Saturday, January 30, 2010

Rejoicing in the Seasons and Cycles



Whether you like winter or not, the view out of my window is a great argument why everyone should live in a place where they get to experience all four of the seasons. Yes, it's cold out, yes, you have to wear tons of clothes and yes, the green is replaced with nature's starkness. So okay, I love foliage as much as the next person, but there is beauty in the starkness of winter - reminding me of the European artist who uses nature to create his temporary, always changing "live" sculptures. He uses leaves, wood and stones most of which he finds on the ground. I remember watching him mold a sculpture from icicles, breaking them off and rehanging them on a rock, creating a symmetrical piece of art. His fingers were frozen from molding the ice as it took his body heat to melt the ends of the icicles, so that he could form and then reattach. My point being, there is beauty in everything nature isn't there.


Now back to the view out my window. Lake St. Clair is about 100 feet from the front of our cottage. There are 50 feet of lawn (soon to be dug up and covered with plants), then a small two lane road, followed by another 10 foot patch of grass. The yard is covered with a light dusting of snow. The trees are bare just like every other tree in the Midwest that isn't an evergreen or a bush. But the lake - wow! It is completely covered in ice. Not smooth ice that hockey players and figure skaters dream about, but due to the huge freighters that come through here until they can't anymore, it is piled up with sharp chunks that are poking every which way. It looks glacier-like and absolutely beautiful. If you enjoy standing outside in sub-zero temperatures, you can hear the ice cracking and moving due to the current underneath. It sort of sounds like a really good scary movie. The sounds and movement are a reminder that all things change and are cyclic. And I mean all things. There is a necessity for the cycles as I believe, it is the cycles that keep earth healthy. But not just earth since it should remind us that we too are part of this cycle.


Winter is a time to hibernate, reassess, take stock of our lives, eat root vegetables and stews. It is our down time to store fat, keep warm and if we are lucky, get cozy. A time to build fires, snuggle, read books, sew, cook, bake, write letters and plan the coming of spring. The winter is a reminder to do the things that feed the part of our soul that has to do with home.


I have never envied the people that chase the sun around trying to stay warm. I think it's ridiculous. Climbing into their RVs, with bicycles hanging on the back. I don't get it. If the sun is shining you feel compelled to be outside. When it is 90 degrees out, I am not going to stay indoors and read a book, cook stew and sew. These sunbirds are the losers for missing the migration of the geese, the fall of the first snow and the crunch of it when first walked on.


Each season has something to offer which gives me an opportunity to look forward to what it brings with it. The summer is for the garden, walks, boating, taking vacations and playing with the dog. The spring is for planning, preparing, cleansing and rejoicing. The fall is for celebration, harvesting, raking, canning and putting the garden to bed. Then, yes, we are getting ready for winter which will come all to soon, leaving us to complain while forgetting that it is a necessary down time that nature has prepared.


It is silly to sit around and complain about the weather when what we could be doing is seeing what gifts each season brings. Let us celebrate and rejoice in the fact that we are lucky enough to be a part of these beautiful cycles that God and nature have given us.

Thursday, January 28, 2010

Duality of Balance

Toj – The essence of Toj is the duality of balance. It is a very yin/yang day that makes us aware of light and dark, hot and cold, borrowing and paying back, hard work and laziness, selfless acts and selfish acts. On this day, pay attention to how there is no shadow without light, no men without women, no day without night.

“Balance”, the always elusive sometimes maddening and occasionally evil word. What is it? How do I find it? Is my balance the same as everyone else or do we have our own individual pulleys? Weights? Scales? I’m Libra, the sign of the scales, balance – but all it has meant for me is to continuously search it out and not know it when I find it.

I seem so compulsive no matter what I do. Constantly working or doing nothing – when I am bad, I am very bad. But maybe balance isn’t a daily thing? Maybe it’s a weekly, monthly, yearly or a decade achievement? Who knows? What I do know is that I feel like I am on a continuous gopher hunt. One gopher pops his head out, I run over stuff it back into the hole only to find another gopher had popped out his head, run over stuff it back in the hole, another gopher, another hole - you get the idea. Really, I am never going to get it right, get it perfect, climb the spiritual ladder fast enough.

My list grows almost by the day. Make a health drink, don't forget the lemon water with added nutrients throughout the day, make lunch, schedule students, clean the house, return, emails, phone calls, pray, cook, go to the grocery store, balance the checkbook, meditate, write in the mornings, exercise, study, have time for my husband, my dog, take walks - most of it by instruction for me to be a better person. But honestly I think it's just causing me to be exhausted.

The cottage has helped. I want to write, want to stay home, do homey things – no longer driven to be somewhere other than where I am or be doing something other than this. I am in the middle, the center of my life, the Chi, the Tao – whatever. Enjoying the details. Is that balance?
Paying attention to the details?

The ice is beginning to form again – I feel a bit sorry for the plants, beginning to peak out – they too want spring. Those groundhogs better not see shadows in the beginning of March. Damn Groundhogs - probably really good friends with the gophers! Too much dark, too much cold, too much snow – too dreary, too hard, too bitter, too harsh. We need the sun. Lots of it. But the sun lies behind the shadows of the clouds, the temperatures, warm then cool, the plants grow then die - ah, I get it, the duality of balance.
.

This book followed by another “Beyond 2012”. The book is about connecting to nature – the heart of mother earth. Remembering the balance between you and her. There's that word again. He goes on to say that we need to connect our hearts with the heart of the earth. In that is our salvation. I have always found that if you are depressed a good remedy is to put your hands in dirt. I'm not the only one to think this. I remember hearing a story about a small town in Mexico. When a villager went crazy his/her neighbors would would tie them to a tree until they stopped being crazy. Can you see it now? Riding down the street, your neighbors tied to trees? What I suspect is that has something to do with being connected to the roots that run deep into the ground. The magnetics of nature, which we are so depended upon. Oh, I see, a little more of that balance. Balancing the demands of trying to live a life with the act of being rooted to the earth......hmmmmm.

In trying to keep balance today, I need to keep the blogging short and get back to all of these super important things that are supposed to make me a better person. But I'm pretty sure, if I just laid down on the couch and read a book, the world would be a no worse place for it and I too would be just a little more balanced.

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Falling in Love with Gardening

Labor day has passed which has triggered memories of last winter. We would wait for local news about the ferry running again, which was sometimes delivered with a knock at the door from good neighbor and long term deckhand, JD. We have been exchanging food and needed supplies since summer and as good things usually lead to good things have developed a friendship. After five days, stuck on the island, we would leave just to well, leave. The words stuck, trapped, imprisoned, just didn't convey the joy of hanging out at home, reading in front of a fire, while adding to the coziness were our cats and a dog (that thinks he's a cat) curled up around my legs to the point that I was a cripple when I would get up due to lack of movement.

Cold temperatures will return as they do causing the garden to look sad and neglected. I know all things need time to replenish, hibernate and have some down time, leaving me with chores such as doing seed inventories, creating a new garden calendar and seeing what is needed for the coming year. In addition, there are a gazillion different composts that can be ordered for specific plants I will be taking on. Last fall, we used a local farmer's manure and about a year's worth of our own compost from kitchen scraps. We have two compost deposits. A portable one in the garage and one outside in a box that Ed Wood (yes, that really is his name) built for us.

It's hard to remember when I fell in love with gardening. I know, I wanted to be in nature from the time I was 15 years old. This was a dream not a given since I lived in an upper flat in a Detroit suburb far from anything that looked like nature except for the beautiful Dutch Elm trees that lined the streets. However, my late teens saw these same trees die from an invasive beetle or maybe some virus... but we knew it as Dutch Elm disease. As each tree was chopped and removed, my heart would break a little more. It didn't seem like anyone was paying attention or suffering from this horrible malady, but that might not be true. It just felt so personal.

As soon as I could, I got out of Detroit and drove until the water stopped me to the greenest of green cities, Seattle. I remember my first few days walking around in awe, not believing what I was seeing, not only were there vines covering the cement walls of the freeways, but there wasn't any garbage on the highways. Who were these people? How did I get so lucky to live among them? Wow there were other people that cared as much as I did about nature.

Soon after, I met Theresa through my dear friend, Patti Allen. The first time I put something in the ground was a tomato plant in Theresa's garden. And her garden? It must be what garden's look like in garden heaven. She lives in the Methow Valley which is at the foot of the Cascade Mountains. The gateway to the Cascades in Winthrop, Washington. Her acreage sits in the hills about five miles outside of town, up a winding dirt road through a grove of trees. As you come into the clearing, her house sits in the valley, the garden 500 feet from the back patio. It is enclosed by a wrought iron fence. When I first walked through the gate, I felt like Alice in Wonderland. I had never gardened before, but my dream was always to have a farm and this looked like a farm to me.

Theresa has one rule when you come to visit her, you have to work in the garden. I know this sounds like penance to some of you city zealots, but for me, it was like saying, "You can eat ice cream all day long." I promptly sat on the ground, with spade in hand and began digging according to the dictates of Theresa. After about an hour, covered in dirt, loving it just like a pig in well, you know....Theresa, with a huge smile said, "Kate, if anyone should have a garden you should".

What is it about a garden that I love so much? Why does this seem so important? Where did this come from? My heritage is half Irish and half Romanian. I know the Romanians were mostly farmers. Were my people? They too lived in the mountains, actually, Transylvania. Big farming country where they still have wagons with wooden wheels, drawn by horses. The Irish had such a hard time with the food shortages, droughts and famine. Maybe I carry the fear of "lack of food" in my genetic code.

What I do know is that once I began to get serious and begin planting, something in me fundamentally changed. I'm different because of the experience of planting, nurturing, caring, pining, adding compost to the soil, hoping this will be the perfect mixture and that this year's crops will be better, bigger, tastier and more resilient.

And I'm never happy unless I continue to expand the garden. I could put a row of bushes there, sunflowers here, a pathway would be nice. How about an archway where the beans can grow and dangle, not only adding color but sustenance. The artist in me awakens. No, it has nothing to do with writing or singing but a beautiful collaboration between me and Mother Earth.

But I am leaving the most important thing out. And that is my family. My husband, Joe, our beautiful cats and the dog Little B, who is just sure he should be helping by digging in the garden, though he forgets to put something in the hole. We even let our box turtle, Howie (short for Howette when discovering he was a she), live in the greenhouse during the summer. We have to make sure to keep the door closed since "Turtle's are faster than you would think" said the rabbit at the finish line.

My husband too, has a passion for the garden. We can be out there for hours, toiling away, not speaking but loving the fact that we are out there together, sharing hard work, passion and excitement. We both get excited when anything grows. We never get over it. We can talk about the most mundane subjects; did you see how well the kale is doing; the green peppers need some help; was that a deer print in our corn; did you see the dead mouse; boy those cats sure are good mousers - they do keep the cucumbers healthy!

Joe and I are privileged to be part of this incredible Eco-system. We have become just as woo woo as I once was when a hippie (who am I kidding, I never stopped being one), and now call this planet we live on Mother Earth.

We want to share our what the British call "shiny bits". As gardening becomes the focus of our conversation with others. It has replaced music, sports, design, food, fashion, fitness, reading, and popular entertainment. Now, when someone is telling me about some exciting game and how it went into overtime, my eyes glaze over as I think about the deliciousness of those little yellow watermelons that grow on the vine in September. Like the melons and everything else we grow, our appetites expand, curiosity is fired, inspiration becomes a part of daily life. All convey a conviction and point of view that turns us on.

I read somewhere that gardening is sexier, smarter, cooler and more interesting by far than music, sports, design, food, fashion, fitness, reading, or popular entertainment. It's more creative, more dimensional, more engaging and deeper than any of those things. Gardening is the real deal, the last, best refuge from vulgarity and a dumbed down culture. Would I sound like a zealot if I put an amen at the end of that?

So yes, the garden will soon be closed, but our imaginations are not. We need to remember that vegetables have become the new "gold" as many go without enough to eat. I do hope that at least my family, can carry gardening and vegetables as the metaphor for everything important and valuable in our short and fruitful lives.


Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Lay of the land

From the Mayan calendar: Akabal days are like the opening of a flower. The world is full of potential: fresh, new and bursting with life. A new dawn has come with fresh light to clear away previous obstacles so that new ideas and acts of creation can be born.

Yesterday spring was teasing us with temperatures of 40 plus. The winter hasn't been cold enough which has caused problems with the ice. With the ferry closed, we have kept our humor because frankly, I am a bit of hermit. I need to do so much – with spring coming, the realization of what we would like to accomplish is at the forefront. One task at a time, I tell myself; recycle, measure clothes to be sewn, do some baking, make jam, organize supplies, become a non-profit, organize the community garden, look for funding, check in on the websites and let's not forget fix Little B’s fur coat since he has been scalped by the local dog groomer.

I watch out my dining room window, sitting at my 75 year old, long oak table - mismatched chairs standing at attention. Being hooked on Britain's xfactor on YouTube is teasing my resolve to be dutiful.

Tearing myself away from the morning sounds, to bake bread but as a reward for paying attention, two swans have just taken flight, reflections intact on the open water where ice is in sharp Gothic chunks on the great Lake Saint Clair. It is times like these that remind me of how lucky I am to be alive and why I wanted to inhabit my body in the first place.

I miss the spring views out of the window which bring so many conflicting sights. The Indians in small fishing boats, roaring across the lake from their reservation on Walpole Island. Coming across like the old bootleggers did when Al Capone used to run in these parts. On their way to our Harsens Island to buy beer and something a little harder to take the chill out of their bones. It makes me wonder what it was like in the days even before Capone, when it was their land. Highly mystical land, inhabited by strong red skinned people, setting up camp – even where the cottage sits.

Yesterday, I poked around some of the Harsens Island websites and found a great link on Bob Stewart's site for Stewart Farm. A historical view of the Indian tribes that inhabited these parts. As far as historians know, the first inhabitants on the St. Clair River were, the Hurons, Ottawas, Miamis, Ilinois, Pottawatomie's, Algonquins, Loups, Kickapoos, Santeurs, Ojibwas, Sacs, Menominees, Shawnees, Wyandotts and Chippewas. The Ottanamies (or Foxes) lived around Lake St. Clair. The earliest industry on the St. Clair River, especially in the Clay Township, St. Clair Flats area, was fur trading between the French and Indians As early as 1615 Frenchmen had come to the shores of the St. Clair River to obtain the fine fur trapped by the Indian tribes.

With this history in mind, it's no wonder that my husband Joe feels an infinity for the place. After our daughter's completion of a family tree/history, it turns out that Joe's great great great great grandfather (really, I don't know how many greats), Charles Beaubian, on his father's side, came from France, married one of the Chief's of the Miami's widowed wife. This is after he turned traitor to the French and the British, finally siding, trapping and selling furs all while living with the tribe. The genetic DNA once again rears it's cosmic head and reminds the body what the brain has forgotten - you have come home.

I look over to the tree where my various bird hangers are dangling off the weather beaten branches. The birds seem to have an extra zip in their flight as they go from bird feeder to bird bath. They too know that in a couple of months spring is almost here.

Tomorrow’s weather is supposed to be more of the same.... Doubtful if the ferry will run. I will find all kinds of reasons to cook and read and not do what I am supposed to. I feel loaves of bread coming on.

Monday, January 25, 2010

Integrity

Third day trapped on the island, though trapped is a word with negative connotations that really has nothing to do with how I feel. I have been looking for down time to cook, read, write and get caught up. Which, of course never happens. Something you would think I would have realized after all these years. I can see me with one foot in the grave, the other foot dangling, not willing to die, because I'm just not quite caught up.

So the drum keeps on beating! Caught up or not, the ferry has been shut down for two days due to the high temperatures, hence ice melting, flowing down the river from Port Huron and piling up in the narrow channel. This channel hosts the pathway of the ferry so therefore we are stuck. Because of the rain, even the blow boat isn't running. I hate to miss teaching and many of my students have agendas with getting ready for auditions and what not - but I will double up if I can and (here goes those three evil words), get caught up.

In the meantime, I am on the couch, curled up in front of the fire (we even turned the heat off to save oil) - bundled under blankets after a breakfast of eggs and bacon. The eggs come from the crusty 70 year old farmer here on the island. He has his own slaughterhouse and believes in complete self-sustainability. The Weavers, who have lived on the island since the turn of the century (no not this century), made a gift of homemade venison sausage. They and their young sons who are ten and thirteen, still trap for furs, fish and hunt, selling what they don't eat. The small community comes together in times like this, everyone checking in on everyone else. A tough deck hand, needed some pain meds after a bad fall, Joe happened to have some stored away - grateful thanks returning the favor with venison sausage with bits of jalapeno pepper. This of course, means I won't be eating it as hot food is not my favorite but Joe says it rocks.

It's no mistake that I am going on about community reliance and sustainability. I am reading "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. The same author who wrote the Poison wood Bible. Run and pick up this book. It is a must read. She and her family, abandon the industrial food pipeline to live a rural life--vowing that, for one year, they only buy food raised in their own neighborhood, grow themselves, or learn to live without it. Part memoir, part journalistic investigation, it will open your eyes in a hundred new ways to an old truth: You are what you eat. Joe and I are taking this on this year, as we felt that we needed a year to know what is available, what can we grow, what can we put up canning and who are the local growers. The term for this, I believe is locovores. Eat food that is grown locally as it does stop our food from being shipped from god knows where, probably genetically modified, everything else loaded with corn syrup and starch, while newscasters, local dietitians (the fool on Fox 2 comes to mind - what's her name?) scratch their heads wondering why we are all getting fat. Oops! How did I get on another soapbox?

I have just found out that the "organic seeds" that I was ordering last year, are actually from one of the Genetic Food monster corporations that are ruining our food. So today I go on an investigation and find out where I can get "heirloom seeds". I did order a bunch in the fall last year, these seeds have a shelf life of five years, so I will go ahead and order more. I am so upset that Traditional Seeds and Johnny's are not what they pretend to be.

I miss the integrity of our health, food, natural resources, government, human interactions - that used to be something that people would strive for. Though it all seems incredibly dark sometimes, I have felt and feel that there is a hum lending itself to an undercurrent of change. Many seem aware that we need to go back to what we used to know and with that, add what is to come. But wasting time, trying to keep everything the same, is well, a waste of time.

Let's take health care for instance. I had a kidney infection about two weeks ago. Now, I am a really healthy person, so this caught me off guard. I am not a fan of most doctors as I believe they have become nothing but pill pushers. After my trip to emergency, I realized that all these docs were missing, were big shoes and red noses to stick on the ones they have stuck in the air. If you quack and swim like the proverbial duck, must be the same for clowns

I remember growing up with a chiropractor that practiced the "recoil" adjustment. Same as Dr. Bowler in Ferndale. He used to have a goat farm in the Irish Hills - a real character. He would come out to the house and give us the adjustment on kitchen chairs and phone books. He'd even apply the adjustment to my dog, who would, after receiving the adjustment, sleep for a day and then run around like a puppy after his long nap. The doctor's name was Doctor Ingram. He gave minerals, food supplements and adjustments to his goats, each who had exotic names like Zsa Zsa and Eva. That was the best tasting goat's milk I ever had. My mother used to make yogurt from it, which tasted just like ice cream. Boy, I wish I had that recipe now.

About a year ago, I was incredibly lucky to find Dr. Bowler in Ferndale. She convinced the university where she was studying, to teach that adjustment which had just about become obsolete. I hadn't had the adjustment since the early 70's and had found her early last year.
After the treatment, I threw up for about four days. However, I not only felt 100 per cent better but all of my scar tissue disappeared from various incidents over the years. Not only for me, but for my hard to convince husband who comes from a very in the box upbringing as he studied to be a brain surgeon, later to drop it and become a medic in Special Forces.......even Joe was impressed.

So I thought, if I found her (these people are easier to find on the West Coast where I lived for 30 years), there must be others.

Then there's Kathryn Conlen - who Dr. Bowler and Dr. Cayle work with - Essential Oils, Massage, Cranial Sacral - I see her twice a month for general healthcare. I am a big believer in preventative medicine. But she guides my cleanse. .....hey, what can I say, I'm getting old and I do what I can.

Next... Dr. Cayle the OBGYN who uses essential oils and straightens out the tailbone. Actually, he was trained as an OBGYN and a fighter pilot by the Navy. He has done something like 1,000 deliveries with only two being Cesarean (I might have those numbers a bit wrong)......His wife is a physical therapist and also does cranial sacral - she works out of the same office. I broke my back in the early 80's (at a party and fell through a ceiling - my wild days)....even with Dr. Bowler and other's that I have worked with - there was still remnants of that injury. One visit with Dr. Cayle about four months ago - zero back pain.

And then finally, Acupuncture. I see James (very Chinese) in St Clair Shores - See him twice a month - same thing - general health care.......

So yes there are people out there with integrity, community conscience, and a willingness to help, but maybe one day that will be the norm and not the exception.

Back to baking bread and the lentil stew.