Benblog

Generating Wealth

When we think about what it requires to have stability, people need some level of suffering, some level of hope. I don't think humans are designed to live without any pain and suffering, but nor are we designed to live in a world where there is only pain and suffering.

Harvesting onions today, we discussed whether or not we could have better farming as a result of our better understanding of body mechanics.

There is work that is back breaking to do that might be more reasonably approached with better training of workers in using the proper mechanics to perform manual labor.

With that manual labor invested in products that sustain rather than destroy us.

The wealth of the fields. The wealth of joy.

Touching the earth

Talking with Michael a few weeks ago about soil formation has me thinking more and more about soil systems generally, and how we focus so much on the top soil, the very, very tippy, tippy top of an eons old process dependent on so many micro and macro forces that understanding the physics of the process requires a little humming now and again, just trying to tune in the cosmological chords ultimately at work.

But touching the soil again, going out and weeding rows and rows, feeling my glutes shiver thinking about all the bending I've done over the last couple weeks, brings enough of the poetry to connect me to the forces that brought me to this moment.

The ancestors farming.

The ancestors, when all else fails, eating the earth.

That should be a basic question for all society - can you eat the dirt you walk on? If not, why not? Is it dirty? Is it polluted? Does the earth not taste good?

Gardening at night

Watching the landscape grow
Water, sun, cow dung alchemy
Smiling petals bloom

The Early Bird

Nature is most brutal at her quietest, in the stillness of the morning, the world's breath held, the first gasp the prey.

A snapping turtle, the most primeval beast of muck and slime, captured the first kill.

Rising from the miasma of the cosmic night to remind everyone in this pretty scene that the fast must be broken, those who slumber also hunger.

Itsy Bitsy Spider

I don't have a clear line for a picture this morning, and it may be the rain and winds last night blew her to another hunting ground, or the happy hunting ground, but my spider molted recently.

This area outside my front window apparently prosperous for her belly.

I don't know that we'll ever have a touching relationship, and I don't want her to be well fed - I need her to stay hungry, and I'll keep the flowers blooming as attractors for her meal.

Fried Pink Roses

What seems like a cool mist coming from the St. Louis region was hot enough to frie our rose blooms while we were gone.

As much as I appreciate the skill and dedication of those who grow roses, what a mercurial plant.

I'd much rather have purple cone flowers, native perennials, ones that, though cultivated for beauty, survive on their own, die off on their own, neither fading away entirely, nor wasting the bloom to blazing glory of the sun.

I could grow a wild rose in my garden, even water it as if it would bend to my will, just to see the beauty of the petal.

How vibrant those blooms in earlier times, when life was not a permanent residence on Phillipi.

Even the weeds

Jim Conrad used to say that a weed is any plant growing where you don't want it growing.

Moving here, unfamiliar with the plants and the gardening culture, I've been hesitant, learning as I go, figuring out what people grow as specimens, what they pull as weeds, what level of gardening maintenance is considered appropriate.

I'm seeing now the milkweeds in full bloom down the street, massed together, fragrant, delicate purple flowers, reclaiming beauty in front of the abandoned building.

People go behind the building to smoke crack, polite with their nods and hellos.

It's interesting here, that the crack addicts and street people  are more visible, more respected, more respectful - perhaps because we all have to get along, somehow, all of us people.

And maybe, like the milkweeds, given enough time, and a bed for growth, the world will provide them with a blossoming of their own.

The sweetness of Spring

My olfactory memory is revived with smells closer to those I grew up with, in the cooler air of Wisconsin.

Even with the sounds of traffic on 95 filling the air breezing through open windows, the scent of lilac and what seems to be a perpetual green provides a barrier to the noise, a calming sheath around the din.

Weeding

I have the milkweed drying out on the driveway, awaiting burial in the compost pile.

I remember Jim Conrad talking about weeds as being plants growing where you don't want them to grow.

Even the most beautiful rose can be weed if it grows unwanted, taking nutrients and light from other plants more delightful to the eye, ones that require some nurturing to fully blossom.

And still, the milkweed plays a part of life, taking the energy of the soil and adding the energy of the sun, giving nitrogen, eventually, back into the soil.

I wonder if the balance is in favor of the earth, the sunlight converted into soil.

I look at all we consume that is not returned usably to the earth, and wonder how much the very use of non-repleshinable resources is part of the grasp of the material world on us. One of the ways we are strangled on what should be a sojourn.

The Life of Decay

The compost pile is started.

The life churning within last falls piles awakened with the spring.

Worms. Mold.

I chopped up leaves with my weed whacker, first using a plastic garbage can as my blender container, and then just digging directly into the pile itself.

I don't remember being this excited about a project in some time.

But I can't wait to make the soil rich.

Juan and Pedro were appreciative, I think, of being able to drop the yard waste there in a pile.

I may ask them to bring all of it to me - run several piles behind the garage, and begin reclaiming the concrete, little by little.

And tonight, a most fascinating array of creatures feast on decay, warming up the heart of the pile with their party. My job now simply to distribute the activity, make sure the guest circulate among the offering.