Do You Have a Lawn Fetish? It's Time for an Intervention

I was very pleased to see a wonderful post on the North American Obsession with the monoculture lawn here at Beautiful Wildlife Garden. I am in the process of digging up my lawn to plant bee forage which has been quite challenging, so I'm always looking for good tips. Then I watched the new documentary called Gimme Green by Isaac Brown and Eric Reed which is a scathing critique of the "perfect lawn" and I must admit the pro-lawn folks made me feel quite sick to my stomach, especially the dude who was a little bit too attached to his lawn--it definitely has become his fetish. Let's face it people, the suburban lawn is an American pathology and it's time we sought treatment.

Speaking of lawns, I saw the first open dandelion last Thursday on a south-facing boulevard. Even though we had a snow on March 1st, it won't be long until the lawns are sprouting daisies and clover. Go weeds go!

I also witnessed another beautiful sign of spring when I watched a male and female flicker perform a mating ritual atop a power pole on our street.

flickers air-kissing

nod, curtsey, bow and repeat

the woodpecker's waltz

In the Window of the Library, Cherry Blossoms

The Pull of the Moon

The moon woke me up today. It must be full. Sometimes it's like the moon comes right into your room and flicks on the hormones. Humans see a man in the moon. Does that mean bees see a bee in the moon? Not that they are nocturnal creatures, but they do spend a great deal of their time in the dark. They are affected by the moon as much as any creature is, which is to say in a mysterious way that we probably know nothing about. The lunar calendar acknowledges the development of the seasons in a more direct way than the Gregorian calendar, which is based on that old drama queen, the sun. Ancient civilizations and indigenous people used round calendars to mark time, acknowledging its cyclical nature. Many people had names for the moon in each month that describes a phenological marker.

Here is a list of names for the February Moon from some native American tribes from AmericanIndian.net:

Algonquin: Ice River is Gone Moon
Abenaki: Makes Branches Fall In Pieces Moon
Northern Arapaho: Frost Sparkling in the Sun Moon
Assiniboine: Long Dry Moon
Cheroke: Bony Moon (lack of food means people make bone soup)
Eastern Comanche: Sleet Moon
Cree: Eagle Moon
Haidi: Goose Moon
Hopi: Month of Purification and Renewal
Inuit: Avunnivik
Kalapuya: Atchiulartadsh--Out of Food
Kiowa: Little Bud Moon
Lakota: Moon when the trees crack because of the cold.
Mohawk: Enniska-- Lateness Moon
Muscokee/Creek: Wind Month
Omaha: Moon When Geese Come Home
Passamaquoddy: When the Spruce Tips Fall
Pima: The Gray Month (when trees are bare and vegetation is scarce)
Potawatomi: Rabbit Conception Month
Shawnee: Crow Moon
Central Shoshoni: Coyote Moon
Sioux: Racoon Moon/ Moon of the Dark Red Calves
Tewa Pueblo: Moon of the Cedar Dust Wind
Tlingit: Black Bear Moon
Winnebago: Fish Running Moon
Wishram: Shoulder to Shoulder Around the Fire Moon
Yuchi: Wind Moon
Zuni: No Snow in Trails Moon

As you can see, these names are poetic and poignant. We have lost so much of this sensitivity to the seasons and the natural world that comes from truly living off the land. It must has been a hard life, especially in months like February in some of the colder parts on North America. The people would have really depended on each other in February, standing shoulder to shoulder around the fire, eating bone soup, giving each other the strength and courage to go on.

One of my favorite all time haiku books is Haiku Anthologie Canadienne: Canadian Anthology edited by Dorothy Howard and André Duhaime. It contains poems by a variety of Canadian artists in French, English, and sometimes Japanese too. It contains a lovely moon poem by Irene G. McGuire:

power failure moon rise

panne d'electricité lever de lune

Here, the loss of electricity suddenly draws the writer's eye to the natural source of light, bringing her close to nature and the beauty of a winter moon. Take time to go out and look at the moon tonight.

3 degrees Celsius, mostly cloudy, Pressure: 101.44 kPa

Insect Compassion

I am reading an excellent book for children called Haiku: Learn to express yourself by writing poetry in the Japanese tradition by Patricia Donegan. It is part of the Asian Arts and Crafts for Kids series. I am studying it as part of my morning meditation ritual. Today I read that the Dalai Lama thought it was a good idea to help children learn compassion by teaching them to respect insects. Donegan says:

"Seeing and writing haiku is a way to practise care and compassion, and is a reminder to love nature as well as people. Haiku is a way to remember how everything is connected in our world, and if we feel connected, then we will not harm things, but rather care for them."

This is exactly how I feel. In my Beespeaker art classes we will be writing haikus about bees for this very reason.

I love this poignant haiku by Basho:

dying cicada--
not showing it
in its song

It reminds me of a poem my friend Sheena wrote in high school. I can't quote it precisely, but it was about aging and went something like this:

Damn these cobwebs
I will climb this tree anyway.

I couldn't forget that poem because of its expression of playful tenacity, but also because my friend died shortly after high school and never got to experience something she had imagined in her poem. Attention and imagination are the human qualities that compose a haiku. The rest is up to Nature, with a little bit of luck in there too.