Hope in Ordinary Time

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the coming year. I don’t make resolutions, but I do frequently make goals. And I always try to have an overarching theme that guides our year, both in and out of the garden. Last year, our theme was ‘resilience.’

The week between Christmas and New Year’s Day, Tom is home from work, and we have been able to go on long walks together (often in the rain, which we stoically bear without complaint since it is so needed - and as a bonus, it makes us walk faster). Our conversations during these walks have been interesting; as often happens, our goals and ideas for the approaching year complement each other and converge nicely.

As the world and its circumstances seem determined to break our spirits, I like the idea going in the complete opposite direction and cultivating a robust attitude of hope. It’s a tall order. How do we hope - and I mean actively hope - in the face of all that’s wrong around us? What does this kind of active hope look like? What form does it take? How does it express itself?

Similarly, as the world and its circumstances seem determined to whirl ever faster, threatening to throw us into a tailspin, Tom has decided to concentrate on slowing time down. He’s wondering how to count each day, and each moment. How to be truly aware and truly living, dwelling, not just somehow glossing over time, quickly on the way to the next thing.

These ideas reminded us both of the liturgical season called ‘Ordinary Time.’ In the church, part of the year is made up of the major seasons of Advent, Christmas, Lent, and Easter. During these times, life is full of flashy events and excitement! But then there is the time of year when none of this taking place. It’s ordered time, ordinal time, ‘ordinary’ time. Some say that Ordinary Time is the perfect season for conversation, growth, and maturation. It can also be a time where we allow the mystery of life to deeply penetrate our consciousness.

Ordinary Time does not have to mean tedious, or repetitive, or dull. Certainly it can be these things too, but the idea is to make all time matter in some higher way, even if it’s not exciting. What is the gift in an ordinary life? What can simplicity teach us? When the theatrics are over (and let’s face it, we’ve all been living in a heightened state for quite some time now), what are we left with?

Could it be… hope?

So that’s our goal for 2022. Cultivating hope while learning to live consciously in the present, in ordinary time.

We look forward to more of these kinds of conversations in the coming year, whether they concern the garden or just our lives. Thanks for spending time with us. We wish you all a very peaceful and happy New Year!

Summer in December

Here’s a happy honeybee aiming towards a fully-opened sunflower on the first day of December in my garden. It’s been chilly at night, but the daytime has been beautiful and warm and in the 70s. Yes, this is unusual. Yes, this concerns me. But I must confess it also delights me. I am enjoying the summer blooms in my garden, and the warm afternoon temperatures which are perfect for walking. I think it’s important that we remember to be present, whatever the moment gives us. I can be worried about our place on this planet and happy to bask in the afternoon’s slanted glow. Environmental work can be draining, so let’s take the joy where we can.

The cover crops in my garden also include, at the moment, cosmos. And borage, cilantro, buckwheat. I used our homemade compost to top off these beds, and the seeds that didn’t die in that pile have germinated and are flowering freely. It’s all good. A cover crop can be any crop, and it’s all improving the soil.

A side benefit to these sunflowers growing this time of year is that the goldfinches leave them alone. In summer, my sunflowers are always decimated, the leaves eaten down to the veins. This means the plant can’t photosynthesize and can’t bloom properly. Why don’t the goldfinches do this in winter? It could be that they don’t need greens this time of year, requiring only protein and fat to prepare their bodies for laying eggs. It could also be that most have migrated for the season, and the ones I see around the bird feeder are too few to do much damage.

Hey, maybe I’ll only grow sunflowers in the autumn and winter from now on.

Happy December, everyone.

Interested?

Are you interested in growing your own food? In food justice and food sovereignty? In urban farming? In designing a food-growing system from the ground up? If so, my spring course may be for you!

Here is the description of the course I’m teaching. I’d love to have you join us! Merritt College is incredibly inexpensive to attend - $46 per unit - and this is a 3-unit lecture and a 1-unit lab course. So, for under $200, we could spend the spring learning and transforming a garden together!

If you have any questions, please feel free to email me.

Change Everywhere

It’s that time of year again, when everything changes fast - the light, the leaves, the weather. We are enjoying fall colors (as much as we can in California) and the increase of ‘cozy’ with the early darker evenings. I’m baking bread again, weekly, and there are lots of hearty soups on the menu. Since it’s just me and Tom around the house these days, we keep it pretty simple when it comes to supper.

I’ve had a few folks ask me about the garden. I decided to plant the entire North section in cover crops, to help improve the soil. I’ve seeded both rye and crimson clover, and there are now other things coming up as well - cilantro, sunflowers, and also some tithonia. These are all seeds I put in over the summer and they never germinated. I just couldn’t keep enough water in the ground to support them. Now that we have cooler weather (and some rain - more on that in a minute), they are all popping up. It’ll be interesting to see what survives the winter frosts.

On the South side of the garden, I amended the soil, then planted: broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, snap and shelling peas, chard, kale, several kinds of lettuce, leeks, garlic, and spinach. Everything has germinated well (or was transplanted from our greenhouse plugs) and I expect slow growth from now until early Spring. Hopefully we’ll have some winter greens and lettuces, at least.

I’ve recently cleared out some areas in the ornamental beds that just weren’t working well, and have bought some new native plants to fill them. I’m especially excited to try our native California clematis - pipestem clematis - Clematis lasiantha - on our front fence by the driveway. We saw this lovely plant all over Mt. Diablo during our summer hikes, and it always looked amazing in the arid heat.

You may have heard a little something about the ‘bomb cyclone’ and/or atmospheric river we experienced here last weekend. In one 24 hour period, our weather station’s rain gauge recorded 5-1/2” of rain. For us, that is unprecedented. My folks in Orinda had 9-1/2” over that same 24-hour period. Crazy! In front of our house, there is a drain that takes all the runoff from about a quarter mile of road (our neighborhood was designed and built in the 1940s, clearly inadequate infrastructure for today). We (and our neighbors) are careful about keeping it clear of leaves and debris when it is raining, because we’ve had flooding in the neighborhood when the drain is clogged. Tom and I both took very wet and windy walks on the 24th, and enjoyed seeing all the little creeks near our house fill up and run at top capacity. In those conditions, it is easy to imagine the watershed the way it used to be before people lived here, with a broad river flowing down from the Mt. Diablo foothills.

As I’m sure you’ve heard, all this rain put barely a dent in our drought conditions. We need ten more storms just like this one (and frankly, that is highly unlikely to happen) to take us out of danger. However, these rains quenched all the fires in the northern half of the state, so that’s really great news.

As you know, I’ll be graduating in December with my BA in Environmental Studies, an accomplishment 30 years in the making. This photograph was taken from Merritt College, in Oakland. I’m proud to say that I have been hired as an adjunct professor in the Natural History and Sustainability department at Merritt, and I start teaching Urban Argroecology courses in January. Part of my position is a separate requirement to mentor students, particularly those that have been historically underserved by the academic community. I am super excited to get started, and also terrified - which I take as a positive sign that this is a correct new trajectory for me. I will be sad to leave my current internship with Friends of Sausal Creek. I have learned so much in my time with the organization, and forged relationships that I hope will last a lifetime. I still have two months with them, though! Between that, my school load, and gearing up for the new gig, I barely have time to miss my kids. Who, by the way, are both rocking it at their respective colleges. We sure enjoy hearing about their adventures in our weekly phone calls, and we look forward to having them back for the holidays.

How are your winter gardens coming along? I’d love to hear about your urban farming adventures.

The Sound of Chainsaws

The ongoing drought is starting to have quite an effect here in the Bay Area, and is especially evident in the Monterey Pines. Historically, these were planted with abandon all over the area, even though they really only do well near the coast. Driving down the highway, the brown, dead trees simply litter the embankments. The areas where we hike, even the reservoirs (where you’d assume the trees have stretched their roots to the water), are filled with struggling trees, mostly evergreen species.

The redwoods are starting to suffer, too. Again, they’ve been planted widely all over the inland areas, even though they are native to the coast and thrive on drippy, foggy conditions. The interior rarely gets fog.

And now we’re starting to notice the California live oaks, both coast live oaks and interior live oaks, are starting to succumb to the drought. It is getting very depressing.

Wherever we go, we hear the sound of chainsaws. Tree crews are out in force, trying desperately to stay ahead of the problem, but there are too many dead trees and not enough skilled arborists to stay on top of it.

In our own yard, we are watering less and less. I think most of the native and Mediterranean trees will be ok. But we have one Southern Magnolia (NOT planted by us, I hate it) which is starting to look a little peaked. I am thinking that it might be time to have it removed, and to replace it with something like a Desert Willow, which can thrive and look beautiful on far less water. Unfortunately, this means we will lose some shade on the house, but fortunately, it will increase the sun’s influence on our solar panels.

I think I will have to wait until the rains come and the tree companies are less busy. Right now, they have their hands full.

10/7/21 drought report from drought.gov