mumma yaga

 May 29 The cows came mooing and mooing up our hill to spend a few weeks here. The farmer rotates the herd around several properties during the summer. Later they will be taken over to Rain and Tal's farm. This morning they are gathered by the old barn. One is nibbling on the wise witch. There are babies, too. When I walk out to see them they watch me. They will probably get used to us soon and pay no attention once they know we don't mean harm. Do we have herd immunity? ***** Rain and I buried Fig by the chicken house on Thursday. It is near where he liked to go and drink from the little stream that ran by there early in the spring. It is dry now unless we get a heavy rain. He is surrounded by sensitive ferns under a young willow. I wanted him near the house rather than over near the ridge stream. We put a cairn over the grave, because it wasn't very deep. We ran into a big rock before we dug too far. I walked to the ridge on Thursday, missing Fig. As I walked down the mea...

May 26 Sometime in the night Fig called to me and I gathered him up and took him to bed with me. He died while I slept with him cuddled against my chest.  We spent yesterday sitting on the porch watching the clouds and the birds. It was a good day. Fig lay on the grass or sat in my lap, or dozed on a blanket by my chair. From time to time he drank from his water dish that I put by him. I asked the witches to call his spirit home.  I carried him to the stream in the afternoon and he had a last drink of the mountain water. He was as small and frail as a newborn lamb in my arms. My thoughts today will be with Rain who was always Fig's favorite. She came to sit with us in the afternoon. She was glad that we weren't far away in Toronto.  Today will be another day of not knowing. Not knowing what to do, not knowing what I will think and feel.  Mumma Yaga

 May 25 Fig is going to die soon. He weighs less than half what he weighed in September. He has diabetes, which means he cannot, without insulin shots (which he isn't getting), keep enough sugar in his bloodstream to keep his body alive. He has a heart malfunction called a murmur which means he can't pump enough blood through his lungs to keep them functioning well, so he coughs, but much more in the city than here. He has been hungry all the time because of the diabetes. But he stopped eating on Sunday. He even refuses the treats in which I used to put his pain medicine. Can he smell the medicine and does it taste yucky? I don't sense that he is in pain: I hope that he isn't. I understand now why some who care for old dogs don't put them down. They are waiting, hoping their loved one will die at home, or until they can say for sure: this is where it shall end. How can I tell? I have to wait until I know. Fig can't keep water down any more. This morning he is no...

 May 22 The green forest. More violets - these are different, taller and with stems from which the leaves branch, rather than forming a crown from the root. White and yellow, although I think they are the same plant.       ***** The long weekend: a weekend of Canadian rituals, with gardening first up: traditionally, now that the frost is behind us (we hope!), we plant our flowers and vegetable seedlings on this first holiday weekend. The nurseries are swarmed by people at the height of their gardening enthusiasm, although I hope many will put off this somewhat less-than-essential shopping for this year. Although I am a haphazard gardener, when I'm at home, I plunge in at this time of year, clearing fall debris, delighting in the returning perennials, trimming bushes and seeding the bald patches of lawn. Pre-pandemic, I took Indre to the nursery to find plants that she could take care of and we prepared a little garden for her. But once this flurry of green-thumb...

 May 20 A different trillium! Smaller than the white ones in Ontario and the first white I have seen here.  The common polypody fern: the first you learn. And this is the only polypody I've seen here.  It is 30 degrees! I took Fig to the stream. It is flowing very lightly since we have had only 6 mm of rain in almost a week. But so green - the trees are in full leaf suddenly! The ferns are rapidly developing everywhere . They are a dominant plant type in these woods. There are even groves in direct sun in the meadow. There are fragile pale green ones coming up outside the kitchen window and a thousand tiny one-frond babies everywhere in the woods. Fig and I were surprised to hear a pair of Canada geese honking aggressively as we reached the crest of the ridge pond. There they were with four little goslings corralled between them. They didn't stop their noise until we left, which we did before they got brave and came for Fig, who, without hesitation, trotted down to stand ...

May 16 The Wise Witch, blossoms in her hair.  There is more green every day. The distant hills show green now. I am sitting on the porch, warm enough in shirtsleeves.The raven is circling the ridge and croaking. There is a pair of crows too, nesting nearby. The song sparrow is nesting here, maybe two pairs, since I seem to hear several. The yellow-shafted flicker is staying here. I have seen white-throated sparrows and another with a brown cap that I can't identify. They have been around for a few days now, but I don't know if they will stay or go father north. Yesterday there was a goldfinch in the apple tree by the barn. And there has been a hummingbird around for two or three days. The tree swallow is coming around daily with his mate - they still seem to want to harass the bluebirds, one of whom is usually on guard while they are here. We see hairy woodpeckers (that's their name, they don't have hair) whenever we are in the woods. We hear one on the ridge often. The...

 May 9 This is my mother with my first daughter, Tamar. She died when Tamar was seven, before Rain was born. I wrote this poem several years later as I began to see who my mother was, not as a mother but as a woman unto herself.  sunsets at little pike partly she was alone in the small green cabin with the wood stove partition walls old linoleum red-yellow on the floor she was alone, even though we were all there. after dinner after the dishes before (not much before) we lit the lamps and dad primed the coleman she'd say, " i'd better go  before i lose the sun" i expect she asked us if we'd like to come i know we often went along the bay shore  to the point out onto the coast of the huron lake like cast pebbles. we made our way in a joy of sure-foot motion across the round-hole limestone moonscape fissured acres of grey like lava, like the moon. then she'd see what she what she had come for gold pink and purple sky and mirrored in the lake we'd stop to w...

may 8 where did my spirits go those three days when the rain closed in and shrouded grey the vermont hills the green mountains bereft of certainty I was cold and though the wind blew soft it did not soothe the sun is shining now tree swallows newly arrived trapeze maniacally over the meadow one lands on the bluebird's house  april's claimant the bluebird chases it off with fragile surety i accomplish some tasks, further a project without thoughts of future or past art as process go on go on through the morning  not in a sleepwalk of the bereft but in the actions of a living thing  vigilant as a beating-heart bird - as breathless i stand tenuous on a brink  then to step where the second has not sounded the clock ticks one and one and one short breath stop thinking and you will not fall leave them alone and they will come home Mumma Yaga

 May 3 The sun was shining yesterday and the trout lilies, who slept closed up through two days of rain and chill, opened and showed their faces once again. More and more are flowering among the trees on the ridge.  Here is a bellwort, my first good look at the flower. More tiny white violets are appearing.             Fig has not been on a long walk with us for a while now: he starts to get stressed pretty soon and wants to turn back, but he does seem to like going over to see the ridge pond and stream. I take him on a leash to help him through the hawthorns and bushes on the meadow, although he is learning to follow in my footsteps quite well. We sat by the stream a while, but when I said, "Let's go," he sat down and looked back over his shoulder towards the stream. So I sat on a log and watched the valley and he lay down not far from me to listen and smell the world. When he heard Blackie in the distance, he leapt up, barking back ferociously! ...