The Green Ribbon

Nature. Growth. Renewal. Hope. 

I am living Up North, in the State of Hockey. The sunlight is fleeting. Each night is getting longer; each day growing shorter as December moves us toward Winter Solstice. Honestly, I miss the quickly melting snow of Oakville, Missouri... and the innocent childhood joy of snow days in Cornell, Wisconsin. 

I am feeling... well... a bit blue. 

This morning, over coffee, I typed "Mental Health" into the DuckDuckGo search bar which yielded multiple websites listing illnesses, disorders and symptoms, and referencing the DSM V. Ugh! After a few minutes of frustration, I discovered that "Mental Wellbeing" is the key phraseology.

Here I found concepts to embrace.

"The World Health Organization (2004) defines mental health in the following way: It is a state of wellbeing, in which the individual realizes their abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and can contribute to their community." - Positive Psychology 

How do we signal our support for mental health awareness? A green ribbon, which serves as a conversation starter. The color green is also a symbol of nature, growth, renewal and hope. 

In this season of Christmas green and red, with Winter Solstice fast approaching, I'm embracing the green.

Nature. Growth. Renewal. Hope.

R

Blue Jay

A blue jay chirped angrily at me this morning apparently upset that I moved the corn cobs it feasted on yesterday. I looked up and found its white breast in the tree overhead, its blue head jauntily tilted, its piercing eyes looking down on me. I responded, “If you wanted breakfast, you should have gotten up earlier, before I started raking these leaves, after all it’s almost noon.”

Today is Sunday, a stunning autumn day with warm sunshine and a bright blue sky—the kind of day that beckons, Come outside and play. I locate the rake and clear leaves from the curb that lines our street, pulling my quarry up onto the front lawn, adding it to the shallow piles the wind has gathered overnight. 

As I begin to bag the leaves for transport to the community compost site, the blue jay takes flight, perhaps in search of another autumn display of gourds and field corn, a breakfast buffet.

R

Photo by Jeremy Hynes on Unsplash

Grow

 

The earliest memories are of a garden at my parents' home in Medford, Wisconsin, in the backyard, between the house and the huge pine tree-- circa 1967. I don't remember what vegetables my mother planted in her tidy rows. Nor was I old enough to reliably weed and water. My most vivid memory is of the rhubarb, tucked in the far corner of the garden, and the bees that chased me into the house one summer morning, after I'd pulled a stalk of rhubarb from the plant that shaded their underground nest. Ouch!

I got stung several times. Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!

While the incident left me less-than-fond of proximity to bees, my heart remains true to rhubarb. I planted some yesterday, on the southeast corner of the foundation that will become my she-shed. This is my second year gardening in this place-- in the rich loamy soil of Renville County, Minnesota.

My partner, who's lived in this place for most of his life, expanded the garden to a third raised bed this year, and we're attempting to grow red potatoes. Earlier this week, I selected the two Big Beef tomato plants he'd requested ($2.29 each) and left Babe's Blossoms with an additional $89.44 in plants including the aforementioned rhubarb.

The morning glories from 2023 left behind enough seeds to propagate 8 tiny green butterfly-shaped plants, more than enough to fill the trellis beneath the picture window. What was a dirt pile covered by weeds on the north side of the deck barely a year ago, is nearly weed free with a 3' volunteer lilac and several clusters of violets-- an interesting combination as lilacs prefer sun and violets grow best in shade.

The containers that in 2023 held the colorful blossoms of annuals, are repurposed to nurture tiny trees, both maples and pines-- an Earth Day gift from a friend.

On social media are photos of my friend's garden harvest in Victoria, Texas, and photos of blossoming honeysuckle in another friend's yard in Oakville, Missouri. Meanwhile, back in the raised beds, the onions sets are thriving. Sprouts of radishes, peas, and green beans are breaking through. 

God also told them, "Look! I have given you every seed-bearing plant that grows

throughout the earth, along with every tree that grows seed-bearing fruit..." 

Genesis 1:29 ISV

Photo by imso gabriel on Unsplash

Winter Dance

Overnight the snow silently shuffled across the patio gently covering the brick pavers with a thin blanket of white, an inch deep at most. High above me in the grey pre-dawn sky, a small dark leaf takes flight, plucked from the branches of a bare tree by a gust of cold wind, then beckoned downward to the snow-covered earth by gravity. The leaf waltzes with the wind, dancing in a perfect circle, before breaking away and twirling free, moving southward toward the fence and disappearing into the shadows.

I stand quietly for a moment, then open the door and step out of the garage. The cold wind greets me and does not invite me to dance. Instead I scurry to complete my task, bringing dry food to fill a dish for the white-and-gray semi-feral cat, one of three cats that roam this small rural community—a cluster of 500 households located 92 miles west of Minneapolis. When we first met in the warmth of summer I had refused to feed this cat, yet in the depth of winter my heart moves toward compassion. The weather has turned bitter cold. Wind chills of 20° below zero are forecast for today and I am reminded of Jordan B. Peterson’s insistence that Mother Nature is a cold-blooded killer, even as she nurtures life on earth.

In past years, six decades of living actually, I’d embraced and asserted that people should not be feeding feral cats as it simply supports unsustainable breeding/birthing rates. Yet on a recent morning as I stood warm and dry looking out the kitchen window watching this one make its way across the snowy landscape, my heart moved toward intervention or perhaps interference—which however well intended often is not a kindness. Am I painfully prolonging misery in the cold shadow of inevitable death Mother Nature brings? Or is my meager offering a welcome and simple kindness?

Rw

image: Olga Deeva on Unsplash [more]

Jordan B. Peterson, psychologist and author [more]