Keening

The story of the most recent mass shooting has hit close to home. Wednesday night twelve people died in a mass shooting in Thousand Oaks, California, which is about 45 minutes from where we used to live.  One of those killed was a young man from our town who graduated from the local high school in 2014. His sister, a friend of one of our sons, was also there. They both worked at the bar, which was close to their school, California Lutheran. He was a bouncer and helped teach line dancing. He had just finished a dual degree in criminal justice and music.  My daughter said teachers at her high school were in tears all day. He had been a well-loved student, the school mascot, a lifeguard, a talented musician, and a friend to many. His father was retiring from the SEALS this weekend. A friend who has a son with special needs has shared some touching stories about his friendship with her son and others with special needs. She also shared a beautiful video of him singing "How Great Thou Art" on Facebook. I'm not sure the link below will share the video, and I feel torn about sharing it on Facebook because I don't know the family. But from what others have shared, it is obvious he had a beautiful voice and a kind and joyful spirit. These stories give a face to the tragedy. He will be missed by many.

I did not know him or his family, but his mother has been in my heart all day.  I want to say I can't imagine what she is going through, but I do imagine it. Like all mothers, I am haunted by the fear of a call that comes one night to tell me of a child's accidental or tragic death. Seared in my memory is the sound of the crying of a friend who lost a son to suicide. I had come to bring her family food a couple days after his death, and she could not prevent a deep, brutal wail from erupting.  Although surrounded by family and friends who loved her, she was destroyed by his death and died from an overdose the next year.

May the mother of this young man take comfort in the knowledge that her son died trying to save others, that his memory is cherished by so many people, that his story is an inspiration to countless others.

A local newstory:
https://fox5sandiego.com/2018/11/08/coronado-remembers-man-killed-in-thousand-oaks-shooting/

I ended up sharing this video on Facebook, even though I didn't know Justin. It's not my story, or my personal loss. But I would want my child remembered, especially doing what he loved and bringing joy to others. And perhaps, maybe, putting a face on this act of violence will prevent some future loss...
https://www.facebook.com/hannah.karzin/videos/2122304821155173/

Now parts of Thousand Oaks and the surrounding area are on fire. We have some friends who have evacuated - their daughter's high school is burning - and the Navy base at Point Mugu has been evacuated, and my husband's office is on high alert.  This part of California may not have tornadoes and ice storms, but these fires are just as destructive. And yet, wildfires can also be lifegiving - necessary for some species to survive.

Music and dancing

A lesson I keep relearning: Say yes to hospitality. Say yes to offering hospitality; say yes to accepting hospitality.

I don't really have trouble with the second part. If someone invites our family over to dinner, we are usually happy to show up ready to eat and enjoy. Party? We'll be there. Meet for coffee? Sure thing! Unless we really have a conflict, we rarely say no to an invite - especially if it means no dishes...  And I think most people feel the same way. People love a personal invitation.

The exceptions are the invites from an organization, or a fundraiser, or someone we don't really know. But even then, if we have time to go to the meet and greet for the Boy Scouts, or the fundraiser for the school arts program, we usually attend. I like going to hear speakers at church or getting dressed up for a good cause or going to events in the community, like the recent book festival. I went by myself, selfishly, so I could hear the speakers and linger at booths thinking about buying books and adding to my TBR lists.* (book post to come) Sometimes I am hesitant to go along to events for my husband's work where I may not know anyone, but at the last few events (where I dragged my feet out to the car because I was expecting to have to work hard to make small talk) I've found kindred spirits with whom to talk books or gardening or education. The end of the party came too soon.

Harder than just showing up at something is hosting.  We love having company, and living in a tourist mecca just 15 minutes from the airport means we get to see lots of farflung family and friends who come to town for vacations and conferences and sometimes just to see us. But I do worry about entertaining, having enough to eat and drink, keeping all the guests happy, scrubbing mold from my shower, and swabbing the window sills. Then people arrive, and I remember that none of that really matters. People just want to hang out and be a part of the crowd.

Two weeks ago we had friends call up from our old community to let us know they would be in town and would be happy to do a house concert for us. This family has a gift for music. They play multiple instruments, can play folk music and 70s guitar rock by ear, and write their own songs based on medieval lyrics or Robert Frost poems, etc.  In the three years since we moved, their boys have developed their talents even more. I knew they were talented, but we procrastinated briefly before saying yes for a couple reasons. 1. We were thinking about going to the Matt Maher concert after the Padres baseball game (for which I hadn't bought tickets) and 2. I didn't want to clean house.  And really, I was kind of afraid of what if other people didn't like their music as much as I did. Nonetheless, we love this family, and they have been so generous to our family, so we sent out an email to invite some other friends.

Here's where the other part of the lesson takes place: I hesitated about inviting too many people, so my initial email list was just my book club. But many of those families already had plans for the evening, so I sent another invite out to more people, and then a few more. What I realized is that it doesn't hurt to invite more people than you think you can manage. It all works out. People brought snacks and beers. Some other old friends came whom we hadn't seen in three years. Other friends brought their friends who were wonderful people.  Not everyone brought their kids, but the ones who came played nicely together and got the adults to dance.  It ended up being one of those evenings where everything went well, and everyone went away happy, grateful for the fellowship and the food and the music.  And the music was so, so good.  It made me wish we had more opportunities to do things like house concerts or poetry readings or impromptu happy hours on the front porch.

So, note to self: Say yes to hosting and to being hosted. Let the people come. Give thanks for easy snacks, decent wine, good beer, and bad lighting that doesn't show the dust. Don't let a little bit of work or fear of awkwardness prevent the event.

(Moment of truth: the poetry reading only happened because my husband has a co-worker who has a lot of exuberance for performing. Sadly, he is now at another command and a difficult family situation has dampened his spirit, so we'll probably never have a reprisal of that event.)

And then some

Every Monday and Wednesday night for the past six weeks I have been up past midnight, sometimes past one, occasionally past 2 am.  The fear of failure - and the stimulation of a glowing screen - have my eyelids peeled back; my heart rate is a bit accelerated with adrenalin and caffeine. Every night, I think I'm going to do this earlier next week! I'm going to prepare ahead of time. The devil of procrastination plus the inspiration of a deadline equals late nights.

I have been laboring over mini-dissertations on nature writers, ecoliterature, ecocritism, ecotheology, ecocentrism, lococentrism, anthropocentrism, the Anthropocene era, regionalism, bioregionalism, shamanism, pantheism, ethnobotany, etc.

I search websites and databases, get bogged down in reading interesting biographical facts about authors, unusual habits and habitats, critical dissent, pertinent data on consumption, water rights, logging and other environmental issues, and details about context, timelines, settings, and references.

I prepare powerpoint slides of flowers and natural parks and kinds of trees and rates of carbon consumption; make lists of links, copy and paste interesting facts and really good quotes onto word documents; then pick up the anthology of readings and think why am I doing all this research and not focusing on the text?!?

So next I make lists of page numbers to reference, bend corners of the textbook pages, note pertinent details, and finally go to bed.

In the morning, I can't remember anything until I open the book again. For instance, this morning I knew I had just read all these reviews and criticism of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, but I couldn't remember what essay I assigned my students by Annie Dillard.  Open Norton Anthology of Nature Writing to p 880: it was "Total Eclipse," a hyperbolic account of the 1979 total solar eclipse she experienced in Washington state. She talks about being in a suspended state of reality as the eclipse is occurring, like a time warp tunnel, a conflation of time and eternity. This is in between accounts of reading about miners, reflecting on a scary clown picture in the hotel room, followed by memories of a trip to a diner after the eclipse. The intentional juxtaposition of mundane and sublime is supposed to reflect the process of remembering and storytelling, I suppose.  I didn't assign it because I thought it was such a wonderful essay, but because it was short, self-contained, and related to the recent solar eclipse last August. My students could relate to Dillard's experience in a way they can't relate to Muir's swinging through pine trees during a hurricane just to be close to Nature. And, you know, being relatable is key to these kids.

I am afraid I am not relatable. Or maybe they are not relatable. I say something about Emerson or ask who wrote Moby Dick, and they can't respond.  They weren't sure about Robert Frost. Even Huck Finn is confused with Tom Sawyer. I thought they would get who the Beat poets were when I brought up Gary Snyder because they are from California - the land of pot and road trips and performance art. But no. One student did know that the Beat poets had something to do with some kind of music.

They do relate to the story of Sharman Apt Russell's toddler melting down in a tantrum in the Gila Wilderness because she cannot ride in the front on the saddle horse. They like Thoreau's comments on getting rid of clothing. They mourn Aldo Leopold's dying green-eyed wolf. They appreciate Rachel Carson's fear of a silent spring even if they didn't read the prologue, which is all I asked them to read. They can imagine seeing Eiseley's raven eating a dead baby bird and the mourning cries of the songbirds arising as it gulps the young thing down. They can share their own stories of encounters with black widows when we talk about confronting mortality and give detailed memories of grandfathers and grandmothers when we talk about the wisdom of the elders in conjunction with Snyder's eulogy to the old growth forests of the Pacific Northwest.

So I am taking notes about how to back off about 50 degrees from what I'm trying to cover. I keep cutting essays, even though I have a hard time not adding reading assignments because there are so many good, good writers, and so many essays about Important Things.  I want my students to hunger for these essays. I want them to be curious and enthused about the authors and the movements and the context. I want them to speak up about issues and observations they have made or heard in the news. Ask questions, make connections.

I do have a few students who read and think and realize it really isn't that hard to make a connection with these texts, even if it's "I just don't get why she brought up the scary clown." Excellent! Let's make some educated guesses!  And I do have a few students who will extemporize about "How then shall we live?" or "What value do we give to people and old growth forests?" "How do we balance the needs of the human community, the need for more space, fewer insects, more food, with limited, fragile, natural resources?"  These questions and ruminations don't need the support of the text to get the conversation going, which is better than no comment at all.

By 1 pm on Tuesday and Thursday, I am wiped out.  I question my existence, my choice to do this. Maybe I'm not a very good teacher after all. My teaching method is to throw a bunch of information out and hope some of it sticks. It is a "filling the pail, not lighting a fire" approach, although maybe some detail, some phrase will light a fire? I wonder if maybe I will not teach next year. I will stay home and homeschool the youngest. We will spend lots of time together in nature instead of reading about it.  We will simplify, simplify, simplify, and march to the beat of a different drummer. I won't be beholden to a boss, to a class of sleepy eyes. 

But then 10 pm Monday night rolls around again. I am balancing the text on my lap, peering through my reading glasses at the screen, thirty tabs open, a word document minimized, and a sheet of paper with scribbled thoughts on the desk in front of the keyboard.  I fold down the corner of a page, search for an image of the brush box tree. And I think, I love this...and this... and this...

And in other news. . .

On the anniversary of 9/11 last week. the campus where I am teaching now had small flags set up in the quad to memorialize those who had lost their lives. Because this is an evangelical Christian school, the campus ministry team emailed some prayers to be read in class. I am thrilled to begin class in prayer - "Come, Holy Spirit," being the one I have used, not sure of the theology of the Holy Spirit for my students, but going with it.  We had a moment of silence, and I read the prayer, and then asked who remembered 9/11.  Only 3 of 16 raised their hands - two were seniors, so they were toddlers when it occurred, and one was a nontraditional student who spent time in the Marines before returning to school. He was 11 in 2001. They shared their stories of what they could recall. One of the seniors remembered his dad packing up his family from southern Mexico to come to America because he still had a visa and was afraid the borders would be closed in response to the attacks.  They never went back to Mexico.  The guy who was 11 watched the news in his middle school classroom - and saw the people jumping from buildings on TV in school.  The third girl with memories of the event remembers it as a movie - something not quite real. To the rest of the students, this event is a part of recent history, much the way I remember Jimmy Carter being president and lining up for gas.

My own memories of 9/11 I  think I have shared: That morning I was, as usual, not paying attention to news until my mother-in-law called me. At the time we kept our TV in a closet because our tiny house in the northern suburbs of Chicago had no space. But I pulled it out and watched TV as much as I could with three toddlers the rest of the day.  Disbelief was my primary emotion.

We have been talked about defining moments of history in class - the fall of Rome, the shift from an earth-centric to a heliocentric understanding of the solar system, the revolutions of the 18th century, including the revolutionary ideas of Lamarck and Darwin. 9/11 surely marks a shift in worldview. Terrorism, domestic and international, has become a defining fear; has increasing secularism been a response?   These students of mine have never known a time when America was not involved in the middle east as a military presence. What a change in the military community 9/11 created.  Day to day life may be relatively little changed for most people, but the inconveniences of security checks, the very real disruptions of IAs, PTSD and deployments have restructured this generation's experience of military service. I wonder if it is just that I am more aware of suicide since 9/11, or if it continues to rise because of the trauma of that event and the corresponding reactions to it.

What will be the next defining event? The church is obviously going through a period of disruption. What should have been ended half a generation ago is still festering. A Catholic friend of mine, also in a military family, suggested that perhaps the Church needs to follow the example of the military. When mistakes are made, the commanding officer has to take responsibility at some point.  Some early retirements, if not public confessions and offers of restitution, should be made. I don't know how far up the canker reaches, but it must be very firmly rooted if it is still erupting so widely.

But it makes me tired to think of that, and many other concerns are more immediate.

For instance, how to teach about symbolism. Apropos of it all we read Blake's "Sick Rose" in class Tuesday - the worm imagery perhaps could represent this scandal in the Church, the sickness in our culture, in our love affairs, etc., etc . . .

O Rose thou art sick. 

The invisible worm, 

That flies in the night 

In the howling storm: 

Has found out thy bed 

Of crimson joy: 

And his dark secret love 

Does thy life destroy.

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For a few days I was spun up because our priest had a question and answer session during Mass about the scandals. I heard about it beforehand and expected the worst. I even went so far to send him an email to see if the rumor was true and to express my hope that the Mass wouldn't be interrupted by angry people venting. In a gesture of attention, he called me to confirm the rumor, to say that the idea had come to him in prayer, and to mention that there is a tradition of questions and answers during Mass (cf school masses). The call just made me sad.  I both was glad and regretted that we were out of town for that Mass.

Happily, my fears of the worst were unrealized, and it sounds like most people appreciated the opportunity to ask questions. They also appreciated our pastor's openness about the issue.  Perhaps the lesson for me is that I shouldn't expect people to behave badly.  I'm afraid I do tend to expect people to behave worse than they usually do in reality. Thus, I am usually happily surprised, instead of disappointed by their behavior. And perhaps that's why I don't feel tempted to leave the church. Priests and bishops, kings and presidents, and all other types of human beings have been acting badly since the beginning of time.  The hypocrisy of the leadership burns worse than anything. It is easy to imagine that Hell exists for this reason.  Who is Lucifer eating in the lowest ring of The Inferno? Judas, Brutus, and Cassius, backstabbers all.

At any rate, our parish also had a holy hour on Friday evening that week. We went, released the kids after 20 minutes of silence to go play on the playground across the street, where the sounds of toddlers and middle schoolers created a sound track for the time of prayer.  I wish more people would have come to share in the /silent/ hour of reflection. This is why our pastor wanted to meet the people at Mass instead of planning another event. Most people just don't come to church other than on Sunday morning.  They want to talk, not sit in silence and pray.

***************
Speaking of hypocrisy, my freshman son has to read Catcher in the Rye this year.  Anthem of adolescent discontent.  Back to school night was this week. I almost didn't go but decided to catch up with what the freshman needs to keep on top of. I really wanted to go to my junior daughter's teacher's classes, especially her English teacher, because I like him, even though I don't love all the books he assigns (Candide the primary offense). Despite my wish that the kids were at a Catholic school, I have to admit I like their teachers - pretty much every one of them, excepting a PE teacher. I loved the previous principal who left to go be principal at an elementary school, which will free her to spend more time with her three young daughters. She was an English major. I miss seeing her around campus - I felt we connected, even if she made everyone feel that way.  After living in the community less than a month, I felt like she knew our name and our high school kids. After living here for three years, I'm not sure the new principal, formerly the vice principal here, has any recognition of us or our kids.

*******************
Meanwhile, I thought my students would appreciate another anthem of youthful ideals, Walden, but most of them seemed to think Thoreau was preachy and unrealistic, which he is, but still. They also thought the book was boring - accounts of how little can be spent on nails or how deep and wide Walden pond is don't interest them. I can see their point, but I also am a bit disappointed in how few of them seem inspired by his call to freedom from stuff.  Then again, I am inspired but unable to detach.  I understand the liberating effects of his minimalist existence, the joy of traveling lightly through the world, but still I hang on to clothes from 1997 and have trouble letting go of books. Our most recent book club book was about decluttering. It claimed to be about making room for God, but I found the spiritual element to be lacking. Thoreau is more convincing in his linking detachment to freedom, but his is more an Eastern viewpoint; he isn't advocating for spending more time in prayer. The book club book might have been more memorable if it had given more attention to the idea that we briefly discussed after reading Dorothy Day's The Long Loneliness. This is the idea that if we own more than we need we are taking from our less fortunate brothers and sisters in Christ.  The author really didn't really delve into the sins that lead to clutter - greed, covetousness, vanity, selfishness, a lack of trust in God's providence, etc, etc. Combining these two ideas - generosity and overcoming sinfulness in relation to stuff might be more convicting.

Not laboring

These photos are out of date, but I have been sorting through photos and trying to get rid of "digital clutter" because our hard drive is full, so I thought I would share some. 

Labor Day weekend we traveled up to our old stomping grounds in Ventura to meet up with my husband's brother and his family. He has a friend who has a boat, a really nice boat, who was going out to Santa Rosa Island for the day, so we got to ride along. The boat had two bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a kitchen - the kind of boat you could live on.  Many of the boats docked near this one were people's homes, at least temporarily. The weekend gave us a little sneak peek into another subculture that we don't get to see very often: the life of luxury boat people. 

The ride to the island took just over an hour. The ocean was fairly calm, but we didn't see any dolphins or other large marine mammals, aside from sea lions. A pod of large flying fish entertained us on the way home. Once we reached the island, the boat owner anchored in a cove and preceded to get out the boat toys: A giant floating mat (the lilypad), kayaks, paddle boards, snorkel gear, the dinghy. The rest of the afternoon we played in the cove. I don't have many photos of the time in the cove. I was either in the water or reading a book in the sun, so the day wasn't well documented.  We had brought our wetsuits and snorkels and masks. With my wetsuit, I was warm enough in the water to stay in for a while. The four-year-old snorkeled around with a lifejacket on, too. Not a lot of color and variety, like in the coral reefs around Guam, but we did see some bright orange Garibaldis, a number of bat rays, and lots of colorful urchins and kelp. Lots of little fish that I don't recognize also, the nameless gray fish that are everywhere. 

The best part of the day was the slowness of time. We had no schedule, nothing to do but enjoy this moment and explore this spot. We kayaked to the island's rocky shore, but there wasn't really a beach, nor was there easy access up the cliffs surrounding the cove to hike inland. The point was to be on the water anyway.  I tested my fears by kayaking into small sea caves, imagining the fate of that soccer team in Thailand the whole time. Then I paddled out of the cove around the edge of the island into the bigger waves of the ocean. For quite some time I paddled along the coast before beginning to think about paddling back against the current. The current actually wasn't that strong, but the unknown was intimidating enough to make me turn around. I did challenge myself to take the kayak through a small natural bridge, even as I envisioned a wave pushing the little boat into the rock wall and scraping all the skin off my knuckles.  I find myself more fearful as I get older; is this because I have heard more tales of death and disaster or because my physical abilities are fading along with my eyesight and hair color (actually that is artificially bright right now, to my frustration.) ?

At one end of the cove there was a large rock island where a whole troop of sea lions were playing. They slid off the rocks into the water, played in the waves, barked at each other, circling around in their games before ooching back up the rock to rest in the sun. That's mostly what our kids did, too. They jumped in and out of the water, off the lily pad and off the decks and roof of the boat, and explored the sea caves in kayaks. They ate and rested in the sun to warm themselves like the glistening, lazy sea lions before sliding back into the water to play some more.

When it was time to return, we felt glutted with sun and salt, and memories of a day of freedom and energy. We planned to sit around the fire that night back at the cousin's house, but instead we all fell asleep early while the kids watched Moana, dreaming of island life. 

Morning light

The littlest one still creeps into bed with us sometimes in the middle of the night. I wake up and she is there, close to my face, breathing faintly from half-open lips, her nose dotted with freckles, her round cheeks smooth as cream. One morning, she opened her eyes and caught me studying her.  She took my face in her pudgy hands, and said, "Mommy I don't want you to get old."

Perhaps she recognizes that her mom is more worn out than other children's moms. I remember being proud that my mom was young and beautiful, and I pitied the other kids whose moms were shapeless and gray. Now my meanness is coming back to haunt me.  Poor child. She will never have a young and pretty mom.  The young moms at our park wear yoga pants and tank tops, their biceps defined, their curves firm, their skin tan. They have long shiny hair and faces unmarked yet by years and cares. Little girls are attentive to what is pretty and sparkly. I must seem more like the grandmas and nannies at the park in their orthotic sandals than these lithe, athletic young moms.

Maybe I am just a little bit frightening in the early morning sun, with my wrinkles deeply creased, dyed roots and grays showing in my messy hair. When her older siblings were small, I was young. She has this strange privilege of not having to share me very much with other children. My bed in the mornings was like a nest of mouselings rolling about when her oldest sibling was her age.

Perhaps she is just recognizing that these mornings when we nestle under the covers a few extra minutes before getting up, the sweetest time of day, won't last. Her older siblings don't climb into bed with mom and dad. In the past few weeks, many things have changed; her brothers left for college, the other kids went back to school, she started a little preschool program, I have been distracted, busy. I am not young and fun and carefree. She asks me often, "Why are you making that face, Mommy?" I will then realize I am squinting or grimacing or chewing on my cheek.

What lesson this? Only that time passes. I have been revisiting the poetry and literature of my college years, revisiting places, revisiting old photos and old books looking for something. As I prepare for teaching a new class, I realize how long ago it was when I first encountered Keats encountering Chapman's Homer.  The son who is newly away at college has been discovering the pleasure of reading Homer with a group of students who are interested in talking about it. Each time I talk to him he has a different idea for a major, or he has just returned from some study session. He is thinking about trying out the Great Books program that was my major.  Delighted that he is relishing his college experience, while also missing his chatter around here. Trying to remember 18 years ago when it was his tiny face smiling at me during that sweetest time of the day.

Summer slips away

Although the sun is still warm and golden, summer vacation has ended here. The beach crowd is thinning.  The middle and high school kids returned to classes yesterday. The college kids have moved back on campus. On Monday, our second son left for a year in Roma to study architecture. I started teaching my composition class at the Navy base last night, and my new class in Nature Writing starts next week.  

This shift to another school year has arrived all too soon, and the deluge of paperwork that accompanies back to school season has begun. School registrations, sports sign ups, syllabus sign offs, CRE registration, emergency forms all have to be signed and submitted. New shoes and school supplies have been purchased.  I bought some colorful Sharpies for myself to update the calendar, but the idea of color coding kids' schedules has already evaporated.

I have fewer schedules now to coordinate. Three have flown the nest now. Our house has suddenly shifted dynamics from being a "boy house" to being a girl led house.  Only one son is left to argue for action movies with his three romance minded sisters.  The quantity of meat and milk I will have to buy will decrease. 

Even with four still at home, it seems quiet around here.  The two high schoolers are playing fall sports, volleyball, and football, and so dinner is late or just a few of us are eating together. One of our bedrooms is now empty of regular occupants; the bunk bed is stripped down, and the mess is finally off the floor - mostly hidden under the bed and in the closet, to be sure, but some of it was actually discarded  I feel lonely for the big kids who were good company this summer and handy to have around the house for helping out with chores and babysitting.

Summer's end was marked by the blessing of spending our last full week of vacationtime in Indiana with my folks on their farm, where the summer heat intensified the smell of clover and growing corn. It rained the first half of the week, which delighted the four year old who hasn't ever played in the rain because here in southern California we haven't had enough rain to make puddles since she could walk.  She donned oversized rain boots and twirled an umbrella and delighted in the summer showers. The twelve year old played outside a little bit with her and with her best friend who made an extra special trip from Maryland to see us since we were somewhat "close." We had a steady stream of visits from my siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles, and old friends.  One day we spent in Kentucky at my aunt and uncle's beautiful farm, which they are selling because of health concerns that come with age.  Life is passing by too quickly. I'm almost tempted to have another baby to stall time. Or perhaps just put on black to mourn the passing of youth and childhood and ideals that have vanished or faded as my children move on into adulthood and my parents' generation slows down in retirement. Tempus fugit. 

Captured moments that exist only in the digital world or memory:

Big cousins and little cousins

The weekend's entertainment: driving the Polaris

Sunrise

Night visitor

Rain dance

Ice cream for all

College send off

Prayers for students

Double rainbow promise

After the rain

Checking on the cows

Chicken dance

Ironweed - remind me to teach my kids the names of these plants so they aren't nature know nothings like the WSJ points out

Garter snake

Zinnias in bloom

Dying sunflowers

Bittersweet

Sulfur butterflies

The harvest from my pot

Back in CA: passionflower blooming