Momentous Events

Myself and Shannon with Rose
getting her "Spa treatment" for her sciatica discomfort

My dear friend, Shannon Dirksen, and I have been planning get togethers for so many years.  Each time our gathering is postponed due to illness or something that comes up in one or the other of our lives to thwart our plans.  This time however our time together came off without a hitch.  Shannon arrived from her research presentation in Portland, Oregon to the Sonoma County Airport and departed from the same.  We had such a grand time together!

The two female blue Indian Runners are growing up.  

Babies in their veggie garden enclosure where bird netting over the top of the

chicken wire prevents raptors from enjoying them for a snack.

Getting to and from the veggie garden. 

Blue Indian Runner ducklings in their enclosure
in the garage where they are kept warm with
a heat lamp.  Organic food and fresh water
are provided with daily fresh wood chips.

Earlier this week they turned 4 weeks old.  We moved them from their box in the garage and enclosure in the veggie garden to the duck house and and enclosure in front of its upright swinging door.  

The ducklings' enclosure now allows them to go into and out of the duck house during the day, that is when there
is not a large alligator lizard nestled into the wood chips beneath the heat lamp scaring them away.

Four weeks old and enjoying the sunshine, warm weather, bugs, and fresh
greens, like baby borage plants.  They will remain in this enclosure
until they have their feathers in about four more weeks.

The big ducks were none too happy with the sharing their house.  It took both Dwight and I to get them to go into the duck house for the first night; each ensuing night is getting a bit easier.  Quaking Grass flower essence is assisting the merging of the babies and big ducks.


Rose is healing.  AND we all 

Rose and Babies

Let us be the always hopeful 

Gardeners of the spirit

Who know that without darkness

Nothing comes to birth

As without light

Nothing flowers.  

May Sarton, The Invocation to Kali

Rose, as most of you know, had her left rear leg amputated last midJune to remove the osteosarcoma, a highly malignant and painful tumor, growing in her knee.  She was a very determined Rose, ambulating soon after the operation so she could come home.  To all who have seen her the general comment is “she’s amazing” and her recovery seemed seamless.  Well, as any of you who have had physical challenges and recovered fully know, one needs to inhabit one’s body and deal with the challenge.  Rose is only now facing the realization “I have only three legs.”  She is in a Dark Place and Working so she can once again be in the “Fun (aka Bright) Place.” 

Rose deep inside herself

Before coming into physical form, aka body, Rose agreed to merge “wildness” and “domesticated”.  This Work seems to be all tangled with BEing in a body with only 3 legs.  And however simple this statement seems, the ramification are huge for Rose who if she was in the wild with a pack of wolves would be either driven out of the pack or killed.  Now that she lives with Dwight and me as a seemingly domesticated dog she had her leg amputated to remove the cancer AND now with sciatica in her remaining rear leg she is depended on us to get her into the house. She wags her tail when we approach her and then bares her teeth and growls every bit as ferociously as an animal in the wild.  To me this represents Rose’s internal conflict.

When Rose came to live with us we agreed to allow her to do her Work and to support her process.  What a learning experience, on many levels!  On the spiritual level for me, watching Rose brings evolution alive.  Humans began as single cells evolving to become a complex two legged.  When I went to church as a child, the literal interpretation of the biblical story “God created Heaven and Earth in six days and on the seventh rested” seemed, well, farfetched.  Evolution over millions of years makes way more sense to me.  And now watching Rose grapple with her four legged wildness in a domesticated setting brings me to the realization that two legged human spirits evolve from four leggeds who have completed their soul work at that level of evolution.  Then to take this further, perhaps human spirits who are just making the transition (with the global population explosion each spirit comes from some previous BEing does it not?) exhibit more aggressive behavior that is seen in wild animals.  "No wonder we have so much global unrest!" is what surfaces in my mind.

Rose Working using Mother Earth's abundant energy

While Rose is Working she is providing me with the fodder for my own spiritual evolution and for that I thank her.

On a lighter note, we have two new babies, female Blue Indian Runners.  To learn more about Indian Runners you can check out their history in the link below:

http://www.metzerfarms.com/BlueRunnerDucks.cfm?Breed=Blue%20Runner&BirdType=Duck&ID=BLUR&CustID=236102

Since we wanted only two to add to our small flock of female Indian Runner ducks, we had ours transported along with the 300 Pekin ducks Salmon Creek Ranch ordered from Metzer Farms.  Chez Panisse in Berkeley is now serving this local organic ranch’s Pekin ducks on their menu.

http://www.salmoncreekranch.com/

First out of doors experience at three days old

"Isn't this world amazing and BIG?"

A fellow California native gardner, Victoria Wikle is spearheading Riverkeeper Park which you check out with the link below:

http://www.russianriverkeeper.org/what-we-do/habitats/riverkeeper-park.php

And last but not least, do you know that the scientific research is showing Monsanto’s Roundup to be more toxic to the environment that DDT which decimated the raptor population?  I am very sad when I walk or drive by vast swaths of ground sprayed with Roundup!  To discharge this emotion I remind myself to