Early Autumn? #phenology

The front flower garden has both anise hyssop and blue vervain in bloom, together with a little bit of butterfly weed and some black-eyed Susans. Several species of bees seem quite pleased with the situation, despite the fact that the bergamot (bee balm) has mostly gone to seed.

early Autumn, maple leaves

Photo by J. Harrington

When we were hanging the front bird feeders this morning, we came across a surprise. Two maple leaves, in Autumn's colors, were lying on the grass. It's looking more and more as if the Better Half was prescient a week or ten days ago when she prognosticated an early Autumn. The local hummingbirds are still around and continue to drain the nectar feeders as they get ready for their Journey South.

The CSA in which we have shares this year just announced that the Summer interns have left for school and the Autumn interns will be arriving over the next couple of weeks. More signs of a seasonal transition. The Summer, so far, has been cool enough that the heritage tomatoes are still ripening. We see few indications that's likely to change any time soon, although we do get temperatures in the 90s and even 100+ in September.

Phenology "affects nearly all aspects of the environment, including the abundance, distribution, and diversity of organisms, ecosystem services, food webs, and the global cycles of water and carbon." Each day brings more and more signs that climate, a basic driver of phenological events, is changing and becoming more volatile. This makes us wonder about our increasing vulnerability to extreme weather events. Some, perhaps most of us hate feeling vulnerable and not in control. Fortunately, some recent Zen readings provide a different way to think about vulnerability. See if this helps alleviate negative feelings of vulnerability.

Vulnerability means appreciating mystery as much as mastery, and being comfortable with not-knowing, ambiguity, uncertainty, and complexity, cultivating awe and wonder that deepen our knowledge. This is what in Zen is the lightness of “beginner’s mind,” rather than the heaviness of needing to be competent.

If so, more of this approach to mindfulness can be found here. As we encounter more and more of the effects of climate change, we need to be open to a range of possibilities to respond. Remember,

"In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities; in the expert's mind there are few. --Shunryu Suziki"

So Much Happiness

Naomi Shihab Nye, 1952

It is difficult to know what to do with so much happiness.
With sadness there is something to rub against,
a wound to tend with lotion and cloth.
When the world falls in around you, you have pieces to pick up,
something to hold in your hands, like ticket stubs or change.

But happiness floats.
It doesn’t need you to hold it down.
It doesn’t need anything.
Happiness lands on the roof of the next house, singing,
and disappears when it wants to.
You are happy either way.
Even the fact that you once lived in a peaceful tree house
and now live over a quarry of noise and dust
cannot make you unhappy.
Everything has a life of its own,
it too could wake up filled with possibilities
of coffee cake and ripe peaches,
and love even the floor which needs to be swept,
the soiled linens and scratched records . . .

Since there is no place large enough
to contain so much happiness,
you shrug, you raise your hands, and it flows out of you
into everything you touch. You are not responsible.
You take no credit, as the night sky takes no credit
for the moon, but continues to hold it, and share it, and in that way, be known. 

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