THE WHEEL TURNS

The equinox has come and gone. The calendar says it is autumn. Today I went up to my garden to look over the next two big projects that are calling for my attention. I did just that. I looked at the location for planting next years garlic and I pondered the removal of the tomato cages but that was it. My garden gusto is gone. The forcast frost from September 16-18th never came. And now there is no frost in sight for a couple of weeks. I don't want to plant my garlic too early but it won't get a good start if I plant it too late. And because my tomatoes suffered a blow from leafspot septoria, I've been instructed to remove the plant debris from the area and either burn it or wrap it in plastic bags and send it to the dump. Luckily the fungus did nothing to harm my tomato crop. So here I am...poised for the cold weather that isn't coming. My latest craze has been to escape into the woods for many hours at a time of happy mushroom hunting. It takes me away from the burden of my dying garden and provides wonderful flavors that I never planted seeds for. I really love to forage. The woods are quiet and smell of moist decay. There has been enough moisture to cause a wonderful bloom of mushrooms in the woods and as I follow the stream beds into the forest, the happy trickle is a kind of music that plays as I walk. Sadie is my companion and there is absolutely nothing on my mind except mushies. Its absolutely thrilling to mosey around in the woods and to stop in a spot and look down to see otherwise invisible black trumpet mushrooms suddenly appear among the leaves. I sometimes feel like I've been led to the colony by a Black Trumpet fairy. I've been showing the mushrooms to Sadie and letting her smell them. I also have her witness my collecting them. If a dog can sniff out marijuana in suitcases why not choice edible mushrooms in the dirt. I remind myself of a pig snorfing truffles. I relish the hunt and feel a happy contentment when I find some. But the biggest thrill of all is the creating of a fine meal with these tender woodland fungiis and savoring their delicate flavor. Now as I realize the beginning of the end of hummingbird season, I need not be sad because it is the beginning of the fall mushroom season. My garden is dying anyway, so I can allow my attentions to stray as long as I keep putting up my produce. One love ends and another begins and I hardly miss a beat. Most amazing is my almost full time employment in my kitchen. Such a happy room to work in. I am truly blessed. I feel the turning of the wheel. The sun goes down on my personal/family garden and all the work it generates. But my attentions turn to my Mother Earth's garden and to foraging for a brand new passion. We've had a Wild Mushroom Alfredo sauce on angel hair pasta...a wild mushroom soup...a Black Trumpet/Chanterelle Risotto...and a homemade wild mushroom pizza. Today I had a nice hot cup of Turkeytail/Birch Polypore tea and imagine myself building a wild forest immune system that can stave off any virus I encounter. Foraging for mushrooms is a celebration of whatever pops up in life...spontaneous and often well camouflaged, they pop up and call for your attention and voila...dinner. I'm so excited that I am going to put on my muck boots and head for the woods. Will I find something? No guarantees. Something wonderful will pop up and I will be sustained. It's natural law...the turn of the wheel.

I THINK I CAN

Since I was let go in March, my pace seems pretty slow. I'm not moving fast but I am moving. After Priscilla passed and I recovered mobility of my knee, enjoyed a family vacation in Antigua, returned to Maine to put in my garden while the men of my life took a five week sailing journey up to Newport RI...I created a schedule for myself. All my excersise plans were easy to keep when I was the only person I had to think about. And it was easy to do a daily write and to update my blog. I don't know what happened but when the guys returned, I stopped folowing my path. I do this all the time. Ever since Stephen and I married, I've put self care on the backburner. It was easy to come between me and myself when the kids were small and we were both so busy just trying to make ends meet. I assured myself that one day in the future I would mend my ways. Trouble with a plan like that is that the future never comes. The mantra of maybe tomorrow keeps the future from ever happening today. I know many women grapple with this very issue. When they commit to a marriage, their creative goals get backburnered...sometimes friends fall to the wayside and often, there is a loss of motivation to workout. Funnily enough...its a time when you most need to practice self care due to the demands on your energy. Everything has changed since the boys grew up and moved on. There is an emptyness that I keep trying to fill. Makes me think of the Very Hungry Caterpillar. Caterpillars move slowly and eat constantly. They can't stop. That is they can't stop until they stop. Their metabolism tells them when they are full and they take the J shape. My next door neighbor, 6 year old Janna, tells me that the J shape is the signal that the caterpillar is coming to a stop. He is approaching his Chrysalis-making stage. When he takes that shape he better be where he needs to be because he won't move again until he emerges from the crysalis as a winged moth or butterfly. I think about this process every day as I move slowly minute by minute, tending my home and garden and spending most of my day alone. My hunger seems to be for creative expression but my actions continue to manifest my usual routine. My garden is a demanding and unruly child and yet it is exuberantly producing food that feed Stephen and I long into the winter. The responsibility of keeping up with the vegetables wins out as my top priority. I have succeeded in putting my creative yearnings on the backburner yet again. It's a comfortable habit even if it remains a mystery as to why I keep sabotaging myself. I wonder about caterpillars. I wonder if they have butterfly urges while they are crawling along the ground like a worm. I wonder if they sense their future before it comes. How do they know when to take the J shape? Do they dream of flight and the unfurling of lovely wings? Or are they 100% in the moment just being true to their instinct to become still and do the inner work of transformation. If the transformation of a caterpillar to a butterfly has something to teach me today, it seems to be...keep moving. Slow motion is motion nonetheless. Keep feeding the hunger. One day soon, you'll curl up in a J and hang around inside a crusty chrysalis...sleeping till the urge to break out can no longer be held back. Then...when you wake up...you will be able to accomplish what you yearn for...flight will be possible. So don't go all negative on me and start calling me names like slug or loser or any of those other mean names that come so easy when you start to get hard on yourself. Try being kind. I think I can...I think I can. The I can track...its around here somewhere.

THE FALL

I marvel at the complexity of the English language and the myriad meanings of even a simple word like FALL. The season Fall evokes beautiful imagery of colorful foliage, ripening apples and pumpkin patches and the startling cerulean blue of a sky that is lit with the sun at a lower slant. I love Fall. I love the coolness of the air and the soft smell of woodsy decay. Mushrooms pop up to surprise and delight. Nature is beyond herself in productivity...the trees are heavy with fruit and nuts or dressed to the nines in brilliance. Raptors begin to kettle for their migration South and if you look up any given sunny day, the dragonflys are dancing with tails curled. They appear to be celebrating. We take to the North Pond in our kayaks and the pond lilies...both pink and white are blossoming for the painted turtles and feeding herons. They remind me of lotus blossoms. We went paddling on September 11th. The shallow areas where the grasses grow and the ducks hang out on their islands of mud are still as glass. As we paddle out to the deeper water...passing under the two bridges and through the shallows we are wrapped in silence...stillness...peace. The changing light makes the whole atmosphere vibrate. As we reach deeper water, the wind picks up. I feel in the presence of a remarkable spirit of breath and possibility. I fall in love with fall. And I remember the falling towers...a fall tinged with horror, smoke and dust and chemical debris. My mind provides this moment of utter peace with the distinct contrast of a moment that passed 10 years ago. For some reason, we are riveted to the TV at night...watching video footage of the inside of Tower 1 as the event of 9/11 unfolds. My son Will and Sam too...they are enjoying the filming of documentary footage. They are in my mind as the two brothers who video the events of 9/11 in a remarkable moment of sychronicity. Remembering is important but becoming fixated on the images of horror and trauma does nothing to help our human conciousness grow beyond it's limits of fear. I go to bed and thrash and revision. It's a full moon night and sleep is elusive. I must finally fall asleep because when I wake up it is to a dream of the Earth shaking under me and a wave of water pouring down a mountainside washing us down...a natural disaster. I figure it's because of the images and rememberance of the events and stories of 9/11. I spend the day harvesting...walking in my garden...apologetic to the plants for not being a better weeder. The september phenomenon is that the garden grows way beyond my control because I am so busy harvesting and putting up veggies for winter that I have no time to weed. I feel delinquent. But my priority is to the emerging produce...to get it in and put by before frost. Here in the Western Maine mountains, winter can come fast. Frost can happen anytime. One sure sign of fall is the prediction of frost at night. It's coming. Day after tomorrow according to NOAA. A sure sign. And that afternoon I get the call. My mother has taken a FALL. She fainted and fell on her face as she walked home from Steves Market. There was noone and nothing to break her fall so she damaged her face...broken cheekbones...and a slight bleed in her head. She was taken to Brigham Womens hospital where she was admitted yesterday. Another night of light sleep and visual images that haunt and trouble. The media wants me to think the worst. They train us to remain stuck in that brain track. Today...I choose to focus on the Lotus...the calm beauty of the great Mother and to continue the job of the harvest while I wait for news of my poor wounded human mother. Let a new track be laid for this train of thought that takes me to a higher way of being and thinking and hopefully I can choose a way of being that is healing...calm and light...and send out prayers for her recovery.