lasflechas.farm

Thought I’d share what’s on my list for the week. That way, I don’t have to actually start doing anything.

THE MAIL. I haven’t opened my mail in a while, and why? Because I feel the sands of time slipping through my fleeting life’s hourglass as I sit and open, recycle, shred. It is 99% junk. I cannot believe the amount of junk mail I receive, that you receive, that all of us receive. Couldn’t we just rise up as a society and say STOP!? We need to put an end to this wasteful, environmentally irresponsible, largely futile sales tactic. Does it have to be this way? Did we agree to this at some point? I know I’m not the only one who feels burdened and aggreived by the ever-growing mountain of useless mail on the corner of the desk, spilling into bags on the floor, and sliding onto the clean surface of every desk all over America.

HOUSECLEANING – I do not move toward this necessary activity with much enthusiasm, but why not? Maintenance of one’s environment can be a mindful activity — you know, “chop wood, carry water.” Make the cleaning of the floor or scrubbing a toilet bowl a slow, intentional act, noting the body sensations when bending, reaching, squatting down, noting the breath, noting the thoughts — the whole mindfulness shebang. Get into it. Care for your space. This is what I tell myself, and (sometimes) it works.

PLANTING/GARDEN WORK: There are still tomatoes growing out there in mid- to late October, believe it or not, but it’s coming to an end. The plants look like a guy who needs a shave and a haircut — scruffy. There are still peppers to harvest, and beds to clean and prep for winter. This is accomplished by planting cool weather crops (radish, turnip, some herbs, garlic), planting cover crops (crimson clover, a great nitrogen fixer), or mulching; I’m gathering the leaves that have fallen by the chicken yard while they are dry and chopping them into mulch.

CANNING/PRESERVING So, when there are this many tomatoes on the counter, something must be done! It’s impossible to eat them all before they start to wrinkle and rot, which is a terrible waste of a year’s work. So I have tomato sauce on my list this week — I like to make the plain one that will become whatever you want it to be when opened: Italian? Mexican? Indian? Just depends on the spices added later. Plus, there are peppers to pickle.

WRITING — As I mentioned earlier, I am writing every day. I’m finding that after years of journaling and doing Morning Pages, my stream-of-consciousness style is following me around into projects and pieces that need something a little more structured and purposeful. I am mired in the “shitty first draft” (Anne Lamott’s iconic phrase for what comes first), and it’s hard to live there. So the writing continues, but there’s not anything I’m even close to sharing. I enrolled in a writing class for some accountability; our first meeting is this Wednesday, and I want to make sure my homework is done. Even after all these years, this is where I am –> Ira Glass describes the creative process perfectly.

QUILTING and SEWING — So many projects underway; I just finished the red quilt on the right that was for my father. I asked him what he wanted, and he said “a red one.” Sadly, I did not finish it before he died in 2008, (again, full time work just got in the way of my creative output) so I just put it away. This year, I pulled it out and finished it, and gave it to Maddy in my father’s memory. At the moment I’m working on nephew Andrew’s Wonky Stars lap quilt that I started in ’22 — I need to finish it and move along! The fact that it’s been in my sewing room for 4 years is a drain on the creative energy. With so many new quilts in mind, and plenty already in the works, the unfinished stuff blocks my flow. I’m setting an intention to finish 3 or 4 of these “Works in Progress” by year’s end, which means I must dedicate real time to this endeavor. I’m currently enrolled in two classes: Quiltfolks‘ Botanical Block of the Month — which recently featured a lesson on textile painting that I’m excited to get into, and Tara Faughnan launched her fourth Block Studies series, which I love. This is my third go-round. Meanwhile, my faithful Juki needs service — I’m having trouble adjusting the tension.

READING: I’ve updated the menu on this blog by adding a page called I Like to Read that lists all of the books that the Second Thursday Book Club has read or is planning to read. Right now I’m reading Book #65 from 2007, Jane Eyre, which I skipped — undoubtedly too busy at the time to sit still for Jane — an important text that was never assigned to me in high school or college, so I’ve never read it, never seen the movie, and it’s high time to tackle it. I am enjoying it. While I am a fan of an audio book, especially when I’m out in the garden, it is important to me that I engage in reading complex content on a physical page as often as I can. Eventually I’ll add to the I Like to Read webpage the books I am reading outside of book club, and find a way to add the titles documented on Goodreads and StoryGraph (no public API or RSS feed at StoryGraph, but I think Goodreads supports this, like my LibraryThing in the sidebar). So far this year, I’ve read 45 books (some re-reads); my stated goal for the year is 50; I’m sure I’ll pass that mark easily. Next year though: more writing, less reading.

MY SPIRITUAL PRACTICE — An additional practice beyond daily meditation this year: I am studying and practicing the Lojong slogans of Atisha in community, participating in a Lojong Sangha that meets weekly on Zoom. It’s a substantive, practical, challenging, and lovely practice — I am grateful to my teacher, and to every single face on the Zoom tiles during our gatherings.

TIME TO MOVE: I guess I’d better go do something physical and tangible. As much as I love talking to you, and the millions and billions of people who have no idea that this page exists, I had better move my body (6500 is today’s step goal, plus a YouTube Yoga with Adrienne, and some strength training/physical therapy for my healing rotator cuff), THEN tackle THE MAIL, or get into the HOUSECLEANING. Or both. Plus my sister just suggested that maybe it should be my turn to fix dinner more often, now that my arm’s pretty much okay.

“Nothing was ever so unfamiliar and startling to me as my own thoughts.”
–Henry David Thoreau

It’s been a year and a month since my last post but since I’m pretty sure nobody reads this blog but my family, my bookclub friends, and my writing group pals, it’s probably okay.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about migrating to Substack — I love that place — but if I can’t keep lasflechas up, I ask myself, what makes me think I’ll faithfully maintain a Substack account?

Let’s see how I do out here from this moment to January 1, 2027.

[Gosh, it turns out that I’ve sort of forgotten how WordPress works. That’s what a 13-month hiatus will do… and I don’t like it when ineptitude impedes creative expression.]

I am writing every day these days, working on memoir pages. I will preview some of those entries here; please feel free to comment. If you know me well enough to contact me directly through email or text, please feel free to do that.

Throughout my life as an unproductive writer, I’ve nonetheless drafted pages and pages about my life, my parents, my sister, my brief marriage and long friendship with a strange, sad, and wonderful man, my amazing daughter (she’s a Pisces), my career as a teacher — all of that. But what i’m working on now is focused on my life here in the Sierra foothills: the dream I had, and the reality I am living. And aging. Holy shit, am I ever aging.

Stay with me, will you? I am thinking of this as a process journal too, and will follow the advice every writer has received and given: put your ass in the chair and do the work. Don’t get up when the going gets tough; don’t stay in the chair so long that you trigger a nervous breakdown.

For the first time in my adult life, I have the capacity for the work. I am not gainfully employed; my daughter is an adult; yes, I am busy, but really direct my own time.

And I am getting to the point where I want and need readers.

Four varieties of peppers — Shishito, Anaheim College, Bridge to Paris, and Alma Paprika, all from Territorial Seed — were planted February 19-21 in the green starting trays — I soaked them in black tea for a day (don’t remember where I heard this), and scuffed seed coats as best I could — they’re small, after all, so I spread the damp seeds on a little piece of sandpaper and kind of rolled them around with my fingers. Karen’s peppers had been in their trays for some weeks by the time I started. Karen seems to be my catalyst, which is good, because I do delay, especially since when it’s time to start a new project like planting peppers. Days are short, dark, and cold, and it doesn’t FEEL like gardening time. I’m likely immersed in another something-or-other that wants my time and attention, so I’m quite willing to kick a new project start date down the road.  Last night, when I was reviewing pepper growing lore, a gardening guru I follow “Joe Gardener,” declared that he starts his peppers on January 1st or 2nd. Well, la-de-dah.

On March 9th, I noted that maybe I had killed my pepper starts by neglecting to water them.  I saw sprouts in just four out of twelve rows of the starting trays.  So I soaked the seeds I had left, again in black tea, and started more seeds, 2-3 seeds per cell, planning to thin out the smaller ones as the tray sprouted.

Plants went into the ground just after Mother’s Day, when frost danger is likely past, although I do remember a recent year where there was a late frost –maybe 2022? — and many growers, including local vineyards, lost plants to the cold.  So plants go in with an optimistic heart, knowing the heart could be broken in one frigid night.

The pepper bed was planted in mid-May.  Out of all the seeds started, twenty five plants made it into the garden.

Nine of these: Bridge to Paris peppers, description by Territorial Seed: 83 days. We consider Bridge to Paris among the best all-around pepper we’ve grown. A sweet Italian type, this marvel offers staggeringly huge yields of big, elongated fruit with very few seeds and excellent flavor. Emerging green and ripening to red, the peppers can reach 7–9 inches long with a fruity taste. Enjoy the harvests fresh, fried, dried or smoked. The plants get tall, up to 30 inches in our trials, and load up with over two dozen fruit per plant. Thanks to Hudson Valley Seed for offering this exceptional de-hybridized pepper.

We have not experienced “staggering huge yields,” and plants are nowhere near 30″ tall.  Because I started with 9 of these plants, I was able to observe and learn more than I have in previous years.  I lost 2-3 plants right out of the gate — they were dead by June.  The remaining 6 are still producing, but not blowing my mind. I’ve learned this year that peppers really must be staked as they get established, and then they need a cage.  When the plant doesn’t have adequate support, the heavy fruit can damage or break limbs, and that open wound invites disease — and this did happen with both the peppers and tomatoes this year. So note for 2026:  support the growing plants with good cages. The remaining plants have been productive, but I see this variety has more potential.  These peppers when harvested will end up in the Pickled Roasted Peppers recipe on the Ball Glass canning website.

Eight Alma Paprika peppers, description by Territorial Seed: 80 days. A sweet, prolific, multi-use pepper that can be eaten fresh, pickled or dried. Plants are loaded with thick-walled peppers that develop just a hint of warmth. The 1–2 inch fruit start out creamy white and then turn to orange before finally turning shiny red. Harvest red for most uses.  

The seed company did not say how tall these get, but mine are shorties, foliage and fruit happening very close to the ground, which is worrisome.  In fact, I am wondering whether I should have pruned away foliage that is growing low on the main stem. But I am enjoying these peppers — great for snacking.

Three Shishito peppers (“Takara”), description by Territorial Seed:  60 days. Shishitos are quickly rising to the top ranks in popularity for their tasty, mild spice and snackability. Takara produces richly flavored, 3 inch long, light green peppers that ripen to red. Early and productive, the compact, well-branched, spreading plants provide heavy harvests of uniform, slender, bite-sized peppers with sturdy stems. We love Takara lightly tossed in oil, blackened on the grill, and tossed with a bit of coarse sea salt.

One of these plants died pretty early in the season, due to careless hose dragging: I ripped that baby right out of the earth without even realizing it.  I continue to harvest peppers from the other two — both of the remaining plants are productive, with lots of tiny peppers — but they remain on the vine and on the counter, waiting to be chopped up and tossed into something. They are a bit spicy, which I like but Vicki doesn’t.  I roasted some in the oven with olive oil, and to my shame, have not yet eaten them.  I think this might be one of those vegetables where I like the idea better than the actual fruit, but I am still hoping that I will hit on the right recipe or the right combination of elements to find how these peppers fit into my diet.

Five Anaheim College 64, description by Territorial Seed: 74 days. If you like a medium sizzle for your palate, try these peppers. Same as the green Anaheim chilis you find in the grocery store, but better because you’ll get to eat them fresh and full of flavor! Anaheim College 64 yields 6–10 tasty fruit per plant, each 6–8 inches long. The thick-walled conical fruit turn from green to red. Excellent roasted and stuffed or minced into salsa and guacamole.

Lots of green fruit on the plants so I’m waiting for them to blush red.  Of the five plants I put into the ground, all five are still standing, but again, they needed support to reach their full potential.  They flopped over and I had to tie them up on bamboo stakes.

Most of these peppers will find their way into the aforementioned Pickled Roasted Pepper jars later on this month.

I guess my pepper growing season was better than adequate, but not great yet. Maybe we could say “good,” or “B-” because I am harvesting lots of fruit.

Notes for 2026:  Even though they say that crop rotation is not important for home gardeners, I am going to go ahead and use a different bed for the peppers next year.  I’ll continue to amend and build the soil with composted pony poop (thank you, Lima Girls!) and kitchen compost. Cover it all for winter with a thick layer of oak leaf mulch.  Remember peppers like phosphorus (flower, fruit) so offer bonemeal on the day of planting; any feeding that’s done over the growing season should be phosphorus dominant (higher second number).  High nitrogen will produce lots of foliage and not much fruit.  Get (make) cages for the peppers as they get established — make the cages out of those wire cattle panels — I’m going to need help with this.

Vicki turned me on to a BookTuber named Angelina (Read & Reread) who is reading (among other things), one short story a day during Book Tube’s “Shorty September” — I thought I’d give it a whirl. Anyone else want to play along??

Angelina chooses the stories and links them on her YouTube page, and for your convenience, I’m listing the stories here, and will add a link to them as we go along.

I guess this her 4th year doing this thing. I may go back and read the 2022-2024 picks, but first let’s see how this month goes. I will read and comment here, so this is going to end up being the longest blog post ever.

1. “Good Country People” by Flannery O’Connor

Back in the teaching days, the literature textbook in our classroom included the O’Connor story, “The Life You Save May Be Your Own,” which I failed to bring to life for the kids. I assigned it one or two times mid-career (2008-2012, maybe?) during a short story unit, and the students read it (or pretend-read it) in the most perfunctory way imaginable. On the other hand, one rainy day I read “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” out loud to my students, and as I remember it, all of our heads caught on fire.

I had never read this story, and if you go to Angelina’s YouTube channel (linked above), you’ll see it’s the first choice for all four years — it’s her favorite. I read it this afternoon, and it has all the stuff that makes O’Connor great: icky people, horrible situations, and a dark comic thread. I know I’ll read it again before I go to sleep tonight.

Tomorrow, Speedoman. What I like about this list is that although there are familiar writers I have read before, most are new to me.

2. “Speedoman” by Ghassan Zeinnedine

What I love about literature like “Speedoman” is how it opens up to a world that is completely ordinary — even mundane — and yet completely foreign to me. I loved the flashbacks the husbands in this story provided, offering glimpses of their growing up in Lebanon, and then living through a civil war, eventually fleeing from the violence, and finding lives and new opportunities in Dearborn, Michigan. The familiar American story that is currently under attack.

I had to go and review the war — It was the early 80s, and I had just entered my 20s; I didn’t remember much but the song “The Lebanon” by the Human League. The internet told me that the invasion of Lebanon was the Israeli response to a Palestinean attack on the Israeli ambassador in the UK. And from there, how could I avoid thinking of Gaza?

Anyway, much of the story takes place at a gym swimming pool and spa area, where a mysterious Arab man in a pink robe suddenly appears on the scene, and underneath that robe he is wearing — you guessed it, a speedo — and a different one each week, with various famous Lebanese landmarks emblazoned on his firm ass. The shifting points of view between the husbands and wives, the inclusion of Arab pop culture like “the burkini,” the text messages exchanged between the wives as they think about this mysterious stranger with his intriguing package, the comical restaurant names like “Ali’s Famous Sushi and Kabobs” where the couples meet for dinner each week — all of these elements combine to make this story rich, funny, and totally unexpected. Loved the ending. Weird in the best way.

3. “The Great Awake” by Julia Armfield

I am realizing that there is so much good writing out in the world, but you must somehow make a point of seeking it out. I had never been to thewhitereview.org where this story appears, and there is so much rich content sitting there, waiting to be discovered. Maybe the way to find these places is to follow a few Book Tubers who make reading their business, treating it as both vocation and avocation. And like everything else interesting and compelling, you cannot hope to capture it all.

I don’t want to sound like an undiscerning fangirl, but I loved THIS story too about a city full of people who have lost their Sleep, a specter that has exited the body, and then shadows their host, mimics them, putters around, alphabetizes the books on the bookcases, and never, ever speaks. Armfield explains that sleep had transformed to a “sudden persistent wakefulness, the mutation of sleep from a comforting habit to a creature that crouched by the door.” People live in uneasy relationship with their ghost-like Sleeps, and wander around at night, filling these new hours with work and hobbies, social interaction, artistic performance — everybody zombie-tired, deep purple bruises under the eyes…yet never able to lose consciousness.

This story resonates, and I’m still trying to digest it. I especially loved Armfield’s language, like “Two a.m., dark throat of summer. A bleary stagger of us collected in the corridor…” A bleary stagger of us. What a great phrase.

Hey, if you’re reading along and would like to write a few of these these little paragraphs — neither analysis or summary, just pure reaction — I would welcome the offer. I’m enjoying it, and handling it now, but what will it be like come September 13th or whatever? At some point down the road, I just know I’m gonna miss because of all the other demands of life. Anyone out there wanting to jump in with me?

4. “Woodland” by Lydia Millet

Oop, it’s happened, and I’m behind schedule. No matter though.

“Woodland,” is a lonely, gut-rending story, told in a disjointed, sparse prose that reflects the diminished world that it is set in — a world of tremendous loss that we are facing. I was thinking about this the other day; Silent Spring and Rachel Carson are placed squarely in my lifetime, and climate change was my generation’s problem to solve, but despite the good work of many wise people, the decimation rolled on. We lacked a savvy marketing team to capture the risk and communicate it clearly, urgently, and today when I see my former students starting families, and having lots of kids, more than Zero Population Growth calls for, I fear what their world will be in 40 years. I think of it when I fold up a piece of used tin foil and put it in the recycling, and imagine that a child may scavenge it out of the dump someday, and perhaps trade it for something nourishing or useful. When future generations look back at our era of easy abundance and our blindness to the cost we have forced them to bear, I cannot help but believe that they will hate us.

5. “The Mine” by Nathan Harris

I know this story is widely acclaimed, but I don’t know. I couldn’t connect. Perhaps I’ll try it again, but I’ve already read it twice. Maybe some stories are better left alone. I didn’t hate it. I just felt nothing. Clearly I’m missing something because as I said, this story received much attention and praise.

6. “The Stone” by Louise Erdrich (audio)

I assume the reader in this audio is the author — it didn’t say, but it sounds like I imagine Louise Erdrich to sound like. I enjoyed this strange and charming story of a woman’s lifelong, often secret relationship with a rock that looks like a skull.

7. “Your Body is a Jewel Box” by Kay Boyle

What a well-written, horribly grim story. I started wondering, “who is this Kay Boyle?” I like reading authors who nobody seems to remember despite their excellence (like Kate Chopin), and Kay Boyle garnered a fair amount of attention in her time. I read that her main concern as a writer is the absence of love in the world. But good lord. Why hasn’t anyone purchased the rights to this story and created a horror film? I can imagine it, shot and lit like David Lynch’s Eraserhead. I advised my sister — who loves cozy mysteries and Hallmark movies — to skip this one. I know it would upset her.

8. “Speech Sounds” by Octavia Butler

I can’t find a copy of this story that my computer would let me open safely — “this site is not secure, open at your own risk” — so I will just say that I love Octavia Butler’s novels (Kindred, Parable of the Sower, Fledgling), and just last night on Substack, someone published photographs of pages from Butler’s private notebook that she must have written when she was just starting out. She is coaching herself, encouraging herself, visualizing her life as a successful writer, refusing to settle for anything other than wide acclaim and commensurate royalties. She knew she would not be poor much longer, and she dreamed of financial security for herself and her mother. I’m quite inspired by the way she spoke to herself. She wrote down exactly what she wanted, like a nice home in a safe neighborhood, and then she’d exhort herself to “see to it!” She knew she was great, and just had to wait for her audience and the publishing world to catch up.

Just a side note. This experience of reading one short story after another has inspired me to renew my subscription to The New Yorker, and to subscribe to George Saunder’s Substack “Story Club.” And no George Saunders story on Read and Reread’s list for the last four years? Seems like a grave oversight.

9. “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Oh, Marquez. I fell in love with One Hundred Years of Solitude in my twenties, and that novel remains in my Top Ten of all time. When pressed, I will say it’s my favorite, but I haven’t read it in two decades (I read it 3x those early decades of life), so I’m not sure whether it’s still my personal GOAT.

This is a beautiful story, about a gigantic, beautiful man, who washes in from the sea, obviously dead and covered in seaweed and mud. The small village that discovers the body, the women who tenderly care for him and gaze at him as they prepare his large body for proper burial at sea, and the men who reluctantly realize how magnificent this man is, all are changed by the mysterious appearance of the handsomest drowned man in the world. “…they all held their breath for the fraction of centuries the body took to fall into the abyss.”

A great, very short story. How can a writer do so much in such a small space? A fun question to ponder.

10. “Ghost Birds” by Karen Russell

In this story, all of the birds are gone. Only ghost birds remain, and not everyone can see them. Here is another glimpse into a bleak future, wherein we see a degraded world, a surveilled place, and a lonely father trying to connect with his adolescent daughter by taking her out to a forbidden area where they might see some ghost birds. He can see them, but she cannot, and neither can her mother. Russell portrays that tug that exists in many children of divorce: a longing to love and admire your father simply because he is your father, but watching him try too hard to please you, and all the disappointments in your father that your mother carries become your disappointments too. I’m not sure how to think or feel about the ghost birds. I think I need to read this again.

11. “The State” by Tommy Orange (audio)

I can’t think of how to express how hard this story moved me — I’m left feeling both uplifted and bereft. This one travels deep. I read along as I listened to Orange read, and think this is the way to do it. I felt something different from listening to his voice tell the story, and from reading his beautiful words. A deeply satisfying experience.

12. “The Pedestrian” by Ray Bradbury

13. “The Redemption of Galen Pike” by Carys Davies

14. “Paper Menagerie” by Ken Liu

15. “Year’s End” by Jhumpa Lahiri

16. “The History of Sound” by Ben Shattuck

17. “Super-Toys Last All Summer Long” by Brian Aldiss

18. “Letter of Apology” by Maria Reva

19. “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe

20. “North Of” by Marie-Helene Bertino

21. “I Won’t Let You Go” by Hiromi Kawakami

22. “Arianespace” by Maylis de Kerangal

23. “You Got It, Take it Away” by Fernando Flores

24. “Winter Dreams” by F. Scott Fitzgerald

25. “Manifest” by Pemi Aguda

26. “The Summer People” by Shirley Jackson

27. “Catherdral” by Raymond Carver

28. “Patient Zero” by Tananarive Due

This is my fourth summer here, and this is what is happening:

Eleven chickens: three from 2022, and eight from 2024. We collect 6-8 eggs per day, and share with friends and neighbors.

The peach tree Maddy brought with her and planted the first year is producing lots of fruit. Last year they dropped while still green, but this year looks promising.

After three seasons, I am harvesting a little honey. It’s messy and sticky, but such sweet work. Every drop is precious.

I brought these in from the garden today, July 31. I love a salsa garden, andI hope to be pickling peppers by the end of August.

I can’t believe how much my life has changed since retiring. My friends are all getting ready to go back to school, and I definitely miss the sound of the marching band practicing as we prepare our classrooms for the year, and seeing teachers, custodians, admins, and students swarming the campus. I do miss it. But also: I don’t miss it. It’s fun to be retired. i definitely recommend it.

All names (except one) have been changed.

Today I asked Lila and Phil — because I ask everyone — about their star thistle eradication plan, and I remember quite clearly their declaration a few years ago, when I was still green behind the ears, that through their dogged efforts, they had managed to remove yellow star thistle from their property.  I held this in mind as cherished evidence that it could be done, that the war is worth waging, and through effort and persistence, it could be won.  

And it is a war — in this long, arduous campaign, I feel outgunned.  

Enough with the war language, and a switch to the vaguely religious — this was Lila’s reply:

Phil and I believe Star Thistle is a plague created to afflict and torment man and woman. [Phil] has spent hours pulling the nasty stuff out by the roots and it still returns. I have heard many weeds can survive in the ground for 7 years or more.  What a joyful thought, YUCK!!!

If we can keep it from dropping seeds hopefully eradication will occur in a few years as long as some kind of animal doesn’t drop seeds from its fur as it crosses the land, and [as long as] the wind doesn’t blow. 

It is a drought tolerant plant and got a major foothold a few years ago when it was so very dry.  Sorry for the unhappy news. We can all continue to do our best and pray for it to gradually diminish…We can think of each other as we pull, cut, and try to think happy thoughts.

Sometimes yellow star thistle is the first thing I think of when I open my eyes in the morning.

It invades my dreams.  It really is a blight upon the land.  

Everyone, everyone has a story, a strategy, a lament.  I’ve taken to asking, “what is your star thistle strategy?”

“I water it until the ground gets soft, and then go nuts pulling it up!”  ~~Mt. Aukum postal worker

“I pull it out by the roots before it flowers, and bag it up in black plastic and let it cook.”  ~~Jerry Bolland, DC

“Have you tried covering the plants with black plastic and letting the sun take care of it? That’s what I’m trying this year.”  ~~Sydney, Mt. Aukum Beekeeper

“You can clip the seed heads, the little yellow flower surrounded by spikes.  I know it’s rough, hard work, but you will stop the seed from spreading.”  ~~Edie Midas

“Bahama sheep.”  ~~Alberto Bocci

I saw one woman online with a shop vac and a long, long extension cord, vacuuming up tiny seeds that had fallen.

Yellow star thistle is poisonous to horses, and fatal. There is no known treatment.

Several University of California Extension programs have produced videos of earnest, educated, hard-working land managers — mostly women — standing in fields of yellow star thistle, or in front of PowerPoint slides in a cavernous, fluorescent-lit room, explaining the problem yellow star thistle has become in the western states.   

“It is a plague created to afflict and torment man and woman…”

The work of eradication is often framed as good citizenship, and in being a good neighbor.  

“We can think of each other as we pull…”

When I went to learn to extract honey with the El Dorado Beekeepers, II overheard someone say, “Well, thank god the yellow star thistle is blooming…otherwise, the bees wouldn’t have anything to eat.” 

I had forgotten that bee keepers generally welcome yellow star thistle, and Pablo Mimosa, the self-proclaimed Chicano Bee Master of the North, positively celebrates the yellow star thistle bloom in July and August…yet I can’t help but believe that these generous thoughts come more easily when the star thistle plants are OUT THERE, on someone else’s property.

As I pull, clip, strangle, poison with vinegar and salt, and I find myself ruminating on how fucking persistent this plant is, how insidious, how toxic, how harmful, how quickly it spreads, how strong it is, I suddenly find myself thinking about the Trump years.  

The parallels are uncanny. 

They think that yellow star thistle has been here in California since about the 1850s, and it’s just in recent years — the last few decades, perhaps — that it has really dug in and flourished, spreading throughout the western states.  Its foothold is deeply established, and is now so entrenched that it is impossible to imagine it ever really being gone.  We may win back a few fields, a few ranches, a few acres, but an earth where yellow star thistle is not a major problem does not exist.

One of the earnest University of California Extension program land managers, Brenda Stanchon, called yellow star thistle “one of the worst economic and ecological problems in California”, and as she is saying this, surrounded by acres of star thistle, cars are zipping by on the freeway just beyond.  Do the people in those cars realize that they are driving past one of the worst economic and ecological problems in California? I never knew. I would have never guessed.

As with the Trump administration, it is overwhelming, really.

I can only do my best.  

I can only continue to educate myself.

I can only attend to my yellow star thistle.

I can only attend to my yellow star thistle in ways that does not harm other plants and animals.

I can never hope to get it all.  

I can not go after it every day.

There is no future that does not have yellow star thistle in it.

Fighting back is simply a part of my life.

I will continue to water and pull, to clip, and to cook with heavy duty black plastic trash bags anchored down with landscape staples, and when the timing is right, I will mow.  

In the hot summer mornings, I will pull on long sleeves and thick black, puncture-proof gloves, step into my boots, pull a bandana over my face, put on protective eyewear, cover my hair, and string-cut the little fuckers (with flower-heads clipped so as not to fling seed) down to the bare ground.

I can fight back with buckwheat.  Buckwheat will compete with star thistle in the spring, shade it and crowd it out, and will feed the soil when mowed down and allowed to decompose.

I can fight back with goats. A goat will continue to eat star thistle, even when the dangerous spiny thorns growing at a good dog’s eye-level are sticking out, surrounding the flower, protecting the seed, and will poop out seeds that are no longer viable.  Goats ain’t cheap, definitely out of my price range, but they seem to be the the answer.

The Yellow Star Thistle/Trump years: a plague, a blight, a scourge — yet we find ways to fight back. We have allies. And when we push back, we become allies.

It’s tough to be a Democrat these days, or let’s just say it’s tough to be a morally awake human being and to witness what is happening in the country we grew up in. No need to enumerate the many atrocities since we all know them. There’s a pall hanging over us all, no matter your vote, and yet we carry on. I find myself reflecting on what it might have been like to be a good German citizen in the 1930s. I’ve dramatically changed the way I take in the news in an attempt to protect myself from the pain and chaos, but worry that it’s wrong to do this, that it is analogous to turning my back on the suffering of real people. But I ask myself, “what can I do?,” and the answer has not come. I send money to those on the front lines when I can, and wait for an answer. Meanwhile: deep gratitude for the resistance that is out there; in many ways large and small, people are pushing back.

I moved to the country for peace, and every day I bask in moments that I sit with the trees, observe the landscape changes with the seasons, reflect on the lives of the bees and chickens and the dog in my care.

I appreciate my sister Vicki in a new and deepening way. We have never lived together, so it took a minute for us to find our groove, but we’re in it now and it’s a great blessing. Vicki tells me that our mom worried that we would break apart after she died, with a distant relationship, but instead we are accompanying one another through the 4th quarter of our lives, with all the details and particulars (and indignities) of aging. You cannot resist entropy; you might slow it down a bit, but entropy always wins. It is important to reflect on death and dying; the Buddhists have this right. Far from being morbid, it brings fresh appreciation to all that is, to every conversation, every bite of ice cream, every dog game played on the lawn, everything. It’s the truth of what is.

I’ve been working hard lately — hard work cannot be avoided in the late spring. Suddenly, the wildflowers are surrounded by stickers (or becoming stickers themselves) and the barbed grasses are up to the waist. It’s mowing time. I finally have a strong and reliable riding mower (a Cub Cadet! Cheeto Yellow!), but the mowing window is closing; as the weather heats up, driving a mower over dry grass becomes a fire hazard, and everybody switches to weed whacking. We need to use the weed whacker out here anyway because of the many granite boulders and trees that cannot be approached with a mower. Mine is electric, and it is my policy to stop when the battery does…the workers out here with the gas-powered whackers will go for 8 hours, but there is no way my body would agree to that. Ninety minutes is plenty.

In the garden, the tomatoes are in (mostly), and so are the peppers, but I have not planted everything that I hope to harvest in September and October. My body feels tired today, despite good rest last night, so I’m taking a hint and enjoying a day off, doing laundry, updating the blog, and soon, I’ll disappear into the sewing room.

In fact, I’m going now. More updates to come. I’ve been slow and irregular out here, I know, but I’ll probably do better in the future. No promises this time.

Be sure to check out the Quilting link. I’ve made some cool stuff lately, and I’m in the middle of several projects.

Thanks for reading!

Reflection: Year Four

Four years ago, I was madly packing, getting ready for the biggest move of my life, from my suburban life in Rossmoor (left), where I had always been a square peg, to a life out on this road in the Sierra Nevada foothills, where I knew no one but my realtor, with no real idea about what was in store.  Most significant was leaving my daughter behind, which was hard. 

I moved in to this house on October 1, 2020.  COVID had the entire world tight in its grip, there was no vaccine, and Joe Biden was seeking to unseat Donald Trump.  

I found this recently during one of my old notebook-flipping sessions. 

February 2019

Five years from now is 2024.  The Elections! [I actually wrote, “the Midterm Elections,” but that’s embarrassing so I’m editing it.]

I’ll be retired. I’ll be 66, going on 67.  I’ll live in a house that I own outright (I hope) somewhere between Portland and Sacramento. I’ll have 2-3 acres, and a big roomy house. Big kitchen. Big private apartment for me, big private apartment “tiny house” for Vicki, who will be 79-80.  Carlos, who will be 71-72.  I don’t know if Madeline will be with us.  Maybe. Probably not. Maybe someday.  

I want to study NO-TILL gardening methods, maybe try it out now. I want at least a half an acre in vegetables, another half in flowers and herbs. I want chickens and bees for sure.  A couple of dogs, a couple of outdoor cats.  Two yurts.  I can do that, on my own, with help.

The thing is — I need Maddy, but the idea of her living with a bunch of old people while she is building her professional life — no matter how much she loves us — is ridiculous.

Fletcher:  Write it down, make it happen.

Reading this struck me; it’s remarkable how things have turned out, four years later.  Obviously, today’s situation is not precisely what I envisioned, but it’s damn close.

Living it, I know more — like how an acre of no-till cultivation is not feasible on this parcel of land, with these ground squirrels, with this level of commitment, and this body at 67. 

Pete’s prey drive has convinced me that two outdoor cats are not in the cards for us.

And I’ve come to see that keeping bees is, on the one hand, fascinating and cool, while also being quite stressful and difficult.  The heat of wearing that suit and heavy gloves in the summer.  The back strain when moving those boxes. The risk of fire – working with a smoker, surrounded by an acre of tall, dry grass.

But this is the life I wanted, and I’m living it.  The notebook entry had this list:

• Stir the pot. Jungian synchronicity. Meaningful events and people converge.
• Writing makes its own meaning.
• Write it down, make it happen. What I want:
•  A sweet dog
• A small, beautiful property
• An orchard of fruit trees
• A wrap-around porch
• A fire pit
• An outdoor kitchen with pizza oven
• A yoga/meditation spot
• A greenhouse full of starts
• A workroom for quilting, making cards, binding books, making paper
• Two yurts
• A wonderful, diverse, colorful, nutritious garden
• A bee hive
• A hen house
• A rescue burro

Again, reading this list from 2019 spotlights the good things that have come to pass.  Much of what I wanted is right here in my life. Other things have fallen away, and I still want to plant a fruit orchard in the bee yard, but that will require a tall fence to keep the deer out.

Habituation

I recently listened to a podcast discussing habituation, which is how we become numb to our lives—the situations we inhabit that once were dreams, the people we love deeply but somehow end up taking for granted, and all of the objects we pined for, then blindly accept as part of the detritus we’ve accumulated moving through this life. Even if we have recognized and worked to curtail our consumerism, that little squirmy urge for the new shiny thing persists.  New windows.  New car. A vent over the stove. A carpet shampoo. A massage. 

The problem, the Buddha reminds us, is attachment, desire, clinging. Marie Kondo asks, “is this box of crap bringing you joy?” I flip through the pages of Swedish Death Cleaning and look around. Although I had been planning for this move, it all happened pretty fast — sold my house, and bought this one in 6-days, and flew through a 30-day escrow.

Four years in, and the garage is still full of boxes, and weird things are stashed in every corner and nook. Time to examine what I am clinging to, and figure out why.  

Clinging: A Clockwork Orange, Naked Lunch, and other titles

How have some of these novels survived the multiple bookshelf cullings over the course of life, and made it all the way to this chapter of my life?  I have not read them, and I think we can safely say I will not.  In the case of Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange, this violent little text — “a savage satire,” “a nasty little shocker,” “a terrifying and marvelous book,” repels me even as I pick it up.  Why is it here?

The novel was published when I was five years old. By the time I was a young college dropout trying to concoct a hipster life on Long Beach’s Ocean Boulevard, I knew A Clockwork Orange was an important text.  Having it on the bookshelf meant something.  Displaying that title signaled an open-mindedness, a counter-culture stance, and also a commitment to supporting banned and controversial texts. “I may be a drop-out but I’m not illiterate, irrelevant, or out-of-touch,” it said.  “I may be a woman but I can witness a violent rape scene without melting down.”

That was then.  I have never read A Clockwork Orange, or have seen the Stanley Kubrick film, so why this still here, out on this country road?  I no longer need to signal who I am and what my attitudes are through titles on my shelf.  And the knowledge of that rape, which I believe happens early in the story, has kept that book closed and dark for decades.

There are easily a dozen titles chosen out of curiosity then, that hold little appeal today. Naked Lunch by William Burroughs.  The Book of Disquiet, Fernando Passoa. Underworld, Don  DeLillo.  The Broom of the System, David Foster Wallace (I love Wallace, but I’ll never read Broom, I know). These are titles that important readers and teachers have swooned over, and owning them with the intention to read them seemed to be a safeguard against staleness, or mediocrity, or literary habituation, perhaps. Or maybe it’s that squirmy acquisitive itch.  Or maybe I’m afraid I’ll forget about reading them if they’re just on a “Want-to-Read” list stashed away on Goodreads.

Speaking of Goodreads, last year, I set a reading challenge to read 40 books, and I read 43. In a way, though, it felt like an assignment, so although I enjoyed +90% of what I read, my motivation was driven by earning that gold star. You’re a good girl. You read them all.

Good lord, I need to escape that craven tug for recognition.

A routine joke within the meditation community: Self-knowledge is not always good news. And ain’t that the truth. Thankfully, a sense of humor helps, and practice brings recognition, acceptance, and surrender.

If you haven’t visited lately, I invite you pop in to the Quilting tab to see what’s going on in my sewing room.