Maura's Acolytes

Glad i showed myself i could follow through and -- over the past week and a half -- did get grass seed down in orchard in time for rains and warmth to help get it started. Pruned the fig and blue berries, pruned two apples and have attempted training some branches (probably using inappropriate materials).  Two apple trees and the persimmon remain, well, and the elderberries but the elderberries have leafed out and they grow like weeds.

Then had 36 hours of executive function vacation.

I continue to fear whether i am productive enough, competent enough at work, which yes, evidence says yes i am, but plenty of evidence that people who seem competent and productive and critical to understanding things get laid off. On the other hand, no big layoffs seem promising. The fear makes me look closely at retiring sooner rather than later: two years and a month and a few more days is the earliest i could sensibly retire and receive what appears to be a reasonable health care benefit from my employer.

So part of my mind is saying: just hang on and then .... what.

Admittedly, part of my mind remains amazed that all the economic engines continues as they have for decades. Climate forecasts for 2030 made when i was in college were missing -- as the scientists noted then -- factors that would offset the warming the models predicted. Which was pretty dire. And peoples around the globe have made efforts to slow our impact, and the models refined and we found -- for example -- the ocean had even more capacity to be a heat sink.  Nonetheless, I suspect though that i will always feel a distrust of planning for the future: particularly  trusting investment income as a stable foundation.

Another part of my mind makes a loud echoing "tick" when i take my morning and evening pills and i feel the time pass. I didn't contact any family members, haven't done anything to include myself in a community that takes care of each other. Yesterday i read the yoga center in town is shutting its doors (and selling its property to be redeveloped). I know the people who make the community there, who i felt might be local community i could connect with, aren't going away, but the locus of an intention has dissolved.

I see something that i think would trigger Christine's elephants. I know she is working on her elephants, i see her improving coping skills increasing capacity. I watch the news of more anti-trans efforts come in from Erin in the Morning and can't imagine the day to day toll that puts on Christine. And i know that the anti-immigrant, racist, anti-gay, anti-women energy is there, too.

I now i can do that thing, have grief and worry and frustration and still hold in my heart the beauty of the early Crocus tommasinianus and Iris reticulata and anticipation of a Chickasaw plum (Prunus angustifolia) covered with flowers. I also appreciate my colleagues, my friends here, and my friends across the country.

May we all find the capacity to hold our personal grief and our global worries at the same time as appreciation and gratitude, that we find joy as we also open ourselves to witness others suffering and have compassion for all living things. Maybe not stilt grass in North Carolina. Nope, not sure i can find compassion for that plant. It's always something.

So i have some no-fat ricotta that i no longer need for the original reason. I figured maybe i could make something a little sweet and maybe it could satisfy my sweet tooth -- and it seemed like a good use for my dehydrated mulberries. I found some spice bush berries from 2024 in my pantry, preserved in sugar, and thought that might be a lovely combination. So: ground the mulberries, ground about a teaspoon of spicebush berries, and tossed the sugar from the jar in. Then spooned ... maybe half the small container into the bowl. I mixed, tasted, and ... brain churned, tastebuds argued, and... ah. It wasn't sugar, it was salt the spicebush berries were preserved in.

Oh my. So i mixed the rest of the ricotta in -- still really very salty -- and i read the internet. Apparently there is a drained, salted, and "aged" cheese called ricotta salata. So, i have put it in a filter bag and the tofu press and maybe it will be nice in salads?