Green Tribe of Belonging

 Another day in our frozen world. The temperature has gotten clear up to 5 above zero this morning, but it is supposed to fall back to 15 below zero tonight. It's a time for quiet, for inside activities, for contemplation. Fortunately, my family of plants keep me company. Many of them have been with me for ten or fifteen years, some much longer. When it gets so cold outside, my first concern is for the plants. I want to make sure that it doesn't freeze inside! I can put on warm clothes but my plants can't. So far, though, our electricity has not gone out during this long frozen spell and the temperature has stayed well above freezing inside.  This morning as I was doing my yoga routine, I felt a companionable closeness to the tall plants that surrounded my exercise mat. There is the 120-year-old fern that was first given to my grandmother at her wedding, thriving green fronds curving over to grace the wooden table it lives on. Beside it, a huge night-blooming cereus is reac...

  Ever since I returned from my trip to Ireland in November, folks have been asking me to talk or write about it. Yet other things keep taking precedence. I just unearthed the notes I wrote down on the way back (actually, in the Toronto airport, waiting for the second flight), and I think I'll just type them as is, into this blog post. Here they are, just as I scribbled them down at the gate.) Sky : -Big, wide. Bursts of stripes across the whole thing -Layers of clouds, long shelves of straight soft lines from horizon to horizon -Fourth night, an almost full moon high in the sky; same moon, same sun, but so different Fields : -No crops that I saw, except the crops of sheep and cows -Pastures bounded by rock walls, and at the far edges an army of beings - wide green and textured at the bottom, standing still and vigilant. And topped with tall trunks and branches. Like Ents! It is only later you realize that vines cover anything that stays still for awhile, like trees. Sheep, whi...

  Awed by Weather Has there ever in this world been such beautiful snow? Large soft flakes filling the air, slowly descending, softening the ground. Already surfaces piled high with a puffy quilt of white. And just now a brave woman stoops through the flakes to harvest hardy green kale from a south-facing cold frame. The world is a shining place in this gentler landscape and life goes on.