What the Raven says

wooOOP!

wooOOP!

Just exactly how does a Raven make those w or p sounds without lips?

Wild plums (and other fruit), slugs, appreciation and the heart's desire

I really like the word appreciation.

It's got this neat built-in deeper meaning to it that just tickles me pink. For not only does appreciating something mean understanding its value, the dictionary also tells us that "appreciate", used as a verb, means to grow.

So in a way, when we appreciate something it grows in value.

I find that there's a difference in .. er .. tone between when I am feeling grateful and when I am appreciating. They're both positive, of course. But grateful implies (to me) a sort of selfishness .. not the right word, I'll try again .. grateful implies that this thing or event benefits me. Appreciation opens me up to see the value in that thing or event in the larger sense.

Once more, with feeling

In this world where information has become currency, words seem to have come to matter more than the meaning behind them.

It's because we miss that meaning that we just keep looking for more words.

We're obsessed with collecting information, horde it in files

                      like pirates with chests of gold doubloons 

only to bring it out and look at it now and then, memorizing terms and phrases we think are important - we call that learning? - never realizing that information, without meaning, is like food without nourishment.

How I spent my summer (and a flower essence story)

Off the internet, that's how I spent it!

And wow .. I highly recommend it. But more on that later.

First, a nifty, and just a little spooky, story about a flower ...

Gardens have their own plans

There are sunchokes coming up in my monarda patch.

The monarda patch itself is obligingly moving eastward to give the sunchokes the space they seem to think they're owed.

The motherwort plants - 2 of them are gigantic already - have produced litters of babies amongst the sedums.

Yellow dock? Don't talk to me about yellow dock. It's in the lawn. It's also in the monarda patch. It's .. well, it's everywhere you'd expect to see a dandelion, and if you think it's tough to get a dandelion out of the ground you oughta try yellow dock. The leaves slide off if you try to just yank it, exuding this slippery mucilaginous stuff (good medicine, no doubt) that makes a second attempt laughable. Only a big digging fork going down a foot or more (at least) and getting to the root is going to even half way discourage those buggers.

But on the other hand ..

2 large plastic bins, 1 plunger, an assortment of basins and one big laugh

I didn't get where I am today without learning to be resourceful in the face of challenge!

Here's the story - thanks to the ongoing Great Flood of 2019, and 1/3 of our village being under waist-high water (and looking to stay that way for a few more weeks), our wastewater treatment plant is rather taxed at the moment and on April 29th we were asked to limit what goes down our drains.

Okay then. It certainly seems a reasonable thing to do under the (apocalyptic) circumstances.

Shit hits fan - the rant.

This is the Cheneaux Dam, on the Ottawa river, just downstream from us. Believe it or not, there is only one gate open, the one in the background, at the far end of the bridge. This is not a normal spring.

Up and down the Ottawa river - and all its tributaries - the twice as much as normal snowfall of the past winter is swelling rivers to unprecedented levels. Two years ago, we had a "100 year" flood. This is much, much worse.