Green Tribe of Belonging

  Queen in the Woods The Mother Oak stands at the edge of the park, her wide-spread branches dominating the scene, decades of growth bringing her to her prime, entangled with millions of life forms around and below. Thousands of caterpillars feasting on the smooth dark leaves, and in their turn, birds snapping up the caterpillars for their own feast. Squirrels scampering through the strong leafy branches, and an owl quietly standing watch from a hole midway to the top. The unseen world below the oak’s base is crowded with webs of roots and microscopic life. Mycelium offering up its bounty in return for nourishment, each giving and receiving for their mutual benefit. Over the years, this mother tree has offered her progeny  to the world around her: acorns buried by squirrels, planted near and far, a crop of children still connected to her life force. And she will support them in the abundant mysterious ways of trees. When her life is over, her branches and trunk dying, her body...

  Thank Heavens for Weeds! Thank heavens they are not always mowing the roadsides anymore Or spraying to remove unwanted vegetation. The earth is too manicured as it is, Every hill and valley planted with crops. Lawns cultivated to grow only grass  Kept clipped so it can never mature. When I drive down the highway and Come across an area too steep for the big mowers, Or too damp, or too rough, I feel like shouting hallelujah!  Here the rightful residents are allowed to flourish, Shooting up tall in their natural life cycle, Flowering, seeding, and then sending sun energy Back to roots for another season. Free enterprise of the plant world!  What a smorgasbord of color, size, texture. Here creativity can get a toehold. A treasure chest of life and growth, And source of food for other lives: Seeds for birds, leaves for insects and animals,  Wonderful and vast root networks in which Microorganisms flourish underground. Nature set free, if only peripherally,  o...

  Tree Dream If truly we have a chance  for another life, my deep wish would be to come back as a tree. Standing tall at the edge of a forest, roots tangled with my neighbors’ roots. And as a small sapling, I’d be nourished by the wise mother tree above me. As I get older, I would join the stand of tall strong trees at the edge of our land, some my own kin, all taking our turn, holding up the whole, reaching out to others. When storms come through, we’d stand grounded, solid, bracing each other as the wind whips past, sending warnings to the trees across the valley by our roots. In summer, I would hold out my arms to welcome beings in different shapes: animals, insects, birds,  as I host a wide ecosystem of life, all thriving together in the small world around my body. Squirrels scampering up and down my branches, birds digging out homes in my trunk, insects nestled in my bark that feed the bigger life. Eggs and seeds buried in my leaf mast below. And maybe a little girl,...

  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...

  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...

  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...

  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 ...

 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:...

(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...

 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...

 I've been thinking about the theme of this particular blog post for days, but then I doubt that I can do it justice, so I busy myself with something else. Today, though, there's no excuse for putting it off. So I'll just start writing. Probably the same as many of you, it is hard to pay attention to what's happening in the world and still feel positive energy. I get twenty or thirty requests for money from Democratic candidates every day, and I've stopped even opening them. I imagine they are worthy causes, but any extra money I have goes to my family. So I delete and delete, and some days I even delete all the posts about what's happening in the government. Some days I decide I can tolerate reading only one, which is usually Heather Cox Richardson.  And that's just the political stuff. Then there's the planet. It is so easy to lead our human lives, surrounded by things we've created, and forget about what's happening to the environment outside ...

 I know that the majority of you who read this blog are from places pretty far from Iowa City. So you'd not consider driving to our gathering on Saturday afternoon (May 2, 2:00, Prairie Hill Cohousing). But even so, you might be interested in what we're doing and might decide to do something similar in your own area. The film we're seeing is something you could watch at home. Being on microplastics, it is not a cheerful subject, but it will be good to know more about this reality in our world and have some ideas about how to cope with it. The best thing about monthly gatherings like this, focused on caring for the earth, is how good it feels to be among others sharing the same concerns, and also enjoying the sharing of the good earth-related insights and happenings in our lives. Even though we may sometimes be focusing on difficult realities, the regular coming together of neighbors and friends for the common purpose of learning and honoring our Earth is fortifying and upli...