The Birds of Passage

October 20, 2026birds, poetryAnne Porter, autumn, migration, re-postGretchenJoanna

THE BIRDS OF PASSAGE

You are the one who made us
You silver all the minnows in all rivers
You wait in the deep woods
To find the newborn fox cubs
And unseal their eyes
You shower the sky with stars

You walk alone
In the wild royal darkness
Of the heavens above the heavens
Where no one else can go.

When the fragile swallows assemble
For their pilgrimages
When the hummingbirds
Who are scarcely more
Than a glittering breath
Set out for the rain forest
To drink from the scarlet flowers
On the other side of the world
With only now and then
The mast of a passing ship
For a resting place and an inn

When the Canada geese
Are coming down from the north
When the storks of Europe
Stretch out their necks toward Egypt
From their nests on the chimney tops
When shaking their big wings open
And trailing their long legs after them
They rise up heavily
To begin their autumn flight

You who speak without words
To your creatures who live without words
Are hiding under their feathers

To give them a delicate certainty
On the long dangerous night journey.

-Anne Porter

Photo is from the Chirp for Birds website.

He recalled the sojourn with longing.

October 17, 2026history, icons, quotesFr. Justin Sinaites, mosaics, Prophet Hosea, St. Catherine's MonasteryGretchenJoanna

From Father Justin’s blog on the treasures and scenes of St Catherine’s Monastery in Sinai, I am sharing a link to his post from last year featuring a very old mosaic icon of the Prophet Hosea, from the sixth century. He writes in the comments:

“Roberto Nardi and his team of conservators recently carried out a major program to consolidate and clean and conserve the mosaic. From their detailed study, they became convinced that it is the work of artisans from Constantinople. The portrait medallions of the apostles around the arch, and the prophets around the base, are each very striking and individualized. An examination of the mosaic up close reveals surprising colour juxtapositions, that the artisans knew would blend together when the mosaic was seen from a distance. Every detail is a source of wonder.”

You can see Fr Justin’s close-up photo of the brilliant icon here: “The Prophet Hosea.” He says of the prophet that, “He recalled the sojourn in the wilderness with longing,” because during that period the Israelites were close to God, whereas in the time during which Hosea lived, their faith was weak.

This fresco below is not that mosaic icon, and is very different from it; I like its energy. It is featured in another article on the prophet here, which gives more of his story from the Bible: The Orthodox Times.

I hope you will take a look at Fr. Justin’s photo of the sixth century mosaic: Prophet Hosea.

Balmy with bread and honey.

October 16, 2026my garden, workfeijoa, food dehydration, Japanese anemone, nursery rhymes, Painted Lady beans, parsley, rudbeckia, salsa verde, tarragon, wealthGretchenJoanna

The sun was hot on my back as I reached up on the trellis to gather the dried Painted Lady runner beans. I separated the beans from the vines and carried loads of still vigorous leafy matter to the green bin. After a while the sun went behind the pine tree, but the balminess hung on.

It was quite a workout climbing up and balancing on the planter box, hauling vines back over the fence from the neighbor’s yard where they always wander. So when I had stashed a five gallon bucket full of bean pods into the garage, I leaned back in my orange plastic Adirondack chair (stained from being out in the weather for years) that I’d moved away from the bean corner, and drank a can of sparkling water.

I was intensely aware of my riches. This morning I had picked another several dozen feijoas, and we put them and what remained from the last week into the dehydrator. Reading ideas for how to use a heavy crop, I learned that people do eat the skins. So I tried a few with their skins on and they are nice that way. The skins are a little more tart than the flesh, but they add another layer of complexity to the overall flavor, and a little crunch. The neighbor’s redwood tree looms over my pineapple guava, so that the dried and prickly twigs that fall are always interspersed with the fruit, and usually tangled in my hair when I come inside from picking.

Below, parsley, which I was prepping to put into the Parsley-Tarragon Salsa Verde, and in which I was exulting. When I have a good sized parsley patch it feels like the most versatile resource. Plus the swallowtails love it!

Last year I never got around to harvesting those runner beans until they had been rained on a few times and ruined. So it felt good to have put them under cover, and also to not let the feijoas go to waste. I had made that extra batch of salsa before the tarragon went into dormancy. I could sit back and relax, and just be in the garden. The awareness of my wealth brought to mind the king who was in his counting house, counting out his money, the queen in the parlor, eating bread and honey, and the maid in the garden getting her nose bitten off.

Well, I was the king, taking account of my bounty. But in the garden. And the queen, feasting on the most satisfying and sweet soul food — in the garden. Some days I hang the laundry in the sun, as does the maid, but that also makes me feel rich.

The king was in the counting house,
Counting out his money.
The queen was in the parlor,
Eating bread and honey.
The maid was in the garden,
Hanging out the clothes,
When along came a blackbird,
And snipped off her nose.

-Sing a Song of Sixpence

The first of the newer white Japanese anemones buds opened today, October 16! I’d have to say I’m rich with anemones at this point. The pincushion flower plants that I cut down to stubs and moved to the planter boxes have started blooming again amongst the basil that also won’t stop.

Back to the feijoas:

Bea blended up some pulp with an apple to make fruit leather, and I sliced the rest with the skin on. Now all of that experimental goodness is in process in the dehydrator, and filling the garage with its aroma.

One last thing to illustrate my brimming treasure stores: The rudbeckia is still blooming!! It has been showing off its gold since May 22, and I expect it will go another week at least, which will add up to five months of opulence. Not only are its flowers still lovely, but the leaves are turning all purply and mottled at the end of the season, a patina of autumn. Because it sits close to the street for everyone to see as they drive by, it’s the part of my abundance that gets shared with the most people. I hope it might cause some of them to say, Glory to God for His most generous gifts!

I cook and the cactus blooms.

October 13, 2026food and cooking, my gardenmeatloaf, mochi, polenta, Thanksgiving cactusGretchenJoanna

I’ve had several house guests in the last week, for anywhere from three hours to one night’s stay. First, son Pathfinder came down for work, and this time we had dinner here. It included polenta, which I hadn’t made for a long time, and I cooked up a big batch; then later in the week I served some of it to Maggie and Wil with a meatloaf that I also hadn’t made in years.

It was my Italian Meatloaf, and they liked it a lot. When I first came up with the idea for it, I wasn’t in the habit of using fresh herbs, and it even calls for dried garlic rather than fresh. But last week I was pleased to use four fresh herbs gathered that day from my garden: basil, oregano, parsley and tarragon.

Maggie wanted the recipe, so I took a picture of it and texted it to her. I need to make a new card, but in the meantime, here is the well used version, showing how adaptable it is:

After those people had gone home, I fried slices of the remaining polenta and ate it with leftover broccoli and a fried egg. Do you like polenta? I find it all too easy to eat.

The next guests were three young children and their mother whom I’d invited over for an afternoon of play plus a snack. The snack I decided to serve was mochi. I baked my old standby that I adapted from one of the recipes in this book that a friend brought me from Maui a long time ago. I’m not going to show you another one of my messy and annotated recipes, but will just say that this one uses lime Jello, sweet rice flour (mochiko) and coconut milk. The sweet cubes cut from the slab of baked and cooled mochi are dusted with potato starch. Everyone loved it. But next time I’m going to try making a version without Jello’s artificial color and flavor — even if the color is pretty!