Backcountry Almanac
May 1, 2008
Creare Diem!
Beltane ushers in May & the beginning of summer / Time of the Sacred marriage of god & goddess
World Press Freedom Day / Pete Seeger b.1919
Santa Cruz Valley Heritage Alliance foods workshop www.santacruzheritage.org
Kent State, Ohio, 1970, Nat’l Guardsmen kill 4 students during anti-war protest
Zuni Green Corn dance welcoming back the corn maidens
New Moon in Taurus @ 5:18 a.m./ Aquarids meteor showers
‘Last frost’ date for Arivaca
8 White Lotus Day: Helena Blavatsky d. 1891
9 Iroquois Corn-Planting ceremony in thanks for seed corn
Victoria Woodhull, first woman nominated as candidate for president of US , 1872
Mother’s Day / Rain ceremony commences in Guatemala
Day of the Mischievous Maverick
Isis day
San Isidro day, patron saint of farmers. Bless your fields and garden.
Need not who needs not thee
Greek feast of Pan honors male fertility
Full Moon in Scorpio @ 7:11 p.m./Moon of the Faeries/Anne Boleyn executed, 1536
Socrates b. 469 BCE
First bicycle ride in NYC, 1819
J. Krishnamurti b. 1895
24 Bob Dylan b. 1941 // Judi Bari car bombed, 1990
27 Rachel Carson b. 1907
Ian Fleming b. 1908
Joan of Arc burned, 1431
Memorial Day – day to contemplate the stupidity & horrors of war
“Those who are successful must have dreamed of something.” –Hopi
May planting dates:
Above ground crops – 5,8,9,15,16,17,18,19
Root crops & perennials –1,4,22,23,27,28,29
Planets visible in the morning sky: Venus through the 3rd, Jupiter
Planets visible in the evening sky: Mars, Saturn, Mercury through the 29th
The Navajo say that there is nothing so eloquent as a rattlesnake’s tail.
Just when I was lamenting the lack of snakes in the neighborhood, I found four all in the same place.
I wasn’t actually looking for snakes at the time. On a cold February day, I decided that a certain space needed cleaning up, so I began sorting boxes and picking up debris in dim light. In a corner stood a rake quite out of place and when I went to grab it, I saw movement behind it, stepping back as a familiar buzz sounded. “Isn’t it a bit cold for this behavior”, I asked rhetorically? I could swear I heard the reply, “Yes, it is, so go away!”
I called for my snaring partner to bring the “noose” and ice chest. In a short time we snagged the snake and put him into the ice chest, lid closed tight. Mr. diamondback wasn’t very happy but everyone was safe. I returned to my original task finding three more hibernating snakes of various sizes in the process. We put two others into another ice chest and left the last one under the flanged board where we had found him. Our intention was to move the snakes, unharmed, to more appropriate places when the weather warmed. They are great at their job of eating rats and mice, you know, and we have fewer rodents when there is a healthy snake population on the land. Snakes are active when the temperature is between 60-80 degrees. When the weather warmed, we relocated all four snakes to individual territories, finding that the last one was the biggest. When I carried him (in an ice chest) out to his new home and put him on the ground he puffed into his fully present mode and warned me to move away. I counted 11 rattles while imagining his glistening snake beauty after he sheds that winter skin.
Summer gardening season begins this month since our traditional last frost date is May 6th. You might wait an extra few days for planting out the most tender plants just in case the weather plays tricks again. Row cover will protect plants with a few degrees worth of insulation. Basil, beans, cucumbers, peppers, eggplant, and squash are very frost tender.
Feed seedling vegetables a week fish emulsion and compost tea every 2 weeks for optimum growth.
Garlic planted in November should probably be dug up and dried by now. Keep checking your plants for pests such as aphids and cucumber beetles. A strong jet of water from the hose should knock off and drown aphids. Crush cucumber beetles with your fingers.
I think of a healthy life as living with Nature in a dance that seeks, not balance, so much as finding center with every cycle of the wheel. Imagine that the wheel is more an ellipse than a circle and things rock along in a beautiful rhythm that occasionally includes syncopation. The dancers swing out into unknown territory every so often, staying on their feet most of the time and coming back around to find center, only to swing out again later. One cannot be entirely thrown out of the dance, but some tunes work better than others. The best dance is when the music pleases both partners (human and Nature) and they dance all day and through the night, remaining strong and energetic into the next dawn.
We’ve been pretty out of step lately and the music is sounding cacophonous. Calling it unharmonious would be understating things. Certainly it has become intensely interesting – like the Chinese curse. Can we regain the rhythm to keep the wheel turning?
Great love, great remembering, great forgiveness, great peace
Meg Keoppen
“When your spirit is battered and your energy is depleted, and you feel like you can’t go on, you can go on. In fact you can surpass all you’ve ever done before and reach a new level of accomplishment. It is amazing what you can do when you know you must. It is incredible what you can accomplish when it means everything to you. But how could you ever be that passionate and so totally committed that you would endure any difficulty in order to reach ever higher? That’s a good question, and one that would be very much worth your time, your thought, your effort to answer. Somewhere in you is something you sincerely care about enough that you would transcend any obstacle in order to give it life. Somewhere in you is a burning passion ready to be ignited. You’ll find clues in the things that make you happy, sad, angry, frustrated, joyful, serene, in the things that make you feel most alive. Pay heed to those stirrings, and listen to what they have to say. The power of passion is somewhere in your life. Let yourself know it and live it.”
Ralph Marston
Just the Same by John Zarski of Aviatik
This precaution ties us down
From our ambition to be weightless
Here we’re tethered to the ground
While our hearts lead us to fly
And the unity we seek
As we attempt to integrate this
No one sees the implications
We must coalesce or die
And the loss, look at what it cost
Couldn’t this fly before the wires got crossed?
Breaking down is just the same
As blank submission
Compromise is just the same as giving up
When we’ve finally lost ourselves
It breaks me, so shake me
Compromise is just the same as giving up
In defense of things untried
Innovation can seem daunting
Held by walls of fear and pride
While the wicked love to lie
In the failures of the past
There’s a hint of something haunting
No one sees the implications
We must coalesce or die
Left inside and we never could tell
This was true
When it breaks you
There’s nobody left here but you
You’ll never see what’s in me
’til we break ourselves apart
You’ll never see what’s in me, what’s in me
So you took me from the ashes
And your eyes could see right through me
It breaks me, it shakes, me
It breaks me, I’ve done my time here
So you took me from the ashes, it’s another lie
It breaks me, it shakes, me it breaks me,
I’ve done my time with you
We’re not forgiving, not forgetting
I’ve never been the way that I feel right now
Stand strong and fix bayonets boys
We used to raise our torches to ignite this light
Illuminate this emblem for tonight we fight
When your last ambition dies
Close your windows, shut your eyes
Your light shines shorter than a shooting star
Rise up, lift your voices
We’re not giving up
Copyright 2008 Meg Keoppen
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