Eradicating Bull Thistles

          For forty years I single-handedly kept the Canadian bull thistles from taking a foothold on the gravel road I live on. I dug up every thistle that showed its head or, if my eyes were good, even just its feet. I was the thistle eradicator.

          But thistles love disturbed land. Two years ago BLM did an undergrowth, fire-safety burn along an old logging road close to my home. A few weeks ago, walking along that road, I discovered an enormous patch of bull thistles. Their bristly balls atop thorny stems were just beginning to peak into purple.

        I went home and prepared for battle. I put on my Garden Girl overalls, a long-sleeved denim shirt, my thickest garden gloves, and a hard-hat straw hat. Then, armed with clippers, long-handled shears, and a paper bag for decapitated blossoms, I returned to the thistles.

          Unfortunately, they were growing in blackberries. As I waded through blackberries deep into the thistle patch, I saw that the thistles were growing on such a steep hill that I would slide down into them if I tried to cut them from above, so I slid, stumbled, and climbed down the hill to attack them from below. I was glad for my hard-hat straw hat, since of course the first thistle plant fell downhill as I cut it. I learned how to manipulate the loppers to fell the thistle uphill, into other thistle plants, then to drag it up to the road and go after the round-ball blossoms with my clippers, avoiding barbs. Thistle thorns stab so sharply I think they might have the porcupine's ability to throw barbs into the flesh. I don't think they eject a poison into the skin, but it feels as though they do.

          Entangled in blackberry vines and balanced on a steep hill, I had to be careful not to fall. I am not Brer Rabbit! I also didn't want to drop my clippers. When I did, they disappeared into the undergrowth of blackberries, amid thistles.

Find the clippers

         Have I mentioned the 90-degree heat? Have I mentioned the mosquitoes? Have I mentioned the bear? (I saw him on two different days.) On the other hand, have I mentioned the birds?

         I cut off every head of each thistle plant, then cut every leaf node. I cut each stem every four or five inches. I decimated each thistle plant, working my way up the stem, leaf node by leaf node, snip, snip, snip. 

Any buds that were showing purple or even white went into my paper bag because buds, even beheaded, can still burst into wind-borne seeds.

          I worked four hours a day for three days. I got every last thistle in that patch. I even nosed into the blackberries and cut down the foot-high babies. I might have missed a few, but I'll be back when they've grown big enough to detect in the blackberries. I'll be back.

          As I walked back down the road after my victory, I saw another patch of thistles, not as big but on just as steep a bank and growing not in blackberries but in poison oak. I went after the thistles, anyway. I found another, smaller patch growing in a less steep place and spread out better and not as numerous. They're gone now, too. Later, turning my footsteps down the road from where I emerge onto it from the woods, I found the biggest patch yet. 

I went after it. When it is lying on the ground, I'll walk on down the hill to see if there are more.

           I have filled eight bags with purple thistle blossoms and sealed them tightly. Next fall I'll burn them.

          The question now is whether I should range up the road or down to look for more thistle patches. The question is whether I have taken on a Herculean task. Or maybe a Sisyphean one. Maybe there are more patches in other places that I'll never be able to get to before they start throwing seeds to the winds and undoing all my good work.

          As I fight the thorns and cut down and decapitate the thistles, I know that even if I can't stop the thistles altogether, I have kept hundreds of plants from growing. No matter how many come up next year, there would have been more if I hadn't been the thistle eradicator. The native plants will thank me. All pasture owners in the vicinity will thank me. I thank me. It's a good deed I'm doing.

I Have Traveled a Good Deal in Wonderland

          My sister Laura Martin blogs at naturebasedblog.com. Last week she wrote about not being able to travel with her husband this year, as they had planned, so she took a trip around her own yard instead. It's like Thoreau saying he had "travelled a good deal in Concord." Laura's pictures inspired me to take a little journey around my own land, which I call Wonderland, and see what I could see.

In the garden, the echinacea was eye-catchingly beautiful.

A rose on the fence had a delicate beauty.

 Even the lowly zucchini was worthy of a tourist's glance.

Outside the garden I found wilder beauties: milkweed under the apple tree 

chicory in the field

grapes dangling on low-lying Oregon grape bushes.

There was also bear scat under the apple tree. Maybe it doesn't make a beautiful picture, but no tourist would pass the opportunity to prove such proximity to a bear!

But it isn't the garden or the wildflowers but the woods that make Wonderland a wonderland—just simply the trees.

I found other beauties of pattern and texture.

and a touch of art in the Zen garden.

At the end of my journey, back at the house, impatiens greeted me with exotic color,

and the mountain, as always, gave the final blessing on my travels around Wonderland.

Ritual for Mike in the Red Buttes Wilderness

         After Mike died, I thought immediately that I wanted to swim in a mountain lake, but until recently weather and circumstances prevented that swim. Then my son, Ela, came down from Washington state to visit and hiked with me to a small lake in the Red Buttes Wilderness Area, a favorite destination during his childhood and one of my favorite places in the world, a lake that will remain nameless here to help preserve its pristine nature and the solitude that is more and more rare there.

          From the beginning of the trail, where phlox massed the shady forest floor with deep pink blossoms,

All photos by Ela Lamblin

to the meadows of paintbrush, lomatium, penstemon, Oregon sunshine, and many other flowers, the wildflowers were as rich and vibrant as they had been the year before, when Mike and I  hiked this trail. This time I counted fifty-four different kinds of wildflowers. The weather was perfect for hiking, and the views—snowy Mt. Shasta rising over the dark green forests of the Seiad Valley, sections of fire-blackened trunks rising through green undergrowth in a striped pattern with still-green forests, the stony red peaks of the Red Buttes—were stunning.

          After walking for two and a half hours, we climbed over the rocks just before the lake itself.

Bear grass and azaleas with the lake, center, in the distance.

Then it lay before us, small and round, deep blue, lined on one side with pastel-red rocks and on the other with white-blooming azaleas, interspersed with plumes of bear grass, in thick green shrubs under the looming red cliff of Kangaroo Mountain. 

          I swam with my head above water so I could breathe the azalea-perfumed air and keep the mountain in sight. The cold blue water was the balm I was wanting. I swam around and around and around. Then I swam close to shore and asked Ela to meet me on the far side of the lake with my towel and the vial of Mike's ashes.

Swimming. The ritual was under the tree just to the right of center in photo.

          Sitting with Ela on the red rocks above the lake, under a large Jeffrey pine tree, I began this ritual with one of the poems I had written after Mike died, called "Cut." It ends with these words:

                    And oh, my heart, my heart

                    sliced open with grief's keen edge

                    on what altar can I lay you down?

                    Where find cure for such cruel cut?

As I looked at the lake and mountains in front of me, I realized that there was the altar on which I had laid my heart, that the hike, the swim, the presence of such beauty, and the companionship of my son were the cure for such grief. With that thought I thanked Mike for all he had given me in our life together, blessed his presence in this place, and released his ashes into the air towards the lake. 

          Ela said a few words to and on behalf of Mike, expressing regret that he hadn't known him better (as so many of my friends have said) and speaking about his strength of character and good nature. Then Ela tossed the last fine-dust ashes into the air.

          We hiked back at a faster pace. Mt. Shasta shimmered on the horizon. My body felt fresh and alive from the swim and the walking. My spirit was calmed by the ritual. I was at peace.

       

Garden Ceremony for Mike

          The next ceremony for Mike's ashes, after the spontaneous ritual I did at Azalea Lake (see post on June 21, 2020), was with four of my closest women friends, in my garden, where the flowers were blooming yellow and lavender, and the lettuces, peas, and broccoli were flourishing. I seated us six feet apart, as much in the shade of the apple tree as I could get us. I had bought a rose bush for each guest to plant in a pot of soil in which she would incorporate some of Mike's ashes and had asked each friend to bring something to contribute to the ritual.

          Janet, Mike's and my yoga instructor, went first.

She told stories from yoga class about Mike, a novice to yoga, emphasizing his tenacity and willingness to do poses that were difficult for him. Then she read a quote from Pema Chödron, one of her favorite Buddhist writers: "To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest." (Oh, yes, I thought: as I have been by losing Mike). She planted the Royal Dane rose, which later graced me with a beautiful pink-orange blossom.

         Tracy was next.

She talked about being impressed with Mike's intelligence the first time she met him and with the way he was able to "keep up with" me, meaning also the physical activities we so enjoyed together (hiking and skiing). She played a YouTube rendition of Leonard Cohen's "If It Be Your Will" that started my tears flowing (but it was an appropriate time for tears!). Tracy planted the Ginger Syllabub rose.

          Kate talked about seeing me turn down other men during the years she has known me (that made me laugh!) and then watching me fall for Mike.

She sang "Spring and Summer," from John Denver's "Season Suite," as a reminder for me that I will find Mike in all of nature. The rose Kate chose to plant was the Rock Star.

          Joan was next.

She talked about the long friendship she and I have shared and what a joy it was to welcome Mike into my life. She read a poem about Mike she had written that morning and planted the Champagne Cocktail rose.

          Then it was my turn. Before reading my poem, "Arcs of Grief and Love," I explained what chiasmus was (the arcing patterns of this poem: references to me at each end of a line with two references to Mike within that arc, as in the first line, "My love could not conquer your cancer, and your illness could not succumb to my tenderness"). Then I read the poem and talked about what Mike had meant to me and how much I will miss him, repeating what I have said many times: Mike was the best companion I have ever had. I enriched the soil of the Dame de Coeur rose with a good bit of Mike's ashes and a splash of my tears before planting it.

          After the ritual we moved from the garden to the deck of the house, where my flower boxes  of petunias, lobelia, cosmos, and impatiens provided rich color and joy. For lunch I served the dinner Mike always prepared after yoga class: crackers with a variety of good cheeses, and fruit with yogurt. My good friends ate, talked, and laughed with me before exchanging air hugs and going on their way.

          I tend my roses carefully. They are doing well.

Royal Dane rose, first bloom

                    

               

Six Helpful People

            Earlier this week I drove 12 miles up a gravel road to Greenstone trailhead for a seven-mile hike on the Jack-Ash trail. The trail, new to me, was stunningly beautiful, with glorious long views of the Siskiyou Crest and unending displays of flowers. I strewed Mike’s ashes over the flowers overlooking that view.

            It was late afternoon when I drove the 12 miles of gravel road back down the mountain. Just before I reached the paved road, my car started making a horrendous metal-grinding sound. I stopped immediately, then tried driving again, then stopped again in alarm. Clearly I shouldn't be driving the car. I pulled to the side of the road to call AAA. 

          No cell service. 

          I had friends who lived a mile down the road, so I started towards their house for help, but when I passed a house, up the hill from the road, with some people in the yard, I called up to them: “Hello! Can you help me?”

         A man and two young girls came walking down the driveway towards me. I courteously put on my mask and explained my situation. They immediately jumped into help-thy-neighbor mode, becoming, cumulatively, Helpful Person number 1.

          The girls, Allie and Caitlin, told me the names of the goats and the dog as we walked up to the house and assured me that the dog was so friendly he would want to lick my face. At the house, their grandfather, Jim, handed me a cordless phone. Allie showed me how to use it.

            I had a momentary second scare when the AAA telephone person said the member number I gave wasn’t valid. I was afraid I had forgotten to renew my membership, but then she looked me up by name instead (becoming Helpful Person number 2, since she could have just sent me packing). When she verified that I was certainly a member, she said she would send me a tow truck but since I couldn’t ride in the cab with the driver (COVID-19), could I find a ride with someone? 

            The first person I called didn't pick up the phone because she didn't recognize the number. The next person picked up when she heard my voice and said she would meet me when the tow truck got there, in about an hour and a half. Helpful Person number 3.

          With many grateful thanks to Helpful Person number 1, who had acted like I was the person who should be thanked for giving them an opportunity to be helpful, I walked back to my car. The tow truck arrived within an hour. 

            The driver loaded the car, then waited with me, qualifying himself as Helpful Person number 4, till Kate, Helpful Person number 3, came. Then we all drove to Mike’s house, where I would leave the car and spend the night, since it was too late to go to the mechanic's that afternoon. 

          I had visions of the car being at the mechanic's for no telling how long, my having to rent a car in the meantime, money pouring out of my pocket.

           That's not how the story spun because when the tow truck stopped in front of Mike's house, Mike's super-helpful neighbor, Simon, came running out to see if he could help. He said he would take a look at the car after dinner. He said his wife was making burritos; did I want one? 

            He brought me a burrito from Helpful Person number 5, his wife, Debbie. He put WD40 on the front-door lock for me because he had seen me having trouble with it, then took a look at the car. He drove it fifty feet. Debbie, Helpful Person number 5, said the noise sounded like a rock in the brake pads. Simon agreed. He told me I should drive the car ten blocks to Les Schwab in the morning. Simon was a very big Helpful Person (number 6).

            The next morning the folks at Les Schwab took the rock out of the brakes and sent me on my way. They, of course, were helpful people, too, but they were, courteously and helpfully, just doing their job. All the other helpful people in this story were being helpful just because they wanted to be kind to someone in need.

          May we all always do the same.