I need to steel myself to tell you this: the bugs seem to be winning.

Not just the bugs, but also the black rot and fungi—the very plagues for which commercial orchardists spray the chemicals thought to be killing colonies of honey bees.

This time last year, we were wandering among our apple trees, picking a meager but healthy harvest of mostly heritage fruit. It had been a difficult season, but we were hopeful. Our attempts to tend the trees sustainably seemed to be working. We’d even found a good population of beneficial insects eating bad insects our trees.

But let me go back to the very beginning.

PostedSeptember 16, 2016

AuthorJan DeBlieu

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Thirty-one years ago Jeff and I moved into a little house on Hatteras Island, here on the North Carolina Outer Banks. Raised in a Delaware suburb, I’d never lived in such a small town. I set about trying to meet our neighbors, who’d seen many outsiders like us come and go. They didn’t pay much heed to us, until it was clear that we were staying.

Bit by bit we were taken into a community of people who were very different from those I’d known before. They fished, ran small stores, repaired houses and cars, and cleaned cottages. They were more open than many of my former suburban neighbors and certainly less pretentious. What you saw was what you got. I loved this about them.

They were also much more conservative than me—which, it turned out, made absolutely no difference at all.

PostedAugust 20, 2016

AuthorJan DeBlieu

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Shortly before my mother died last spring, she made a comment that brought me up short:

“I wish we’d talked about it more,” she said. That was all.

“It” was a defining event in all our lives—the death of my 16-year-old son in a car accident. Concerned about the toll it was taking on her and my dad, my husband and I tried to keep the depths of our pain hidden from them. Even several years after the accident, we didn’t level with them. Our conversations ran along the lines of, “Yeah, it’s really hard, but we’re doing okay.”

That, I see now, was a mistake.

PostedJuly 17, 2016

AuthorJan DeBlieu

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“Service is about mutuality,” said the beautiful, bright-eyed, round-faced woman. “You can’t help anyone else unless you put yourself on their level.”

I’d heard the same sentiment voiced by many people who are in the business of helping others. It’s true, but it’s much easier to say than to do.

What struck me about this woman’s remark was the simple joy with which she said it. She wasn’t lecturing, just stating fact: Everyone knows we’re all the same, broken or whole, homeless or housed. That’s what makes the work so meaningful.

She had reason to know what she was talking about. She was a nun.

PostedJune 18, 2016

AuthorJan DeBlieu

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“Can you help us?”

The elderly woman spoke in a singsong voice so loud that everyone in the bank turned and stared. She wanted to know if the two ancient keys she’d found in a drawer fit her safe deposit box, which she hadn’t opened in—she couldn’t remember how long. Her daughter (in her 50s, I guessed) tried to shush her. No luck on either the shushing or the keys. “I’ll pay to replace them. I can pay!” the woman shouted.

This recent encounter in our small town made me realize something with crystal clarity: There needs to be a national day honoring grown sons and daughters who now care for their elderly parents. Mother’s Day and Father’s Day speak to a different era of our lives. And boy, this one deserves to be marked, too.

Read the rest of this blog in Huffington Post by clicking here.

PostedJune 8, 2016

AuthorJan DeBlieu

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Healthy, Buggy Harvest: Year Two

Common Ground

Just Talk About It

Get Thee to a Nunnery

Parenting Our Parents Day -- Honoring Grown Kids Who Care for Their Moms and Dads

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