Monthly Archives: May 2011
Digging with Bears.
26-May-11A friend gave me some offsets from her bottlebrush buckeye plant, but not knowing quite where to put it – they get very large – I stashed the plants in my vegetable garden, which had not been planted. The time has come to plant vegetables, so I chose some spots for the buckeyes and transplanted […]
Bee Plants in the Catskills.
23-May-11We just had our wildflower festival at Catskill Native Nursery, and the owner, Francis Groeters, gave a pretty impressive talk on native pollinators (as opposed to the nonnative honeybees). One of his powerpoint slides – how I love scientists – simply said “Observe.” His point was to observe how the plants in your garden create […]
“Church as Permaculture.”
23-May-11Richard Rohr, a Franciscan true to the name, has been writing recently on “Church as Permaculture”: Mere beliefs do not necessarily change the way we live in this world. What we have been calling “Emerging” Christianity or “Lifestyle Christianity” involves a real movement toward simplicity—at all levels. A return to a simple lifestyle is the […]
Saint Francis, Nature, and Poverty.
23-May-11I have been reading Thomas of Celano’s two lives of Saint Francis, with all the complicated pleasure of advancing age. In 1973 the Franciscan Herald Press put out a lovely edition of the early writings about Francis, Saint Francis of Assisi: Omnibus of Sources, a beautifully executed book, hardbound, with maps of Italy and Assisi, […]
Spring Arrives.
13-May-11Giant Ledge, May 2011.
On the death of Osama Bin Laden.
04-May-11No sympathy – live by the sword, die by the sword – but only a coward exults over a corpse.
On Artistic Discipline.
17-May-11From Carey’s Wallace’s essay on maintaining discipline as an artist. The most difficult of all tasks, for precisely the reason she indicates: There is no such thing, we discovered, as disciplining one corner of a life. There are only disciplined or undisciplined lives. So far I’ve kept to precisely the opposite pattern – bursts of […]