Babies and Beauty

In preparation for afternoon tea I made two different kinds of cookies. I was busy with my project and I heard a ruckus through the South facing kitchen windows. At first I just ignored the noise but as the wild turkey was persistent I went out the front door to see three baby turkeys (not even 3 inches tall) walking across Page Street. YIKES! no wonder mama was adamant they join her and their siblings.

 

In the above photograph you can see Mama standing on one side of Page Street.

All walking by were naturally curious. One gentleman with camera in hand was taking pictures and Mama Turkey charged him. He reported he counted six babies. We all assume Mama brought the babies through Delano Park but why, why, why was she meandering into the manufactured home park across the street?

Today I can report no sightings of turkeys of any size. WHEW! I'm sure they have returned to the safety of the fields a block and a half away.

Moving onto the beauty happening in the Japanese maple tree located on the West side of our front yard: when I was living in Palo Alto (the first time) many years ago, a friend raised red flowering epiphytes. She was kind enough to share one (like this pictured below now hanging in my Cotati front yard).

While living at MuRefuge I began collecting different colors. When we relocated to Santa Fe, New Mexico, I gave my collection to my friend Diane who lives down Hessel Avenue towards the North. Now I am back where I can grow these unusual plants that thrive in trees located in tropical rainforests where they settle into forks of trees where big branches come together. They do not need soil.

The three peach colored flowers pictured below I did not have in my collection. Diane's sister gave her these peach colored epiphytes. She in turn passed along one to me.

And I have one plant I gave to Diane that has not bloomed for her. My plan is to divide the plant and repot it. Then hopefully it, once resettled and root bound, will bloom. What color?

A Pipevine caterpillar update: 

This caterpillar seems to like
to munch on not only the leaves
but the stems of the 
California Pipevine(Aristolochia californica)
as well.

Yesterday I had a dear friend over for tea which was the reason for cookie baking. We sat outside and sipped tea at our glass top table. She had not seen our Cotati house nor garden so we had a walk about. She marveled "you have done three gardens and my husband  and I are still working on one." And I was sharing that the remaining caterpillar was gone; that I was certain something had eaten it since I found some tea colored thick stuff on one of the big California Pipevine leaves that had been munched on by the caterpillar.

My friend was looking about on the West side of house and pointed out what is pictured below on the side of the addition to the original 1950s bungalow.

Rob gave me five caterpillars some six weeks ago. I had unhappily texted him earlier in the day about the demise of the remaining caterpillar. Once my friend who had located the caterpillar left I texted  Rob again sending him the above picture. His response was "he's getting ready to form his cocoon." 

The above picture was taken on Friday. Both Dwight and I are worried that the caterpillar once enclosed in a cocoon will be too hot from the West sun. Rob says "just leave the caterpillar alone." So we both just go out and look many times a day but we have not disturbed the process of transformation from caterpillar to butterfly which, when you really consider the process, it is quite a phenomenal event!

To dissipate all the angst and worry I

Meanderings

Meanderings in our new neighborhood is both familiar and not. While I use to shop at Oliver's, the local grocery store here in Cotati, while we lived at MuRefuge, we did not walk about this cozy little town of over 7,000. We did used to walk along the Laguna de Santa Rosa headwaters that our English friend and now near neighbor restored. The plantings are all native and have grown into stunning flowering shrubs and native blooming trees like the Buckeye tree which I love.

We have a long, narrow "dog" park (Delano Park) just across the street from our new home that Shasta and I walk through each morning as we use to walk to Lopez Park in Santa Fe. Some mornings we meet a number of dogs and their owners, other we are by ourselves. As we come out at the far end of the park there is an expansive field across the street. Here's what we saw this morning.

Each morning we see the two cows and usually a small flock of wild turkeys of which there is a plethora, both here in Cotati and other towns and cities in Sonoma County. We have heard of over 200 in flocks and most all the citizens complain of the numbers. If they get into one,s garden they can reek havoc with the plantings for sure!

As we round the corner and come upon the City of Cotati Munipal Center, we pass a stunning planting of Matilla poppies which is my most favorite "bush" for its spectacular "floppy" flowers.

Matilija Poppy (Romney coulters)

And here is what the "bush" looks like.

My plan is to have one? two? three? in front of our breakfast nook window near the "floppy" flowered rose bush that rests against the garage. 

As you can see the flowers of the two have a similar quality. And while I am neither a big fan of roses nor do I have any skill in knowing how to care for roses, this rose is rather growing on me. The other yellow with a slight reddish tint rose bush I will dig up this week. The lady who cares for all the roses at the church down the street is going to plant it with all the pink and red roses which have been donated by people after their loved one's funeral. She was delighted to get another color.  

After breakfast all three of us have a couple mile walk, sometimes longer. One of our new favorites is walking West beneath the freeway into a neighborhood with really old stately homes and small newer ones as well as bigger ones dotting the shady road.

Another common bird is the peacock.
Here is one in his favorite
shady spot
where we see him almost each time 
we walk here.
We have seen a female with two babies
 . . . cute beyond description!

Here you see a male turkey attempting to woo a nearby female
who seem uninterested, at least to this human's thought of the matter.

A touch of Santa Fe: 
here is a picture of
Olive Tyrrell's, the chef at
The Kitchen located
in the Plants of the Southwest,
beautiful slab pot
with a rabbit foot fern
sitting on the back of our
new very low flow toilet.

I know it has been almost two months since I have written a post. Seems the moving, unpacking, having my very first yard sale (with stupendous guidance from Katie), digging up plants and throwing them into the garden waste bins x2  which get filled to the brim weekly, going to an A's game every few weeks and spending time with our long time friends here in Sonoma County . . .  well, the time has sped by. But now you can look forward to the upcoming Summer Solstice post.

There is one native plant, well it is actually a vine, that was previously planted in the gardens of 35 Page Street. This I will not only keep but cherish especially when the Pipevine Swallowtails eventually visit and lay eggs on the leaves. 

California Pipevine (Aristolochia californica)
now retrellised after all the icky redwood bark
was removed, then watered and fed.

May we all during these unsettled times (what an understatement . . .huh?) continue to

What If . . . ?

“What if” we BEings are more than the physical vessel we believe we see with our naked eye?

“What if” we BEings are made up more of subtle energy than physical matter much like what is represented by the spider (physical vessel) and web (subtle energy)? 

I recently heard that the ratio of energy to matter in living BEings is 90%:10% which caused me to pause and reflect. Back in the late ’80’s when I moved to Sonoma County after wandering the country in search of the “perfect job” I embarked upon a path of healing and self cultivation. As I began on this path I was introduced to the Enneagram, a dynamic map (“the map is not the territory” a soul sister voiced) of both the personality AND of higher states of BEing. I was intrigued that others saw the world differently and likewise reacted in other ways from myself. I thought to myself, “if others can see the world differently than me, I can learn to see differently too.” 

We Ones of the Enneagram are all about perfecting oneself which can be annoying to the other eight types and yet serves me well in the process of waking up from habitual behaviors learned in infancy and childhood.  While sitting a recent morning past while gazing at the beach rock engraved with the Enneagram symbol, a thought arose, “What if the opening in the bottom of the Enneagram diagram allows for the flow of Tao, aka qi/Life Force, which then splinters into 9 narrow and quite different fragments of reality?” 

Thus the Enneagram diagram illustrates that each of the nine types numbered One through Nine sees, experiences and feels a different slice of reality as though each type wears glass lenses of distinct color within the full spectrum of color representing reality, much like the opening in the bottom (all that is "real" or reality) splinters into narrow views of reality represented by the nine points around the circle. 

Recently my awareness has been shifting to seeing and feeling energy which is allowing me to recognize that energy flows within and around me. This process is affording me awareness of the connections to, not only the Tao, but all sentient BEings as well. As we live in a world of rapidly increasing human manufactured energy, aka electromagnetic fields (EMFs), how does that “static” interfere with our own individual BEing? And what disruption does more and more EMFs cause in our ability to connect or “bind together” (as in the Latin origin of the word: con - together and nectere - bind)?

Recently, while staying in a small house with solar panels atop the roof, I became aware of the splintering of/holes in my energy field. My late brother would say my energy field was "wonky." I could not connect with the beauty that I felt in my body or visually saw around me; nor could I stand still in the Standing Crane qi gong pose, one of my usual morning poses which I typically can maintain for some while. An ah-ha occurred when I noted the solar panels
above our living space. I have previously known viscerally that solar panels are not a beneficial way of generating electricity for the ever growing number of humans, most of whom have no idea about simplicity nor “what is enough.” Of course, there is the response, “the earth generates EMFs,” to which a counter response may be that all sentients BEings evolving here on Planet Earth have done so in the presence of her electrical field. The human generated EMFs are now occurring in massive amounts to accommodate the out of control appetites of our overpopulated planet.

So, “what if” the human created EMFs disrupt homeostasis not only of humans but all sentient BEings. We know from research that those humans living near electrical transformers have an increase of rare and unusual cancers. “What if” this is the end result of chronic interference with those humans' homeostases which are not maintained by physiological processes as we have been told, but rather by subtle energy processes?

Can you feel the energy and physical matrix
of Golden Currant (Ribes aurum) now beginning to
flower here at MuRefuge?

Or within the California Pipevine (Aristolochia californica)
also beginning to flower and leaf out here at MuRefuge?

For me the anthropocene worldview is nothing short of terrifying! Edward O. Wilson described this worldview in his glossary of Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life (2016) as “applied to nature, the belief that all life should be henceforth valuated primarily or even solely for its importance to human welfare. In its extreme form, the worldview envisions future Earth as entirely enveloped and engineered by humans.” “What if” the widening chasm in our Congress is merely a microcosm of the widening schism between those viewing Nature with all of her magnificent subtle energy as the most valued force on Mother Earth versus “science” which believes and acts as though it can do better than Nature, or at the very least, create what she has created.

A revealing happening at the latest Heirloom Festival, held annually usually in August in Santa Rosa, California, at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds, was a representative from agribusiness interviewing attendees about their preference for heirloom tomatoes to tomatoes created by this industry. YIKES! Humans think they can create something as good as or better than what has evolved without “splicing and dicing” as the saying goes?

Also in Wilson’s glossary: “Anthropocene: The proposed name for a new geological epoch in which the entire global environment has been altered by humanity.”

“What if” this comes to fruition? It seems to me we are well on our way. And if we continue on this path then of course we are participating in our own extinction. 

“What if” rather each human wakes up, is conscious and connects with Tao both within and without? Could we then avoid the Sixth Extinction?

As we each ponder this, may we 

California Pipevine

From Complete Garden Guide to the Native Perennials of California by Glenn Keator:

"Here is perhaps our most curious native vine. Roots penetrate deeply between rocks on brushy or wooded hillsides; stems wind their way around surrounding vegetation to reach light. Stems are covered with attractive, fuzzy narrowly heart-shaped leaves; flowers are often borne before new leaves appear at the end of winter. These are alway sure to catch attention — they are distinctly pipe-shaped, the sepals with three maroon-purple lobes at the opening to the 'pipe.' The rest of the floral envelope consists of brown and white stripes which surround and hide the stamens and pistil. Insects are fooled into entering the pipe, lose their orientation, and remain trapped until pollination is completed. Pipevine is capable of extending stems several feet in a season, but the new growth and leaves are normally lost in winter, to be replaced the following season. Cuttings and rooted sections are quite easy ways of propagating pipe-vine.

Since pipe-vine is more odd than beautiful, it might be displayed on its own trellis, rock wall, unsightly shrub, or simply up a small tree in the woodland garden. Since the pipe-vine swallowtail butterfly depends upon the leaves as food for its larvae, planting this species will attract these beautiful butterflies."

Louise Hallberg has almost single handedly assured all of us living here in Sonoma County of a plethora of Pipevine Swallowtail butterflies to enjoy. For many years she has led by example by planting and caring for this "curious native vine." We are so fortunate for her setting this example for gardeners who often plant this caterpillar food for the Pipevine Swallowtail butterfly, thus supporting its flourishing numbers when most other butterflies are nearing extinction since their caterpillar food plants are becoming scarcer or disappearing altogether.

The many California Pipevines growing here at MuRefuge are covered with the what I see as beautiful flowers, looking like none of the other early blooming natives perennials. Two Winters ago a start was planted just inside the gate by the garage. This is the primary gate used to enter and exit the fenced area of MuRefuge. So the thought was "wouldn't a California Pipevine be an attraction at this location?" The plant and its dependent butterfly have not disappointed! Caterpillars were abundant last Spring and Summer, and now the entire vine on its trellis is covered with flowers with nary a leaf yet to distract from this eye catching display.

The California Pipevine in full bloom

      The California Pipevine leaves that are the Pipevine Swallowtail caterpillar food.

Pipevine Swallowtail caterpillars in varying sizes munching away at the plant specific food.

The California Pipevine caterpillar

The California Pipevine seedpod

The Pipevine Swallowtail chrysalis

Freshly emerged Pipevine Swallowtail

May we honor diversity, support ecological gardening and