A couple of weeks ago I took some vacation time and went to help my middle son move out of his apartment in Amherst, Massachusetts.  After the furniture was gone, my job--just as my father had done for me--was to sweep all the remaining detritus into the center of each room, remove the change and other small keepsakes, then sweep it again and again until the pile was gone.  It was just short of three years since we moved him in.  He and his girlfriend were trying out living together while they wrapped up their college courses.  Three years later, it is time to move on. 

They are dividing their time between her mom's house back in MetroWest and our house in Farley.  There are still a couple of rooms worth of furniture on the porch.  In fact, I had to collect some of it from the lawn during yesterday's tornado warning.  Life feels like a tornado sometimes. I worry about them and about all of us as we watch the dismantling of what our society once was.  Every day is a hard choice.

Of course, transitions are part of life and we are all forced to be relatively mobile, or at least flexible.  I looked back at what I was writing in 2022 when we moved the boy in.  His big brother was on the AT, finding his own path after COVID. His younger brother was in high school, finally "in person". My posts back then were already filled with questions about the future of The Eliot Church where I served. Maybe not all of the membership understood that, but the signs were there. We could feel the changes in our bones then.  We feel it now, too.

In the American psyche there is this idea of a "home town" where people live their whole lives and where things never change. It isn't real. Maybe a few people manage to stay in the same place, but...they themselves change. They adapt to stay there, even if they don't think they do.  The place they call home changes, too. Heraclitus was right.  We don't step in the same river more than once.  Life rolls on. We can acknowledge the change. We can prepare for it. It is stressful, of course. That said, there are rewards that come with traveling downstream.

These days, though, so many Americans prefer denial. These folks tell stories that demonize the seeming "new thing" and that celebrates a comic-book past. Many of the problems of today are because of this denial. Living a life of openness is the only real way to go.

A couple of days after moving my middle child out of his apartment in Amherst, we moved our youngest to campus.  He transferred from UMaine to UMass this year seeking a better fit. This year the commute from home was much shorter. He also kept his job at a grocery store near his dorm. However...it is still a change. The flow of life is teaching him, too.

We are nesting a bit. This week we went to the Franklin County Fair in Greenfield.  The fairgrounds are just up the hill from 2nd Church where I serve. I love fairs.  I have been going to them all my life.  Each one is unique, but so much of it was familiar, too. I was never a midway person. I spent my time in the agricultural section like I always have. The county fair draws all kinds of people who these days would never rub shoulders otherwise. We don't have many places like it. Do we talk to each other? Not really.  However, we do have to see each other at least...

Anyway, it was a step toward making space in a new place. All this moving and changing over the past three years has been a lot. It would be good to get settled a bit in this landscape we know through hiking, but that we have never inhabited for an extended period of time. 

​The fall has arrived and so we mark the time. Yes, technically one day is like the next and nothing really begins or ends exactly. School is in, but it only ended recently.  The new church year begins on September 14, but we were in church on September 7th. Still...we have to stop and take stock sometimes. These "beginnings" in the ongoing and interconnected stream of life are like the mountains we climb. At the top is the view of where we have been and where we have yet to go. The pause is worth it, I think. Then...we move on. 

After church yesterday we went to see a new friend sing at a local brewery.  It has already become a "local" for us. We humans are good at building patterns. Some of those patterns can help us make a home in a new place, or accept new people to our old places. We stay connected through the story of how we got there and where we are going. These are good instincts to have. May we always operate in this way when we can, fighting back the fear of the new. If we do, we can see what glorious opportunities await.

I am just starting to see the change of colors on the mountain this week.  It comes off as a spectrum of green, mostly.  However, recently it has been a fairly uniform wall, like a hedge that has grown well out of proportion.  Now it is noticeably more diverse. Up on the ledge the various hardwoods are slowly turning to their cold-weather state. The fluffy darker pines continue as if nothing is happening.

​No doubt species will have something to do with what our impending palette will be.  I suspect there are roughly equal numbers of sugar and red maples, for example.  There are also oak and ash.  Maybe there are a few birches too.  Each will have its own way of going about the change of seasons.  Also, some are on rock shelves that I can see from the porch. For others the soil or water may be more plentiful.  I know from my own explorations that there are a few small drainage streams wending their way to the Millers.  Their mini-biomes seem rich to my untrained eye. 

Anyway, I have noticed the trees noticing the beginning of the transitional season of fall. The weather is colder, too...just a little.  It even rained this week!  Most of the grasses are still very dead.  Yet one can have hope for August and September.  It has been nice not to mow...but only in a way.  I am very busy with church and family and don't mind dropping a task.  That said, it does feel strange.  The earth is changing in ways that seem obvious to some and less to others.

During the heat wave and drought, I put together a new composter.  The house came with one of those black vertical barrels featuring a small door at the bottom.  The critters figured it out well before I got here.  I "upgraded" to a rotating one, which may buy me some time.  Realistically, though, it is also a stopgap.  In the end I will be building a keyhole garden...hopefully in September.  Then I will fill it with leaves, vegetable bits, and finished compost over the winter. Then I will plant it out in the spring. 

This makes sense to me. Both the old and the new composters I have now are built for the suburbs. I don't really live there anymore. You have to accept that there is more wildlife than domestic and they will have their way. I would have just gone straight to some other plan but I don't have the time. The problem is that there are still stumps to pull where the keyhole bed will go.  One can only move so fast...

Thinking about compost has been a good exercise.  The magic of transforming "waste" into "fertility" preaches without my help.  I feel it.  The old and battered and used gets--not discarded but--stored in a sort of dark, warm sabbath container.  Then out of that rolling barrel--or bin or dirt pile--something new comes of it.  That new thing, though is very different.  A handful of finished compost derived from pounds of kitchen scraps, leaves, and newspaper is more altered than a caterpillar emerging from its cocoon a butterfly.  I think compost is a better metaphor for the transformation many of us look for.  We settle for butterfly. Who doesn't celebrate when we manage it! Still, compost is the harbinger of the new thing.  We change not so much to alter ourselves but to alter the world, right?

Anyway, that is all for now.  I am looking forward to the changes, seasonal, agricultural, and otherwise. Who know what will come of us or the world?  We shall see.  Let's do our best to make the location wherever we end up into a fertile place.

Today the air is a little better than it has been.  I can look up to the ledges on Rattlesnake Mountain and the haze is less obvious.  Still, you can tell there are forest fires in Canada. It feels like an annual event.  The local government reminds us that breathing is a risk right now.  We do it anyway. Yesterday every other person I saw looked like they had just wrapped up an hour-long crying jag. Thank you, particulates! Conservatives seem to think that by making Climate Change illegal it will go away.  Thoughts and prayers can't change the weather no matter how hard one tries.

There is plenty of evidence this summer of nature's presence intersecting with ours. A couple days ago an adult black bear walked by the back deck and out to the front driveway before heading north toward the mountain. I think we were just part of its commute.  The bear was massive. We had to delay dinner as Allison waited in the car until it had moved on. 

It has been a long time since I saw one.  I am not sure I have ever seen a bear in this particular context.  We live on a fairly dense street.  However, it is a dead end and there is forest all around us.  Hiking in Maine and New Hampshire we see them but not as close.  We stay away from them and they from us. We definitely do not feed them!  A bear that sees people as sources of food does not fear humanity. Then they are a danger and sometimes have to be relocated or killed. It is another sad story of human encroachment and human ignorance when it comes to the natural world.  The cops said we only have to call them if they get into the garbage. Otherwise, we are all trying our best in the space we have been given.

In other news, I managed to do something to my back on the journey to getting a new fridge.  As I mentioned a couple of posts ago, we got the smallest full-sized refrigerator we could find.  This necessitated removing the outside door to get it into our  vintage 1970's pocket-kitchen.  Our house has good bones but the idea that people would socialize where the food is made was foreign to the builders.  The kitchen was definitely an after-thought. One theory is that they had servants when the house was built in the 1890's. Anyway, I blame the door for a certain awkwardness in my moving about this week. We have a composter that needs assembly...but it will have to wait.

Yesterday As a rehab walk, I braved the hideous air and went over to Energy Park to check out the native plant garden.  It is a short stroll from my office.  I am still thinking meadow thoughts for next year and find it helpful to see some actual plants in the ground.  One can only get so far with the description on the tag; "heavy spreader, reaches 3'-6' tall." The park has a little exhibit that helps explain what I am looking at as well. This weekend we managed to get to the "Bridge of Flowers" which is rehabbing as well.  They had labels, too.  It was our first drive west of Greenfield since we moved.

​Other than that, there are small tasks that I think I can handle.  The yard-demolition continues.  When I can manage it, I cut vines here and there. Some of them are like tree trunks themselves.  It has been a long time since an attempt was made.

There is not much more to say.  Life in summer moves fast then it moves slow, even if you aren't on vacation.  Hopefully next week I will be able to report on a hike or two.  However...I do hear the heat is coming back...

It rained yesterday. What a relief!  There could have been more, though.  The clouds lasted most of the day and there was a steady drizzle, particularly as we got ready for church in the morning.  The soft and fertile soil of the raised beds seemed to have absorbed it reasonably well.  Still, when I planted some gift herbs (thanks to a friend who read of my distress a couple posts ago), I made sure to water them thoroughly.  Also, when I took the last of those plants--probably an enthusiastic but pot-locked version of marjoram--directly in the ground today, the hot, sandy soil was dry as a bone.  I soaked that plant as well.

Today is my "sabbath day"...in a sense.  It is the one day of the week when I am definitively "off" from work.  Errands get done. So does the garden.  There are always household tasks, too. This morning's first task, for example, was to make sure we could get the door off its hinges to accept delivery of a refrigerator in a couple days.  The fridge is the smallest and cheapest "full-sized" one we can find.  Our house, however, is built for a time before appliance escalation.  With the door off...maybe...we will be able to preserve our new food. 

That is all in the future, though.  The old fridge died spectacularly yesterday. It is conventional wisdom that when you move, the appliances in your new place will start to die.  Sometimes there is truth in these common beliefs.

After the door project, the dog and I took a long walk.  We back on to the M&M trail.  Our section--not surprisingly--is road but you can go on for miles.  Theoretically I could have ended up on Mount Monadnock or at the Connecticut border.  The dog is named Carrigain, after my final peak on the NH 48 4,000 footers.  We will go the distance on the M&M, but not today. It would require camping or car spots...and I didn't bring any water.  So after dipping into the woods for a moment to cool off, we turned back around.  Still, it was around 4.5 miles on a beautiful day. 

Now I am back.  This afternoon--after a meal of whatever the fridge hasn't destroyed--will be about making appointments.  There is a tree removal to set up.  The dog needs me to order more pills.  I should fold some laundry and catch up with friends if I can.  It is just the simple tasks of life, right?  We need a day for that sort of thing. 

For me that day is frequently Monday.  The most "sabbath" I get--at least in the way most people think of the term--is a Sunday afternoon when I don't have anything going on.  Then I will sit in front of the TV and cheer on whichever of my many teams happens to be playing.  That​ is relaxing....even when they are losing...which can be pretty frequently.

Whatever the body is doing on this sabbath, I appreciate the freedom of letting my mind wander a bit.  Today I have actually been thinking about that rain and heat.  Climate Change is real.  As I look at my small garden and consider larger dreams for the future, I wonder about expectations.  Maybe whatever berry bushes I order for the spring should be drought-tolerant or do well in the warmer "zones" that gardeners think about.  Certainly the lawn needs a different plan.  It crunches in places where I walk.  We will see what that marjoram plant does...

I found this article in the Boston Globe helpful. It says that within my lifetime we could have the sort of climate that Virginia has now.  That means different plants.  It makes me wonder what I can put outside to replace what is already there.  The lawn is a mix of things.  Someone many years ago must have put down grass seed.  However, wind and time have diversified the ground cover, which is fine with me. These days it is mostly clover and other low plants that survive being mowed occasionally.  In my planning I have a great deal of freedom.  I just left a place where the condition of one's lawn could be the topic of neighborhood gossip, judgement, and retribution.  That isn't the way in Farley.  

Anyway, if you can get through the paywall, I recommend it.  We will continue to move from grass to gardens, bushes, and flowers.  They have some suggestions as to how...

Yesterday in church we had to move back to the sanctuary from the air-conditioned Parish Hall where we had been meeting this summer.  There reason was wildlife.  A bat or bats had escaped from the belfry, which must be painfully hot, and began doing loops around the room.  The low ceiling would have made their motions rather...distracting.  So we decided to give them some space.  I remember early in my career preaching a sermon while a small bird flew about the sanctuary.  No one remembers what I said.  Least of all me.  There is only one sermon on a Sunday morning.  Sometimes nature is preaching.

It's been a minute since I wrote about gardens.  Maybe gardening--a slow and stumbling project in the best of times--hasn't been fully on my radar for a year or two.  My garden was always small.  There are couple or three raised beds containing herbs, mostly.  Also, over time I accumulated a massive number of pots...mostly for flowers and weeds.

Now we have a house that we plan on being at for a while.  Of course I do see the irony of the "temporary" parsonage lasting over two decades and--with all the factors of life--the real possibility that we will never live in another place as long.  Here though, I have "permission" of a sort to move things around and plant, not just for right now...but for an undisclosed future.

With that in mind, I have been at work.  Mostly it has been "garden demo."  Many ornamental plants on the property have grown to stupendous size.  The owner before the woman we bought it from loved both lawns and gardens. He put in a number of flowering bushes--rhododendrons mostly--and some of them went feral in the intervening decade. 

​I totally get it, actually.  They are big and beautiful.  However, they were also filled with vines and absorbed a number of other bushes along the way.  I have been trimming some and removing others.  

One massive collection of bush and vine has been completely removed.  Next year I will use it for planting fruit.  I haven't completely decided between blueberries (high bush), blackberries, and raspberries.  That is OK.  The best time to plant them appears to be in late May.  I have a literal year. There are some wild black raspberries peeking out from some of the brambles, though.  When I find one I stake it...and try not to kill it as I thrash about. In any case--given the growth patterns of these berries--I am a good 24-36 months from a meaningful harvest.

There is a heat wave and a drought here.  This has presented its own challenges.  On the good side, my lawn can be maintained with a grass-whip and some spot mowing with my reel mower.  Reel mowers are what we call the motor-less contraptions of yesteryear.  Mine is made by Fiskar, an actual scissor company. 

This same drought has been hard on the two raised beds I managed to salvage in the move.  Really they are  more the spiritual descendants of the parsonage beds rather than the actual ones.  Each is a third new wood.  However the perennial herbs all survived the trip. Some--like the walking onions--are establishing a new generation while letting the old one pass.  Others need to be trimmed and either dried, or chopped and frozen...maybe next week.

There are a lot of beasts about.  My kale basically feeds the local rabbit population, who have decided the bok choy is my portion. We have had a front-row seat to two different hatchings of two different families of small birds.  I am fighting a loosing battle with some yard-dweller about who gets to enter the compost bin that the previous owner left.  Now I just leave the little door open so they don't damage my plants.  Carving a human space in all this is a chore.  I knew it would be and--so far--I enjoy it more than not.

Anyway, that is where we are right now.  It took a lot of work but it doesn't seem to take much time to write about.  I have empty pots and big dreams.  I am reminding myself that I also have all the time in the world for this.  Nature moves slowly and so should I.  I should see whatever annuals are still about in the garden centers and bang them in the few pots that have soil.  Basil and parsley seem hard to find now, which is too bad.  I have space left over from harvesting choy. There is always, always spot-watering thanks to the heat.

I have ordered a better composter. This time it is one the critters may not figure out right away. Also, I have a lot of studying and watching to do. I have books and videos and sketches of what could be.  There is plenty going on at the church these days.  It is nice to have this other work that leads to its own kind of prayer.

About a week ago I got my car back from the body shop.  I had two claims on it.  The first was from January.  When I realized that I would probably have to change churches after 22 years it made me a bit distracted.  I survived the Advent/Christmas insanity by focusing on work and, of course, on the actual holiday itself.  However, When the new year began there was nothing to distract me from the massive changes ahead.  Anyway, in a state of general overwhelm I managed to gently back my car into a metal barrier at a local gas station, damaging a rear door while leaving the barrier blissfully unaware.  After the "accident" I didn't have the spoons to get it fixed, so I spent six months driving with a slight dent, a blue streak on the door, and a piece of trim flapping in the breeze.

The second claim was a gift from my son, who was raised in the 'burbs with a mailbox screwed to the house.  He backed the car over the regular old rural delivery mailbox at our new home, surgically removing the car's bumper.  That was much more recent, of course, and the proverbial straw that forced me to do something.  He has been distracted, too.  We all have.  However we are settled in to our new place in Franklin County.  I have a month under my belt at 2nd Church of Greenfield.  We are moving on.  Life is fine.

Allison and I even got to go for a hike last weekend!  That was a fun return to normal.  We live in a valley along the Millers River with trail heads pretty much everywhere.  It was just a walk in the "neighborhood" that I would describe further but...we are supposed to keep hiking traffic down thanks to the presence of a VERY popular rock-climbing site.  Its popularity can create a few bottlenecks for hikers, climbers, and residents alike.  Suffice it to say...if you know, you know.  If you would also like to know...just email me.  Everyone involved is very friendly, just also concerned about the ecosystem.

The hike itself was short and lovely.  There was a classic Massachusetts hiking view.  No great snowy or craggy peaks...only a gentle hill across the river and just a hint of Watatic to our east if you risked your life on the ledge to see it.

​We need to get back in shape after a long hiatus of life interfering.  Al's dissertation still lurks but the "search and call" is behind us.  Getting back out will be a slow process, but a pleasant one.

One thing I have been thinking about lately is how location can change a person.  I feel like I am in the process of becoming at a rate that feels unusual to me.  In Natick I wasn't stagnant by a long shot.  However, now I am moving among different people, with a very different congregation.  I have been pushed spiritually, socially, and physically. Also I am back living in the country.  For the most part I have only visited it for the last two decades. Before that, it was just life.  Now the re-entry is...interesting. Nature is overwhelming here--or feels like it.  There always seems to be a reason to head outside. I am planting a small garden now and planning for the springs of '26 and '27. I am always discovering mysteries in the soil and beds that I am now responsible for.

When I get out of work I come home, put on a different sort of work clothes, and then move brush, or fix the mailbox, or plant the flowers and the vegetables...or perform any number of tasks for the slightly-falling-down house that was built in the late 19th Century.  I am trying to remember the skills I was taught by my grandfather starting 40 years ago and ending a quarter century ago. Then I will read up on whatever needs reading up on.  Then I will do more church work and hang out with the family. 

​I will no doubt write more on this at some point.  For now I am trying to enjoy the ride and the different sort of busyness.  We shall see where we end up in the end.  However, I am happy with the new start.

I don't know why I did it, but I grossly underestimated the amount of time and energy it would take to go into search, conclude a search, and work through the many complications of moving, buying a house, ending a ministry, and starting another one.  So in my ignorance I signed up for courses and workshops.  Early in the year they worked out well.  I took a course on non-profit administration, for example.  I felt I would need those more "secular" skills if I stayed at Eliot and worked part time somewhere else.  I highly recommend it if you are from Massachusetts and don't mind the occasional drive to Framingham.  However, this was early in my process and part of the process.

I also signed up for some courses and trainings in the area of ecology and religion.  I do this sometimes when I am stressed out.  Learning something that is separate from the chaos is fulfilling and useful for the future.  However...in this case I had to back away.  Before I did, though, I managed to complete an assignment in which I wrote a "Psalm" about the county where I am moving.  It made sense to focus my energy there since we were heading out for house-hunting, candidating, and other meetings.  Anyway, here it is.  I didn't finish the course but I recommend it. I also recommend the platform for people who are interested in the study of religion...