Swan Sanctuary

We take so much for granted. Many of us were raised with the notion that we must always strive to be more and to have more. In the striving, we pay no attention to the journey, to the everyday, sometimes monotonous moments. But in the end, we discover we have “lost” many moments that at the time seemed mundane or unimportant. I wish often, that I had savored more of the moments spent with my children when they were young. Although I was with them continually, I was often distracted and lost in my own thoughts. I was not as attentive as I could have been.

I think often of my maternal grandmother with whom I spent my very early years and several summers. She has been gone now for close to forty years and I still miss her. There are so many things that I wish I could ask her. Some time ago, in perusing old photos with my sister (before her passing) we came across pictures of relatives that we did not know. My own mother had lost her eyesight due to macular degeneration, so she was unable to assist us with identification. 

I would like to pass on some of the knowledge I have acquired to my daughters and granddaughters. I hope to leave small gems of wisdom that they can discover on their own treasure hunt through life. Perhaps that is why I write this blog. One day, I will be gone too, and they will not be able to ask me about those things that their hearts seek the answers to.

I am grateful to have reached that time in my life when I can slow down enough to appreciate the moments that go into the making of a day. This moment will never repeat itself. It will soon be replaced by another; but for now, I breathe deeply, taking in this current moment and simply say, thank you.

Today I will be mailing in my voting ballot. There is no time to waste and I wish to be sure my vote is counted. Women have had the right to vote for only one hundred years. It took seventy two years (from 1848 to 1920) for their efforts to finally pass the 19th Amendment. Those women who marched and picketed for women’s rights, endured beatings, persecution, and arrests; but they persisted in the face of incredible opposition. Black men were granted the right to vote by the passing of the 15th Amendment in 1870, a full fifty years before women were granted the same right. And black women were not accorded voting rights until as recently as 1965. 

For more than a century, our ancestors have fought to procure our rights. We have the right to vote – as women, as women of color, or even regardless of our sexual preference – thanks to those who have gone before us and endured so much to make it possible. This is no time for apathy. If you are a woman, I urge, plead, beg you, to please vote. Do not argue that your vote will not make a difference because it is all of us together, united in common goals, that will enable the healing of our country. If those people who finally succeeded in passing the 19th Amendment had given up, we would not have this right today! We have the right and we need to exercise that right. 

Do not wait until the last minute. Vote early. Vote by mail. The world is depending on us to vote for the candidate who will fight for our planet and help us confront climate change – not one who denies what is all around us. Vote for the one who will fight for us (women) to protect our rights, our right to choose, and our right to equal pay – not for the one who does not honor your difficult choices and wants to repeal your right to choose. Vote for the one whose agenda is to work for you, the citizens of this country – not the one who has his own agenda to become dictator through his continual abuse of power. Vote for the one who has integrity, empathy, and an open mind – not the one who is driven by racism, bigotry, and deceit. Let’s keep our momentum going for women and for people of color, to bring equality and justice to all, by voting for Joe Biden.

I am not a carpenter, but in recent weeks I have had to teach myself how to do things that I have never done. Looking back, I realize that I have self-taught much of what I know, beginning as an adolescent girl when I taught myself how to cook because my mother worked long hours at her job outside the home. A few weeks ago, after a great struggle, I was able to erect perches in the chicken coop. I have been toiling at placing an edge in front of the nest boxes so that the eggs, when laid, will not roll out onto the concrete below. I also had to make a ramp with rungs so that the chickens will be able to climb to their nest boxes. As a finishing touch, I added a curtain rod for the curtains that I had sewn from bandanas, to provide them privacy. I am certain that a handyman could have accomplished all of this in under thirty minutes. It took me the better part of two days. I have never been able to measure anything accurately, so I was having trouble lining things up. There was almost nothing to which I could attach support braces for mounting the perches. The wood often splintered, or there would be a knot wherever I was trying to sink a screw. I do not have a saw, so I used my pruning saw when I needed to cut pieces to size. I have a power screwdriver, but it is a cheap, not very powerful model. I still had to make starter holes by hand because I do not own a drill. Fortunately, I was able to find plenty of scrap wood lying around so I did not have to incur extra expense for the project.

Several months ago, I had made a platform outside of the cat door that I installed in the kitchen window. I only had to cut one 4X4 (with my pruning saw) and my measurements, naturally, were a bit off, but only by ¼ inch. It is sturdy at least, so my cat can move in and out easily. In spite of the fact that I am carpentry challenged, I want to add an additional step up to the platform because it is too high for my cat to jump from the porch. (I have temporarily provided boxes for him to jump onto.) I also hope to build a shelter for the beautiful, black stray cat that I have been feeding, so that it has a place to get out of the wind and the cold.

What I have come to appreciate from my hard work is the amazing strength of wood. I marvel that it was once a living tree and still, many years after its death, it continues to be of service. The fact that it takes a serrated saw with very sharp teeth to cut it, is incredible. I love the smell of wood nearly as much as I love the smell of soil and of rain. I am awed by the beautiful patterns in the wood. Our ancestors built homes and boats and furniture – often intricately carved – without the aid of power tools. My hands, which already have extensive damage from the gardening I have done, are hurting; but I think of the people in those generations before mine. They were hard working people who rarely complained. I am grateful to them for passing along to me the virtue of tenacity.

Yesterday was officially the final day of summer 2020. Today marks the Autumn Equinox and the time for moving inward. The sun is moving away from us for a while, so we must say goodbye to the flowers as we celebrate what was hopefully, a bountiful harvest. 

Autumn symbolizes the time to dive deep into our inner world and to face the darkness we find there. It can be a time to seek forgiveness. Forgiving our enemies is often one of our biggest challenges because we falsely believe that it means to accept or to condone a wrong that has been committed; but on the contrary, forgiveness is about freeing ourselves from pain and anger that has attached a shadow to our happiness. 

I was focusing on my body in order to sense where love and hate resided there. I felt love as a radiating warmth around the area of my heart chakra, in the upper portion of my chest. When I thought about someone whom I found difficult to forgive, I felt a heaviness around my solar plexus. The acidity or alkalinity of a soil can be measured on a scale. When it is halfway between acid and alkaline, it is considered neutral. I think that finding forgiveness is about finding that place in our body where hatred can be neutralized. It is that place in between love and hate – it is the place of peace. I like to visualize my body as being a lighthouse or a pane of glass through which light can shine. When I get out of my own way, the light can shine into the furthest depths, dispelling the darkness that has been harbored there. Borrowing from The Wizard of Oz, I see a house suddenly drop from the sky on top of the person I believed had hurt me. Then I see vultures fly in to dispose of the remains and I turn and walk away, finally free of the dark gloom that had clouded the glass and dimmed the light. Having reached that place of peace, forgiveness is accomplished, and the love that I felt in my chest expands throughout my body and beyond. This inner light will carry me through the dark winter months until we reach the Spring Equinox.

There was a song by The Carpenters that became popular when I was growing up, with the lyrics, “Rainy days and Mondays always get me down”. This is what I like to refer to as a sappy love song. It goes along with the sappy Hallmark® movies. Many people want to believe, for their entire lives, in the fairy tale of love; and when their happy-ever-after ending turns sour, they wallow in misery. Some actually enjoy being miserable and throw a continuous self pity party for themselves. “Misery loves company” they say; but I think the larger truth is that “when you cry, you cry alone”. We tend to avoid habitually unhappy people because they bring us down.

Many things can spark a reminder of something that can momentarily catapult us into melancholy. We can choose; however, to let go of negative feelings and emotions as they arise. We can reject sadness and immerse ourselves in the present moment; rather than boarding the train of despair that will carry us into perpetual darkness. We can look at rainy days as simply what they are and realize that it is a mere memory or a mis-guided thought that gives them the power to bring us down. We can approach Monday mornings with a sense of pure possibility. What amazing things does this day or this week have in store for us? We can hopefully anticipate good things to come, or we can begin the week on a downward spiral into calamity. 

The good news is that we always get to choose in each and every moment how we want to feel. If Monday doesn’t turn out so well, we can try again on Tuesday, to make it a better day. I personally love rainy days. I love Mondays, too. The weekend is gone. The coming weekend is far away. But, we have the entire week to ask ourselves how we can make a difference, not only in our own lives, but in life itself. “Smile, and the world smiles with you.”

My chickens are teenagers now, at sixteen weeks of age. Technically, they could begin laying eggs in another month; however I have been told that this will probably not happen until spring since we are heading into winter. My girls were becoming more bold and less content to remain confined within the 1200 square foot yard that has been their home in recent weeks. I had placed a gate at the top of the porch steps to prevent them from accessing it and proceeding into the front yard. Ivy is always the instigator of their mischievous maneuvers and she began to perch on the gate in the mornings shortly after being let out of their coop. She was soon joined by the other four. After a week or two, I began to hear Ivy jump down from the gate onto the porch. Several times I had to go out and tell her no and send her back into the yard; but soon they all figured it out and made a beeline to the bird feeders, where they feasted on seeds dropped by the birds. 

It became second nature then, for Ivy to also fly up to the top of the four foot fence railing and hop out. Marigold and Buttercup soon caught on, as well. Last week, they became almost wild chickens, running all over the place, into the vacant yard to the east, the vacant lot to the south, and all around the house. I was growing more and more exasperated, not knowing what to do. They had begun to ignore their chicken feed because they were filling up on bugs and bird seed. I was stressing out about them getting into the road or getting caught by a dog. I worried that the neighbors would complain.

This week, I finally came up with a plan and began adding a layer of fencing and netting above the existing fence, making it much too high for them to fly out. When I previously had chickens, I lived in the country where allowing them to completely free range was no big deal. Now, I worried that when they begin to lay eggs, they may choose a spot that I would be unable to find, rather than using the nest boxes that I have built for them. My first chicken was more or less wild and it took me ages to discover where she had been laying her eggs. When I finally found them, there was a pile of about two dozen, which I simply had to bury because they may have been spoiled. This happened a few times until I finally enticed her to use the next box, with the help of a fake egg.

During the course of the week, while I was working on the fencing, Ivy and her cohorts managed a couple of escapes. They did not go far; however, because one or two of them had not figured the way out. I love that they wanted to stay together and even in her desire for freedom, Ivy would not desert her sisters. Hopefully, as winter approaches and the urge to lay eggs becomes strong, they will be content to remain close to home. For now, they are safe and I can only hope that this teenage rebellion will pass.

A month ago I needed to get outside in the garden early to do as much as possible before the heat became too intolerable. Today I must wait for the sun to warm the air because night time temperatures have been in the low 50’s F.

Last night I caught an interesting program on PBS about a unique and ancient tree called the baobab. It is of the genus Adansonia, six species of which are native to the island of Madagascar. It is a deciduous tree with a massive trunk that is capable of storing as much as 32, 000 gallons of water! It is often referred to as the upside down tree because the branches and foliage appear at the very top of the extremely wide trunk, kind of like a mushroom; except that the crown is very compact and resembles roots rather than branches. The leaves and the fruits are edible. It has helped native people, of desert areas, to survive the impossibly dry conditions in which they live for as much as ten months out of the year. The rainy season, which lasts only a couple of months, sustains the trees and the native people as well.

I am truly grateful for the ample snow and rain we received last week, but I am concerned about the droughts in surrounding states and the terrible fires that are raging out of control. Science continues to reveal more and more amazing discoveries about this planet we live on. The number of species in the water, on the land, in the soil, and in the air, that are all competing for space and food is mind boggling. Most of our human race could possibly become extinct over the next few decades, but there are plant, animal, and insect species that have truly stood the test of time. There may come a time when Earth may no longer be able to support human life; but life will continue in one form or another. If by some ill fate our entire planet should burn up, there are billions of other stars and solar systems. Life will always evolve according to the conditions that are present. Life will continue in some form, for eternity.

In early August I wrote about my granddaughters’ cat getting lost after escaping from the hands of a veterinary assistant. My daughter’s family has spent weeks checking shelters, talking to nearby neighbors, and posting pictures of their lost cat, Princess. They had a few leads, but none that led them to the cat; and she was not able to find her own way home since she had been taken by car to the vet hospital. At long last, a gentleman who lived close to the vet clinic, contacted them to say that a cat who looked like Princess was seen several times on his porch. A trap was set up there and yesterday they received the joyful news that Princess had been caught.

Somewhat dehydrated and a little thinner, she was returned to the family in good health. The veterinarian also micro-chipped her, should she ever get lost again. My daughter was not charged for the services rendered, since it was clearly the fault of the clinic that Princess had been lost. I am curious though, to know if the veterinary office has lightened up on their social distancing procedures. We can only hope that this lesson was taken to heart. They do deserve some credit for persisting in their efforts to find the cat. The care and concern of the staff and of neighbors that lived close by, shows that when people come together to help one another and to help animals, good often comes from it. I believe that we could all experience more happy endings if we offered ourselves in service to others (people and animals) rather than expecting life to bring happiness to us. The more we give, the more we have.  I know that my granddaughters are grateful to have Princess back home with them. I am sure Princess feels safe again at last – and that makes me happy too.

Those for whom the economy means everything, and who must maintain control over each thing and every person in their lives, will lie and cheat and do whatever it takes to assert their power and position. The flat out denial of climate change is pure ignorance. How so many people can be blindsided by the boisterous and venomous sneering of Trump, is beyond me. His foolish rationalization for recent natural disasters is “poor management”, which implies that he believes human beings can control nature. The truth is that we are part of nature and not separate from it. The only thing we can control is ourselves.

A large percentage of fires are caused by human carelessness, but those fires are spreading because of abnormally dry conditions. Shorelines are slipping into the ocean in some parts of the world, forcing entire towns to retreat inland. We seize forest habitat from other species to build our houses. We build our homes at the water’s edge, directly in the path of danger and flippantly mock the elements. The state of our economy will make no difference whatsoever when we delude ourselves into believing that our riches will protect us. When we live entirely at the whim of our ego, setting ourselves up on the tip top of a pedestal, the only place we can go is down and it will not be a pretty fall. We will tumble headlong to our own destruction. 

We can turn a blind eye to the pain and suffering all around us. We can turn a deaf ear to the cries for racial justice. We can sit in our castles, surrounded by a moat of hatred that separates us from those less fortunate; but we will not be safe for long. Nature will find a way to restore balance. She has her own economy. She will return order to our planet and put us in our rightful place.

I set out my suet feeder prior to last week’s snow. I only feed suet through the winter and early spring months because I think the birds can generally find sufficient natural food sources during the warmer months. I have not seen the goldfinches for months now, or anything other than the usual sparrows at the feeders. This morning; however, I saw that a flicker had returned and helped himself to the suet. 

My sunflowers grew quite tall – about twelve feet – rising far above the chain link fence of only four feet. The snow brought a few of them down, helped along by a couple of agile and skillful  squirrels. They are amusing to watch as they walk along the top of the fence and stretch their little arms up to pull a sunflower down to within their reach. They chew it off of the main stalk; then run with it in their mouth to a spot near my truck, where they can enjoy their hard earned meal. This is just one of the many ways in which I see the result of my labors. I grow most of my plants, not for myself, but for the wildlife that depends on them. 

If I were to stay here for a few more years, I could add evergreens and shrubs and fruit to the landscape. Given enough time, I might be rewarded with more hummingbirds and butterflies, which were nearly non-existent this season. More likely, I would be fighting a losing battle due to the overuse of pesticides and herbicides from the surrounding farms and ranches – and even here in town. I saw very few mosquitos or wasps this summer. Is this because the exterminators have finally succeeded in decimating them, and all of the other species that depend on them for food? When there is SO MUCH evidence of the detrimental effects of chemicals on the environment, why do we continue to allow the manufacture and use of them? I wonder, will we ever learn?