Phthursday Musings: The Ballad of New Jheri

Back on May 20, I introduced META-SPIEL readers to Jheri the bunny, who was efficiently chomping grass in our yard while hanging out in a little shade.

Jheri has been hanging around, along with other bunnies. Last week, though, somebody new had appeared. New Jheri.

This very morning, New Jheri was observed out chomping away. Note how New Jheri is on the sidewalk, dining on the side of the grass, gaining tremendous efficiency from not having to perform neck bends to access the sumptuous blades.

It has been remarked that there are likely many Jheris and many New Jheris. However, even though we will see multiple bunnies at once, we have not yet seen multiple Jheris or New Jheris at once.

Also, in another week or two, there will likely be Even Newer Jheri, and then at some point they will start being given names like Tesla Jheri, Lambo Jheri, and Volkswagen Jheri, if the other prevailing conversations in the household are any indication.

Jheri & New Jheri & Friends are believed to be largely habitating under our deck, an advantageous location made possible by a series of interesting decisions made by previous homeowners.

Once upon a time our 1950s ranch actually had an inground pool in the back. It was filled in, and a deck built over the top of the pool location, the deck essentially hovering a few inches off the ground. We did not buy the house for any of these details in particular, but it is interesting how decisions - possibly arbitrary ones - wind up altering how we live our own days.

As it turns out the deck is an ideal height for bunnies and other creatures. We’ve seen raccoons emerge in the past, and at least one fat possum. The possum hasn’t been seen for a while, but it is welcome, because it will eliminate mice. Just leave Jheri & New Jheri alone, possum!!!

The deck also has an extra special feature, which we discovered a few months ago. Our ranch has in-slab ductwork. A corner of the house adjacent to the deck has an elbow of the ductwork. I found that there’s a tennis-ball sized hole in the ductwork at the elbow. This is… very inefficient. But for wildlife hanging out under the deck, especially in the winter, it is probably very nice, because it’s keeping the space temperate. (The hole isn’t outright exposed to the outside, just to the surrounding cement. New Jheri is not going to pop up in a bedroom any time soon.)

Our HVAC guy - because, yes, we have an HVAC guy - has no idea what to do about it. Hopefully his boss has a better idea than mine, which is to take a big stick, smear the end with cement, and push cement into the hole from three feet away.

I know what some of you are thinking: Dude, why are you telling us about your freaking ductwork? But look. Have you ever thought about your ductwork? You really should think about your ductwork some time.

I know what at least one of you is now thinking: I am not thinking about the ductwork, I married you to deal with that kind of bullshit. Now, if, somehow, more than one of you is thinking this exact thought, then apparently I am lacking pertinent information about my life status.

I could keep this up, but… several of you are already groaning.

You know who’s not groaning? New Jheri. Groaning is inefficient.

The original idea for this week’s installment was to revisit numerous previous Musings and provide updates. But I only had a couple of ideas, and I didn’t really want to have to research myself, because that’s ridiculous. And now I am finding that trying to write an entire installment about bunnies in the yard is difficult even for a certified master bullshitter like me.

Since I’ve dwelt upon the outdoors surrounding the house, though - hmm, does this qualify as a Message From Yard? - another Musings update is in order after all.

On February 4, my special guest Rachel and I discussed sedges. In that discussion, the following question was posed, with the following answer provided:

If you were to bring a sedge home, what might you name it?

Lol Phil

I would call it by its name???

Wtf are we talking about here

Guess what, everybody? Jheri & New Jheri aren’t the only life forms living around our house.

I would like you all to meet our long-beaked sedges, The Pepoons:

From left to right, they are Herman, Silas, and Schtoompah.

These fine Carex sprengelii specimens were part of my modest native plants haul, which also included downy sunflower, royal catchfly, and butterfly weed. At least one downy sunflower seems to have been attacked by somebody… unfortunately the number of suspects literally keeps multiplying. (When asked for comment, Jheri responded by hopping away.)

Most people, I assume, will not write blog entries, and then follow through on the most obtuse jokes within through gardening, but you really should give it all a try some day, just like how you should give some thought to your ductwork.

As gardening goes, I wouldn’t claim to have a green thumb, but I have a thumb - two, actually - and there is something about mild gardening which does make me feel more connected to concerns both terrestrial and celestial. Humans are absurd, ridiculous creatures. But honestly, so too are plants, so too is the entire planet. Humans are profound agents of both order and chaos. When people speak of “the natural order” though there’s an implication that such a thing is fixed and intelligent. But nature itself is a much greater agent of both order and chaos than any human, or than humanity as a whole, if you even accept the idea that there is a distinction between the two. Oh, you might draw the Venn diagram to represent the overlaps between Humanity, Nature, God, and the Devil differently from how I might. But please don’t think that chaos belongs only to Humanity and the Devil.

I share the concerns of many people about the wacky human obsession with lawns. But I find that such concerns don’t stop me from pulling weeds and employing an edger. And with the native plants, the logic seems to be, put these things in the ground, help them out a bit, and they’ll take care of the rest. Which of us is the agent of order here, and which of us is the agent of chaos? Or is the reality, like all reality, much fuzzier: that order and chaos are just the yin and yang of the universe, and all of us - New Jheri, The Pepoons, and I - are just atoms in the fuzzy Creator’s plan / un-plan?

Whatever the answer, I find a neatly edged yard to be aesthetically pleasing, and New Jheri apparently enjoys it as well, and The Pepoons can be as rude as they want to be.

The more I think about it - the more I muse upon it - this one small patch of land outside the sliding office door really is an epicenter of metaphysical consideration.

The Pepoons are stationed near the door into the garage, and atop the garage are 20 solar panels. The light of the sun is, directly or not, feeding us all: The Pepoons through photosynthesis, New Jheri through the grass, the HVAC system through the electricity generated by the solar panels.

When a parent asks me how I think the world is going - and, for some reason, it always seems to be a parent who asks me such a thing - my stock answer is that things are always getting better, and always getting worse, all at once. This weekend, it’s expected to be over 110 degrees in Portland, a city where that’s not supposed to happen, which has never recorded a temperature higher than 107. But the pace of scientific innovation is unlike anything which came before. So much is wrong in the climate space, and so much good work is being done. I could say similar things about race relations, the economy, kids today, etc.

I can see how a nihilistic mindset could easily kick in, how people could get sucked in to the idea of a zero-sum game. But I don’t understand the yin and yang in those terms. To me zero-sum thinking is the equivalent of being unable to solve Zeno’s paradox (or, if you’re my dad, to finally reaching Antelope Freeway.) The answer lies in another dimension. Sometimes that dimension is time. But, I argue, sometimes that dimension is kindness.

Kindness feels like it is primarily an instrument of order, but it can also be an instrument of chaos, because the prevailing order might be remarkably unkind. I think it should be understood as belonging to both the yin and the yang, that it should be used to spread both order and chaos.

Solar panels producing electricity used to charge a battery used to power an edger used to manicure a lawn is all a little nonsensical but I believe that aesthetic pleasure can be an act of kindness (and self-kindness counts). This is why art and music are so vital to the human condition; they give the lie to the idea that the yin and yang are zero-sum. When you create art or music, you are creating both order and chaos; you are not creating something while taking something else away. (I realize that some art and chaos hardly qualify as orderly, but this is not the place to question whether something truly is art or truly is music. I will leave that to the central bureaucracy.)

(That was a joke.)

(Anyway.)

To put it a different way: “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction” is fine so far as physics is concerned, but is insufficient to explain not just the human condition but also the natural condition more broadly.

I’m not trying to be an Armchair Emerson here, mind you. This, ultimately, is just me going on an extended tangent about a baby rabbit. If you think that’s funny, then I ask you: What’s so funny ‘bout peace, love, and understanding?

Incidentally, if you, too, would like to send a Message From Yard, it may behoove you to study from the Godfather of Dub himself. Now, I must confess, I have no bloody idea what on earth is going on in this song, and I don’t think there’s enough of any kind of grass to help me, but if you can be inspired, go for it:

And, look, this has nothing to do with anything, except I can draw a fleeting relation between Lee “Scratch” Perry, the subject of smoking something, and this song, but since this was in my list of recommended YouTube videos, I couldn’t help watching it, and couldn’t help sharing it, because it’s so very wonderful, NOT THAT I RECOMMEND SMOKING, SMOKING IS VERY BAD FOR YOU

Now that I’ve managed to cram an exposition on the yin and yang, further jokes at the expense of a cherished botanist, and The Chats into the same entry that’s ostensibly about a bunny, I think my work here is done.