Presence

Sometimes, A Little Humility Is In Order

August 19, 2020

It is not the right time to attack the star thistle. It is late in the afternoon, going on 5 pm. It is also quite, shall we say, hot out. PG & E keeps calling and texting to warn of impending power outages due to this unprecedented heat and, incidentally, these power outages are NOT their fault this time around.  The power outages that will certainly come in the fall? When fire danger peaks? Those will be on them. But not this time. They are not responsible, and they want you to know it.

Anyway. It is a pretty terrible time to be outside. I am learning, though, that I usually miss the “best” time for most things, so if I’m going to get anything done at all, I just have to do it whenever I can.

Also, I attacked this patch of star thistle a few days ago, (see my YouTube video here on my new and exciting YouTube channel. Because isn’t watching somebody trim blackberries and pull star thistle absolutely scintillating entertainment?  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxl7sZbJPSc) and was quite pleased with myself because in one relatively short twenty minute session, I was able to SOLVE the problem. Except when I walked by this morning, with my dog and one of my best friends who also loves native plants and who is wildly supportive of my star thistle project, I saw that it was back. It had not been vanquished. It looked like it was flourishing and blooming and pretty much thriving.

I understood a little better how former President George W. Bush must have felt a few months after his “Mission Accomplished” Iraq speech. He said that in the battle of Iraq, the U.S and our allies had prevailed.

Not so much. Continue Reading…

Presence

Welcome to the Blackberry Project

August 16, 2020

If I look at the whole thing, it is overwhelming.

I feel that way about a lot these days: the death of George Floyd, my white privilege,  my lack of awareness of that white privilege, global warming, plastic in the ocean, plastic everywhere else, the national debt, Donald Trump (just everything about him), an unexplained elephant die off in Africa, COVID-19 and this continuing lock down in California that makes it illegal for me to practice massage inside.

See, isn’t it all just a little too much?

That brings me to the blackberries.

When we bought our house seven years ago, it came with four parcels of land. There are two on the side of the road where the house sits. We have never had it officially surveyed, but judging by the county’s tax maps, it looks like the deck off our back door is somehow split between both parcels. If we were to ever sell the bottom parcel, the new owners would get half our deck.

On the other side of our little street, we have two more parcels. They both run alongside a small, year-round creek. The smaller parcel starts at our house and goes down the street toward our neighbor’s house. The larger parcel also starts by our house, but then winds up our street to the stop sign, then turns the corner and intersects with Main Street, giving us a little land on the other side of the creek.

I have a confession. Up until very recently, I didn’t actually realize that this land was ours. I’m not sure what I thought. That we just owned the little bit that fronted Main Street, and everything below it was somebody else’s?

It is not. Continue Reading…