Stirred, Not Shaken

...intention that ties us to the land, to the elemental spirits of plants and animals that were tangible to our ancestors. We could all use ritual that ties us to nature and I look forward to stirring preparations and perhaps making them with a few close friends. In fact, I’m much more excited about making preparations than it buying a package through the mail. Steiner’s set of herbs all grow well here and many of them I have already. But a cow is ki...

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Who’s Visiting Your Garden While You’re Not Watching?

...am on for a period of five days, pointed at our backyard shed, to see what animals are visiting. The motion sensitive camera picked up seven visits from a possum, six birds, four skunk visitations, two rats, one raccoon and two house cats. I need to let the camera run for a longer period to get a better sense of what times of the day or night are the most active, but so far the hour of 2 am picked up the most activity (after the bars have closed o...

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“Interstellar”: Leaving the farm for the stars

...ng monocrops going. We seem to be living on an all-corn diet. There are no animals to be seen, anywhere. Not even a cat. I’m assuming we ate them. There seems to be plenty of gas left, perhaps because there are so few people. At any rate, things aren’t good–there are constant dust storms and disease threatening the crops. It seems that humanity isn’t out of hot water quite yet. And our hero, Cooper, who is a ex-NASA pilot forced to play farmer, di...

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Behold the Ant Lion

...Tracking Team (if you live near Ventura, CA and want to learn how to track animals for fun, look them up). We were under a tagged-up bridge, in a dry river bed. Someone pointed out a hole or divot in the sand and quizzed us: what made the hole? I had no idea. It was a divot that could have been made by a big man’s thumb. I might think it was made by dripping water, if there was ever any water anywhere in this dry land. The answer was “ant lion” —...

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