The Furious Spinner

It's the middle of the night, and I can't sleep. I just went outside to the Kuan Yin Peace Garden. It is light out for a new moon night. Don't know why. Perhaps the stars are brighter. It's more likely I'm just noticing the star quality of our street lights: little suns up and down the road. Everything was so quiet. The sound of my dryer was a distant-sounding white noise, soothing, like wind through pine trees. I had gone out earlier, before I went to bed, and I heard someone call my name in the darkness. I immediately ran into the house, to see if Mario had called me. He hadn't. I don't know what had been whispering my name...

Yesterday I spent most of the evening preparing for my presentation to the city council tonight. I put together a packet, 53 pages long, to help the council make their decision on whether they wanted to adopt a pest policy or not. Presently, the city uses few pesticides, but I want them to be aware of alternatives in case they get too much pressure from the noxious weed board to get rid of weeds. (Isn't the minutia to being a citizen interesting? What can I say? It's often the minutia which we don't pay attention to that causes so many problems.)

For instance, I found out today that the daycare center lodged in the church across from my house has an exterminator come in regularly to spray, among other things, an insecticide called cyfluthrin. Cyfluthrin is a neurotoxin. Yes, you've figured it out: it affects the nervous system of the insect and can cause great harm to human nervous systems, among other things. I would pull my child out of that daycare in a New York minute, as they say. I can’t believe they would be so reckless as to expose children to these kinds of toxins.

Anyway, I prepared the presentation, so I was a bit wired and only slept about three hours last night. I was finally wide awake at 6:30 a.m. I got dressed and went outside to work in my garden. It was cool, the sky New Mexico blue. I was cranky from lack of sleep, but that slipped away as I sat on my butt pulling weeds. Hardly anything makes me as happy as being in my little garden. My dream is to have my own land with a huge vegetable garden that feeds Mario and me all year round. I think I would be completely content: me, Mario, home and garden.

After I weeded, I harvested strawberries, carrots, kale, rosemary, thyme, and sage. I took them to Mario, inside the house, then went back to the garden. Then I harvested the lavender. I can't smell, but I hold the stems beneath my nose anyway; they look like colorful sticks of living incense. After an hour of sheer sensual pleasure in my garden, I went in for breakfast. Mario had made a scrumptious meals of eggs scrambled with shitake mushrooms, rosemary, thyme, and sage plus hash browns, carrots, strawberries, and kale. (All organic.) It was divine! My favorite kind of meal—I am the provider, and someone else is the chef. Mmmmm!

After Mario left for work, I divided the lavender stems I had culled from the bush into vases all over the house and a couple outside beneath the overhang. Then I carried out most of my potted plants and put them on my potting table. I proceeded to transfer most of them into new pots, along with new soil. Again, I was so happy—cool and protected from the sun while I dug into the dirt and whispered sweet nothings to my plants.

When it got to be lunch time, I cleaned up the area. My Martha Stewitch mode had kicked in. I took the small table the air conditioner usually sits on (Mario put the AC in yesterday) and set it between the two chairs next to the potting table. Then I put an old window on top of the table. I got a basket full of marbles and rolled them out onto the glass of the window (which was now a table top). I put a vase of lavender in the middle of the marbles and the glass. When Mario came home for lunch, I led him out to the porch. (He liked the "marble" table.) He read his chess book, and I went inside and prepared his lunch: a burrito, baby bok choy, rainbow Swiss chard, tomato, and apple. (All organic.) I took it out to him on the "porch," then sat with him while he ate. We talked and looked out at the Kuan Yin Peace garden and my vegetable garden. Ahhhh bliss!

It got to 90 degrees today, at least.

We gave our presentation at city council tonight. I think it went well. They are open to using less pesticides. We'll keep working with them. Now maybe I'll see if we can get the school to change their policies. The superintendent is leaving. (Yes, the one you've been reading about since this weblog began.) It's a perfect time to approach the school board.

Now I'm awake. 2:00 a.m. Wired. I've got the 9/11 hearings on in the background. I was looking forward to taking a long hike in the woods tomorrow, but I don't know if I'll be able to now. It's not wise to be hoofing it through the forest with only a few hours of sleep over the last 48 hours.

I hear the train whistle above the hepa fan and Bob Kerrey's shrill voice. He certainly gets his knickers in a knot during these hearings. Didn't he admit to participating in war atrocities?

I read today that an oil executive is worried about global warming, and he's not sure we can do anything about it at this point. And Canada is this close to electing a right-winger who could be George Bush's younger twin. I guess hell has frozen over.

Enough. I need to sleep. 0 comments

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