On Second Thought: a Thanksgiving Post

Dear Lord.  How is it more than a month since my last post?  Argh.  Way waaaaay more.

OK.  So, it's not that I haven't started posts. 

There was one draft that I began back in early November, and all that I will say about it is that

"Time management."

was the first sentence (fragment).

I am not qualified to expound upon that subject...obviously.  Off to the virtual trash can it goes.

The second (circa a predictable 11/24) started off with this:

"Gratitude is pretty in these days.  So is talking about being 'blessed.'  Both of those words tend to make me feel a bit twitchy to be honest, but that is a symptom of their popularity and overuse rather than a deep-seated aversion to being genuinely thankful.  This is the second year, actually, that I've tried to write a Thanksgiving post, and my failing has nothing to do with how much gratitude I feel for the gifts I have in this life."

[...but it does signify the beginning of a long tradition in aborted gratitude posts, apparently.       *sigh*] 

*   *   *

So it is not that I've been lacking stories to tell, but rather that I am suddenly a much busier, employed person.  Then you add holiday prep/panic time and a catastrophic computer failure...and we end up...here.  With a sadly neglected blog and a few more gray hairs.  Would you like a quick update on the rest of my life?  Did I mention the sprained ankle?  The contractor who quit in the middle of a project for my new job, one that had already been delayed by three weeks--?        

--Wait.  That's not the stuff I want to share; that's just stress getting in the way again.  I want to talk about the good stuff, like my most recent bout of harvesting--yes, harvesting in the last few weeks of December.  I was on the prowl for plantain, if I could still find it growing in the yard, and also out to snip the last of the comfrey that had escaped frost damage.  Both, along with some of the calendula flowers I harvested and dried all summer, were for a healing salve that I planned to make for our home medicine chest as well as for gifts.  Jason was outside with me, and as I paced along, bent over and staring intently at the ground, I started to giggle. 

Plantain is a weed.  A prevalent and much-combatted one--in fact, my guess is that it is second only to dandelions as the weed most people could easily identify, due to their constant struggle to eradicate it from the lawn or flower beds.  And here I am, in the freezing cold with a scarf over my head like a peasant woman, combing the yard for this hated plant.  To use in a potion.  For healing.  Oh, poor Jason.  I laughed again.  How did I get to this place?  How did Jason get yoked into sharing his life with a crazy person harvesting weeds in December for Christmas gifts?

Jason was over by the chicken yard, talking to the girls, and he finally noticed me snorting to myself as I shivered and snipped comfrey leaves and asked what was so funny.  I joined him, explained, and we both laughed as we stood side by side, watching the girls beg for treats.  This is a good life.  A funny life, certainly, but a rich and satisfying one where we love each other dearly despite our glaring mental health issues, and where we can stand outside in the cold together, surveying our yard, chickens, garden, weeds with pride and contentment.  Where food and beauty and even medicine can be found just beyond the kitchen door, even in December when summer's gone and the living ain't easy for man nor beast nor fat, spoiled hen.  We have so much--so much of what counts.  I may not be capable of finishing a Thanksgiving post, but I am oh, so thankful.

When I started this blog, one reason was to write it as a project for school--to record my experiments in urban sustainability, and to keep a descriptive commentary going that others could use for their own purposes (hopefully as a guide for their own adventures and not just to laugh at my ridiculous musings!)   Well, the time has come to summarize this blogging experience in a paper, and I am already feeling nostalgic. 

The simple days of working on house-projects, caring for the girls and the garden, teaching four-year-olds about seeds, soil, and Nature, the long winter evenings snuggled on the couch with knitting needles whipping around industriously--now I have to find time for these luxuries on an increasingly crowded calendar.  Herein lies the basic dilemma of the two-income home:  who makes the home while both people are at work?  I don't know what the future of this blog is, or how frequently I will be able to write posts.  Now, more than ever, I realize the hard, cold value of time and labor; no matter how much I may want to reduce our consumption by making things ourselves, the truth is that there are only so many hours in a day.  How and where will I draw these lines? 

While I don't have these answers, I do have one:  I will still be posting here.  I have grown to love this strange blog world, an odd hybrid between a diary and pulpit where I am required to ponder life and Nature and lessons-learned and then offer up my ponderings under the bloggish-assumption that these thoughts are worth recording and sharing with you. 

Of course, the bottom line is that the girls have a responsibility to their public, and I am the only one who can type!

 

Happy New Year to all of you!  Thanks for reading!

Solstice

Today is the darkest day of the year, the deepest point in this cold season of quiet and reflection.

This morning I watched the world outside my window turn from a black void into a luminous blue fantasy of dark, bare trees lined with glowing snow.  Almost before they were distinguishable, a few cardinals arrived at the sunflower seeds, and a downy woodpecker tapped away at the suet feeder, while a fat squirrel, puffed up against the cold, bounded along the branch of a pine overhead, causing an avalanche of fluffy snow.  As the light grew, the soft, dreamy blue gave way to the bright gray of a snowy winter morning.  Today, long before there is any faint whisper of spring, the sun begins to return, to gain strength--is it any wonder that so many cultures have worshiped the sun?

This is an issue of faith for me as well.  At some point in February every year, I irrationally lose heart and am unable to believe that spring will ever come, no matter what the calendar and my rational mind have to say. My patience is at an end, and every day that dawns in an icy, gray world is almost more than I can bear.  I've had thirty-three years to ponder this, and I think that it all comes down to having to face and embrace the cold and the dark, the unavoidable duality of the great Mother that I love so well the rest of the year, when she is present in her warm, nurturing, growing form.

I am, of course, hardly unique in my struggle to accept the darker side of the cosmic coin.  I am not one who memorizes poetry, but Dylan Thomas immediately pops up in my mind, bidding me to Rage, rage, against the dying of the light, and even earlier, I remember falling in love with Edna St Vincent Millay:  I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts into the hard ground.  I will stop right there--I would never dare to attempt something profound about the lessons of loss, of cold, of the bleak seasons of the heart; far greater minds than mine have spent lifetimes considering these grand conundrums.

What I have learned to accept, however, is that the duality is--above all--necessary; in order to have the light at the end, there must be the tunnel to travel through.  As a gardener, I know this; many of my carefully horded seeds and bulbs will not sprout unless they are exposed to freezing temperatures and kept away from the light--without January, June will never come.  This is a cycle that is so fundamental as to disappear within the normal rhythms of our lives--how long would I last without the daily dark oblivion of a good night's sleep? Just because it is easier to celebrate while I am embraced by the warmth of a breezy, sunny spring day (or impassioned by a wild, gusty autumn evening) doesn't mean that I can deny the cleansing power of the icy wind, or forget to value the generosity that rises in my heart as I scatter seeds in the snow for my furred and feathered sisters and brothers.

I have never formally observed the solstice.  But last night Jason's new snow boots were delivered to our door, and, happily, Mother Nature cooperated with yet another snow fall, filling the night with fat, fluffy flakes swirling down to blanket the world.   Eager as children to try out a new toy, we bundled up and went outside, down the steps and driveway, to stand in the middle of our empty street.

Our chatter died away, snuffed out by the overwhelmingly silent night and the still, dark trees.  Under the street light on the corner the snow floated down, softening the sharp edges of the world, dusting my hair with glittering silver...and there, in the dark and the cold, Jason's hand in mine, all at once my heart overflowed with gratitude for such beauty and such perfect peace.

Happy winter...happy Christmas...happy solstice.

Good Things

I never got around to writing a Thanksgiving post, which is not to say that I have little that I am thankful for--I tried, actually, to write one and had so much gratitude that I froze and couldn't write coherently about it.  So, instead, here are the things that I am grateful for today:

Meine kleine Jacke.

1.  Cats.  My cats.  In particular, small, tidy Jack who immediately commandeers the warm spot when I leave and curls up into an itty-bitty circle to take a nap.  Earlier, he was sleeping beside me and the house was so quiet that I could hear his soft little snores.  I understand the appeal of a dog--I really do--but I love the complexity and depth of my feline relationships.  I also love that Colby just finished tinkling in the potty (self-taught) and is now chasing his tail in a puddle of sunshine. 




2.  The fact that my chickens are absolute freaks for carbohydrates.  I didn't think it was possible for them to love anything like they love cooked spaghetti (kitchen treats from mom!  that look like worms!  oh, joy!!!) --but the stale rosemary sourdough loaf I've been pulling bits from is another huge hit.  There was almost a chicken stampede this morning; who knew that two eyes, a beak, and some feathers could look so pleading and hopeful at the sound of a bread wrapper??

Sunshine, on my shoulders, makes me happy...

3.  The beautiful natural light in my house during midday.  This is something that has been slow to come to the surface--but I've realized lately that I am so grateful for the sunshine coming in the windows.  Especially since we are heading into such a dark season, I am a lucky, lucky girl to not be stuck in an office, under fluorescent lights for the entire span of the daylight hours.  The glowing column behind Jack in the picture at the top of the page is our south-facing bedroom, and when I walk in there, my heart lifts at the beauty of the sun streaming in...I want, like Colby, to bask in the warmth and glory of the light.



4.  The opportunity I have this year to make Christmas gifts. Despite the pressure of getting everything ready in time--not to mention my desire to come up with truly fun stuff, not wretched, church-raffle tacky "crafts"--I am surprised to find how satisfying it is embrace my creativity, and how meaningful it is to be daydreaming about the beloved recipient as I knit, or sew, or bake, or--well, never you mind!  :)  I am ever-grateful for the wonderful people that I am able to call my friends and family.

The yarn shelf.  Yum.

(I should probably also mention my gratitude for this blog--giving me an excuse to put off paper-writing for just a leeeetle longer...!)