Apples and Visits

My good friend whom I've known for 51 years came to visit last week, and we had fun just hanging out, doing puzzles, walking by the lake, watching movies, gathering hickory nuts, and yacking. She's the lovely type of low-maintenance guest who is always up for an adventure but content to sit around reading too. Whenever she comes to visit we do a project, anything from hauling rocks to weeding the yard, and she's an incredibly good sport about the construction sites I plop her into. This time the project was washing windows and polishing windowsills. She went home on Friday, and now...reality hits. I have one and a half bushels of apples to process, three buckets of hickory nuts to crack, carrots and onions to harvest and preserve from the garden, tools to clean and put away... and then the blessed calm of winter.

God's Parenting Mistake

The world is on fire, and everyone seems to be fighting over what part of this burning planet others are allowed to stand on. Nevermind that our hair is in flames, just stay on your side of the wall. I was horrified by Ukraine, by Armenia, by so many other conflicts. This week I'm flabbergasted by the conflict in Israel/Palestine. Each side is firm in their belief that God gave them a certain portion, and they take that to mean "No one else is allowed." Nowhere did he say "Use it to indulge your sense of superiority and oppress others." What if God gave them that land with the expectation that they would use it to shelter and feed others on it? To take stewardship and care of it and ALL its inhabitants? And if we truly believed God gave us this land, this earth, wouldn't you have thought we'd have taken better care of such a gift? 

Perhaps He gave certain inheritances to our ancestors, but that doesn't mean WE still deserve it. I suspect we don't. I suspect we've forfeited any right to this entire planet through our own cruelty, mindlessness, and self-centeredness. This tiny, burning earth deserves better. Right now, I wouldn't mind if God took us all out. Blew the whistle. Right! Everyone, out of the pool! If you can't share nicely, no one gets it!

I suppose, if we wanted to, we could blame God for starting all this conflict in the first place. After all, He made the fundamental parenting mistake of playing favourites (He's done that a lot throughout human history -- Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph to name a few), and anyone can tell you that only leads to sibling rivalry. Maybe instead of asserting our rights and summarily dispatching others from off our planet, we should address that fundamental problem, and get rid of the concept of favourites.

I know it isn't as simple as territorialism. There are a lot of other factors at play, and I have no idea how this will be sorted out. Meanwhile, I'm personally on the side of the children and animals and plants. I'm not too impressed with adult humans right now.

Mulchmaker, Mulchmaker, make me a mulch!

I am singing and dancing, because I got a new, cheap leaf shredder from Princess Auto, and it has revolutionized my gardening. The two catalpa trees at the end of my driveway usually take up bags and bags just for the leaves (I pollard them each fall). This year they were tidily turned into one bag of leaf litter in about fifteen minutes. Cool! I used it for mulch this time, but I also intend to chop up leaves to add to my compost. No more unsightly black garbage bags of rotting leaves needed! 

I have sadly neglected my garden soil for a long time, but I mean to change all that. And my new toy will be the key, I think. 

Couldn't help laughing. Did someone really think this was a good brand name?

I guess we got our Thanksgiving turkey from Florida this year...

A poem for Truth and Reconciliation Day

I have thought a lot lately about how western civilization has nothing civil about it, and how societies rise and inevitably fall. The industrial complex, capitalism, colonization -- it's not sustainable, much less deserving of being sustained. Then this morning I was intrigued by a sentence from Gary Snyder in the book The Practice of the Wild, and it prompted a poem.

The tide comes in,

runs heedless across the sand,

sweeping away our footprints, 

bringing sea wrack to trip us,

poisoning earth with salt.

Wait and watch, child --

it will devour itself, recede.

By nature, waves must collapse on themselves,

slip away, die off,

leaving us alone to return

our footprints to the sand.

It has always been thus, the world over.

Be patient, child --

The settled people can wait it out.