THE COMFORT OF CROWS, A BACKYARD YEAR, with MARGARET RENKL (BEST OF)

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This week we revisit a favorite conversation from the archive, The Comfort of Crows, A Backyard Year, with author and backyard tender and observer, Margaret Renkl, reminding us that even on days when we feel overheated and overwhelmed, there is always some comfort, intelligence, and agency to be found among the flora and fauna of this generous planet.

Many of you will remember our previous conversation with writer and gardener Margaret Renkl about one of her previous title, Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss and her other titles include Graceland, At Last: Notes on Hope and Heartache From the American South.Her opinion pieces in The New York Times document the nature of our humanity weekly.

I am so pleased to welcome Margaret back this week to share more about her newest title – what is aptly described as “a literary and nature- based devotional” from one of our favorite backyard nature devotees.

Margaret's writing nourishes and buoys me quite regularly and I am so pleased to share time with her this week, perhaps especially this week.

Enjoy!

You can follow Margaret's work on line at margaretrenkl.com/:

and Instagram: @margaret.renkl/

Images courtesy of Margaret Renkl, Illustrated art by Billy Renkl, all rights reserved.

HERE IS THIS WEEK'S TRANSCRIPT by Doulos Transcription Service:

07-18-24 CP - The Comfort of Crows - Margaret Renkl Best Of - Final

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Download PDF • 157KB

If you enjoyed this program, you might also enjoy these

Best of CP programs in our archive:

Joyful Participation in a World of Sorrows, Libby Ellis

Orwell's Roses, with Rebecca Solnit

Hunger, Heartache, Identity, with Claire Ratinon

Five Seasons, The Gardens of Piet Oudolf

JOIN US again next week, when environmental author, teacher, and advocate Janisse Ray and I talk all things place based. From her award winning writing such as Ecology of A Cracker Childhood, to her teaching of place based nature writing, her poetry and her advocacy on behalf of beloved places like Okeefenokee Swamp, we cover a lot of ground. That's right here, next week.

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Cultivating Place is made possible in part by listeners like you and by generous support from

The Catto Shaw Foundation,

supporting initiatives that empower women and help preserve the planet through the intersection of environmental advocacy, social justice, and creativity.

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Thinking out loud this week....

And my take away this week I find in Margaret’s dialectic between grief and hope. That hope is not a fool’s errand, but it is also not a noun.

It is a verb, an active verb which can take make forms but in this case it is embodied and made manifest through listening, looking, appreciating, supporting, tending, and sharing forward – which we might call sowing.

A man at a reading this past week asked me to sign his copy of What We Sow with this: "Sow kindness, harvest love."

I fully enjoyed the rich love song that Margaret Renkl both harvested from her Backyard Year and then has sown forward into ours. I think you might too.

And PS: As this week's BEST OF program airs this week, I am in Concord, MA addressing The Thoreau Society as a post annual conference gathering, but also recording on location one of our CP LIVE episodes with Gaining Ground Farm. I hope you saw some of our instagram posts/stories about the experience and will look forward to the roll out of the CP LIVE podcasts in early 2025 as well as the documentary final result of this curated series.

Earlier this month, I posted the very first update on our Special Project Cultivating Place Live over on the website – really hoping you will check it out – it’s fun and I welcome you all along on this new branch of the CP tree: go to cultivatingplace.com and follow the links under the CP LIVE tab….

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