Lavender Patch Specialties from Blueberry Gardens

Get ready, hummingbirds are on their way! But please, if you are going to put feeders out, please do so responsibly. No red dye, no soap and clean feeders regul...arly, daily when it gets hot. Mold will swell a hummingbirds tongue and they will suffocate. I’m happy to help anyone who needs more info. here is the link to the interactive map: https://www.hummingbirdcentral.com/hummingbird-migration-sp More info on feeding: https://www.audubon.org/news/hummingbird-feeding-faqs

Dear Ones: I want to share something beautiful with you today. This is a map of the Mississippi River, created in 1944 by a cartographer named Harold Fisk. It’...s called a meander map. It demonstrates all the various paths that the Mississippi has taken over the millennia. The different colors represent moments in history when the river jumped her banks and changed her course dramatically. Native Americans used to move their settlements along with the river’s constant shifts and changes, but Americans saw things differently. In the 1940s, the Army Corps of Engineers decided to lock down the Mississippi River into a certain course. They built walls and levees and declared: These are now the official boundaries of the Mississippi. She doesn’t move an inch from HERE. Nature, of course, has had different plans. I’m bringing this up today, because I’ve been thinking lately about the ways that I keep trying to control my own nature. I see the rules and boundaries that I have set for myself over the years, and how often they have failed. I think about the vows I’ve made to myself and others about where I’m going to be next year, or who I am going to be next year. Endless, expensive, stress-inducing efforts to civilize the river of my being. But if you were to look at the history of my life, it looks a lot like this map right here. This map could be a portrait of my heart’s own journey. Maybe yours, too. I often say that, after a certain age, every woman in the world could write a memoir called: NOT WHAT I PLANNED. We change. Life changes. We often feel shame, confusion and anger about about those shifts and pivots. But what if we just trusted the river? She seems to know where she wants to go. Onward. LG

Italian diver Enzo Maiorca while diving into Siracusa sea felt something patting him on the back. He turned around and saw a dolphin, which he understood did no...t want to play but express something. The dolphin dived and Enzo followed. At a depth of twelve metres trapped in a net there was another dolphin. After managing with his wife to release it, as the two dolphins emerged they emitted an almost human cry (this is how Maiorca described it). Dolphins can be held under water for up to ten minutes then drown. The trapped dolphin was a female who soon gave birth. The male circled them and, standing in front of Enzo, touched his cheek (like a kiss), a gesture of gratitude. Enzo finished his speech by saying: Until man learns to respect and communicate with the animal world, he will never be able to know his true role on this Earth.

"Following the biorhythm of the bears, he began staying up all night and sleeping by day. He determined that under cover of darkness, six bears were working the... stream for the biblical 40 days and 40 nights of the salmon run. As he watched them methodically hauling fish after fish into the deep bush, he conceived a whole new understanding of the flow of life between the land and the sea.... The impact of the salmon-bear connection, Reimchen now knew, surges far beyond the streamside. In Bag Harbour, he found that bears took 80 percent of the salmon run into the forest. When the young salmon leave the natal river, they roam the Pacific, feeding and growing until they return to spawn. Then, with the bears’ help, they contribute their maritime harvest to the forest in the form of their flesh. During the 40-day spawning period, he calculated, each bear ferries about 700 salmon, amounting to 1,600 kilograms of fertilizer, far into the woods. Under conditions of abundance, the bears eat less than half of their haul. By Reimchen’s reckoning, this one small stream provided enough salmon for 2 martens, 4 eagles, 12 ravens, 150 glaucous-winged gulls, and 250 crows. When these animals dispersed through the forest, massive recycling continued as they spread nitrogen through their droppings. Decaying salmon also kick-start a maggot population that emerges in spring to feed warblers and flycatchers that arrive famished after their long journey north. And the nutrient-seeking trees take up whatever is left over. In fact, up to 50 percent of the total nitrogen the trees use comes from salmon. It’s a give-and-take relationship: the salmon fertilize the trees with their bodies at the end of their lives, and the fallen giants provide backwater nurseries for more young salmon. As the trees decompose, their nitrogen is released into the stream, feeding tiny plants and insects that nourish new generations of fish...... Salmon, he tells us, avoid moving...because they light up like lamps when they move, making them easy targets for the bears. Bioluminescence is common in late summer and fall, coinciding with the salmons’ return to spawn. Reimchen speculates that salmon have adapted to this problem by going into a nocturnal torpor out of which they aren’t readily roused. ... Following the creek, we enter forest as black as a bear’s coat. We peer through night-vision glasses: it’s like peeking through a keyhole into a spooky, green-glowing world. Wherever we shine our infrared lights, we pick up bear eye shinetwo gleaming emeralds in a dark pool. There is bear activity all around us, but we can see only a tiny bit at a time. The bears shuffle up and down along the creek on trails worn by generations. To establish who is around and how close, they mark trees with scent. Bears are visually sensitive to each other, but at night they seem less leery and fish side by side. One balances on a log in the creek’s centre. We watch in silence as it gropes in the water, grabs a salmon, and retreats into the forest to eat. We can’t see it, but we can hear it, and we wince at the double pop of its teeth biting into the fish’s brain. Brains are best, Reimchen says. Testes are detested. Tonight the bears are biting off the heads and leaving the bodies, scattering them everywhere. But when salmon are scarce, the bears can’t afford to be so picky. .... Tonight, chum salmon are so plentiful that the bears are being very fussy. Time after time we watch one bear catch a fish in its mouth, then seconds later spit it out and try again. When fishing is this good, the bears select for females. If they catch a male, they immediately sense its sex by smell, release it, and try again. Reimchen has found that the captured females are often already spawned out, so the bears’ impacts on salmon reproduction is minimal....... In the quiet wilderness of Haida Gwaii, Sitka spruce and western hemlocks form a green curtain above the crisp cut of the high-tide line. Dusty green lichens hang like strands of wool from an insert of alders, a telltale sign that a freshwater stream weaves through the forest to the sea.... In 1992, as Reimchen mused on the problem of how to measure the importance of salmon to species other than humans, he wandered up this stream. Crawling over and under barricades of blowdowns, he noticed that on the plush, moss-covered backs of the fallen giants were littered hundreds of snaggle-toothed jaws, spiky ribs, and clear, cartilaginous medallions, the circular gill covers of salmon. They extended up to 150 metres into the forest. What, he wondered, was responsible for carrying all these fish back into the forestotters, eagles, martens? Setting up his tent near the estuary, he sat in the forest, watching and waiting. For days he saw nothing. Then, late one night as he lay in his tent, he heard splashing. Creeping outside, he could make out the inky shapes of several black bears working the stream. He was astonished, because by day he had never seen more than one bear at a time. All night the bears moved back and forth from stream to forest, finally fading away at first light.... Thinking beyond Haida Gwaii to the coast-wide decline of wild salmon, Reimchen reasons that while we worry about the loss of forests and the impact on salmon, the reverse is also a concern: salmon not only need forests but forests also need salmon."

Stunning video footage of a sight most of us have never seen, complete with the crunching of snow and breathless voice of the photographer.

Congratulations to our south of the boarder neighbor

The ultimate test By @naratip.boobpathong

DID GOD RIDE THE BROOKLYN SUBWAY Marcel Sternberger was a methodical man of nearly 50, with bushy white hair, guileless brown eyes, and the bouncing enthusiasm... of a czardas dancer of his native Hungary. He always took the 9:09 Long Island Railroad train from his suburban home to Woodside, N.Y.., where he caught a subway into the city. On the morning of January 10, 1948, Sternberger boarded the 9:09 as usual. En route, he suddenly decided to visit Laszlo Victor, a Hungarian friend who lived in Brooklyn and was ill. Accordingly, at Ozone Park, Sternberger changed to the subway for Brooklyn, went to his friend’s house, and stayed until midafternoon. He then boarded a Manhattan-bound subway for his Fifth Avenue office. Here is Marcel’s incredible story: The car was crowded, and there seemed to be no chance of a seat. But just as I entered, a man sitting by the door suddenly jumped up to leave, and I slipped into the empty place. I’ve been living in New York long enough not to start conversations with strangers. But being a photographer, I have the peculiar habit of analyzing people’s faces, and I was struck by the features of the passenger on my left. He was probably in his late 30s, and when he glanced up, his eyes seemed to have a hurt expression in them. He was reading a Hungarian-language newspaper, and something prompted me to say in Hungarian, I hope you don’t mind if I glance at your paper. The man seemed surprised to be addressed in his native language. But he answered politely, You may read it now. I’ll have time later on. During the half-hour ride to town, we had quite a conversation. He said his name was Bela Paskin. A law student when World War II started, he had been put into a German labor battalion and sent to the Ukraine. Later he was captured by the Russians and put to work burying the German dead. After the war, he covered hundreds of miles on foot until he reached his home in Debrecen, a large city in eastern Hungary. I myself knew Debrecen quite well, and we talked about it for a while. Then he told me the rest of his story. When he went to the apartment once occupied by his father, mother, brothers and sisters, he found strangers living there. Then he went upstairs to the apartment that he and his wife once had. It also was occupied by strangers. None of them had ever heard of his family. As he was leaving, full of sadness, a boy ran after him, calling Paskin bacsi! Paskin bacsi! That means Uncle Paskin. The child was the son of some old neighbors of his. He went to the boy’s home and talked to his parents. Your whole family is dead, they told him. The Nazis took them and your wife to Auschwitz. Auschwitz was one of the worst Nazi concentration camps. Paskin gave up all hope. A few days later, too heartsick to remain any longer in Hungary, he set out again on foot, stealing across border after border until he reached Paris. He managed to immigrate to the United States in October 1947, just three months before I met him. All the time he had been talking, I kept thinking that somehow his story seemed familiar. A young woman whom I had met recently at the home of friends had also been from Debrecen; she had been sent to Auschwitz; from there she had been transferred to work in a German munitions factory. Her relatives had been killed in the gas chambers. Later she was liberated by the Americans and was brought here in the first boatload of displaced persons in 1946. Her story had moved me so much that I had written down her address and phone number, intending to invite her to meet my family and thus help relieve the terrible emptiness in her life. It seemed impossible that there could be any connection between these two people, but as I neared my station, I fumbled anxiously in my address book. I asked in what I hoped was a casual voice, Was your wife’s name Marya? He turned pale. Yes! he answered. How did you know? He looked as if he were about to faint. I said, Let’s get off the train. I took him by the arm at the next station and led him to a phone booth. He stood there like a man in a trance while I dialed her phone number. It seemed hours before Marya Paskin answered. (Later I learned her room was alongside the telephone, but she was in the habit of never answering it because she had so few friends and the calls were always for someone else. This time, however, there was no one else at home and, after letting it ring for a while, she responded.) When I heard her voice at last, I told her who I was and asked her to describe her husband. She seemed surprised at the question, but gave me a description. Then I asked her where she had lived in Debrecen, and she told me the address. Asking her to hold the line, I turned to Paskin and said, Did you and your wife live on such-and-such a street? Yes! Bela exclaimed. He was white as a sheet and trembling. Try to be calm, I urged him. Something miraculous is about to happen to you. Here, take this telephone and talk to your wife! He nodded his head in mute bewilderment, his eyes bright with tears. He took the receiver, listened a moment to his wife’s voice, then suddenly cried, This is Bela! This is Bela! and he began to mumble hysterically. Seeing that the poor fellow was so excited he couldn’t talk coherently, I took the receiver from his shaking hands. Stay where you are, I told Marya, who also sounded hysterical. I am sending your husband to you. We will be there in a few minutes. Bela was crying like a baby and saying over and over again. It is my wife. I go to my wife! At first I thought I had better accompany Paskin, lest the man should faint from excitement, but I decided that this was a moment in which no strangers should intrude. Putting Paskin into a taxicab, I directed the driver to take him to Marya’s address, paid the fare, and said goodbye. Bela Paskin’s reunion with his wife was a moment so poignant, so electric with suddenly released emotion, that afterward neither he nor Marya could recall much about it. I remember only that when I left the phone, I walked to the mirror like in a dream to see if maybe my hair had turned gray, she said later. The next thing I know, a taxi stops in front of the house, and it is my husband who comes toward me. Details I cannot remember; only this I knowthat I was happy for the first time in many years..... Even now it is difficult to believe that it happened. We have both suffered so much; I have almost lost the capability to not be afraid. Each time my husband goes from the house, I say to myself, Will anything happen to take him from me again? Her husband is confident that no horrible misfortune will ever again befall the. Providence has brought us together, he says simply. It was meant to be. Skeptical persons will no doubt attribute the events of that memorable afternoon to mere chance. But was it chance that made Marcel Sternberger suddenly decide to visit his sick friend and hence take a subway line that he had never ridden before? Was it chance that caused the man sitting by the door of the car to rush out just as Sternberger came in? Was it chance that caused Bela Paskin to be sitting beside Sternberger, reading a Hungarian newspaper' Was it chanceor did God ride the Brooklyn subway that afternoon' Paul Deutschman, Great Stories Remembered, edited and compiled by Joe L. Wheeler

JoyStory Passion Pictures! Joy & Heron Make joy happen

A female humpback whale had become entangled in a spider web of crab traps and lines. She was weighted down by hundreds of pounds of traps that caused her to st...ruggle to stay afloat. She also had hundreds of yards of line rope wrapped around her body, her tail, her torso, a line tugging in her mouth. This is her story of giving gratitude. A fisherman spotted her just east of the Faralon Islands (outside the Golden Gate) and radioed for help. Within a few hours, the rescue team arrived and determined that she was so badly off, the only way to save her was to dive in and untangle her. a very dangerous proposition. One slap of the tail could kill a rescuer. They worked for hours with curved knives and eventually freed her. When she was free, the divers say she swam in what seemed like joyous circles. She then came back to each and every diver, one at a time, nudged them, and pushed gently, thanking them. Some said it was the most incredibly beautiful experience of their lives. The guy who cut the rope out of her mouth says her eye was following him the whole time, and he will never be the same. May you be so fortunate To be surrounded by people who will help you get untangled from the things that are binding you. And, may you always know the joy of giving and receiving gratitude.

Anxiety may be higher now than at other times. Please enjoy Rosemary as she speaks about some of her favorite plants to help ease those anxious feelings. Kava (...a rising star for anxiety) Lemon Balm Chamomile Valerian Hops Hawthorne St John’s Wort https://scienceandartofherbalism.com/8-herbs-that-calm-you/