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| Squirrel with Fresh Fruit, San Francisco Botanical Garden |
Christmas is as good a day as any to reflect on my own core philosophy, which is that holiness is foundational to everything and everyone. I like the word "holy" instead of the perhaps less religious word "sacred," but that's a personal preference. I think of sacred as an attribute, holy as an experience. To experience the holiness that underlies everything from sunny days to hurricanes, from children at play to grown-ups at war, from glorified saints to vilified sinners, is to have empirical knowledge of a deep mystery that can only be explored by an individual person on an individual journey.
May all of you have a beautiful day filled with joy.
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| My wife spotted this huge chicken-of-the-woods on a stump in the back of the Botanical Garden. Some other interesting fungi were sprouting from the top. |
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| I was surprised to find such a nice fruiting of turkey tails in the SFBG. One of the things we like about the Mendocino Botanical Gardens is that they leave in place any mushrooms that sprout, so it was good to find some unmolested fungi here at home. Also, it's excellent to have such a good season of rain to bring them out, and to let us forget, even for a little while, the threat of drought. |
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| The Townie couldn't decide which tree to forage in next and hopped along the fence line until it found a congenial spot to re-enter the plant world. |
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| A group of bushtits made its merry way through insect-laden trees. |
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| This is one of the SFBG ponds decked out for its holiday light show. |
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| Greetings from down in the pond.... |
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| This was the view of surface winds blowing this morning. |
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| And this is the view of winds at 2,000 feet. |
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| And speaking of the High Country, this morning also turned up a foggy yet cheerful snow scene in Yosemite. |
On a
recent visit at North Lake I collected a few small Chinese chestnuts and meant to put them on the railing at Cliff House. I kept forgetting to do that, so I ended up leaving them out back to see who would get them first, the jays, crows, or squirrels.
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