June 22 2024 Work Party

“Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore we must be saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness.”

 Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History

March 23 2024 Work Party

Light rain. Root balls, knotweed, holly, mulch. Little lime green frog. Bushtits nest in an adolescent fir tree, chickadees make copious announcements. We dig and haul and break for strawberry knotweed pie. Fireworks of green everywhere around us.

March 16 2024 Work Party

A copse of trees hides a stand of holly. The youngest among us recruits help, instructs on tools, leads the way. It is warm, too warm for this time of year, we peel off layers, elderberry and red flowering currant bloom weeks earlier than usual. What do the nesting birds make of the unseasonable warmth? An elder wrenches tangled holly roots from between those of a grown cottonwood, we unearth gnarled blackberry root balls nearby, pull up the carpet of ivy. An old Coke can, shards from a broken pane of glass, tennis balls shorn of fuzz. Everywhere we have touched this landscape. A silent bald eagle and a crying red-tailed hawk circle above.