Tag Archives: home

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The creeping wild

No mow May: here.

Home meadows are becoming more common, for pollinators. Unmown, with wildflowers. There is a movement for a no mow May, to help pollinators and insects survive. This will help the birds too, because insects are food.

I quit mowing half my lot in 2007, after checking with the neighbors. I had just finished a divorce and I was paying my ex and I did not have time to mow it, nor money, nor inclination. My lot is L shaped. The 1930s garage extends onto the second lot, which is perpendicular to the first lot and goes to the middle of the block. The plumbing goes there too.

The lot is a deer stop. The deer circle a route that is often the same from year to year. This lot is not very visible from the road because a huge rosa rugosa, well over my head, fronts on the street. The deer come in through the driveway. There are high fences around it now, but there are still two other exits. One at the other end, to another driveway, and one past the garage next door. I watch for fawns in the spring, the mothers will leave them there some days.

I have birds and nests and sometimes raccoons and squirrels. I have seen coyotes within a block. This year I have a pair of “swamp robins”, also known as varied thrush, at my bird feeder. That is a first. My present cats are allowed out on leash or in the cat cage, so I have lots more birds all around the house. The birds apparently know that the cats are contained.

The lurker in the cover picture is Sol Duc. The grass is already deep.

My front and back lawn are still lawn, sort of. I have not used any weedkiller ever, and have lived here since 2000. Siberian squill and parsley and daffodils and forget-me-nots are busily invading the lawn. Also oregano and thyme. The deer are unenthused about most of these. They can come through the sometimes mown back of the house, but the front yard is fenced to protect my roses.

The deer do eat the squill. Maybe I could have a lawn of squill, mown by deer.

I like my lawn full of weeds. I am not very interested in grass and I like birds and insects much more. Ok, not cockroaches or fleas. We are not warm enough to have a lot of mosquitoes in my yard.

Maybe the deer like the leaves but not the flowers.

The wild has taken over the center of the block and now is creeping through my back yard and my front yard. And I am rooting for it all the way.

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What the body wants

My lungs are much much better than a year ago, shown by no problem at altitude at rest. Of course, I did not exercise heavily above 5000 feet, but walked a lot.

The last three days I have been waking up very very stiff, knees hurting when I walk downstairs, and throat closed again.

I think it’s about work. I am contemplating going back to work. I am getting a clear “not yet” message from my body. I was sick for two years and it’s only been a month that my muscles have been working normally. Same with lungs. So I think the stiffness is the body resisting.

In clinic sometimes I would have people draw two charts. A pie chart of a day. The first chart is how they are spending their days now. The second chart is what they want. In order to do more of what you want, you have to do less of something you are presently doing. What are you going to cut out? Not food or sleep or baths or maintaining the home. How about television?

Anyhow, I added a third chart, to do a few days after the first two. Draw a pie chart of what your body wants. I had one person say, “But my body just wants to sit and do nothing!” I said, “So when are you going to do that?” At first she said, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t. After a while she said maybe. Then she rearranged work and took a two week vacation. She said, “After a week, one day I had a book, a cup of tea, the cat on my lap, the dog on my feet, and suddenly my body just entirely relaxed. And then it stayed relaxed.”

She went back to work. “Are you still relaxed?” I asked. “Not all the time, but when I start tightening up, it’s often because I am taking on someone else’s problem. I am learning to let it be their problem, not mine.”

I am listening to my body too. What does it want? Not yet, for work. I have some work at home, or some jobs to do there first.

Wise body, I am listening.

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Daily Evil: Z is for Zzzzz

Sleep is not evil. Nor is snoring, though you might think someone is evil at 2 am if their snoring is keeping you up.

This is a small watercolor, 9 by 6 inches. Again, no date, but it is a view near my parent’s house in Chimacum. They loved that house and the views. They moved there in 1996 and my mother was diagnosed with cancer a year later. I want to end with this painting because they were so happy there, even with the cancer. They had wanted to move to the northwest for years, but waited until my grandmother died. She was in her 90s and they were afraid to move her. After she died, it took three years to find a place and sort things and move.

So let’s end with them sleeping and waking to morning and the sun coming over the mountains and the farms around them and the views.

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Time ripples

I found this calcedony nodule on North Beach about a week ago. The lines in it are layers laid down over years and years, as the mineral crystals lined a space and precipitated. The different colors in the stripes mean different impurities. This is one of the biggest pieces that I’ve found on the beaches here.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: ripple marks.

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Daffodil lawn

I have daffodils in the back yard that are slowly spreading. I do hope they will take over the lawn. I am also encouraging parsley, thyme and oregano to take over. Then no mowing! I got a book out for Earth Day called Food Not Lawns. I think a lawn of mostly herbs would be quite wonderful. Also, the deer won’t eat those unless they are really really desperate.

For Cee’s Flower of the Day.

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Daily Evil: X is for Xenophobic

Are phobias evil? A fear of strangers or of foreigners. I think a phobia can make someone behave strangely or dangerously and harm others. I think that the isolation of the pandemic has increased our fear, so it may well exacerbate xenophobia. Not only the pandemic, but inflammatory news and war and changing weather patterns and the news that one in five trees is dying in part of California, unable to survive the warming.

This is a watercolor, again no date, but I think it is of the Olympic Mountains. That means it was painted in the last four years of her life, between 1996 and 2000. She and my father bought five acres with a house and barn in Chimacum, off of Center Valley Road. She loved the views up and down the valley. She was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 1997 and died in 2000.

The mountains look like they have a crosshatching, Xes to indicate snow and valleys and places where the snow can’t stick. Or has fallen down.