soon and very soon we will have to trim the stunning plumes off the grasses in the backyard. dogga loves to walk right alongside these grasses and the spikelets attach to his fur. posing as perfectly harmless golden seedheads, these little spikelet awns end up on our bed, in our socks, on the area rug in the living room – and ultimately stab us repeatedly, until one finds the source of the pain and removes it.
last year…as fall progressed and the number of spikey jabs increased, it occurred (slowly) to us to remove the source – and so we reluctantly trimmed the plumes out back, even though the way they catch the sunlight is remarkable.
nevertheless, they somehow sneak in, these tiny posers. and we heroically hold up one or two showing each other that we have literally saved the other’s life.
it’s those sneaker-inners that plague us…like needles from a long-gone christmas tree…they show up…and the longer they are around, the dryer and pointier they get. so it is important to try and eradicate them from inside the house as soon as possible.
ahhh…speaking of eradicating them from inside the house – we are ever closer to midterms and the big house – that-white-one-that-no-longer-has-an-east-wing – the one that every single one of us owns – that house needs big time eradication of the posers lodged there.
any reason to continue to tolerate that which brings pain is not acceptable.
they are seeding nothing but cruelty, bigotry, gluttony, self-serving agenda. and it is all at our peril.
we are wise enough to remove the spikelet awns from our comforter, our rugs, our socks.
we must remove the same from the leadership of our country.
everything was already changing. we were on our way from seattle in a budget truck – david’s stuff loaded in the back – moving him to wisconsin. everything was in flux for both of us and we were riding on trusting the universe, a 20′ truck and love. it was no small deal.
as you have already read before, the sign “aussie pups” caught my attention and we turned around to drive up the hill at the farm. with only one puppy left – in sore need of adoption – we followed farmer don to see it.
d told me that australian shepherds are usually multicolored, merle, browns and whites and auburns with a bit of black, but never all black – which was good since we had decided that sooooomeday we would get a puppy – a black one so fur wouldn’t show up on our decidedly black wardrobe.
the only thing was – farmer don told us that the reason his only puppy was not being adopted was…wait for it…because he was all black.
cue life change.
we fell for his amber eyes the moment we saw him and he bounded over to us, curious about who he obviously knew was his new family.
even though we left a deposit and drove across the state, debating dog/no-dog/dog/no-dog for the next couple days, we figure dogga knew that whole time.
and then we drove back.
we picked him up. and our hearts and our family grew.
and now – as we watch him aging before our very eyes – as we pass through days when we are so, so worried about him – like this past weekend – we know our time is limited.
“this is nothing new,” you are thinking, “you’ve been writing about this.”
and yes…you are right…we have both been writing about this.
but today – today is that day – the day we met the aussie-angel who has walked with us. and that is a big deal.
he now has tiny grey hairs scattered across his face, not just around his muzzle. and every now and then he looks a little confused when he wakes up. there are other issues and concerns and we deal with each and have many workarounds. we stay home or close to home. there is nothing we can do to change it. we are in this with him just like he has been in life with us, through it all.
as 20 wrote the other day, “no matter how much love and sacrifice we give, we just can’t change the outcome.”
exactly.
what we can do is celebrate the moment that all that black fur came bounding at us – a full-throttled expression of exuberance, a full-throttled expression of i-am-who-you-need, a full-throttled expression of love that has carried us for thirteen glorious years of time spent together.
there are many things we are not doing these days, simply so that we are here for dogga. no matter.
we can hardly remember the before. we cannot think about the after. these days are the important ones.
in every way we are grateful that thirteen years ago our dogga – tripper – chose us and the universe gave us the wisdom to drive back.
i don’t know who – in our town’s parks department – is responsible for plotting what will be planted in the big urn planters around the city or in the hanging pots or in the gardens…but my hat is off to that person. their grasp of color and texture and how they all juxtapose with each other is exquisite. and it shows in each and every planter and garden.
regardless of who it is – precisely, who is the designer – there are many, many others on crews who spend all their working hours tending these gardens, watering and weeding and deadheading – the zillion little tasks that make a garden look effortlessly stunning.
our city has taken inordinate care of these gardens and planting vessels all through the years, preserving the zen people feel while walking in and amongst the yield of this hard work. we are both proud of these gardens and grateful for them, walking through practically every day, noticing the tiny nuances of change as the seasons move – the late spring planting into summer into fall. the smell of cocoa mulch permeates the garden down by the lake and – between the scent of flowers and cocoa – it is enchanting and heavenly.
eric hanson’s video speaks to the current administration’s shrinking of national monuments bears’ ears and grand staircase-escalante national monuments. no small reduction, these federally protected lands lost 90% of their acreage. this reduction opens these lands up to private exploitation, ignoring the native spiritual and conservation environmental regulations that kept them safe and not accessible to road-building or the deployment of heavy machinery for resource mining. these vulnerable lands are gorgeous, part of the history of these United States, enchanting and inviting, a piece of heaven not only for native peoples but for the entire populace of this nation – which – as the video pointed out – are literally owned by we-the-people.
why it is that the administration would work to eliminate protecting the natural beauty of our country is truly beyond the scope of my imagination. so is the rest of what this administration is doing – i simply cannot comprehend the vile, heinous stuff they are – ruthlessly – enacting.
each day our at-least-3.5-mile walk takes us past our city’s gardens and planters along the harbor channel and inland around the marina. each day we are grateful for the careful attention paid to these places of beauty.
the times i have been in utah’s canyonlands or near any of its wild have spoken to my soul. there is a deep root connection to the earth there, a glorious sense of the freedom that is supposedly the law of this land, and sheer enchantment and wonder at how anything could possibly be so stunning.
again, i say, they-in-this-administration have no reverence. for anything.
and as a person with a finite life – just like all of them – i cannot begin to grok the shortsightedness of that.
two saturdays ago – on the 26th – we noticed on our weather app that the total daylight – for that very day – was 11 hours 59 minutes. the sun rose at 6:43 am and set at 6:42 pm. almost exactly half and half. we missed the actual half and half day, but we were still astounded by these numbers and nodded our heads, honoring the equinox.
i’m not sure we are really ready for the aftermath of the equinox. not yet. as these days get shorter – and the nights get longer – my wistful grows. so we change the timers on the garden lights, the living room lights, lamps in the bedrooms upstairs. we turn on the happy lights sooner and light candles. we mitigate the darker season that will arrive, anticipating and alleviating the impact earlier darkness has on us.
we are getting closer and closer to the midterms. the halfway point between big presidential election cycles. where time that came before is what is to come. so much in the before. what will be the after? it literally makes me sick to my stomach.
so much is riding on this election. our country is being destroyed, brick by brick by brick. it is blatant. it is mindbogglingly breathtaking. thinking about what could come is both paralyzing and numbing. it is not as simple as the amount of daylight decreasing. it is the amount of LIGHT decreasing.
at this point – on this day – there are precisely 29 days left.
my sweet poppo – a man who dedicated part of his life to the united states army air force, who was missing in action and then taken prisoner of war in world war II, who earned a purple heart and has his story told in the records of the smithsonian – this man is freaking the hell out as our democracy teeters…even from the other plane in which he exists. and with him are all the others who have fought for this country’s freedoms, rights, constitution. all the others who have resisted, protested, died for this country and its republic. all the others who have pushed back against all manner of authoritarianism.
and i am with him. my pompoms are solidly in the stop-this-takeover camp. i no longer have any tolerance for anyone who is cheering on the madness of the current administration. they have clearly not anticipated the impact that kind of darkness will have on us.
sometime in the two-thousand-aughts my girl and my boy gifted me with a tall bamboo vessel filled with feathery ochre and barn red reeds. it immediately found its way into a special spot – any gifts they give me are so very cherished – and it has moved around from time to time.
its last long-term place of residence was in our sitting room, but we did some rearranging a couple years back and it found its way into our bedroom, right between the gingham wingback recliner and the windows. the east windows. and there it has stayed – this place where it welcomes the sun each day and holds steady as light streams over it. from our perch on the pillows, it is a beautiful fluff of color and light and shadow. i can’t imagine it in a better place.
on a morning recently, the sun was coming up at just the right angle to tiger-ize these dried plumes. stunning. the things you notice when you are in notice-wonder-mode.
on a walk recently we talked about our life together. things are pretty simple these days – as we hold vigil for our dogga – not venturing out too far for too long. some days are better than others for him. some days he has puppy-face on and he is strong and vibrant and enthusiastic. some days he has old-man-face on and he is slow and tired and his stomach is upset and it is clear that he is uncomfortable. the difference in these days is striking and there is no way to predict which day it will be when the sun is rising.
dogga wakes us around 4:30. he is hungry from the overnight fast and so he recognizes that his sensitive belly needs breakfast. after he eats, we sleep for maybe another hour – maybe – but then he wakes us because, well, we think he wants us up, he wants our company, he wants to start what he knows is the morning ritual – “put the coffee on,” he urges.
like people with sensitive bellies or dietary concerns or various other health reasons, he eats little bits every few hours. it seems to really help him. we make special meals for him and try to read him best as we can.
we were invited to go away with friends recently. not only was the weather going to be perfect but we love our adventures with these friends and so getting away with them would have been perfect as well.
we struggled with leaving dogga.
and ultimately decided we couldn’t go.
we don’t know what will happen to our old dogga as these days go by. we know we are very lucky to still have him with us. no matter what, our commitment to him has to outweigh anything we are doing just for ourselves, outweigh any fomo, outweigh any uncertainty. this sweet aussie has given his whole life to us – he has ridden the roller coaster of the last thirteen plus years with us – he has been steadfast and sensitive and intuitive and our rock. we stand in all these moments now with him, without knowing the course that things will take.
and so, we will be in notice-wonder-mode. the moon rising over the lake, the last cherry tomatoes and a bit of remaining basil, the edges of the aspen leaves changing, an exchanged glance yoga-mat-to-yoga-mat as we exercise in the living room, the bazillion blooms on the black cherry mum, the taste of an oven-baked baked potato with just salt and pepper, the crunch of homemade salsa on a chip, first morning coffee, the coze of our new sweatshirts, dogga grinning at us during a belly-belly, an unsolicited text from the kids, the first jeans day of fall, and, yes, the golden light on the plumes by the window.
the tidbit server is an etched clear glass tray – vintage fostoria from the 30s or maybe a tad closer to mid-century – with a fleur-de-lis finial in the center. though difficult to store, it is a lovely piece passed down to me and i keep it at hand so that i might use it from time to time. i thought about this tray the instant we passed by the canna lily on the sidewalk by the art center. the brilliant orange-red petals – aglow with noon sun – curled back from the center, revealing nature’s fleur-de-lis, right there, just waiting for us.
we walked home and i looked in the corner cabinet built into our dining room – just to say hello to this piece, remembering my sweet momma using it on special occasions and recommitting to using it any old time.
we were at old navy browsing. they were having big sales and plain black sweatshirts were a part of the sale: $20! – less than half price! it’s been a long time since we each got a new sweatshirt – years, really – so we looked for a couple in big, cozy oversizes, and splurged. just the idea of a new sweatshirt for the fall days and nights rapidly approaching made us excited. we know there is a low bar for eliciting our excitement, but, heck, new yummy sweatshirts would make anyone pretty gleeful.
we imagined walking in all our favorite places with these new sweatshirts. and, though we are not traveling these days – instead, staying at home with our aging dogga – we could well imagine wearing these in the mountains, on the coast, up north, in canyonlands, out in the desert after sunset.
it also means, maybe, that some of our ancient sweatshirts may move on. well, except for the north face clearance ones that are falling apart from close to a dozen years of wear and tear. or the old zip-up that d uses when he paints in his studio. or the cropped zip-up i wore on every single solo roadtrip i took for years – like a reassuring, protective guardian – my support hoodie – now at least 25 years old – with no cuffs left to be found and a paper clip as a zipper pull. yeah, these will not go – no one else would want them, nor would we even give away such shoddy shirts with so much meaning.
but there are others – sweatshirts i collected over the years touting places or universities or organizations. some of those are in very good condition and still have lots of wearing to be done.
it’s a funny thing about old stuff. a few years back i thought that this fleur-de-lis glass tray might be a good thing to move on – to sell to someone who might really relish its vintage beauty, who might use it in regular rotation.
and then i realized that person is me.
the etched glass tray and the tattered papercliphoodie are in different classes entirely. but they are both expressions of who i am, where i have come from, where i might be going.
as soon as the beakyrule has run its course – and i can wear the brand new thing – i’ll be wearing that new black sweatshirt, being all cozy-like. hopefully it will feel just right, right away.
in the meanwhile, it’ll just have to wait for its wings, sitting patiently on the cedar chest in our room, on top of the old quilt and under my sunhat.
the next time we passed the canna lily, it was no longer in fleur-de-lis position, a ballerina in positions of grace. it had withered a bit, its petals less reaching-for-the-sun, more cuff-less and zipperpull-less, but, i noted, no less of a blossom.
after all the rain – followed by some big dashes of cold – i thought that the potting stand would be done-in. i figured that any tiny cherry tomatoes would have fallen off the vine, that the basil would be drowning, that the mint would have given up, that the jalapeños would stop being-a-pepper. i was concerned about the rest too…the sweet potato vine, the fern, the licorice plant, the tiny purple flowers in planters. i wasn’t sure i was ready for what that would mean – the end of summer – even though we are now past the official date for the start of fall.
i haven’t really been a mum person. truth be told, i’m not sure what a mum-person is, but i just know I haven’t gravitated toward mums. despite their unrelenting determination to bloom and to flourish in the roller coaster of autumn, i think it might be how structured a mum tends to look….a tight little ball of green with lots and lots of buds just waiting to burst into color. now, i don’t know if there could be anything at all wrong with such a plant – we all need that kind of steadfastness, that kind of dogged dedication to blooming. there was just always something stopping me from mumming.
until this year.
our friends have a black cherry mum on their front steps – its blooms the color of deeply ripe bings in the summer, the color of the name of one of my favorite “sodas” growing up, the only color of choir robe i ever thought was aesthetically appropriate for everyone in a choir (should robes be necessary at all). their mum…stunning.
i commented on this mum and they promptly told me they had gotten it at the local grocery store, which has a plethora of them out front – all different colors.
the next day they texted that the price had been reduced – to $12. now, this is a really big plant. and full of potential blossoming mum-flowers. and so…
we went to the grocery store that morning and chose our new mum-plant to come home with us, gently placing it in the back seat of big red.
it has exploded with gorgeous blooms and has been absolutely steady and unperturbed all through the torrential rains we had after its homecoming. like it is…carefree.
now, “carefree” is not a word i would have used to describe a mum – unlike the wildly growing ornamental grasses in our yard, it seems to have more framework, more parameters for its growth, a tad bit more structure. hmmm.
we have recently discovered that – in lieu of doing chores as needed – there are some things that work better within a charlie’s-plan kind of plan. certain days or dates for certain things – a tad bit more structure – it takes away the spontaneity yet – surprisingly – frees up space.
in essence, we have found that it can be effective to be a little more mum.
and so, our little black cherry plant sits on our deck and giggles, “and they thought they weren’t mum-people.”
a very long time ago – decades – my friend joe-z took me on the curvy, hilly route 25A on long island – east of northport – to teach me how to drive his datsun 240Z.
at the time my own car was my 1971 volkswagen superbeetle bug, so i was driving something that was quite a bit more tame than the 240Z – ok, a lot more tame than the 240Z.
his red z-car was powerful, low to the ground, with a very responsive suspension and tight steering. it was a lot to handle if you wanted to take it to its limits. i remember it as being stick shift – four on the floor – like my bug.
i was timid as we started, the curves of the road intimidating, the hills and slanted roadway a bit nerve-wracking with this much power in my hands.
but joe-z was patient and had time to spend. and, among other things, he taught me that driving into the curves – accelerating – would give me the ability to control the curves and not have the curves control me.
i can still remember driving that Z, still remember the power under me, still remember the lessons from those times driving that car in various conditions.
so i nodded during the movie the art of racing in the rainwhen the race car driver character denny said, “no one knows what curves life will throw at you, but if the driver has the courage to create his own conditions, then the rain is simply rain.”
25A’s curves are simply curves. its hills are simply hills. and the road right in front of you is what exists.
in this time of my life, i am finding that courage is the thing that counts. the unpredictability of life can be mind-boggling and sometimes shattering – in so many ways – and accelerating around the curves may well be the only difference between succumbing or having some sort of control.
on these particularly rainy days, we can see that rain is most definitely rain. it can overwhelm the land, communities, spirits.
standing up to the fear of any of that while adapting best as one can may not diminish the rain’s potential impact – we cannot underplay the rain’s havoc-wreaking. but presence, resilience and placing your eyes where you want to go – like the race car driver in the movie – can help survive the conditions.
we can learn from each other – lessons that generalize over spectrums of life: shift our weight in the saddle, press into the turning waterski, sustain-pedal with some reserve, taste food before salting.
every day now the mourning dove shows up. all by itself, it sits on the wire. not cooing or preening at all, it appears to be waiting, waiting.
something about this lone dove tugs at me every time i witness its silent vigil. it feels as if it has lost its life partner and its perch – high above the backyards it can see – gives it a place from which to search or from which to be quiet and pine. though i know that it could be acting as a sentinel for a nest or simply resting with an eye to predators, there is something else i can feel.
i’ve whispered up to this mourning dove – that i see it, that i am privy to its vigil and that i honor its steadfastness, its constancy. i tell it that i am witness to what seems like its sadness. i hardly know if it helps – or if the dove can hear me or understand me. but being here and watching and aware, it feels like i am honoring its story.
it is not unlike that which we could do for each other. all each others, regardless. if only we were to sit on metaphoric high wires quietly and listen to each other, honor each others’ stories, be witness to joy or pain, hold one another tenderly. if only.
