A summer poem in December.

"The Summer Day," by Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean –
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down –
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to all down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Sunday's bounty.

November rain.

Yesterday morning I woke up to the sound of water dribbling down the ABS pipe along the house that leads to the cistern. This was a new sound, and as a homeowner (especially early in the morning) new sounds are by definition suspicious. I sat up very startled, and was quickly calming myself, satisfied that everything was going where it was supposed to and indeed making all the right noises according to their little water paths - I had just never heard these things before.

So today, I googled images for "chicken" and "rain" and this snapshot of Don, Jim, Bob, Alva, and Bud is one of the photos I got. Not exactly what I was looking for - I have never met those five hefty, mountain men, but I am sure they had a good time eating the chicken if the rain didn't keep the fire at bay.

I am really writing because I could barely contain my excitement that it is actually raining and the water catchment tank is filling up (slowly as there is really only a light drizzle here and there). This morning I could even turn on the spigot to find free, untainted agua pouring out. This is all very exciting as the cistern has now lost its catchment virginity of sorts. I also saw a little toad between the aloe patch and the cover crop I have planted in the summer beds. I always take it as a good sign that random little creatures live in the yard - unless they are feral cats going after the chickens (there's at least one that I regularly am forced to throw rocks at) or hundreds of swallows making off with free chicken feed (I'm thinking a scarecrow?).

And with the rain, the gutters have not fallen off (though there are a few places I will have to seal up), the tank hasn't fallen over, and the plants in the basins look very content with their new found locations. According to all the weather websites and forecasters, there is a 100% chance of rain for the rest of the day and night, into tomorrow. For anyone who knows anything about Tucson, saying that it will rain with such certainty is nearly unheard of, and tantamount to saying something like Dick Cheney is going to have another heart attack, take his shiny, black helmet off, and beg forgiveness just like he did in Star Wars - don't get our hopes up if it isn't absolutely true.

Well at least it's raining.

Just before the midnight hour.

In perfect Peruvian form, one of the Araucanas has delivered a last minute blue-green egg just before the big feast of dead birds that takes place tomorrow all across this confused land. It seems that all of my threats of beheading and baking were sufficient for the absolute bare minimum of return on their part. Not knowing which bird it was that laid the egg, I of course cannot risk the sacrifice and all three will therefore survive...

I know you were all dying to know when the first blue-green Araucana egg was laid. So here it is. Behold, the fabled egg of the South! Happy holidays to you all.

Catching Water: A progression

Day 1: Before we got started. I actually just put the ladders there because it looked too empty.

Day 2: Progress has been made - more is about to take place. This time we actually needed the ladder.

After all sorts of hard work and sweat. No ladder, just wishing for rain...

Tragedy continued.

Well they identified the young man who was shot and killed near my house. Manuel Fimbres-Moreno was 26. He will always be 26. I did not know Manuel - at least that I know of. But I am terribly saddened by his murder and cannot begin to imagine the pain of his family.

They arrested someone on suspicion of killing him. The kid they arrested is 21. Certainly it is not proven that he is responsible, but undoubtedly prison is in his future given the broken beyond repair system of injustice. For me it is simply a furtherance of a terrible tragedy. But this time, more than ever we will be complicate in what takes place as the tax payer funded "justice" system will do everything possible to ensure that no rehabilitation will ever take place.

Are we now safer that a young man will spend years in prison learning how to be more violent, less feeling, possibly drug addicted, and completely removed from his family? And when he returns to our community (96 percent of all Arizona prisoners do) will he have any better idea how to positively impact the people around him? Or will he be hardened, broken, and lacking any real understanding of what responsibility would actually mean in a situation like this? Will he ever have a chance at anything different than just that? These are questions I ask myself, but are never asked when laws are passed and people punished. Whatever happens to this young man, will we as a community be better for the judgment that is made on his life? I am positive we will not. This makes the tragedy of last Wednesday evening even that more horrendous.

Tucson police identify man who was fatally shot last week...

Catching Water: Day 2

Day 2 was oh-so-satisfying I couldn't stop smiling for the rest of the day. Even before 5pm the backyard looked totally transformed with the cistern all finished and sealed, and two whole basins lined with rocks, planted, and mulched. Everyone worked fabulously and seemed to enjoy the whole day. Before I knew it, time was up and we had accomplished way more than I had anticipated. Planting native flowers and grasses is so instantly gratifying, especially here in the desert where greenery is sparse and plant life certainly more subtle. (For great help and a wide selection of native plants visit Desert Survivors.)

Because things went so smoothly I have very little in the way of photo documentation during the bulk of the day's work. The work mostly included extending PVC pipe to the spigot, cutting inside ABS pipe to length within the cistern, and ensuring that the basin was deep enough to accommodate overflow from the ABS overflow line. Enough technical details. Here are the photos.

This is Basin 1. It is actually not for the water cistern but will be fed by a gutter system off the shop roof.

Working, digging, planting, supervising on Basin 2 that will receive overflow water from the cistern.

Still working on Basin 2. The river rocks along the edge help to prevent erosion.

There is a lot of standing around happening in this picture, but consider it similar to one of those moments when suddenly there is silence among a large group of people - before, it was really chaotic, but for that moment it seems calm and ordered. Either way, we got heaps done.

Everything is sealed, sawn, and ready to get filled with water - as soon as we take the ladder out.

How Chicken Diction has made your life better!

Well the results are in. A little late perhaps, but right in line with all floundering democracies and their voting tendencies. Though you can of course see the results of the poll in the left column, you have no doubt been anticipating the unparalleled, critical analysis of the results by yours truly. So without further ado...

As I suspected and the exit polls clearly indicated, it was a three-way tie between the following ways in which Chicken Diction has made all your lives better:

- I have major chicken envy.
- I am on the frickin' edge of my seat wondering when those Araucanas will lay a blue egg!
- You're a nut job.

There is clearly a theme here between the leading positive impacts of Chicken Diction on your lives. Indeed there is only one clear reason behind these responses being equal in votes - clearly you are all die hard chicken fans, forever rooting for the underchicken(?) to lay a fabled blue egg, to the extent that you read this blog so much you are on the verge of a mental collapse, much like myself. I know, it's difficult to admit, but that is why we ensured that voting remained confidential and free of any tampering, so that you were able to fully express just how beneficial this blog has been to your life.

As an aside, I would like to mention that I am glad no one is stalking me through this blog. Also, I am happy to point out that since it is so obvious that Chicken Diction has a positive impact on peoples' lives, even the poor soul who got lost and inadvertently ended up on this blog must have had a life changing experience.

Wow. I am so relieved that people love this blog. It really serves to entrench my ego in the way that blogs were meant to do. There is nothing more satisfying than writing about oneself and then having people tell you how great you are for it. Thank you Chicken Diction lovers wherever you are. May you continue to find inspiration from my nutty life, shamelessly detailed on this nut job blog!

You've got to dream big.

I might just have my life figured out. Well, mostly.

There was a time before I lived in Tucson, when I imagined myself clad mostly in faded jeans, cowboy boots, and a straw hat (but not exclusively), driving a beat-up, dusty pickup truck past saguaros and cholla buds under the wide open desert skies with craggy mountains on every horizon. If the memory of my imagination serves, I was a high school teacher at some middle of nowhere rural outpost town, living in a rustic house where I watched the sunsets, read endlessly and learned to play the harmonica on the porch under the warm night air. But I could be making that last part up.

If I'm honest, this dreamy and imagined existence I once had of my then future self, first exploded onto the plain of my not always so grounded mental playing field, one summer evening in middle-of-nowhere Pennsylvania. I was working on a 30 acre organic farm with some of the best people ever to stick their fingers in the clay soil along Lost Creek. Visitors abounded that summer, almost as frequently as we spent the nights along the creek, enraptured by the fire, stories, and laughter. At some point during that wetter than usual growing season, punctuated it seemed by more weeds than crops, a friend of a friend showed up with tales of teaching in a far away land called the Southwest, where there was no rain to speak of and road runners were not only cartoons.

It was a point in my life when I needed no help making plans, only deciding which to follow, but somehow the dusty life appealed to my imagination and stuck around in some nebulous form or another. Evidently it has manifested itself, in many ways without my realization, until only the last few days. Here's how.

Clearly I am residing in Tucson, Arizona, though hardly the dusty, rundown, rural mirage I once envisioned, but still the desert nonetheless. And a whole wide range of other similarities to that aforementioned idea of perfection. But the epiphany that has so recently slapped me in the face, thanks to that "friend of a friend" from the creek on the farm in Pennsylvania saying "hello" completely out of the blue, and the wailing of some good ole' fashioned blue grass musicians, is just this: that whatever half-crazed idea of my life I had during that summer of fresh veggie eating, dirty fingernail scrubbing, and organic produce cultivating, I am now right smack dab in the middle of it. Half-crazed or not.

So I'm not a high school teacher (with no plans to be), and though we dread to even say so, Tucson will one day get swallowed by the beast that is Phoenix if we don't run out of water first (fingers sorta crossed I must say) and is therefore NOT rural in the least, I miss too many of the sunsets, and don't read enough at all. BUT, my truck is the Websters Dictionary 217th Edition Honest to Goodness definition of "beat-up", I've got a straw hat that fits me almost as well as the one back on the farm in Pennsylvania though it is less authentic for sure, somehow I am pulling veggies from my old flood plain dirt in the backyard, and that feeling that goes with the old imagined version of me today, is actually how I feel about life right now - which is downright goooood.

AND, to top it all off, about a week ago as the young boys of the Old Crow Medicine Show made sweet sweet bluegrass music, I danced and hopped around in my brand-new-but-used cowboy boots, realizing that I might just have it all figured out. Well almost. I think.

At least I feel oh-so-good. I mean check out these boots! Though my footwear standby is definitely flip flops, everything is better with a good pair of cowboy boots I have now decided.

Local food you should eat.

For all of you in Tucson and looking for a little incentive to visit a local farmer's market, here is a fabulous little clip that aired on Channel 12 about the Santa Cruz River Farmer's Market about five blocks north of my house and the University Farmer's Market. They are just some of the many gems here in the downtown area of Tucson. Hopefully you can find the chance to make it to one or the other of these places. Oh yeah, Mari and I happen to be on a few of the clips at the Santa Cruz Farmer's Market...

Tragedy.

Last night an unidentified young man was was shot and killed on the street about four houses down from mine. It happened right after Riley and I left for ultimate frisbee practice. Mari heard at least five shots. No one knows who this person is, nor who shot him, other than he drove away in a white truck. I'm not sure what to say about this other than it is a tragedy. This morning I walked down the street and lit a candle by the blood stains in the road. That is all I can think to do right now. But somewhere, a young man didn't come home last night, and another has blood on his hands. I guess we all do in some way. So please, take a moment, and do something thoughtful, something kind.

"Rage. Rage against the dying of the light." - Dylan Thomas

Catching Water: Day 1

Day 1 was a huge success with the cistern installed and set in concrete, the piping ready to be finished off next weekend, as well as sealing the lid on. It took us about 5 hours, 10 volunteers, and 20 bags of concrete mix. I am very very happy with the project, all the help, and the new addition to the yard. Though now that I have a cistern in the backyard, it will certainly not rain for months and months. One can hope.

Mari and Jonathan digging out the overflow basin for the cistern.

Riley working on the inflow piping.
(You made Rudy proud!)

See how much Jeremy likes carrying 80 pound bags of concrete?

Catlow prepping the forms for us to pour in the concrete.

Sun is setting and we haven't started mixing concrete yet.

Mixing concrete by hand is oh-so-fun.

We placed the cistern (no longer a culvert) in the cement before we had as much as we needed because it was setting up too quickly. So we hand dumped it from the top of the cistern (trying not to splatter too much), and then Catlow had the exciting job of climbing down via a carabiner-strapped ladder and rock climbing webbing in order to bend over and smooth the surface inside. He's a good sport.

One might say I was "supervising" at this point.

Ta-daa!
To be continued in one week...

Catching Water: Sneak preview.

Today is the first day of two water catchment tank workshops in my backyard. Mostly we will mix cement and set a 7 foot tall, 4 foot diameter metal culvert on its end in the cement. With some pipes mixed in for fun. For a diagram of what we are going to do, look at this older post, and for more information about improving our water resources, local watershed management, all here in Tucson, Watershed Management Group knows a thing or two. Here are the parts, pieces, and place.

Culvert, soon to be cistern.

What 1 ton of cement mix looks like next to 3 inch ABS pipes.

Location, location, location. In this case, right under the newly installed gutters seems to make sense.

Winter gardening and chicken talk.

Pathways, river rocks, fire rings, and veggies.

Chiles!

Lettuce, spinach, swiss chard, and paths.

"Hey Hayduke, make sure no one's coming will ya?"

"Coast is allll clear Cracker."

"It's hard out there for a hen. Can hardly find time to lay an egg. Hey you Araucanas! Need some inspiration - check this out!"

Barrio Brew Co. - and chickens of course.

Me and some friends had probably more than enough fun at a new brewery, Barrio Brew Co. this evening and I happened to have a camera along. So here are some photos you may or may not enjoy, that entail our own personal inspiration and imitations of my chickens. You'll probably know which are which, but in case you are easily confused I have added some subtitles to explain the inspiration and imitations...

To the left.

To the right.

Me and Dave - partial.

We were number 78. They're sticklers about numbers.

Uppy after I told her to think of some neuroscience word I currently can't remember. She enjoyed it though.

At some point I told Dave to be serious, but he didn't do that well, so I told him to pretend one of his rats had died. I don't think this is the picture though.

Debbie's failed attempt at seriousness.

Riley thinking he is in GQ magazine. Really.

This is my "fuck the man" pose. This is why revolutions fail - too much cynicism, not enough gruffness.

Uppy doing "chicken".

Dave, definitely doing "chicken".

Look at me. I'm a chicken.

Wait. Debbie is a chicken too.

Don't forget to vote.

So in case you missed your opportunity on Tuesday to vote for a largely already decided city council, mayor, and two propositions (here in Tucson at least), and for those of you who can't get enough of voting, here is your chance to have your voice heard! Look in the now almost famous "left column" and just below the mocking description of this blog you will find a poll that you can participate in and help answer the question on everyone's mind....How has Chicken Diction made your life better? Polls close next Friday 11/16 @ 6pm Arizona time so don't miss your chance to be apart of democracy and put to use your right to vote.

If you're not absolutely-totally-demoralized- and-angry, then you're certianly not paying attention.

Chicken trippin'.

All Souls' Procession

Every year in Tucson, the All Souls' Procession walks the streets of downtown in a funky, eclectic array of creativity and quirky-ness that really is the epitome of this town. It was last night and a group of about 20 of us walked together to remember the people in Arizona prison's long-term solitary confinement units (as a part of the StopMax Arizona Campaign that I coordinate). The procession culminates with music, floats, and performance art all in order to burn a giant urn with hopes and memories from the year from the people of Tucson. This year they were hoping for 12,000 people. I don't know how many were there, but it was big and fun. Unfortunately I don't have any picks of the amazing floats, masks, or puppets that were everywhere. But here is some of the group that we walked with, and below, is the urn about to go up in flames.

Dia de los Muertos.

Some beautiful pictures from around the world, in honor of the Day of the Dead, care of Reuters.

(Santiago de Sacatepequez, Guatemala)