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We Learn and We Evolve

  The high point of this past week for me was attending a Field Day at Cold Spring Pond and Cabin, a part of our family’s farm. The program featured things like pollinator strips, water buffers, and riparian zones along stream beds to filter out nitrates and other chemicals from the water running from the fields. My cousin Ken and his son Thomas talked about the evolution of this family farm as well as farming in general over the decades. And it has brought back to me the memories of my childhood growing up on a large Iowa farm. My grandmother Fawcett raised her two sons pretty much alone, her husband having died while both boys were very young. Although the boys' father had been a farmer, Grandma brought them up in a little house in the nearby town of West Branch, leaving the farm in other hands until her boys were old enough to take over. Both brothers went to Iowa State University, studying farming science. And then started working the land on our acreage. There were two homeste...
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Who Will Speak for the Trees?

  Who will speak for the trees? Or the rivers? The prairies and forests?  No one did for too long. Yet it is beginning to happen! It’s really refreshing to learn about all the groups, small town governments and countries that are pushing to give legal rights to Nature. We have for too long assumed that we can own and wipe out natural settings because it increases our wealth or status or happiness. Who cares about the streams and rivers we change? Or the trees we cut down? Or the prairies we cover with corn fields? The answer to that question is changing, though. Not long ago, our species looked upon the natural areas surrounding us as only resources to be put to human use. Certainly that was how it was when I was a child. But by the time I was in high school in the early 60’s, the concept of an ecosystem had started to creep into biology lessons. We were learning (perhaps yet again) that there were relationships between other living beings. Things were not separate. Everything...
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One Small Person's Mission in a Crowded World

  One Small Person’s Mission in a Crowded World If I had a full time job, I wouldn’t have time to think about the fix we’re in. I wouldn’t worry about  the crazy presidential mob that’s taken over our government. I wouldn’t have time to dread the next report about more extinctions. I could pretend that everything is just fine, in this country that is supposed to be the best in the world! But I don’t have a full time job, unless you count all the weeding in my big garden, or all the committees I’m on. Or the thick coat of hair that my kitties keep depositing on my rugs and on my clothes, my sheets, and my chairs. I breathe a mouthful of air, and sometimes need to remove the silky hair that drifts up before I breathe it in!  I am struggling to find ways of cleaning my home! However, I am technically retired. So my life is my own. I can decide how to spend my time. It is a freeing thing. Yet some days it is hard to remember what my mission is. If I had a job, my life would b...
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Feeling the Wind and the Rain

  Feeling the Wind and Rain Today I braved the heat and walked out to my garden.  It was still morning, and if I was going to catch up on weeding, this seemed to be the best time. I put on the same clothes that I had sweated through yesterday. They could get sweaty and dirty again. And I sat down amidst the weeds and started rescuing the tiny lavender and zinnias, and beets and tomatoes  and peppers and fennel plants. It was good. The ground was already damp enough so that the roots came up easily. I was so intent on clearing away the weeds so “my” plants could have an easier life that I didn’t notice it had clouded up. I did notice the wind, which was refreshing. It allowed me to keep working, not getting too hot. Then I started noticing random rain drops coming down. And I thought, no need to quit! I am already sweaty. Rain would feel good! And it did feel good. I kept weeding, moving over to the poppies and pennyroyal, the  four-o–clocks and squash, the chamomile ...
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Deep Humble Learning Is What's Required

 I am finally well again, after surviving a three-week virus that had me wondering if I would ever get well. When you're down for that long, hardly remembering what it feels like to be your normal self, it is cause for happy celebration once the virus leaves. And for three days now, I've been well, and I am SO grateful! Now I can begin to catch up with everything that fell by the wayside while I was sick.  Today was a special day, for the monthly meeting of our Earthcare Working Group met here at Prairie Hill. We began our meeting, as usual, going around the circle of all of us, each telling of some inspiring or interesting earthy thing that we experienced during the last month. It is such a positive way to start our time together. And it becomes a bunch of individuals sharing of themselves before doing something together. After our check-in, the program consisted of two parts. First we discussed the book that we've been reading for the past couple months: The Light Eaters:...
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Five Lessons

(I've been sick with a stubborn virus for the last 10 days, and not feeling much like writing anything. But I found this (see below) piece in my file and it seems to give the kind of inspiration I need, and perhaps it will be good for you too.)  “Lessons from Geese” was transcribed from a speech given by Angeles Arrien at the 1991 Organizational Development Network and is based on the work of Milton Olson.  Lessons from Geese Fact 1:  As each goose flaps its wings it creates an "uplift" for the birds that follow. By flying in a "V" formation, the whole flock adds 71% greater flying range than if each bird flew alone.  Lesson 1: People who share a common direction and sense of community can get where they are going quicker and easier because they are traveling on the thrust of one another.  Fact 2: When a goose falls out of formation, it suddenly feels the drag and resistance of flying alone. It quickly moves back into formation to take advantage of the lifting p...
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Life Supporting Life

 As an antidote to the dismaying happenings in our government lately, I've been spending a lot of time out in nature. I go to my garden where I've planted hundreds of seedlings I grew inside. And also to my favorite spot at Kent Park, where you can look out over prairie and sky, birds flying overhead, trees shading the landscape, a wide expanse of the earth with less evidence of human interference. There I can breathe deep, open my mind and heart, and join the other millions of lifeforms in our world. I can remind myself that I'm just another little being, connected to everything. And I can ask for guidance. I love to think about how life sustains itself. All of us beings (plant and animal) grow and thrive for awhile, and then when we're done, our bodies sustain the following generations of life. It's like natural recycling, there from the beginning. Our earth's natural rhythms perfected this process long before we coined the term recycling. As a follow-up to ou...
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