How to live today

This year’s prairie plants have been planted, a couple of dozen or so. Tomorrow it’s forecast to rain so that should help. Now I need to get busy with pocket gopher and mole traps to help protect fresh new roots. In a couple of months I’ll take pictures of whatever survived, sooner if anyone starts to burst into blossoms before then.

While the Better Half was directing me on where to make holes for the plant plugs, I noticed several seedlings, I think oak, growing where the field is trying to return to forest. Closer to the top of the slope is a pine tree seedling, probably thanks to a squirrel planting a cone for winter food, and beyond that a cluster of juniper(?) or cedar surrounding a “mother” tree. We’ll talk and think over the summer about whether to let Mother Nature take her course.

Getting the planting done was the second highest point of the day so far. This morning we got a new door bell, wireless, to replace the one that came with the house. We think the wiring developed a short behind the cement board siding and rewiring would have been both expensive and potentially unproductive. The electrician thinks the wires got pinched behind the replacement siding and the short developed as the house has expanded and contracted with the changing seasons. In really cold weather, sometimes the bell would ring by itself and other times it would buzzzzz for awhile. The latter drove the dogs crazy, which made the dog owners crazy. We hope it’s all taken care of now. We’ll see come winter and no, I’m not looking forward to checking it out.

how long until the first cutting of hay?

Photo by J. Harrington

One of the authors I’ve been reading recently, Laurie Allmann, cited a line from one of my favorite poets, Wendell Berry, in the piece I read this morning. It fits so well that today I’m going to share the entire Wendell Berry poem after I pique your interest with the cite: Be joyful / though you have considered all the facts.

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

by Wendell Berry

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.

And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.

When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won't compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.

Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.

Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.

Listen to carrion -- put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as Women do not go cheap
for power, please Women more than men.

Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.

As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn't go.

Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.