life

And about twenty seven gallons of pumpkin bisque.

August 11, 2023August 10, 2023 J.2 Comments

So, I’ve been picking pumpkins.

Well, that’s kind of an understatement — I’ve been attempting to gather and process pumpkins quickly enough to actually make a dent in the sheer number of them. It takes about an hour to cut and bake two of them, then I need to let them cool, then puree and freeze them. Each pumpkin seems to yield a little over 16 ounces of puree. That’s enough for either one pie, one batch of pumpkin cream sauce, or one pot of pumpkin soup.

In other words, this is basically a replay of when my spouse and I went strawberry picking. This last time, we sprung for the big cardboard flat. I still have a whole loaf of strawberry bread in the freezer, two gallon bags of whole berries, and two trays of frozen strawberry puree.

I’m either going to run out of space in the freezer for pureed pumpkin, or be completely sick of pumpkin and pumpkin-adjacent things by the time October rolls around.

Eight pumpkins, sitting on a granite countertop. There's a bag of flaxseed meal and some glass canisters of rice, beans, and oats in the background. — Some of the pumpkins that still need to ripen a bit.

Fortunately, pumpkin seems to keep well. Once it’s turned to pumpkin mush, I pack it into a one cup Souper Cube tray and freeze it. After it’s frozen, I can pop it out and stick it in a reusable freezer bag. I wish I had a chest freezer (but I also know that I’d just fill it up with nonsense if I did).

In the meantime, I’m amassing pumpkin recipes. So far, I’m looking at egg- and dairy-free pumpkin pie, pumpkin cream sauce, and pumpkin bread with chocolate chunks. I hope everything turns out well, but I’m also slightly concerned that I’ll end up having to sneak around and drop off piles of excess pies and breads on my neighbors’ porches in the middle of the night.

I didn’t even plant these pumpkins. I’ve watered them maybe twice ever. I have the feeling they wouldn’t be nearly this prolific if I’d actually put effort into them.

A Fruitful Lughnasadh

August 1, 2023August 4, 2024 J.2 Comments

Today marks Lughnasadh, the celebration of the first harvest. This usually focuses on summer fruits and grains, so there’s lots of blueberries/bilberries, baked goods, apples, and pears.

In another sense, it’s about coming together to share. Traditionally, it happened during a time of year when the earliest crops were spent, and the next round wasn’t ready for harvest yet. Lugh is also credited with battling the powers of blight, which is connected to the scorching, drying heat of the summer’s hottest days. That meant celebrating with foods that either stored well (like apples and grains) or could be foraged this time of year (like bilberries).

A rolling pin and several balls of biscuit dough on a floured board.

It also started as a funerary feast. While it’s associated with the Celtic deity Lugh, he created this festival in remembrance of Tailtiu, his mother figure. She’d died of exhaustion after clearing the land for growing crops. That makes this festival a poignant combination of anticipation of what’s to come, and gratitude for what has passed. It’s joy and sorrow, thanksgiving and mourning. Tailtiu has passed on, but the land is ready.

This year, we were supposed to join in a camping trip and Lughnasadh celebration. Unfortunately, a combination of high temperatures and severe weather meant that that didn’t pan out the way we’d wanted. Instead, it’s given me more time to think and (as overused as this phrase may be) connect with this High Day.

Really, I’m at a Lughnasadh point in my life. The rise of AI chat bots has coincided with the natural end of several long-term paid writing projects that I’d been working on, so I’m not getting the same volume of work that I once was. At the same time, I’m investing more of my time, money, and energy into other things that haven’t yet paid off. There’s mostly been a lot of planning and reading stuff to help me figure out how to navigate this transition.

But I’m not doing that today. Today, I’m extremely thankful for everything that the old cycle has given me. I’ve reaped some very generous harvests from it, and that’s awesome. I’m also excited for my next projects. Having less paid writing means less money, but it also means a lot more time and creative energy to put into things that have deeper meaning for me.

Today, I’m baking bread. I’m making these very strange (but very delicious) cookies full of dried berries and cacao chunks. I’m eating dried blueberries by the handful, and searching my strawberry plants for ripe, red berries.

Have a happy and abundant Lughnasadh, and I hope we all reap a good harvest in the days to come!

Uncategorized

The Bully Birds

July 27, 2023July 26, 2023 J.2 Comments

My crows have, for the moment, disappeared.

Well, okay. Not disappeared, they’re just sort of close by instead of hanging out on my various sheds and/or porch.
Personally, I blame the starlings.

Starlings have a bit of a reputation. They’re invasive, noisy, arrive in hordes, and get into tiny brawls everywhere. They fight in the birdbath and knock it over, upsetting the mourning doves. They fight in the seeds and kick them everywhere. They kick each other off of the deck railing like this is a tiny Sparta, and every one of them is a miniature Leonidas.

A group of starlings doing what they do best: screaming and kicking the crap out of each other in a pile of food. — It’s just this, constantly, all day, every day.

They’re also bullies. Since they travel in groups, often with masses of babies in tow, they have no problem starting fights with birds much larger than them. Starlings are tiny compared to crows, but they do outnumber them greatly. Crows will kill and eat baby birds, so the starling families seem to go on the offensive as a matter of course.

It’s not like they have to fight a whole bunch, either. Crows have good memories, and starlings are loud. It probably only takes one fight for a crow to hear a flock of starlings and not exactly feel up to facing down an army of shrieking lilliputian kickboxers.

A group of starlings pecking in the grass. In their midst, there's an oblivious gull. — A gull, probably about to get his face rearranged.

Starlings also have basically no sense of self-preservation. In the past day, I’ve seen a baby starling walk up and gape its mouth at a reflection, a sparrow, and a squirrel. This afternoon, one of them flew to my kitchen window, stood on the outside sill, and gaped at me through the glass.
I wished I’d gotten a picture of this, but I did not as I was too busy staring in shock at this stunning display of hubris.

Sorry, kid. I keep the feeders filled, but I’m not about to go outside to spit bugs into your tiny face.
Also, where are your parents?

Fortunately, starlings are migratory. They’ll hang around during the summer, like a swarm of drunk college kids in Punta Cana, then pack up and leave. I know the crows are still here because I hear and see them around. They just tend to go to the feeders very early and very late, when they’re less likely to be harassed.

Honestly, I know how the crows feel.

A male starling in a field of dry grass. His feathers are deep black flecked with cream, with a rainbow sheen. — He’s probably looking for someone to fight.

life

The Imposter and the Trickster God

July 24, 2023July 22, 2023 J.Leave a comment

I want to be involved in all of the things.

I try to give back as much as I can to every community I’m involved with — my community, Meetup groups, even (well, especially) the band of lovable weirdos who inhabit the yard.

One way to do that is sharing skills, but… that’s not always easy.

Right now, I’m struggling with a quandary. I have some skills I could share with one of my Druidry groups, but I’m also dealing with a massive case of imposter syndrome. It’s hard to share your knowledge with anyone when you feel like your skills aren’t worth offering.

A mouse sneaks through a pipe placed in a concrete wall. His expression is alert and cautious.

The thing is, I obviously wouldn’t be where I am without knowing how to do stuff. Even bullshitting is a skill. I mean, it’s a skill I wholeheartedly admire in other things. My favorite stories have always been about tricksters. Trickster deities, tiny heroes, and animals who compensated for their lack of size, sharp teeth, or fearsome claws by using their cleverness. Even the deity with whom I have the closest relationship is often regarded as a trickster figure, who uses his wisdom, magic, knowledge of the Otherworlds, and trickery in equal measure.

Why’s it so hard to see any of that in myself? Why can’t I manage to share something that I’ve been doing since I was a child?

life

I did it!

July 18, 2023July 17, 2023 J.Leave a comment

A bit ago, I posted about having bloodwork done and discovering that my blood lipids and vitamin D levels were off. I then talked about some of the changes I was making in order to correct these things.

It is with immense relief that I can say: It worked!

Well, it’s still working.

My total cholesterol is now normal, as are my vitamin D levels. The only area of some concern is my LDL (low-density lipoprotein, or “bad cholesterol”) is very slightly higher than it should be. It has decreased, however, so I should be able to normalize it with time and a few more adjustments.

As I figured, the culprit was probably eating takeout. Even “healthy” options are often less than ideal — they’re really just healthier than, say, a burger and fries. If you’re traveling, without a kitchen, or otherwise unable to store and prepare your own meals, “healthy takeout options” are definitely better than the alternative. But, at the end of the day, all restaurant food is made with taste as its primary consideration. I knew this on a logical level. It’s just easy to let yourself ignore it when all you’re ordering is a salad or sandwich, you know?

Anyhow, I don’t have many other lifestyle changes I can make at this point. I can take a fiber supplement. I can explore some herbal remedies said to help maintain healthy blood lipids (ginger seems promising, for example). Other than that, we’re gonna have to get deeper into the weeds a little bit.

I don’t know how much I’ll speak on that, though, chiefly because I know attitudes toward medical care in the US are… complicated, at best. If I do expound on the alternative/complementary remedies I use, I don’t want someone to take that as evidence that these things will fix their own health issues. For one, their body is not my body, and thus their blood is not my blood. For two, it seems irresponsible. I feel like it might encourage someone to place outsized importance on my anecdotal evidence, and I don’t want anyone to get hurt because they refused effective conventional treatment because some outside-the-box shit I did might have helped fix what is really a very minor problem.

So yes. That’s where I am right now — happy, relieved, and figuring out my next steps. Wish me luck!

life

“hey. hey. hey where’d you go”

July 13, 2023July 6, 2023 J.3 Comments

So, my spouse and I went to an out-of-town family shindig the weekend before July 4th. It was a lot of fun — there was a ton of food, live music, and a huge crowd of interesting people to talk to (many of whom are also Garden People like me).

When I came back, the yard was silent. My heart dropped into my stomach.

Was it because I wasn’t there to keep the food and water replenished? Was it the fireworks? Had someone gotten injured or killed, scaring the whole murder away?
Did something happen to Boink?

I put fresh water and the usual mix of food (peanut butter cereal, cat kibble, dried bugs, and berries) out, but all I got was a clamorous mob of starlings.

(Apparently a group of starlings can be called an “affliction,” which sounds about right. I love all of the birds that come to my home, but most of these are, to put it bluntly, invasive shrieking dickheads who throw things.)

A day went by, then another. I lost sleep and felt my urge to write or paint completely sapped. So much of my art is inspired by these magnificent little weirdos, I hated the idea of working on a painted bird when the real ones had disappeared.

Then this happened.

A crow, head cocked, peers through a bathroom window. — “hey, you there? you guys back n- oh, you poopin?”

The crows returned by having this guy rock up to the bathroom window (please ignore the spots on the glass — the rain and pollen have fingerpainted everything) and stare inside. They twisted their head from one side to the other, very deliberately peering in. If they had hands, they probably would’ve cupped them around their eyes to see better.

It was funny, but, in retrospect, also somewhat concerning. Did they watch us leave? Did they send someone to stare into our house every day to see if we were back yet? There are so many windows, you guys, why did they pick the bathroom?!

Anyhow, the big maple tree is once again filled with raucous caws and shiny black birds. I’ve seen Magni and Muse, and even Boink has once again taken up his position on top of the shed. (I have no idea where — or how, for that matter — he went for several days at a time. I’m just glad he’s back.)

It does my heart good to see them. I just kind of wish they’d maybe peeked in the kitchen instead.

life

This is Boink.

July 10, 2023July 6, 2023 J.Leave a comment

Crows are sleek, beautiful, intelligent creatures.

And then there’s Boink.

Boink looks like he was made by Jim Henson with spare parts and a strict time limit. He looks like what birds would look like in the Fraggle universe.

Boink is not injured, but has somehow managed to damage all of the flight feathers on one wing and half of his tail. He can fly, but it’s the flight a bird whose wings have been clipped — just enough to keep from falling, until his flight feathers grow back in. His main means of locomotion is to hop and scramble in a way that even the best foley artist would have difficult putting a sound to.

A small, scruffy crow gazes pensively through slats in a deck railing. — Boink having a small philosophical moment.

He spends most of the day hanging out on the railing by my back door. When I open it, he jumps up and… well, boinks his way across the deck to the shed. He hops on the roof, bops his way to the other side, and ducks down with his little head sticking up like a periscope.

If I look at him, he ducks.

If I pretend to close the door, he pokes his head up again.

If I go back inside, he moves back to the railing to sit.

Boink is the scruffiest wild animal that I’ve ever seen. He is the prime specimen of scrunginess. An absolute scrunglemuppet. He is Mother Nature’s silliest fool and I love him very much.

He doesn’t seem to have trouble avoiding predators, somehow — when he needs to hide, he hides behind the other shed, or climbs up the big apple tree. It makes me grateful that I didn’t prune it as much as I should have, because the lowermost branches give Boink something to hop onto and make his way up.

(I don’t even really know if he’s a he. In my defense, I don’t think Boink does either.)

I think that Boink may have a criminal record. He doesn’t seem to have a mate to help take care of him, and the other crows push him away from the feeders. I sneak extra portions of food into places I know he can reach easily and put extra fruit and dried bugs to make up for the things he may not be able to forage for himself.

A small, scruffy crow sitting on a deck railing in the rain. — “Hoh. Kibble for Boink? No! Cereals for Boink? No! Every time, they bully Boink.”

The other crows also don’t seem to have a problem with leaving Boink behind, too. Is he Outlaw Boink? Has he been ostracized for crimes, or do they just leave him because they know he’s safe, with his water dish and his food stashes and his shed roof?

I don’t know what Boink did, or what happened to him. He sits on my deck like a tiny, questionably useful gargoyle. He is my very special boy and his presence is delightful.

life

I can only assume that they’re developing agriculture.

June 27, 2023June 26, 2023 J.Leave a comment

Not long ago, I mentioned that the crows in the yard bartered me for a small rock painted to look like a strawberry. Now, the whole reason I had a rock painted to look like a strawberry was to keep birds from eating my actual strawberries. The idea behind it is that you put out strawberry decoys before the plants set fruit, and the birds will investigate them, decide they’re inedible, and assume that the rest of your strawberries are similar levels of bullshit. Seems legit, right?

A strawberry plant with a few ripening strawberries.

These rocks aren’t the only things the crows have been interested in. When my spouse’s mom came for a visit, she remarked that she’d seen the crows playing with some of those little black plastic pots you get from plant nurseries. (I have a few on a shelf on my deck. They’re useful for starting plants, and I’d rather re-use them as much as possible and keep them out of the landfill.) I thought this was funny, but didn’t really put much more thought into it. I had a thing, the crows thought this thing was amusing and interesting, and that was that.

Then I noticed that I had lost all of the strawberry rocks in the back yard and one of the raised beds in the front. Just up and vanished.

Then my spouse mentioned seeing a crow flying away with an empty plant pot in its beak. He’d tried to snap a picture, but only managed to get a blur of tail feathers as the thief absconded.

Putting two and two together, I can only assume one thing: They’re developing agriculture.

Maybe it isn’t aliens or artificial intelligence that we need to worry about. Maybe humanity’ll be overthrown by a race of swiftly advancing, hyperintelligent birds. People remark on the intelligence of corvids, and they’re correct. Crows, ravens, and their kin are very smart. They’re also coming for your horticultural supplies.

If you’re reading this at some point in the future, when the human race is relegated to the annals of bird history as some kind of combination of amusing pets and manual labor force, and our bird overlords have ushered in a new era of art nouveau solarpunk luxury forest communism, I apologize for not being at all sorry because that actually sounds awesome.

life · Neodruidry

A Midsummer Bardic Circle

June 19, 2023June 18, 2023 J.Leave a comment

I love bardic circles. There’s something that’s so much fun about finding a song, poem, or story to share, and listening to the things that others have brought to share with you. Hearing these things can tell you more about a person than hours of conversation can — what they find beautiful or moving. What they want others to hear. What they hold as important.

There are few feelings as good as finding your feelings, crystallized and stated by someone more eloquent than you. Bardic circles are a chance to find those things and show them to others.

This year’s was busier than last year’s, which was nice. There were plenty of old and new friends, tons of food, and lots of things for the goods and gear swap.

I shared two poems from Jarod K. Anderson‘s “Love Notes from the Hollow Tree,” ate a ton of black raspberries, watermelon, homemade pickles, and (veggie) hot dogs, and traded books and crystals for more books, homemade incense, peach preserves, pickled watermelon, camping supplies, and a beautiful card of the Druid’s Prayer for Peace done in purple watercolor.

We sang together, laughed, and talked about things. The crows in my yard. Gardens. Where the wild berries were ripening, and when to gather to forage for them. Next month’s camping trip. History, legends, and prayers.
Too much to enumerate here, and even trying to do so would just make the words flatten like toothpaste.

As usual, I went home to immediately agonize over everything I said and did (and everything I didn’t), but the social anxiety is worth it. I’m grateful for having a community of such generous, creative, intelligent, and warm people. I’m grateful that we’re welcoming to anyone who wants to come along to learn and share as well.

Deep within the still center of my being, may I find peace.

Silently within the quiet of the grove, may I share peace.

Gently within the greater circle of human kinds, may I radiate peace.”

The Druids Prayer for Peace

Environment · life

I mean, it’s pretty much an avian daycare at this point.

June 13, 2023June 11, 2023 J.Leave a comment

I don’t know why this surprises me. I knew — or at the very least hoped — that developing a relationship with the birds here would mean lots of baby birds.

I just didn’t really count on their parents dropping them off on my doorstep.

This is not code language. After dealing with deadbeat cabbage butterflies last year, I thought my need to concern myself with the reproduction of the local wildlife had more or less come to an end. However, I was incorrect. Like, really incorrect.

The crows (there are seven or eight of them now) dropped off a fledgling in the back yard. He hops and makes a few bold (if futile) attempts at flying, then ends up hiding behind my shed most of the time. Magni and the others post up on the roof of the shed most of the day, and I’ve seen Magni carrying peanut butter puffs to the baby, so at least the little one’s parents are aware of what their kid is doing.

The house sparrows dropped one of their kids off on my porch. It came up and kind of scratched at the door, much to the confusion of myself and the cats.

A view of a sparrow fledgling on a doormat, seen through a glass storm door. — Kid, where are your parents?!

All of this means that I spend a not-insignificant portion of the day treating the yard like some kind of avian daycare center. I keep the bowls topped up with fresh, cool water, leave fruit and dried bugs where they can forage without going into the road or where neighborhood cats can get them, make sure there aren’t any confrontations, and make sure there are shady spots for them to hide out during the sunniest part of the day. It’s been kind of hot, and the wildfire smoke hasn’t done anyone any favors, so I’ve tried to make things easy on everybody involved. I don’t want the babies to become too used to just scooping up snacks from the bird feeders, though, so I toss them berries and bugs on the grass.

A handsome crow stands on a deck railing, looking up toward the camera.

We have a pair of cardinals here, too, but I don’t know what they’re up to just yet. There’s still the side yard and the driveway, so who knows where they’ll unload their brood.

I have to admit, as much as I worry about the babies (are they learning to find food well? Are they staying hydrated? Are they away from cats and snakes?), it’s kind of nice knowing that their parents seem to consider this a safe spot. They’ve even stopped flying far when I go out to refill the feeders and water dishes — the sparrows stay in the apple trees, and the crows hop to the fence and roof until I’m finished. Sometimes, when I sit out there to meditate and get some sunlight, they’ll land on the deck and go about their business anyhow.
It’s nice. Being ignored never felt so good.