In Case the World Could Use the Help

The New Year's sun rose to welcome guests in the prairie. It's not unusual. Last evening dusk scooted 10 deer, this time all does, along the tree line between the barn and the labyrinth-- amblers not too hurried to pause briefly to supervise my evening walk with the dogs. It's always dangerous, of course, to anthropomorphize animals in the wild, but we like to think it's a sign the deer feel comfortable here. A refuge of sorts; safe, never mind the loud "pops" we hear from time to time in the near-distance. The dogs carry on animated conversations with them as they graze, though the talk is quite one sided. The deer never respond in kind, except to look up and stare in the direction of all the commotion before taking a few more satisfying chews and then their leave.

It's too early to know if the gentleman who has kept bee hives on the prairie off and on will be back this spring with more, but we are hopeful. We like the thought of hosting nature's interplay -- the essential giving and receiving that makes all fruiting possible, be it the sweet fruit of the hive, the nourishing fruit of the garden and orchard, or the enlivening fruit of civilization. It's part of the reason we replanted the prairie with native grasses and pollinator wildflowers. It's part of the reason we cultivate milkweeds in addition to vegetables. It's part of the reason we bucket manure from the alpacas next door into the compost pile, where it joins the spent bedding from the chicken coops, grass clippings gathered from the yard and leaves from the trees. Partly to remind us that “waste” is an obsolete and artificial concept born out of ignorance and a lack of imagination.  All that, plus the constantly-needed and tangible reminder that none of us, as the old English poet noted, is an island.  We are threads in a web of reciprocity.

It's not quite the "Peaceable Kingdom" the biblical prophet imagined, and I know from bloody experience that nature isn't all bucolic tenderness. That, and this is a mere 10-acre theater; hardly a global stage. Still, it is our determination to honor the natural processes here, to learn from them and partner with them rather than coerce them into submission to our own extractive benefit. And who knows where that could lead? If Lori's Permaculture Design instructor is correct when he posits that "You can solve all the world's problems in a garden,” then the sky is the limit.

So bring on the deer, the bees and the worms; bring on the chickens and the seeds; bring on all the mulch and compost of the New Year. Together we've got work to do in this garden we are called to tend.

Not that the world has any problems.

But just in case, we are trying to do our part.