We have been “transforming” the pond garden for the past 30 years. It started out as a vegetable garden with peas, lettuce, tomatoes and cucumbers. Eventually, I accepted that our focus on vegetables had firmly moved across the field to a much larger actually ginormous garden. The pond garden became a flower garden. It’s a yearly battle with wild raspberry bushes, yarrow, bishop’s weed, anemone and so many others I can hardly remember. We pull them all out and start over. There have been five cullings through the decades and each time nature does what she wants. Right now we are experiencing a peaceful truce, temporary, but it feels calm. I don’t want to get all self-righteous about it because that is when she moves back in.

Today’s Cal-Rec featured a story about a local artist bashed by school board member in Newport Vermont. The artist, Maria Lacroix painted a female nude with multiple breasts, arms and bellys. The school board member is concerned about children not understanding the painting and, in fact, feeling sexually harassed by the painting. The school board member called it obscene. It’s actually an interesting perspective on the female body image in the context of a female-hating culture.

From poem “Käthe Kollwitz” by Muriel Rukeyser.

“What would happen if one woman told the truth about
her life?
The world would split open”

I will tell you what’s obscene:

hungry children people going without health care people experiencing inadequate health care police killing black men and women sexual harassment school loans selfish president selfish senate covid 19