Apocalypse with butterflies

Elderberry on this cloudy morning

I wrote what follows yesterday when it was hot and dry. This morning it's cloudy and cool, and there are rumors of rain. And there you have it. Apocalyptic feelings melted by the thought of a rain cloud. I knew someone once who often advised me to view my feelings of dread like weather. 

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I’m finding it hard not to catastrophize the lack of rain here. In my lizard brain, I’m more Californian than Minnesotan since I spent more than 40 years fearing the Santa Ana winds. Seeing flames from my house during the Thomas fire and the one that came next whose name I can’t even remember was not an experience I want to have again. Masking to go outside was a thing, and this was months  before Covid was  even a mere gleam in some Chinese market creature’s eye. 

I moved here to Minnesota after those big fires and before Covid. 

I love the Midwest. I love that it rains here. I love rain and a book and something hot to drink. I love rain and the way growing things look afterwards. I love the clouds and the washing of everything, and how birds sing when it’s over. 

Red Admiral butterlfy.
So far this year, I've seen these and blue swallowtails and monarchs. Also some yellow ones I don't know the name of.

So right now, I’m sitting in my hot and  dry back yard, telepathically telling my new little transplanted peony that I will give it a good soak tomorrow. I’m envisioning where I will plant more plants that butterflies love, and how I will shrink my front lawn with a path for the mailman and his yard to yard shortcut, and how there will be plants for the butterflies there too, encircling him. In the end there will be very little grass. Mo’ grass mo’ problems, a neighbor says. 

I don’t want an apocalypse with butterflies. I just want the butterflies. I want world peace, a cure for cancer, and a regularly employed methodology to make it rain. 

The garden of everything

I toured a friend's garden today. It's always a wonderland. We talked plants and then she made me a salad with greens and nasturtiums. That she grew in her garden, of course. 

She's a painter too. On her living room wall was a large painting she'd worked on for months. She's busy. So busy. A complicated life. Here's my yoga space she said, gesturing to a space between her couch and her bay window full of orchids. I haven't been doing much yoga, I said. Me either, she said. But I have a yoga space.

Hollyhock buds. I'm waiting.

My yoga space is in my bedroom. Or used to be. Now it's  my garden. Not that I'm doing yoga out there when I step out the door, still my in pajamas and blowing on my coffee. What I'm doing is breathing. What I'm doing is looking and listening. 

That crow is there on top of the blue spruce every day.

Was that what my dad was doing? 

My father has been dead a very long time. He died suddenly of a heart attack when I was 19. Nineteen years is not long enough to get to know a parent. Our relationship was just beginning to shift, and then he was gone.

Cuke.

Maybe he gardened not just to garden. Maybe he really loved being out there, looking and listening. Maybe he wasn't just putting food on the table. Maybe he was doing yoga.

Shiny! Are all banana peppers shiny?

It never occurred to me to ask him if he loved those plants. If he loved hearing the birds or the wind or the feel of that black Iowa dirt.

I miss blogging

Back in the day when this blog was titled "His Big Fat Indian Wedding," it brought me a lot of relief. It was a place to vent and to keep a real- time diary of of the carnage that ensued at the end of my marriage, a place to document the facts, and to think out loud. There was community and a certain artistry. Everyone's blog was a bit different in appearance. I liked that creativity. And the widgets. Remember widgets? I find Substack less interesting in its presentation. So I'm just gonna stay here. I want to start reading the blogs I followed then--if they exist. I hope to blog regularly again too. I need to see my thoughts in black and white. Shine some light on/through them. Which is literally what happens to words on a screen. My life is a wreck in a few different ways right now. I'm also very happy. I do a lot of things to scrub off the crud so I can see the happiness. It's fairly easy to do that in Minnesota in the spring. Super easy if you like to garden. I'm crazy about flowers. And vegetables. Trees too. Last spring my partner and I planted a native wildflower garden in our parkway. Thirty-some two-inch plants. Don't expect blooms the first year, I told him. It's all about putting down roots.

This year there will be flowers. In fact, some have already completed their first bloom cycle. Here is what is in the wildflower garden: Hairy beard tongue. How did it get its name? I don't know. The stems are hairy. No beard and tongue though. Thank god. There's probably a story there somewere. Orange butteryfly weed. Whorled milk weed--which is quite bossy and spreading all over. That's fine for now. Next year I might be out there with a weed whacker. Blue sage. The wild rabbits stole one these immediately after planting. There were then three left. Two were regulary dined on as soon as they poked their stems out of the cold dirt this spring. We covered them with cages. Yep. Here the bunnies roam free, and the plants are put in cages. Anisse hyssop. Prairie smoke. Wild petunia. Golden Alexander. Jacob's ladder. Stiff goldenrod. Wild blue asters. I chose these plants because they are attractive to birds and butterflies--and good for the whole business of pollinating. I love the idea of having native plants in my yard. Many of the plants that were here when I moved in are native too. And I'm trying to grow the things that my dad grew when I was a kid. Hollyhocks, irises, zinnias. I was always super proud of those flowers when I took a bouquet to school for the May altar which was devoted to the Virgin Mary. I have absolutely nothing to do with a church of any kind nowadays--and haven't for a very long time. My yard is my church. I feel serene there. I feel worthwhile. That my efforts will yield something good and beautiful. Here's an ecoprint from the wildflower garden. The ecoprinting was my first attempt. I plan to do more of it.

Mostly, when it comes to art, I make collages.