Wind & Full Moon

Here it is, the turn in weather we've been expecting. Wind and leaves falling and cold. In Spokane, my home town, there hasn't been a frost yet. Here, yest we've already had one. We went to the pumpkin patch on Saturday and brought home some nice gourds and pumpkins and apples and drank some hot apple cider and feed the goats. It was completely fun and sunny and happy. Now we're faced with low light and stormy weather--everything equally balanced.

The full moon is on Tuesday, Aries/Libra 22 degrees. It's a time to remember how we own our assertiveness, and how we then can give it to others in a way that is fair to both of us. This moon is also accompanied by a Mercury direct--which is good, things have been righting themselves during the retrograde. A good thing I guess, although scary when it comes to how many us have planned our financial futures.

Well, not much time this a.m. as the grandbaby is coming today. I bought a fall doughnut for us to share, what was I thinking all that sugary icing. But hey, what's life for but some fun. We are eating our vegetables like crazy right, a little dessert now and them is harmless.
Ciao, Flower

Indian Corn

Indian Corn
Originally uploaded by Jaida

If you grow Indian Corn in the garden and regular corn, too, they will cross pollinate. It's fun to grow Indian Corn and dry it and decorate with it, but again, it is hard to keep strains apart. I grew Indian Corn once. The colors, yellow, rust, purply-black, are all fabulous. I like to stake tied corn stalks, pumpkins and ears of Indian Corn on the porch. They are a lovely indicator of fall and soon spiders will have their webs spun through them and it will be Halloween.

The grandbaby is already shreaking at the Halloween things he sees in the stores, balloons with goblin faces, etc. He's especially afraid of skeletons. And then there's the pilgrams and Thanksgiving and the book Turkeys, Pilgrams, and Indian Corn tells the story of Thanksgiving. Take a look.

Sometimes I think about how everything is new to the grandbaby and how parents, not necessarily his, get impatient with little ones start crying or being resistant. But I'm afraid and become resistance, most of us do. He just acts on his feelings immediately, there is no ego saying, well, I shouldn't feel this way. Right now I'm afraid of a lot of things, comes with the territory of the divorcee woman. Yes, I was running home in my dream: late for work, I had to grab my papers and couldn't find my home. I searched and searched, even went around to the back of the houses, I didn't have a home. Now this is sad to me--and although not a reality, because I do have a condo--it's just not too homey here. I feel confined, exposed. I miss my home on the water, the routine I had with my husband. So I'm going to do something about it. I'm going to start looking into getting a home. And I'm going to make my routine, how I do my days, okay--something I'd miss if I didn't have it. Everything is good, right? Yes, everything is great.

Friends forever, Flower

True North

The farther north you go the more angular the light becomes and the less light you absorb into the body, and the body suffers. This isn't a scientific discussion, but it is important to consider, perhaps read up on light and the body. Light is as important for the body as it is for plants. Here's a book that might shed some light (pardon the pun) on it: Health and Light: The Effects of Natural and Artificial Light on Man and Other Living Things

I wonder why we think that energies effecting life on the planet, don't touch us. The planetary energies come in sounds and magnetic waves and heat waves and light waves--and other waves I don't know much about. The tides come and go—this is a huge thing. Barometric pressure changes—there's high pressure and low pressure. Anyway, what I'm trying to say this morning is everything is connected. Humans aren't separate from nature. We are nature and as we interact, things change, come and go, flourish and fade.

This morning I couldn't find my journal and so I opened an old journal to an entry dated 2005. I was in graduate school and working hard. My marriage was failing. I'd decided I needed time off from my marriage and lived separate, taking to heart the theory of the marriage sabbatical being a good thing. It is hard to believe that it has taken three years to dissolve this union. But then, it was a long marriage. Twenty-two years total. Well, even numbers have meaning and perhaps energy—if you've ever looked at numerology, you can discover a lot about the number you were born with, the year you are in, etc. Twenty-two is what they call a master number. I'm actually not sure what 22 means, yet, somehow having the total number of years married be 22 seems significant. Anyway, I digress.

What I mean to say here is that our planet needs us. Our earth needs us to be in harmony with her. Our gardens are important. How we treat the soil is important. There is a balance that must be found and when we are in balance, we are happy. I seek this balance. And in the garden, the tomatoes are ripening and things are bending toward the ground, heavy with fruit. And the leaves are turning orange and red. Things are overgrown in places, twisted and dying. All of it is good, it is the moon cycle. All sprouts, flourishes and goes back to nothing, and then it all starts over.

Be happy and flourish,
Flower

Moving On

Fall is a time of reaping. There will be an abundance of vegetables to choose from, many to give away. Last year my community neighbor gardener set a box of veges outside her door for her neighbors. There is always the jokes about zucchini. There are the tomatoes and the methods of pulling and hanging a plant or wrapping green tomatoes and setting them on the window sill. In the weaker fall sun coming through the pane over the sink, the tomatoes will ripen. And then you have the vegetables that can stay in the ground for the winter: carrots, parsnips, potatoes. If you have a good potato crop dry them in the sun and rub off the dirt. Put them in a cool dark place in a bag. Light will make them sprout and turn green—of course the green is toxic. If you have grown pumpkins or winter squash you can wait for the first frost to move them to a place that is dry and will keep them for the winter. I had an upstairs landing once covered with Hubbard. Then there is the corn stalks to cut and tie in bundles and stack by the door, along with a scattering of pumpkins and you have a lovely fall arrangement. And of course acorn and butternut can come inside. If you've never had acorn or butternut halved and baked with almond butter and maple syrup in the opening try it. And then there is the squash soup and the leek soup and the potato soup and the carrot soup. Ahhhh!

On a different subject, I'm all moved. I have a locker with my furniture and boxes sitting there. I thought this would make me feel sad, but having it all there makes me feel secure. The folks were nice. It's a bit of a drive from the house, but I won't have to go too often. I was with my ex. It was difficult, for me, I don't believe for him, because he's clearly moved on. It is like summer, it has moved on. There is nothing to do about it. As far as the garden goes and my life, it is time to pull in and fortify. To rest and to heal. It's the way things go.

Cheers!

Flower

Cross State with Tony Hillerman

I drove from Puyallup to Spokane today, a 6 hr drive. Long drives go faster with books on CD and the drive across Washington state is 250 miles--that counts as long enough to listen to a good book. It was nice weather--sunny and not to hot. Usually the desert is heatwaving and the sage is cracking dry. I needed a little airconditioning the last trek of the drive, perhaps the last 100 miles through the golden grass fields. This evening I've donned a sweater. Back in B'ham I heard it was warm--ah, the old switch-a-roo.

Back at home, my neighbor gardener is watering the plot. She says it's easy because she waters both at once--no worries. The cat is being fed by a friend and it's down-time for the week. Sort of a rest and recovery week for this poor divorcing woman, who could easily see herself in the shoes of Tony's character, a young Navajo cop.

The cop is not so good on the job because she's more interested in plants, picking up seeds and -thinking about the environment where they're growing. I feel the same, place is important to life. And the state of Washington is full of unique landscape, scab lands, dry falls, canyons, plateaus, buttes, valleys, mountains, rivers, lakes, ocean, etc. It's a great drive, seeing deserts, the columbia, rolling Palouse, etc. And now, pine trees. Very refreshing, all this pine.

Tony's character is worried about the spirits that come off a dead person--so as a cop who has come across a body, this isn't a good thing. She now needs a shaman to get the critters off of her. Interesting. Maybe that would work with an ex.

More about the Inland Empire tomorrow. Stay tuned.
Flower