Sunny Days and Signs of Life

It's only February but I'm already looking for signs of spring, or at least some kind of life in the otherwise barren winter. Especially on sunny days, I love hearing snatches of birdsong or seeing the splashes of green grass. Even the moss on the rooftops makes me kind of happy.

I tromped around in the park by my apartment complex today and saw these trees budding. They were the only ones. I thoroughly enjoyed myself, but the best part was when I was crossing the little bridge and realized there were two ducks in the creek. Or rather, a drake and a (female) duck.

I snuck around carefully to try and give them space. They were very timid, and moved into the shadows when I got too close, but otherwise seemed to be simply enjoying themselves in the water. The drake circled the duck protectively. He was very beautiful.

Can you find her?

The duck had such perfect camouflage too.

As I stepped a little closer to get another picture of her, she was startled at how close I was and burst into nervous flight. Her movement alerted a large yellow lab dog who had been wandering around in the bushes by the creek, and he pounced into sight, which made the drake also take off. For a split second I thought what if somebody were to shoot those ducks right now, right in front of me? Right out of the sky. It seemed so odd, and kind of tragic, to me, that anyone would rather shoot a duck than watch one as I had been doing. I felt bad for scaring them, and I hoped that they would be able to find another peaceful place to spend their day. They seemed so contented in their little corner of the creek, and I had thought, what a shame that they were afraid of me, but how are they supposed to tell I'm no danger to them, when for so many decades they have been hunted by humans?

I was so pleased to see them, swimming so peacefully. I can only hope that someday the whole world is a safe place, for them, for the other animals, and for humans too.

Wanna Be a Cat Foster Mama

The other day I was walking from the college to the bus station. It was sunny, and I saw a cat sitting in a windowsill.
He ignored me when I said hello to him, so I went on my way, but then suddenly he ran over meowing and let me pet him. Then he got up and walked off again as if to say he'd been heading somewhere and just happened to run into me on the way there. It was so cute... xD

Then I saw another cat sunning himself in a basement window. He didn't seem to notice me, but it made me happy just to see him so comfy in the sun.

I recently started following a Facebook page called Pet Pardons. The people who run it find out what pets are going to be put down at shelters and try to spread the word around facebook so that someone in the area can rescue or adopt the animals. They've saved many lives, but are unable to save so many more because of how so many people can't or won't adopt, while others don't spay or neuter their pets or abandon them at the shelter because they didn't make a real commitment to that animal. It's really sad. Before I left for Christmas Break, Danielle and I stopped in at the pet store downtown (HOHL/Clark's Feed & Seed) to look at the showroom they set aside for Whatcom Voice of the Animals, which is a local nonprofit organization which fosters unwanted pets until they have homes. The pet store set aside a room for WVOA to put some of their cats in cages during the day so people can come and take a look at them and hopefully want to adopt. There were four adolescent cats, all female, not really kittens anymore, who were all siblings and had been there for two months already. We were especially charmed by the black one because she reminded us of Nina. At that time we thought, well, maybe when I get a job and am in a secure enough position to adopt a cat, we can adopt a cat. I went back to that show room again recently and there were three of the four left still, including the black one.

This pretty girl was being really friendly though.

My thinking has started to shift, so that now I am pondering fostering cats rather than adopting them, since I don't know where I'll be for the next few years. How sad it would be for those three beautiful cats if they hadn't been taken in by a no-kill foster organization, but instead had been left at a shelter where they might have been euthanized because they weren't adopted quickly enough. I would like to volunteer for WVOA sometime soon.

Meanwhile, I also wish I had land so that I could rescue farm animals, but that is something that will have to wait until I can afford it. Until then, once I have a job I will just have to be content with donating to those who can rescue for me, like Farm Sanctuary and The Gentle Barn.

I Owe You, Bees.

Sorry for two posts in one day. I'll try to keep this short. It'll be mostly pictures anyway.

I recently watched this 4-minute video about pollinators and read a thingy on DeviantArt about the maker of the video.

It's just another reminder to me of how much we depend on other creatures for our survival, and how careful we have to be not to drive away our benefactors.

Remember that without bees, bats, butterflies etc so much of our food would not even exist. Therefore we would probably not exist. Without them, actually, most plants which reproduce by creating seeds would probably not exist because those seeds are the fruit that results from pollinating the flowers.

When I was growing peas on my apartment balcony, I wondered how in the world bees would find my tiny patch of vegetable plants when there wasn't much else flowering nearby. But they did. Perhaps it was because I let my bak choy and daikon bolt so they were flowering a bunch too, but just the same I was so happy one day when I walked out and saw a bunch of bees flying around. It seemed like a small miracle.

So... it's good to remember that we really don't have the right to do whatever we like with our "resources", and if we think we do, eventually we'll end up destroying ourselves xP So just remember to be grateful for even little "bugs" like bees and other little creatures like bats.

Just Loving Life

Amazingly, in the middle of all my school stress, I am still really enjoying life lately. Almost all of that enjoyment is closely associated with cooking, the changing seasons, and animals. No joke. Well, and beautifully done Hetalia fanart music videos, but that's totally off-topic....

Last weekend Danielle's Oma (aka German Grandma) came up to visit us and we made her lunch. Recently we've started to try out free recipes from The Post-Punk Kitchen website, which is by the same people who did Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar. Suffice it to say that it's all delicious so far. For this lunch we made Pesto Soup with Gnocchi, Beans & Greens, along with home-made veggie spring rolls. Danielle did basically all the work with the soup and I put the spring rolls together (they had lettuce, mint, cilantro, cucumbers, rice noodles, pickled carrots and daikon).

 

When we went on an early morning walk/bike ride in the cold November air to Haggen to get rainbow chard and other stuff that we needed, we were both having a fan attack over the vegetables. Sometimes vegetables and fruits are just so beautiful you have to stop and BE AMAZED. Srsly. 

The lunch was delicious and then we went to the Bellingham Farmer's Market to see what we could find. Some really nice guy gave Oma a large sweet meat squash for like 3 bucks or 3.50 or something like that! It was big enough that we split it between ourselves when we got back to the apartment.

Please excuse the dorky crazed look.

Even though it was a little smaller this time, there was still plenty of colorful produce.

We had a good time hanging out at Value Village and got some "new" sweaters now that it's getting super cold. I also got a purple scarf xD !

On Sunday I was walking home from church and there was a deer on the trail. We locked eyes for almost a full minute and it actually took a step toward me rather than away. Seemed very unafraid, but I kept a respectful distance anyway. Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera with me at the time. Here's one of a young buck I took a few weeks ago by the Institute.

I also recently witnessed some interesting things in the sky. Today there was a hawk circling over campus, close enough that I could see the spots on its wings. It was beautiful. Last week when I was walking to the bus station, a large flock of pidgeons (I'm pretty sure anyway) burst out from under a nearby alcove and proceeded to spiral rhythmically through the sky, in perfect tandem with one another, for nearly a full minute before they left the area directly above the street I was on. It was mesmerizing to watch. Then just the other day a facebook friend posted a video of a huge flock of starlings  "dancing". It was a bit like watching those huge groups of little fish in the ocean on the Discovery Channel. You know, the ones that form up into very specific shapes in Finding Nemo? Well, this was certainly even more impressive and astonishing. Are they doing it just for the joy of flying, of cooperation? That was the thought which popped into my head as I watched the pidgeons. I always have to wonder what the cause of such incredible behavior is.

It is already getting toward the end of the colorful leaves, and I'm sad that I haven't taken more good pictures, but that's part of what makes autumn special--it's fleeting, but it always comes back next year.

Cooking Can Be Spiritual?! NO WAI.

I've been having a tough time lately, emotionally. Trying to figure out how to get home for Christmas, how to have enough money to get back up here in January and get a job so I can stay for the rest of the schoolyear... it's all pretty annoying and stressful, on top of midterm stress. And in the middle of all of that having a brain which tends to latch onto inconvenient contradictions and questions about religious, social, and cultural issues (one example: gender & sexuality issues and mormonism... not a fun topic). I've been lucky to have lots of little things which have been cheering me up, like having a nice dinner with my visiting teacher last night (though that too was fraught with some awkward moments) and actually (sort of) having a social life all of a sudden... where did that come from? xD (a social life meaning only that I talk to people in classes and on the bus, someone actually came over to my apartment for dinner last week, and then this week someone invited themselves over for next week).

Still, when I headed home from institute today I felt like all I wanted to do was curl up in a blanket and bury myself in a pile of pillows. And maybe cry (yeah I'm a baby okay deal with it). Knew I should make dinner so I wandered aimlessly around the co-op on the way home and finally got some potatoes and an onion so I could make this recipe from a fellow Bellinghamster's vegan blog. I've been craving such potatoes for a while (mom calls them scalloped potatoes).

Here's a bad flash-y picture of the finished product (already cut into--we were hungry!)

(Some quick notes on my recipe variations: I didn't have any parsley so I used chopped bits of fresh rosemary and dried basil. Also put in only 1 1/2 onions since I get so tired of buying onions all the time... we use so many of them! I used 3 or 4 large potatoes but there was some left over once my casserole dish was full. I also didn't have garlic powder so I chopped several small-medium cloves of garlic and added a bunch of garlic salt. Made my own unsweetened almond milk in the blender. Added a tiny sprinkling of Follow Your Heart cheddar on top.)

The funny thing about all the cooking I've been doing lately, is that it has become a de-stresser for me for some reason. It has also become a handy form of procrastination. I come home from a tense day at school--oh, I need to make food! Better get on that right away, homework will have to wait... 30 minutes to 2 hours later... food's done, now I have to eat, maybe we'll watch a movie while we're eating... then it's time to do dishes. Eh there's a few hours left before bedtime, I can cram it all in then right?

But in all seriousness, cooking is becoming a haven for me. I'm someone who struggles at being in the moment... I worry a lot about the past and the future. Cooking somehow puts me in the right frame of mind. While I'm washing and cutting up vegetables, my mind calms down and focuses on the task, the moment at hand. The same thing sometimes happens when I'm washing dishes, though not as often. Maybe it has something to do with being a part of a life-cycle process.

While I was slicing the potatoes, I suddenly became aware of how much my mind had calmed, and how peaceful I felt. I was tapping into a sense of continuity. The potato I held in my hand came from a plant that had constructed itself out of water and sunlight and minerals from the earth... honestly, quite a miracle when you think about it. Now I was part of that process somehow. It's difficult to explain. Sometimes I feel like we make life so complicated, when at its best it is beautifully simple in its complexity. There are patterns; we ourselves, as well as something even so simple as a potato, have complicated cellular structures, but I guess sometimes we lose the beauty of just being a part of this intricate and breathtaking web of life.

I remember in my East Asian Art History class at BYU-H, hearing about a particular Buddhist sect which believed that sudden enlightenment could be achieved through repetitive, mundane actions, such as sweeping the floor. There's a famous ink painting of a leader of this sect chopping bamboo, as one example.

Maybe there's something to this idea. Perhaps that is why many people feel a kind of joy when they are exercising, especially outdoors--it frees their mind and makes them aware of their physical surroundings, their interconnectedness, through the air they breathe and the reality of their own sweat and aches. Maybe that's the same reason many people say that they often feel closer to God while hiking in the mountains than they do while sitting in a chapel.

Last spring, when I was in a particularly dark and chaotic place mentally, I suddenly decided I wanted to have a garden. Living in an apartment, that makes things a little more difficult, but Danielle's mom said I could use some of her big plastic pots and so I impulsively bought a 50-lbs bag of soil from the local nursery (getting it home was another adventure entirely) and some seeds and went to work. It seemed like an irrational thing to do... it used more money, and cut into my precious study time. But filling the pots, pushing the seeds under with numb fingers (it was still very cold outside), watering... these moments were full of a peace I couldn't find anywhere else. And then the sprouts started to come up.

Every time I came home from school or left the apartment, this beautiful growing life was waiting for me by the door. Something about the simple process of watching them grow really put some light back into me, and I think was one of the main reasons I made it through that time. Those sprouts were a promise of cycles, of things getting better, warmer, brighter.

Eventually my garden got so big the fire department threatened to haul all the pots away if I didn't move them off the walkway!

I could go on with even more specific stories of times in Hawaii when meeting eyes with a bird (or a dog or a gecko or a mouse) gave me something like a spiritual breath of fresh air, a sense of communion with something larger than myself, like stepping into the edge of the ocean. That was a time of special awakening in me, of discovering a sense of family with the rest of the natural world.

Overall I guess my point with this post is to re-affirm to myself that God is out there, and that his presence, his spirit which connects everything living, is present for me to find in even so humble a thing as a potato, if I am willing to just calm my mind down enough to see it. This aspect of God, this beautiful life-force of joy and love which causes plants to reach for the light and moves human hearts to compassion, is not judgmental or wrathful (apart from the kind of heartbroken "how could this happen?" anger a kind person feels while looking upon violence). So when I trap myself in these mental obstacle courses of trying to reconcile all the tedious bits of doctrine which don't seem at first glance to line up to my conscience, I just have to take a deep breath of Life and chop some potatoes, plant some seeds, pet a cat, or go take a hike.