“My philosophy is very simple,” Representative Lewis once told an audience. “When you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, say something! Do something! Get in trouble, good trouble, necessary trouble.”
Friday, July 18, 2025
Sunday, July 13, 2025
November Hill farm journal, 236
Beautiful butterfly on a beautiful rattlesnake master on a beautiful Sunday.
Sundays are family days with all of us here on the farm. How amazing is it to have all my loved ones close, including the animal family members?
We’re living in difficult times. I believe that people acting without integrity will eventually realize the consequences of their actions, and I believe this goes for all of us.
Find the beauty and let it speak.
Tuesday, July 01, 2025
An anniversary of trauma + an aquarium
I’m sure it is no accident that in this one year anniversary week of the most traumatic event thus far in my life I ended up being given an aquarium via my local buy nothing group. A pathway back to something from my childhood, my dad’s love of aquariums, his caretaking and teaching about the fish I watched endlessly in our living room. We didn’t have a TV at that time and the aquarium and the stereo with my parents’ vinyl albums were both exciting and soothing.
In my life I’ve experienced trauma: the loss of beloved animals, losing a friend to suicide, rape, so many moments during my work in child and family services, including being singly responsible for yelling loudly enough and long enough to make sure children at risk of violence were moved to safety. I’ve sat with children and teens still wearing blood from suicide attempts, gone to homes and been met at the door by gang members pointing guns at me, I have worked on cases so disturbing I would go home at the end of the day and just sit, exhausted, letting the awfulness leave my body before sleep. I’m leaving a few things out here that are deeply personal.
And yet none of these things are the most traumatic. Last year on this day and the three weeks that followed became the worst experience I’ve lived through. I won’t go into it here because it involves people I love dearly. What I want to say is that I feel it in my body. Thankfully it’s manageable because of my understanding of trauma and anniversary events. And because I resumed therapy to do EMDR and other somatic work to address this experience.
We hold things that happen to us in our muscles and our brain and our sensory awareness. There’s a sensation that I can still feel as I type this that came out of what I lived through last year. It’s hard to describe but it’s grainy and there’s a smell and an internal, visceral sensation that I can remember distinctly. As I type this I also hear the bubbling of the aquarium filter and that too carries muscle memory: safety, peace, loving parents, joy.
That the aquarium, with two tetras and colors that I might have chosen myself came to me last week is pure serendipity and synchronicity. It’s also both of those things that when I pulled my daily Woodland Wardens card, it was this:
Keil Bay is still with me. So is my dad. It won’t surprise me at all when my mom shows up in her comforting way.
May we all find our healing with things that hurt us.
Saturday, June 21, 2025
Reprised post from 2010: an appeal for connected and humane horsemanship
On behalf of my herd, including the goddess mare Salina and my first beloved horse Bo-Jinx, who are with me in spirit, and now joined by the amazing Keil Bay, I’m offering the link to a post I wrote in 2010.
It’s getting a lot of hits this week in the archives and everything I wrote then I still believe to be true today.
There are so many ways this expands to current affairs too. We must do better in all our relationships with our animal family, our communities, our regard for one another as human beings, and our mother Earth.
Friday, June 20, 2025
November Hill farm journal, 235
The pollinator beds are very busy right now, with coneflower in full bloom, milkweed awaiting its very hungry caterpillars, and passiflora stretching through the bed and climbing to the sky. I have managed to get some of the smartweed and stilt grass out the past few days and that will continue on through the season, but it’s so good to see things busy right now.
In this same bed the narrow leaf mountain mint is blooming, Stokes asters still going, the aromatic asters are budding, and the prickly horse nettle is coming to its close. Once the blooms are done I will pull it out, with gloves, and clear that space for other plants coming in.
Last week as I removed the smartweed and stilt grass in one section of this bed, I came upon an Eastern box turtle who is undoubtedly awaiting maypop fruit from the passiflora. I’m so happy this turtle has found passiflora’s gift.
Across the driveway the two-level bed is happy in deep pink right now, with the bergamot and the New England asters going strong. The short leaf mountain mint on the upper level is just popping, and while it’s flowers are not as visible here, they are a hotbed of activity, beloved by pollinators. The button bush is nearing bloom time and I’m using my electric weedeater to keep the strip up along the fence clear, as I have plans for that in the fall. I’ve cut the Canadian goldenrod, which is my biggest planting mistake in this bed, three times already, to keep it from completely overpowering the early summer stars. Still to come in this bed are more asters, swamp sunflower, beautyberry, and yes, the goldenrod, which while very aggressive, are also extremely good for pollinators in the fall.
In the potager and back yard we have tomatoes, okra, cucumbers, various greens, peppers, yellow squash, eggplant, blueberries, blackberries, and figs growing. My husband has taken on the potager this year and we’re enjoying the harvest.
Tomorrow is the summer solstice and this year it appears to be the opening to a string of very hot days when horse and pony will be hosed, donkeys will roll in their dust circles, fans will blow, and humans will take a lot of showers. This is summer in NC, and we’ll get through to fall as we always do. I will keep pushing forward with chores and words and hugs from grandkids, with books and a few amazing TV series (if you haven’t watched Pernille on Netflix I highly recommend it), a few good films, maybe some painting inside the house if I can muster myself, and the little signs that let me know, yes, it’s hot right now, but just wait, autumn is coming.