I took this photo on the mail route yesterday. It's sumac. It reminded me fall is near. We didn't have any customers yesterday. Things tend to slow down this time of year. They shouldn't, when it comes to planting natives, but they do. I planted 4 bluestems in the front meadow last evening . . . 2 big and 2 little. I looked up the latin meaning of big blue stem the other day. I can't remember exactly what it was but an image of an old man with a long beard comes to mind. Oh, yeah, back to the meadow. It's dry. Cutting through the soil with my soil knife is getting more difficult by the day. The soil I put back in the hole is gritty and dusty. Doesn't hold together at all. I'm off the mail trail. Hope you have a great day! 8.7.25

Money sovereignty, to me, is money not controlled by human beings. #Bitcoin

Scrolling through Facebook I see this commentary and photo from a customer: "Rattlesnake Master! Bought from Bean Brook Nursery. It’s had a hard couple of years - so I’m thrilled it hung on and is now ready to bloom!* This is our 3rd season growing and selling native plants and shrubs. This season has been a challenge. There's a lot of places we can look for inspiration and encouragement. Today we look to one of the plants we grew from seed. Why not? Plants are persistent. Without them we are nothing.

From the front meadow last evening. Black eyed susans blooming with lance leaf coreopsis. This is the most yellow we've had sprinkled through the meadow. The black eyed susans are popping up where we've thrown seed or past plants have dropped them. We never really know. The plants do what they want to do. We learn the best we can from them. 7.2.25

"Technologies of the soul tend to be simple, bodily, slow and related to the heart as much as the mind. Everything around us tells us we should be mechanically sophisticated, electronic, quick, and informational in our expressiveness - an exact antipode to the virtues of the soul. It is no wonder, then, that in an age of telecommunications - which, by the way, literally means "distant connections" - we suffer symptoms of the loss of soul. We are being urged from every side to become efficient rather than intimate." - Thomas Moore 9:30 AM. Mother's Day morning. Happy Mother's Day to all you mothers out there. We open in a half hour. We've been open for 2 days now. We've had 9 customers stop in so far, and everyone has left with plants. It might not sound like much, but for our backyard nursery operating on a thin margin every exchange counts and is appreciated. While I deliver mail Annie texts me updates. And when I get impatient I call to see if we have customers. I ask a lot of questions. I want to know how people have found us so far off the beaten path and what people are interested in. I've heard a few customers showed up because of recommendations from customers last year, others return after multiple visits from years past. Almost all of them say they'll be back! Our neighbor who got married to Led Zeppelins' "Thank You" showed up again this year. She has a few spotted bee balm she bought last year growing at the end of her driveway. I keep an eye on them. I like seeing plants we've grown from seed growing in the wild. The algorithm showed me this post and photo the other day: "Serviceberry (Juneberry) and Ninebark from Bean Brook Nursery have overwintered well! The high bush cranberry made it too but, they are shy and are reluctant to show off any spring finery as yet." We're 3 days into our nursery season and I'm already starting to feel the distance between our customers and neighbors diminish. 5.11.25

I feel like the universe is looking out for me this morning. I sit down in front of fire 213 and randomly open "The Soul's Code." I am desperate and depressed looking for direction on my day off from delivering mail. I have spent the week sacrificing my time to a system that seems destined to fail. Things seem to be getting worse in the economic, environmental, social, and political realms. I don't think I'm alone in this assessment. And it doesn't matter what political party is in control. The page I open to is 153. My eyes land on the 3rd paragraph. Here's what James Hillman writes: ### "The ecological vision restores to environment also the classical idea of 'providentia'--that the world provides for us, looks out for us, even looks after us. It wants us around, too. Predators, tornadoes, and blackflies in June are only pieces of the picture. Just think of all that's delicious and sweet-smelling. Do birds sing but for each other? This breathable, edible, and pleasant planet, invisibly serviced and maintained, keeps us all by means of its life--support system. Such would be an idea of nurture that is truly nurturing. "'Environment,' then, would be imagined well beyond social and economic conditions, beyond the entire cultural setting, to include every item that takes care of us every day: our tires and coffee cups and door handles and the book you are holding in your hands. It becomes impossible to exclude this bit of environment as irrelevant in favor of that bit as significant, as if we could rank world phenomena in order of importance. Important for whom? Our understanding of importance itself has to change; instead of 'important to me,' think of 'important to the aspects of the environment.' Does this item nurture what else is around, not merely us who are around? Does it contribute to the intentions of the field of which we are only one short-lived part? "As notions of environment shift, we notice environment differently. It becomes more and more difficult to make a cut between psyche and world, subject and object, in here and out there. I can no longer be sure whether the psyche is in me or whether I am in the psyche as a I am in my dreams, as I am in the moods of the landscapes and the city streets, as I am in ,'music heard so deeply / That it is not heard at all, but you are the music / While the music lasts' (T. S. Eliot). Where does the environment stop and I begin, and can I begin at all without being in some place, deeply involved in, nurtured by the nature of the world?" ### The world is alive, provides, and looks out for and after us. I needed that reminder this morning. I hope you have a blessed Sunday! 5.4.25

Last night I wonder why there's balls of water on lupine leaves. I think it's the little hairs that shape and hold it. Where it goes from there I don't know. "Water is fluid, soft, and yielding. But water will wear away rock, which is rigid and cannot yield. As a rule, whatever is fluid, soft, and yielding will overcome whatever is rigid and hard. This is another paradox: what is soft is strong." ~ Lao Tzu 5.3.25

Only he who can take care of the property of others can have his own. ~ Gurdjieff