15 MAY 2023 MERRY-GO-ROUND

I have not visited a children’s playground in years so I do not know if the merry-go-round is still standard equipment. I rather doubt it, since plastic, in vibrant primary colors, has replaced so much of the sturdier and more durable metal; and the safety issues have grown far out of proportion.

I remember distinctly; however, the playground at my elementary school when I was in the first and second grade. The merry-go-round was one of my favorite things. It was a large metal disc balanced on a ball bearing, which allowed it to move around in a circle. Its metal surface had slightly raised bumps to give you traction when standing or sitting on it. Handlebars of two or three feet high were evenly spaced around the outer edge. You could ride it alone or with several friends; but it required at least one person to begin the movement, by holding onto the bar and running alongside it until it got moving. He or she would then have to jump onto it and sit, or stand, holding on until it naturally slowed to a stop. The faster a person could run to get it going, the faster it would make its orbits around and around. You could sit, thrusting your legs through the handlebars as you hung on, or you could stand in the center, or stand holding onto the bars whenever it was going really fast; otherwise you might be catapulted right off.

The merry-go-round is resemblant of modern life. Those people who play the game in an effort to reach the top of the proverbial corporate ladder, jump onto a kind of merry-go-round. They run faster and faster as they try to keep up with the demands of their job. One day, perhaps the merry-go-round comes to a complete stop. Maybe they are fired, or they suddenly have a terminal illness, or they simply become overwhelmed by the dizzying pace that they have tried to maintain, and they make the conscious decision to step off. Maybe the merry-go-round slows down gradually because the person retires. Most people live their lives going around and around and around on the merry-go-round. They do not realize that they are not actually going anywhere. They have spent their lives running in circles. They never realized that they could slow down the merry-go-round, or if someone else was causing it to spin too fast, they could choose at any point in time to simply get off. Eventually, they learn that riding the merry-go-round alone is often the best way. They can slow it down or speed it up as they please, enjoy the ride, and dismount happily when it slows to a complete stop.

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11 MAY 2023 LIFE’S VEHICLES

I have had to make a couple of lengthy road trips of late. While I miss my truck immensely, for its ability to carry all of my gardening necessities, I am grateful for the new car that gets much better gas mileage. My truck had grown too old and costly in repairs; and I did not feel safe driving it long distances.

I do not like to drive. I would, if I could, opt for a chauffeur and the comfort of being driven in a Rolls Royce. That is of course, as fantastical as wishing that I had been born into royalty. As I was making my way through the maze of highways yesterday, I was a mere dot in an endless stream of traffic. I was stuck by the thought that human beings are clearly insane. We drive in narrow lanes that are often strewn with potholes and uneven surfaces due to miles and miles of road construction. We drive at ridiculously high speeds. There are speed limit signs posted everywhere, but most drivers ignore them, driving as fast as their vehicle will allow. It is truly a wonder that there are not far more accidents than there are. These narrow lanes are shared by tanker trucks carrying double loads, by extra wide tractor trailers, and by tiny smart cars alike. Driving through Denver yesterday morning, the fumes from all the vehicles that I was forced to breathe, brought on my asthma. How, I wondered, are people able to breathe continually in the toxic environments that we have created?

It has been said that our bodies are vehicles for our souls. Our bodies allow us to maneuver through the physical world and to experience it. Our lives are not unlike the highways that we drive on. We merge onto one highway at birth where we share the road with our biological family. Throughout our lives, people will travel next to us for a while, just like the vehicles on the road; and then they will take an exit. We may, or may not, see them again on another road, at another time. When the time comes, we will take an exit – our final exit.

During the course of our life journey we are provided with one vehicle (our body) to carry us through. We must care for that vehicle because it is the only one we will get. We may have come into the world with an average body type or one that is very thin or very large. Our body may resemble a VW bug, a sleek Mercedes, a Mac truck, or anything in between. We often do not like our body vehicles. We abuse them and curse them; and we often abuse the vehicles that we drive as well. Our body vehicles will grow old, too. We may have to repair them from time to time. Too many people; however, mistakenly think that their body is who they are. They fail to appreciate the body they have been given, often wishing they had a different one. Whatever vehicle we have been given to use, to navigate our life, we must understand its temporal nature. We must value, honor, and respect not only the vehicles that we drive, but also the vehicles that we inhabit.

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8 MAY 2023 PREDATORS AND THEIR PREY

Predators prey on the weak (the young, the old, and the infirm.) This has been common knowledge since the human race came into existence. But, I am not going to talk about hunters who hunt for trophies. Humans prefer to think of themselves as civilized and domesticated. They do not like to think of themselves as predators. Human predators, at least in our modern world, are rarely driven by hunger. I want to talk instead, about the everyday predator that we encounter through the normal course of our lives. I want to talk about the oligarchs, the hideously wealthy, the greedy, the corporate directors, the bankers, and the landlords in management positions, who revel in executing their assumed power over others.

There are many kinds of predators in our human society. They are not always the rich and powerful. Sometimes they lie at the bottom of the “food chain.” They are actually prey who lash out in anger and who seek revenge – the less educated, the bitter, the rejected, the tormented, the victimized, and the mentally incompetent. They may lie, steal, pillage, rape (sexual predators) and commit whatever crime they falsely believe will improve their chance of happiness.

The prey are often plain, hardworking folk who either cannot, or do not want to imagine a better life for themselves. They live uninspired lives and accept their “lot in life.” Others simply give up, become homeless for the remainder of their pathetic lives, beg on the street, or sell drugs in a world where no one can be trusted.

The dominant predators, the one percent who own most of the world’s wealth, and therefore, most of the world, are never satisfied. They are driven by an insatiable hunger to have more, control more. They are intoxicated with their own power and what they do not take for themselves, they destroy. We are living in a time when the predators themselves are fighting each other. They are driven only by their desire to win. The prey are discarded like chafe from the wheat as the predators cull them, taking only the finest. The prey that remain retreat quietly into a world that does not acknowledge them. Some give up altogether; while others barely survive, either accepting their meager lives, or ending them through suicide.

A very small percentage of prey cling to hope. They dare to envision a better world. They surround themselves in protective light and remain centered in a pool of calm knowing, while other prey is picked off one by one. These few wield a power that is unseen. The predators pass them by, either because they do not see them, or because they are repelled by the light they emit. These prey live in a state of grace regardless of the murderous fighting going on around them. These few will never become victims for they carry their protection like a porcupine carries its quills. They carry love in their hearts. They carry peace in their souls. They are poison to the predators who would dare to eat them.

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3 MAY 2023 NO MOW MAY

The month of May was designated by an environmentally conscious group of citizen scientists, in the United Kingdom, as No Mow May. This novel idea has spread, slowly, into the United States. There is much resistance to the idea by the uneducated public.

Allowing grass and weeds to grow helps to provide essential food (pollen and nectar) for many bee species and other insects as they emerge from hibernation. The practice of not mowing in May has helped to greatly increase the number of species and the diversity of bees and other insects. This in turn brings more songbirds, both resident and migratory, that rely on insects for raising their hatchlings. The taller grass also provides cover for snakes and rodents that provide food for the larger raptors. Bats, too, rely on insects and many of them help pollinate flowers later in the season.

Grasses are able to grow stronger, deeper root systems when they are allowed to grow. This allows the grass to better withstand drought later in the season when temperatures are soaring. A barrier strip can be mowed around your house if you wish, or you can mow paths where you generally walk; but leaving the grass and weeds unmowed for the month of May will help the entire ecosystem in your yard to get off to a good start for the summer season.

Many people live in subdivisions that have strict rules, which is unfortunate. The board of directors for HOA’s are generally totally ignorant about the harm they cause with regular applications of herbicides, insecticides, and the profuse use of chemically derived fertilizers. Thousands of butterflies and beneficial insects have disappeared from these “sterile” environments.

Most people do not want to hear what they do not want to hear. Their minds cannot be changed until they are ready to change. I have learned to keep quiet about my commitment to 100% organic, sustainable gardening. Saving, maintaining, and creating wildlife habitats is my passion. If I lead by example, perhaps a few will become curious and eventually change their ways. My concern is, will enough people awaken to the damage they have done, before it is too late?

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1 MAY 2023 OUR BROKEN HEARTS

The heart, we have learned, has its own brain. It is equipped with thousands of neurons and neurotransmitters that can feel, learn, and remember, just like the brain in our head. Due to its own electrical system, it can continue to beat after the brain and other organs have stopped. If we say that our heart is broken, we aren’t too far off because heartache and stress from grief can bring on a heart attack. When we are sad or depressed, the pain we feel is centered in our chest, near our heart. The connection between the heart and the brain allows for the negativity in the brain’s thought patterns to feed the pain felt in the heart, thereby increasing it.

A person who is unaware of her thought patterns and the power they wield, is caught in the trap of the thinking mind. Gloomy thoughts feed the emotions, which create still more melancholy, anger, and enmity. Many people spend their lives caught in such webs of negativity. A great philosopher, Ernest Holmes, said, ”Change your thinking and you change your life.” In essence, our lives are an outpicturing of the beliefs that reside within our heart “brains,” which is the center of our emotions.

Changing our thinking should be a relatively easy task. We only need to direct our thought processes from a calm place of love and acceptance. But, we get into trouble because our ego wants to be in control. Our ego is needed because it gives us our personal identity and our self-esteem; but like a toddler, it needs direction and boundaries. There are many ways to slow down our heart beat and to break free from the whirlwind of negativity. Meditation and yoga help to slow down both the heart rate and the incessant thinking mind. The most natural way; however, is to spend time in Nature. Unfortunately, the barrier that we have created between ourselves and the natural world has led to disease in the human psyche. The only way to heal the human spirit is to heal our planet. When we reconnect with Nature, we connect our broken hearts to their source. It is only in this way that our broken hearts can be healed. The pathways to compassion can then be opened and the means to heal our planet can be revealed.

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26 APRIL 2023 OVERNIGHT

We were blessed with quite a lot of rain here yesterday, and just overnight the grass and emerging weeds have turned green. I have seen a few brave dandelions already peeking their smiling faces through the soil. Within a few days I know that their large extended families will join them, adorning my yard in bright yellow and providing nutrient rich greens for my salads. I have grown weary of the anemic looking, weeks old lettuce that I have had to buy from the local supermarket.

It amazes me to see the synchronicity in Nature. Thanks to their underground communication systems, trees of the same species bloom all at the same time. In a mere 24 hour period, the outdoors changes into something tantalizingly beautiful, kind of like the scenes in a film, but far better because the flowering trees and shrubs share their heady fragrance with the world. They do not do this for our benefit; however. Their scent is there to attract pollinators, to carry the pollen from flower to flower, thereby helping them to produce fruit and the next generation of flowers. This in turn helps the pollinators that feed on their nectar.

Hummingbirds, bees, butterflies, and moths often have host-specific plants for which they are perfectly adapted. These relationships between plants and pollinators have existed for eons. Then humans arrived on the scene and made a terrible mess of things. One day, hopefully, all humans will awaken and realize that we must return life on Earth to the natural balance that once existed. It really is up to us. We human beings must pay the consequences of our actions, both individually and collectively. We must “get back to the garden.”

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24 APRIL 2023 A WEALTHY STATE OF MIND

I have reached a point in my life where I no longer put up with self-serving individuals. No one need be subordinate to another. I do not deserve less respect because you are in a “higher” position or because you live in a bigger house, or because you have more wealth than I have. Respect should be a circular movement – not a straight line moving in only one direction. Those who refuse to meet others on a mutual level live under the illusion that they are “better” than those that they perceive to be “beneath” them. You may be familiar with the empty thank you that is mumbled by an “authority” figure with his or her back turned, while he walks away from you. It is neither sincere or heart-felt. By the same token, a worker may begrudge his employer for the simple reason that he is the boss.

These scenarios play out in many ways. It can be between a landlord and a tenant or even between a husband and a wife. Some people believe that their time is more valuable than my time or that their job is more important than my job. We each have unique gifts that we bring into the world. If we are doing something that we enjoy or do not mind doing, and if it is something we are good at, then it has value. In our economic based society; however, that which we do may not be given the monetary value that is congruent with the effort and talent it requires. In other words, a lot of people do not receive a living wage in spite of their hard and dedicated work. Sometimes, even when we do our job well, appreciation is withheld. The manager or the boss instead looks for something that is wrong or not good enough, rather than acknowledging that their success depends upon the work that we do. If their “authority” is threatened they may even react with rage.

There will always be those who have much and those who believe that they do not have enough. The poor resent the rich and the rich believe that their wealth gives them the right to judge and treat the poor with contempt. Kindness and compassion are reserved for those they feel “deserve” it. Sometimes, those who grow up in poverty manage to beat the odds and “work their way up” where they too, become hardened to the less successful. You may be considered an authority in a certain field because you have acquired knowledge, you have the credentials, or you have the experience. This does not necessarily make you a better human being. Eventually, the wealthy come to realize that their “privileged status” cannot buy them happiness.

The fortunate ones are those who find contentment within whatever circumstances they wind up in. They know intuitively that they always have enough. They do not desire more wealth because the price that they would have to pay is too high. It would disturb their inner peace. Their calm demeanor is too dear to them. They are grateful every moment for what they have, regardless how little. They are grateful for their health, for their families and for their own skills, which allow them to give something of value to the world. They go about their work remembering to smile and to be kind, in spite of the “poor” complainers and in spite of the “wealthy” who wield their authority like a whip. These are the lucky ones. They sit outside the circles of the “haves” and the “have-nots.” They have found balance in a world that teeters precariously between love and fear. From their center, all are seen as one.

Once we draw our last breath, any authority we thought we had will cease. If we suffered from a sense of poverty, whether real or imagined, our suffering will end along with our life. In either case, we may have failed to appreciate the good we had. In the end, we come to understand that true wealth is a state of mind.

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19 APRIL 2023 SKIN

I once heard it said that our forests and trees are to Earth as our skin is to our bodies. Trees do so much besides storing carbon. They offer protection by anchoring soil, along with all of its necessary nutrients, making it available to the roots of the trees as well as to all of the understory plant growth. Trees help to slow down the flow of water, which is also vital to plant and animal life alike. Water is allowed to trickle slowly down through the leaf litter and further down into the underground aquifers where it is stored. This stored water becomes a lifeline during dry and extremely hot spells. The trees in a forest are home to millions of species, from the primates that live their entire lives in the canopy, to the tiny rodents nesting at their feet. Most birds would not exist if it were not for the trees that offer them a place to build nests and to roost at night.

When you take away the trees by clear cutting ancient forests, what you have left is a desert, mostly devoid of life. These “deserts” are often planted with hundreds of acres of a monoculture such as palms, pines, corn, or soybeans. Because these areas lack diversity, they are not sustainable. They are prone to insect infestation and disease, so they are doused with chemicals that seep into the soil and into the water. When the crop is harvested, the field often lies fallow, exposed and vulnerable. The once living soil has no protection from drying winds that blow it miles away. It bakes and cracks in the sun and rain washes away any remaining nutrients. When the produce is grown and harvested time after time, the soil becomes depleted. Eventually, the soil itself dies, becoming devoid of all the microorganisms that would normally continue to “feed” it.

Every city, too, is like a desert. The plants, the trees, and the grasses that were once native to the area are swathed in concrete, asphalt, and buildings that reach to the sky. The soil is smothered and compacted. Precious water is lost in storm drains. Weather becomes extreme and in many places the wind becomes relentless. There are no trees to slow it down and it howls menacingly through the skyscrapers. The people and animals living in these city deserts must breathe the dusty air, toxic fumes from automobiles, cigarette smoke, and an infinite number of chemicals. We have forgotten what it is to breathe fresh air. We have become the festering wound upon Earth’s precious body.

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17 APRIL 2023 WE KNOW NOT WHAT WE DO

I have just finished reading the final book in Peter Wohlleben’s trilogy, The Secret Wisdom of Nature. This has brought to mind the famous words by the often quoted, Jesus, from the Christian bible. “Forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Human beings have allowed their egos free reign. This has resulted in utter chaos and has left our planet in a sad and despicable condition – and an uncertain future.

There is so much that we do not know, about the ground beneath our feet and about the ocean depths. There are species that we have yet to discover and they ALL play an important role in Nature’s perfect balance. Still, we go about our lives oblivious to the damage we cause; and even when that damage is pointed out to us, we continue doing what we have done. We have made the economy the god of our present day world, to the detriment of those other lives we depend on. Many of those lives are rarely seen. Some avoid humans altogether. (Can you blame them?) Some are nocturnal. Some are too small for our eyes to notice or they are hidden beneath the soil. Others are insects, which most people lump into one category that they do not like; and they exterminate them. They do not realize how vitally important invertebrates are to the interconnectedness of all life. Many of them are decomposers – and we need decomposers.

We continue to deceive ourselves, and each other, into believing that we are “managing” our forests or “culling” our wildlife. We erroneously choose to protect one species over another. We continue to roll over and disc vast areas of earth with heavy machinery, compacting the soil and destroying the millions of organisms that live within it. We have “controlled” burns; irreverent of the life that exists within those ecosystems.

Will we ever let go of our desire to manipulate the world around us? Can we ever concede to the higher wisdom of Mother Nature herself? Instead of fighting the natural world, can we learn to live in harmony and balance? Can we admit that we do not know what we are doing?

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12 APRIL 2023 SCIENTISTS

Science is a subject that most of us were required to study when we were in school. It is a broad subject; however, and when I was in school I did not care much for it. This is because the areas of science that my teachers focused on simply did not interest me. I found learning about electricity, or astronomy, or the table of elements, or chemistry, to be gruesomely boring. My classes in biology bring to mind having to dissect frogs and to endure the stench of formaldehyde that permeated the entire building. Having grown in awareness since my school days, the murder of all those frogs would now entice me to launch a protest.

There are two kinds of scientists in the world. Most scientists (and indeed, most people) view the natural world as separate from themselves. These scientists seek to use the knowledge that they gain to control the world around them.They see no harm in mutilating other living things and in devising experiments to torture them and to exploit them for their own selfish reasons. Chemists create drugs in laboratories and test them on animals, oblivious to the imprisonment of them and the pain inflicted on them, emotionally as well as physically. They allay any sense of morality by (falsely) claiming that other animals have no feelings. These “laboratory” animals are viewed as “lesser” beings whose lives can be sacrificed for the good of human ”kind.” Plants, too, are constantly being changed and genetically modified from their original forms in order that they can be “improved” for human use. Scientists have interfered so much in our natural world that it is no longer recognizable as it was 200, or more, years ago.

A smaller number of scientists approach their work as a means to better understand individual species and their relationship to each other. They study other species, forests, the ocean, and the numerous ecosystems within our world to discover the ways in which they relate to one another. They seek to understand how these species and ecosystems together maintain harmony and balance; and they look for ways in which humans, who are a part of Nature, can also live in harmony with the natural world.

One of my final science classes that I recall from high school was when we were asked to study a small ecosystem for an entire semester. Our successful completion of the project would be our final grade for that semester. I remember receiving an “A” for my project. I believe it planted a seed that has guided me in my life, to seek to know and to understand the non-human life that is all around me. I am not a scientist, but I rely on some scientists’ discoveries to help me be a good steward of all the plant and animal life for which I have been given the privilege of caring for.

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