IT'S MARCH !!
(well, not officially as I write, but probably so when folks read this)

This is the drawing on my calendar (Llewellyn's Witches Calendar 2006) for March, and I love it! According to the info on the calendar, it's an original scratchboard piece done by Jennifer Hewitson. I'd really like to meet her and see more of her drawings! (I hope I've given proper credit and haven't committed copyright infringements! If so, someone let me know, please.)

This afternoon, I picked up the pruning shears and began the first in a LONG list of spring chores here at the farm. I've read up on pruning roses, so I snipped the ones back that looked like they survived the winter and proceeded to pull some weeds down around the barn and clear the dead grass and rotten stalks from around the irises and peonies. My mind was working a mile a minute as I visualized what I'm going to plant where and the colors that would surround the house and yard in just a few weeks / months.

I'm amazed at how full the buds are on the early bloomers. Daffodils, hyacinths, and tulips are beginning to send shoots out to test out the temps above ground. It's early, and I hope Ole' Man Winter doesn't come through with a blast that wipes them out.

The corgis and three cats followed me everywhere I worked and added their assistance by getting under my feet and chasing the sticks I was throwing out of the veggie and flower beds. As I was cutting some weeds, I remembered poison ivy lurked in the area last year, so my hope is that all the vines I handled were not that pesty stuff.

I had a great afternoon! When I came in, instead of watching the evening news, I put on some nice jazz, fixed a couple of BocaBurgers and warmed up some collard greens (the Southern girl in me has to have some greens once in a while), and ate a leisurely dinner and looked at the second amaryllis I have in bloom on the table.

Now it's off to write bills.....

Welcome to March!!

SPRING IS SPRINGING.....

These little crocuses have been in the south-facing flower bed for over 25 years now. I remember planting them there hurriedly one fall afternoon because I didn't have any other place for them. So, I just stuck them in the ground with the promise that I would move them the next fall to a well-prepared bed with lots of other annuals.

Two and a half decades later and still in the same place after having been up-rooted various times, these loyal, delicate, precious harbingers of spring herald the coming of warmer weather.

My calendar tells me that Spring officially arrives on Monday, March 20--three weeks from tomorrow. In the Pagan tradition, the Spring Equinox rejoices in the rebirth of spring-- a time when the light returns and begins to surpass the time we spend in darkness each day--a time to contemplate growth and new beginnings....

I'm inspired by the crocuses to sharpen my pruning shears, get the roses and grapes clipped back, turn the compost, get the farm equipment in running order, and dig in the dirt. I'm a double Virgo; both my sun and moon signs are Virgo, and for those of us with that astrological placement, there's nothing better than getting our hands in the Earth! I'm looking forward to bare foot gardening and dirty fingernails!

Wiser than I thought.....

My plan for today was to get away from the office, have lunch with my students, go to the accountant to take care of my taxes, and come home early in the afternoon to enjoy the sun and get a couple of things done around the house....

HOWEVER.....

While waiting for my turn with the accountant, I decided to have a piece of chewing gum- the soft kind that isn't hard to chew, of course. About five or six chomps after I put the gum in my mouth, I felt an EXCRUCIATING pain shoot up my right jaw. Although I didn't sense any tooth parts in my mouth, obviously something had happened to one of my back teeth on the right side.

To make a long story short, I sat in the accountant's office with a wad of Kleenex packed up against the tooth to lessen the pain as I tried to convince myself that it would go away. When the sweet woman behind the desk asked me if I needed help, I realized the my efforts to make it appear that I wasn't in pain were failing miserably.

As soon as I got to the car, I called my dentist, only to find out that he and his staff don't work on Fridays. His nice office message provided an emergency number, and it took very little time for me to call it! When Dr. L. heard the explanation of what had occurred, he ordered me to come meet him at the office immediately. (Then I began to worry that I was REALLY up the creek!)

So, two hours later, I am out of pain (except for a dull throb in the area) , have a prescription for mega-Motrin if I need it, and have found out that I might have to have some extensive dental work in the near future.

BUT, here's the real surprise of the afternoon....An X-ray of my upper back teeth show that I have an impacted wisdom tooth!!! I thought this was a rather strange thing since I had all four of my wisdom teeth removed about 25 years ago, but Dr. L. says one can have up to three sets of wisdom teeth over the course of a lifetime. Great! Now I have to wait and see if there are others of these suckers embedded in my gums ..EERGH!

Despite the unexpected events of the day, I do have some high thoughts....

1) I am grateful to have a dentist who will drop what he's doing (he was in the process of moving to a new house) to come to my rescue.

2) I am grateful for novacaine and immediate pain relief.

3) I am grateful that I will get money back from the state and federal governments (a meager sum, but hey, it's better than paying).

4) The discovery of this heretofore undiscovered impacted tooth confirms the fact that I am a wiser person. After all, it is a WISDOM tooth.....(groan) :0) :0)

Off to start the chores I had hoped to have completed by now....Wishing all a pleasant weekend!

Amazing people...
Their stories are similar and different--Laida, an artist and human rights activist---Manuel, a prize winning poet, author, journalist--both exiled from their beloved Cuba... Laida left the island over 40 years ago, expecting to return within a year of her arrival to the United States, and Manuel came to Miami seven months ago after serving 16 months (many in solitary confinement) of incarceration in Cuban prisons. Neither know how much longer they will have to wait before they return to their island homeland; neither can predict what sort of situation they will find once they get there.

Laida remembers the Cuba of her youth as she works infatigably from her home on behalf of Cuban political prisoners. Manuel's memories of Cuba are more recent; he tells of spending days on end alone with his books, traveling in his mind to various places in the world from his darkened cell.

I listen, as always, absorbing not only their memories but also the pain of their expatriation and their compassion for all Cubans. I get a glimpse of a sparkle in their eyes as they remember Cuba before the Revolution, and I watch the sparkle quickly fade to saddness as the reality of the past +45 years sinks in yet again.

One day, we will all go there...Laida and Manuel returning to their native soil....I, accompanying them to a country whose people have made a tremendous impact in my life, to a country I know almost as well as my own, at least in my mind and my heart....

~To be loved, love.~
-Decimus Maximus Ausonius

~There are never enough "I love you"s.~
-Lenny Bruce
VALENTINE'S DAY 2006......

~The story of love is not important--
what is important is that one is capable of love...It is perhaps the only glimpse we are permitted of eternity....~
-Helen Hayes

~Love seeks only one thing: the good of the one loved. It leaves all the other secondary effects to take care of themselves. Love , therefore, is its own reward.~
-Thomas Merton

~Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problems of human existence.~
Erich Fromm

~A wise lover values not so much the gift of the lover as the love of the giver.~
-Thomas a Kempis

~Love is patient; love is kind;
love is not jealous or boastful;
it is not arrogant or rude.
Love does not insist on its own way;
it is not irritable or resentful;
it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right.
Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never ends.....~
I Corinthians: 4-8

MOVIE REVIEW...THE PINK PANTHER....

If you are one who can let go, not insist that every movie have some sort of deep interpretative impact, and laugh heartily, then you must see "The Pink Panther."

Steve Martin pulls it off...Yep, as Inspecteur Clousseau, he got as many laughs out of me as Peter Sellers, --so many, in fact, that at one point, I could hardly catch my breath. (And, I will confess to being quite skeptical that even Steve Martin could come close to Sellers' Clousseau.) Kevin Kline comes through as well as Inspecteur Dreyfuss.

See it..Let me know if you laughed...anyone who doesn't get a good chuckle going at the sound-proof room scene needs a laughter support group! :0)

TODAY AT THE FARM....
It's Saturday morning...overcast, chilly, tiny snowflakes beginning to fall...
Today, I don't plan to venture away from the farm...
I'm going to have some tea...
Maybe go back to bed and watch a movie...
Get up later...
Do some uninterrupted yoga..in the silence and with a heater nearby to warm me up....
Make a pot of home-made veggie soup...
Read about pruning (grapes, roses, red bud dogwood await the spring snips)
Begin to write the paper I'm going to deliver in Baton Rouge next week...
Listen to Leo Kotke, Cassandra Wilson....some soft jazz...
Take a walk in the snow later on today...
Look into the amaryllis a thousand times today....

GOOD NEWS !
Yesterday I learned that a person who is very dear to me is pregnant...Never thought she could conceive, always wanted children...a huge surprise for her and her husband...the Universe at work....¡Qué alegría!

And...the days are getting longer...My plants in the bathroom / solarium are beginning to bud...Two orchids have bloom spikes...My geranium is about to bloom...We are just a little over a month from spring (officially.....)

¡¡¡Olé!!!

Breathe....

That's the message for today, Tanya..
Plain and simple...

Involuntary, conscious
The ocean's waves....

Deep, expansive...

Inhale.............................
(pause) ...
Exhale.....................................
(pause)...

Begin again......

Relax...

Sweet instructions....

Open the throat...
Relax the face....,
Lengthening the spine...
Smiling from the heart....

Breathing in, I relax my body...
Breathing out, I calm my mind...

Ahhhh...

I breathe......

The Path Home
Those of you who have been to the farm know this walking path well. Around the time of my divorce four years ago, I started mowing out designs in the fields...I can't remember why I did so...I think I was just out on the tractor one day, consumed by thoughts that I wished I weren't having to think about at the time, and realized I was way off the beaten path and doing circles in the center of the field....It turned out to be a sign from the Universe--these fields were to become my canvas as I putzed around on my faithful little orange Kubota....

Anyway, there's a huge spiral in the field behind where this photo was taken, a peace sign (which I have yet to photograph) two little valleys over from this vantage point, and another spiral in an adjacent field. The big plan for the spring, once I get the tractor checked over and can be sure I won't get hung up in front of all passersby, is to cut a tremendous heart in the front field that will be very, very visible from the road on the ridge. I wonder what the neighbors will say about that ???????

Once the heart's completed, the message from the farm to those who travel along the Warren Chapel Road will be all about LUV & PEACE....Groovy, isn't it???

SPIRIT...
He chose to relax in the sun on the ledge of the silo rather than take a late afternoon walk...

I headed on down the path to the back of the field, all the while thinking what it must be for him as he hunts and tangles with the other farm cats with only three legs....

And, does he really feel his missing foot as he scratches at this ear with his phantom appendage?

Spirit is the third in a line of white cats who have adopted us at the farm - -preceded by Dover, a mesmerizing feline who could sleep soundly on the floor while two dozen people danced around him, and Ghost, who also lost a leg in a trap and healed himself by lying on magnets. Dover lived a long and good life here; Ghost disappeared shortly after he went outside for the first time after losing his leg.

Forty-five minutes or so later, as I returned back up the path toward the barn, I heard Spirit, engaged in what I refer to as "cat opera"..... No longer was he perched on the silo ledge, but he stood just outside the barn door, head cocked, tail swishing, glaring at Loonis and daring her to take the next step, waiting to pounce on her when she did.

After several moments of stare-down, Spirit nonchalantly turned and hopped away, with a smug twinkle in his eyes that signaled he knew he was still alpha cat around the farm. I watched him return to the silo ledge, clean himself proudly for a couple of minutes, and again, stretch out in the afternoon sunlight on the silo ledge.