While I Was Gardening

Another mass shooting. This time, here in Seattle, at a festival, a joyful summer food festival. Who are we to allow guns to be more populous than people? Who are we to allow babies, parents, toddlers, grandparents, friends, neighbors – people we love be they stranger, neighbor, spouse, child – who are we to allow such horrific sin to be normalized? We wonder, will it be my c...

Yay!! – it’s my favorite season of year! (Well, except for hiking season, travel season, gardening season, and holidays.) Still, the season of touring gardens is right up there, sharing the top of my list of Activities I Love. And although our favorite garden tour (Yakima) was not held this year and we missed the other big tour (West Seattle), the tours we took part in were w...

I woke to a beautiful surprise – a gentle, soft, summer rain. Yesterday morning, a quiet Sunday morning, I heard a sound I haven’t heard in weeks. I sat up, listened closely (ignoring snores of spouse and cat), and heard rain! Summer rain is rare anymore, a July rain even more so. My response – jump out of bed, run to the livingroom, open the door, stand on the porch and watc...

A forest hike a few days ago – ferns nestled in moss, youth and elders share mycelial networks, soft fog from the Salish Sea floats through green and drips and drops on warm skin.

Birds narrate a forest almost empty of people but filled with sound – songs of time and space, birth and death – and food, always food.

We leave the forest and crest a hi...