It’s mostly been a labor of love.  But it’s also been time-consuming.  And with other writing projects making serious claims on my time right now, I have to make some tough choices. Rather than do a half-baked job here, I’m going to take a rest for now.  When my next book is out,  I’ll be picking back up here again.

Until then, on behalf of all of us…

…I’d like to say thanks to everyone who’s stopped by.

Your visits have brightened my days.

Most of my readers have figured out that I’m an avid gardener, but I’ve never shared my true motivation before. Sure, it’s because I like growing things, spending time outdoors, and getting my hands dirty, but none of those are the motivators–they’re the benefits.

What got me into gardening so many decades ago (and keeps me at it) was the realization that “doing business as usual” would eventually kill our planet. I don’t remember the book I read when I was a teenager that turned my thinking around, but I do remember that it caused an instant and permanent shift in my actions: I would do my best not to waste resources and to try to replenish what I took from the earth.  One of the ways that manifested for me was to get into organic gardening.

And the interesting thing about organic gardening, when you do it long enough, is that it begins to lead you down Alice’s rabbit hole.  You start thinking about how everything is inter-connected and inter-dependent. And you begin to see how easy it is to muck that all up.  And you want to start learning how not to do that. And then it jumps from the garden to everywhere else in your life. And then it just becomes how you want to live on the planet.

So as a gardener, I’d like to bring a little known but growing problem to your attention. (No pun intended.) While everyone has heard about  peak oil, peak phosphorus is probably our biggest global emergency. But you won’t hear many people talking about it.

(Thanks to Think or Thwim for gathering the following info together in one place.)

Here’s the problem.

Phosphorus is one of the most the important elements of life. It is a major component of RNA, DNA, and ATP (the molecule produced by photosynthesis that carries energy to the other plant cells – which in turn provide us with energy).

Of the nutrients used as building blocks for life, the following elements all have gaseous phases at the temperatures and pressures found on the surface of the Earth and are therefore easily redistributed through the air:

• Hydrogen
• Oxygen
• Carbon
• Nitrogen
• Sulfur

However, the following elements are solids or liquids and don’t move around so easily:

• Phosphorus*
• Sodium
• Potasium
• Calcium
• …64 more

In a natural ecosystem or on a traditional small farm, plants take these molecules out of the soil and air to build themselves. Animals eat the plants and use the same molecules to construct their bodies. When the plants and animals die, microbes return the molecules to the soil. Lather, rinse, repeat.

On the other hand, with our current industrial agriculture system the plants do their part and take in the molecules they’re supposed to, but then we ship them to a feedlot or city where they are consumed and decay far away from where they originated. The molecules of the elements easily transported by air are replaced relatively easily, but the molecules of solid and liquid elements won’t make it back to the field they came from for a long, long time.

Phosphorus is more sensitive to this imbalance than the others because it is 10 times more concentrated in the body than it is in the Earth’s crust. None of the others are more concentrated in living beings like that.

The phosphorus was originally put in the soil by weathering phosphate rocks. That’s still going on, but that process took millions of years to build up the reserves we used during the last century. To replace the missing phosphorus, we mine phosphate rock, grind it up, and sprinkle it on the soil for the plants to use as RNA, cell walls, etc. This seemed like a great idea when we figured it out 170 years ago. It continued to seem like a good idea all the way up until about 40 years ago when we started noticing two big problems with this system:

Big Problem #1

Phosphorus that doesn’t get used is washed away by rain into rivers and eventually into the ocean. Phytoplankton (algae) in the ocean are very happy with their newfound abundance. They grow fat and reproduce prolifically. The problem comes when they die. As the algae is decaying, the bacteria breaking it down use too much of the oxygen dissolved in the water, killing everything else in that area. Algae bloom near La Jolla

Big Problem #2

We’ve already used half of the phosphate rock available. According to a study by Patrick Dery peak phosphorus occurred in the US in 1988 and the rest of the world in 1989. Others think we’re still 30 years away from the peak, but it doesn’t matter who’s right. Either way, unless we change what we’re doing now, we will have depleted our supply of the central building block of life within a few hundred years of discovering it, and we do not know how to make more.

Chart from phosphorusfutures.net

Current uses of mined phosphate rock:

90% fertilizer.

5% animal feed supplements.

5% soft drinks, toothpaste, etc.

The Solution

Fortunately, the solution is easy. We did it for our first 100,000 years, and we’re the only creatures not currently doing it. The answer is eat, poo, and die in one place.

That doesn’t mean we all have to be farmers, but it does mean we need to become locavores. But certainly, if you can, plant food in your yard. Buy the food you don’t grow from local farmers. Look for pasture raised meat. Compost every organic material you can find. Recycle your own waste. When it’s time to die, have yourself planted in the ground without preservatives so that a tree can build itself out of the molecules you’ve been using. It’s time we give back–while we still have time.

• Barks for strangers were recorded when a researcher approached a dog’s owner’s home when the owner was away.
• Barks during fights were recorded at dog training schools, when a trainer encouraged dogs to bite the glove on the trainer’s arms and bark aggressively.
• Barks for walks were recorded when owners behaved as if they were preparing to go for a walk with their dogs.
• Barks for balls were recorded when owners held balls in front of dogs.
• Barks during playtime were recorded when owners played tug-of-war or similar games with dogs.
• Barks made when alone were recorded when owners tied dogs to trees in a park and then walked out of sight.

Cait has been going through a period where’s she’s been given the opportunity to practice not over-reacting.  This is not an easy lesson for a teenager. What’s been interesting to watch is that what initially seems like disappointing or bad news has actually turned out to be a good thing in the end.

The most recent example of this was when she was up for the lead in her school play. It had come down to her and another boy. They both had fantastic call-backs and it was a tough choice. The role went to the boy.  Not because Cait didn’t do a smashing job, but because the part was for Oliver in “Oliver Twist.”  The director ultimately decided to go with the boy for a boy’s role.

Cait was devastated. Even though she got another lead role as Bett, Oliver’s crush, she came to me bemoaning her fate. She found me in the kitchen, making dinner. “Mom, I can’t believe it! I’ve worked so hard — and this is the last chance I’ll have at this school.”

“I know this is a big bummer. And I know Bett isn’t Oliver, but I think she will still be a good role for you,” I said, continuing to chop veggies.

She flopped down at the kitchen table and her eyes welled up with tears, “Mom, I’ve worked so hard… it’s not fair.”

“Ever heard of the farmer whose only horse ran away?”

“What?” Cait looked up at me with confusion.

I sat down at the table with a bowl of green beans and gave her a bunch to snap. “Let me tell you a little story.”

Long ago there lived a farmer who had learned to live each day as it came. One day, the farmer’s only horse ran away.

All the neighbors gathered in the evening and said, “That’s so unfortunate.”

Nonplussed, the farmer shrugged and said, “Perhaps.”

The next day, the horse returned, bringing with him seven wild horses.

The neighbors once again gathered and said,” How extremely fortunate!”

The farmer said, “Perhaps.”

The next day, the farmer’s son tried to ride one of the wild horses and was thrown, breaking his leg.

And all the neighbors said, “Oh, what bad luck that your son broke his leg.”

He said, “Perhaps.”

The next day, the conscription officers came around, gathering young men for the army, and they rejected his son because he had a broken leg.

And the visitors all came around and said, “Isn’t that great! Your son got out.”

He said, “Perhaps..”

I looked at Cait and asked, “Do you know what the lesson of the story is?”

Sighing, she answered, “That things don’t always turn out the way you expect.”

“Yeah, that’s part of it. But the bigger part is that sometimes you never really know in which direction progress lies.”

Cait gave me “The Look.”

“No really, Honey,” I said, “you watch and see — I have a feeling that Bett will wind up being a better role for you in the end.”

I can’t say that Cait bought my theory at that moment, but she does now.

As it turned out, she wound up having much more fun as Bett than she would have as Oliver.

But I’m sure I’ll need to remind her before long that if she’s feeling that her “horse has run off,” she just needs to keep an eye out for the horizon to see where the next progress will come from. And that maybe, just maybe, it will be even better than what she had planned.

With all the swirls that life seems to be offering her these days, looks like she’ll have lots more opportunities to practice.

A Dog’s Life

Do these guys know how to have fun, or what!

Here are this year’s winners, Richard and Pogo, of the HTM (heelwork to music) Freestyle.

Click here to view the embedded video.

And Mary Ray is one of my favorite performers. Simply amazing.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Orange Salad Recipe

1. Peel skin off several oranges, leaving a fair amount of pith (the white inner skin).
2. Slice and cut into bite-size pieces
3. Drizzle with a light oil of your choosing
4. Sprinkle with sugar
5. Chill for 1 hour
6. Enjoy!

Do you have favorite childhood food?

As Cait and I were painting , the subject of one of her school projects came up. Her assignment was to create a utopia. I asked her how it was going, thinking that would be a fun assignment. To my surprise, she complained that it was an impossible task.

I asked her to explain. She said that for every utopian idea she had, it created several more problems that would need to be solved. The conversation fully engaged us for the entire time it took to finish our painting.

But it got me to thinking…

At some point in my life — I keep saying when I’m in my 70s– I plan on starting a school. A utopian school. A school that children couldn’t wait to get to in the morning, and wouldn’t want to leave in the afternoon. I’ve spent years reading and researching and collecting contacts, so that when I’m ready to get going I’ll have a lot of the leg work already done.

While the 3 R’s would be taught along with other traditional subjects, they would be taught in non-traditional ways, where books would play a secondary role to direct experience.  On sunny days, classes would take place outside.  Life skills would also be taught, along with an emphasis on maintaining a close connection to the natural world. And so on and so on. In other words, I’d take the best of Montessori, Waldorf, public school, private school, and home schooling and ditch what doesn’t work.

I would only hire the best of the best teachers and I’d pay very high salaries, because I’d have very high expectations of them. I’d accept no union teachers because I’d reserve the right to hire and fire based on performance. “Classrooms” would be set up more like “Life” rooms. There would be multiple adults and varying ages of children combined in small, fluid groups that would shift and change based on what was being learned.

That’s just a small peek at what I have in mind.

As I’m always looking to pick up more ideas, let me ask you — if you could create a school from the ground up, what would you include and throw out? What do you think is important for a good education? I’d love to hear.

At least, she didn’t sing well — before I signed her up for singing lessons last year.

I’m not one to get Cait lessons for every little interest or activity.  I’m not one to want her to be involved in a zillion things.  That’s because I’m a big believer in “down-time.” For a lot of reasons. Not least of which is because I know that creativity, ingenuity, and discovery are more likely to happen if you leave space for them to happen.

So I think Cait was actually a little surprised when she asked for singing lessons and I agreed.

Her singing ability dramatically improved and she got a lead part in this year’s play. We both know that wouldn’t have been likely without the lessons. But the play is over and I’ve let her continue with her lessons.

Yesterday she asked me why.

A million thoughts went through my head, including one of my all-time favorite quotes by one of my all-time favorite authors, Mark Twain. You’ve probably heard a variation of it, but here’s the original:

“Dance like nobody’s watching; love like you’ve never been hurt. Sing like nobody’s listening; live like it’s heaven on earth.”

Right after my father died, I worried that I’d never truly feel alive again. I had to fight my way out of a black hole. The only time I had to myself back then was when I took Kiera for her daily walk. We’d head out on our 3-mile route. Once we were out of earshot from neighbors, I’d start singing at the top of my lungs while dancing and skipping down the deserted road. Kiera would jump and sing along with me. After belting out a few of my favorite tunes, I’d invariably feel my heart open back up and I knew I’d be able to breathe for another day.

My dad’s been gone for enough years that I can think of him now and smile without also crying. Maybe that’s as much because, over time, I figured out how to reconnect with him so that he doesn’t feel “gone” to me anymore. But that’s another post.

What I told Cait was that I believe there’s a spiritual power in singing — to open up the chest to breath deeply, to open up the heart to feel fully. And that I loved hearing her sing everyday, and I wanted her to continue to sing everyday for her own health and well-being. And that I believed if everyone sang uplifting songs and danced everyday, the world would be a better place.

Talking with her about this, I realized that I’d fallen out of the habit of singing everyday like nobody’s listening. So I’ve started back up.

So, just a little warning. If you’re around these parts and you see what looks to be a crazy lady walking her dog, apparently spazzing out and singing (not necessarily in tune) at the top of her lungs, you’ll know that, um, you don’t need to call for the men in the white suits.

Speaking of which — when’s the last time you’ve had yourself a good sing?

Mud Season

Muddy Yard

Muddy Dog

Muddy Floor.

So don’t say I never warned you.

Oh, and the one and only reason to get a dog? If you can’t live a day without unconditional love and laughter. There’s nothing else in the world quite like it.

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