Today is Imbolc, the cross-quarter day in the cycle of the year between winter solstice and spring equinox. It celebrates the new stirrings of life under the cold of snow. When I took a walk this morning, I saw the well-traveled paths of deer in our back and front yards, and decided to follow the road where I could see them also in other yards.

I have much less energy than I used to. I notice it in my spiritual practices. I don't seem to do rituals anymore such as lighting candles or building a fire in the yard. I haven't written a blog post for a month. All that I still do is to write in my journal each morning, and if I can, take a short walk to the nearby Capisic Brook.

At 4 a.m. this morning, I woke in the dark of the night to pee. On the way back to bed, I saw a shadow outside the window. It was a bright night, with white snow on the ground, and a clouded sky backlit by a full moon. I opened the curtain and saw that the shadow was a small deer by the bird feeder.

In the midst of cruelty and oppression, where does hope emerge? For me, it was seeing the protesters in Portland, Oregon dress in inflatable frog costumes, exposing the lie that Portland was a war zone, or that protesters were violent. In the face of armed and masked ICE agents, people responded with this creative and playful spontaneity. First there was one frog, and then it expanded to many frogs, and other silly costumed beings.

The summer garden had some successes and some fails. And it is sometimes hard to tell which is which. This turkey family visited the yard many days, and walked through the garden beds in the back. They mostly left the veggies alone, except they liked to eat the tops off the bean plants. We still got a few beans even so.

Costco has announced that its pharmacies will NOT dispense mifepristone—a safe, FDA-approved abortion pill used in the majority of abortions nationwide. This dangerous decision is a concession to anti...

This summer, we've been blessed to feed hummingbirds in our yard, both through flowers like bee balm, and also through our little red hummingbird feeder that we fill with a sugar solution. Earth creatures feed each other. Everyone needs to eat. This happens through the incredible natural chain of life, some animals eating plants, other animals eating animals. But the deepest natural order is that all animals must eat.

The intent of our permaculture gardening is to create a mutually beneficial relationship with the earth and all her creatures. But lately, it feels like a little backyard battle. The squirrels have literally eaten all of the green peaches off our peach tree. (Last year there seemed to be enough for all of us.) They have been also eating raspberries, hazelnuts (still green) and mulberries, but I sort of gave up on all of those.

I've been trying to figure out what it all means. I mean my life these days. What does it mean to be ill, to be mostly fatigued, to be compelled to rest most of the hours of my days? I wasn't sure what photo could go with this question, and then I happened to see this photo of Billie from five years ago, her body hidden under a sheet on the bed, just her little paws sticking out.

Today a monarch butterfly finally found our little milkweed patch in our roadside garden bed. Last year, three plants appeared there on their own, and in late July we saw a caterpillar. In the spring we scattered some fluffy seedpods in the soil hoping to expand the numbers. This year we have a patch of about a dozen. As they grew and then bloomed, I'd look out the front windows, hoping to see a monarch.

I don't have a new photo to share, but this afternoon, I saw a young robin pecking the ground in the orchard. It had the slightly mottled chest coloring of a juvenile. It didn't stay long, it quickly flew away, but it brought me a moment of hope. I can't prove it, but I think it might be the young robin that I tried to help last week…

The other day, Margy and I went to Maquoit Bay to see horseshoe crabs that had come to shore to mate. Margy especially loves horseshoe crabs and has learned a great deal about them. It was shortly after high tide, and we noticed that a few of the crabs had wandered behind and between big boulders placed on the site, in a way that they were trapped.

This morning there was more excitement concerning the sole surviving baby robin. It had walked out from the nest onto the nearby beam, even into the next section of beam. So it was alive! But the parents went back and forth calling several times. I was watching through the glass of the back door, hoping that they would find it and feed it.

Something got at our baby robins... of the four in the nest, we just found three on the deck floor, two were dead, and one still alive--I gently put that one back in the nest, but not sure if it is really okay or how it might survive, we hope the parents will come back for it. They were calling loudly, but not around now.

My favorite color in the garden is this blue/purple of the Siberian iris. They've multiplied in the roadside garden bed, and blossomed all along the way. And now they are gone. So we had maybe a week to enjoy their beauty. I feel the time rushing by with all these spring and early summer flowers. Nothing goes on and on. With photos we try to capture the moment and make it last a little longer, but nothing really lasts in that way.

This earth love is a balancing act. We love critters in the yard, after all, they live here too, and have the right to be here. They bring so much joy to us. But we want to grow food too. The last time we bought organic broccoli at Hannafords, it was $8 for one crown. These twelve broccoli plants in this raised bed will be very valuable food for us.

Parent feeding the babies on May 18 The robins raise their young so quickly, just a few weeks and they are already fledging from the nest. But they treasure their little family, and take utmost care to give the babies everything they need. We feel privileged to watch from our windows. So I will take my theme from this little family, to speak about the human rights of families.

The trout lilies bloomed last week before several days of rain. This photo was from May 5th. Today the blooms are already fading or gone. The trout lilies live near a path by the Capisic Brook that I visit most mornings, though I don't always make it as far as that path. I was glad to walk a little further to see these lovely small beauties.

We have robins nesting again in the beams of our deck! Two years ago, a pair of robins raised three broods of chicks over the course of the season. The year before that, in 2022, they had tried, but failed, and it seemed the clear ceiling raised the heat too much for the babies. So I created a shade from cloth…

Israeli forces are ramping up the genocide in Gaza, killing more than 322 children since Israel broke the ceasefire. And they’re committing these atrocities with the help of Microsoft. Leaked document

Photo By Ishmaeldaro - Own work, CC BY 4.0, Mosab Abu Toha is a Palestinian poet and writer living in the United States with his wife and three children. I have been following him on Facebook because every day he posts so eloquently about what is happening in Gaza, he shares the details of people killed and the horrors of the genocide there.