Tripping

We're driving to California for a family reunion. We've packed our pillows, teapot, and toaster. We're taking our pillows because we're creatures of habit and comfort; the teapot to make tea in our hotel room in Ashland, Oregon where we're spending Monday night; our toaster because our day always begins with tea and toast.

I think we've planned every minute of the whole week. We're taking our laptops and spending plenty of time in wifi places. So, if we see anything cool, we promise to let you know.

California, here we come.

June tomato report

this is our second report of our progress in this years great tomato race, sponsored, or originated, by the wonderful dr charles. the tomatoes pictured were started from seeds planted april 8 and transplanted early in may to the greenhouse and the cloche.
the little green in the foreground is a brandywine. behind are early oregon tomatoes to the right. also visible are basil and brocolli.
the tomatoes in the cloche are doing even better. that is a zucchini leaf. also transplanted in the cloche in early may
i highly recommend cloche gardening.
a better view of the zucchini.

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in our continuing effort to be up to date, we are testing youtube. if you couldn't see our clever cat movie, here's another chance.

Friday Cat Blogging

it has been a while since we bored you with a cat post. that's over. we didn't select this picture as the best or most flattering to bonsai (the cat) or us. it was produced by our camera when the blogger formerly known as rexroth's daughter started filming when said cat was rolling around the kitchen floor. click on the picture for the movie.

Our Robin

Pohanginapete had a post up the other day that deeply considered the individuality of an animal. He was writing about a one-eyed kingfisher that he had spotted, and who had spotted him with its one good eye. How does such an animal survive? Especially one that must navigate the waters for its food? We have wondered the same thing about an animal's ability to adapt to its particular deficits and injuries. We think about it, because we have a robin that we have watched for several months. There are many robins that congregate in our yard and bathe in the pond. They like to eat the juicy worms and bathe in relative safety. But we do have one robin in particular that we call our robin. He comes to our yard a few times a week. How do we recognize that one robin?
He has something sticking out of his chest. We can't tell if it's superficial or one of those peculiar punctures, like the nail through the jaw into the brain, but that hits just right and causes no obvious injury. We emailed our friend Dave at BLC and sent him this photo. He didn't think there was much we could do, and offered that we would probably cause more damage if we tried to capture the bird and assist it.
So, we just keep our eye out for him, and notice when he shows up. We're always glad to see him.
He reminds us that animals adapt and survive. They have resilience, persistence, and a deep desire to keep eating worms.

Instinct

We've been watching a young energetic tree swallow build her nest. She isn't satisfied picking up one dried piece of grass at a time. If she's got one, she wants two. When the grass is too wide for the nestbox opening, she flies in from every angle she can think of until she is successful.
She knows exactly what to do. Her mate waits on top of the box for her. They do not flee when we walk around with wheelbarrels full of shingles, or when they hear the sound of compressed air shooting staples into those slices of cedar. There is no question for them. They are doing the things that are written into their cells, and they know how to read that message.
Here on a bigger nest, the eagle dries her feathers. She has probably just come from the bay after finding a meal for her babies. Her mate flies the shoreline. They will know at some point when it is time to leave their babies. Just abandon them. The eaglets will have already stood on the edge of the nest testing their wings. After they have wailed and cried for a two or three days, they will leave the nest to find food for themselves. They will have no choice. We heard David Hancock, an eagle biologist, on NPR today, say that the timing for the eaglets is just perfect because it coincides with the salmon spawning. There will be plenty for them to eat, even if they can't really hunt yet. Perfect timing.
We took a break from shingling and walked the minus tide today. It's where we saw the eagle. There were also hundreds of tiny silvery fish jumping everywhere along the shoreline. I asked dpr if he thought the eagles might try to grab some. He said no, but he offered that it was likely something below the fish was hunting them and making them leap that way. Sure enough, a little further down the beach I notice this little fellow sticking his nose out of the water.

I started college when I was 30 years old. I tried to imagine a seal explaining that to her parents.

Our True Country

We walked quietly through Fort Worden on Sunday, contemplating Memorial Day, and what's expected of us as citizens of our country, when something swift and bright caught my eye. What could possibly flit so quickly and energetically but a hummingbird? It landed on a tiny tip of a twig that extended off the dead branches of a madrone. We both tried to photograph the little thing, lost ourselves in the moment and were distracted from our somber mission.


Later when we arrived at Memory's Vault and took the time to read all the poems there, we found these few lines from a poem by Sam Harris called A Lover's Quarrel:

When I remember the sound of my true country,
I hear winds
high up in the evergreens, the soft snore
of surf, far off, on a wintry day,
the half-garbled song of finches
darting off through alder
on a summer day.

Lust does not
fatigue the soul, I say. This wind,
these ever-
green trees, this little bird of spirit--
this is the shape, the place of my desire. I'm free
as a fish or a stone.

It was then we remembered that discovering the sound of our true country has been our mission all along.

Memory's Fault

Entrance to Memory's Vault

We've been thinking about what to say on this Memorial Day. We know that many other blogs will have eloquent and moving tributes. We'd like to, as well, but we are so far removed from this war. We have not lost any loved ones. Our families have not been asked to sacrifice. Nothing at all has been asked of us. Our lives have not changed. How do we memoralize an abstraction? So we took a walk through Fort Worden to look at gun batteries, and to walk the same paths where soldiers have walked. We make ourselves remember that our country is at war, because all that has been really asked of us is to not think about.

Names are still being added to the list of the war dead nearly everyday. Blood is shed. Tears are shed. Names and dates are hammered on a stone. A folded American flag is handed to a loved one. Someone raises a horn to blow.

Fort Worden, Memorial

At least we think that's how it still happens. We are not are allowed to see our fallen soldiers. Their dead bodies are our country's secret, and we are complicit in keeping it.

Do you remember that soldiers are fighting and dying everyday?

We say to all those soldiers: They may hide you, but we will remember.