June 9 I am sick of cooking! On Tuesday I prepared this meal, plant-based and mostly whole foods. Pancakes made from sourdough starter and mashed chickpeas, steamed asparagus (in season now), spinach and cucumber salad. There is processed whole wheat flour in the pancakes, processed vinegar and mango juice for salad dressing, processed sweet zucchini…

 June 5 The old witch, a hawthorn, is in bloom, looking more than ever like a jaunty, woman’s hat. Confetti from a hawthorn wedding by the ridge stream: We drove home from Toronto without any arrival time in mind. We even left “late” at 11:30 am.  But, as we did on the way there, we…

 May 27 Once there was a caterpillar who by a random mutation looked a little bit like birdshit on a leaf and he had a survival advantage and his grandchildren looked a little bit more like birdshit… You couldn’t make this stuff up. ***** Rocky is my guide. If we cut through the woods, he…

May 24  As soon as the snow is gone, it begins. First are the primitives, the fossils. They were on the planet before the trees and flowers. This was in April. Shining club moss. Pincushion moss British soldiers lichen and reindeer lichen. Fan club moss, and broom fork moss. By the end of April, frail…

 May 22 We had a few hot days in Toronto and the kids and I were at the creek. Of course they went in. ***** K and I were in Toronto for summer tires and other errands. I was in Shoppers’ Drug Mart at Six Points, then I went to the Valley Farm Produce and the…

 May 20 It is time. It is going to be a terrible revolution. The people are going to rise up, because the climate is driving them from their homes and farm lands. They are going to rise up, too, against the mega-monopoly consumer chains that transport goods around the world and back again. Against the…

 May 6 The trilliums are showing their nodding buds while still only inches from the ground. I may miss them in flower if we are gone to Toronto. (We still have to go and get our summer tires put on, and run other errands.) In Ontario I am used to seeing the trilliums tall and…

 april 25 It seems a long time since the forest became naked, disrobed of snow. I was afraid it would be fleeting, and I wanted to know it better like this. I can see its roots, its dead, and its broken limbs, among the rocks, and walk where I can’t go, once the undergrowth has…

 April 21 This happened Sunday morning. (It happened last year, one morning.) Sunday at three pm, from the top of the meadow. At four-thirty. At five pm. At seven pm. ***** Today, Thursday, was only the second time I have left Rocky with K. The first time was only for an hour and he whined…

 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…