Curt's Ponderings From The Bioshelter

My work situation is requiring a lot more effort for the next two months. I have obviously been forced to go on a hiatus since the beginning of August. This, unfortunately, will have to continue until mid October. I hope to begin again August 24. Hope you will be back reading then!

Gratitude is an attitude that a person has to learn and nurture. That has been true for me, and I believe it is true for others. There are always problems that we have to deal with, and I don’t want to minimize these, but it is too easy to become so fixated on today’s problems that we lose track both of all that has happened in the past to make the present possible. [1] When I contemplate such things I am filled with gratitude, both for the amazingly complex past that makes my present possible, and for the amazing potential for the future to which our present existence is contributing. It is this attitude of gratitude that helps me appreciate that all things have their purpose. I thought of this the other day as I was eating a salad made of home-grown greens. The salad included a variety of lettuce-like ingredients, plus onions, tomatoes and a garnish of flowers on top. It was a wonderfully flavorful blend, and beautiful. On the other hand, eating flowers...

In one of my older posts I commented on how being open to local relationships changes everything, even our personal economics. For instance, I noted that when our first batch of wine turned out to be more than a little disappointing, we were happy to find a neighbor who loved it. He was perfectly willing to trade us a dozen fresh eggs for every bottle of very poor wine. I suppose there is a bit of a Tom Sawyer-esque flavor to this story. Rather than pouring the wine out, we got someone else to actually give us something for it. But we really did tell him our opinion of it first—and I have to admit that we are hardly wine experts, ourselves. Two weeks ago, though, our local economy faced a small local calamity. A grizzly bear broke into our friend’s chicken coup and ate all the chickens. Our neighbor is very frustrated. He not only lost the chicke ns, but also had a lot of damage to the chicken facility; it was pretty elaborate, even including an elec...

I am not good at remembering how to identify the indigenous plants surrounding our bioshelter home. My best understanding of why I have trouble with this has led me to take a look at two different reasons. The first is that I may not be passionate enough about the subject. Realistically, I have a lot more that I am doing than studying plants. The plants that I intend to do something with right now probably become memorable enough, but if learning to identify plants is mostly an academic exercise and not immediately useful, then I don’t really put enough effort into it. Second, let’s face it, I’m 54 years old and I don’t memorize as easily as I used to. I have to work harder at it if I want to retain it—which is another way of it takes some real passion to learn it. A good example is the lambsquarter that grows on our property. Lambsquarter is much like a wild version of spinach. Its leaves are great in salad and it has a lot of vitamins and fiber in it, making it b...