Star singing

We all worked hard yesterday. Of course we all work hard every day, but some days have a special quality about them. I don't know what causes or triggers it, but we seem to move through the hours like a single dancer, whirling about to a piece of music no one can hear but everyone feels. On those days we absorb bad news (like the death of our large freezer) with facility and grace, a few wisecracks, and a brainstorm session about how to use the body as an underground root "cellar".

Some days are just crammed full of grace.

A sense of celebration and joy takes hold. Yesterday, when our little spot on Earth finally rolled away from the sun, we made guacamole (with the season's first garden tomatoes) and tortilla chips, and sat on the patio to watch the evening sky show. Soon one of our summer guest/helpers brought out the guitar and a singing session got underway.

Crickets and tree frogs provided the shruti note for our voices, and song became a blessing to the night, soaring out over our little Bluestone Farm. Gospel laments, folk song, show tunes — braided with jokes and memories — drawing us ever more deeply into each other's lives, filling us with peace that we carry into a troubled world.

By the time we called it a night, the sky was dotted with the light from galaxies light-centuries away from us. All that vastness and mystery, singing its own melody, gift of the Master Singer.

The Universe is a song-strong place.

Of Ducks and Wasps

Petra is still hanging in there; she's a tough little bird, all right. We added two more Muscovies in the meantime; Basil (another blue) and Macrina (same coloring as Petra, though "Mac" is larger). I suspect both of the new ducks are females, but I'm basing that on their sound production alone. Probably not a sure-fire gender predictor. Bernie seems to have plucked the ends of Basil's wings clean, behavior not uncommon among ducks getting acquainted. Seems unnecessarily rude to me, but I'm not a duck.

It has been about ten days since B and Mac arrived, so I think the Pecking Wars are over and, though Bernie is a control freak about the pools and feeding trough, all four are getting along. Petra is decidedly smaller than the rest, and the loss of sight on one side hampers her foraging. But Bernie has taken a bit of a shine to her, and that may be enough to keep her going. We hope so.

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A few months ago I mentioned having been stung by a yellow jacket; yep, the one who was rude enough to fly up my skirt. That encounter left me with a doctor bill, an EpiPen, and some scary information on how dangerous both a sting and the treatment could be. Just what an already sting-phobic soul needs. Today I got to check out my theory that my "allergic" reaction was due to the chemicals sprayed into the nest rather than to the venom. If I had trouble breathing this time I would inject the epinephrine, eat a bit of crow, and head for the nearest emergency room.

Here's how it happened: I decided to tackle the side of the house that fronts the driveway. This area has been growing without human intervention for years, and was in bad need of a haircut. Actually, what it really needs is radical surgery. By 7:00 AM I was half-way though a major trim job on a rhododendron. Forty-five minutes later I was putting a second rhody out of its misery when I dragged a large branch through an overgrown azalea, which was next on my Extreme Landscape Makeover list.

What I didn't know was that a large colony of bald-faced hornets (which are also called white-faced wasps, but which are neither hornet nor wasp, but an aerial yellow jacket) had taken up residence in the azalea. I also didn't know, but found out fast, that bald-faced hornet workers are fierce protectors of their paper nests. I was fortunate that I was only stung once — these guys are really serious about keeping bothersome intruders away. I ran for the ice (which I highly recommend to quell the immediate pain of the sting), and decided to wait out the reaction before I grabbed the EpiPen. Gadgets like that scare me.

Sure enough, my reaction was classically "normal local", and there was no indication of any systemic involvement. Gosh, I love to be right. Of course, "normal local" for a bald-faced hornet is ugly enough. I still have ice on it to keep the swelling down, it itches like crazy (thank you, God, for Benadryl), hurts to touch (or scratch), and is a fashionable shade of pink.

In spite of all that, I went back out to work for a few more hours. I stayed away from working on that rhody, the azalea, and an andromeda on the other side of the azalea. But I did spend some time watching the activity around that nest. The hornets quickly went back to their own normal behavior, zooming in and out of the nest as they foraged for food and wood to increase the nest size. As long as I didn't disturb the nest, they left me completely alone.

It made me think about my reaction to the raccoons who made the murderous assault on our ducks. I was angry for days; I even enjoyed seeing raccoon pelts hanging in a cabin at Connor Prairie (Indiana), a sight that would normally have pulled at my heart. But once my bald-faced neighbors knew I was no longer a threat to their home, they forgot me entirely. One non-fatal sting and it was back to business as usual for the hornets.

I used to think of yellow jackets, hornets and wasps as being intentionally vicious, capable of harboring a grudge and willing to pursue something several gazillion times its own size just to get even. [Ahem ... just a little anthropomorphism there.] Non-human critters are rarely mean for mean's sake. Attacks are almost always undertaken in service of survival and abandoned as soon as the threat is gone.

I think we humans still have a lot to learn.

Petra update

Here's the latest Petra update: she will probably lose the sight in one eye, she was covered in scratches and the feathers of one wing were completely stripped. It's rather amazing that she survived the attack — I like to think that Bernie protected her, but I rather suspect she has her own inner toughness. Sr. Lilli Ana often reminds me that an accidental step on a plant will either kill it or toughen it up. Petra may turn out to be one tough bird.

She has spent the last two nights in my room, which smells a little too much like a barnyard right now. I'm playing nature sounds on my computer for her. I suppose this is more for me than for her, but it makes me feel like I'm contributing something to her well-being.

And she is doing well. The eye still looks pretty bad, but she eats and drinks (a very good sign), and she chirps happily, allows us to administer her medications with a minimum of fuss, appreciates our attention and shows interest in what's going on around her. I think she'll make it. Last night she snarfed up a good-sized bug I found in my room. Death for life. Energy exchange.

I spent some time researching raccoons today, trying to find an acceptable place in my heart for them. They are an aggressive, occasionally violent animal, in spite of their rakish, cuddly appearance. They are sort of the cockroach of the mammal world. They give as good as they get, and occasionally go out there and attack just to remind everyone else they are there and a serious life contender. They can cause major headaches for humans, taking houses apart as well as killing ducks. They can muck up a chimney in no time, and are almost impossible to remove. I suspect the next attack will occur in our garden, probably on our tender corn crop.

But this is how the Earth has always worked: competition among species sharpens the senses and the skills and wisdom of all the participants. As Brian Swimme says, be sure to pick a worthy "enemy" if you want to grow and thrive. It will demand your very best. And it will demand your respect, too.

Prophesy and bandits

It was the raccoons, not the coyotes.

Last night for the first (and probably the last) time we forgot to close the door to the house in Duckville. We all feel guilty about it; irrationally, I wish I hadn't written what I did here yesterday afternoon. I wish I had not just assumed that because I could see the ducks in the house, and the gate to Duckville locked, they were safe from predators. I wish I had followed my own advice and looked out for the little ones.

This morning Lynne found them — Brigid, Graham and little Blue. Bernie's fine, but little Petra looks roughed up and seems to be in shock. We'll have the vet check her out this morning. Lynne and Sr. Emmanuel buried the other three, and I picked up a lot of feathers — white and downy, with rust-colored stains on them.

If the coyotes had killed our ducks I could handle it better. Oh, I'd still feel guilty, no question. But coyotes kill to feed themselves and their young. Raccoons seem to kill just because they can. They did the same thing to birds in the cloister and fish in the pond several years ago, leaving the little bodies for us to find in the morning. No wonder raccoons wear masks. Nasty little buggers.

But just because I don't understand it doesn't mean this apparently gratuitous behavior is, in fact, without purpose or meaning. It makes no sense in my world, but perhaps in the raccoon world something necessary happens. I hope so. I want Brigid's and Graham's and Blue's deaths to have been — I don't know, worthwhile, I guess. I want to feel better about what happened, and I can accept violence and death with a purpose. If anyone out there understands raccoon behavior, let me know.

We certainly learned something and, sad as it can get, learning from our more serious mistakes is the most effective (I hate to say "best") way to remember a lesson.

You can bet the farm at least six of us will be checking all the Duckville doors every night from now on.

The Ducks of Bluestone Farm

I haven't posted any pictures lately, so I thought it high time to introduce the newest five members of our Bluestone Farm family: Brigid, Graham, Bernie, Blue and Petra. These are our five Muscovy ducks. Here's how we arrived at their names: Brigid (of Kildare, my favority Celtic saint), Graham (Quacker, of course), Bernie (we got these three on Bernard Mizeki's memorial day), Blue (a blue Muscovy and half our name) and Petra (Greek for stone, so we have "Bluestone" ducks).

In the photos, Bernie and Graham are the two large white ducks in the blue pond. Brigid is the other mostly-white Muscovy in the black pond, and the two little ones with her are Blue (the lighter-colored small duck) and Petra. You can't tell it in these pictures, but Petra has irridescent green wings.

Duck wings stay small for awhile, though Muscovies eventually become good flyers and will head for the trees to scope out the joint when they get a little older. Ducks are fascinating to watch; they stick close together and watch out for the little ones. They move from place to place in a line, Brigid in the lead usually, with Blue and Petra in the middle. Every now and then all of them will stretch tall and flap their wings, for no apparent reason I can fathom. This is an impressive display for the larger ducks, but for Blue and Petra, with their stubby duckling wings, it reminds me of children playing dress-up, trying to look like the adults.

We have to trust these wonderful creatures to the vagaries of life outdoors. We do secure them in their new house in Duckville at night, but during the day they pretty much have the run of the world if they want. They forage a bit farther from home each day. I know the dangers that lurk in our woods — coyotes, hawks, raccoons — but this is how life works. We live in harmony with our surroundings, but that doesn't mean the coyote family won't have duck for dinner some night. Or that we won't ache with Lyme Disease. It's all a balancing act, and you pays your dime and you takes your chances.

Just the same, we keep an eye out for the little ones.

Seeding the Future

I've been awake since about three this morning, my brain in high gear for some reason.

One of the mental trains I've been riding is about saving seeds. The winter and spring crops and early flowers are bolting — going to seed. Odd that we use this phrase in a rather pejorative way with ourselves. Going to seed in the natural world is actually a time of fabulous abundance and promise. Because we at Bluestone Farm are committed to preserving as much of Earth's wisdom as possible, we have instituted a seed-saving program.

Each plant has some ingenious strategy for propagating itself. One of my favorites is the columbine. Not only is it beautiful (and the state flower of Colorado, my home sweet home), but its seeding design makes gathering a breeze. As with many flowers, the base of the flower becomes the seed "womb". The base of a columbine looks like a cup formed of tightly rolled petals. As the seed matures, the petals unfurl to form a pretty little open cup.

The cup remains upright on the stalk, so it takes a passing animal or a heavy bee or dragonfly to tip the cup and drop the seeds to the ground. For human gathering, this design allows me to simply tip the cup over my own little gatherinng bowl and out come the seeds.

Each flower has about six petals to a cup, and each petal holds about seven to ten seeds. Let's see ... that would be somewhere between forty and sixty seeds per flower, right? Our columbines have somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty flowers going to seed on each plant at the moment, which means the columbine plant knows it will take 1200 to 1800 seeds to insure that at least one new plant will make it to adulthood, flowers and seeds, next year. Whoa, is that abundance or what?

Or take the broccoli raab plant. When it bolts it looks like an entirely different plant. Gone are the tasty green leaves and little yellow flowers. When this plant goes into seed production it transforms into stalks with long slender seed pods growing on a short stem along the main stalks. Brocoli raab pods hold about ten small seeds each, and to get them you have to wait until the plant — stalk, stems and pods — are thoroughly brown and dry. Then comes the fun.

The stalks must be carefully cut, since their pods are designed to burst open at the slightest jarring. What with deer, turkey, coyote, raccoon, voles, wood rats, swooping owls and God knows who else playing near the plants, this design strategy is a great one. Makes human gathering more of a challenge, though.

Carefully, carefully select the driest stalks and place them gently in a roomy container. Carry this gingerly back to the harvesting table. Now at this point my own harvesting strategy differs from Sr. Heléna Marie's. She goes with the oldfashioned way: hop into the roomy container and stomp on those pods until all the seed has fallen out. Then toss the pods and stems carefully back and forth between your hands to free any lingering seeds; throw the chaff into a bag for future mulching duty and admire the seeds left at the bottom of the roomy pot.

Now I prefer a more refined approach. I carefully use my hands to squeeze the pods (OK, it's more like crushing them) open over a collander in a bowl. Then I use a classic threshing move (like TV chefs do with food cooking in a frying pan) to remove the seeds from the chaff. If I'm really being anal-retentive, I then use a fine strainer to remove dirt from the seeds. A perfectly ridiculous process, since the seeds will be going into the dirt again next year anyway, but I think it looks better. I'm all about appearances.

Back to the number-crunching: ten seeds per pod, an average of twenty pods per stalk, and maybe twenty-five stalks per plant ... um, that's ... 5,000 seeds. No wonder I'm making so many seed packets for broccoli raab.

Earth wisdom says if a few seeds are good, a zillion must be better. It's a great survival strategy. Even humans are given to amazing abundance when it comes to reproduction: millions of sperm are produced every minute in males and a few thousand eggs form in each female fetus before birth. Given the odds against eggs and seeds surviving the perilous reproduction process, abundance is a very good thing.

Lots and lots of potential babies mean that the whole system can sustain itself. A few aren't high quality, some never get to the right conditions, many are consumed to provide energy for other species, lots of them root and grow, but never make it to adulthood ... we are flooded by the message of abundance, and yet we humans seem to hang onto a scarcity context for ourselves.

Pretty hard to live in this abundant Universe while holding on to the belief that there's not enough — of anything.

The Wright Brothers

I know, I know, it's been entirely too long since the last blog. It's not for lack of material, for sure. Life just spins all around me, filled with oddities, miracles and wonder. I've been so busy enjoying all that I just haven't plopped myself in front of the computer. As whizbang-fantastic as computers may seem, they just don't hold a candle to Life According to God.

Here's the kind of encounter I prefer: a few days ago I was driving along the north edge of the Danbury Airport, of which there was much recent ado in the news. Seems a young lad, given to a tad too much alcohol consumption and with a yen for flying, "borrowed" someone's plane from said airport and flew it down to Westchester, at night, with two friends on board and enough alcohol in his blood to fuel the flight and earn him a place of honor in the local jail to boot. Bad business. Dangerous as hell. Sad, too. He seems a bright and worthy young man, wandering a bit too far down a dangerous road. Misses his mom. Has a dad who cares and can't figure out how to help his son find a safer, more promising direction for his life.

Of course the news folks leaped on this opportunity to notify any lurking terrorists too dumb to have already thought of it that small airports might be a good source of transportation for their next US mission. Let's kick that fear level up a notch. Let's implement big-city security at every little airport in the land. Think of the money that will change hands. Ah, consumerism at its finest.

Oops, sorry. I'm off my own trail.

What I wanted to write about was what I saw in the sky the other day. Thank goodness for a long stoplight, because watching the sky while driving is generally a poor idea. But I'm glad I let my eyes wander, because right there above me was a small plane, flanked by a turkey vulture. The little plane flew a nice, exact, gentle curve toward the airport. The vulture, however, was having a blast, gliding with the air currents — up, down, sideways, up over the plane and down the other side, swooping and diving, lagging back and speeding up ... I just know that bird was laughing at the odd little machine that used all of its energy simply to stay in the air. What kind of fun is that? A lot of noise and not much beauty in just staying up there.

How can we possibly believe we can compete with God's design strategies? Yes, our planes do a pretty good job of staying in the air. But sometimes they don't and when that happens disaster strikes. A turkey vulture in bad weather, or on a collision course with another bird, just makes a minor adjustment and keeps right on going. God forbid the bird encounters a speeding bullet, or a nearly-invisible power line. In that case it, too, crashes to the ground. But at least only one being dies, not two hundred.

Look, I'm not against airplanes. But I do think we lose a lot (too much, actually) by acting as if our plans are so great they should take precedence over the rights, needs and very lives of all other living systems of Earth. That's a whole lot more dangerous to us than we know. Let's not find out the hard way that turkey vultures can teach us something, not only about flying, but about living.