Gather Medicine

The final year of my eighth decade has begun. It was an especially warm milestone spent in a couple of commemorative dinners, in person, and also via a variety of communications including a Skype from Keoni complete with a complicated, exuberant violin rendition of Happy Birthday, and even one voice mail birthday greeting from my pharmacy—a local small business. There is a great deal for which I am thankful and these milestone memories are now a cherished part of it.

Over in Missouri, young Niece Lexie was celebrating her second birthday...

Pat and I took walks at a couple of the local parks and I could appreciate again the beautiful lands set aside here for the citizens to enjoy...

This is Chestnut Park. We noticed the trees are in rows--Chestnut trees--so once it was an orchard.

There is a small creek running through Godshall Park.

Pat and Marge went to Washington, D.C., to attend an award gala where one of Marge's colleague's received a lifetime achievement award for her work in the field of mental health and addiction recovery. There is no doubt where they are in these texted pix...

Gala outfits. Ready to hobnob with the DC glitterati.

One of the speakers was Patrick Kennedy.

The Farm Report:   

Aidan and I had a nice walk together and tasted a few raspberries along the way...

A stiff breeze was flipping the raspberry leaves.

There were plenty of goat pastoral scenes...

...and horse. Austin with her friends.

Rosie is all grown up.

The boys' hangout.

Neighbor Joe's barn top...

Toby hangs out on the porch in the afternoons...

Later in the afternoon, he was spotted disappearing into the tall pasture grass on another hunt.

The parlor chicks doubled in size...

Pin feathers are growing.

The chicks are the friendliest in Wendy's experience and don't mind being handled at all. They run toward knocking on their big plastic box. Aidan's clicking here replicates what mother hens and even roosters do when they find a morsel for a chick to eat...

Aidan is going for the summer soccer team along with cello work at Dali Quartet's ARCONET, and piano lessons he's taking with Seth (yes, that one of the BLTs). Aidan loves his handsome, new soccer shoes...

Sandy sent over a snap of her mouse drawing...

And, Jeanenne is watercoloring again...

Sandy and Jeanenne got together for a drawing session. Yay! Wish I was at that big kitchen island at Jeanenne's, too.

Over in Wyoming, Susie is at the festival she attends yearly and this time our nieces Kelly and Katie are with her.

Right here in Marge's garden...

I've been prowling the household goods shelves locally...

Additions to the future apartment. (The crochet is the topper on my bed that I made during my first three PA years.)

Keoni continues to include hiking up mountains during his Music Institute summer days in Aspen, Colorado, including a stop-off here...

Other hikes looked like this...

One of Keoni's friends snapped this one. Keoni is closest to the camera.

***

Five years ago this week, Toby, my pony Subaru, and I crossed much of North America to dwell here in Pennsylvania. A defining adventure in my life and certainly in Toby's. The changes in the world these five years since, are astounding.

There is more than a little going on in the world. Great societal structures from neighborhoods to whole continents, to the seven seas, in the air we breathe, day-by-day, minute-by-minute, hurtle from familiar pathways into mapless unknowns. Every new step taken challenges known with unknown.

But here's the thing...we can't go back. Summer won't become Spring again.

Scary is one way of looking at it. A little honest fear isn't a bad thing. It keeps us alert and aware. And awareness has another side--when we take new steps we find out where we are going. At first, we don't know and it's scary; then, after a step or two we start finding out. There's the adventure.

And, we don't have to walk alone. If we don't dig a foxhole and hunker down in it, or seal ourselves away behind walls, or load ourselves up with too much in our backpacks, we can trust ourselves, our families, our friends, our neighbors to find a common path together. We'll bring multiple wisdoms of what has already worked well; then, take action for good, for justice, respect for others and our beautiful Planet Earth, for compassion and equality for every human, and do it out of love. We can trust our innate abilities to learn and to create new solutions that will deal with whatever new need or problem we encounter. Some ways will work, and some not so much. We figure it out--together. It works like that.

And that's work. A lot of work. The adventure is worth it. In my seventies, Toby and I found a new life in a different part of the continent. We loved and embraced the old life and love and embrace the new one here in Pennsylvania. There were occasional, thumb-sized cockroaches for Toby to catch back in the Tucson condo days and here he learned how to hunt barn rats (and much else).

The ever-faster changes across our land and our good Planet Earth are enormous and all the dust hasn't even been kicked up yet; much less, begun to settle. We don't all look alike, we babble in different languages and evoke different cultures, but I'll guarantee that we are all in this together.

Yes, together. In isolation I would have had only my own resources, my own set of standards. Toby would have had to transition to a feral cat or been pawned off to a kitty rescue had there not been the farm shelters and steady supplies of cat food for the days he had no catch. My world would have become narrower and narrower without the many family, friends, and others who extended their hands to me and I to them, as best we could.

The good Earth is still spinning on her path around the sun in our familiar galaxy in a Universe incomprehensibly vast; yet, we are part of it. All of us.

Much lies ahead. I used to go to a mountain and sit awhile to contemplate and wonder about life, and though no profound revelations ever came, I returned to the valley healed inside, strengthened, and ready for what lay ahead.

Go to your mountain. Gather medicine.

Chickens Are My Friends

Shoutout to Wendy: Thanks, for getting chickens; and baby ones, at that.

Here's Wendy's order that arrived day-before-yesterday.

Whew! What a ride. One day in an egg; the next day in a box.
Everybody is just fine!

Oh, look! Water! Taste it! Look, these B-Bs are food!

Who are you, holding me? Are you a giant?--No, I'm Aidan.

And where else did you think we'd be?--The living room, of course.

I can report that they are growing exponentially having nearly doubled in size by this morning when I stopped in to have another look.

A week or so ago Marge's siblings all gathered in PA to celebrate their nonagenarian aunt and uncle's 75th Wedding Anniversary. Her sisters all stayed with us for their first night before going on to the celebration...

Mary, Marge, Caroline, and Pam.

The early risers had coffee on the patio...

Their brother John and his wife Debbie joined them later at their hotel...

All five siblings together.

Other parts of the country weighed in from time-to-time.

Keoni is loving the mountains and sent us a cliff photo...

Rocky Mountains.

Aidan and I got another walk in, recently. My knee is holding up well now for this little adventure on the rough field pathway. For a time Wendy couldn't mow the paths, or any of the property for that matter, because it was so wet. One day when Aidan was mowing he came across a clutch of very young fawns curled up, hiding in the tall grasses.

Here Aidan and Wendy are working together...

Everything now is so wonderfully green. Aidan captured this.

Phil, over in Tucson, let me know he is still the party animal with picture evidence of his Fourth of July get-together with friends.

Carla and Phil.

Next up:

From the Sports Desk: Via Sonja's smart phone, via FB, via Sandy's screenshot, via text, via Photos edit, now presenting to you...

Utah--Elijah pursuing summer basketball had a special moment. In his mother's words...

Go Elijah! #34. 

Then, from New Mexico we heard from Val and Tim who were out there horse-backing under those great big skies. What a treat to see them.

Good going, you guys!

Jeanenne and Larry have taken another of their grown kids and their family to Disney World. This year, it is the Joyces and their children Harper and Della. Jeanenne said she is using an electric cart this year. Yes, photos via, via, via, via, via...

Sandy picked up her pencil again and shared a bit of her recent renderings. I have no doubt she misses her little Scottie dogs...

You can see the horse theme runs through the family.

So good hearing from Paula in Tucson, too, and learning what she has been doing lately. It's called Sketchnotes...

Paula and Carl's recent trip to Wash., D.C.

Locally, Marge and I sensed a fine morning happening and hopped in her car to zoom over Pennsylvania byways to cross the Delaware River and visit Frenchtown, New Jersey. Lunch first, then wanderings that included walking across the clearwater river's bridge...

Mexican food in Frenchtown. They got everything right but for the tortillas which have devolved into a hybrid corn and wheat mix. Or maybe I'm getting snobby about my tortillas.

The perfect temperature, clear skies, a Saturday, and everyone who owns a motorcycle in Pennsylvania and New Jersey was on the road.

Crossing the Delaware was a lot easier than Washington's.

On the drive back, a Thrift Store stop yielded $21 worth of stuff for my future kitchen when I get the word I have an apartment...

The bag holds six, five-piece place settings of flatware which was $6.50 total. The rest was on sale.

Back to the Local News Desk: From prior postings you know there is a friend of Marge's--Pat--who moved back here from Florida to look after a son afflicted with a worsening illness. She is also on the waiting list where I will be living (and so are a couple of other friends of mine). Marge and Pat made a plan that when I move out Pat will move in here until she too can move into Dock Manor. We are calling Marge's the Dock Manor Halfway House.

Here's an aside to photos from this week's trip to State College that Marge and Pat made. The botanical garden at Penn State was in bloom this time. It is a fairly new garden...

Pat stopping to smell the Hydrangeas.

Their fave--the Children's Garden.

Marge is retiring completely in November. Later on, after Pat and I have both moved out of her house, Marge will sell the place and move to Ohio where two of her three sisters reside.

In the meantime, with the weeks dragging into months since I got word that I get the next available apartment, Marge and I decided we could be three here at her home and invited Pat to move in now. So, she will be here August 2nd which rises to an official move-in date since the movers bring the furniture that day. We'll actually be moving stuff over several days before that.

How do you shift all that stuff when your body says, "Ouch, haven't you noticed the grey hair, the wrinkles, the sore feet? --No container bigger than a Bankers Box or a Trader Joe's grocery bag. Nothing heavier than a sack of oranges and a couple pounds of hamburger.

Things that need to stay in climate-controlled housing.

Things unharmed by heat in the attic.

There's more than this but you get the idea.

I spotted a small, comfortable couch and bought it. It's being kept at the warehouse or store where I got it. Once I sign a lease and ACTUALLY SEE the apartment, I'll go to the Harleysville Mattress store and get that essential item there.

It will be a one-bedroom with a kitchen, living/dining room, full bath, closets--one is walk-in. Two windows. Dock Manor. Scroll down. It's the one on the left, not Dock Village.

Well, you ask, "What about Toby?" It's a wrench when I say he'll remain at Wendy and John's. He's an outdoor cat now with complete run of the barn and the grounds. I am sad about that but happy he is okay.

So, I will talk to my plants. They don't climb up on my shoulder and purr like Toby used to do on the farm's back porch while I wrote to you, but they have their way, too. Just look what this Tillandsia air plant does with air and a soak in some pond water...