The Drought is Here

"We join together as many and diverse expressions

of one loving mystery: for the healing of the

earth and the renewal of all life."

                           U.N. ENVIRONMENTAL SABBATH PROGRAM

A goldfinch landed
on the nyger seed feeder
just to my left as I was watering
the recently planted flower seeds.

 Don't Spray It Sweep It

Break out that broom

anytime you need an

outdoor cleanup rather 

than spraying with water.

Santa Rosa Water

"To ensure adequate water supplies 

are available for current 

and future water demands 

under varying water supply conditions, 

Santa Rosa Water has an 

aggressive water conservation program

and provides recycled water for urban 

and agricultural irrigation 

to reduce demands on 

our precious drinking water.”

The view of the mulching from our
sliding back door onto the slate patio.
Please note the heart rock that
Dwight gleaned from the banks
of the Santa Fe River as a
birthday present to me while we
lived in Santa Fe.

Water is a precious commodity not only here in the West but throughout the world. The population continues to grow well beyond Mother's Earth capacity to safely harbor all of her inhabitants. Wildlife, forests, expansive plains are all struggling to survive amidst the burgeoning number of humans.

"The Drought is Here" signs have popped up in many yards throughout our small burg. One has a sign in her front yard while her neighbor to her left and two across the street water their lawns every day . . . every day???? What are those humans thinking? In my opinion they are "not thinking" nor taking action to conserve water. I ask, "what is the purpose of a green lawn?"

Fortunately the City of Cotati is still giving "lawn rebates" which we are in the process of receiving. The yard will be fully sheet mulched first, plants chosen and purchased then in early November all the plants will be planted into the ground. A full list of plants as well as cost of the mulch will be considered in the amount of the rebate. Of course, we will not submit any cost for the latter since we are using "wood chips".

The completely mulched backyard:
8" to 10" in woodchips were
laid over natural fiber clothing
and/or cardboard.

I was quite amazed that the city's recommendation is for 2" of mulch. From my experience that minimal amount really does not provide any benefit of either weed suppression nor feeding the soil so microbes thrive making for more vibrant, healthy soil. While removing all of the vegetation here, I found the soil dead ... it feels dead, it looks dead and for sure it is dead. The state of the soil was masked with huge amounts of redwood fluffy shavings. Oh my gosh, I am so glad all of that was taken away by Cookie earlier this Summer just passed.

I can barely wait until the planting can begin.
Bare root apples (x3) and 1 Blenheim apricot tree 
have just been ordered from Trees of Antiquity. 

The present idea is to plant the apple trees to the left of the Santa Rosa plum, the trunk of which is in the middle of the picture above. The write up on Trees of Antiquity's website says that the Cox Orange Pippen is on of the best fruit trees to espalier. Since we have limited space which is the primary reason fruit trees are espaliered, I am going to try my hand at this technique. Right now I am undecided whether to do this along the fence pictured above or the fence along the West side of the house. Stay tuned.

It is a mystery to me why the pictures above look "cloudy" in appearance. That is not how they appear in iPhoto???? To let this go I'll have a hardy belly

Autumnal/Fall Equinox, 2021

O sacred season of Autumn, be my teacher,

for I wish to learn the virtue of contentment.

            As I gaze upon your full colored beauty, 

                    I sense all about you

an at homeness with your amber riches.

You are the season of retirement, 

of full barns and harvested fields.

The cycle of growth has ceased,

and the busy work of giving life

is now completed.

I sense in you no regrets:

you've lived a full life.

I live in a society that is ever restless,

always eager for more mountains to climb,

seeking happiness through more and more possessions.

As a child of my culture,

I am seldom truly at peace with what I have.

Teach me to take stock of what I have given and received,

may I know that it's enough,

that my striving can cease

in the abundance of God's grace.

May I know the contentment

that allows the totality of my energies

to come to full flower.

May I know that like you I am rich beyond measure.

As you, O Autumn, take pleasure in your great bounty,

let me also take delight

in the abundance of the simple things in life

which are the true source of joy.

With the golden glow of peaceful contentment

may I truly appreciate this autumn day.

                                      EDWARD HAYS                                  

My friend DeAnne just a few
days ago shared this picture 
of newly purchased ristras
hanging in her back patio.
She says they are exordinarily heavy
this year given the abundance
of rain during the recent monsoon season
with the most monsoon rainfall since 2014.

Oh my gosh, where have these first nine months of 2021 gone? I have a fleeting remembrance of Christmas. Was that really almost 10 months ago? Really? It seems to me we were just making the decision to sell our 1950's Stamm home in Santa Fe, New Mexico, yet here we are settled into our 1950's cottage in Cotati, California. All this has taken place amidst the pandemic. 

And now the Autumnal Equinox is just around the corner. September 22 at 12:21 pm PDT is the official arrival of Autumn. This is a time of equal balance of light and dark on planet Earth. Based on the astronomical definition of seasons, the Autumnal Equinox marks the first day of Fall in the Northern Hemisphere.   However, according to the meteorological definition of the season which is based on temperature cycles and the Gregorian calendar, the first day of Fall is actually September first.

Dwight donated his Mu sculpture that he
created to sit in front of our Sebastopol MuRefuge home
to the Upaya Zen Center before we moved from Santa Fe.
It now sits atop the mountain
of the Prajna Mountain Forest Refuge
which was been created for deep longterm retreat.
In the above picture Joan Halifax
and her 4 legged companion, Jaya (Victory).

The two above pictures are more chili ristras hangings at DeAnne's home in Santa Fe. Everyone in Santa Fe seem to hang these lovely traditional, and so Santa Fe, decorations on their porches, door and gates as DeAnne has done. Thank you!!! DeAnne for sharing these pictures with me.

I fondly remember our wonderful but brief time in stunningly beautiful New Mexico and the exceptionally welcoming neighbors upon our moving into our Stamm home. One neighbor who lives in the home in which she was raised says this particular neighborhood is "the BEST in Santa Fe". To discharge the incredible sadness of no longer living in Santa Fe, I have a good belly

Welcome

Welcome to the college town in which we now live. Rohnert Park, the official home of Sonoma State University, is a very short drive from our house in Cotati. The above banner stretches across one of the many streets here in Cotati.

The college students are often seen eating in the eateries of downtown Cotati. Others are found working in them as well as in Olivers, the local grocery store.

And while the college students flood back to the area, I have just finished up with the Summer canning. On a recent foray to see Shasta's Auntie T a very large bucket of the Pink Pearl apples were picked from her tree. While several other buckets could have been filled one bucket seemed like what I could handle with the peeling and coring before the cooking and ladling into pint jars for sealing. We will so enjoy eating this beautiful apple sauce this Winter. And Tanis says "they make great holiday gifts".

Whole ripe Pink Pearl apples

Pink Pearl apples cut in half
which is such a stunning beautiful apple
especially for making sauce!

20 pints of totally natural pink applesauce
was reaped from one large bucket of whole apples

Yeah! the seasonal canning has been completed. My focus now is on completing sheet mulching. Today another load of woodchips arrived which will probably be enough to complete the entire yard. Stay tuned for the next post identifying all the native plants purchased for probably November planting. I am so excited looking forward to the fun of planting and creating another native habitat.

Another shout out for the birds . . . we have Goldfinches and Lesser Goldfinches coming to eat the nyger seed provided in one of the cylinder feeders. Both are in  daily quantities I have not seen at either MuRefuge or Santa Fe, New Mexico. However, in Santa Fe quite a few goldfinches did come to ravenously eat the Rocky Mountain penstemon seeds in the Fall. It was so fun watching them go up and down the dried flower stock eating the tiny black seeds. 

When plants are transplanted in a month or so, at least three of these stunningly beautiful plants will call PageRefuge home. I know . . . I know . . . I know I just said I was creating a native habitat! I just cannot resist planting a few of these for the finches. And a Desert Willow has already been planted on the West side of our house for its beautiful flowers and lovely foliage. Since the '80's when I first saw this blooming tree, it has held a special place for me. In Santa Fe I planted two and both flourished, blooming the season after they were put in the soil at San Felipe Circle.

While sheet mulching I thoroughly enjoy many a 

Sheet Mulching

The trees and shrubs cut
and piled up in the front of the house.

The pile of cuttings chipped

Now the sheet mulching begins.

Loading woodchips 
into the wheelbarrow.

The Northwest corner:
All of our natural fiber
clothing and other household
goods are laid out on the ground.
Worn out sheets, mattress pads and 
bath towels are great for sheet mulching.
Sooooooo much better than dumping 
them in the landfill!

All of the cardboard boxes that we packed our belongings in when we moved from Santa Fe, New Mexico, are laid onto the bare dirt. 8 to 12 layers of newspaper works just as well as cardboard. 6 to 8 inches of woodchips are then piled on top of the cardboard or newspaper. Before the first rain oyster shell powder is preferred to sprinkle on top of the chips. Alas, no oyster shell powder is available. The alternative is lime stone ground finely which is what will be used.

For those of you that have followed this blog since it's inception, you are aware that mulching is foundational for building the soil, aka soil regeneration. Woodchips used to be easy to come by when MuRefuge soil regeneration began. 

We now have a compost pile covered
with our compost blanket.
In the area with woodchips 
covering the ground a native bush will be planted.

As time passed others learned of this essential activity and wood chips became more difficult to procure. In Santa Fe where the technique was just beginning to catch on, I was able to have a load of wood chips delivered for $60. All I had to do was put my name on the list and when the tree trimmers were in the neighborhood, I received a call that a delivery was to be made the following morning.

Back in Sonoma County woodchips are at a premium! So the pile of chips from the vegetation cut and chipped on our property has now been used for the beginning of the backyard mulching. 

Sierra Tree Service
delivered a load of almost
all woodchips with minimal leaves.

A sizable dent has been made in the cardboard boxes used for our moving. Olivers, the local grocery store, has cardboard boxes available for pick up after shelves are stocked. And several neighbors have graciously volunteered to save their cardboard boxes. When visiting Auntie T, we scavenged her recycle bin for cardboard boxes which we brought home. Our neighbors to the West throw their cardboard boxes over our adjoining fence. And then a friend delivered a huge amount of

very large cardboard boxes which may be enough to finish the mulching project.

Another soil regeneration project that has already happened is between the patio and the tall hedge that blocks the apartments on our West. Mostly herbs have been planted in this space so soil regeneration is essential for their growth and well BEing. In that light we sojourned to Grab 'n Grow and purchased bags of Mango Mulch. As some of you will remember truckloads of this wonderfully rich mulch were delivered to MuRefuge. At PageRefuge there is much less needed.

Below is a a mini snapshot of the "herb garden" and Dwight's stunning male and female Tewa heads:

The mini herb garden contains basil, 8 chives,1 comfrey, echinacea, sweet marjoram, mint, oregano, parsley, 2 Broad leaf plantain, 2 rosemary plants, 2 kinds of sage, white yarrow, zinnias along with 2 tomatillo plants and 1 cherry tomato. Seeds for chervil and arugula will be scattered at the beginning of the cooler weather.

Gardening brings me many a joyful

 

 

Clean slate

 

 A picture Michael Stoyka

                   took of our house before we moved in.

                               

For each of the three homes Dwight and I have owned I have had the vision of native habitat restoration for the land. Each has been increasingly more difficult to begin the native habitat restoration. With our present home in Cotati the past few months have been to get rid of what we do not want on the land: the icky redwood mulch everywhere, the hot tub then the cement beneath the hot tub and the trees and shrubs. The latter was just completed over the weekend. A clean slate is ready for the soil regeneration followed by native habitat restoration once the rains arrive.

                                                             Present day view of the front 

All of the people walking by having been doing a double take. I am imaging many are saying to each other "what are the people living here now thinking?" The bushes cut down along the front of the property from the size of their trunks must have been planted soon after the house was built in the early 1950's. So all who have lived in this neighborhood long before we arrived have never really seen the front of the house. Jim, who walks his dog Julie past our house several times a day, said just that to me Saturday afternoon when I was out getting our mail.

The West side
of the house looking
towards the shed in the background

The East side of the backyard
with the green slate patio

The backyard looking East
The cardboard boxes ready for
the massive mulching project
are evident on the right of the above picture.
To the left of the swing is the
severely pruned Santa Rosa plum
tree that hopefully will now
grow to more bushy
instead of tall and "leggy".

I have now have a pile of wood chips in the front to begin the sheet mulching project. The owner of the company that cut down the trees and shrubs and ground the roots of the shrubs, bushes and trees in the front yard says he will deliver me more wood chips when I am ready. I am so excited to begin the soil regeneration process! The soil here is in dire need of regeneration.

As I mention above planting all the carefully chosen native trees, shrubs and perennials will not begin until the rains come . . . and hopefully we will get some rain in late Fall or early Winter. The natives that thrive here put their roots down in the Winter so that they can survive the usual hot and dry Summer and Fall. I know I will need to water the first year but after that the plants will flourish. I am optimistic that the climate catastrophe will not interfere with this age old practice of growing natives here in Northern California.

During this fire season now underway in the whole of the Western United States may we dissipate our anxiety and foreboding with a good belly 

 

THUD

The hanging tray on the left side of the
above picture is often covered
with birds feeding on the
black oil sunflower seeds,

Sunday past as I was just sitting down to read a bit on a riveting note I heard a horrifying THUD. I knew, I knew, I knew a rather large bird had hit a window. From the loud THUD I knew indeed a rather large bird had hit one of our long narrow windows looking out onto our patio. On the opposite side of the patio our bird feeders hang from a stand. We have a plethora of birds that come to feed intermittently from sun up to sun set. 

Rushing out to the patio I saw a young Cooper's hawk laying on the left side of the granite that surrounds the gas grill after colliding with one of the long narrow windows. With Rescue Remedy augmented with lavender essential oil spray I ever so slowly approached the hawk. The hawk scrambled up and hopped onto the grass since s(he) was unable to fly. S(he) was having nothing but nothing to do with me!

The reflections in the window
of the hedge and tree across the patio.
The young Cooper's hawk no doubt thought s(he)
was flying into a hedge to hide out to catch
a snack from the bird feeder.

I called the Sonoma County Wildlife Rescue. Within a half hour, since we are located not far from their facility, two women arrived. Our backyard is quite small but it took them both with nets about fifteen minutes to capture the hawk. Once the hawk was safely contained in a small carrying cardboard container they departed.  

Several days later I received a call informing me the hawk's wing had received no severe damage such as a broken wing . . . whew!!! what a relief. They believed the wing was bruised from the collision. They planned to keep the hawk for another week to be sure its flight was no longer affected from its window collision. As I was writing this post the aforementioned hawk was released on our street.

The focus here has been to get ourselves settled into a house with much deferred maintenance. Installing Zen wind curtains on the two long narrow windows, the only windows that do not have screens, has not happened. In fact, until the hawk hit the window I totally neglected to access the windows to see if protecting them from bird collisions was needed in this house as we have done in our two previous homes. I feel so bad that I did not! Oh my gosh it took a Cooper's hawk hitting one of the unscreened windows to awaken me to action. 

Dwight measured and ordered two Zen wind curtains. This company acts immediately. The day following our ordering, they arrived.

As you can see in the above picture
the reflection is interrupted 
with the Zen wind curtains
which sway in the breeze.

It is lovely indeed, it is lovely indeed.

I, I am the spirit within the earth.

The feet of the earth are my feet,

The legs of the earth are my legs.

The strength of the earth is my strength,

The thoughts of the earth are my thoughts,

The voice of the earth is my voice.

The feather of the earth is my feather,

All that belongs to the earth belongs to me,

All that surrounds the earth surrounds me.

I, I am the sacred works of the earth.

It is lovely indeed, it is lovely indeed.

SONG OF THE EARTH SPIRIT,

NAVOAJO ORIGIN LEGEND

May we each and every one of us feel our connection with and honor our Mother Earth. As we do so let us often

Turning

 

Cassis Peaches bought at the
Sebastopol Farmers Market today.
Not perfect but will be delicious to eat
this Winter once canned!

Today, August 01, is a cross quarter day midpoint between the Summer Solstice and the Autumnal Equinox. In the Celtic tradition this day called it Lughnasadh designated to celebrate the Summer harvest. Today is a reminder of the turning from Summer towards Autumn.

  

 “The Summer was very big.

....

Command the last fruits that they shall be full,

give the another two more southerly days,

press them on to fulfillment and drive

the last sweetness into ” .... the fruit

                                         Rainer Maria Rilke

I am so grateful for the abundance this Summer has offered. When I see all the canned fruit over the past few months, I am filled with gratitude.

Santa Rosa Plums from our tree and Tanis'
Blenheim Apricots
and 4 different kinds of Peaches

I ask for a moment’s indulgence to sit by Thy side.

The works that I have in hand

I will finish afterwards.

Away from the sight of Thy face

My heart knows no rest or respite,

And my work becomes an endless toil

In a shoreless sea of toil.

Today the summer has come at my window

With its sighs and murmurs,

And the bees are plying their minstrelsy

At the court of the flowering grove.

Now it is time to sit quiet

Face to face with The,

And to sing dedication of live 

In this silent and overflowing leisure.

                                   RABINDRANATH TOGORE

Michele, Katie and Leigh
during the Sims Reunion
floating on the McKinzie River in Oregon.
  They are obviously fully embracing leisure.

Today as we honor the turning of the seasons may we