Late Fall

“I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.”   -L.M. Montgomery

Exceeding Expectations

This was the first year that I took up the vegetable side of the garden. I planted everyone's cast offs. My mom had one too many pepper plants, the neighbor had a butternut squash with nowhere to go...garlic, broccoli all acquired the same way and tomatoes. Oh, it was a crazy, good year for tomatoes. My backyard was hot, humid and tomato-lucious all summer long.

I had so many tomatoes I couldn't eat all of them. I tried to offload a batch to the delivery guy from my favorite Chinese restaurant. He was polite about it but had to say no. Against company policy. So I stuck the whole lot of them into my slow-cooker over a late summer weekend. Boiled them down with oregano and garlic in an attempt to make marinara sauce. Jarred up the sauce and froze it in the deep freeze until our house had a hankering for lasagna last night. 

We boiled up noodles, thawed out the marinara, grated some cheese, stuck everything into the oven and gave it a go. Cooking is like that for me. Slap a whole bunch of stuff together, set it in the oven, and spend about thirty minutes just living on hope. The hope this particular collection of ingredients will turn out OK.

This one? This lasagna? OK, wow. I'm a lasagna lover but the homemade sauce kicked it up a notch or two. Dinner exceeded expectations.    

Morning Trail Run

Amherst, MA (3miles)

Peppered

I made use of the dry, warm weather today by planting thirty crocus bulbs. I looked then at the bare ground and tried to imagine it peppered in yellow and purple petals next spring.

Blowing Around

Spent the day in pleasant company. The cold weather blowing around outside. The sort of day that makes for long, involved conversations. The sort of day where my voice, my brain feel a little exhausted by the end of it. I climb into bed wondering when we can get together again? Hoping the answer is 'soon'.

My Sunday

Sometimes you just have to kick your other plans to the curb.

Air Outside

The air outside had a cool, wet skin this morning. The stars thinning out, I felt closer to the light sky than usual.

Rain Save

Four girls caught by a downpour on the walk home from Middle School. Nobody has an umbrella. N dials for a rescue as they took shelter under a tree. 

Ten minutes later the car doors clap closed. Every surface inside the car is instantly soaked. We're smooshed inside with kids and bikes and backpacks. 

The windows fogged up from all that giggling. 

It's nice to occasionally provide the rain save.

Indian Summer

Blue River Lodge (Sept, 2013)

I dangled my feet off the dock and into a mud bottomed lake this morning. It was murky lake water that it seems everything disappears into. Feet dangling, coffee in hand, I closed my eyes and listened to this place. 

There's a difference between listening for something as opposed to sitting still enough to listen to a place. It's in the brain filters. Listening for something selects one sound, it disregards other sounds as noise.

I spent this morning listening to whatever came. Birds or bugs, the sound of truck tires on the gravel road, the wind kicking up dry leaves that are yellowing soon. 

There was an expanse in me that the outside world opens. A welcome sensation that I live in a large, complicated, noisy world. One that drowns out the chatter inside my brain. I felt grateful for the very air around me.

Greening Forward

N came with me last weekend to the TedxYouth conference in Lincoln. We sat audience to a young man from Atlanta named Hasib Muhammad who started  Greening Forward as a resource for young activists. 

He gave an amazing speech. I barely had the presence of mind to scribble down a couple of thoughts that fell from his microphone. At the end I looked down at a page that read "Harness hope: learn, fear, grow, fix."  

Heliophilia

Heliophilia - (n.) a desire to stay in the sun; love of sunlight. 

Take Your Time

Thanks, J.

Soak

I woke up to a slow, soaking rain this morning. Opened up all the windows to let the wet weather inside.

Green Camera Action

Grab your camera and submit an entry into tve's 2013 biomovie competition.

Mud Season

Photo Credit: Wendy Jane Bantam

I make a mud pit out of my back yard twice every day. I've reworked some of the grading recently. Planted some grass seed. I've been watering ever since.

I love it. I love the way the way the water rains down my hands. The washed skin that's slick to the dirt surface. The water lasts just an instant before soaking in. The rich, musty smell that rises up from a wet ground. The speckles of a mud sticking to my shins. The cold, strangely clean feel of mud. It's something I make twice every day.

Ripening

 

 

This is the first year, ever, that I've taken up the backyard effort to grow vegetables. I'm a little nervous, so, wish me luck.

International Mud Day

Tree Effects

I've lived for a long time with the philosophy that there is no problem, no mental funk that a good hike can't cure. I practiced this philosophy for the better part of my college experience by studying trees. Refined the idea over a habit of weekends and holidays doing the same.

Japanese scientists have studied the biological effects what I'd guess intuitively from a walk in the woods. They found reduced stress levels in the body, decreased blood pressure, and a strengthened immune system better able to fight tumors and viruses.

Researchers at Columbia University correlated trees in urban neighborhoods to a lower incidence of asthma. Similar studies indicate that anxiety, depression and even crime are lower tree-lined environments.

I stand at one of those life moments where things shift quickly. Everything feels uncertain. As a result I've spent a great deal of time wearing hiking boots. Over the past year I have visited a stand of redwoods, hiked an eastern deciduous forest, picked apples from an orchard, run a swamp stomp, watched leaves bud and studied the fissures of tree-bark. I have caked my shoes in mud. I have giggled to throw the front door open extra wide just to bring in a little more fresh air. 

So I was pleased to hear Geoffery Donovan, a researcher with the U.S. Forest Service, recently suggest we consider that trees might not be just an essential part of the natural environment but equally essential to our well being. It was one of those moments when someone else, someone I've never met put words to an idea I had. Better than that Mr. Donovan puts statistics and findings behind what I could only guess. He goes on to say we could start thinking of trees as part of our public health infrastructure.  

There's an expansive way of thinking that happens when I go for a hike. A way that breathing becomes less constricted in a stand of trees.  A dimmed vision of my failings when immersed in something larger. Obviously, I like hiking. Regardless of my position on a map the effect of forests will always help me arrive at a better space in my head.  

Wet Weather

The air was wet, the sky all purpled up. I know what it looks like when rain is coming. I know dry and warm is inside. 

But I had that wondering. That sense that I'd miss something if I didn't wheel up. Mix in my irrational sense of optimism and I was a goner. I convinced myself the rain could, or would, hold off entirely. With one click of the chin clasp on my bike helmet I shrugged and thought, at most, maybe, maybe it would be just be a light sprinkle. 

I got soaked clean through. A cold rain that started off with fat plops before opening up a full downpour. The surprise wasn't the storm itself but the sweet, giggly feel of it. The way my toes flinched against my sandals. The swishing noise of my bike tires against the puddled up pavement. The spray that comes from wind shaking around a tree full of wet leaves.

I rolled up to my destination. Drip dried on the porch for a moment. Rubbed my cold cheeks that were stiff from smiling. I forget how much I can love wet weather. 

Hidden and Alone

Outside Denton, Nebraska

"The solitude of the prairie is like no other, the feeling of being hidden and alone in a grassland as open as the sea." 

-- Richard Manning (Grassland: The History, Biology, Politics and Promise of the American Prairie)

Summer Start

The sun came out yesterday after weeks of rain. 

Swinging the garage door open after a long bike ride I felt thrilled and exhausted. 

After showering up I smiled to realize my time on two wheels brought me my first bug-bite and my first sunburn of the season. 

2-miles Outside

Urban Hike With N (Rock Island Trail)

Greening Up Outside

4 miles - Wilderness Park (Lincoln, NE)

Trickle Down Ecology

  "Trees, how many of 'em do we need to look at?” - President Ronald Reagan

Late January Fog

Three days of mist mixed with drizzle. The air stands still. It smells clean and cold. Objects materialize and disappear at close range. 

I blame the weather for my strange dreams at night. 










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Currently Reading: Born Standing Up by Steve Martin
Thoroughly Pleased By: ASAPScience channel on Youtube
Recent Habit: Playing gin rummy with my kid
Quote That Made My Day: 'Never fear, guacamole is here' (Thanks, D.)

Green Sweet Spot

I'm hard pressed to think of a more pleasant surprise than finding something green sitting prettily on the cold, winter ground. Found this one on my morning lap around Wehrspann Lake.