the solemn grace of newts

A tumbling of thoughts, diverse yet connected:

1.  Derrick Jensen, who is a regular contributor to the wonderful Orion magazine, used to bug me.  His tone was condescending, his essays harsh.  I'm not sure if it's he or I who has changed, but lately I have found myself murmuring constant amens while reading his pieces.  His piece in the latest issue is no different.  He talks about how so many of us (particularly those in power) lack imagination in this world.  Most of us cannot, for instance, imagine our lives without electricity (and the non-renewable resources much of that energy is dependent upon), yet it was not so many generations ago that the entire human population lived without electricity, and even today nearly 2 billion people continue to survive, and even thrive, without it.  Derrick Jensen then writes, "Imagine if we were to say we cannot imagine living without the heart-stopping flutters and swoops and dives of bats, and we cannot imagine living without hearing frog song in spring.  Imagine if we were to say that we cannot live without the solemn grace of newts, and the cheerful flight of bumblebees."

2.  In church this morning the Old Testament lesson was from Exodus, the story of Moses and the burning bush, of God calling Moses to be God's ambassador to Pharaoh and to the Israelites.  The voice from the burning bush told Moses to remove his sandals, for he was standing on holy ground.  Pastor Jean asked us where, and what, is our holy ground.  Where are the places where we are called to be more than we are, where we are stretched to be the fullest versions of ourselves?  At the end of her sermon she looked out at us all and said, "THIS is holy ground.  Right here, we are standing on holy ground."  And she pulled off her sandals, set them aside, and asked us to do the same.  I jiggled my flip-flops off my feet and rested my soles on the smooth, cool wooden floor of the church.  When the time came for communion, I walked up the aisle, feeling the soft texture of the carpet beneath my feet.  As I put the fresh, yeasty bread to my mouth and felt the sharp tang of wine wash it down, the taste and texture of both seemed intensified, as though the nerve endings in my toes and heels were increasing the sensitivity of my taste buds and the nerves of my tongue and throat.  I was reminded of the physicality, the tangibility, of this sacrament; reminded of an essay I wrote for my thesis that explored this physicality; reminded that I am a physical being in a physical world.  Reminded that I am.

3.  An article in the most recent issue (Sept/Oct 2011) of Sojourners Magazine also caught my attention.  It is the story of a church in Tennessee that welcomed the building of a mosque across the street, and the Muslims who were building it.  In a time when so many people in this country are giving in to irrational fear of their Muslim neighbors, in a time when hateful acts towards Muslims in America are common, this story stands out as a shining and poignant example of what happens when we act with love, peace, and acceptance instead of hatred and fear.  When the pastor of the church found out that a mosque was being built in the neighborhood, he put a sign in front of the church, welcoming the new mosque.  This grabbed the attention of the Muslims building the mosque, who decided to reach out to the people in this church.  And that opened up the door for a relationship between the Christians and the Muslims in one little piece of Tennessee.  When the mosque wasn't finished in time for Ramadan, the church let the Muslims celebrate their evening Ramadan prayers in their building--for the entire month.  "Jesus told us to love our neighbors," says the pastor, Steve Stone.  And this is certainly what Heartsong Church is doing.

4.  At the Good Food Store today, Greg picked up a copy of the Fall issue of Yes! Magazine, a magazine I had never heard of before, but which I love already after reading just a few articles.  (Yes, I know, this post is turning into a plug for a number of magazines, but really, they're all incredibly worthwhile!)  There's an interview with W.S. Merwin, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and the U.S. poet laureate, who lives in Hawai'i in a home with solar electricity and its own water supply.  A few of his thoughts:

• "I think that as a species we're in a very dangerous place.  I'm not optimistic about it at all.  I think it's because of an attitude we've got which is deeply ingrained, which is that we have some right to treat all the rest of life just the way it suits us and throw it away when it doesn't profit us at all.  I don't think that realistic.  I don't think that's true."
• "I think the thing that distinguishes the human species is the imagination."
• "All things that really matter to us are impossible, you know.  They say translation is impossible; sure it is.  We do it because it's necessary, not because it's possible."
• "I think it's natural--literally, in every sense--to love being in the world around us."
• "I would like to have this place [his home, where he has been restoring native rainforest] saved as much as possible, just because of what it is and what it can reassure people of.  It can be a place that people can come and think, 'Oh, yeah, the world is really here, still.'"

5.  Yes, the world is really here, still.  The solemn grace of newts, the feeling of grass beneath our bare feet, friendship between people of differing faiths, human imagination that can envision the healing of our broken world, the amazing ability to do what is necessary, even if it seems impossible:  this is our world.  This is the place in which we live.  This is holy ground.

abundance

Despite occasionally wishing for a little bit more space, I know there are many advantages to having a small house.  One of them is that, on any given lot, a small house means a larger yard.  Having a larger yard means having more space to garden.

And in August, having a big garden is a happy, happy thing.

For instance, one does not need to buy nearly as much fruit.  One can simply go out to the backyard . . . 

. . . and pick blueberries (this was all we got this year, but still.  It's three more than last year!) . . .

. . . and blackberries . . .

. . . and raspberries.  This year, especially raspberries.

One also does not need to buy as many, if any, vegetables.   There are peppers to eat . . . 

. . . and garlic . . .

. . . and kale, carrots, beets . . .

 . . . and soon, very VERY soon, there will be tomatoes.  Masses and masses of tomatoes, if these are any indication:

Not to mention potatoes and currants and onions and cucumbers, and, soon, corn and beans and squash and cabbage, and even a few grapes and soybeans.

Have I mentioned lately how much I love my little bungalow and the big yard that comes with it . . . not to mention my garden-crazy husband?  

big house, small house

I've been thinking about space a lot lately.  Not outer space, but our need for space, how we use our space. Greg and I live in a little house.  It's a little over 1100 square feet.  Granted, we also have a full but unfinished basement, which is great for storage, but we don't use it as living space, per se.  (Thank goodness for that basement, though.  Space for washing machine, deep freeze, canning jars, camping gear, recycling, and oh, yes, the kitty litter.)

But 1100 square feet is not large.  The average American home is somewhere around 2400 square feet, and I admit, sometimes I wish we had more space--or at least that it were arranged a little differently.  (For instance, I would love to have a bathtub in the house.  The shub is great and all, but SOMEDAY this house is going to have a bathtub.)  Most of the time, however, I'm very content with the space we have.  For the two of us and our kitties, it's ample.  Living room, study, dining room, kitchen, bedroom, and bathroom on the main floor, and in our low, slant-ceilinged upstairs, our "large" bathroom and hobbit room, which is perfect for watching movies and hosting guests.  

The reason I've been thinking so much about space, however, is due to the various places I've stayed during my recent travels.  My parents' house in Sioux Center, the house I grew up in, seems huge.  Such high ceilings, such big open spaces!  Four bedrooms, actual bedrooms with closets!  Plus a sewing room, plus an apartment in the basement!  Enormous!  My brother and sister-in-law's house is even bigger.  In fact, their GARAGE is 1100 square feet.  Yes, their garage is the same size as our house.  Ah, northwest Iowa . . . .  I walk through the rooms, marveling at the huge kitchen, the airy dining room, the four bedrooms upstairs, the huge finished basement with ample space for my nephews to play.  Like my parents' house, it's a great house for a kid to grow up in, a great house to come home to.

Then there are the houses I stayed in this past weekend, when Greg and I went to Spokane to visit his sister Wendy and her family (who were visiting friends in the area).  The first afternoon we spent with the family of a friend of Greg and Wendy's, who live in this spectacularly lovely home in a quiet, shady neighborhood.  Again, it's huge, and old, built in 1912.  I loved the shelves hanging from the ceiling in the middle of the kitchen, with the sink and dishwasher built into the island beneath it.  I loved the glossy wooden beams crossing the ceilings of the living and dining rooms.  I peeked upstairs (yes, I'm nosy!) and loved the little sitting area connected to the master bedroom, and the room at the end of the hall that had been converted into a huge, light-filled bathroom.  

That night we stayed with other family friends, who also lived in a large, old house built in 1912.  Theirs was classy in a different way; they had done their best to maintain the historical integrity of the house, keeping the old windows (whose glass had gone all wavery as it settled) and finding antique furniture and light fixtures.  There were myriad nooks and crannies, fun little rooms that added character.  The slant-floored sunroom upstairs, with windows on three sides, that was meant to be a sleeping porch.  The wide upstairs hallway, with pleasant rooms opening off of it.  The homey kitchen, splashed with colorful reds and blues.  The large back deck, built off the main floor but rising high off the ground due to the sharp slope of the backyard; sitting on it, I felt as though I were in a treehouse, because of the big maple with branches encircling it and arching above it.  

The next night, we stayed with yet another set of family friends, and their house was a little newer, less elegant and more homey, but large and comfortable.  Scott and Nancy are gardeners and naturalists; I loved the case of animal skulls in their living room, and their garden, orchard, and chicken pens are amazing and an inspiration.  My favorite room in the house was the den, which was added on at the time when having a big extra family room was popular.  It was an enormous room, perhaps 500 square feet, and just . . . open.  Light-filled.  Windows on three sides.  No television--ahhh.  Lovely.  A room to relax in.  Add to that their acre+ of land, the native ponderosa pines scattered behind the house, and a pleasant deck off the back--well, it was a great place to stay.  

It's hard, when one spends a night or two in places like these, to be as content with 1100 square feet and a 1/8-acre lot.  I come home and see my little bungalow through different eyes.  But as I sit here on my living room couch, with the window open and the sound and smell of rain floating through, and Greg sitting cozily in the study, I am content.  We have enough (and more than enough) space for our books, our furniture, for eating and sleeping, for entertaining guests (23 people ate dinner here and nine people slept here two nights before our wedding!).  We have enough space in our yard to grow all the garlic and potatoes we need for the year, plus a plethora of other crops.  We have enough space for chickens, a picnic table, a clothesline, a hammock or two, AND lounging on the grass.  Yes, all this is enough and more than enough.

There is one house I visited that I have not yet mentioned, because it did not fall into the category of huge and spacious.  I visited my good friends Tricia and Benjamin a few weeks ago. They live in a lovely piece of southern Illinois in what used to be a 600-square-foot A-frame home.  They've recently built an addition, so the living space is now perhaps 750 or 800 square feet--for Tricia and Benjamin, their two children, and two cats.  Whenever I need to be reminded of how very possible it is to live comfortably in a small space, I think of them.  Despite the small size of the house, it holds two bedrooms, a study, a living room, kitchen, dining area, laundry room, bathroom, and guest room, and, when it's not 105 degrees outside, it's a very pleasant place to be.  And when I return home from visiting them, I am reminded of how relative these things are:  our "little" house seems positively palatial.

What am I trying to say here?  Perhaps it is simply this:  that it is not always easy to be content with what I have.  That sometimes I long to live in a big, historic house on a quiet residential street.  That sometimes I wish I had seemingly simple things like a bedroom with a closet and a bathroom with a bathtub and a dining room with space to expand the table . . . and an acre or two of property on which we could plant an orchard, have a goat or three, and harvest all the veggies we need for the year.  And perhaps someday we will have some of those things.  In the meantime, I strive to be content with the many wonderful things that we do have.  It is good for me to list them occasionally, as a reminder.  

So here I go again, working on needing less--for, as G.K. Chesterton said, when we want to have enough, needing less is the only alternative to accumulating more.  Accumulating more is not only expensive, it's unsatisfying.  Whenever I focus on needing less, however, I feel freed.  Here's to that kind of freedom for us all. 

ripe red fruit and bright blue birds

Yes, it is the beginning of fruit season.  Red, ripe, fruit season.  A few strawberries have been eaten.

We are drooling over the handful of cherries that just may be ripe by the weekend.

Our raspberry bushes are laden with flowers and green fruit, which should be ripe in the next couple of weeks (probably the day after I leave on vacation . . . oh, well!).

Fruit is so exciting.  I love vegetables--peas, spinach, kale, green onions, bok choy, all the delicious goodies we're currently harvesting from our garden--but there is just something special about fruit.  It's sweet.  It's tangy.  Its flavor bursts lusciously against your tastebuds and you forget everything except how delicious it tastes.  Mmmm.

It's almost July and I'm not quite sure how it happened.  The weather has warmed, at last; the sweet hot air of summer surrounds us, though this afternoon a cooler front whirled through in a scattering of leaves, sprinkles of rain, and bright flashes of lightning, but the storminess, too, is summery.

Last night after dinner I walked to Mt. Sentinel and made my way up the steep trail to the fire road that runs across the western face.  I didn't set out to climb up the mountain (if I had, I probably would have worn some other footwear than flip flops!), but that's where my feet led me, and I'm glad they did.  The sun blazed golden on the horizon, illumining the clouds that rose above the valley and the encircling mountains.  The clouds shone rose and orange, dimming to dusky purple and periwinkle as the sun sank down.  The waving grasses near the top of Mt. Sentinel glowed pink against the deep blue eastern sky, and I watched a deer watch me, pausing in her munching as I meandered past.

I love that an evening stroll can take me up the side of a mountain.

Dad and Mom visited two weekends ago, and the June rains let up enough to let us wander the North Hills for an afternoon.  We saw myriad birds and flowers:  bitterroot (Montana's state flower!)

and lupine, waterleaf and groundsel and penstemon,

mountain bluebirds and meadowlarks, western bluebirds and goldfinches.  The highlight of our amble was 1) seeing several mountain bluebirds, which you think can't possibly be as blue as you remember them, and they're not--they're BLUER;

and 2) watching a mountain bluebird family, the father and mother feeding their little fledgling, who must have been just out of the nest.

The parents kept flying away and catching insects, then taking turns bringing them back to their fluffy little birdlet, who seemed very grateful.  And hungry.

 We were utterly enraptured.

It was a lovely day.

Though time does seems as though it's been whirling by, it helps to remember what I've been doing during these weeks.  It helps to set the memories down here, in this little bit of cyberspace, and recall the delights and details of the quickly-passing days.  It helps to taste and see the world around me . . . and I am reminded of a poem by Denise Levertov, one that I read in college and that has stuck with me ever since.

It is a reminder.
A motivation.
An encouragement.

O Taste and See

The world is

not with us enough

O taste and see

the subway Bible poster said,

meaning The Lord, meaning

if anything all that lives

to the imagination’s tongue,

grief, mercy, language,

tangerine, weather, to

breathe them, bite,

savor, chew, swallow, transform

into our flesh our

deaths, crossing the street, plum, quince,

living in the orchard and being

hungry, and plucking

the fruit.

the chickies' new home, and other updates

Yes, that's right, the chickies have a new home!  It is no longer a conglomeration of cardboard and screens in our study, but an actual chicken coop and henhouse in our backyard!  *gasp*

Two weekends ago we decided it was Time.  We lucked out, as Home Resource had a good supply of cedar shingles (!), which we bought and promptly used to side the henhouse.  Greg then put asphalt shingles on the roof, and TADA!  Hen house:  finished.

Here's a peek at the inside--the nesting boxes are at the far end (top of the picture), with ramps leading up to them, and the roost is on the near end (and a ramp leading up to it).  Isn't it cute?  We removed the tools and put pine shavings in instead, which we thought the chickens might appreciate.

We used deer fencing to stretch over the top of the coop, both to keep the chickens in and other animals out, and then spread a bale of straw on the ground, which was basically a patch of dirt, as not much grass had been growing there, anyway.

Then we brought the chickens out one by one (they weren't too keen on being picked up and carried through the house, but oh, well), and, once they were all in the coop, they settled in quite enthusiastically (i.e., they found their food!).

 The finished product:

Not bad, eh?

Other bits of happiness in the past few weeks:

Swinging AND fresh laundry blowing in the breeze!

 Spending time with Rachel: yay!

Ambles along sunlit pathways through spring-green forests:

Masses upon masses of fairy-slipper orchids, one of our local treasures, as well as one of the 52 species of flowers we saw and identified on this particular hike (!):

Outdoor explorations with my sweetie!

CHERRIES!!!  (if the bugs and birds don't get them all . . . fingers crossed)

A day hike up to Morrell Falls, through deep patches of snow and beautiful stands of Ponderosa and western larch and Douglas fir, with this glorious and majestic tumble of water as a reward:

A weekend spent birding with a lovely group of people . . . and I think I may even remember how to identify a handful of the 50-some birds we saw!

It has been a busy few weeks, but there have been a number of delightful things intermixed with the busyness.  Work looks to be mellowing out for me a little bit at least in the next little while, and I'm looking forward to more outdoor explorations.  Mom and Dad are visiting this weekend, and we're planning on going on a flower walk or two to see the vivid blues and purples of the penstemon and camas and lupine.  More pictures to come!

Can you tell my brain is just a little bit tired?  If it weren't, there would be more words and fewer pictures.  Ah, well, next time.

los nombres de las gallinitas

As of this evening, all of our ladies have been named!

We have Henrietta the Fierce (the golden one in back), Isabelle (our dark lady), Princess Buttercup (the golden one in front) and Saxifrage (the lighter Araucana).

They all have names!  At last!

sunshine on my shoulders

Not that the sun is exactly shining right now, but it has been for most of the month of May.  Overnight, it seems, our yard has turned green and leaves have burst out on the trees.  There is leaf shade out our western windows and dappled light dancing on our walls, and the purple smell of lilacs in the air.  Ahhh.

Sometimes I like to go away for holiday weekends.  Over President's Day weekend we headed west to visit Andrea and Philip in Bellingham.  It was a lovely ski-to-sea weekend.  Cross-country skiing in glorious feet of snow near Mt. Baker?  Check!  Ferry ride to Lummi Island?  Check!  Donuts from Rocket Donuts?  Check!  A hike in the fern-draped forests of Lummi?  Check!

This weekend, however, we decided to stay put, and there is something so delightfully delicious about a "staycation."  We've slept in every day, puttered around in the garden, read books, taken long ambling hikes in the wildflower-laden hills.  Several friends have visited from out of town, and it's been good to reconnect and enjoy their company.

Last weekend Greg led a botany field weekend for the Montana Natural History Center, a slightly more advanced course created for Master Naturalist students.  I chose to attend as well, and we (along with seven other Master Naturalists, including Greg's parents) had an intense but lovely weekend learning about plant families and how to key out wildflowers.  We would arrive at a trailhead, walk seven steps, see a flower, then hunker down, pulling out our Vascular Plants of Montana books, then counting petals, stamens, pistils, peering through our hand lenses, and carefully dissecting the flowers with our forceps in an attempt to gather all the crucial information.

New definition of nerd:  one who actually enjoys having a plant in one hand and a dry, nearly picture-less book in the other, trying to determine whether the plant in hand has "involucral bracts with pectinately arranged processes about 1mm long toward tip" or "involucral bracts not as above."  Yes, this process does involve frequently referencing the glossary . . . which often involves referencing the glossary.  For example:  I flip to the glossary to look up "involucral."  I find that "involucre" is defined as a "whorl of bracts or small leaves subtending a flower or flower cluster."  I then look up "bract," which is a "reduced or modified leaf often in the inflorescence." I then look up "inflorescence," which is the "flowering part of a plant."  By this time I've forgotten what I was looking up in the first place . . . and I still have to look up "pectinate" and "process."  My other option, last weekend, was to call, "GREG??  Help!" which often resulted in reaching the answer much more quickly.  :)

Despite a forecast of rain for both last Saturday and Sunday (70% on Saturday and 60% on Sunday), we were blessed with two utterly glorious warm, sunny days, and the rain only came in the last half hour of the class on Sunday, just as we arrived back at MNHC for a debrief of the weekend.  Excellent timing.

We spent some time drawing some of the flowers we'd seen over the weekend, and put all our drawings together in a lovely little booklet.  Here's a sampling (this is very like the kinds of entries I make in my field journal.  Sketching is just one of the many reasons I love field journaling!):

I drew Disporum trachycarpum, rough-fruited fairybells, in the lily family:

Greg drew some bright blue forget-me-nots (borage family),

and Bill drew arrowleaf balsamroot (aster family), which are blooming in profusion all over the hillsides of Mt. Jumbo.

All in all, it was a delightful weekend.

As I mentioned earlier, we've also had some good friends in town over the past couple of weeks.  My dear friend Rachel is here for a few weeks, on her summer break from her job with the Uganda Studies Program in Mukono, Uganda.  It's been wonderful to have her here, and to share tea, dinner, ice cream, and ambles in the hills.  Greg's friend Bill visited for a few days as well, and we went for a beautiful hike on the Mt. Jumbo saddle with both him and Rachel.  A few pictures from our hike:

The hillside awash in arrowleaf balsamroot.

Arrowleaf balsamroot up close.  Fun fact:  this "flower" is made up of myriad flowers--two different types, disk flowers and ray flowers.  The ray flowers are the tiny yellow cups in the middle, and the disk flowers are the yellow "petals" on the outside.  Cool, eh?

A silly moment.

Me and Rachel in the wildflowers.

Looking down the hill into the Missoula valley.  I so love living in this place!

My friend and former co-worker Jessie was in town just for the Memorial Day weekend, and we took yet another hike up Jumbo, on a loop that I've never been on before.  It was stunningly beautiful.  Our hike was sandwiched by rain showers, and the grey clouds and damp air brought out the deep green of the ponderosa pines and douglas firs and the leaves of the flowers.

We saw not only balsamroot and larkspur and prairie stars, but shooting stars and even two buttercups that were just starting to bloom--buttercups, the first flower of spring, ones that are rare to see in early May much less almost June.  We also saw lupine and bluebells, Indian paintbrush and heart-leafed arnica, kittentails and pussytoes.  The diversity of wildflowers was a gift.

Rain showers washing over the Missoula valley, bringing out (and on) the green.

Today we planted our corn seeds (!), as well as beans and squash, and Greg has also been working on the chicken coop.  The chickies are seven weeks old today, and we'll be able to put them outside soon!  Only a few more months until we get our own eggs . . . I can't wait.

My stomach tells me it is lunchtime, so off I go.  A happy Memorial Day to all!

May flowers, among other things

Somehow it's the middle of May, and I'm not quite sure how that happened.  Mentally, I'm still back at the end of April.  I guess two weeks behind isn't too bad . . .

I'm sitting here on the living room couch while Greg makes dinner.  The evening sunlight is streaming through the window, and the new leaves of the maples are backlit and glowing.  In just the past week everything has leafed out--maples, cherry, apricot, kiwi, lilacs, and even our oak tree.  Pale spring green leaves arch over the streets; all the trees are misted in myriad shades of green.  On the solo hike station for our 4th grade field trips at work, there's a card that asks, "How many shades of green can you see?"  This time of year, the spectrum is vast.  Deep green ponderosa pines.  Pale greeny-yellow cottonwoods.  Bright green larches.  Yellow-green maple flowers and slightly deeper green leaves . . .

After too many weeks of chill, clouds, and rain, we've been getting the warmer side of spring weather.  Temps in the 60s, sunshine, spring breezes, poofy white clouds.  AT LAST.  I've been able to wear my flip-flops (!) and skirts without leggings underneath.  The Farmer's Market has started up, and we've bought local cheese and asparagus and native plant starts.  So many delightful signs of spring!

And our garden is finally starting to take off.  The garlic, of course, is doing marvelously, as is the spinach (from last fall), but now this year's spinach is leafing out, as well as our kale and onions and broccoli.  Despite the slow start, I have high hopes of a good harvest this year.  Our chickies are growing rapidly, too--then again, they have a heat lamp, which our plants do not have.  They're now five weeks old, and this past weekend we expanded their home.  They're supposed to stay indoors until all their feathers have come in, so we have a few weeks to go, and the box they've been living in has become far too small.  Thank goodness for $1 screens from Home Resource and vast quantities of duct tape!  Here are their new digs:

(Their original home was the cardboard box on the left side.  Yah, it was definitely time to enlarge their space!)

We have now named two of them, and are still waiting for inspiration on the last two.  In the picture below, the dark Araucana (the one standing next to the water dish and looking at the camera) is Isabelle, and the larger of the Buff Orpingtons, just left of the thermometer, is Henrietta the Fierce.  Henrietta's been named since day 2, but the other three we've been calling Peeper, Cheeper, and Fuzzbucket (guess who picked those names?  Hint: it was NOT me!) while we wait for their personalities to be revealed.  However, if you have name suggestions, feel free to share!

Other exciting happenings:  our tulips are blooming!  They are so beautiful!  Pictures are most certainly worth a thousand words in this case, so enjoy:

YEAH, tulips!

In February, I finished the field journal I began last year in the Montana Master Naturalist Class, which was an exciting accomplishment.  Even more exciting, however, was beginning a brand new journal.  I love new journals.  All those empty pages with nothing written on them yet, clean and white and fresh-smelling.  Since February 14th, I've been writing and sketching in my field journal several times a week, often during my 15-minute "sanity breaks" at work.  MNHC is located right on the river trail, one block from a huge city park, and two blocks from the Clark Fork River.  In the afternoons, I try to make a point of spending 15 minutes outside, breathing the fresh air and experiencing the weather instead of staring at a computer screen.  I find a place to sit, note the time, weather, and temperature, and then simply look, listen, smell, breathe.  I draw swelling cottonwood buds and snowflakes, the curves of the mountains, the shapes of the clouds, and birds that sit still long enough.

I am so grateful to be taking note of the world around me.  Sometimes I come home, open up our Sibley's Guide to Birds, and sketch a new bird that I've seen that day or week, trying to get to know it better.  Or I'll sit and draw a flower, pick one to press and tape into my journal, and then, at home, I'll look it up in our field guide and learn a little more about it.  I love having this gorgeous, intricate, achingly lovely world around me to explore.  The more I learn about it, the more I love it, and the more I want to get out into it and learn more.

Today I went out to Council Grove, a state park a few miles west of Missoula, to help lead our 4th grade field trips.  One of the stations is a wildlife hike, which MNHC's top volunteer, Valerie, led, but as we walked along looking for birds and animal sign, I was amazed at how much I knew.  I can identify a Lewis' woodpecker and a rufous hummingbird.  I know the calls of the northern flicker, the western meadowlark, and the red-winged blackbird, of the osprey and the cedar waxwing.  There is still so much that I don't know, but I know so much more about the natural history of western Montana now than I did six--or even two--years ago.

This may be my plug for getting to know your place.  So many states have Master Naturalist courses, and even if you've lived in your place for years or decades, there's always more to learn.  It may be one of the most important things you can learn:  the natural history of your place.  Even if there is no MN course available, you can buy yourself a bird guide, a plant guide, an insect guide, and teach yourself.  That may be one of the things I love most about this discipline.  I am grateful for a husband who knows the intricacies of Montana's plant world, and for friends and co-workers who are passionate and knowledgeable about birds and insects and mammals, but even if I didn't have these people in my life, I could teach myself simply by going outside, being curious, and looking closely at the world around me.

If we don't know what's in our world, we'll have little motivation to protect it.  But the more we learn about our place--its seasons, its rhythms, its intricacies, its balances--the more we will want to preserve it in its entirety.  When it comes down to it, we can't afford not to learn about our place, because we can't afford not to care about it.

All right, stepping down from my soap box now . . .

I'll end this by posting some other signs of spring:

Ice cream at the Big Dipper!!

Snow melting from the low mountain areas, leaving behind green landscapes and pools of water:

Transplanting tomatoes into bigger pots as they grow:

Kitty cuteness in the OPEN window!

Two words:  Future.  Cherries.

(Last year, we got four blossoms and no cherries, due to a late May frost.  This year, we have dozens upon dozens of blossoms and we are hoping for no more severe frosts . . . )

The Dude (i.e., Basil) in his happy spot, viewing his domain.

The Shmub (i.e., Nutmeg) looking cute and deceptively dignified.

Gorgeous sunsets, with the sun setting much farther north:

Naps for Greg, who is done with classes for the semester and has a week-long break before the summer session starts, and for Nutmeg, whose life is basically one long nap interrupted only by eating and pooping.

Greg and the kitten have a very special relationship.  One of massive cuteness, among other things.

Happy spring!