Ah Friends, it’s been an emotional sort of week. We are in moderate drought here at the moment. The garden is suffering in spite of James and I watering it; we can’t water enough. New Cherry Tree has only ever made very tiny leaves and I don’t know if these leaves are enough for them to gain enough energy to survive the winter. I am sad and worried.

Serviceberry, moved from the chicken garden was so very happy, and now is looking very sad. Like Cherry, their leaves are tiny and I am worried.

And then there is Old Rhubarb. Many of their new leaves get to a certain size and then die. I don’t know why. I don’t think it is crown rot. I feel like they are trying to tell me, but I just don’t understand. I give them water, but maybe not enough often enough. Maybe they are telling me they are thirsty?

Because I was stupid, Elderberry Junior might be dead. I planted them in the chicken garden without any protection. The chickens were not bothering them at all. But I told James to be sure to give them water, and he did, which is good. But the chickens love to scratch and play in the mud and so they scratched Elder Jr right out of the ground and I didn’t notice until 24-hours later. Elder Jr has been replanted with protection, but all their leaves are limp and I am not certain they will survive.

The cape gooseberries/ goldenberries are being attacked by Colorado potato beetles. I squished several adult beetles a few weeks ago and tried to clean off all the little orange eggs they had laid all over the plants, but those eggs are tiny and hard to get off. So now I am squishing leaf-eating beetle larva, which is pretty gross and kind of sticky. To the credit of these little annual plants, they keep putting out new leaves and growing and I am sure they will be fine as long as I keep squishing until there are no more baby beetles to squish. On the plus side, the goldenberries are across the garden from the potato bed, and nothing is attacking the potatoes.

A baby bunny has found their way into the garden. I startled them during the week when I got home from work and went out to let the chickens into their garden. I chased baby out of the garden and fixed the fencing where they exited so they couldn’t get back in. But yesterday afternoon I looked out and there was baby bunny sitting in the middle of the main garden path munching on something.

James, who I think was once a canine, went into dog mode and chased the poor baby all around the garden. They didn’t know how to get out. I suggested to James that he stop a second, open the side gate into the front yard, try to encourage the rabbit towards it. Likewise, we could open the gate to the chicken garden, and if he waited a second while I got my garden boots on, I would keep the chickens away from the gate. James opened the gate to the front yard but couldn’t wait for me. He didn’t see where the rabbit went, though after a thorough search of the garden, we were certain Baby Bunny had left.

Today we put up more chicken wire fencing along the bottom of our neighbor’s chainlink fence. We used to have bamboo fencing in this area on our side of the fence, but the bamboo is falling apart after these six or so years, and we have pulled most of it down, leaving gaps along the bottom of the fence where a baby rabbit can easily scoot in. Baby munched on some marigold flowers and “weeds” but all the beans and peas appear to be unharmed.

We had a “chance” for rain nearly everyday last week and in spite of James and I both sending up daily prayers, not a drop fell. Friday I decided something more was needed. So I wrote down on a small square of paper a plea for rain and an offering of praise and gratitude. I crumpled the paper and we burned it in the fire pit in the garden, watching the plea go up in the smoke.

Saturday, another chance of rain in the afternoon. It was cloudy, but we watched all the rain on the radar disappear as it approached the city. Just when I was feeling defeated, it began to sprinkle. I ran outside and brought the laundry in off the line, big drops falling on me. Elation! By the time I got the laundry down and back to the house, the rain had stopped. No! I cried. Please!? And ten minutes later it was really raining. We only got .06 of an inch, but it was something. There is a chance for rain on Friday. I might need to send another prayer up in smoke Thursday evening.

Tuesday evening I facilitated a book group discussion with members of The Gaian Way. The book we discussed was Andreas Malm’s How to Blow Up a Pipeline, which I posted about back in January. There were several different perspectives, and we didn’t all agree about everything, but that was fine and good. It was a great discussion with wonderful smart people who all come from a position of the Earth as a living system to whom we have an obligation. Spending an hour with them was refreshing.

And then my friend Care at Care’s Books and Pie made me tear up with her kind words not long after a just graduated student had me teary at work. The student is in the library studying for the Bar Exam at the end of July and heard me and a coworker talking and laughing. She came over because she was feeling overwhelmed with all the studying and needed, as she said, to be near people laughing.

Of course, we immediately set to work cheering her up, encouraging her, letting her know, yes it’s hard, you’ve done so much already–you graduated from law school!–you can do this too! And then she told me that I probably don’t remember her since she didn’t use the library much, but back in the summer before her first year, before she was officially enrolled, she and I had had an email exchange. She had wanted to borrow some books on how to be successful in law school, and even though she had no student account in the library system yet, I made it happen so she could borrow books. When she came into the library for the books and began to explain, I said, Oh! You must be —!

She revealed these three years later how insecure she was feeling then and unsure about law school and whether she was making the right decision, but when she walked into the library that day and I was so excited to see her and called her by name, she said she was immediately reassured and decided that yes, she had made the right choice.

Both Care and the student are blessings. I am so grateful to them both. It is not often we ever find out what sort of influence we have made on others, how what we do affects someone. We always have our own things we are dealing with and it is easy to forget that others have things they are dealing with too. Those others may meet us with anger or frustration or fear or friendship or any number of other things. We can choose how we meet them. Meeting everyone with kindness is hard. It is easy with Care, and it was easy with the student. It’s not always so easy with the demanding, entitled professor or the driver of the car who almost ran me over while I was biking home. I frequently fail. But each encounter is one more chance to get it right. And when I get it right, it feels good. And if I am blessed with it coming back around to me, oh, what joy!

I returned to that joy several times after reading Why I Stopped Saving the World. Tears of grief are kin to tears of joy. We cannot have one without the other. Despair is one step from grief. Despair is seductive. I wanted to go there. I thought I had come to terms with climate grief, but like all kinds of grief, it ebbs and flows and a person can find herself sobbing over a grief wound that happened decades ago because someone made her cinnamon toast like her Granny used to. Climate grief is no different.

There is often a balance between grief and joy, as my week flip-flopped back and forth. But today, in spite of all my worries about Cherry Tree and Serviceberry, capitalism and fossil fuels and civilization collapse, joy buoys me up. I knelt in the garden weeding the tiny carrot sprouts, I cheered on the bulbing radishes, I thanked the garlic as I clipped the scapes to add to dinner, I delighted in the wind singing through the trees–best orchestra ever. And I giggled over the chickens adding their vocals to the chorus.

Joy and grief. My heart is full of both. And that’s okay. It’s how it should be I think.

Reading

• Montaigne by Stefan Zweig. I’ve meant to read this book for ages. After reading Julé’s beautiful review, I decided it was time. I have a little more than one chapter left to read, and I am enjoying it very much.
• Translation State by Ann Leckie. This turned out to be pretty good. It’s a SF book that manages to be about translation, trans-gender and trans-species all at the same time without being didactic. There are a few plot quibbles I have with it, but all in all, a good read.

Listening

• Podcast: War on Cars: Nick Offerman. Such and interesting person!
• Podcast: Missing Witches: Meditation: Snake Kin. We can learn a lot from snakes

Quote

The true essence of freedom is that it can never restrict the freedom of another.

Stefan Zweig in Montaigne, page 109