Green Tribe of Belonging

  What : Earthcare Working Group, August Meeting Where: Prairie Hill Cohousing, 140 Prairie Hill Lane, Iowa City When: Saturday, August 2, 2:00 in common house living room, 1st floor Dear Friends, This is a reminder about our earthcare meeting this coming Saturday afternoon. We'll hear from Becky Ross about the plastic crisis we're in, and how we can use less of it.   As part of sharing practical ways to reduce the use of plastics, Jane Cadwallader-Howe will demonstrate how to make simple beeswax wraps. There will be time to share about your own discoveries and methods of reducing plastic in your lives. And there will be a table for examples of non-plastic alternatives. Please bring your examples, if you have some. Our meeting on Saturday will also include time to organize our participation in the Iowa City Club Fair coming on September 7th. Feel free to bring your friends and neighbors. We have the larger dining room to expand into, if we need more space than the living ...

  Tree Elder I’ve come to sit at your feet again, my old tree friend, you standing tall and strong. among hundreds of other trees around the cemetery’s gravestones. It is peaceful here, with trees and birds, bees and butterflies, clouds rolling in across the sky covering the sun, whipping up the wind. I want to connect with your rootedness, your serene stance and deep experience. You know your place in the whole. You have survived tumult and change. My species is not so vital as you, not so connected to our living neighbors. We’ve set ourselves apart, and now we’re suffering for it, floundering. We are not a bad species.  We just got off the healthy track. And now we sorely need the connectedness of the forest, of the living world, of your wisdom. So I come here, to restore myself, sitting on the ground at your feet, pulling in your calm and strength, gratefully carrying it back to my world.

 It is a time in our lives when the whole world, the institutions and traditions we have been surrounded with all our lives, may well be heading for collapse. Despite our general belief that humans should be what we call "moral" (kind to others, peaceful, fair, cooperative), we are seeing the government in this country becoming steeped in falsehoods, targeted hate crimes, and the destruction of the democracy we have assumed would last forever. Even if we don't watch the news, we feel it in our bones. We are all connected in ways we cannot see, and we are increasingly challenged to find our own path amid the apparent chaos. What are our real values? Our culture seems increasingly to focus on making money, competition, accumulating possessions, and joining what we see as the superior winning tribe, be it political, racial, or religious. What we learned in Sunday School seems a long time ago! It is time to look inside and see what really matters to each of us. As a bodyworke...

The TakeOver! What a treasure! A patch in the community garden, already fenced, fertilized with compost, full sun, water hoses, flat and ready to plant.  I can't believe  my good fortune. It is high up on the hill, a long and challenging walk, but safe from predators and exercise for my muscles. The veggie sets I plant explode with vitality and health. On week 3, I proudly show it to rave reviews. Can there be too much of a good thing? Who could have predicted that on week 5 came the TakeOver. When I arrive to harvest beans all I see is huge squash vines, like a green thriving carpet covering everything. The neat rows of vegetables have been completely erased by a species gone wild. Should I laugh or cry? I do neither. I ponder. Then, apologetically, I bring up my shears and rescue the rows underneath. Yes, there are still plenty of squash vines, but less. And the other veggies are freed to live a life in the sun. NF 7/8/25

 My hat for gardening says "I love dirt!" on the front, and it reflects my sentiments exactly. But of course most of us were trained from an early age to avoid getting "dirty" and to avoid being in the dirt. Somehow that word has expanded to include all sorts of unsavory things. Yet dirt is where we come from! It is essential to our lives and the lives of most everything else on our planet. Someone suggested to me the other day that I should stop using the word dirt, and start using a more socially acceptable word like soil or earth. But that made me want to use the word dirt more! For we have been conditioned to avoid contact with the land under our feet, and we need to erase that inclination from our minds. Dirt is good. It is the ground from which everything emerges on this planet.  I remember being fascinated when in my biology class in high school more than 60 years ago, we learned that scientists were starting to talk about ecosystems. It was a new and excitin...

I just had a birthday and received lots of beautiful cards. My favorite said in colorful handwriting: I’m so glad to be going around the sun with you.”  And that phrase makes me smile every time I look at it. What a great sentiment. Stepping back from our crowded busy lives and seeing us as a collection of beings living on earth and traveling around the sun. Thinking more broadly like this helps me when I get wound up by reading the news. It is almost more than I can take to find that so many people in our country, intelligent nice people, don’t see what chaos is being wrought in our government. They think our president is doing fine. That makes me feel a bit crazy. How can humans see things so very, very differently? It’s like we’re living in a science fiction dream, and we’re moving toward the crisis. But then I take a deep breath, remember that after all, we’ve been here a long time. And sometimes we take wrong turns and then have to deal with the consequences. And then I look a...

  The Roots Go Down Softly, gently I lay these fragile roots of my small seedling into new ground. I carefully cover them with good soil, pat them firmly, and murmur a blessing for their future. Across the garden, a high weed is already firmly rooted. In contrast, my job now is to pull this plant out of its space. All the roots need to come out too, for even without leaves the vitality of a web of roots can push new growth into the sun. Though trees have deep roots, some of them decide to live above the ground. The oak’s tall majesty is supported by a wide spread of thick smooth roots, a visible living base that holds fast and nourishes. The dark world of underground roots hosts a wide diversity of life: fungi, tiny bacteria, egg nests, earthworms, beetles, ants, small mammals, all trading services, communicating with each other. If you happen to be a root, it is better for you if you’re not delicious to animals. Humans love carrots, turnips, and parsnips. Moles and chipmunks nibb...