January 6, 2013

I will savor these times,

Sunday evening, game on downstairs,

fire in the woodstove, dogs laying contentedly

near the heat,

Me, at the stove, cooking onions and garlic,

Making soup.

Chickens tucked in, snug.

Only one egg today? Really.

This morning, temperatures so mild,

Soil so damp, perfect to clear grasses and violets

from the asparagus patch!

So satisfying to connect with earth in this

dark winter season.

At sunset I walked with my dear friend,

Our annual remembrance of the day her mother died,

Yet this morning, too, a phone conversation

‘how’s the baby’, the new little one born on the Solstice.

Both ends of life, savoring the sweetness,

Someday things will be different.

The End of Day Light Savings

                                                                        

November 4^th, 2012  5:22 p.m.

(had my mother lived this long she would have been 100! Happy Birthday, Mom!)

It is not yet 5:30 and the chickens are already shut in for the night. Just now the Western sky is illuminated by the last presence of a brilliant orange light filtering through the branches. The trees are suddenly devoid of leaves, the result of the changing light, falling temperatures and, of course, Hurricane Sandy who was just  making landfall barely one week ago.

This time of year – with the light fading so silently and so early in the evening-  I feel myself  cascading down into a warm womb encased by the dark. Turning my gaze inward,  I find myself introspective. The world in front of the eyes is stark, perhaps to some it appears bleak, yet inside the hearth fires are burning, creating a warm welcome to come and sit a spell, to reminisce, to travel inward  to retrieve and acknowledge the harvest, the jewels of the year. It is a time for gathering and reckoning – what have we gained and what have we lost? What needs keeping 'hold of and what needs letting go? This is an important exercise for this time of the year, this end of day light savings.

What needs keeping hold of? Well, for one thing, I have come 'round to the desire to re-engage with my blog, to share some of my writing(s) as well as  some of the jewels I have discovered this year, 2012: articles, books,poems, (some my own, some by other)s, portions of journal entries, links, recipes, my own thoughts about this and that, in other words, Notes from the Garden and Other Thoughts.

I turned 60 this  past April. In Chinese Medicine this turning (12 X 5 as in 5 seasons of the year with Late Summer being it's own season) is a very important event. For those of us turning 60 this year it is the year of the "Water Dragon". (more on this later).  I decided to take this occasion of turning 60  seriously and put alot of thought into what this birthday means to me and what  I want the next phase of mylife to look like. Over the next several months I intend to share what I've discovered with the hope that what has turned up for me will be beneficial to you.

For now I leave you with the words from Thich Nhat Hahn's Peace Is Every Step.

Breathing in, I calm my body.

Breathing out, I smile.

Dwelling in the present moment,

I know this is a wonderful moment!

“FOWL LANGUAGE:
CONVERSATIONS WITH MY CHICKENS”
Part One


This is something I wrote about a year ago….which I am just now posting…hopefully better late than never!

The call from my local post office arrived as a message on my cell phone around 11:00 a.m. In the background I could hear the faint ‘peep, peep, peep’ and knew the good news had arrived. “This call is for Mary Brandenburg. Mrs. Brandenburg, your baby chickens have arrived. Please call us to let us know when you’ll be by to pick them up. We’ll be here until 5:00 this afternoon.”

Silly as it may sound, my heart leapt! I had been planning for this day for weeks on end. I was ready. At the age of 58 I was about to become the mother of 8 baby ‘peeps’: two New Hampshire Reds, two Barred Plymouth Rocks, two Silver Laced Wyandottes and two Speckled Sussex. I had poured over the hatchery web site (www.my petchicken.com) and picked our these girls specially: all large breeds, known to be docile and friendly, and not given to ‘flightiness’. All good breeds for the beginner, the web site assured.

Admittedly, I must say this was not my first attempt at raising chickens. The first time wasn’t so successful. In fact, it was pretty awful. Those chicks, ‘day old peeps’, also arrived by mail, ordered right out of the Sears catalogue. Twenty five Rhode Island Reds (not very imaginative….gives you an idea ‘what did I know?!), half boys and half girls (a straight run as in, “you get what you get”). They started their life with us in the kitchen of our old farm house in West Virginia. I was a girl from the suburbs of Washington D.C., and didn’t know much , or anything really, about raising chickens. And this was way before the appearance of the Internet…so information was harder to come by. Oh dear.
Their ‘brooder’ consisted of a large oversized cardboard box which had once held a washing machine. There they huddled under the light bulb fastened above on the side of the box. By six weeks, mid- Spring, or so, they were sturdy enough and feathered enough to be housed in a pen outside in the yard. In the meantime, my husband (at the time) built a sturdy chicken coop with a large run surrounded by, of course, ‘chicken wire’. Finally it was time for them to graduate to their permanent home up the hill from the house. All went well. Pretty soon the boys began to attempt to use their voices and they all grew steadily. By now it was July and was hot in the evenings. As I later learned, when chickens are hot they spread themselves around so as to not touch each other. Thus, they positioned themselves around the perimeter of the run, rather than to be ‘cooped up’ in the chicken house. And so they were just like that when I arrived one morning to feed and found 13 of them dead, even decapitated, laying along the edge of the chicken wire with the others walking around dazed and traumatized. It was truly the chicken killing fields. I never really knew what predator had managed to penetrate the run. From what I have heard it was likely a possum whose habit it is to kill and just move onto their next victim, not even bothering to eat the carcass. And as luck would have it, if I could call it that, whatever it was left mainly the young roosters.

This time, 30 years later, I was determined to create a better fate for these girls. I was committed to do whatever it took to create a safe environment for them.

Upon bringing the little ones home I carefully opened their well designed shipping box to find eight little one day old girls all standing at attention, peering up at me as if saying ‘reporting for duty’! I carefully placed each one in my daughter’s retired hamster cage which had been retrofitted for the purpose. Above a table in the basement I had hung a red grow light suspended from the overhead joists, and piled in clean pine shavings to be used as bedding. Attached to the side of the cage I placed a thermometer to monitor the temperature: 95 degrees for the first week and 1 degrees lower for each succeeding week until time to go outside. The week before I had ventured to my local farm store to purchase a waterer and feeder, outfitted them with Mason jars, bought 50 pounds of “Start ‘n’ Grow” poultry feed, and the pine shavings. I felt like a real farmer.

After carefully placing them inside their new home I watched and listened. One by one they recognized the chicken feed as food, and one by one each discovered the waterer, taking a sip and then raising their head upwards to swallow. For the next twenty minutes they wobbled around on their little chicken legs making loud, distressed peeping noises. I began to think, yikes, if they make this much noise at night we will never sleep as our bedroom is right above that part of the basement. However, before I knew it, silence took over the basement. All eight had fallen asleep cuddled together in a pile of soft chicken fuzz. For the next several hours I didn’t hear a ‘peep’ out of them!

That was just about a year ago, June 2010. In the meantime the girls have grown big and bosomy. It’s really quite startling how gorgeous and healthy they are! By December 5th they all had begun to lay…and today, June 2011, we are getting between 4 and 6 eggs a day! They are producing an income….I have my ‘egg ladies’. Why just the other day I deposited $100 cash in the joint checking account. The girls even have their own line item in our family annual budget.

Compared to what I didn’t know thirty years ago about raising chickens this past year I have learned a lot. I have to say that I am a bit proud of them, and myself.

So tomorrow morning I will be calling our local post office to them to expect a new batch of peeps…call me when they arrive!

Hello again!


It's been a long time since my last post...nine months, I think. So where have I been? I ask myself the same question and upon re-reading my journal from 2010 I came upon something I wrote December 1, 2010.

"...It's been months since I've added anything to this space. I've been so busy living my life I've scarcely had any time to reflect. Moreover, I find when the seasons beckon me to be outside busily engaged with all that needs doing and tending I find I am not circumspect. My attention is not inward, but outward and in the moment. Yet by now, really the last twenty-four hours, the leaves have really all come down leaving the dark branches beautifully etched against the sky and the descending darkness. We are headed into the dark quiet of the year, the time of short days and long nights. As much as I resist the gravity pull of this transition into the dark, the cold and the wind I do savor it as a punctuation, a counterpoint to the many months of sunny blue skies, sandals and short sleeves, green garden lushness over flowing from the ground and the growing beds."

A few days later, January 5, I wrote this poem.

By now all the leaves have fallen,

branches are bare and thin

against the descending darkness.

The sky at 5 p.m. is dark and somber,

clouds slowly move from northwest to south east,

hints of sun lite orange illuminate the tree line.

Five young deer emerge slowly from the hedgerow,

tentative at first,minutes later, in full view.

The dogs growl softly from the window.

So silent. So peaceful. So powerful.

Moments later as I glance up,

the contrasting darks and lights in the sky

take my breath away.

This pageantry is so startling

I shall never grow accustomed

to the early winter beauty.

January 22, 2011

A month past the Solstice,

we are in deep winter.

The darkness...short days,compacted living,

time to return to our roots,

to essence, bare bones,

pure potential- and simply rest there.

The silence is so loud it rings in my ears.

Each moment resembles the one that came before and after,

yet-the river is steadily moving beneath us-

making its silent path forward.

Sitting here in the growing darkness

I feel so filled up

about to burst with each passing moment,

yet empty as the New Year stretches out -

a wide chasm to be filled.

Dusk draws me to pen and paper,

words issue forth, spilling out,

sorry that I am such a bad poet,

yet no matter,the sky does not mind,

nor the branches,nor the hard ground.

I am grateful for the audience

that calls forth my inner longings,

the leanings of a soul forever content,

and restless enough to swallow the world whole.

May 18, 2010
Given what a cold and damp Spring it has been here is a recipe that I have been perfecting to accompany the drizzlyevenings when you need something warm and nourishing to take the chill off! Enjoy.

RED LENTIL SOUP WITH GROUND PEPPERCORNS, CUMIN AND SWEET RED PEPPER

Makes 6- 8 generous servings
3 T olive oil
1 lg onion, chopped
2-3 stalks celery, finely chopped (I like lots of veggies in this soup)
1-2 carrots, finely chopped
3 C red lentils (can use French lentils instead)
1 sweet red pepper, finely chopped
50 + peppercorns, ground, add more if you like peppery flavor (Tellicherry are nice)
1 t cumin seed, ground (use ground cumin if yu don’t have seeds)
1 t turmeric
½ t or more to taste, crushed red pepper
3/4 C chopped cilantro
8-10 C chicken broth (my favorite is “Better Than Boullion” brand)
2-3 cloves garlic, finely minced

In a large pot or dutch oven sauté , over medium heat, onions, celery, carrots in 2 T olive oil until softened, (5-8 mins). Add the garlic at the end of the sauté.

Add the rinsed lentils and chicken broth. Cook 30 -40 minutes (longer if you like or need) uncovered over medium- low heat, stirring occasionally.

Meanwhile, grind the perppercorns, cumin seed and crushed red pepper in a coffee grinder. Heat a small sauté pan and add the remaining T of olive oil. Add the ground spices and raost until fragrant and yet not burned. Add the spices, chopped sweet red pepper and turmeric to the simmering lentils.

Continue to cook adding the cilantro about 5 mnutes before serving.
Blend 1/3 of the soup (optional) to create a creamier consistency.

ENJOY! Great for a damp, chilly early Spring or Fall evening. Excellent the next day for lunch!!

May 18, 2010

I hardly know where to begin. My last blog entry came shortly after I had arrived back home having traveled to northern Arizona, visiting Flagstaff, Navajo Country, Canyon de Chelly, and Sedona. I was all set to write about our time in Sedona…to share my impressions of a place of extraordinary beauty that I’d not visited in some 15 years.
Yet somehow, in the wake of things that have occurred since then I became stuck, thinking that my small impressions of my trip seem so minuscule in importance compared to what we are in the presence of now: the oil gush disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, executives of BP, Transocean and Haliburton falling over each other to place blame and point fingers anywhere other than their own culpability; the ongoing suffering as Haitians struggle to rebuild and reconstruct their lives, their county, their economy; the daily suicide bombings and killing of innocents in Kabul, Pakistan, Baghdad; the failed car bombing in Times Square, the perpetrator having been caught only moments before his flight was to take off from Kennedy Airport, apprehended due to of a lot of luck and some fast investigative work; the volcanic eruption in Iceland which underscored our frail vulnerability compared to the immense force of Mother Nature; the ongoing fighting and blood on the streets of Bangkok; the absence of a capacity for civil discourse which makes it seem as though our government and Washington is profoundly broken.

I could go on and on. Each morning, as I, like millions of others who wake up to listen to the morning news or read the morning paper, am met with events that can feel like we, as a culture and a civilization, are cascading out of control. I move through my days with a sense of heaviness and sadness, and perhaps most disconcerting of all, a feeling of powerlessness. It is Spring outside, the season of birth and rebirth, yet in some ways I feel I am in mourning. So I do what many others do: try to add something positive each day, something to the side of ‘light’ in the small part of the world I touch. I am reminded of the quote from Mother Teresa, when she said “We can do no great things, only small things with great love.”

Meanwhile, in the garden it’s been a ‘herky jerky’ Spring thus far: hot summer temperatures one day, and cold and overcast the next. The blueberry bushes are setting fruit, my pea plants are waist high, the newly planted raspberry plants are doing beautifully, much to my delight. The asparagus are coming in faster than we can eat them…so I have the pleasure of giving them away. The same is true for the lettuces and spinach. Yet, last Friday, while I was not paying enough attention, the afternoon temperature rose quickly and I lost four small Japanese cucumber seedlings, fried to a crisp inside the greenhouse which I had failed to properly ventilate, and earlier in the week the night time temperatures produced an unexpected frost that nailed two peppers plants and a small zucchini plant which I had thought were safe to put in the ground. For some reason the other squash plants survived, thankfully. And thanks to a long growing season I will be able to start over again with the cucumbers. Life and death in the garden.

‘Creation Spirituality’
The last week in April I had the pleasure of attending a weekend workshop offered by the Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation which is located in Bethesda, Maryland. (http://www.shalem.org/ ) The guest presenter was Matthew Fox, (http://www.matthewfox.org/) a former Dominican priest who was ‘silenced’ by the Catholic Church for his 'radical writings', author of 28 books, a true visionary and proponent of “Creation Spirituality”. I had purchased a copy of Matt’s book Original Blessing in 1989, yet had never actually read it. (His idea being that we don’t come into the world with ‘original sin’, but rather ‘originally blessed’.)So I was very excited to hear what he had to say. As he spoke about our interconnected to all of nature and quoting from the mystics,theologians and Native Americans,(Meister Eckhart, Hildegard de Bingen, Thomas Aquinas, Chief Joseph) and many others who believe that the Divine exists in all of creation, it suddenly occurred to me ‘so THIS is MY spirituality’. Having navigated away from the Catholic Church by the age of 13, I didn’t have a name for the beliefs I so cherished and held to so firmly, yet here, in the words of Matthew Fox and the others, was precisely what I had been cultivating through my own direct experience for the past 30 or 40 years! It was a theology with deep roots, that organized a cosmology that viewed all life as sacred, and placed human actions in it's midst, not apart from Nature, hence pointing to an ethics of behavior and choice. (My words) For me this was an epiphany and I felt so comforted and confirmed to be in such profoundly good company!

So what about that trip to Sedona? Well, very simply I was appalled, no, aghast, at the rampant development that has occurred amidst the fragile environment of the beautiful red rocks: million dollar adobe style homes built way up into the hills surrounding the rocks, a Hyatt and a Radisson ,complete with ‘water features’ lining the once scenic highway that meanders through the rocks as you come into town, downtown clogged with new construction and bumper to bumper traffic, T-shirt and ice cream concessions, and sidewalks filled with tourists. No longer a sleepy ‘new age mecca’ for those seeking the curious influence of the magnetic vortices and the sacred stillness of the rocks and canyons, Sedona has become a tourist attraction, a sad example of a lack of thoughtful planning and zoning that could have preserved something beautiful and irreplaceable. Fortunately, you can leave all that behind as you wind your way out of Sedona on Highway 89A, climbing up through White Oak Canyon, as breath taking and splendid as ever!

Next stop: ‘Camp Gone to the Dogs’, June 6-12 , 'TEDDY’ and Mary go on the road!

Greetings!

It has been several weeks since I posted anything- and alot has been happening. So this may be a bit long and I hope you can hang in and bear with me.

First, Spring has arrived here in central Maryland in a big way! The first week in April saw record high temperatures that soared to the low 90s...which caused a big acceleration in the trees leafing out and the blossoms arriving. Not only did the famed cherry blossoms peak a good week earlier than predicted, the maple leaves are fully leafed out two weeks sooner than normal, the usual early May azealias are here, the red bud and dogwood, which typically follow one another, are in bloom simultaneously...

Since then, temperatures are back to what we would expect this time of year, upper 50s and low 60s. My garden is liking this just fine: the peas have doubled in height in the last two to three days, the asparagus are coming up faster than we can eat them, spinach, swiss chard and lettuces are growing like....well, weeds....and the tiny kale and broccoli seedlings that I set out in early April are beginning to look like pre-teens. The potatoes (red Kennebec and Yukon Gold) are beginning to push curled up green leaves through the soil, the blackberry canes which were barren canes a few weeks ago are bushy and leafy, and the canes in the new raspberry patch I began a few weeks ago are beginning to show little sprouts of leaves telling me that the compost and loving care I bestowed on the plot is beginning to make a difference. I feel like a mother watching her babies grow up - each with different habits and requirements. Back in the basement under grow lights melons, squashes, tomatoes, peppers and basil are ready to go in the garden once they are hardened off. Yet my experience tells me to be prudent and wait until the last danger of frost is passed....about May 5th around here.

April 9 to the 13 John and I traveled to northeastern Arizona to visit what I was to come to learn was the epicenter of Navajo culture: Canyon de Chelley (pronounced de Shay) situated on an 18 million acre Navajo reservation. The Canyon is incredibly beautiful with astounding rock walls,beautiful colors, fields, orchards and pastures that are cultivated to this day by the local Navajo...farming in the traditional ways. However this canyon is home to a terrible history which I was to slowly learn during the three days we were there exploring this amazing monument to beauty . A bit of history here: the Canyon was first occupied by the Anasazi ('the ones who came before) about 300 or 400 A.D. They built numerous stone dwellings situated safely about the canyon floor protected from the seasonal flooding that would course down the Chinle Wash....which meanders along the canyon floor depositing valuable nutrients.In addition, they carved sacred symbols and drawings on the walls of the canyon which are easily seen today. The Anasazi left abruptly in around 1200. The Canyon was occupied by various others groups/tribes until around 1650 when the Navajo drove out the others and settled there making it their home.

The many tribes that occupied various parts of the southwest warred upon one another for hundreds of years, taking each others' land, stealing their livestock, burning their encampments. I have no romantic illusions about native Indian culture. However, what the U.S. government did to the Navajo is unspeakably cruel. In the 1860s the U.S. government, in the person of Kit Carson, drove the Navajo out of the canyon, destroying their homes, crops and peach orchards and forced them to walk 300 miles west to Fort Sumner. 8500 Navajo, those remaining alive, were detained there in horrid conditions only to be freed in 1868 to return to their home, or what was left of it. Today we would call this terrorism...or genocide.

This was my first exposure to native American culture , an experience filled with paradox. Modern Navajo culture is an interesting blend of traditional practices and ways of life married to contemporary American culture: Burger King, pizza joints, a Coca Cola plant is a prominent fixture in the tiny town of Chinle a mile or two from the opening to the Canyon. Rural Indian poverty is very evident. Lots of public housing, lots of trailers, lots of debris and trash laying all over. Yet what struck me, and was hard to understand, was their ways of caring for their live stock. The animals, based on tribal regulations, are allowed to 'free range', seen grazing along roadways, medians, parking lots. Yet other animals, horses, sheep and goats spend their entire time confined to small round pens, hanging out all day with no place to roam. Certainly they were fed yet no place to move, to be the herd animals Nature designed them to be.As an outsider seeing this for the first time it was hard to witness and I don't begin to understand the practice.

Next stop: Sedona, 'red rock country'