NOMAD DREAMING

If you build, it they will come Every day now, I walk out into a field of flowers. My ongoing pursuit of black flowers manifested this season in a patch of Black Peony poppies (Papaver somniferum) . Not quite black but very poppy. Even when folded tight. Pollinators love them. Especially the single petalled ones. There’s quite a range of petal shape and colour. The very crinkly full blooms are hard for the pollinators to get into. I have to take care walking some of the pathw

“Look for the helpers” Mister Rogers (1928-2003), Presbyterian minister and American TV children’s programming personality famously counseled. I think. Full disclosure: I’ve never actually watched a Mister Rogers show but icons of the adopted culture creep in subtly, then lurk, embedded on the edges of awareness, to surface at moments like cockroaches when I switch on the kitchen light suddenly at midnight. This May Day (mayday mayday) I take a moment to acknowledge some of

People forget that eating represents their most profound engagement with the natural world. Through agriculture is how we change the world, more than anything else we do. Michael Pollen in The Omnivore’s Dilemma Agni (digestive fire) inhabits a little patch of garden on the southwestern boundary, under the (recently restrained and reshaped) mesquite tree. The stand of hulless black barley, Hordeum vulgare nudum (it’s not truly hulless, I am discovering) sowed late autumn, smo

When life gives you science fiction rock ‘n roll, listen to Jimi All day a demonic wind has been sandblasting a wildfire invitation, a hot, dry breath from the devil’s own furnace, until, suddenly, at dusk the wind drops. Everything softens into a Jimi Hendrix purple haze. Excuse me while I kiss the sky. Purple haze all in my brain. It’s wrap around liminal light, numinous with a deep quiet, such a softness…shhhh…. Barefoot in the front garden, lured by luminosity, I stalk th