Bedlam Farm Blog Journal by Jon Katz

In the winter, it’s difficult for us to spend much time with the sheep and the donkeys. It’s too cold so sit outside, and the donkeys get edgy in the cold, they can’t graze and get restless.

Today, before we had some friends arrive for dinner (tortellini, kale, broccoli, non-wheat spaetzle, scallions, Lemon Artichoke Pesto, parmesan cheese, pine nuts) we went out and set up two plastic chairs and sat with our animals.

They seemed to welcome it.

They need us as much as we need them, sheep and donkeys have lived with human beings for thousands of years, and they need our attention when we live with them.

The sheep clustered around us, then the donkeys. The usually standoffish Lulu put her head on my shoulder and we more or less hugged one another for a long time. It’s been awhile.

Then it was Fanny’s turn to nudge me with her nose and demand scratching behind the ears. I love this part of our lives. I love our donkeys more than I can say. And it was a beautiful day with a gorgeous sky.

The donkeys are among the most meditative animals, they love to stand with us while we sit with them. Even the sheep seemed to want to cluster around us, I took this photo of Maria, an iconic Bedlam Farm photo, and then I put the camera away, and the donkeys came over and we sat with them for 30 or 40 minutes.

This is an essential part of our life, and in the cold weather we miss meditating and sitting with our animals. It was so good to pick up this beautiful tradition again.

Bud is a happy spirit, he finds mischief and mayhem everywhere he goes, and is unperturbed by criticism or re-direction.

I’ve come to call him “Little Bastard.” Boston Terrier owners understand.

His joy for living is infectious, we can’t help but loving him. In the morning, he wanders far out into the back pasture exploring and looking for geese to chase or something else to disrupt.

When I blow my green bath whistle he comes running all the way back, and instantly, he will rush across burning coals for his treat, or even for a good hug.  He loves this game and can do it all day.

Bud’s happiness makes me happy, and that alone is worth it all.

The story of the Sad Succulents seems to have a happy ending, at least so far. We rescued them from a dusty Petco shelf and re-planted them in a terra cotta pot with fresh potting soil and some room to grow and breathe.

Maria also wanted them to be with one another, she thinks it helps. The experience can easily be trivialized, but I see it is important. We have to start somewhere when it comes to saving our Mother, the earth.

People like me can drift easily into hypocrisy, feeling smug about my beliefs, but also failing to do much about them. I have tried to correct that in the past  few years, I believe democracy and compassion are being reborn, not destroyed.

The earth deserves small acts of great kindness just as the people who live on it do. We are shedding out lives of plastic as well, one thing at a time.

Saving the earth means one thing at a time, one animal, one river,  one plant. I have to do what I can, the problems seems so overwhelming it’s easy to just look the other way.

But I think the luxury of that is ending, and I want my granddaughter to know that even if her grandfather wasn’t the most attentive grandparent, he did what he could to leave her with a better world.

So for now, a small victory for the plant, and the life that exists here. A small step for plants, hopefully another step towards a healthier world.

Maria and I stopped at Petco the other night to get some food and treats for the dogs and cats, she  came up to me holding a pathetic little plant in her hand, the root ball was exposed and it looked dead to me. ‘It’s a sad succulent,” she said. “We need to rescue it.”

There were five other sad succulents also, but Maria is a bit tight as well as loving, She only wanted the one, but I had a feeling we might be back. Plant rescue is a pretty new idea to me, I  tend not to notice plants or tell one from another.

I took a look at the other five, they were also in rugged shape. They did need rescuing, and I saw this was important to Maria.

This was a first for me, but I no longer laugh  at Maria’s love of nature and her reverence for all living things ( except flies.) She is ahead of many people on that score, including me, and she has changed the way I see the world.

I thought it was a great idea to rescue the sad succulent, I was irked that the manager wanted full price – $6 – for a dying plant, but perhaps it was the cost of the terra-cotta bowl. I know how busy he is, but somebody needs to water them.

I am used to this sort of thing by now, Maria saves spiders, lady bugs, worms and crickets. The only thing I dare to swat any more is a fly buzzing over us at night.

This is  the new normal for me, and I get it.

(Maria moves the sad succulents from the temporary carton home into some pots, where they can be together, she said, and have some room to breathe and plenty of sun)

I made some wisecracks to the manager about paying full price for a dying plant to the manager, a very nice young man I have come to know well and like.  He just laughed.

This morning, when we woke up, Maria said she was thinking of the other sad succulents. The strange thing was that I was also.

I said let’s go back to the Petco this morning and buy the other five. Really?, she said, a bit surprised.

Absolutely, I said, we can’t leave them there. And this time I said, I’ll do some negotiating about the price. We stopped for breakfast along the way at Jean’s Diner, a new discovery for us, then on to Bennington, to get to Petco four minutes after it opened.

Maria was afraid the succulents might have been thrown away, they were all ratty and limp.

They were all there, right where she had last see them. We liberated them from the store, and putting my old negotiating hat on, ( I love negotiating) I said to the the very nice manager in a firm but strong voice: “look, most of these plants are dying.”

I held up the pathetic plants to show him.

“How much will you pay us to take them?”

He was startled and not expecting this and  looked at me incredulously, and mumbled something about the pots being worth $3.  I imagine he had to do some  explaining to some computer if he cut the price.

He clacked on his keyboard for a bit.

Okay, deal, I said, “we’ll buy them all for three dollars.”  This was half price, a perfect negotiation, a compromise, the kind our politicians no longer seem to know how to do. Fair enough. The money really wasn’t the issue, taking responsibility was.

Maria seemed shocked that we were taking all the plants home. And happy.

I applied some emergency watering out in the car, the pots were very dry. We got them home and Maria happily took charge when we got home. she spent an hour planting and re-planting and re-arranging the sad succulents in various terra cotta pots.

I’ve changed. I’m not a plant fanatic, they don’t draw me the way they do Maria.  I don’t pay much attention to them, that is pretty much her terrain. Maybe one day.

But I do recognize that they are part of life, they are important,  I need to learn to care about living things beyond myself or the people and animals that I love. I hope we all can learn to do that.

This is the hope for the future, for my daughter and granddaughter, for the children of the world who depend on us to give them a safe and healthy place to live.

Money can’t be the only thing we care about, or we will descend into hatred and cruelty and greed. The sad succulents are important to me. I am grateful to have helped save six of them and  lucky to be living with a person who cares and who is teaching me how to care.

Jean’s Diner has sat alongside a busy road in nearby Hoosick Falls, N.Y., for some time, but this morning was the first time Maria and I stopped by for breakfast. There is a sign hanging on the wall that says “Beware Of Attack Waitresses,” and our waitress Robin said all of the waitresses were attack waitresses.

But she was actually quite  sweet and attentive. The Oat Bran pancakes were wonderful, so was the coffee. And Jean’s was dripping with character and feeling.

I don’t know why I never ate there before, Maria suggested it this morning and so we tried it. We both live it – the food, the feeling, the atmosphere. It’s curious how you can live in a place for a long time without stepping outside of the conventions and boundaries of our life.

Maria told Robin there was also such a thing as an “Attack Wife,” and they both got a good laugh out of that. I told Robin I could testify that this is true. Maria got blueberry pancakes. The bill was $15.