Devotion

I missed this last night, so I'll do two today maybe. Anyhow, I will do one now. I have a keyboard and I'm not doing it from bed on my phone, that's a good start.

I am grateful to myself for taking the plastic off my north window so I can open every side of my house and feel the moving air on my skin. I am grateful to the wind for gently stirring every aspen leaf even remotely in earshot into a quiet ocean susurrus.

I am grateful for the seasons for progressing with the comfort of structure and the intrigue of variation. Today the leaf miners are out on the aspens. Last week was hot two years in a row. This year there are more roses. The apples are swelling just as they always do.

I am grateful for my garden. Already it's bigger than I am, it's more information than I could ever take in. Tomatoes greening and foliage exploding, corn expanding in such different ways in each bed: up and slim or wide and green and thick-stemmed or slender, each a different green, each leaf a different shape, squash putting on leaf after leaf and the soaked seeds sending up cotyledons that make me wish I'd recorded all thirty-odd types seperately because I've never seen a squash cotyledon so huge, beans, melons, brassicas-- it's happy, and I'm happy, and I'm already thinking for next year. I walk it every morning.

I'm grateful that my past self sowed just a few glutinous barley seeds on my deck, for seed multiplying and to see what would happen. One type either didn't sprout at all or was eaten by crows; the other did sprout in two different buckets of soil. One bucket had two seeds, one bucket had three. Now I can observe the differences between buckets (maybe the drainage in one is stopped up, the plants in it are paler and smaller, or maybe it's a fertilizer issue?) and the glorious tillering on the biggest plant -- nine stalks! -- and just generally have a sense of bounty and focus different than the larger-scale garden gives me. Hopefully it will be a successful seed multiplication.

I'm grateful for my geese, who accept me as one of the flock.

I'm always grateful for cooking and eating with people. It may be the most human of experiences I'll ever be accorded.

I'm grateful to always be learning more about myself, to be able to see patterns pop up and think about them and hold them through my daily life.

I'm grateful for a pantry full of empty shining jars and a summer to fill them; for empty carboys and rhybarb and roses to fill them; for a house full of the things I love to do.

Devotions

It's easiest for me to be grateful in the mornings. I wear down as the day goes on. Nonetheless today held a lot for me:

I'm always grateful for seeds; I'm grateful for my enormous seed vault from which I drew two seed mixes today to put out, one primarily lettuce and one primarily kale-style brassica. Sorting, evaluating, deciding on the mix: it's pure pleasure.

I'm grateful for my well water, which is always cool and tasty.

I'm grateful that the acorns Josh brought me two years ago, I guess two and a half now, from white oaks at UBC in the fall of 2020-- they survived two winters of stratification in the fridge, began to grow this spring, and now are safely tucked along the southern fenceline of my woodfield with significant mosquito blood-sacrifice.

I'm especially grateful that the red oaks from 42nd ave in Vancouver will be joining them. Those acorns are from trees I collected acorns from when I lived briefly in Vancouver as a kid, after immigrating to Canada, so that would have been in '87. I would collect them and they would sprout and there was no way to grow them all on a city lot, it was sad. Now I'm planting them up here over thirty years later. I don't know if either of them will survive the winter, but I've given them the chance.

I'm grateful my dogs are relatively calm with the fireworks happening right now.

I'm still grateful to my stubborn past self for planting all those tomatoes even though I thought I was going to move. The plants are growing so well and I would be bereft without them. I will be grateful to that self all summer.

I'm grateful for the door I found in the dump that might fit my loft doorframe well enough, and with enough airflow, to keep the cats out but let the air through.

In that vein I'm grateful my blankets are all washable.

I'm grateful for those who really listen to me, instead of hearing what they expect.

I'm grateful the mosquitoes up here barely leave a mark.

I am so grateful to have laundry in my home, and a nice tap to wash my feet outside before coming in.

I'm even more grateful that I survived so many heavy times to be here in this one moment.