sketch books

I've just started working in the final pages of a large sketch book and am resolved to stick to smaller books again. Less weight. My next one is partially started and I found this in it. Noam Chomsky came to speak at UTK in 2011. The book is all scrap paper bound in the style I learned from Andrzej Włodarski, but not nearly so well finished.

your name in print!

Worthy 4

This is a link to a great article about Tallu Schuyler Quinn, executive director of The Nashville Food Project and a radiant, creative soul. I got to work with the Nashville Food Project (then called Mobile Loaves and Fishes Nashville) and their wonderful garden manager, Brooke Gillon, last summer through Urban Land Scout camp and it was a great experience. I'm pleased for Nashville to have an organization like the Nashville Food Project and glad Tallu is steering the ship.

Photo by Ashley Hylbert

Propping Against the Dangers

My grandmother gave me a copy of Nikki Giovanni's Bicycles. I've not read more than the title piece, but it was a good one. Here's to talent sprung from East Tennessee and the indomitable spirit of Ms. Giovanni-- long may they live.


Bicycles

Midnight poems are bicycles
Taking us on safer journeys
Than jets
Quicker journeys
Than walking
But never as beautiful
A journey
As my back
Touching you under the quilt

Midnight poems
Sing a sweet song
Saying everything
Is all right

Everything
Is
Here for us
I reach out
To catch the laughter

The dog thinks
I need a kiss

Bicycles move
With the flow
Of the earth

Like a cloud
So quiet
In the October sky
Like licking ice cream
From a cone
Like knowing you
Will always
Be there

All day long I wait
For the sunset

The first star
The moon rise

I move
To a midnight
Poem
Called
You
Propping
Against
The dangers

Rest and Be Thankful

Garden Qi

It is unseasonably warm here as it is most places in the US right now. I've been looking forward to Spring since December and suddenly spring is upon us and throbbingly green and almost past. Last year I learned the term "spring ephemerals", the woodland perennial wildflowers and other plants that emerge early in the season, bloom, and then give way to the hot weather species. There are many of these at the park where I walk (trillium, solomon's seal, blood root, and so on). I think of them fondly. They mark the time.

Asparagus doesn't qualify as a woodland perennial, but its appearance is equally early and exciting. After two years of patiently not harvesting the stalks coming up in our yard, this year I got to enjoy several spears. The plants have since rocketed into full growth (up to 4' tall already) and will provide some visual height and contrast in the summer garden. Other good friends thriving (or trying to bolt) in the garden now: chard, bok choy, mustard greens, collards-- all flowering now, a beet left to go to seed, and an overwintered rainbow chard. Tiny beets are coming up and I hope for nasturtium success this year. It is the best time of the year when the weather is warming, but not hot and there is plenty of rain and everything seems manageable and fresh.

Worms

Yesterday I led an Urban Land Scouts workshop at Three Rivers Market in which we made vermicompost bins for home use. They're simple and affordable to set up -- two important criteria for me as I continue to develop the ULS curriculum.

In preparing for the workshop I was reminded of the amazing qualities of worms: they consume food equivalent or greater to their body weight every day, they have five hearts, they breathe through their skin, and on. Learning about the specifics of their lives and bodies heightens my sense of reverence for them. I also love that they eat my garbage. "Worms Eat My Garbage" by Mary Appelhof is the seminal introductory literature for those wanting to get started with vermicomposting. Appelhof's enthusiasm, meticulous experimenting, and semi-evangelical work promoting worm composting is a testament to the power of teaching.

In my beginning Tai Chi classes we begin the session with a bow to honor our teachers. I have many teachers for whom I am grateful. I think of some of them when I bow. Mary Appelhof died in 2005, but her legacy lives on in the literature she published and the people she taught. This is a good reminder for me as a struggle with my own trajectory and orientation in the day-to-day: what will you leave behind? When worms and associated microorganisms are breaking down my body, what essence or spirit of mine will carry on? Is it important to me that it carry my name? I do not often take this long view in my daily labor (making breakfast, writing proposals, drilling holes in worm bins), but it is comforting to me now.