mumma yaga

 April 11 forest, bare and brown the meadow runs with water the forest runs with water There is water everywhere. We stand on the porch and hear the loudness of a hundred small tumbling streams pouring down and down the hills.  Though the forest has just shaken off its winter coat, there is green life already awake. This fern, above, polypody, is green all winter and now it is awake and alive already. The Christmas fern, below, is likewise green all winter and awake now.   This tiny fern (below)  is brand-new, already growing: "Brittle bladder fern". Mosses wake up and start being alive as soon as the snow is gone. This is a "delicate fern moss" - that's its name! fronds like tiny ferns. Below, two kinds of ancient plant that were around when the dinosaurs ruled. They stay green all year and are among the first to green the forest floor. ***** I climbed to the top of the mountain and looked north. There was still snow near the top although it is melted and gone ...

 April 10 In February, my daughter asked me to make her a gift for a friend. It was to be a "shrine": a small object to be a focus for meditation. I talked a bit about its conception and creation in an earlier post, (220301 bread road shrine) and now that the gift is given, I have asked the recipient's permission to share pictures of it. I thank them again, here, for letting me show it. In our first discussions, Elf and I imagined a grotto-shaped ceramic piece and I went to a friperie in the next town that I knew would have some vases that would work. But there I also found the box we eventually used. This is the box, cleaned, and polished with beeswax polish. It was not broken, only worn and a little sun-damaged. It is unusual in its details, very "art deco". The glass rods are to support the lid when open. They are from glass swizzle sticks, cut and smoothed with a diamond dremel end, one and a spare. The green silk box in the front right corner was a contribu...

 April 4 The little calfs leapt away to hide when I stopped to look at them! These are at the chicken woman's farm. *****  My thoughts, living here, retired, covid-retired and post-illness, are used to being slow, methodical and mindful, though still, it seems, busy. Saturday morning, half-way through our walk, Rocky was out of sight and I was at a crossroads, literally, where the path branched north or west. I didn't know where he was, which way to turn. I waited there for ten minutes, maybe longer, and then I began to fret. (Okay, maybe I began to fret at four minutes, and waited for fifteen.) As I grew impatient, my mind burst into a full-on panic-reactive setting, and a hundred scenarios dove-tailed into the end of "the movie" - Rocky lost, Mumma bereft, Rocky hurt - have I missed him walking down in the woods? - fallen into the big pond ...  At last I began to walk along the west path that we had taken yesterday, and as I had hoped, I found fresh paw prints in th...