Karinaland River

  The green leaves of my new Ginkgo tree wave like little flags. Their special green color has  a minute yellow tinge – not only in the golden evening sun, as in this snap shot with rhododendron in back.   Planted last November, I did not know how the young tree would like its spot on the front hill where I had taken out a couple of small oaks to give it sun. It felt like a wild adventure to finally proceed with my long-held wish and make space for a Ginkgo friend in Karinaland. How would it go?    T he first  small Ginkgo leaves  sprouting in late March  from buds   on bare branches – miraculous wonder!   Mine is a male Ginkgo producing small pollen cones that dry and drop off. The tree will grow slowly. People visiting easily overlook it, so I point out my new friend with affection. This tree, native to China, is ancient, going back approximately 170 million years. It is able to live up to 1,500 years. Some Ginkgo trees in Hiroshima were the only living organism within 2 kilometers

  April 24 th  is Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day.  This year this date is also Orthodox Easter Day.   On Wednesday, I visited my friend Pete Najarian to bring him a copy of Bob’s  Black Lives, White Lives . Pete is a writer and artist. His mother Zaroohe Najarian is the “star” of my film  I Will Not Be Sad In This World  (2001). It’s been a while, so when catching up on things, we also talk about Zaroohe. Pete shows me a copy of his last drawing of her, the only one made with an ink pen. Usually he draws her with a pencil when visiting the nursing home. This last time she is far away already, and a few days later on March 15, 2006, she dies at age 101. For her funeral, I drive with Pete to Fresno.   Drawing of Zaroohe by Pete Najarian, published in his book “The Artist and His Mother”   “I'm not going to be sad, I make myself happy,“ she declares in my film. For its title, I chose an old Armenian folk song:  I will not be sad in this world . Zaroohe is still with me. All over my

Evening view from the street gives me a sense of life’s cyclical fullness:      Memorial Mural on garage doors – rusty Gate at stairs – old Rhododendron in full bloom in patio       The Mural is still waiting for me to add names of innocently imprisoned and exonerated people. The metal gate and fence pieces have been rusting nicely since December 2019. I designed them to keep the deer out, and Andrew, a highly skilled metal worker came along for the adventure and built it all. Since I had to cut the two old Magnolia trees down, the old rhododendron gets more sun and is exploding each Spring into huge spheres of fuchsia flowers, much admired these days by passers-by…    All of life seems to be mingling close by in this combination of commemoration, death, decay, renewal, blossoming, light & shadow, boundaries & limitless sky….    

  Well, Squirrel Week just ended…   The photos in the daily short articles are endearing, funny, and mind-boggling. If you need a reprieve from human news, try these reports from Washington, DC. https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/04/11/best-of-squirrel-photos/   As you know, I have my own squirrel paradise in the old Live Oaks. And have reported to you about them before. For years, I have felt the common Eastern Fox Squirrels here in California are just too big to be considered cute, they are ravenous, greedy, and wasteful dropping stolen plums and apples after just one bite, leaving sometimes nothing unless I want to harvest unripe fruit.      Then last November came Silvana into the picture a much smaller lithe acrobat and air dancer. She’s been building nests with a partner, and I have two kinds of squirrels now in the garden. There is a lot of flirting going on, when I talk to them out loud, and after a while I make sure to also scare them away so they don’t become too ta

  For two hours I converse with my niece Inka in Germany on the phone   – wonderful! Have not spoken to her in over a year because of time difference etc. And it’s been 3 years since I last visited, and won’t be able to go this year either, normally I visit every year. Inka is 33 now, married, with a 5-year-old son and a 3-year-old daughter in Bad Wildungen near a big lake where they have taken up sailing. She is well situated, earthy, her heart is open, focused on raising her children, doing systemic constellation work for companies at the side. Inka is amazed when I tell her about realities in America, the astronomic level of violence, the extreme lying and distorting of facts, the staggering number of guns and automatic rifles, and most of all the blatant and subtle ongoing racism. She knows about my Memorial Mural, and the re-issue of Bob’s   Black Lives, White Lives , from Facebook entries. 30 years ago, when 2-year-old little Inka gets whiny on a stroll through the woods, my husb

The Garden is at its fullest and lushest right now – intoxicating!   If you are reading this, you are invited: please come by and visit tomorrow Saturday, I’ll be around from 1 pm on. I will be making a big glass pot of garden tea with herbs and flowers from Karinaland :)  This feast of colors, fragrances and textures  won't last long since we are in severe drought, and I am watering only certain spots conservatively. So, don't wait, now is the time to be delighted .   Everyone is showing off: my new small gingko tree dressing up in light green, Rhododendron exploding in opulent fuscia, purple clematis, patches of Melissa (lemon balm), my meadow of Plantain plants is back (for medicine), the nasturtiums in red, orange, yellow, delayed this year, Wysteria’s sweet fragrance wafting down the hill, the Live Oaks thinner than ever but hanging in, wild roses, forget-me-nots, patches of wild violet with their heart-shaped leaves, wild onions scattered throughout, oregano, rosemary and

The Lonely Loaf of Bread Here is a loaf of bread  by master bread baker Eduardo Morell. His loaves have the texture and taste of fine ingredients, plus the alchemy of skill & devotion. They are basic hearty nourishment that is divine. For me as a child, the fields of barley, rye, wheat, and oats were experiences of delight and freedom, undulating and swaying in summer’s wind. My body and heart bouncing and skipping along unpaved dusty roads, alongside that which feeds. What a miracle! Delight, Gratitude, Reverence…. A beautiful loaf of bread will always make me tear up with awe, especially these days…     Even in war times we find poetry and bread.  A lonely loaf of bread .  In today’s newspaper this scene :  “ A snow-dusted loaf of bread remained on the park bench on Monday….” (a link below to article & photo)  We know immediately that the photo is not luxury item advertisement. We know it refers to people absent, perhaps a desperate flight, blood in the sand, or dead bodies s