The Tenets of Rootedness

Rooted: Life at the Crossroads of Science, Nature and Spirit.  By Lyanda Lynn Haupt. Litte, Brown Spark, 2021, 229 pages.  FVRLibrary.

The Tenets of Rootedness

Ecology and Mysticism
Everyday Animism - Aliveness of Living Beings
Poetry and Science Intermingle
Truth and Fact are Not Synonyms
Mystery - Unknown Dimensions, Awe
Kindred, All
Kith - Your local environment, Place
Reciprocity - Interbeing, Interdependence
All is Sacred - Reverence, Awe, Respect
Enchantment and Wonder
Creativity and the Great Work - Drawing, Painting, Collecting
Eccentricity - Individuality, Unconventional

Try: Walking, Gardening, Reading, Nature Studies, Visiting Beautiful Places, Play, Listening, Seeing, Looking at Botany or Animal Books, Swimming, Going Barefoot on Grass or Sand, etc.

Gardening in Vancouver, Washington

Gardening Information

Understanding your gardening environment is essential to success.  What are the climate conditions in your area during a year's cycle?  What is the soil like?
What kinds of plants are grown successfully in your area?  What nurseries are nearby.  

Vancouver, Washington, USA, Zip Code: 98662

Hardiness Zone:  Zone 8a: 10F to 15F

Average First Frost:  October 21 - 31

Average Last Frost:  April 1 - 10

Koppen-Geiger Climate Zone:  Csb - Warm-Summer Mediterranean Climate

Ecoregion:  3a - Portland Vancouver Basin

Palmer Drought Index:  Extremely Moist

Average Annual Rainfall:  43.55 inches

Heat Zone Days:  Rare Over 86F 

Elevation:  171 feet above the Pacific Ocean

Soil:  

Nurseries:  Yard and Garden, Shorty's, Tsugawa in Woodland, Lowe's and Home Depot.  

General Geography: 

The Pacific Ocean and Astoria, Oregon, is 100 miles to the West from Vancouver.
The south side of the City of Vancouver is the Columbia River, and across the river is Portland, Oregon.  The Cascade range and Columbia Gorge is to the East.  Looking north: 165 miles to Seattle, 494 miles to Vancouver, Canada; 105 miles to Olympia, and 45 miles to Mt. St. Helens.  

January Average: 33F low, 46F high, 6" Rain

February Average: 35F low, 50F high, 4.99" Rain

March Average: 37F low, 56F high, 4.38" Rain

April Average:  40F low, 60F high, 3.28" Rain

May Average:  45F low, 67F high, 2.67" Rain

June Average:  50F low, 72F high, 1.88" Rain

July Average:  53F low, 79F high, .8" Rain

August Average:  57F low, 82F high, .5" Rain

September Average:  49F low, 75F high, 1.91" Rain

October Average:  42F low, 64F high, 3.41" Rain

November Average:  38F low, 52F high, 6.49" Rain

December Average:  34F low, 46F high, 6.68" Rain

Yearly Averages:  42F low, 62F high, 43.55" Rain


The Spirit of Gardening

Gardening in Red Bluff, California

Colors in the Garden: Vancouver, WA

BANG BANG - Dead Doves

A repost from September 2014:

Yesterday, dove hunting season opened in Tehama County.  Throughout the day, we heard the blasts of shotguns coming from the surrounding fields, dry creek beds, and orchards.

I don’t know how much edible meat is left of these small birds after being killed by a blast of shotgun pellets.  Pretty lean pickings I would think. 

We have lots of mourning doves and California quail living on our five acre rural parcel.  I am not a hunter, so they are safe on our land. These doves feed at our bird feeders and eat weed seeds. 

Red Bluff has lots of hunters.  We have large numbers of "beer, guns, and church on Sunday" folks in our area.  Guns are sacred phallic fetishes hereabouts. You know, fashionable rural values:  killing creatures is fun. 

I much prefer listening to the cooing of living mourning doves over the blasting of shotguns.  

“Mourning doves are the traditional bird of peace and a beloved backyard songbird. But some people use mourning doves as live targets, sometimes calling them "cheap skeet." Hunters kill more doves each year—more than 20 million—than any other animal in the country.

Doves are not overpopulated, and hunting them doesn't feed anyone or help manage wildlife. Mourning doves—called the "farmer's friend" because they eat weed seeds—pose no threat to crops, homes or anything of value to people.

Many hunters don't bother to retrieve the dead or wounded birds.

American kestrels, sharp-shinned hawks, and other federally protected birds look like doves and can be shot by mistake.

Mourning doves nest during the fall hunting season, and hunting can orphan chicks, who starve in the nest without their parents' care.”

-  Dove Shooting, The Humane Society of the United States

Gardening and Environmental Awareness

 "Odd as I am sure it will appear to some, I can think of no better form of personal involvement in the cure of the environment than that of gardening.  A person who is growing a garden, if he is growing it organically, is improving a piece of the world.  He is producing something to eat, which makes him somewhat independent of the grocery business, but he is also enlarging, for himself, the meaning of food and the pleasure of eating.  The food he grows will be fresher, more nutritious, less contaminated by poisons and preservatives and dyes that what he can buy in a store.  He is reducing the trash problem; a garden is not a disposable container, and it will digest and reuse its own wastes.  If he enjoys working in his garden, then he is less dependent on an automobile or merchant for his pleasure.  He is involving himself directly in the work of feeding people. 

A person who undertakes to grow a garden at home, by practices that will preserve rather than exploit the economy of the soil, has set his mind decisively against what is wrong with us.  He is helping himself in a way that dignifies him and that is rich in meaning and pleasure.  But he is doing something else that is more important: he is making vital contact with the soil and the weather on which his life depends.  He will no longer look upon rain as a traffic impediment, or upon the sun as a holiday decoration.  And his sense of humanity's dependence on the world will have grown precise enough, one would hope, to be politically clarifying and useful."
-  Wendell Berry, "The World-Ending Fire", p. 55

Ecology and Mysticism Reading List

My Reading List for the Spring of 2017

Guide books, Day Hiking Books, Travel Books, History Books, and Campground Directory Books for Washington and Oregon

Ecomysticism: The Profound Experience of Nature as Spiritual Guide.  By Carl von Essen, M.D..  Bear & Co., 2010.  288 pages.  ISBN: 978159141183.  VSCL.  Thus far, this has been an excellent read.  

Nature Mysticism.  By John Edward Mercer (1857-1922).  CreateSpace Independent Pub., 2016.  178 pages.  ISBN: 9781536805895.  VSCL.  I have the Kindle edition.

Spiritual Ecology: The Cry of the Earth.  Edited by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee.  The Golden Sufi Center, 2nd Edition, 2016.  336 pages.  ISBN: 97819413994144.  VSCL.  I have the Kindle edition. 

The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World.  By David Abram.  New York, Vintage, 1996.  Index, bibliography, notes, 326 pages.  ISBN: 978-0679776390.  VSCL.  I've read this book twice. 

Senses and Consciousness

One Old Daoist Druids Final Journey