Anyone else out there having moments that can be described as confrontational yet totally surrendered? As though some super sensitive gene has awakened and signals an awareness of how completely twisted human life has become, how easily that could be remedied and how baffling that a tipping point has become more a metaphor for a possibility gone begging. The "totally surrendered" part of this nebulous feeling is not entirely clear to me as yet. And why would it be? Should we not be howling our discontent? Should we not be hurling foul smelling things? Should we not stop eating sugary snacks? Maybe not. Here's something the orchard taught me just recently. Farms been getting pummeled with winter rains. The kind that haven't been seen around these parts since the eighties. Frreal. So me, in my little human flesh suit and knotted up sensibilities conditioned by decades of WRONG! is being kept up at night by the sound of natures blessing to the earth, thinking oh fuck, the mango's and avo's and jabo's and lychee are all flowering and, and what if this fucking rain is ruining my crop, goddddammit. So the rain's rainin' and the wind is whipping up through the night and I can't wait for daylight to go out and get ready to manifest the biggest boohooohoooo I can muster, think about packing it in and start googling land in eastern europe. Something about the morning sun. Think about it. Wherever you are. How the first rays peeking over the rim bring the colors way up and gift you with the promise of renewal. Nice to be able to count on that. Even in a storm, you know its happening right on the other side of the grey. Simple as breathing. So I'm walking down the driveway, feeling the pessimist creeping around in the shadows and beginning to notice that although there appear to be plenty of unopened flowers littering the ground, the trees still have somewhere in the vicinity of a crap load of potential fruit everywhere. And as I approach the pond area to feed the chooks and make sure none of them have drowned in the deluge, I walk by a pope mango, already laden with early fruits and flowering like tomorrow may never come. Flowers, I might add with nary a trace of powdery mildew. I stop by the tree. Smile real big. Stoke its aura and complement it for its immense good sense in manifesting something so totally amazing, year after year after year. For having the stability that comes with longevity. For hanging these edible ornaments for the world to delight in. The colors. The flavors. Year after year. All I have to do is make nice. And I'm thinking, there's nineteen varieties of these on the land and to imagine that some wind and rain is going to do anything but make this seasons growth spectacular and next years fruit set a wonder to behold is to forget that I don't have the slightest bit of control over any of this and that if I just surrender to the wisdom inherent in each moment of sincere observation of Natures complex simplicity, I may just die a happy camper. Thanks orchard. I love examining the flower panicles  for new fruit set. There are hundreds of pretty little perfect flowers per spray. Light golden color and ready to make magic. The housefly is the main pollinator and dances about sucking up nectar and shuffling pollen to pistil and making mango's. Thanks man. I've taken to putting a chicken carcass or deer parts, when available under the trees that prefer the fly as pollinator. A slick little permaculture trick brought to you by the minds at "all you hafta do is plant stuff and pick stuff and make nice"; a limited liability corporation headquartered in the Bahamas. There's always something stranger than you've ever seen before. The past couple of weeks it's been the discovery of two barred rocks, in separate areas, found dead. The strange part is that one was decapitated (sort of surgically)and the other was totally eviscerated but had its head in tact, innards picked clean. Strange indeed. In all my days of tending the flock, I have never witnessed such wanton brutality. Troubled I am, young skywalker. Now, even though nurse Amanda and hubby Jason seem nice enough, one can't help but wonder given that the horrific slayings began with their arrival, whether they have some macabre need for chicken blood and entrails, and if so, what kind of Heironymus Bosch  ending this episode may come to. A calmer look at things might suggest a particularly aggressive and Large mongoose, or a nasty, mangy, treated poorly as a kitty feral peckerwood with acquired feline sociopathy, a condition normally seen in urban and overcrowded areas but on rare occasions seen in the boonies. We're thinking night vision youtube video that will freak cat lovers out the world over. Live streaming bard rock snuff film. How's your cuddly little pal look to you now? There but for fortune...... So the mysteries mount up and there's not enough time in the day or people on hand to monitor the goings on of some psycho cat who's decided to make itself at home and whittle its way through your flock of faithful feathered freakshows. Fact is, the one that was eviscerated probably died of natural causes and was eaten, in tribute by her sisters. I'm pretty sure the one that was decapitated was me when I was sleep walking the other night. I woke up in an inia tree with some feathers sticking out of my mustache and a piece of beak lodged between my teeth. Didn't think much of it at the time. I'm gonna just leave it at that, and the next time it happens I'll blame Tyler. I have a new stage name. It's "side dish". Miss Meaghan Owens, who will be playing along side me at the Hana Hou cafe this very saturday evening between six and nine pm, has agreed that "side dish" suits me and fits perfectly with the creative interplay generated by her loveliness and nutrient dense musical offerings and my mashed potato like consistency and buttery oozings. So the entire time I've been writing this, the bufo's have been churning out a constant tapping sound characteristic of some Facebook chatter gone viral. Used to be that the sound of just one of the gnarly little amphibs would get the heart rate jacked up a bit and after awhile have me taping a flashlight on to the barrel of my .22 while doing my best Elmer Fudd impression and, on tippy toe, hunting the noise maker down. Splaaattt. Phew..... back into the house for some rest and within ten minutes another one would start sounding off. I'm not sure when I noticed that at a certain point they go to sleep, but whenever it was, I realized that I could let my zest for splattering them on the rocks slip away. I could accept them as background noise and let them continue to act like horny frat boys responding to the scent of a woman, and accept that around tenish the tapping will give way to a silence more profound for the tapping it replaced. Its all slipping away. One can be grateful for the stillness born of surrender and the calm born of short odds. The more you show, the more we'll grow. with aloha, Jp