CHEAP BIRD FEEDING WITH THE THREE-B's

Here is a very inexpensive way to feed the birds (or raccoons or possum), and one that fits right in with the landscape, which I find desirable.  I don't mind pottery or wooden bird feeders but the plastic ones just don't quite do it for me (although I do own a mission-style one that I painted black). So if you are looking for an easy-on-the-wallet inside project for the outdoors...here goes:

Take a walk in the woods to find a fallen branch or small tree trunk...10-18 inch long and around 4-6 inches in diameter.

Cut the ends off and screw in a hook at one end.

Drill evenly spaced holes all around the wood.

Rummage through your freezer to find old Bread, Buns or Bagels. Sometimes you can get old bread from stores.  

Heat up the cooking grease you save...rather than throwing it down your drain...and place the three B's in it to soak.  You can cut them up into smaller pieces either before or after the soaking.

When it is below freezing, stuff the bread pieces in the holes with a spoon, let harden and watch for titmices, woodpeckers, Carolina wrens, flickers, chickadees and even a few cardinals at times. 

SPIRITUALLY LITERATE RESOLUTIONS

It's two weeks into the New Year...so this seems like the perfect time to share a list of resolutions that were recently passed on to me. I hope they are encouraging, challenging and helpful in your spiritual formation for 2011.

1. I will live in the present moment. I will not obsess about the past or worry about the future.
2. I will cultivate the art of making connections. I will pay attention to how my life is intimately related to all life on the planet.
3. I will be thankful for all the blessings in my life. I will spell out my days with a grammar of gratitude.
4. I will practice hospitality in a world where too often strangers are feared, enemies are hated, and the "other" is shunned. I will welcome guests and alien ideas with graciousness.
5. I will seek liberty and justice for all. I will work for a free and a fair world.
6. I will add to the planet's fund of good will by practicing little acts of kindness, brief words of encouragement, and manifold expressions of courtesy.
7. I will cultivate the skill of deep listening. I will remember that all things in the world want to be heard, as do the many voices inside me.
8. I will practice reverence for life by seeing the sacred in, with, and under all things of the world.
9. I will give up trying to hide, deny, or escape from my imperfections. I will listen to what my shadow side has to say to me.
10. I will be willing to learn from the spiritual teachers all around me, however unlikely or unlike me they may be.

STAYING OR GROWING?

Sometimes what goes around, comes around.  

Years ago I was in a pretty conservative church that would take a yearly retreat to Tar Hollow State Park.  We would rent out the group campground and pavilion, do the usual church retreat stuff and have a lot of fun.  The only thing that wasn't usual was that we didn't call it a "Retreat," we called it an "Advance."  The thinking by the leadership was that the Church should never retreat from its obligations...but should always advance the cause of Christ.

At the time, I thought the whole name change was a pretty lame idea  The church was always trying to separate itself out from the mainstream, and I thought this was a silly and impotent stance to take.  But twenty-five years later, and now leading my own retreat ministry, I'm wondering if they weren't on to something.

Since the beginning of Heart By Nature Retreats at Prairie Pond Woods, I've had occasion to hear many reasons why people can't get away for a day or a weekend.  The list ranges from, "I'd love to, but I'm too busy" to "I'm just not interested in retreats."  But I also wonder if folks have a misunderstanding of retreats and might be missing some potentially wonderful experiences.



Maybe we have come to understand retreats as only "getaways," where we just leave whatever state our lives are in, committing what someone once called "domestic suicide" in the process, and return to pick it all back up. If that is so, then I wouldn't want to hassle with it either. If we just go for distraction, diversions or temporary stops to the craziness and discontent, only to come back to a life that defaults to staying the same...we might as well call it a true stay-cation.  It takes a lot of energy to rearrange family schedules, make sure everything is covered and potentially deal with bad attitudes about your leaving, so it should count for something in the end. I always give kudos to the women who show up on Friday evening or Saturday morning, because I know what it took to get there.

But let me give you another way to look at retreats, if this is your conscious or unconscious view of them.  Retreats really are (or should be) a way to advance your life. When you attend a retreat, especially ones that give you time for solitude as we do at Heart By Nature, you have the opportunity to:

• Advance your relationship with God by learning NEW ways to pray and to listen and to just be.


• Advance an understanding of your own passion, gifting and calling.


• Advance the healing necessary in your life before you can be wholly God's.


• Advance your active and important role of sharing God's love to a broken world.  


• Advance your understanding of ecology and appreciation for God's creation.


• Advance YOUR process of moving towards a conscious and intentional life.

These "advances" are really moments of enlightenment by the Holy Spirit, or new ways of looking at things brought on by others who don't think like us, or healings that come through finally accepting ourselves or discovering how deeply God loves us.  These may come in large or small doses, depending on our receptivity and God's will.  But they will come, if that is what we seek. 

John Trent wrote a book about the importance of making just 2-degree changes here and there.  Just a 2-degree course change on a boat, plane or path, will land you at a different place altogether at the end of the journey.  And in the end, isn't a well-lived gift of life what makes us fruitful, content, a light and a delight to our Creator?  That is the goal of an Advance or Retreat or Whatever you call it...to be inspired to make your life different by going deeper, wider, wilder!  Not just for you, but to your family and those around you who long to see hope through authentic transformation.  



The quote below by Thomas Merton, inspired me to write this.  It came to me, as I'm sure it was written, in a moment of quiet contemplation. 



"We live in the time of no room, which is the time of the end. The time when everyone is obsessed with lack of time, lack of space, with saving time, conquering space, projecting into time and space the anguish produced within them by the technological furies of size, volume, quantity, speed, number, price, power and acceleration."

"The primordial blessing, "increase and multiply," has suddenly become a hemorrhage of terror. We are numbered in billions, and massed together, marshaled, numbered, marched here and there, taxed, drilled, armed, worked to the point of insensibility, dazed by information, drugged by entertainment, surfeited with everything, nauseated with the human race and with ourselves, nauseated with life." 

"As the end approaches, there is no room for nature. The cities crowd it off the face of the earth. As the end approaches, there is no room for quiet. There is no room for solitude. There is no room for thought. There is no room for attention, for the awareness of our state."



"In the time of the ultimate end, there is no room for us." 

Be still, bear fruit

Cindy





 

VALLEY OF VISION

Let me learn by paradox

that the way down is up,

that the way to be low is to be high,

that the broken heart is the healed heart,

that the contrite spirit is the rejoicing spirit,

that the repenting soul is the victorious soul,

that to have nothing is to possess all,

that to bear the cross is to wear the crown,

that to give is to receive,

that the valley is the place of vision.



Arthur Bennett

Valley of Vision

WINTERY SCENES

Spent a few days over the holidays at Prairie Pond Woods. On Sunday, we woke to some of these winter scenes outside.  There was truly peace on our little patch of earth. 

Male Cardinal in Spruce

Chickadee at the Feeder

Hillside View from the Front Porch

The Pond.  Where?

Waiting for Spring

Waiting for the Bluebirds

CAN YOU SPOT THE COMMA?

It is mid-October, but there are still butterfly species nectaring about at Prairie Pond Woods, and a few individuals that have come back to the deck flowers for the past few days...one Red-spotted Purple, three Great Spangled Fritillaries, and two Eastern Commas.  They're not looking so good...a bit haggered...so I'm guessing I won't see them at all by the weekend.  And every afternoon between 4:00-5:00 a very beautiful moth flies, quite spastically, over the deck. Too spastically so far for me to get a good photo.  Maybe tomorrow.

By now you've probably seen the Eastern Comma in the photo.  

But can you see why it is called a Comma?

 

In the lower portion of it's ventral wing is a small, silver "comma."

Its cousin, the Question Mark, looks similar but has a dot at the bottom of the comma making it look like one. Two species easy enough to identify!

I'm always amazed at how these seemingly delicate creatures can hang on through cold nights and frosty mornings...but they do.  And it is a great thing when folks plant late-blooming flowers, such as asters and golden rods in their gardens to help these late-blooming Lepidoptera.

So, what's flyin' around outside your place?

GOLDENROD

On roadsides,

in fall fields,
in rumpy branches,
saffron and orange and pale gold,

in little towers,
soft as mash,
sneeze-bringers and seed-bearers,
full of bees and yellow beads and perfect flowerets

and orange butterflies.
I don't suppose
much notice comes of it, except for honey,
and how it heartens the heart with its

blank blaze.
I don't suppose anything loves it except, perhaps,
the rocky voids
filled by its dumb dazzle.

For myself,
I was just passing by, when the wind flared
and the blossoms rustled,
and the glittering pandemonium

leaned on me.
I was just minding my own business
when I found myself on their straw hillsides,
citron and butter-colored,

and was happy, and why not?
Are not the difficult labors of our lives
full of dark hours?
And what has consciousness come to anyway, so far,

that is better than these light-filled bodies?
All day
on their airy backbones
they toss in the wind,

they bend as though it was natural and godly to bend,
they rise in a stiff sweetness,
in the pure peace of giving
one's gold away.


~ Mary Oliver

POEMS FOR AN AUTUMN DAY

Autumn Day
Rainer Maria Rilke

Lord, it is time. The summer was too long.
Lay now thy shadow over the sundials,
and on the meadows let the winds blow strong.

Bid the last fruit to ripen on the vine;
allow them still two friendly southern days
to bring them to perfection and to force
the final sweetness in the heavy wine.

Who has no house now will not build him one.
Who is alone now will be long alone,
will waken, read, and write long letters
and through the barren pathways up and down
restlessly wander when dead leaves are blown.

Wild Geese
Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

A MORNING WIFI-ING

All I think anybody really wants in life is enough time and a space to call their own. Add to this a little extra money, after paying the bills and the ever-increasing taxes, to buy a few frills on occasion. Just a life free of worry and too much toil, and a space to make our own and call our home, that’s what we are all looking for.

But sometimes we want someone else’s space, a place where our surroundings are unfamiliar but comfortable. A place where we can get something to eat or drink that we wouldn’t normally make at home. A place surrounded by people who will leave us alone but make us feel a part of some kind of food-eating and beverage-drinking community looking for warmth or comfort or productivity.

We could do all this busyness in our own homes, but we don’t. I have coffee. I have bagels. I have, lettuce, ham, and mayo in the fridge. I have classical CD’s. I even have a comfortable chair in front of a big window with the view of the woods outside, and wireless internet. And though I may do my best thinking there, I am most productive here, probably like everyone else at this coffee shop, reading the paper, talking on the phone or musing over a legal pad. I'm sure these people are not homeless and have a space somewhere called an office or even a family room, a place where it is quieter, where the views outside are not malls or dirty streets. But here we are, alone together, with no personal distractions, just impersonal ones.

What a day we live in when our friends and family, or at the very least, our compatriots are off fighting in foreign countries, while the rest of us sit and listen to soothing music, doing our end of the quarter reports. No huddling in our various villages waiting for the barbarian invasions. No scrap metal drives or bombing drills. Not yet, anyway. Today we can just glance up to the CNN-MSN-FOX-box and catch what’s going on in Iraq or Afghanistan, while eating a croissant. Or watch a thirty-something woman visit with her domineering Italian mother. Or observe a young man nervously wolf lunch before his job interview that, though he doesn't know it, may change his life forever. Hubs of distraction. Hubs of accomplishment. Hubs to meet someone or be met.

The new church? Perhaps. The new conference room? Definitely.

“So, what makes you unique as a Systems Integrator, than all the others applying for this job?”

I hear the young man in the khaki shirt with the logo answer, but I am fairly sure he was thinking, “Oh God, here we go again with this stupid question. Just hire me and let’s get on with it. I’m your man!” But the dance goes on…only now it’s with 2 cappuccino lattes between them.

And the dance of seduction goes on as well I’m sure, though I am years removed from hearing the music. If I pay attention and squint my eyes I pick up on what I think are the signs; the busboy lingering long at the table of a smartly dressed young lady in the corner. A beauty, and probably out of his league, but he tries. I’m not sure what the lawyerly looking man against the wall is about, but our eyes have met a few times. He’s been done with whatever he was working on for 20 minutes now, and has spent that time just watching people, too. There he goes. Oops, perhaps I was wrong; he just left and got into a Grand Prix. Perhaps he’s a public defender. Good for him.

So it goes…an Altman-esque morning of people coming and going, with their large handbags and tiny phones. How many degrees of separation between us all? How many people have worked for the same boss at one time and could share war stories of trying to just make it through the day? How many parents stand across the soccer field from each other every Saturday? It doesn’t really matter. It is understood that in this new techno-culture of instant connection and information we are all part of the machinery. And somehow, I guess, that makes us feel good.

I LOVE THE PRAIRIE!

While my perennial home garden looks sad, dry and pathetic due to the heat and lack of water, the prairie part of Prairie Pond Woods is in full, vibrant bloom mode...complete with more butterflies than I have ever seen!

 

That is the joy of native prairie plants…and the joy of prairies in general. I know, I know, I rant about it every year beginning in July and don’t stop until October!

 

But prairies have a beauty and wisdom all their own. Every year is different. Every year something new appears or reappears after a long absence, when conditions become just right. I love this dynamic. And the color combinations are exquisite!

 



A whole field of purple and yellow complimentary colors with green, white and lavender accents...it is dazzling! I want to just stand there for hours.

 

One patch by the fallen willow displays the white splashes of boneset, the orange dots of spotted jewelweed, the vivid, purple tufts of ironweed , all atop a layer of lavender mistflower mixed with the yellow starbursts of black-eyed Susans (the photo below just doesn't capture the delight of it all). 

Some Big Bluestem in the foreground

The Start of The Refresher Course

While strolling along The Refresher Course, whose paths I reluctantly widened this year, I was amazed to see a few Butterlyweed plants still in bloom. They usually peak about the third week in July, so an extra few weeks of show is quite the treat!

Butterlfyweed Pods "ripening" in the sun

Every fall when the wind stirs, I hope seeds are being dispersed to other less colorful parts of the prairie. When the birds begin to migrate back south, I wonder what new seeds they are depositing, maybe from the well-known Lynx Prairie just a mile or so away as the crow flys.  And when the deer amble through at dusk, I know seeds are shaking loose and hitching a ride on their bodies. 

Like all gardening or land restoration, it is an act of complete trust.  So much of the process is silent, unseen and dependent on so much more than we realize.  Growth and diversity are amazing and miraculous events...may you find them in your gardens and in your hearts.

Enjoy these other random photos, shot while "strolling the grounds...."

Question Mark

You can see the "question mark" on its ventral hindwing

Played Peek-a-boo around the stem until I out-maneuvered  it and got the shot

I'm thinking this praying mantis is full with eggs...  Yay!!!

Wingstem

Ironweed

The not-so-eentsy-weensty spider...

Abandoned Field Sparrow Eggs

Hazelnut Pods

Sphynx Moth

Common Buckeye

Red-spotted Purples enjoying minerals and salt from Scat!