Yesterday morning I watched a cottontail hop around the perimeter of the new donkey paddock. I wondered if she might be the mother of the nest of babies we found the night before. I don’t see rabbits often anymore, not since we’ve had Leonard… and the six outside cats. Rabbits with much sense steer clear of our place.

Early this morning, I woke up to check on the bunny we’ve tried to bottle feed for the past two days. She was starting to take the milk better last night and even though I know these wild babies rarely make it, I was beginning to let myself hope she might. I found her sprawled awkwardly and already growing cold. I held my breath, squinting to see if she was still breathing, and I saw her tiny diaphragm move once.

Maybe it wasn’t a last breath, maybe she was already gone and the organs were still shifting away inside. I don’t know what’s scientifically possible or probable - I’ve always preferred to keep a veil over those things. When I was pregnant, I couldn’t bring myself to read about the physiological changes that were taking place inside me - I didn’t want to know precisely how the “miracle” was happening. The workings of the womb and reproductive systems were one of the last medical mysteries, and it was only through the trafficking of corpses in the 18th and 19th century that scientists and physicians began to have a true picture of how things worked. I have a book of poetry about it called “The Resurrection Trade,” by Leslie Adrienne Miller, and even ten years after reading it, lines and passages come back to me.

The poem I’m thinking of today is called “Mirabilia, 1726.” It’s a bizarre account of a woman who fooled a male midwife and much of her community into believing she was giving birth to litters of rabbits.

“Even after churching, more rabbits fell

from her marvelous loins in Guilford,

so the English Court brought her into town

to have a look, and though they caught

the serving boy with pockets full of blind

and slippery bunnies and trundled Mary Tofts

off to jail after her confession, the fact

remained that she had fooled at least

a half a dozen educated men by simply

being what she was, mammal, mystery,

cave and warren, unmapped womb,

a woman.”

We can only guess what Mary’s intentions might have been. Maybe she’d lost her mind, maybe she was grieving, maybe she was bored or desperate or thought there was some degree of power that could be gained by it. The rabbit babies are not even secondary characters in the story - they are merely collateral, disposable lives that are only mentioned because they happened to be found in a place they shouldn’t have been. Just like mother cottontail and her ill-fated babies. Just like Mary Tofts. Sometimes our best intentions don’t matter for much.

We buried little baby “Berry” beside Rory and Lilly at the edge of the prairie grass and I cried for her in a way I know I shouldn’t have, only knowing her for two days. Maybe I was crying for all the little bunnies and rabbits and animals whose lives are taken by something bigger or stronger or more “important.” It’s nature, I know, but some days I feel weary of the cruelty.

Some of you old friends might notice that my “Rabbit Trail” has disappeared, at least from this website’s name. I followed it along and it turns out that little trail led me to Sweet Haven. So that’s where you can find me now.

garlic mustard, ‘Alliaria petiolata’ being photogenic on this cloudy day

Montmorency cherry tree

There is a small cherry tree blooming in the orchard and I’ve been down to the bridge to pick nettles again. I walked back around the field and into the woods a ways, along the creek, looking for garlic mustard, but didn’t find any patches bigger than that growing against the stump of an old black walnut tree which the county sawed off a few years ago to clear the view of the bridge. The mustard is already blooming small white clusters of flowers, and it grows thick all down the west bank of the creek, mixed with stinging nettles, both plants that thrive in disturbed soil, markers of human interference, but useful ones, in moderation. The sight of its leaves and flowers is familiar to me -and yet today is the first time I can name it.

A few weeks ago the peach trees bloomed. Every year before this, I somehow missed them. They opened up vibrantly pink blossoms the day before Nettie’s fifth birthday, almost glowing in the morning sun. The blooms froze a few days later, which happens more years than not here in Nebraska, but I’m thankful for the blooming even if we won’t have the fruit. I cut some and brought them inside and the flowers made the kitchen smell of honey.

My middle and index fingers are stained yellow with the pollen of dandelions. I keep wandering outside with a bowl or colander to pluck off the sticky heads and bring them in to boil into tea or syrup. I gave a small bottle to some neighbor-friends who brought home-grown tomato and cabbage plants yesterday. We scuttled back and forth awkwardly, each of us coming forward like some poorly-dressed magi bearing gifts, setting them in the driveway for the other to retrieve and then backing up to half-shout at one another over the garden fence for a few minutes. They noticed the hens scratching around the yard and asked if we had extra eggs, and I was relieved and happy to have something useful to give them, unlike a few flower plants and dandelion syrup, which are more novelty than necessity.

I’m not sure why I keep making it except that now more than ever, I have this desire to make things that can be put into jars. I suppose it’s the evolutionary gatherer instinct that responds to crisis by laying aside more things to eat, even if dandelion syrup isn’t a strictly necessary foodstuff. Then again, I keep planting flowers, too, and there’s no evolutionary explanation for that. I guess maybe we don’t have to rationalize or justify the desire for beautiful things, though perhaps we should try to cultivate our ideas of what we consider beautiful.

I’ve been taking still life photos from time to time, of my kitchen counter. The left side of the sink where I do the bulk of the kitchen work - making bread, chopping vegetables, straining tea, pouring syrup into jars, even starting seeds all happens here. I like to see what this most-used part of the house looks like from moment to moment, the subjects and light and shadows migrating throughout the day. It helps me take notice of the beauty of the mundane and humble, the things I’ve looked at a hundred times but not really seen.

The other night we worked with the donkeys on halters, trying to convince Hazel and Beau to follow the lead so that they can have their hooves trimmed with Tru in a few weeks. They consented to the halter but locked their front legs and wouldn’t take a step even with Nettie’s coaxing and so we all stood around for half an hour while Tru snorted and paced jealously in the adjoining pen. As we walked back up to the house, migrating White Pelicans flew graceful and effortlessly overhead in undulating groups of a few dozen at a time. I found myself standing still, almost holding my breath as they passed, listening to hear their wings, squinting in the dusk-light to witness their presence and being in my small square of sky, if only for a few silent moments.