nature

Last week was rough.  Beside it being a chemo week, I had the added bonus of an extra empty bank account, extra horse expenses, all of our computers being down for maintenance, a Boyfriend meltdown, more calls from creditors, and now a sick Boyfriend.  Boo hoo, right?

So what to do when I felt well enough, but futz in my garden and yard?  Good news is, I still know my way around a pitchfork and a wheelbarrow!  I raked and moved leaves, turned compost and tended to my fledgling garden. 

So Girlbert, how does your garden grow?  Funny you should ask!  I've harvested two, count 'em, two, tomatoes, but the little tomato plants hold the promise of more, with several green fruits to ripen, and more forthcoming, as evidenced by the many yellow flowers opening on the stems.  Some of the lemon cucumbers are nearly ready to harvest, too.  There's a baby bell pepper, and the very tiniest acorn squash trying to find a spot to settle down and grow.  And my herbs seem to be flourishing in our recent heat wave - basil goes with everything!

But I have no idea what I'm doing, despite all the advice I've received (thank you, gardening friends!), books I've collected, and information I've gathered online.  There are lots of spiderwebs, one split tomato and one with a wormhole, lots of dead leaves, and something ate my first (and highly anticipated!) cucumber already.  Sometimes I think, "Will I ever enjoy the fruits of my labor?  Will anything come of all of this hard work?"

Not that it's all bad.  Those two tomatoes?  Really. Yummy.  And I love hanging outside, with the plants.  And the trees.  And the nature.

So I water my little plants when they seem thirsty.  I carefully remove the spiderwebs, any wilted or half-eaten fruit, and brown leaves.  And I admire them for their perserverance.  I encourage them to do more. 

This week I caught myself telling them, "Grow, little ones, grow!  Bloom, little flowers, bloom!  Grow tall and strong, reach for the sky!  You have great things to do!"

Or is it the other way around?

"Watch a plant for 5 minutes, 15 minutes, half an hour, and you won't see any change.  But come back the next day, and there's new growth.  There's always something happening, even when you can't see it."

"Focus on the good, focus on the positive changes, not the setbacks."

"Remember how long you have been training yourself to do things the way you currently do them.  It may take at least as long to untrain yourself; to train yourself to do it a different way.  Change will take time.  Be patient with yourself."

It's been almost a year since my shaman said those words to me.  I repeat them to myself often.  I write them down over and over in my journal.  And I still struggle to remember...

I just recently lamented, "It's been a year, and nothing's changed!"  Staring setbacks in the face seems to be my specialty these days.  

But I bring this up now, because Spring has settled in and set up camp here in the mountains of Santa Barbara.  All she has left to do is wait for Summer to arrive.

And so the next season of my journey has begun.  I'm planting a garden: sowing seeds, digging in the earth, feelings running through me, just as dirt runs through my fingers.  

Gardening has always been a grounding experience (I guess the metaphor's pretty obvious!) for me.  But it's always been my own thing. I drive myself to the nursery, pick out the plants, seeds, soil.  Bring them home in the back of my Explorer.  Set everything up, dig up the soil, set the plants into their new homes, and care for them all summer.  

But this year is different.  This is the first vegetable garden for both of us, in the past I've always stuck to a flower and herb garden.  Just something to do in my free time, and I've mentioned my ongoing interest in making things look pretty, right?  

This is the first time I've ever tried to make a garden make sense financially.  We're trying to actually save money constantly spent on fresh, organic vegetables, and I've never been very interested in crunching numbers.  Leave it to the promise of a garden full of nature's bounty to bring out the "Mathlete" in me!
 
This is the first time I've ever had to plan a garden with someone else.  Every decision must be mutual, because it's our time, our money, our effort.  It's a big lesson in working together, which is hard work for both of us.  And all of my patience seems lacking as eagerly await to get my hands dirty with a project, happy to put off the hard stuff for another day.  Let's buy the vegetables and plant them!  We'll figure it out as we go, right?

So it seems I have much to learn from the vegetable garden this year.  I will continue my lessons in Letting Go and Accepting Help from Others, all while taking an advanced course in Compromise and the Science of Mutual Decision-Making.  And I'm really digging into it.  Sinking my fingers in, sifting through the lessons, sowing the seeds, anxious (but willing to be patient) to unearth the gifts that are sure to emerge from the combined efforts of myself and the universe.

As I stood at the kitchen sink this evening, on my own two feet, washing the dishes that I had just eaten dinner off of, not feeling nauseated or woozy or sick in any way, I thought, "Things are looking up!"

And BOOM!  I had a post to write.  

This week marks two years for Boyfriend and I.  We had our first date two years ago this very week.  Things were most certainly looking up for me then, just having moved to California from Colorado, I was looking forward to a fresh start.  Just like we are now that I've gotten through chemo-radiation and my first five days of monthly chemo.  We now know what to expect (chemo sucks for all five days, plus three or four after) and are looking forward to a little more fun in the year ahead.  A fresh start.

The first date story:

I met a cute sailor on a wine tour on a previous trip to California.  Now that I was here, I had invited him up to Los Alamos (from Somis, about 100 miles!) for lunch, and if he wanted to stay for dinner, I would love to cook him dinner, too.

Lunch was a bold statement about the way I like to eat – pasta sautéed with tuna, capers, garlic, and anchovies in olive oil.  He was impressed at this brazen combination of flavors for our first meal.  After lunch, he wanted to take me on a drive.  It had snowed in the mountains the day before, and wouldn't it be fun to go check it out?  I thought, a spring snow – how nice.  Didn’t I move here all the way from Denver because I can’t stand the snow?

After a beautiful, winding drive up the mountain, we stopped and got out of the car to check out the view.  We were standing at the top of a mountain overlooking the Santa Ynez Valley, arms wrapped around one another for warmth, and he explained that all of the green leaves in the trees are mistletoe, which is actually a parasite.  Mistletoe live in the trees, getting all their nutrients from the other organism.  I had no idea - a real botany lesson!  So, it’s windy, we’re freezing (did I mention the snow?), and we get back in the car to drive down the mountain.  

He's pointing out the mistletoe growing on the trees on the way down, and we drive under a bit of it growing over the road.  He stops the car, and says, “Look up.”  I’m thinking this is going to somehow further my education about mistletoe and associated plant life, so what do I do, but what I’m told.  I look up out the sunroof, and there is indeed a clump of mistletoe hanging over the car.  As I turn my head toward him to smile, my mouth runs into his.  That certainly did further my education about mistletoe – not in a way I would have guessed, but  it did, nonetheless.

Things are looking up, as long as you know where to look.  Keep looking up!

I received this fantastic email from a friend, then passed it on to a handful of friends, one of whom posted it on her blog.  Huh.  There's a novel idea.  Well, YAHOOIE for that, because I get to put some new content on my site without having to write much.  Which is good because I'm on my monthly dose of chemo this week, and the writing's just not flowing...

They call this chemo-brain.  It's like the process I have to go through to convice myself that taking a nap is better that just being a grouchy blob on the couch just to be upright for a few hours a day.

Anyway, this is a great story.  Enjoy!

One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people. He said, "My son, the battle is between two "wolves" inside us all..

One is Evil.  It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.

The other is Good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith."

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather: "Which wolf wins?"

The old Cherokee simply replied, "The one you feed."

Let's not even get into the fact that my biological clock has been been shifting into overdrive for a while now.  (No, you can't ask me how long!  And I can feel you high-fiving each other, Kurtabel!)  But recent events have certainly heightened my nesting and maternal instincts, much to the dismay of all logical thinking.  

Then She Found Me came in the mail from Netflix the other day, and poor Boyfriend had no idea the treat he was in for.  By the time Helen Hunt shouted, "I'm not adopting a Chinese baby!" for the third time, I was nearly in tears.  

[Before certain family members get all excited, please see the previous post.  I'm in the process of adopting a CAT.]

So I'm going to risk boring you to tears by indulging myself in nature's version of the magic of motherhood.  I took this video Saturday* of the inaugural appearance of Momma Turkey Hen and her 9 balls of fluff.  Moms always seem to have impeccable timing, don't they?

Happy (belated) Mother's Day.

*NOTE: This video is not my own, but in an effort to keep my head from exploding, I opted to link to this video until I get my own posted to Youtube.  Did I mention how much I love Hughesnet satellite internet service?

UPDATE: I got the video uploaded without my head exploding.  Enjoy.

I'm obsessed with taking photos of the local wildlife, particularly birds.  So I'm going to begin posting the story behind the photos as well.  Because many photos involved me yelling, "Stop!" and maniacally bursting from the car, camera in hand, fumbling with the on-switch and zoom, tripping over rocks and poison oak, in hot pursuit of feathered subjects who are, understandably, now long gone.  I imagine the birds have become accustomed to my antics, rolling their eyes when they see me coming.  They seem to be on a mission to thwart the crazy camera lady, taunting me with their, uh, ability to fly.  Away.

I am admittedly limited by my own bumbling inexperience, not to mention my camera.  But still, it's tricky to capture the essence of living, moving, flying things, with half a second shutter-lag.  But the Panasonic Lumix does have 10X zoom, so that's pretty fun for the time being.  Our first bit of extra cash has already been earmarked for a new battery and lens for Boyfriend's Digital Rebel.  Maybe by then my skills will match the abilities of the tool.

Look, everyone - here comes the point of this post!

Hummingbirds are some of my favorite subjects - they're tiny, living, breathing jewels. They're also about 20 times zippier than your average bird, so it is a rare treat to catch them with my camera.  I usually settle for simply watching them from our screen porch.

A few weeks ago Boyfriend and I discovered a new way to interact with our little community of buzzing, aerial artists.  That particular evening, we filled our hummingbird feeder at prime feeding time. Boyfriend was swarmed by the usual crowd of 10-15 little jewels on his way out to hang it up.  So he hung out and I took this video.  In the past we've seen them hit the ground, the screens and each other as they duke it out for a place on the feeder.  Watching from the screen porch is one thing, standing in the midst is another experience entirely.

View the gallery of stills here.