Halloween

The day started off with folks filling a shipping container for Belize.

Tonight was a fun Sharon North Birthday Prairie Biscuit party at the grange with some pretty amazing and loveable folks.

My "pumpkin" this year was an old neglected melon left from the summer garden.

Mid day friends biked along Comanche Creek looking at possibilities for bike paths. Tonight the Great Horned Owls were singing a duet and the crack between the worlds was shining wide in the moonlight as Animism flourished.

World Climate Change Day

It's my brother's birthday, United Nations Day and World Climate Change Day. In the last week I drove the little veggie voyager to do my Cancer Detection Program work with health care providers in Sonoma and Marin
and got over 100 miles per gallon but then couldn't really help much with the Peace and Justice Center Annual Dinner except that I just loved the speakers and the recipients of the Peace Awards. The peace and environmental work is so critical and it's so moving to be part of the eager element yearning and working for justice, for reverence, for the delicious natural food and banquet of life lived walking the walk... Ah, you know I get a bit excited.. Anyway, I learned the new "board" shown here with Tim in the new KZFR studio. I went to the Make a Difference Day event in Bidwell Park and didn't really make a difference but can share photos of who is making a difference.

I mainly went to Farmer's Market and crawled around again for the second straight weekend picking up walnuts, which I think of as pretty much a perfect food. In one week the prickly tawny mat of weeds has sprouted a thin hopeful sweet green flush of grasses after the second rain of the season. The cover crop and winter garden are looking tentative but good. I'm satisfied and grateful for both the harvest and my responsibilities.

Walnut mania

The big storm last week brought down all the walnuts and now the race is on to pick them up before the next rain.

I was away for a few days, my first trip alone in the new veggie VW. She did a great job except I did run out of diesel (from the 2 gallon tank that fits inside the spare tire that is used to start and stop the car so it never sits with veggie oil in the lines.) That was a bit of an adventure, trying to find diesel in San Rafael before the Marin Community Breast Cancer Forum. (The forum was fascinating. There has been a great grassroots effort to figure out why Marin County has the misfortune to have the highest breast cancer rates in the world...no, no conclusive answers yet.)

Meanwhile the news from Farmers Market today was that there is a new home grown biodiesel effort starting up. I'm excited to think I might have access to biodiesel without hassling Michael to process our VV waste oil supply or going to the Costco to buy soy oil cubes.

It was just excellent to get over 100 miles per gallon of diesel on my trip.

Enjoy these photos of fall squash, amaranth, beans, wild grapes and those amazing English walnuts all growing here on the land.

Decent Work Day

It's Fair Trade Month, which follows World Decent Work Day. (See www.usleap.org) Things aren't decent for many in this world though. We watched Rethinking Afghanistan yesterday and it's been weighing on me about what steps to take--without a draft it is next to impossible to think we can build a movement and stop a troop build up. We must rely on our small actions and Obama for the time being.... Hardly enough to stop the momentum of the military industrial complex.

Still the thinking of flowers says celebrate life.. Today is the last day before our first big rainstorm. I got in covercrop, the winter garden and have harvested.

I doubt if anyone at the Chico Peace and Justice Center wants seeds at the Annual Dinner but I thought it would be nice to offer sunflower seeds and Evening Primrose seeds so I have harvested them. I'm also full swing into my frenzied walnut picking... once the black walnut hulls get wet they are slimy and stain your fingers brown and the English will go into the baklava for the Annual Dinner.

Alas, I think this is the last burst of golden out of this blog for you for quite some time. Peace accompany you into the less comfortable time of year.

John Lennon's Bday

So, I get to choose from the stimuli what to write about cuz everything is optional sez dear David Sisk.

Well, let's start with Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
Is Early Detection the Best Protection or would it be better to understand the toxic effects of chemical substances before they are in use and control them if they are dangerous?

Which leads me to the subject of Capitalism. We saw the Michael Moore movie last night and were just sickened by the reality it presents. In this ad, the genocide of Native American people from this land mass, generally recognized as begining with Columbus, is overlooked/cutesified in order to get you to a sale.

Yesterday, I rode past the Walmart on my way to work in the morning and about 20 sprinklers were on. At 5:30 they were still on with runoff pouring into the storm drain. How many hundreds of gallons wasted?

There are a lot of people in Chico who want a cheap source of Chinese capitalism in the form of a supercenter to go on the "weed field" beyond this strip of overwatered green.

I'd rather have our Nobel President smiling into the eyes of the Dalai Lama, getting rid of Timothy Geithner, stopping the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and fulfilling his campaign promises of CHANGE!

Live frugal. Avoid debt. Stop using toxics and clean up what's here. Use the earth's resources wisely because they do not belong to us. Give Peace a Chance. All these things I'd say are not options.

Gumboot

Friday, after finishing clinic site visits in Mt. Shasta, we headed up to Gumboot Lake. The next day we searched in vain for the Pacific Crest Trail. We made widening loops where we thought it was, as we thought it was on our side of the drainage until dusk when we ventured up to the Gumboot trailhead. By that time the pleasant warmth, that had even been cosy for the gopher snake, had been followed by snow flurries. Unfortunately, my beautiful photos just look fuzzy. You can barely make out the snow, which continued until we left today to come home for Touch of Chico, a massage benefit for KZFR community radio. We did get to hike the PCT last night as well as this morning, in the blowing diamond chip wind of the ridgeline.

I was thinking about the Ken Burns National Park series we'd been watching all week. How the National Forests are given such short shrift due to the terrible multiple use policies that has caused such species loss.. Still, the high country is exhilarating. Not transcendent, as the flowery language about the parks goes on about. (Isn't transcendence an experience of wholeness, available anywhere?) It's just that in nature I know my emotional heart swells with delight.. I equate this with joy or bliss... I don't want to go all flowery myself but it's just not the province of National Parks.