"Before" pond image - with the boxwood hedge and the slate patio leading up to the pond at the back.

We got a small man-made pond when we bought our house. It was at the edge of a slate patio in the back yard, ringed with a kind of perplexing boxwood hedge that blocks the view of the pond from the house. The pond is a graceful figure eight shape. It has aqua concrete walls, cracked now. It was lined with black plastic, held at the edges with loosely placed (unstable) slate tiles. It’s funny, looks like I didn’t photograph it except from afar (see left).

The pond was the project Dave spent the winter planning. In the early spring, Dave pulled up the black pond liner, finding several garter snakes nestled into the cracks in the cement underneath the liner. We suppose they overwintered there…!

Under the black liner was a clear indication that the pond had previously been fed by a spring coming out a few feet north of it. The spring came out of a pipe, from somewhere near our foundation (or from the other side of our foundation).

If we reinstated the flow through the pond, instead of a stagnant pool full of water striders, leaves, and a few frogs, we could have something more lively and fresh. And, we’d get to engineer a waterfall.

Excavations adjacent to the pond, old liner partially removed

The planning began. Dave’s dad Nate, similarly inspired, booked a trip to visit from out east. Dave worked to get the end of the spring pipe excavated so that the pond work could begin in earnest once Nate arrived.

Nate and Dave chipped away the concrete edge where they wanted the waterfall and created the waterfall and streambed using pond liner, river rocks, and rocks from the garden. They endured a false start where they filled the pond and it started leaking back up along the piping, re-designed the flow into the pond, replaced the liner, and finally got to enjoy the waterfall after three days work and many trips to the hardware store. My contribution was putting in my calla lily and voodoo lily bulbs near the spillway. Otherwise, I did other weeding and garden work while Nate and Dave reconfigured the pond and the liner and the piping..

Watching the water start to flow into the pond

We watched the water flow into the pond this afternoon with our neighbors, and then once the pond had filled, we watched the overflow start to spill down the waterfall. There’s still work to be done – pond lining to trim, slate to arrange at the edges, landscaping to do, mulch to spread, and weeds to pull, but it’s flowing nicely across the pond and down the rocks and then back into its old streambed. Cool!

A grasp of fresh air, originally uploaded by Bindaas Madhavi

I tweaked my back two weekends in a row. I have some history of back pain, largely stemming from a jaunty twist in my spine (scoliosis). And, because I bend towards my knitting, bend towards my computer monitor, and otherwise stress out my upper back and neck, my upper back gets cranky now and then.

Once I’ve tweaked it, it is a long process of hot baths, ibuprophen, bodywork, arnica gel, and mostly just rest and time to undo whatever kink or constriction I’ve triggered.

Boring.

My interesting stories are the divergences from this pattern: I have had two experiences of spontaneous improvement in my neck/back pain: through pranayama breath, and at a music concert the other night.

Pranayama heals

The first spontaneous release I’ve experienced was in a yoga workshop taught in Ann Arbor by Navtej Johar at Sun-Moon Yoga. During the session, the pranayama breath work (shown in the photo above) released the kink that had stuck my neck for days. I have used pranayama breathing some since then, not enough considering its powerful effect that day….To encourage my practice, I recently picked up the Pranayama iPhone app by Saagara from itunes. I used it recently to relax during a bout of insomnia, and last night to further relax my back and neck. It helped!

Music heals

The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century by Alex Ross

Sunday night was the only other time I’ve experienced seemingly “spontaneous” healing. I think I whacked out my upper back on Saturday by trying to move some largish rocks we have in our garden. I woke up Sunday morning kind of sprung behind my right shoulder blade. Later that day, I attended a concert at Rackham Auditorium. It was a reading by Alex Ross of his book The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, accompanied by Ethan Iverson on the piano. While I enjoyed the crisp and funny writing, I found the turbulent 20th Century history revealed in the lives and concerns of its composers daunting.

I was excited about the concert because I wanted to hear the music of the composers I’d read about. I also sometimes lose track of time, and so I was late for the performance and stressed out when I arrived. They wouldn’t seat us because the piece had started, so I waited, fretting, in the hall for the a slight break to be seated. Well, Rackham has very comfortable seats, and once I settled into our row, the soothing notes of the piano, even playing intellectual 12 tone music, which I’d expected to be annoying, had a physical effect on my body.

I don’t know what Ethan Iverson was playing in that particular moment, but in the middle of the performance that included Babbitt, Bartok, Gershwin, Ives, Ligeti, Jelly Roll Morton, Charlie Parker, Schoenberg, Shostakovich, Sibelius, Stravinsky, and Webern, I felt a muscle next to my shoulder blade go into a release that felt like an inverse spasm. It was a kind of drumming pattern of releases and then slight recontractions, but without pain. I don’t know what it was exactly – I’m going to guess, based on my experience with pranayama, that what might have helped was a relaxation in my own breathing in time to one of the pieces. Or, perhaps my absorption in the event let some other process take its course in my back. I doubt that new age spas around the world play a selection of 20th century classical music, but maybe they should. The concert had an unexpected and salutary effect on my body!

Old West Side black walnut

They’re available online 24/7. What’s even cooler is they’re local here in Ann Arbor, in my neighborhood!

Greenovation.TV‘s Matt Grocoff will speak on “greening a historic home” at 7:30 on April 23 in the Bach School multi-purpose room. Matt reports that he pays in a year what many pay a month for utility costs since doing some updates to their Old West Side Ann Arbor home. I wish I could make it, but I will be traveling that day. I look forward to tuning into the channel as it grows!

You can find out more in Concentrate’s feature article on GreenovationTV.

Nice to feel I’m ready for the change of season.

So, I took a perfectly good Saturday and Sunday and made two trips to the Farmer’s Market, a trip to the hardware store, two trips to a grocery store, burned many BTUs of gas on our gas stove, and taught myself to can following the Ball Blue Book of Preserving and an article on canning in the October 2008 Bon Appetit.

This was my discovery:

• $15 of organic roma tomatoes plus
• a few dollars of organic shallots plus
• a few dollars in organic lemon juice plus
• $30 in canning supplies (jar lifter, magnetic lid lifter, pint jars, canning funnel)
• labor peeling, seeding, stirring, ladling, and then boiling the jars of sauce

makes about six pint jars of fresh tomato sauce, something which when purchased would have cost many dollars less than what I spent. Yet, I didn’t burn myself, had some fun cooking and learning, have some lovely jars of pinky-red tomatoes lighting up the shelves of my basement, and I have stored a bit of this lovely summer sunshine for later.

I realized that canning is kind of like knitting a sweater. It’s not that I saved any money, it’s that I got to enjoy the process and engaging with something concrete – beautiful yarn in the case of a sweater, beautiful produce in the case of canning. That level of absorbtion and attention is almost intoxicating, while my hands were slicing the 50th tomato, my mind was wondering at the variety of shape and color and detail in the box of romas. Plus, I experienced a distinct sense of abundance when processing a big pile of tomatoes- their weight, their texture, their color, bounty. So, after I finished the tomatoes on Saturday, I was up for another round on Sunday. With dinner guests arriving at 6PM, I carefully planned my day of cornbread-baking, coleslaw-making, peach cobbler-baking, and my husband’s slow cooking of the spare ribs with more canning. I discovered that

• $20 in fresh figs plus
• zest of two lemons plus
• sugar and brandy

makes six 1/2-pint jars of drunken fig jam. It’s tasty, though I’ll have to arrange to get myself invited to sophisticated dinner or wine tasting parties where I can bring this as an addition to a cheese plate…Dear reader, let me know if you’re hosting such an event. I have the housewarming gift ready to go!

I loved it, I’d do it again, and I realized just how much I love my dishwasher, which I think ran about 6 times this weekend, no fooling, and that’s even after I hand-washed all of the pots.

I even considered heating up frozen veggies, just because I didn’t think I could muster anything beyond tossing something into a bowl and punching 4 buttons on the microwave. Then I realized that was completely pathetic, and I couldn’t possibly. I imagined each bean and each beet staring at me, balefully as they wilted, while I feasted on non-organic and less vitamin rich frozen food because it was marginally more convenient.

And then I recognized the awesome power of the farm share to improve my life. Yes, the veggies were organic and local, yes they were chock full of vegetabley-goodness like vitamins and minerals, but their real power was elsewhere. Yup, those veggies in the fridge could make me eat healthier just by their very presence. I’d already committed to them, several times, by signing up for the CSA share from Tantre Farm last fall, by picking them up this week, by giving them space in my fridge. After all that, how I could waste them? The frozen food would keep. I had to wash and slice and maybe even boil before I’d get my meal.

I started with the beets. I scrubbed them and cut them into even blocks for a quick boil. But then, because I was crazed with hunger, I tentatively put one in my mouth and bit down. Raw beet was perfectly fine, tasty in fact. I turned off the water, chopped the beets more finely, tossed on a splash of fancy Zingerman’s balsamic vinegar and moved on to the next course. I prepped some kale, rinsing and chopping, and blanched it quickly. Nice.

In probably 5 minutes, I had two very tasty dishes out of my organic veggie stockpile. Because the healthy food had guilted me out of it, I had protected myself from poor eating. By stocking the fridge with healthy food, I actually ate healthy food. And it was quick to prepare. Imagine, fresh fruit and veggies really are nature’s original fast food.

Good wishes streamed in from across the globe, from close and from not-so-close friends via email, twitter, Plaxo, and Facebook. The email friends already knew my birthday, or maybe saw my shame-free birthday-promoting gchat status line. And, at least some of the twitter wishes came in response to my own birthday oriented tweets, but not all. Some came before my own tweets. The other birthday wishers are either uncanny calendar-keepers or may have been reminded of the event by the various methods those sites use to keep friends aware of each other. Facebook and Plaxo did all the hard work for me. I’ve been kind of withdrawing from Facebook, but I got re-engaged with it today, catching up with well-wishers, surfing their profiles. Previous to today, I would have said I wasn’t completely sold on Plaxo. I mean, who needs another place to update your status and befriend the same 30-60-90-howevermany people I’m already friends with elsewhere. But Plaxo seems to really emphasize the birthday thing, and that was amazingly touching to me on this day. Nice to get several well-wishing messages and feel friendship coming through my email all day today.

I also benefitted greatly from the ArborWiki birthday deals page, which helped me score some great (and free!) Zingerman’s bagels and a yummy free Birthday cupcake from Cake Nouveau (key lime, mmmm). Thanks to the larger ArborWiki community for maintaining the list!

They came with wheeled vehicles of all sorts – bicycles with training wheels, tricycles, bicycles, scooters, and a funky skateboard with an axle in the center. But there were no cars. We pulled some tables into the middle of the closed street, and as the kids did their bicycle/tricycle/scooter laps in the street, we set up a table of snacks and drinks. The cookies and the cupcakes went first, individually taken by kids looking thrilled to be getting dessert before dinner. Each one that grabbed a cupcake seemed to be waiting for one of the adults to insist they put it down and eat their veggies.

Then the squirt guns came out, and the hoses, and the kids formed some loose teams and had a water fight. The adults only interfered when the shenanigans got too close to the adults and the food table, but otherwise the water war raged at the north end of the block. Adults of grandparental age marveled at the way the girls and boys played together – said it wasn’t like the old days. Later, after our neighbor Georgia created a geyser with Mentos and Diet Coke the gangs of kids broke into gender groups – the girls skipped rope and the boys continued to beat on the plastic 2-liter container.

We met one neighbor for the first time, and we’ve been here for almost 8 years now. And, we got to know other neighbors better, not only those on our block, but also neighbors who live on nearby blocks. What fun.

In the week since the party, I’ve been looking for people on the block, looking to say hello and continue the conversation. Looks like 8 hours of no cars and some food on the street has started to coalesce some neighbors into a neighborhood. Thanks Wendy!

In support of my intention to acquire, maintain, and store less stuff, I moved most of my Amazon wish list to a wish list (personal card catalog) at the Ann Arbor District Library. They don’t have every book I’ve ever wanted, but they have an awful lot of them. Amazing. I suppose I’m not as unique as I thought . I’m also storing some of the list on my anobii.com bookshelf’s wish list.

Anyway, this blogger’s interesting sounding book with the compelling title was available from the library. I put it on hold, received the notification email, visited the library, checked it out, and then returned it the same day. Funny, flipping through the book, it seemed so tangential to my current interests and so, yes, I’ll say it, thin with huge spaces between lines, not many words on the page, not many pages. After touching the book, I no longer had any interest in its contents. Funny. Glad I didn’t buy it or get someone else to buy it for me.

Note to self – always touch books I’m going to buy or ask to be purchased for me. Online descriptions just don’t compare.

I came with the hard questions in mind: how to be at peace with my father’s life and death (lived on his own terms, not in agreement with mine), how to be still, how to be present, how to let go of my expectations and be open to life as it really is.

I had an intuition that meditation would help. But sitting in meditation was excruciating. Moments passed like hours, my body ached and my mind worried and fretted. I came to the Siddha Yoga Meditation Center of Ann Arbor at the invitation of a friend, after a frustrating meditation class elsewhere. I came with the intention of learning to meditate, but my heart got caught up in chanting. Good thing, too, because it took me several years of chanting to be able to sit well for meditation. I suppose I had to clear my system, or else get comfortable, or maybe just grow into it. Hard to say. But now, after 10 years, I can see all that I have received from Siddha Yoga.

What a blessing the center, the community, the teachings, shared chanting, shared meditation, the friendships, and the grace of the guru have been for me.

Over the last 10 years, I have become:

• more gentle with myself,
• more thoughtful and grateful,
• more able to receive,
• more connected to others and more open to connection,
• more content.

Some of this is, perhaps, the wisdom acquired through an additional decade of living, but much of it was gained through the inspiration and teachings of the Siddha Yoga tradition and through applying the practices of chanting, meditation, and self-inquiry modeled at the center.

The Siddha Yoga Meditation Center is at 315 W. Huron, Suite 280, Ann Arbor, MI 48103. It’s just west of downtown Ann Arbor, in the Arbor Atrium Building, on the South side of Huron, between First and Third Streets, just east of the Ann Arbor YMCA, west of Live at PJ’s and Goodnight Gracie’s, and across the street from the Delonis Center. We have public programs Thursday evenings 7-8:30PM and Sunday mornings 9-10:30AM (often followed by breakfast/brunch).