Katie’s Ground Podcast

This year when I went for my mammogram, I barely took a seat before I was ushered into the exam room. I changed, got squished and was on my way. For years I went to Swedish American, now UW. I wrapped the gown around my middle, held it close and sat down with other women. Some of us read a book. Others watched the TV. Sometimes we spoke. Those days we waited for our results with some dread. We sha...

We call it sheep running when the wind moves in the tall grass. It’s a glorious sight, that wind in the grass, not something you’d think glorious like a mountain range, but that grass up and headed out, lush from a spot of rain and warm days, it’s glorious, and if we cut and bale it with enough chance to dry, it will feed Mrs Horse and the neighbors’ cows. It’s the nesting ground of meadow birds—r...

I’ve been caught up in the chatter about Unidentified Aerial Phenomena since Trump began releasing previously top-secret files. Pastors who have seen files have said that these would destroy Christians’ faith1. Others are concerned about how we would be deceived as revelations ramp up. Rod Dreher has said these phenomena are demonic. Now we are faced with a universe that is more mysterious and odd...

The days this week have been exquisite, especially as the sun set, with enough clouds to focus the light, to make the barn, the trees, the grass radiant. One day with predicted rain, possibly severe, the air felt like pressure like there was thunder rolling in the background or a jet readying for take off. The big machines were working the fields. Every few years they get bigger, the finishers the...

The farmers are on the move. Finally. It’s been a cold week, as chilling as any week in the middle of the winter, with a few mornings of frost, and cold winds roaring through. I watched a maple tree’s leaves wilted, trembling on a rare still day, as if those leaves were trying to warm themselves or trying to say something. The lilacs have lasted longer than normal. I walk past their scent, heavy,...

Early, when I’m doing chores I notice but don’t notice: the wood walls of the barn. The manger where I set dusty grooming tools. The shavings pushed back in Mrs Horse’s stall. Water buckets I sloshed and tossed out even before Mrs. Horse walked around looking for me and her portion of hay. I turn on the My Daily Office Podcast because I can sometimes hear the word of the Lord better than I can rea...

Sometimes it seems like our whole culture is aligned against the deep commitments of a marriage that lasts over many years. There are rough patches that can last months, that are just that-rough patches and not the truth of the marriage. There are reasons why you chose that person, that are perhaps deeper than you first thought. With Bruce, my body sang to him, the first night we stood under a tre...

The Week of April 12, 2026 The willows are alive with red wing black birds. A squirrel runs across the road. Aiden alerts and pulls hard on the leash. I don’t see many squirrels at this part of the road. The squirrel colony is by our house—living in our trees with clumps of leaves as nests. Our multiple black walnut trees keep them well fed. Outside our bathroom window, I watch them run branches t...

The Ring We need to get you something for Christmas,” Bruce said. Christmas gifts can be difficult here. “I’d like to get you an Oura ring.” He’d seen the slick television ads promoting them for better health, and a close friend has spoken highly about hers. But I hesitated because it sets a machine between me and my body. Do I want to invite a machine that far into my personal, physical space? Th...

I walk up to the Peterson farm just to hear the wind in the trees in their dooryard, the pines especially. There’s an old apple tree that has a big fat trunk, and is so misshapen it seems like it has grown out of a fairy tale. A flock of redwing blackbirds settled by the willows. I don’t know how the leftover golden rods, sticks really can hold their weight, but it does. My mind was quiet walking...

Was it Angels or Merely Sun rays? Does it matter? The sky slanted-- gray shafts cloud to cloud streaming silver bars looked like angels, not the kind with wings blooming out of their shoulders or the others with four faces eyes, oh so many eyes or a man who walked up and wrestled hard, throwing out a hip. But still looking into the sky it was like I was seeing angels, a whole company of light, not...

I’m as gobsmacked by these recent years of quiet and contentment as I was by decades of steady difficulty. Bruce and I are both healthy. We get along. We are quiet with each other. We have found a synchrony that Ruth and Peco Gaskovski say happens with old married couples. In their essay with Inkwell, Marriage Coded : they say: “When you put two pendulum clocks on the same surface, they eventually...

Sunday, March 8, 2026 The wind is brisk this morning. The sky so clear and clean I could see the faded gibbous moon off to the east. When the moon is like this at night, I get spooked. It’s lopsided, faded, fat. It doesn’t feel clean and joyous like the little crescent following the sun down to the horizon. Or the shouting full moon throwing shadows, glorious shadow. But today it was faded over th...

The following are poems that sprang out of my journal. I’ve been taking a class in contemplative writing that has opened the gate for my words, however they want to run. Research has shown handwriting can avert dementia. Even as a young woman I could feel poems rising, when my mind clouded over, cluttered. But I forgot. The less I pack my brain with pixels the more my own thoughts rise. It’s as if...

February 4, 2026 Last night the contrails looked like pick up sticks tossed out on the floor, with the challenge to pick them up without disturbing them. Then Orion clear and high in the sky. Finally got a picture of him towering over our house, the pine tree and an arrow pointed straight at him. (I didn’t know if anything would show because the phone showed only black. I barely held both dogs sti...

February 19, 2026 My gosh the train was loud this morning, so loud it hurt my ears. I watched two engines pulling tankers to the east. My phone dinged, so I checked it and Mr. Dog, who has been walking out kindly, thought it was cute to grab the leash and pull, grab my shoelaces and pull. Like Mrs. Horse, when my attention strays, the playful joker in him arrives. (Mrs. Horse would stop if my mind...

Do you think Abraham studied the stars, so that when God found him, and said, “Your descendents will be as many as the stars and as the sand of the sea that he was gut punched with the enormity of the promise, as he looked at stars so bright they burned his eyes, and at the Milky Way so clear it looked like a distant front, clouds billowing, pregnant with rain? It’s Hagar’s story I wonder about, e...

I walked up to the horse farm and back listening to Martin Shaw’s I Set my Mind on the City . It was the first walk back after the bitter cold kept my walks short. And underneath his words quiet, the fields themselves quiet after the work of the big machines planting and harvesting, the work of cranes laying a new natural gas pipeline, the noise of gorgeous pickup trucks running back and forth, th...

Last week my reader @Mama reminded me of John’s words about Jesus: “In him was life and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. 1 And Jesus words about himself, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life.”2 So I thought I’d post pictures of light showing up around the farm....

Monday, January 19, 2026 One evening I looked out the window, Orion was close, and swollen, to the west of the barn, in front of the kitchen window. Where before in the summer we could only see him in the middle of night, bright and far away, crisp. The Northern lights aren’t showing themselves behind clouds and a cold wind, even though there is a G4 solar flare. When I was a young girl, I loved l...

Friday, January 16 While it was still dark, and I would remain in sleep, the snowplow scraped by. He went north and came back south. We had a bit of snow last night, but nothing Bruce would have to plow. I’ve seen bits of asphalt tossed in the ditch, black seeds that will not sprout. And my wild, young pup, Aiden has dived for them, rolled them into his mouth. I pull off my gloves, reach into his...

Yesterday, when I woke before dawn, the day looked dark and lowering, the moon cloaked in heavy clouds and silent. Last night’s wind had calmed. Finally, when the sun rose, when I ate my snack and drank my water, I walked both dogs down the road in spitting rain. It was glorious. Both dogs pulled ahead, not hard, but like the dogs you see with dog walkers in a park. I was pleased that they walked...

Sunday December 28 It’s raining warm buckets today. I let Mrs Horse out to stretch her legs, but the rain is so persistent, she stood by the barn, her hay soaked and untouched, so brought her in. I played the kid’s game of digging out the blocked rivulet under the barn eaves, so it would run away from the doors. Tomorrow that water will be ice. The air is full of energy. My head aches. The air is...

The day before Christmas Eve I walked Omalola behind the shed and manure pile. The sun had dropped behind the horizon to pull in a darkness with presence. The clouds were low and heavy, threatening rain that never came. Morgen’s back was against the barn, her ears forward. She always watches when I’m out with the dogs. My excuses not to work with her suit me—mostly having to do with no energy or n...

When the wind threw snowstorms into billows, pirouetting and spinning off the fields, my family waited for the plowmen to clear our road. We respected the power of the wind to plug it up. We stayed put, sometimes as long as a week, until the town plowed us out. At times, my mother called for them to come, afraid my father with his bum knee would have to walk the mile long road through drifts after...