Helpers in the ‘hood: what Mister Rogers said

“Look for the helpers” Mister Rogers (1928-2003), Presbyterian minister and American TV children’s programming personality famously counseled. I think. Full disclosure: I’ve never actually watched a Mister Rogers show but icons of the adopted culture creep in subtly, then lurk, embedded on the edges of awareness, to surface at moments like cockroaches when I switch on the kitchen light suddenly at midnight.

This May Day (mayday mayday) I take a moment to acknowledge some of the helpers in my current world, the roommates who share this patch of Chihauhauan desert and help and serve and deserve pause for applause.

And yes those forementioned cockroaches are ecosystem helpers. They are excellent recyclers, great in compost heaps. They apparently also help distribute pollen as they slink and slide and ooze and canoodle between plants looking for debris to feast on. In turn a cockroach can be fine dining for other critters especially the birds. Feed the birds . If only I could convince my birds that they are insectivorous some of the time. A big May Day Labour Award to cockroaches. When it’s all over and everything’s trashed and broken, clean-up crew cockroaches will be King of the Dump.

To herald May Day this year there was spectacular full moonset, for which my camera was decidedly not cooperating nor being a helper. I apologize for this abomination of a spectacularly bad image placeholder to remind me of a moment you will just have to imagine. The moon swells and shrinks, ebbs and flows besides me measuring off my days, weeks, months, years, as it always has, as long as I can remember. Mutable, consistent, reliable no matter the headlines of the day, the moon is an unwavering companion, who takes time out from commanding tides and oceans, to beam silvery enchantment into this desert life. Thankyou Moon. Good Morning Moon. Good Night Moon. Good Everything Moon. Moon rules, Every Day Queen of my world.

It was a dark and stormy May Day morning. Windy too. As usual I am out in the garden at dawn, paying respects to Turtleback Mountain, up to my eyeballs in treasure, admiring all the jewels the fresh new day has to display. What a lot I got.

Volunteer Papaver somniferum (Breadseed poppies) which must have snuck in with the rye stalk mulch when it was spread around the garlic last autumn equinox, are at their luminous best in this stormy light.

Pollinators adore these delicate lovelies but they aren’t the only ones finding sustainance here. Poppyseed muffins and pancakes might just be in my future. Depending on the harvest, of course. Being beautiful to look at isn’t a sin, either, could even be a function. While I wait for poppy seed pancakes to manifest, I feast on colour, line, shape form.

Here today, transformed tomorrow , Papaver somniferum writes the I-Ching, the Book of Changes daily, enriching my life with Tao not a cash register cha-ching! A May Queen Award to these floral kingdom beings of beauty and mystery.

On the south west side, just look at all those helpers! Such an array. How many helpers can you spy? Beans Phaseolus vulgaris and Vicia faba, chard calendula, pomegranates, garlic, hollyhocks, plum tree (no fruit seems to have set this year) kale…not forgetting all the cockroaches, earthworms, butterflies, ants and fuzzy buzzies who inhabit this world…

Incidentally a person walking by one morning told me she complained to the city about the vegetation, “I just want my neighbourhood to be nice” she says from the street view of this “yard full of weeds” . It’s food, O Ignorant One: a fiesta of food and helpers. Living beings who labour to make the planet great. To make one tiny piece of desert earth and all who find refuge there, healthy.

Later in the day this bounty for my belly found its way to the kitchen table from just that one small sector of the garden, from the area seemingly making the neighbourhood “not nice” for that morning walker whom I’ll give the Not Helping mayday distress call award today. It’s a life threatening emergency. Civilization is in the weeds. But no fear, I think we’ve found a Queen for that Kingdom.

This patch of cilantro/coriander ( Coriandrum sativum ) is way beyond the leafy green garnish stage and is now in full flower mode, well on its way to the real reason I grow it: for coriander seed spice to flavor and enrich my meals. Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food. Attributed to Hippocrates of Kos, this is a commandment to live by in the Garden of Earthly Delights. As true monarchs do, ‘Orange King’ Calendula officianalis serve and support at the base of the coriander. The Servant Leader Award goes to these cooler season helpers who offer balm and healing in all the wounding from the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. (Hamlet, Act 3, scene 1. Thankyou William Shakespeare)

Lurking behind the coriander is a stand of volunteer sunflowers, the first this season, raising their faces to the new day, attracting pollinators and already on the radar of the hungry birds who are again feeding ferociously on the leaves while tearing into the flower heads before they can become seeds. I’m good with that. It means they leave the chard alone. Apparently the little birds (probably sparrows various - there are at least three versions who live here) just like the rest of us, need the nutrients which leafy greens supply. Fortunately these self seeding sunflowers have multiple flower head so there’s plenty to go around. Some even make it to mature seed heads to feed the birds and sow themselves next year.

A Western Kingbird perched on a wire is just one of a myriad helpful monarchs who inhabit my life. It’s a good life. When you look for the helpers.

Like a bird on the wire,

like a drunk in a midnight choir

I have tried in my way to be free.

Like a worm on a hook,

like a knight from some old fashioned book

I have saved all my ribbons for thee.

If I, if I have been unkind,

I hope that you can just let it go by.

If I, if I have been untrue

I hope you know it was never to you.

Like a baby, stillborn,

like a beast with his horn

I have torn everyone who reached out for me.

But I swear by this song

and by all that I have done wrong

I will make it all up to thee.

I saw a beggar leaning on his wooden crutch,

he said to me, "You must not ask for so much."

And a pretty woman leaning in her darkened door,

she cried to me, "Hey, why not ask for more?"

Oh like a bird on the wire,

like a drunk in a midnight choir

I have tried in my way to be free.

Leonard Cohen Bird on a Wire. 1968

Where would I be without words which do the heavy lifting every day, getting me from here to there and everywhere?

Recommended Reading:

Talking about helpers (of the mothers little variety) and trying, in a way, to be free: today’s rabbit hole book is a very weighty (subject matter) but very worthy piece of investigative journalism.

Empire of Pain : the Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty. Patrick Radden Keefe. 2021.

Part multigenerational family biography, part company history of Perdue Pharma, you know the company that made OxyContin and the Sackler family billionaires, and ooops! incidentally ignited the opioid overdose death epidemic (1999-2023 maybe), part white collar true crime and courtroom drama, wholly absorbing, engaging, horrifying. If you have any doubts that capitalism is a poor paradigm for human society, this story of greed, hubris and deliberate carelessness will go a good way toward allaying them.

Santa Rita Opuntia shrugs and offers a distraction of amazing neon yellow-green eye candy flowers while I wonder if a Sackler ever grew a tomato? These Korean Long paste tomato vines are holding their own against the recent punishing winds and even showing signs flowering this May Day. Go, tomatoes, go! Future Fire Roasted Spagetti Sauce award is yours on this gala day.

Does your neighbourhood look nice?