yet,  but i am thinking.   There is no firm answer, probably,  but to my sense of things,  there IS a difference.  Thinking.

 

 

unlike what i'd thought,  the shelter for this soul will be grasses.  ok.  and  Souls/Spirits…  maybe a Spirit is an entity in and of itself.  Has always been and always Will be.   a Soul might be the Energy Released from  some Being that has been attached to the Life we know on this Planet???