Calm calamity

 The wild aster shows it's delicate sweet face in Vermillion Cliffs as well as in our back field--last dash of summer in many places. No one much here at home wants to see my photos  and I feel the need to compartmentalize what is still so fresh and vibrant about our recent Veggie Voyage looping western Wyoming and most of Utah. Those were good times. Lots of open space and relationship with great beauty and interesting people. It gives me warm and quiet joy to rethink of it.

 We came back to some mundane stuff but also to one huge shock- Michael's routine follow up CT scan showed a probable recurrence of cancer, now in the lung. Unless you have been through such a shock and know what it feels like I have little need to want you to imagine it and no need to walk you through my feelings or thoughts.

 Michael feels well in his body and has no symptoms and the main thing we are doing is all the routine things of catching up with our lives where they need us to show up. We are not as calm and sanguine as I sound writing this but we are in love with life and committed to living it fully and as normally as we can. We know we are on the cusp of more big medical decisions and procedures and I may not be posting much for awhile.
Here at Riparia Bruce has set out over 100 different types of lettuce. They gleam in the late fall sun. He's also still selling hundreds of dollars of heirloom variety tomatoes and besides asters there are still summer vegetables and flowers enjoying their time before frost. The Thanksgiving cornucopia of this valley never ceases to amaze me.

 And there is a cornucopia of work that awaits too. These poke plants are beautiful and the berries are luscious looking but when the raccoons eat the seeds they end up planting these deep rooted survivors everywhere. Digging them out in summer is something I do every year and I don't much enjoy it. Now is the time for so many things. Live. Love. Enjoy the earth we are Blessed within.