Today, I received an extraordinary gift. But before I tell that story, I need to give a context for the story which will throw it in ultra-high relief. . .
I came home from a whirlwind 48-hour trip at the stroke of midnight last Sunday morning. The next day, still groggy from lack of sleep, I went out to the car and noticed, out of the corner of my eye, a spot of orange on the surface of the GANG pond. Oops . . .
Reluctantly, I went through the gate and walked over to the pond. Yes, there it was, a dead goldfish. Then I noticed a few other dead fish, floating on their sides.
Other fish lined up with each other, parallel, unmoving, at the bottom of the deepest part of the pond. See them?
And, there were at least three that were alive, moving slowly, and hiding away in a shallow corner of the pond.
Then I noticed that the pond had overflowed. In fact, that it was still over flowing. Somebody had left the water running from the hose in the pond. The hose water was in the process of killing the fish. I guessed there had been at least 100 fish in the pond. How many would die? And what would we do with the dead ones?
I turned off the hose. Within a few minutes one of the smallest fish revived completely, started swimming around like crazy. The others stayed still.
I went in the house and called my son. I needed moral support. Colin came over, and together we started scooping dead fish out, as well as, we discovered, dead polliwogs . . .
… and buried them, a few at a time, in the garden beds. This is a process that I would repeat for the next 24 hours, over and over again, as more and more fish died and floated to the surface on their sides. And polliwogs. At least 50 of them, all together, and I bet I buried 125 fish. I had no idea we had so many polliwogs. In fact, I had never seen a polliwog in the pond, though I had heard rustling, and once in a while, the two adult frogs which I did know were there, would croak and jump. So we learned something about the denizens of our pond on this sad day.
The big question was, would the little school of fish survive without being replenished from outside? An open question.
Within 48 hours of the hose water being turned off, the pond had mostly recovered its oxygen; apparently hose water is not oxygenated, and when you leave the hose on for too long, all the water is replaced and the fish suffocate. At least that’s the theory I tend to believe. I do run the hose when the pond gets low, but never more than about two hours at a time. Lucy, who was caring for the rabbit while I was gone, was the one who had inadvertently left the hose on, and it ran for nearly 24 hours before I discovered it.
By yesterday, the fish were all swimming around like mad, and I counted at least a dozen in there, which surprised me. At first I thought that only about a half dozen had survived. Among the survivors were the two biggest fish, from the original stock three years ago.
Now, here’s where the story of the gift comes in.
This morning, when I went out to the pond, the biggest fish, the one I always think of as a male, the stallion of this little herd, was definitely acting like one, aggressively swimming alongside and trying to corral the second biggest fish. Trailing them both were four or five other, smaller goldfish, who I thought of, at that point, as yearlings, wishing they could get a piece of the action, but it wasn’t gonna happen.
I wondered, “how do fish do it?” How do they have sex?
Well, I got to see it! Right then!
The stallion fish corralled the slightly smaller fish into an area between two reeds next to the side of the pond where she couldn’t get away and right then, what I saw from above was him humping her, thrusting four or five times. But wasn’t really sure that this was what was happening, because couldn’t see that she was underneath until it was over. And she was! He then swam off, and she “stumbled” out into the main body of the pond, and the four or five little ones once again tried to get at her. The stallion then came back and aggressively turned them away, coming after her again! At this point, feeling too much empathy for her, I turned and went back in the house.
So I have a feeling that any worries we had about the little school being able to replenish itself are beside the point.
I tried to take a picture of the two of them together, but they were too fast. But the Mama and Papa frogs both let me take their photos! For the first time. Can you see them? Here are three shots. Try this one first.
He’s in the middle, next to the tall reed. Here’s a slightly closer look:
And the other frog, just then, decided to show herself (pretty sure she’s the female). Hopefully, they will have new babies, soon. (She’s on the carpet, to the right of the red floating leaf.)
Never before, have the frogs shown themselves and sat still for photos.
Rejoicing continues, with the irises, the first of which bloomed on the day the fish died,
Thursday Alexandra, Sarah and Stephanie had a productive working meeting at the GANG with the help of fellow neighbor José.
Alexandra, Stephanie and Sarah awed by the seedling-baby growth
We were thrilled to see the seedling so bountiful… but wanted to thin out some of the ones that really sprouted up, like the cilantro and basil, so we cleaned out some potters with herbs and re-planted the little plantlings. We also put some into the garden tower (more on that to follow!) With the recent frost warning, Ann had been taking the plants in overnight, so they are still alive and kicking. Now, we have been covering them with plastic overnight to keep them safe.
Happy gardener weeding the bed for the arugula.
Then we decided the pouty, wilty arugula was ready for a re-planting, having outgrown its little container. So Alexandra and José weeded out a bed in the garden,
Doing the dirty work... José with the bucket of manure
then José got a giant bucket of manure
and together we spread the nice, mulched horse manure over the bed.
Spreading the love...
Stephanie went to check how far apart to plant the arugula (about 6 inches) and together with Sarah, we re-planted the arugula plants in this bed.
Planting the arugula.
Sarah also had fun planting and trimming the Garden Tower.
Sarah planting herbs and arugula in the Garden Tower.
Stephanie added some amendments to the raspberry bush, from a mixture of liquid fertilizer (all natural, of course).
We hope these changes make the plants happy!
We made a final circuit around the garden, and Stephanie showed us the successful results of our de-weeding experiment:
Clear boundaries from where plastic was pulled up - no weeds underneath! It worked! A quick, easy, and efficient way to weed large spaces.
in March, we had put black plastic over a bed with a lot of weeds and clover that needed to be er one bed that was completely covered in clover and weeds that needed to removed before planting there. The black plastic, held down by rocks to keep down, would kill the weeds (with the help of the sun!) to free us of weeding. Stephanie lifted up the black plastic, and we could see the effect! Here you can see, too, the clear line where the plastic left off, and how nice and weed-free the soil is underneath the plastic! We left the plastic on, and will remove it when we are ready to plant.
A photo update of the work taking place around the garden.
We hope you come and get involved. Next work day: EARTH DAY, April 22nd from 2-5 pm !!
Spring is sprung. The garden in its weeded glory.
Seedling power! Stephanie and Alexandra planted some seedlings over Spring Break… and within days they were popping up like champs!
This eggplant jumped up right away and needed to be re-planted into bigger containers!
Compost here! We got a lot of help from the neighborhood, including Jim making these awesome compost bins! THANKS!!! Now, we need all of your compost, grass clippings, coffee grounds, etc!
Mmmmmmmanure!Thanks to Steve Headley and his horses for this wonderful natural fertilizer! (FYI – his farm is on Mt. Gilead Road in Bloomington for others who might benefit from using this manure on their gardens). We will be spreading the manure over the beds to get them chock full of vitamins and minerals for healthy plants!
Weeding… a necessary evil. Thanks to all who pulled weeds to get GANG ready for yummy plants!
Yes, Shadow absolutely helps, too!
Ann is excited for the brambling blackberries and raspberries!
Ahhhh, planting. Steph and Sarah had some fun planting beans and peas along the perimeter (they’ll grow up the fence) and around the teepee (another good structure for their vines to climb up).
Green Acres is a neighborhood which some of its residents envision could be an ecovillage.
Photo: Gretchen Frazee/WFIU News
Green Acres Neighborhood Garden is an urban garden where people who tend to it also share the fruits of their labor.
This is the last in a series on cooperative living in Bloomington, Indiana.
In the summer, in a small garden in Green Acres, just east of Indiana University, is full of tomatoes, sweet potatoes, peppers, basil, onions, radishes, corn, cabbage, strawberries… you get the picture. It us a lot of food.
Ann Kreilkamp owns the garden, but several people in the neighborhood and as well as students from IU’s Permaculture Department tend it, and, in return, share the harvest.
Kreilkamp envisions several similar gardens popping up around the neighborhood and eventually forming the Green Acres Ecovillage.
“What we’re trying to do here is trying to build an ecovillage from what’s already here,” she says. “It’s called a retrofit ecovillage where you use existing structures, and you can have renters and people who own them.”
In her vision, neighbors would help each other garden and share the fruits – and vegetables — of their labor with everyone involved. Basically, a large-scale version of what she’s already doing.
“Eventually I would like to see in 30 years, the whole neighborhood is an ecovillage, with zoning laws having changed so you can have small businesses inside it,” she says.
Kreilkamp is petitioning the Bloomington Zoning Commission to change its laws so she can operate her garden without being afraid of overstepping the law. The Bloomington Planning Department says it is taking all the zoning requests on a case by case basis.
Jim Ollis, a student from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is staying in Bloomington for a few weeks as a part of his permaculture studies. He says Bloomington is ripe for this type of community living because it has a lot of land that can be used for small-scale gardening.
“Communities like Bloomington have a much easier potential and much easier transition than places like Philadelphia in the city because the land is wide open, the land is readily available,” he says.
Kreilkamp says she hopes people like Ollis will take inspiration from her work, leave Bloomington and begin similar projects throughout the U.S.
“Because we are a university town you have people constantly moving through,” she says. “So the type of governing you have to do is really educational so they will learn how to do it and then they’ll move and do it somewhere else.”
Her dream, she says, would be to see her grandchildren living in a world that is sustainable and lives in sync with nature’s cycles. Krielkamp says, she thinks they will.
Kim’s turn to whack the beloved cob oven, symbol of community.
Hold on to your horses. This is an epic post, divided into parts, each with lots of photos that you can scan through quickly just to give the flavor.
Introduction
1. The cut in the wall
2. The Ceremony
3. The Blows
4. Potluck
5. Aftermath
Introduction
First, here’s some “before” pictures of the SW corner of the garden, containing a cob oven and ferrocement wall, all of which was constructed by volunteers over hundreds of hours.
Cob oven from inside the garden, wall behind. Notice the “yield” sign to the left. In order to transform an inherently destructive situation I (my combative personality) had to learn how to yield . . .
The side view of the beautiful oven, designed and constructed by SPEA students in a Sustainability Course at IU. BTW: it worked great the one and only time we fired it up for pizza.
The “Berlin Wall” from the outside, admittedly kind of ugly and forbidding, though plants were beginning to grow up enough to soften the effect.
The situation had been brewing for five months. See this and this for details. For the first three months I had been locked in an internal battle, trying to not only make sense of what was going on, but to come to terms with it and find a way through. At some point, it occurred to me that this situation was the most challenging I had ever encountered, in the sense that I had to integrate more dimensions than ever before in order to discover a way to creatively respond. I had to integrate 1) the neighbor who opposed the educational — and, it appeared to me, the community — function of the GANG garden, 2) the city Planning Department who had responded to her call and was making certain demands, some of which I preceived as a threat to the multi-purpose of the garden, 3) the near and far Green Acres neighborhood, with whom I have been working to help seed an authentic village culture for the past seven years, 4) the new and still very tender and rawecovillage hub of which I am a cofounder, 5) the Council of Neighborhood Associations, to which I belong, Transition Bloomington, of which I am one of the original organizers — and on and on, in widening circles of influence.
But beyond and within all these concentric zones, was what I call zone zero zero, the center of the self, which dissolves into no-self, Presence. Zone zero zero as the infinity that opens and enfolds in the embrace of the the Love that fuels the universe. And, right next to this sacred center, right on the other side of it, or at its edge, was/is my persona, or personality, the evolving form I have been conditioned into for this lifetime. And this form or persona is fiery, combative, arrogant, righteous, determined, like a combination of bulldog and banty rooster — all qualities that I like to see in my “opponent,” the neighbor who has been “giving me so much trouble.” My perception of her persona was and is my perfect mirror, the projection of all that I dislike about myself. (So perfect, an “opponent” who actually shows up! How else am I going to learn about my own shadow without an honorable opponent to illuminate it for me?) So, beyond any of these other zones of integration, I had to integrate this cocky persona into the higher self of detachment and compassion, that which sees the entire human drama as merely one more play of illusion within this three-dimension stage that we have all chosen to walk together.
So that’s the internal scene. In the external, the GANG garden is, and is viewed as, one possible alternative private/public template for the future as we learn how to relocalize our lives and, in particular, grow our own food, in a downshifting culture that will more and more need to be fueled by cooperation and sharing rather than competition and greed.
For more of the details, see this and this, the two emails I sent out to announce the Ceremony of Impermanence that would precede the destruction of our lovingly constructed cob oven at the SW corner of the GANG garden.
The Cut in the Wall
The city requires that we remove not only the cob oven, but the wall behind it, due to a law which outlaws “structures” 25 feet from any intersection (a law that is only enforced when brought to the city’s attention). So, we had to figure out how to remove that wall. Were we going to trash it? And if so, how? Or were we going to move it to another location, if so how and why, and where would a 20-foot long, right-angled, six foot high ferrocement wall fit? We thought about various places in the garden, but nothing seemed appropriate. It was just too damn big! Finally we decided to place it inside a copse of little trees in my back yard, clearing out a space to do so, turning the area in front of it into a hidden meditation spot.
Here we are, on the day of the Ceremony, traipsing to take a look at the newly cleared sanctuary for the wall.
Given the space available, we decided to cut about a five feet off one side of the wall to make it fit. My son Colin and Jim, the permaculture student that has been staying with me cleared the space. A few days before the Ceremony they made the cut, using a grinder purchased for the occasion. Here’s the process.
First, Colin measured the point in the wall where they would make the cut.
Next, Colin and Jim fastened and sretched string to indicate where the cut would go.
Next, Colin started the cut with the grinder (leaving a bit of the wall intact both at the top and the bottom, in case of wind. The final cuts to be made on the day the wall is actually removed).
Here’s what the cut looked like when done. Hardly visible. Very clean. I was amazed, thought it would be ragged and ugly.
The Ceremony of Impermanence
November 20, the long-awaited day for the Ceremony of Impermanence and destruction of wall and cob oven dawned warm, grey and rainy. Oops! Can’t use power tools in the rain. We’d have to postpone removing the wall, and concentrate on the Ceremony and cob oven. Okay. C’est la vie.
About 18 people straggled in throughout the morning and early afternoon, despite the rain. And we all agreed that the rain was perfect for the occasion. The sky was weeping, as these three drops on the pear tree attest.
We gathered beforehand in my house and I told them what would happen during the ceremony. First, I’d talk about the whole situation, and its history, why we had to remove the cob oven and wall, what they meant to us, and my own process of trying to come to terms with it, by utilizing ceremony to transform something terrible into the first step for renewal in the spring. Next, I would invite others to say whatever was in their hearts as well.
Then Anna Maria, another permaculture student who had been staying with me on weekends during the two month local permaculture weekend course, would read from the Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching (Fall River Press, 2002), an appropriate verse for this ceremony. She chose verse #22, “Celebrating Paradox:”
No-thing remains itself.
Each prepares the path to its opposite.
To be ready for wholeness, first be fragmented. To be ready for rightness, first be wronged. To be ready for fullness, first be empty. To be ready for renewal, first fail. To be ready for doubt, first be certain . . .
Verily, fragmentation prepares the path to wholeness, the mother of all origins and realizations.
At this point, we would each take the little slips of paper on which we had written something from our lives that they were willing to give up and put it in the cob oven for one last tiny firing, as a symbol of the impermanence of all forms. So hard to give up what feels safe, secure, comfortable, what we love!
And so on.
We went out in the garden and stood in the rain in a semi-circle around the cob oven. I started to talk, at first coming close to tears, our mood somber, sodden.
Anna Maria read verse 22 . . . Here are a few more lines from that beautiful translation:
Because the wise observe the world through the Great Integrity, they know they are not knowledgeable. Because they do not perceive only through their perceptions, they do not judge this right and that wrong. . .
Then, we fired ‘er up one last time, letting go of our personal attachments.
Jim lights the match.
At this point something very funny happened. Anna Maria’s piece of paper had trouble burning. She started laughing. She was asking herself to finally let go of her mother, who died sixteen years ago! Our mood began to lighten as we watched that damn little piece of paper finally catch fire.
By the time we came to the finale of the ceremony, echoing the wonders of Celebrating Paradox with the song “We Shall Overcome” we had changed the lyrics to —
We are right and wrong. We are right and wrong. Right and wrong make us strong!
Oh deep in our hearts, we do realize
That right and wrong make us strong. . .
— and were in a trance of hilarity, ready for anything, even destruction.
The blows
As the “leader,” I had the dubious honor of taking the first whack, which I did sort of gingerly . . .
We all expected the wall to break up into fragments. Instead it disintegrated into the “true grit” of sand, clay and straw of which it was composed.
Rhonda’s turn to whack.
So we each took a tiny piece of this for our own gardens as a symbol of neighborhood renewal. Here’s Sandy, going to get hers.
We decided to create a wheel barrel brigade, and shovel the gritty remains of the cob oven onto the garden beds. It felt good to return the oven to the earth of which it was made.
The firebricks were the bottom two layers. Danny made sure we saved them for the new smokeless rocket stove we will design and construct in the spring in the dining area by the pond.
Okay, done! Time to eat. The process took longer than expected. We were kind of glad the rain had stopped us from doing the wall on the same day. Colin plans to round up a bunch of strapping male undergraduate students who live nearby after Thanksgiving vacation to manhandle the wall into its new location. He figures it shouldn’t take more than 30 minutes.
The potluck
Vera, at the kitchen table, grabbing a cracker.
Here we are, in my house, hanging out with quiche, fruit, bread, and other sundries.
Bre, another out-of-town permie who stayed with me during the course, and who took most of the photos here (thanks, Bre!) with Adam, who hails from Missouri and had asked to attend our “heartbreaking” ceremony. It’s true. It was heartbreaking. It was also — cerlebrating paradox! — heart-healing.
Rhonda, one of our permaculture teachers, with son Caden.
Rhonda’s daughter Maya, fixing strawberries for the fruit plate.
In one of my emails sent to announce the day’s events, I mentioned that for anyone who is interested, we would have a “metaphysical discussion” of the deeper meaning of the Ceremony of Impermanence after lunch. This we did, utilizing Anna Maria’s 20 years as a traditional Feng Shui practitioner . . .
Anna Maria’s wheel of finely calibrated directions, as used in traditional feng shui.
A bunch of us pored over the map of Green Acres, and the GANG garden’s location within it, to understand, through the symbolic language of Feng Shui, on an impersonal level, why this destruction/renewal process had been necessary.
After this, I told the group a story of what I had discovered upon awakening that very morning. . .
I had wondered why this whole five months process had felt so important, and so difficult, and all of a sudden it had occurred to me that it was a “replay,” though with new characters and plot, understanding and outcome, of a drama that I had been involved in nearly 40 years earlier, during which I had been scapegoated and fired from my job as a teacher at the experimental New College of California for “being too experimental.” It was only years later that I recognized the entire process had originated in my arrogance (that persona again!). Now this time, many decades later, I had attracted another opportunity to deal with a multidimensional situation that required great discernment in order to thread my way through and shift it from destruction to transformation.
And, I concluded, I checked it with the symbolic language of astrology and discovered this: the chief fuel that I am burning in this lifetime is a 90° frictional square between Venus (personal love, desire) and Neptune (impersonal love, compassion). When the New College fiasco happened, in 1974, the slow-moving planet Pluto, agent of death and rebirth, had conjuncted my Neptune. Now, during this time when my soul had constellated parallel situation as part of the lesson plan for this lifetime, Pluto had moved 90 degrees, to conjunct Venus!
Voila! Out of destruction, resurrection. Out of confusion, clarity. Out of pain, joy.
Aftermath
That evening, I was lying on the couch when Zilia (Vera’s daughter) called. Said she was standing in front of the IU auditorium, and there was a guy there who was selling his $85 ticket for $65. Would I like to get it for the sold-out Paul Simon concert. Yes. I would!
The evening began with an old favorite, “Days and Miracle and Wonders,” truly a harbinger of these days when we are learning to Occupy our hearts and celebrate paradox. And near the end of the concert, his song “Love is Eternal Sacred Light,” its refrain:
Love is eternal sacred light
Free from the shackles of time
Evil is darkness, sight without sight
A demon that feeds all the mind
Love is eternal sacred light
Love is eternal sacred light
Love is eternal sacred light
