Backcountry Almanac
March 1, 2008
Tree: willow Flower: delphinium Color: violet Stone: aquamarine Metal: tin
Gender equality month: time to honor both genders
Matronalia: day of Juno, goddess of womanhood
Whuppity Scoorie Day
William Godwin b. 1756. First modern anarchist writer.
Last witchcraft “trial” in England, 1712
Day to honor Isis as Lady of the moon/ Taoist Lao-Tzu b.570 BCE
Forgive an error
New Moon in Pisces @ 9:14 a.m.// Billie Holliday b.1915
International Women’s Day
Slavery outlawed worldwide, 1927 /Kuan Yin, goddess of compassion
10 Explain nothing
11 Johnny Appleseed day, 1845/ Doug Adams b.1952 /Watergate 7 indicted, 1974
12 Jack Kerouac b.1922
Algerita & Elm trees bloom this week
Ed Abbey d. 1989
Lightnin’ Hopkins b.1912
Mylai massacre, 1968
Festival of the Green Man
18 Edgar Casey b.1877
19 Spring Equinox: spring begins, point of equal daylight & darkness, suns rises and
sets in due east and west
Full/Seed Moon in Libra @ 11:40 a.m. //Feast of Ostara, celebrating annual rebirth
22 1965 March from Selma to Montgomery, AL
23 Easter Sunday
Aretha Franklin b.1942
Joseph Campbell b.1904
Three Mile Island nuclear accident, 1979
29 The last US soldiers left Viet Nam, 1973
Caesar Chavez b.1927
I pledge allegiance to the Earth, One planet, many gods, & to the universe in which she spins, with sustenance and respect for all.
Planets visible in the morning sky: Mercury, Venus (brightest), Jupiter
Planets visible in the evening sky: Mars, Saturn
March days:
Plant above ground crops- 7, 10,11,15,16
Plant root crops & perennials- 1,2,3,6,22,23,24,25,29,30
Cultivate soil- 4,8,9,12,13,17,18,26,27,28
Old New Year
Historically, March 1 was considered to be the beginning of the year. The names of some months reflect this. (September = Seventh, October = Eighth, November = Ninth, December = Tenth). If the days of the year were counted from March 1, till the next March 1, each date of the year would have the same number every year, unlike counting from January 1.
“How might we begin to reweave our web - to reorient ourselves?
I believe we need to reinvest the knowing of our hearts, hands and intuition.
To connect with the quiet and profound intelligence that surrounds us.”
- Nina Simons
Unpredictable March is the first full month of spring. The wind may blow, the days can get very warm, and the frosts will come often at night; but the daylight hours are longer and plants emerge from hibernation in earnest.
This is the time to get serious about gardening if you plan to do some this year. Put soil amendments like manure out on the garden and around fruit trees and shrubs, turn over the garden soil and rake it in preparation for planting, lay out the drip line and soaker hose, gather your plants, seeds and mulching materials.
Succession plantings of peas, radish, lettuce, cabbage, broccoli, Swiss chard, spinach, dill, parsley and all the cool weather crops can be planted. It’s too early for frost tender beans or basil. Start chiles, eggplant, tomatoes, basil, thyme and such indoors for transplanting out in early May. Our last frost date is approximately May 5. Corn can be planted in April if you wish because it will survive a light frost when young.
It’s true that gardening can be tough work and sometimes goes un-rewarded by bumper crops for the table, but do not overlook the benefits from cooperating with the natural world. Folks that spend a lot of time in Nature are more perceptive on every level and usually enjoy superior health, have many friends and constant material for conversation.
Out in the wild parts of our desert you’ll find Algerita, gold poppies, lupines and many other wildflowers blooming this month. If you have a sharp eye you may also notice shy Pasque Flower (anemone tuberosa). Algerita (mahonia trifoliata, and cousins) or barberry is a shrubby tree of the middle and upper elevations of the southwest desert. It blooms in many yellow flowers this month, maturing into small round edible berries. The roots are a deep yellow color indicating berberine and other related alkaloids. Pieces of root and stem bark can be gathered from summer to winter for use either dry or tinctured in alcohol as an alterative medicine. Its three main functions are as a bitter tonic, a stimulant to liver function, and as an antimicrobial for the skin and intestinal tract. It’s a great substitute for goldenseal and works well combined with echinacea. (Please consult Michael Moore’s or Charles Kane’s Medicinal Plants books.)
May St. Fiacre, Irish patron saint of gardeners be with you as you tend your garden. A 7th century monk, St. Fiacre was renowned for his gifts of herbal healing (particularly hemorrhoids, renal troubles, and venereal diseases) and gardening. The vegetables he grew around his monastery were said to be superb. In images created of him, he always holds a spade. He is the saint who’s aid may be implored in clearing weeds and brush and stones from the garden, and if he does not help with the heavy lifting and digging, he can at least grant patience and persistence in labor that is never done. He is a saint for lowly things and for increase and his blessings are welcomed by those who love springtime, planting, summer, and harvest, the smell of turned earth, and the joy of a flowering land.
Disappearing dirt rivals global warming as an environmental threat. The planet is getting skinned. While many worry about the potential consequences of atmospheric warming, a few experts are trying to call attention to another global crisis quietly taking place under our feet. Call it the thin brown line; Dirt. On average, the planet is covered with little more than 3 feet of topsoil — the shallow skin of nutrient-rich matter that sustains most of our food and appears to play a critical role in supporting life on Earth. “We’re losing more and more of it every day,” said David Montgomery, a geologist at the University of Washington. “The estimate is that we are now losing about 1 percent of our topsoil every year to erosion, most of this caused by agriculture. “It’s just crazy,” fumed John Aeschliman, a fifth-generation farmer who grows wheat and other grains on the Palouse near the tiny town of Almota, just west of Pullman. “We’re tearing up the soil and watching tons of it wash away every year,” Aeschliman said. He’s one of a growing number of farmers trying to persuade others to adopt “no-till” methods, which involve not tilling the land between plantings, leaving crop stubble to reduce erosion and planting new seeds between the stubble rows. Montgomery has written a popular book, “Dirt,” to call public attention to what he believes is a neglected environmental catastrophe. A geomorphologist who studies how landscapes form, Montgomery describes modern agricultural practices as “soil mining” to emphasize that we are rapidly outstripping the Earth’s natural rate of restoring topsoil. “Globally, it’s clear we are eroding soils at a rate much faster than they can form,” said John Reganold, a soils scientist at Washington State University. “It’s hard to get people to pay much attention to this because, frankly, most of us take soil for granted. The National Academy of Sciences has determined that cropland in the U.S. is being eroded at least 10 times faster than the time it takes for lost soil to be replaced. The United Nations has warned of worldwide soil degradation, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, where soil loss has contributed to the rapidly increasing number of malnourished people. Many vegetables for the European market are grown there. Why is sustainable farming such a hard sell, given what we know?
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/348200_dirt22.html
Long life, honey in the heart, no evil, 13 thank-yous.
“SERVICE is the act of doing what you love for the sake of loving it. This is
the highest work you can do in the world. Service is the divine multiplier.
When you perform an act of genuine service, giving of your time, energy, and
resources as an act of love, the universe will multiply what you do and
reward you with greater results than expected. Love sparks the fires of
passion. Passion leads to spontaneity and creativity. Spontaneous creativity
is a supreme act of trust. When you trust yourself and the universe enough
to give yourself over to the passion of what you love, you are serving
humanity and the Divine.”
Late Fragment
And did you get what
You wanted from this life?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
Beloved by the Earth
–Raymond Carver
Leiah Bowden
yes@lightspeak.com www.energyportraits.com
No matter what has gone wrong, our eyes can rejoice in the new day’s rising sun, our hearts in the burbling of our babies, in the victories of the heart and spirit in every way they come to us. Everything is needed in the healing of the self and of the world: singing, weeping, caring for our friends and even strangers, writing to our Congresspeople, meditating and praying, the making of powerful art, making casseroles, bringing medicine and support to our wounded brothers and sisters.
Rejoice. Sing. Pray. Hold each other closely and send messages of hope in every way possible. Claim the sweetness that will not melt. Name it. Send it into every space around you and listen for its homecoming.
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“All this was inspired by the principle - which is quite true in itself - that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying. These people know only too well how to use falsehood for the basest purposes. …”
Hitler, Mein Kampf
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
-Joseph Geobbels
Bush, Other Officials Issued Hundreds of False Statements Before Iraq Invasion
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/012308K.shtml
Douglass K. Daniel reports for The Associated Press, “A study by two nonprofit journalism organizations found that President Bush and top administration officials issued hundreds of false statements about the national security threat from Iraq in the two years following the 2001 terrorist attacks.”
Study: Bush, aides made 935 false statements in run-up to war (January 23, 2008)
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/01/23/bush.iraq/
Copyright 2008 Meg Keoppen
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