I have learned from experience that our little fishpond needs to be aerated in the winter because the two dozen goldfish in the pond need oxygen in the water. They have to breathe too. My sweetie fusses with the little circulating pump so that it will hang just right–an inch under the surface, circulating waterRead more about Circulator[…]
With a thin layer of snow on the ground, i can see the paths of voles and mice under the frozen iced-snow. Inside the house, my sweetie sets mousetraps and catches voles more than half the time. Voles are a little bit bigger than mice. Voles have short tails and are very cute. Our spiritualRead more about Vole Trails[…]
Conditions are right for ice needles when the ground is not frozen but the air is. The water in the ground freezes before the dirt does, giving rise to beautiful prisms of ice, which extrude out of the ground like pasta. One of my gardens, which i now see has seeping water not far belowRead more about Ice Needles[…]
I’ve always wanted a spring on my property. (Be careful what you wish for.) I suddenly see a puddle of water in the middle of a flower bed. The nearby fishpond is frozen, but this little puddle is not. The water in the puddle moves ever so subtly, but it is moving. The water isRead more about A Spring Springs Up[…]
Today is the latest sunrise of the year here in the Northern hemisphere. Already the sun is setting 14 minutes later than it did on December 7. More light at the end of the day! Tomorrow we will have (a few seconds) more light at the beginning of the day! I like cracking my eyesRead more about Latest Sunrise[…]
I don’t know what to do with my rose bush. It’s four feet tall and drooping. Most of the leaves and branches are still green, so it’s not obvious to me where to prune. One website says prune in the spring. Oh, the rose bush was easy when it was little. I put a bigRead more about Winter Rose[…]
While I was packing the remains of the Christmas ham into baggies, i trimmed off the fat and put it in the suet feeder. The woodpecker loves it. She spends long minutes pecking at the ham fat and scaring off any intruders. Those downy woodpeckers may be small, but they are at the top ofRead more about Suet for the Woodpecker[…]
“Stress is caused by being here and wanting to be there.” Eckhart Tolle Mindfulness, as we know, is tethering the mind to the body and being in the present moment. But the mind wants to go elsewhere. The mind has a lot of good ideas–places to go, people to see, things to do. Oh, aRead more about Not Wanting to be Here[…]
“I must go in. The fog is rising.” These are Emily Dickinson’s enigmatic last words. What might be your last words? Of course, we cannot even begin to guess what we might see/hear/feel in that in-between place, that bardo between life and death. For now, we can only be aware of the between places asRead more about Emily Dickinson’s Last Words[…]