windthread

a Blur of some kind.....Part One

these pics were from yesterday which feels like for ever ago...not a yesterday at all....the possibility of Evacuation pending,  had continued.  There was temptation to Give Water,  Feed but then sleep.  I had no energy.   none.  The "air",  sky, Air that is between and touching everything was a strange mustard yellow and ash was floating.   The Fire Alert channel,  on phone,  said it wasn't from the fire here,  but all the way from the Big Fires south of here.  Ash lands on the leaves of the plants.   I just wanted to sleep.   But then the phone pinged 

 

 

son messaged me.  This is his daughter, Giana.  My granddaughter.   In Colorado.    Somehow i had a vague vague sense of information on that rolodex in  my mind...Alyssia saying,  press down the pic  tap the 3 dots  pick one that says send....and i did this and sure enough,  this photograph was off my phone and into the photo gallery.  Here.   She's 6.  I hardly know her.  They came here the first year i got here...before that,  they had come to New Mex twice.    I talk to her once in a while on the phone.  She calls me Goat Grama.   They go camping a lot....places of Great Beauty in Colorado,  once a year they travel,  last summer it was Yellowstone.  They want to take her to New Zealand.   I sat and looked at her a long time.   a really Long time.

 

and it occured to me that maybe i could do that with other pics?   So i went down the sidebar here to Archives...all the way back to the beginning,  2010...found this and tried it.  Yes.   i can bring those old pics from New Mex here.  From that other life.  

i looked at this pic a Long Time.   On my Wall there,  at the center top is the first Cloth i bought from Jude.   Under it is the first Cloth i made,   made by looking closely at how she did things  over at Spirit Cloth.   Looking in this  moment  is  really like looking at some other person....i remember her well,  but ...  

restless then impatient....i caste one vote

 

a restless night.  smoke.  and the owls came.  Tay had to stay awake.

 

this morning there was no update on the Fire,  known as the Potters Fire,  600 acres.  20% contained by late evening.   This morning down to the Wall Garden and me thinking that because of the excessive heat,  i was given an excuse,  but the fire said NO EXcUSE,  so i dragged down some fencing  and positioned it and during that,  blood...i have very thin skin...every scratch makes blood but there's no feeling to it

i positioned the fencing over the Bell Peppers.  had forgotten to bring down the clothespins that will hold the STUFF in place,  but i got the fencing  in place and pounded down with U nails  and bled on the Alternate Garden Dress of linen because the other one was just too  gross    to wear another day and i then bled on the linen one but ok then,  Walnut Dye.   all will be well somehow.  And i watched all the stuff about an election and i Caste my vote.   I don't so much love him,  but i trust him to be decent.  a decent human being.  right now,  that's enough.  Just decent.   Just a decent human being.

plain

i'd imagined a plain Hot day,   maybe some more plants eaten by Something,  but just a plain Hot day and i would go Give Water after Goat care.   

around 7 am there was Thunder.   A little distant but then ROLLING closer and closer and ROLLING,  the sound almost continuous,  Roll into Roll into Roll and on and on and it went from then into hours of that and there was no lightning to be seen here on this Hill,  but there was NO DOUBT that the THUNDER was the voice for the Lightning.    Somewhere.     I watered through it.   These oh so incredibly Elegant Red Splendor Mustard Greens...so so small but so so exactly a Red Splendor Mustard Green,  each of them.    

 

Then B Garden and more had been eaten but i won't go there now.

 

came back and pinned and looked.   Took it down and folded.   Hooked in to the local Butte Weather Fire and Accident Face Book  page  and read through the Evacuation Warnings,  watched the LIVE  of the fire that is only one of the 8 that were sparked by lightning strikes,   this one nearby enough to need watching....over the ridge....and  began gathering things to load in the Truck

you could smell the smoke.   Goats don't like the smell of smoke.   Uneasy.

response to this fire is impeded by the NUMBEr of fires happening simultaneously.....do you remember the term   Climate Change?   Do you remember Climate Change?  amidst the ALL of STUFF?    There is NO THUNDER AND LIGHtNING in August in this part of the Sierra Nevada.   NONE.   ANOMALY.   

 

 

i gathered Emrie's stuff from the Crow Altar.    put it in a plastic food container and put that in the fire proof bag thing with important papers.   This year,  i'll leave the Crow.  everything else there.   I'll leave that Cloth above.   I'll probably leave almost everything else.   Take a role of toilet paper.   I realize things have changed.   

i go,  off and on,   to the Democratic Convention that looks so hopefull.   then back over to the Fire channel,  then i go out and put some bedding straw in Talkie's transport.   Call her to give her extra meal worms,  so it's fresh in her mind that if she is called,  she might get extra meal worms,   i go talk to Sunny Ray and Jack Flash...tell them we might be going to try to Load them...they stand and stare,   Nogal,  who is so gentle,  i tell too and he listens,  but already from my tone,  my body energy,  he is Vigilent.

Where's Puppy?

destiny

is there a thing of Destiny?   even about   "small"  Things   ...like green beans?   in the Wall Garden,  they were uhhhhh,  Taken,   taken at ground level almost as soon as their second leaves.    Replanted here at B and going along but this mornng...2 of them,  disappeared for the most part..... but just the leaves this time....????? and closest to the fence,  the Echinacea ,  it's 3 blooms, drying,  There at around 10:00 you can see the remaining leaves of Plant?????   So...if you were a Goat and you wanted those green bean leaves and you leaned hard into the fence .....first the echinacea,  why not,  on the way to those leaves....?????   OR maybe whatever it was that ate the plant at  the Wall Garden....finally found it here at B????

Green Beans.   seems simple,  wanting to grow green beans.

 

there is one plant,  hidden by a far leaf of the Crook Neck Squash....still.   

 

 

halfway through August

the gentleness of B garden.   What i guess is dappled.   In any direction,  always  branches,  leaves,  pine needles.

at A,  the Wall Garden...Full SUN.   Half way thru Giving Water,  i took off my dress,  dunked it in a bucket of water,  wrung it out and put it back on.  Sat a while,  my feet in the bucket.  It takes me 2 hours down there.   I realized i've never lived in this kind of Heat...even N. Mex desert,  not this much...today 106...going up through next Tuesday when it is forecast at 110.  The Malabar Spinach grows,  unlike the squash plants,  never wilting.  Was listed in the catalog under Heat Tolerant.  this is true.  Is thriving so far.

 

no words for this.

Life forms double click the pics, they came through Great (not the Z pizza)

scrub oak leaf at B garden.   ????   Dried,  fallen.  Spent.

 

 

the leaf provided habitat,  there's a better word,  but i can't think of it right now,  but the leaf provided a Place for     Something else to play out their Necessity.   I probably can never know what this secondary life form is.   i think tho,  that it completed its Self.

 

it's the middle of August.   Zucchini Pizza Time.    i missed two Augusts.   This third here,  Not.   It was crazy.   I knew it would be 106 degrees today.  

i love.   love.  Zucchini Pizza...which really has nothing to do with pizza at all,  but it was the title of the recipe that was in a little booklet of zucchini recipes that was offered as a fund raiser  for the kids PTA 40 years ago.   I kept the booklet for a long time...there was a block print on the front of a HUGE PILE of zucchini and a woman...almost disappeared into it,  her arms and legs sticking up and out,  kind of a cartoon image.  But the Greatest recipe of all and i somehow lost the book but had it written on a recipe card but somehow lost the recipe card when i looked for it at the beginning of August knowing it HAD to HAPPEN this circle of seasons....to keep some kind of Order....so i put everything on the list for Alyssia's shopping and she got everything and i had a Giant Zucchini   and 

today....i knew it,  was going to be 106 degrees...not really a day to begin by lighting the oven,  but 

it was Zucchini Pizza day.  The mushrooms were FRESH,  all the cheeses,  a beauty  Full bellpepper,  everything,  so i did it.  Began grating things at around 4 am.   I've eaten it 3 times today.  it's good cold.   will be breakfast tomorrow.  probably lunch and dinner.   i'll eat 3 times again.

 

Somehow about Love

this doesn't make much sense.  But this is a journal.  it doesn't have to.  I just need it here.  today.  as a kind of  Witness  of about how the Thread runs true even when we don't notice for a long time.   it runs through and pulses quietly waiting till we catch up.

the wall across from me as i sit at this Morning (All Purpose) table,  where i read and write things,  eat,  work,  play with Emrie,  is divided by the bathroom door.  On the left there is the large piece of walnut Cloth where things get pinned,  for Looking.  On the right is the Green Tara in her glass frame.   I either look At them or just in their direction every day.  All the time i am in here, not OutSide.   For a while the Green Tara has been just a little crooked because the pushpin she hangs on is loose,  needing to be repositioned but i just kept thinking that because that wall also needs to be washed.   I just notice these things over and over.  For whatever reason,  i got up from my sitting place today and DID those things.   Fixed.   Sitting back down i looked again, as always,  and suddenly realized how much the Cloth on the large Walnut Cloth,  the last Cloth i sewed,  that is to me,  a Spirit House,  how much it resembles Green Tara,  the colors,  the positioning of colors,  the whole "spirit" of it.....the sense of Love they both hold...the sense of  Extending Out....to me...asking me.   Without even really formulating the question at all,  i was given an Answer.   Again.  Over and Over.   Cloth tells Story.   I am so grateful for that.  I can count on that.  A forever thing.

Morning and i sat down here at Wall Garden  letting the hose flow.  I read.   And felt my body open,  expand,  the space  over my heart,  the bones there,  opening and moving apart   after all the constricted grip,  the first time in so many months     I look at her face.  Her smile.   and i look at her eyes.   Her eyes are True.   I ask John Lewis the small tree,   What say you?   He says she will cause Good Trouble.   

i would,  if i could,  have AOC.   it's not her time yet.   But maybe it's the best we can do to have a bridge.  and so,  OK.  OK enough.  Now we will see what we are all made of.  We are going to find out.

Ally

unexpected Beauty of an unknown and unexpected kind

 

Just Jenny today.  The two of us.   She never says what she has in mind before hand.  I find out when she shows up.    She called me on phone from the bottom of the Hill,   asking me to bring down rope.  I ask what kind,  how long,  for what and she says as long as i can find.   Ok.   Turns out she's into making some kind of bridge/dock  at the bottom of the low Hill across the creek.  Something we can just sit on.  Dangle our  feet.  Down  far  enough from the Carefree  Way.   close to the young Cottonwood.   Wants the rope to measure the distance down the slope and across the creek.   Maybe 70 ft?   We never got that far because there's a river willow there that's grown into the creek with branches extending horizontally IN the creek and creek debris is caught there,  making a little pool of Stuff.   This is the kind of thing that the Feather River people would clear with machinery when they come every couple years.   And  in clearing this,  most likely,  the young Cottonwood too.   There is no bank.  only a maybe less than 1 ft space with a slender strip of Goat Trail.  inches.   We study this and look at the two huge forms of the Sea Weed that is intermittant all along the creek,  in it's huge form looks ominous.  Like a large fish or animal down there and i'd just watched a Utube about sturgeons.   They look like 7 ft sturgeons.  i think,  eee,  but  she says no...look and grabs some that's close and pulling it out,  it's feathery,  very much like the stuff you buy to add habitat in your aquarium...its NICE,  strand by strand so ok i think and since there's no way but IN,  i go IN.   Extending from the edge there's a granite shelf  about 3 ft,  of course, sloping like everything here is,  but solid and just at the end of that the middle of the creek dips down and turns out to be over 4ft deep.  I am in.  And she hands me the Racheted Loppers  and i begin.   Branch by branch that we can easily see,  but then i need to reach down,  feel my way  under water and we can't see because it's all stirred up.  She tries to cut from the bank but Not so she's IN too.  We work...freeing up the tangle....letting it go in the current.   It's 99 degrees.  Water is cold.  The conversation strays to many things.  Memories of her hermit crab,  vacations,  to Julian and Emrie,  Alyssia,  to her dad,    We work.  We talk about what she envisions for her bridge/dock.   Time goes by and we slog around,  two EXTREMELY large crayfish show up and are interested in her shoes   and it's time for Alyssia to come bringing me ice so she has to leave.   It's a little abrupt.  But she tells me she took two days off from work.  Just to get away from the Virus.  She'll be back tomorrow.  When i got back UP,  i layed it on the bed (unmade) because  i was so HUNGRY and needed to hurry to cook food.   Some of which was FROM THE GARDEN.

 

she saw them first.  Only on this branch....What's THIS?    we don't know...these Beauty Full Flowerets made of leaves????

 

on ordinary branches as in the first two pics....there are Several.   ??????

I am an old woman.  She,  middle aged.   a Woman.   Off and on through those hours,  i thoughtglimpsed the fact that she was my old Jenny,  my little girl Jenny,  the one that was Emrie's age and on....What it might have been like to have wandered in this creek with her then,  how she was never afraid of anything,   how she was so adamant about Who She Was,  Her Self....and What it was like to do this work with her today on this HILL  in California 2020 ,   this Hill that belongs to her.  That no one can take  from her. Ever.