Author Archives: Ann

JUNE 22, 2023: SUMMER SOLSTICE DINNER AND CEREMONY

Joseph was going to prepare an altar, but at the last minute couldn’t do it. Four of us were there, cleaning and preparing the patio for the dinner and ceremony to come, and wow: right away, we pivoted in place and cooperatively figured out how to do a small altar with items on it to a suitable scale (i.e., tiny flowers).

Here it is!

You can’t tell from this angle, but our makeshift altar slants down to the left . . . but not enuf for anything to slide off.

And here’s the context: with the new yurt, the old barn (now called Moloch, since in contrast to the pristine yurt, it has a newly menacing presence), and various junky old garden beds and other weird stuff (like why the fig branches in the white bucket??).

The dinner itself featured a first, in all the years of doing Community Dinners: three seafood dishes, all of them wonderful, and one of them, Jeff’s, totally spectacular!

We asked people to please try to be on time, 7:00 PM, so that we can eat first and begin the ceremony at 8:00 PM. 

At 8:00 PM we circled up near the little altar and Mariella, a good friend and neighbor, whom I had invited to “call in the directions,” did so, something she had never done before. First, we all faced East, then South, then West, then North, then Above, and finally Below — while she intoned the special qualities of each.

Then, in response to an email I had sent out to the Dinner List, I had invited folks to meditate on what felt full in their lives right now, at the fullness of the summer sun, what in their lives made them feel grateful. This they did, almost everyone, many more than I expected, and the atmosphere during that circle was centered, meditative, and full of careful listening.

I loved young Rebecca’s story especially. She felt grateful for her body, the fullness within her physical body, and its communion with the body of earth.

Afterwards, we each lit the next person’s candle, and thanked, as a group, the six directions for joining us.

And the piece de resistance? A gorgeous croscosmia, flare into bloom that very day. Every year I forget about these seemingly fragile, but hardy perennials, and wonder what that plants those are (in several gardens now), with those kind of stalks — until one of them gifts us with the fullness of its sun-time glory!

 

This is the first of two posts for today. . . . Meanwhile, the tornado warning has just sounded, so I’ll be with others in the basement for awhile.

. . .

30 minutes later. Back upstairs, tornado few miles north of here, moving east fast. Big wind and rain here for a short while. Yurt survived. But that big bucket of fig sticks tipped, as did the front porch begonia. 

 

 

 

 

Mid-June, and the flourishing takes hold!

And that’s what we’re doing here, in Green Acres Permaculture Village, “growing community from the ground up.” And it’s the ground which teaches us how to BE with each other. 

Which reminds me, see the BEE in the bottom right corner of this montage. I took these photos this morning, and though there were lots of bees flitting about and on the the butterfly weed, I only managed to capture one. Rogue sunflower shooting up top right; climbing beans to the left.

Tiny splashes of color here and there and everywhere . . . 

Above, garden panorama; below, Joseph’s fairy garden.

In the top photo above, notice the old two-forked tree stump. That’s from the bradford pear which, not knowing better, we planted the very first year of the garden, back in 2010. Finally hacked it down five or six years ago; yet its trunk still stands, reminding us of the past as we learn from the garden to be so fully present that we move seamlessly into the future.  

BTW: only nine people at Thursday’s Community Dinner. “You never know how many will come, EVER!” We remind each other of this as we set up for the event each time, wondering how many tables? This time we had four extra tables (the most ever!), since we expected many more, including a family with five kids! Unfortunately, they didn’t make it, as didn’t many regulars and residents who were out of town. But these intimate dinner conversations dig down deeper than the more rowdy boisterous ones. All in all, very satisfying.

Next up: Solstice Community Dinner: Ceremony and Celebration. June 22.

 

This summer’s cleanup carries long, not so fond, memories . . .

We’ve been planning on this cleanup for at least a month, but various situations intervened, and meanwhile, of course, the piles, in the verdant, greening midwest spring, kept piling up. Here are four of five piles, as of last Saturday morning, when we took the first pile to the dump, i.e., Hoosier Transfer Station. 

After two work parties, Saturday and today, we’re still only half done. BUT: the hardest pile are done, these being left bottom above, Saturday, and right top, today.

Saturday

It may look like some people are just standing around, but actually they are waiting in line. We decided we needed to organize that way in order not to run into each other.

Tuesday

Today’s load was epic. Mainly because it meant that we were finally rid of what remained from an ill-fated project that was done thirteen years ago, as detailed here:

The Cob Oven Saga

All the hurt feelings, especially those between a neighbor and myself, have been healed, though that little remnant of bygone times took until last summer!

The oven’s walls, made of cob (a cement like feature) and rebar, sat, in three large pieces, upright in the backyard here for awhile, then were cut into smaller pieces with a diamond blade saw last summer by a visitor from Jackson Hole.  There they sat, in a pile, in the back yard, until another man cut them up even smaller, so that the rest of us could haul them out to the front. 

I decided to document the final ridding of the cob oven walls extensively, little by little, mirroring the little by little progress over the last 13 years that led to this glorious day. Here goes, with Joseph and Marita doing the heavy lifting, into neighbor Dave’s truck, as usual.

Part way through, this sight, under the bottom layer. We stood around and pondered it for awhile, how nature is full of tiny, lacy mycelliac (is that a word?) structures . . .

Nearing the finale . . .

The finale!

At the transfer station they learned the total weight of the cob oven walls: 1,120 pounds. Actually that feels low, not even as big as a horse.

In any case, we are now free.

Will reserve this week’s Saturday work party for the final haul, probably two trips, of organic matter to Good Earth

 

Early June, 2023: Community Dinner, Work Party, Yurt Details

 

Last Thursday’s Community Dinner featured a full patio! Plus lots of great food and the new yurt as partially hidden backdrop with old barn lurking behind.

Saturday’s Morning Work Party, first priority: get the chips off the road! After waiting for what, six months, we finally got our longed for chip drop. That’s Marita and son Nicolas bottom left. Luckily, the driver managed to avoid the little poppies from which neighbor Carisa had casually tossed seeds. 

 

Some of the new chips we put on the paths of Joseph’s fairy garden, where the elderberry bush is now flowering.

And Marita borrowed neighbor Dave’s trusty (horribly noisy and effective) weed whacker to get the path between the mess that we’re going to get out of here next Saturday and (what used to be the) pond visible, and walkable, again.

Here she is just starting out. Later, voila! (Second shot from a greater distance.)

Marita has already spent one night in the yurt, and is about to spend another. But first, she wants to get air flow figured out. Up through the bottom . . .

. . . out through the top.

New flowering the last few days on back patio.

PlantNet ID tells me it’s garden loosestrife, and we have to watch out, because it’s invasive.

Even so . . .

Yellow Loosestrife – Medicinal Applications and Benefits

Hands and Hearts Serve Garden Glories!

 

Went out into the main garden yesterday early and what should I see but a single, unexpected burst of color!

A few hours later, I went back out, for our regular 10 AM Saturday workparty, and asked the five humans already present to stand still for the camera. They are, in order, Camden, Ben, Nathan in back, Joseph and Nicolas in front.  

So, we got to work. Joseph cuts back, while I sit on stool, planting itsy bitsy lettuces.

Nicolas, it turned out, wanted to go help his mom Marita turn compost in one of the back gardens. Marita also planted eggplant in the front garden of that house.

I notice the allium is fading . . . sob!

To me, what’s sadder than anything this spring, is to be utterly delighted by gorgeous flowers that emerge and flower unexpectedly, stay for a while, and then gradually fade. And yes, they mirror who we are. Each of us a unique gorgeous flower, that comes in (sometimes unexpectedly, for the parents!), stays for a while, and then gradually (or suddenly) fades.

Love that bok choi! And see just how many seeds (to save)  this overwintered kale produced, finally growing so heavy with seed that it now bends over to the ground. The flower below right, I don’t know the name of, but one of the women Joseph works for in her garden gifted it to him. YES!

Just as it did last year, valerian is growing up all by itself in the gardens surrounding the Overhill house. And that little plant, “Queen of the Prairie,” a native, but in the southwest! Neighbor Carisa said it had to get in the ground, NOW! So she brought it over. Already, three days later, it’s twice as big and much healthier looking!

And ah yes, the perilla, the perilla, coming up nicely once again, where it chooses. 

Here’s Joseph with his gigantic mullein, that he says he talks to. To the right, his wonderful friend Nathan, who has started to work with us each Saturday.

And finally, Joseph again, watering, in his fairy garden.