Thirteen good reports

1. smiling black chihuahua, river-wet, disheveled, delighted
2. two olive-skinned boys in flannel, cautiously looking for a hidden fishing spot
3. sweet grassy horse breath
4. swerving to miss pedaling over wooly bears and grasshoppers
5. beautiful toothless woman working at the gas station who gave me a free coffee cup and cold water
6. September light filtering through trees 
7. skin as solar panel
8. evidence of primal sidewalk chalk screams
9. going back for the $10 I forgot in the self-checkout machine's change slot, and some honest soul had turned it in to a cashier
10. writing our gratitudes at lunchtime
11. Casey Bowen's handmade soap
12. watching friends succeed at acting, directing and doing
13. THIS:

Needs and wants

It's spring! The real beginning of the new year. I've been anticipating this day by eating flowers. The first front yard dandelion (of many to come—sorry, neighbors) peeped its yellow eye at me and I picked it and popped it into my mouth. It tasted like sunshine. The first violet appeared and I ate that too—delicious. I love spring so I could eat it up. I'm hungry for it it. Gimme. It's time to wake up, be reborn. I want to internalize this fresh gorgeous light and pop out all over with flowers and happy weeds.

It's been a while since I checked in with the Google Oracle and asked the great and powerful internet to explain me to myself. Here's what it revealed today:

• Georgia needs nuclear power.
• Georgia needs more virtual schools.
• Georgia needs migrant labor.
• Georgia needs a win here.
• Georgia needs more friends and fewer fans.
• Georgia needs more trauma centers.
• Georgia needs several transportation megaprojects.
• Georgia needs fosters.
• Georgia needs commuter rail.
• Georgia needs willpower.
• Georgia needs you.
• Georgia needs Christmas angels to help.
• Georgia needs assessment.
• Georgia needs to put foot down.
• Georgia needs more sunlight.
• Georgia needs to read more honestly.
• Georgia needs a home.
• Georgias need hope.

• Georgia wants to hear from farmers.
• Georgia wants strategic alliances.
• Georgia wants Rolling Stones to tour in 2012.
• Georgia wants less water released.
• Georgia wants to help husband get a job.
• Georgia wants foreigners to pronounce her name differently.
• Georgia wants to shock people into ending childhood obesity.
• Georgia wants to outlaw vasectomies.
• Georgia wants to make miscarriage a crime.
• Georgia wants a no child waiver.
• Georgia wants guarantees.
• Georgia wants a bit more than a penny.
• Georgia wants everyone to go fishing.
• Georgia wants to stand up without props.
• Georgia wants to come up.
• Georgia wants to order respect.
• Georgia wants to be on your mind.
• Georgia wants to help lead the way.
• Georgia wants her seat back.

Enlightening

Jake gets up at 4:00am and works. He says, "I like mornings," and asks me, "You're still a night owl?" He brags about seeing the perfect moon glow fully over the eastern horizon and dangle Venus, clear and lovely, as if from a string. "I love mornings," he says, and Rob agrees. "They're so quiet."

Today I woke up before the sun and crawled out of bed, choosing the birth of the day over neutralizing another wakeful night with sleep. I said to myself, "I like mornings. I don't want to live my life missing them."

It's overcast so I'll get no peek at the waning moon nor attendant planet, but the light, however diffused, still grows, and the world feels quiet enough for thinking. I'm glad for a new writing app, Momento, even though the tiny typing on an iPhone is hunt and peck. My words are coming back. I believe they've been there right along, circling and watching for me to rise and enjoy them. Just like the sun.

And I say it's alright

Oh, oh, winter solstice!

When was I ever this glad for the sun to begin its yearly climb?

I am hungry for light.

(An ice ball we kicked along the path.)

Sun, sun, sun, here it comes!

Giving Thanks, Day 9

Parking the car in the sun, eating J Dawgs, and listening to John Cage & Lou Harrison with Rob. That's a feast.

Giving Thanks, Day 8

Gratitude du jour:

• the joy of movement, esp. walking fast on a crisp afternoon
• messages from faraway friends
• sweet irony: Last night a friendly neighbor sent over an ENORMOUS plate of gooey black magic box brownies, the kind that can turn deadly if you overindulge. After Rob and I cautiously sampled them, we decided we were in danger, so I loaded up the rest to share with a family I met with today. They were excited, and we were relieved. Hey, no emergency room trips for us! On my way home I received a text from a different neighbor friend, telling me she'd just left brownies on my porch and giving me full disclosure about her ingredients list, all healthy in the extreme. Those we finished off. 
• fresh flowers in the house (love gifts)

Giving Thanks, Day 2

Another list.

• a new recipe for a Dutch baby (apple)
• sitting in the sun by the lake and writing the opening of a new story
• hot water (Mary, you are so, so right!)
• moving furniture
• laying plans to pass on Big Pink to a friend who has the crappiest couch in town
• Simple Green + microfiber cloths
• listening to an enlightening interview with Dr. John Gray
• wearing Rob's sweater
• not watching Kung Fu Panda
• being raised by people who loved to give
• Mozart's Requiem Mass in D Minor
• finally locating a sweet spot in the house where we can play records on the German Telefunken without our steps causing the needle to skip across the vinyl
• take-out bean and cheese pupusas + that magical pickled cabbage-jalapeño stuff
• KUER's nighttime jazz
• swapping love letters
• more Mexican chocolate brownies
• cold, clean night air
• feeling well enough to attend teacher training
• being taught a new way to deepen gratitude: Each day, write down three things you're thankful for... and then ask yourself, "Why/how did they happen?" 

Listening, thinking, stitching, rambling

I was supposed to be at a very friendly knit night this evening but instead I'm home, sick with a fever, but my sticks and string are flying as I flop. I've got a gift to finish by Saturday. I'm set up in the shop, where my Rob is working late on an art project... a sound sculpture, to be exact. He's given me a chair to sit in near the center of the action. I'm surrounded by speakers and my ears and head are filling up with the nicest stuff. I'm excited to see (and hear) him seriously working in this new medium; I'm pleased and proud. It feels really right. He's preparing for a show and I think you should join us when it happens. Yes, you.

Late last night we went out for a walk downtown. We heard the most delightful squeaky fuss coming from high up, next to the alley behind the art store. It was sweet, funny bat music. What's a group of bats called? Surely not a flock, or a gaggle. What about a bite (megabite?), or a siphon, or a strangle of bats? Anyway, there was a crowd of them, making a tight little home together behind a sign. We stood there, peering into the dark, listening to them fret, hoping to see them fly out for their nightly hunt. Eventually, they began to emerge, one at a time, each one winging out crazily, many of them buzzing our heads. Bats! They're fabulous! They made me think of skydivers leaping from a plane, only they never fell to earth.

I think I'd like to build some bat houses with Rob. I don't want them in MY house but I'd love to have them as neighbors. I feel pretty sure their voices would end up in a sound sculpture somewhere.

A new season begins

We went out driving in the canyons in the afternoon, hoping for some first glimpses of autumn, and we were not disappointed. The oranges and red are just beginning to pop here and there. Oh! After such a wet spring and a lush summer, I think we're going to get quite a show this year. It will be hard to focus on valley life now that I know the season's color burst is underway. Wish we could hole up in some cabin in the mountains for the next few weeks and watch it all happen up close. 

I was too busy loving the scenery to think to snap pictures of it, but I did grab a shot of this osprey nest at the Jordanelle State Park near Francis. Ospreys are such beautiful birds (and like the turning leaves, not pictured here). We watched them for a long time and Rob managed to get some recordings of them, although there's noise interference from the road. What a gorgeous place we live in. I love Utah. I love how quick and easy it is to escape the city and get to some place magnificent.

We Meet Again (and Again)

Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You. (Dr. Seuss)

Who you are today?

Tell me. 

Tell me more. 

Sweet September

The season's changing. Welcome, September! Last night I needed to sleep with more cover. This evening down by the lake at sunset, as we watched flocks of ibises and swallows swoop in to settle down among the reeds, the air was autumnal. It's the time of year when I want to do something, learn something, move something, eat something.

I feel so ripe for the good changes which are already underway. The moon grinned wide and yellow at me tonight. Harvest begins in earnest. I can tell—this is going to be a fruitful month!

Miracles Are

Exhibit A.
You flew in the sky from there to here, to see your family, but you came to see me too, and I got to wrap my arms around you, and you are still you are still you are still my dear darling girl, my friend, my you-know-who. That's the sweetest blessing and benediction to a week that began with my getting dumped (thankfully not by Rob). That was the worst. You are the best. I love that we are still heart and soul friends and I hope I hope I hope that will always be our joy. I believe I believe I believe it will be.

Exhibit B.
You, amazing person who also flew in the sky from there to here, are exactly the person I expected. I don't brag like lots of people do that I am a good judge of character, because really, who can suss out that sort of information without a great deal of work and actual revelation? Such a declaration always embarrasses me. What I do claim is that it doesn't take long to love people, and every once in a while that feeling seems to predate the friendship itself. So when did I start knowing you, anyway? Logic says it must have been the first time I studied you in photos. But even then I felt a sense of recognition, so it must have been earlier still. Huh. Well, nice to meet you and finally get to say I like you out loud and to your face.

Exhibit C.
Thunder and rain. Comfort sounds.

Exhibit D.
After my third hamburger in less than 24 hours, I am completely ready and can hardly wait for The Great Garden Produce Purge of September. I wish I was starting my juice fast tomorrow, I am that tired of food, but I still have some prep to do. I am so ready to wash my brain and my whole system with veg and fruit. A full month of harvest season relief and bliss! It was that final devastating hamburger, the one at the ward picnic this evening, that pushed me over the edge. I don't care if I eat meat again till autumn. Or maybe ever. Ack!

About a Plant

Here we are, almost two years ago, just after learning I was pregnant again. Happy, thankful people.

A short time later we traveled to SoCal to spend some time with my dear uncle, who was in the process of wrapping up his mortal sojourn.

One day Rob and I went to the beach with my cousin. We went out onto the big pier and watched people fish and throw mackerel to the seals. (It isn't called Seal Beach for nothing.)

Later we poked around in a few shops downtown. My cousin bought a gigantic fake diamond for his wife, a piece of cut glass large enough to fill up my hand. 

There was nothing for sale that enticed me (except when we stopped in an Italian deli which nearly overpowered my will with its wall of olives) until we came upon a beautiful little open air garden shop. So many gorgeous growing things. I think Rob and my cousin Brett grew an inch of beard standing around, waiting for me to look at every last flower and succulent in the place. Twice. When I left, I had in tow a panda plant,

a few rescued pearls from a string of beads plant,

and a plant which is the one I want to tell you about. It's known as a mother plant.

This is the one I loved the best. Is it any wonder that I wanted to buy a mother plant to celebrate our big (but still secret at that point) joy? This plant is the succulent equivalent of a possom, carrying its "babies" till they're mature enough to drop to the ground and make it on their own. See the spiky edges of each leaf? Comfy lodging for a baby on each of those points. This kind of plant is so pretty to see when it's fruitfully full of its tiny riders. 

So, when our stay in Seal Beach reached an end, I carefully packed up my mother plant and the others and brought them all safely home to Utah. 

I expected to share some real maternal solidarity with the mother plant in the months ahead, but it wasn't meant to be. In the early summer I miscarried the baby I'd been so sure about. It was devastating. And the mother plant suffered. I never out and out tried to kill the plant, but I neglected it like I'd never neglected any other in my life. It remained in its tiny starter pot, with only the merest plug of soil to protect and sustain it. It dried out. Its babies died and it dropped most of its leaves. It stretched desperately toward light, toward any kind of nurturing, and grew spindly. It became deformed, almost two feet of thin green crisis. I might have watered it a few times (or Rob might have) in the beginning, a nickel's worth of a drink, only enough to be insulting. Then the soil really dried out, hard. The mother plant fell over and got pushed behind a junk pile. I never really forgot it; I began to ignore it. The sight of it depressed me but I couldn't persuade myself to throw it away... or take care of it either.

This non-story goes on and on. Months, many months passed. During those months Rob and I began working through the long process of preparing for an adoption through an agency, LDS Family Services. You'd think, wouldn't you, that I'd have made my peace with the mother plant then? Nope. Despite my own renewed pursuit of motherhood (possomhood?), the mother plant suffered on. 

Now Rob and I are facing a deadline that's less than two months away; we must complete our preparations so that once and for all we can qualify to become viable candidates for adoption. Do you know what people mean when they say they've been on an emotional roller coaster ride? I do. I'd like to say I've done nothing but push on diligently toward our goal for ten months, but I admit I stalled out here and there, scared and unsure, about irrational stuff. Or maybe rational stuff, depending upon how you look at it, but still irrelevant if you factor in faith. Yeah, what about miracles?

For instance, here's one: that crazy mother plant lives on. It's not a zombie, not undead; it's alive! It's been devastated, but it hangs on. It doesn't even seem to hate me. If my life was a Hitchcock film, or maybe a Kubrick, the mother plant would have strangled me in the night long ago, wrapped its horrible glow-in-the-dark tough skinniness around my neck and choked. But this show's got a finer director, so rather than whomping me with Mother Nature's curse, this little mother plant has shown me that survival is what we're made for. 

So March Forth, my very own holiday, came. A lot of good things happened that day, which I mentioned in my last post. The event that seemed the most celebratory and symbolic was finally caring for my mama possum plant. It felt like time, time to march forth in mothering and peacemaking. I found in our storage shed a pretty pot, never before used, and a new bag of potting mix. I put a magical rock from the day's hike in the bottom to cover the drainage hole. I kissed and clipped that mother plant. I cut her down again, and again, with my sharpest knife and steadiest hand, till there seemed to be almost nothing left of her. Then I carefully planted and watered her, and decorated her new home with more magical rocks and remnants of a beautiful old wall in Salt Lake, and set her on my favorite old plate to catch the extra water.

This is a lot of talk about a plant, isn't it?

The mother plant was curled and bent when I planted it two days ago. Today it's standing straight (already!) and that's an encouraging sight. I'm doting: Need a mist, love? Here you go! Such a forgiving thing, this plant. How did it go on so long in the face of my grudge and manage to survive on air? How? 

I have a habit of looking for symbols everywhere. Maybe I'm projecting too much onto this plant. Whatever happens with my own mothering, I'm through with killing-by-degrees this eager green life. I'm hoping it will soon feel well enough to possum up and make a few happy vigorous babies. If anybody wants a succulent start, I can certainly vouch for the strength of the stock. 

How I Celebrated March Forth

I went with Rob to visit another planet.

We brought home souvenirs. (I carried so many in my pockets that my pants wanted to fall down.)

Spied a tree growing rosary beads, but decided not to harvest any for my prayers (wrong religion). 

Listened to jazz (and you can too, right here), loved it. Loved my friends.

The pièce de résistance was rehabilitating this (nearly two feet long prior to surgery):

and giving it a fresh chance at living. This is significant.

I'll tell you why in the next post. (Must sleep now. Tired out from all this Marching Forth.)

Sliding (part 1)

Photography tip: If you want to capture a feeling of motion in a picture, it generally doesn't work to shoot straight into the oncoming action, like so:

and so:

and so:

and so:

or you wind up getting static shots that give no sense of speed. Shoot from the side or it will make little difference whether your subject moves rapidly (Rob) or slowly (Geo); what you'll end up with is a static image. As in this case, you could miss out on accurately demonstrating the whee of an overdue sliding lesson, sought by an eager, awkward novice and delivered with playful panache by a long-time pro, at Utah Lake on a bitingly cold New Year's Day. (But this doesn't mean it wasn't fun.)

More on this and other January subjects tomorrow. Happy 2011, everyone.

Parts that don't photograph

So we went on a vacation, and it was great. If you're someone who knows how I reacted to coastal Oregon my first time there you may have wondered if I would make good on my old dream of moving there, but I came home. I kept a journal every day as we traveled—mostly I wrote late at night, so it's going to be tough to go back and decipher that chicken-scratched fatigue-speak, but I expect some of my notes will find their way here. Tonight I'll mention a couple moments, not the stuff of scrapbooks, but for me very memorable. They took place on the first and third of three progressively sick days, which happened to coincide with a planned hike and many hours of driving from There to Home Again.

Moment #1: After climbing to the top of Multnomah Falls, I stood staring into the waters as they rushed over the rocks and down, down, down. It was there that an unusual impression came to me: the elements are my friends. Something seemed to say, Whatever comes your way in the future—if there are lonely times—you can always find support and friendship here. It seemed like a love declaration, an expression of family solidarity. From the earth. Huh.

Moment #2: On the long road between Nampa, Idaho and home, I was in lots of pain and was sadly no help at all with the driving. I flopped, a twisting turning passenger, trying to sit up and be company to Rob, trying to talk, trying to read, but quickly I had to go horizontal again, so I lowered my seat till it was nearly flat. As I lay back and breathed into the hurt, I sensed someone sitting behind me, female, very gently stroking my hair, the way you might do when you want to help someone relax or feel better, or when you're just being quiet and close. Another unexpected friend? Huh.

Okay. I'll take them where I find them when they're true.

Most of the other parts I'll share about our time in the Pacific Northwest are concrete experiences, stuff I actually took photos of (or at least could have if I'd been quick enough), the great fun we had, the wonderful visits we enjoyed with people we cherish, the lovely views we applauded, the interesting meals we ate, the beached jellyfish we poked at. So don't worry that I'm going all funny on you. Just a little funny. No more than usual.

A rather long ramble about listening

Yesterday I was given the opportunity to speak briefly to a group of women about the beauty of storytelling as family history. Oral tradition. Asking, remembering, speaking, hearing, sharing—all aspects of listening. In preparation for the assignment I dug out some old family recordings—one I made of my grandmother singing, back when I was just 8 and trying out my first cassette recorder; another I made of her answering my awkward interview questions, 32 years later; and a cassette my mother recorded for me a few years after I'd left home—a Southern story, to honor Christmas—the only piece of her voice I have left. The first two I mentioned made me laugh out loud and got me singing and sniffling. My mama's tape wiped me out less than a sentence into the thing. It's incredible how powerful just the sound of someone's voice can be. I couldn't listen to Mama's tape yesterday and still be able to concentrate on getting ready for my little class. So, I stuck with Gram's singing and drawling, and the tracks I played for the women to introduce my topic seemed to charm them all. 

Yesterday I also blogged that I'd like to hear your adoption stories; I'd like to even begin recording them next month, if possible. (By the way, did you know that November is National Adoption Month? Neither did I till today. Synchronicity. Must mean I'm on the right track with this idea.) I am thrilled that a few people have responded, writing bits of their own and others' stories. I hope that some will feel brave and interested enough to share their voices as well. 

Today Rob and I spent three straight hours with a friend, recording him at the outset of what is already proving a strange and romantic international quest for... well, I'm sworn to secrecy for the time being, but I'm hoping some day to persuade him to let me write the screenplay once he's survived and recovered from his journey, has (hopefully) come off conqueror, and feels ready to share his secret and sell the movie rights. 

This evening Rob and I visited our favorite local library and came home as usual with unreadably large armloads of books. (I was trying, on my way out to the car, to imagine how many thousands of pounds of books I've checked out and carried off in my lifetime. I hope when I die I'll get the answer to that question. One of the books Rob happened to spot was a book on music that is really a book about listening. It spoke to me before I even cracked the cover: I love you. You love me. Buy me for your li-bra-ry. Then I read the intro and first essay. Yes, indeed. I already know who's getting this book for Christmas. What I love about it is that right away it started in talking to me about something I've been fuzzling over a while: Why do some people seem so unable or unwilling to listen? And no, I won't exempt myself from the question; sometimes I am guilty of being the non-listener. If it wasn't late and I wasn't writing from my bed with my mama's quilt thrown over me and my laptop, I'd be mining and including some quotes from the book right now.

I am excited to help my sister-in-law and two friends record some oral history in a few weeks. The more listening and facilitating I do, the more I want to do. Rob has started calling us recordists. I've suggested sound hunters, and that applies sometimes, but it seems that we are merely becoming listeners. Nobody's paying us to do this yet(?), and really, I almost feel I should be paying others for the privilege of hearing their stories. Maybe listening itself is at least partial payment. 

Other interesting listening moments today:

• While recording our friend, capturing as well the sound of a (our) whining dog, and of Rob's parents talking in our backyard
• Hearing another person's hidden fear
• Horses in fields on either side of the road, running excitedly to parallel clearings, waiting and listening to yet other horses approaching, clop-clop-clopping far off down the pavement, with riders astride
• Allowing ourselves to be engaged by an old man on the Jordan River Parkway Trail and hearing his reminiscences about photographing sunsets, canoeing, traveling, and his big plans to develop museums and science centers around Utah Lake as well as historical monuments along the Provo River Trail 
• Walking on one of the last quiet country roads in our town, stopping right in the middle and listening to the wind, the bugs and other animals, and the falling night
• Paying attention to body signals
• Paying attention to brain alarms
• Receiving comfort
• Noticing body language, hearing the unspoken, understanding subtext
• Weighing options and saying yes to simplicity
• Catspeak
• Appreciating the hush of my old knitting needles made of some material that doesn't click when it meets itself
• Unpacking the car late at night, being surprised by two small boys razor scootering down the middle of our street, one of them calling me by name

Life can be so utterly likable sometimes

Beauties of the day—

• Soon after I crawled out of bed feeling unwell, I turned on the radio just in time to hear the single most nightmarishly wonderful glitch ever uttered by a young female announcer. The fact that she misread breaking news about the world's largest living organism on KBYU-FM, of all stations, only added to my hilarity. I laughed myself simultaneously sick and well and felt much better for the ab work. Poor girl. She managed to mostly keep her composure long enough to finish her report, but I could tell she was about to choke. I imagine when she was finally off the air she probably burst out laughing and then threw up. 
• Today was Day 1 for me of my 21-Day Meditation Challenge from the Chopra Center. It was a good 12 minutes. Care to join me? (Thanks for telling me about this challenge, Robin.) 
• I enjoyed a brief but fun Facebook exchange with one of my favorite people on this planet. (Do you know who you are? I do, at least.)
• I wrote a four-page stream-of-consciousness letter in one sitting. With my bright orange Aurora fountain pen.
• Lovely, funny, generous Charla came to visit on Leland's Flying Pigeon and brought us a great big bag of freshly-harvested salad greens. 
• It was finally chilly enough tonight to wear my best old sweater when I went out for a walk with Rob (which deserves a bullet point all its own, really).
• We picked perfectly crisp sweet apples from a neglected neighborhood tree and brought home enough for apple crisp tomorrow (if we can stop eating them tonight).
• Rob ordered The Book of Imaginary Beings and it arrived today. I can't wait to read it!
• Oh, and I nearly forgot—I discovered this beautiful quote:"If you hear a voice within you saying, You are not a painter, then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced." —Vincent Van Gogh

Starling

Found out earlier that a young woman I'm acquainted with, a family friend, is dying. Three weeks she's been given. Weeks! That's practically like budgeting out the rest of her life in hours. It's only been a few months since this beautiful girl was singing over the supper table to entertain us and our extended family. She was already well down the road to a professional singing career when she fell ill. And now she's nearly ready to leave home on a startlingly different kind of journey.

And seemingly to drive that hurtful point home, the sweet starling baby my tender-hearted mum-in-law has been lovingly tending and urging toward adulthood (so kindly that the homely little thing was practically calling her Mama after a couple weeks), was killed by Coco and/or Cowrie, the big dogs in residence. What a sad thing. I know plenty of people dislike starlings, but it's impossible not to be charmed by a friendly baby, however ratty looking, who sits contentedly on your finger and talks and chirps and asks comically for food.

So, it's been a thoughtful day.

We had a no-lunch lunch date with some wonderful people, friends I'm glad to claim. But afterward, when the chumming hour was over, more thoughts. They just wouldn't turn off.

Existential angst.
My age.
Other people's problems and griefs.
Mortality.
All the books I won't get around to reading even if I live another thousand years.
Library fines.
Stuff I dare not mention.
My dog's dental problems.

You know, right? Because you tumble down the stairs into your own dark spidery basement of thoughts sometimes too. I wasn't in the black abyss I sometimes visit, but I was definitely below ground in a musty place where the light doesn't adequately reach.

Even when Rob and I went out for Korean food this evening, I had a hard time shaking some of more troubling thoughts (i.e., far beyond the book and dog worries). And a strange fatigue got hold of me. I could barely keep my eyes open or stay upright. Felt like everything was shutting down. Even my speech was coming out in slo-mo. Some date I was!

But we drove out toward the lake in search of sandhill cranes and ended up walking along a tucked away path we haven't explored together since last October. What a beautiful evening—the light was golden, and the clouds and sun rays made an incredible show. The wind whipped my hair twentythirtyforty directions, but blew away the usual bug clouds and also churned up the lake till it seemed you could almost surf on it. Pelicans were everywhere. Elegant terns, with their hilariously incongruous buzzy voices, snapped through the air and mixed with countless swallows, all catching their dinner to the left and to the right—zip! swoop! A great blue heron rose up from the reeds just ahead of us. A muskrat. The species of bird I spotted in our neighborhood last week—black wings, yellow neck and breast and back, rosy red head. Wildflowers, yellow and purple, of which I pinched an armload for the dining room table. A houseboat anchored in a small swampy inlet area of the lake. Birds singing all around, beautiful songs. Shifting light. An airplane high above us, seeming to head straight for the sun. A good walk and then a slow ride around the lake, to spare Mudhoney some alignment problems from hitting too many holes too fast.

It was during the first part of our time at the lake when I caught a whiff of something fresh and flowering then got my body moving, one foot after another, and my thoughts corrected themselves; I'm wasting time on these worries, I said inside me. What if I had three weeks to live? What if today was my last day? What would I want to be doing? and thinking? It didn't take me long to boil it all down to gratitude—that's where I would want my thoughts to be centered, and what I would wish to use as a template for my "last" choices.

How would you wish to spend your day, if today was your last? I know it's almost cliché now, that question, but it doesn't bother me. It's still a good thing to consider.

I spent the rest of the evening trying to be present and notice everything beautiful. When we drove by a bank full of bunchy white weeds and they were thrashing in the wind as if they were in a mosh pit, we stopped and smiled at their wild party. It really looked to me like the earth was dancing. And why not? What could be better than feeling the wind in your flowers?

What if I really had only three weeks to live? What if today really was my last day?

I spent the evening focused on gratitude and loving and concentrating on righthererightnow, and everything about my day changed, in an instant. And energy returned. But maybe that just was the kimchee talking.

Sowing seeds, reaping media

NEIL: [who has been hoeing—picks up a large bag of seed packets] OK, I've plowed this bit, right. And now I'm going to sow it. [throws packets of seed down] This self-sufficiency thing really is amazing. We sow the seed, right. Nature grows the seed, and then, we eat the seed. And then, after that, we sow the seed, nature grows the seed, and then, we eat the seed. And then, after that again, we sow the seed, nature grows the seed...

RICK: Oh, shut up, Neil! Shut up! Shut up. It's pathetic. I mean, what about radical magazines? What about Kicker boots?! Can we grow them? No, we can't, can we?! The beauty of your plan, Neil, seems to rest on everyone being really into seeds.

NEIL: No no no, Rick. You don't understand the timeless wonder of the whole thing. We sow the seed! Nature grows the seed. We eat the seed. And then...

[Rick clobbers Neil with a shovel. Neil collapses, unmoving.]

So it has come and gone, the big project that's been burning a hole in my brain for the past season—the first-ever Utah County Community Seed Exchange. It was fun, and successful. Several local businesses were very generous with their donations, providing us with all sorts of seeds, seeds forever, packet after packet of swappable-edible-beautiful seed bounty. The folks who braved the weather (snow and slop) to take part and trade their treasures and tips were wonderful; I met so many delightful people. Some of them had questions. Some had answers. All had enthusiasm and interest. This event was sure proof that gardening builds character, because there wasn't a dud in the bunch! I feel really grateful to everyone who helped make it work—the donors, the swappers, the Extension service. We even had a few reporters on hand interviewing, photographing, videotaping—and I appreciate them very much. Old friends were reunited. New friendships were begun. Holy moly, what a treat! The day just flew. 

Now it's time to turn my attention to other projects, but half my brain is still taken up with a growing obsession (yep, pun intended). My yard and garden need a heckuva lot of work. And now I've got a revamped stash of beautiful seeds, all ready to be planted and nurtured. Wow! Exciting!

I got so caught up in the details of the exchange that I forgot to do things like pick up copies of the local paper when the pre-swap story ran and again when the post-swap story appeared. But I did read them online. Did you catch any of our newscaster's shout-outs? Here's the media lineup (and big thanks again to all who spread the word):

UPP online article

Daily Herald (pre-swap) article

Daily Herald (post-swap) article

BYU Universe Daily News at Noon video (you'll find the exchange story about halfway through)

If anyone who attended took photos and is willing to share, please contact me. My personal photographer experienced some technical difficulties that day, so I am essentially pictureless. 

Mwah! Now get planting, friends!