The Gardener
Santa Clara, CA 95051
theroot_us@yahoo.com

  • HomeClick to open the Home menu
    • The Wave
    • The Henge
    • Jeans Are
    • Ghost Play
    • Tesla's Tavern
    • Daft
    • Coy Pond
    • Extreme Weather
    • The Visitor
    • Contagion
    • summation
    • Renewal
    • Friendly
    • Sound Check
    • Bee Tracks
    • Backyard Jungle
    • Dew Drops
    • The Hit
    • Rufus
    • Iridescent Bird
    • Tiger Tale
    • Early Bird
    • Red Rice
    • Etched
    • The Riddle
    • Orange
    • Insight
    • Peace Corps
    • going for the gold
    • diamond dew lights
    • a path of pavers
  • the hive trapperClick to open the the hive trapper menu
    • ripe cherries
    • bumble bee weed
    • dry humor
    • the space thimble
    • the play zoo
    • grasshopper's rondo
    • a homeric backhoe
    • fire and ice
    • bell hop"s bling
    • a parade of comets
    • cockroach country
    • the sand castle
    • a chimney charcoal starter
    • extra sensory reality
    • three florets
    • scrounging dumptster diamonds
    • doing a back flip
    • destined for compost
    • on fielding cattle
  • an orange fordClick to open the an orange ford menu
    • world wide weeds
    • mythic flower song
    • ah the loafster
    • go turn any stone
    • a seasonal meal
    • crow's wheel rhumba
    • our nested realms
    • on a leafless tree
    • crows hackberry home
    • hen house serenade
    • plain as day
    • on becoming conscious
    • an even match
    • a history of tomorrow
    • eddies in the stream
    • means and ends meet
    • junco on the fence
    • the splendiferous song
    • everywhere the axis
    • the labyrinth wriggles
    • wood hole winery
    • on machine awareness
    • the teetering tower
    • robin song science
    • a fly ornithology
    • the tale of yo-jimbo
    • the word bucket
    • the midnight tuba
    • time out of mind
  • Water SpoutClick to open the Water Spout menu
    • no blind spot
    • liberation
    • sun feather
    • creek shimmer
    • the engine telegraph
    • doom glow
    • the village bell
    • inner ear
    • free the clouds
    • noodles
    • og's paradox
    • fireflies at sunset
    • hue and laughter
    • for frankie
    • reason on the level
  • Atop the May poleClick to open the Atop the May pole menu
    • weeds
    • autonomous wheelbarrow
    • Bright colors Big balloons
    • bocce balls
    • human action
    • nasturtium
    • meaning
    • the trumpet
    • time lapse
    • tall tail
    • a better breeze
    • sunday thunder
    • two-way mirror
    • what we knew
    • larry 9-3-62
    • enough is
    • profusion
    • a jitney once
    • time's up
    • the cosmic well
    • the magic mountains
    • planchette pen
    • blankety blank
  • HeresayClick to open the Heresay menu
    • Heresay Three
    • Heresay Two
    • Heresay Four
    • Heresay Five
    • Heresay Six
    • Heresay Seven
    • Heresay Eight
    • Heresay Nine
    • Heresay Ten
    • Heresay Thirteen
    • Heresay Fourteen
    • Heresay Fifteen
    • Heresay Sixteen
    • Heresay Seventeen
    • Heresay Eighteen
    • Heresay Nineteen
    • Heresay Twenty
    • Heresay Eleven
    • Heresay Twelve
  • Being-TimeClick to open the Being-Time menu
    • Dominoes
    • Wood Duck Theater
    • Said The Crows
    • Frankie & I
    • From Here To
    • Larry Again
    • Pale Shadows
    • Rogue Wave
    • Fragen Shade
    • Dove Tail
    • Half-eaten Peach
    • Twilight Ozone
    • Midnight Sun
    • Granma's Kitchen
    • Category Zero
    • Ever After
    • Heresay
  • Cat's CradleClick to open the Cat's Cradle menu
    • Not A Quant
    • Sing, Sing, Sing
    • The Vortex
  • Living SpaceClick to open the Living Space menu
    • Planet Bliss
    • Blefirmagest
    • When We Wake
    • My Way
    • Music Loom
    • Banjo Blues
    • Reality Show
    • Twinkle
    • Frames
    • Ancient Pond
  • The ViewClick to open the The View menu
    • The Orion Factor
    • Humpty
    • The Unexplained
    • Untitled
    • Frankie
    • Thunder Fingers
    • Frankie & Twinkie
    • Death and Oranges
    • Clinkers
    • Brown Rice
    • Happens To Be
    • Twilight Tea
    • Fossils or Fusion
    • Three-Way Quartet
    • Artless Art
    • Blues Dhalia
    • Unboxed
  • TimelessClick to open the Timeless menu
    • Fossils
    • Just Add Water
    • O'l Factory
    • bAlls
    • Holo Words
    • Communique
    • Flight Line
    • The Leap
    • just SO
    • Tipster
    • Tripology
    • Twitch Hunt
    • An Audience
  • FusionClick to open the Fusion menu
    • Wheelbarrow
    • Endless
    • Segnaro
    • A New Page
    • Make It So
    • Gravel Gavel
    • Right On
    • Conspirit
    • Mind City
    • Hackberry Breeze
    • Peace Happens
    • For Sure
    • Sage Flat
    • Enchantment
  • The VanishingClick to open the The Vanishing menu
    • Sonorous Sun
    • Flung
    • Shuttlecock
    • Rhyme Time
    • JOY
    • Win-Lose-Draw
    • Text
    • Pale Blue Dot
    • Heliotrope
    • Cadillac Cat
    • Baker's Dozen
    • Roux
    • Crazy Quilt
    • The Warehouse
  • Beneath TreesClick to open the Beneath Trees menu
    • The Visitor
    • The Castle
    • The Airplane
    • Here Goes
    • Wood Song
    • Renegade Rider
    • Hot Saxes
    • Moving On
    • Search Dog
    • SETI
    • Fried Artichokes
    • The Rock
  • Rolling ThunderClick to open the Rolling Thunder menu
    • Toehold
    • Pistory
    • Back Beat
    • Next . . .
    • Stop and Go
    • Beyond
    • Sleep
    • Pulse
    • Outback
    • Retro
    • The Source
    • It Is
    • Red Berries
    • Communication
    • Simpatico
    • Salt Pond Dues
    • Green Gremlins
    • ONE
    • Tea
    • Magic
    • Jackdaw
    • Final Analysis
  • With FireClick to open the With Fire menu
    • Puff
    • Wild Onions
    • The Toll
    • Mute Messenger
    • Serentripity
    • Five Ring Circus
    • The Road To Well
    • Pacific Players
    • Gumbo Gone
    • MGB
    • Castle Rock
    • Truth
    • Breeze
    • Daycare
    • Nothing Doing
    • Existence
    • Flying Circus
  • FREEDOMClick to open the FREEDOM menu
    • The Corner
    • The A Train
    • Solstice
    • Holiday 2016
    • The Quarry
    • Suite Home
    • Spring
    • The Dream
    • Go For It
    • A Grove
    • Unfree Speech
    • Seasons
    • Wheelies
    • Rim Shot
    • Rain Drops
    • The Loft
    • Benton Street
    • Jingo Jangle
    • Surreygate
    • 'Snuff Box
    • Tiuana
    • Being
  • NO MINDClick to open the NO MIND menu
    • Surfing
    • H two OH!
    • SV Tweet
    • Fusion
    • Dove's Dream
    • Super Sol
    • Unseen Universe
    • Outsourced
    • Effortless
    • Fool's Gold
    • Between Storms
    • Gas Lamp Blues
  • Debit MemoClick to open the Debit Memo menu
    • Whim Logic
    • Ripples
    • Renewal
    • Frond
    • Noon Moon
    • The Red Seals
    • The Song Itself
    • Marmalade Mind
    • The Marquee
    • Dodge Cities
    • Book TV
    • Hymn
    • Referendum
    • Next
  • DRY CREEK OVERPASSClick to open the DRY CREEK OVERPASS menu
    • THE CREEK TALKER
    • heresy
    • nothing doing
    • the story
    • cap trade
    • burning bright
    • purgatory
    • the way
    • stirring coffee
    • Sightless Vision
    • dung flower
    • mute vision
    • dove
    • Margin!
    • Bone Deep
    • yestermorrow
    • the ROSE garden
    • Cancelled Flights
    • Oak Country
    • XTECHNO
    • gateless
    • Transitions
  • reckoningClick to open the reckoning menu
    • hysteria
    • juice like blood
    • yonder
    • step by step
    • sharp tools
    • blinders
    • plain clothes
    • souveniers
  • phoenixClick to open the phoenix menu
    • ashes
    • leaf mould
    • window blossoms
    • flat bush
    • improvised vision
    • 100 proof insurance
    • how's them apples?
    • bits and pieces
  • circling forthClick to open the circling forth menu
    • back home
    • middle earth
    • lightning strikes
    • tabitha
    • night vision
    • spirit tune
  • karmic fireClick to open the karmic fire menu
    • rosie
    • harbinger
    • sleepy time tea
    • speed bump
    • breaking news
    • juice
    • plenitude
    • brain storm
    • no price
  • wild muffinsClick to open the wild muffins menu
    • moments
    • bow sprit
    • taiko buzz
    • real music
    • from here to . . .
    • karma dogs
  • oil lamp daysClick to open the oil lamp days menu
    • repose
    • tranquility
    • harmony
    • rapport
    • departure
  • bird brainClick to open the bird brain menu
    • wind song
    • dust devils
    • folded echo
    • bach boogie
    • bird brain
  • rusted dinosaurClick to open the rusted dinosaur menu
    • blue haze
    • what hath?
    • fractal
    • transbiohomo
    • rusted
    • peacocks
    • beetles
    • tents
    • trance
  • sand dollarsClick to open the sand dollars menu
    • grist
    • griftology
    • gerrymander
    • gondolas
    • griffins
    • galloping
    • galaxies
  • LIFTOFFClick to open the LIFTOFF menu
    • commencement
    • joy nest leap
    • wisp of reason
    • breeze cap
    • the gathering
    • impersonal portrait
    • when chaos dies
    • going down the trail
  • oroborusClick to open the oroborus menu
    • smoke in our eyes
    • anthrology
    • buried gold
    • R and R
    • dominion
    • compost
    • oroborus
  • laughing thunderClick to open the laughing thunder menu
    • swivel liberty
    • scrabble stone
    • never never mind
    • clap rag shuffle
    • circus pipes
    • endurance
    • sky serpent
    • song breeze
    • fog thorns
  • thoth moodsClick to open the thoth moods menu
    • peace cloud
    • truth food
    • drifters
    • out of context
    • radar ears
    • crow song
    • green tea day
    • floating
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Savvy Neighbors Impede Profiteers
  • Links
  • AS THE WORLD BURNSClick to open the AS THE WORLD BURNS menu
    • the creek talker
    • ark welding
    • old tree
    • the compost bird
    • through the scaffold
    • holly day celebration
    • infinity paralyzes time?
    • opus 3!
    • way past

ONE

 

Clouds dust the blue slate sky and a 'copter hovers, throbbing just out of reach in summer's heat. It's a charade quickly called off. A viewpoint in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence perhaps. Stealth technology? Something hidden from TVs and cell phones, but here nonetheless.

It's a safari into the heart of space as the arrow of time vanishes, and our usual birds are elsewhere. The temperature has reached 104 degrees. A wet bird does not fly at night? In the settling sun, white floaters drift down like flour on water. Mr. Finch arrives at my table, looking for cookie crumbs

I had brought seeds here, and to the feeder a few feet away in the garden. Also some water for the small dish nearby. It had been the last resting place, sadly, for an exhausted yellow jacket. Now seeing it full, Mr. Finch goes for a drink. Then a bath splashing wildly, jumping, raising all feathered hell, a wet bird laughing!

And then robin's arrival.

At the flick of a finger from this lawn chair outpost, my Kindle fetches a report from the National Weather Service, a heat advisory for this weekend, out of the blue. From the ends of the world, a vast archive is plucked for the bits that will appear in my lap.

Einstein would appreciate robin's space-time bocce ball dimension, relativity in a tea cup, being the universe. My mind is not alone in losing its limits.

With its rainbow peacock logo, the NBC portal brings reports from Texas, flooding with hurricane Harvey:

“' This hurricane is something else. One minute you don't know if you're going to

live through it or your house is going to fall on you or whatever,' Victoria

resident Roger Saski said on Sunday. 'The main thing is we made it through

the storm,' he said. 'You know material things don't mean nothing when you

go through this.'”

As we have seen, climate is affected by materializations of money and power. And as for value, we understand:

1. importance, worth, or usefulness of something

2. a person's principals or standards of behavior, one's judgment of

what is important in life

Mr. Hummingbird 'copters in, red feathers outshining the metal flowers on his feeder, to hover at what he finds important. As I write, sometimes he hovers over this clipboard:

Nuclear weapons and oil revenue are more important than either our climate or civilization? What do leaders know who are just rogue waves? Should anyone be given unlimited power? Do individuals matter?

Sunday morning is a time for hanging onto my footstool with tiny claws --> Louis the lizard. As the sun moves, he runs to a favorite rock beneath the dove bird feeder.

Sit a mile in my lawn chair and patterns emerge. In the language of kids, songs outfox copyright, sung at conversational speed, skipping freely in the magic.

Suddenly out of nowhere, robin swoops and bombs Louis off his rock! Inexplicable. He'd been wide awake and still, looking at me. Maybe the rock is in the game. Robin's ball court would escape casual notice.

The planter box forms part of robin's habitus, which has to be seen to be believed. It is an airport with a covered terminal. The landing strip is on the patio at the east end. Hackberry seeds fall on the patio. Round, green, perfect spheres. Robin nudges one. It rolls. He chases and sticks his beak under, pushing again, following with another push to keep it rolling --> it's bocce ball, with robin winning, and I'm cheering!

Texas refineries cease to function, escalating the price of gas, 20 cents and climbing. North Korea gleefully flouts its Bomb, threatening our west coast and Texas. Our heat wave is an aspect of Harvey's Texas disaster, but summertime pollution will be mitigated by a law fashioned in Palo Alto that bans vehicles from prolonged idling. Like sumo wrestlers stomping before the match, leaders thunder thermogeddon. Exciting is it not! As though one might win.

The fossil bonanza dwindles. In its wake, our exhausted world is whipped on by frightened leaders, served by technocrats who have a tiger by the tail. Wisdom is water boarded.

Hummingbirds, spiders, doves, finches and robins don't get to choose. But we do. If material things don't mean nothing, what does?

With a lapidary saw, cut through a piece of plastiglomerate. Polish it. See the galaxies appear.

You are the only you. No one else occupies your space. Billions of galaxies, each with billions of stars, countless planets and no two exactly alike. If you reappear, it will not be in this lifetime.

The resources, energy and technology now wasted on wars and oppression can be repurposed. We can do much better.

Technology is on the brink of usable fusion power, fueled by abundant hydrogen which is readily available in the world's oceans. It leaves no residue of carbon dioxide, as from fossil fuels, or radioactive waste, as from nuclear fission. We now have the knowledge, if not yet the capability, for tracking and intercepting asteroids with earth crossing orbits. War is more important?

Life and water, gifts of the universe, precede the fiction of ownership. We can bring our resources and populations into balance. If civilization is not for making life better for all affected, what is a better purpose? How about supporting self realization, and thus appreciation of life itself. Why not replace the exploitation of people with recognition for attainments of wisdom. How about music, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. Why not redirect the energy and resources presently dissipated into a guaranteed income for everyone, and let work be a vehicle for personal expression.

Pollyanna? Not at all. We will align values with reality or cease to exist.



write "subscribe" or "unsubscribe"  in the subject line of an email to:  theroot_us@yahoo.com

The Gardener
Santa Clara, CA 95051
theroot_us@yahoo.com