Flower Quilt

I bought a quilt wall hanging at a church Christmas bazaar. It's colorful and flowery. It's beautiful. I love it. Now what am i going to do with it?

For the moment, it's my winter flower garden in the living room. But i so-o-o don't need any more stuff. This is the stress of desire.

I saw the little quilt. Pleasant. I bought it. Pleasant. And now what? (Unpleasant.) Not knowing is stressful. Not wanting clutter is stressful. Wanting and not wanting. (Stressful.)

Maybe i'll go to the living room and smile when i look at it.

Older and Wiser (?)

My sweetie has been bothered by an incomplete pruning job for the past few weeks. So he belted on my pruning saw, climbed up a ladder, and into the hemlock tree.

Yes, that's an 83-year-old man hanging by one hand in a tree--20 feet off the ground. All for the aesthetics of sawing off one offending branch.

Is this an example of "older and wiser"?

What is wiser, anyway? What is wisdom?

Part of wisdom is having good judgment. Judgment doesn't necessarily need to be good or bad, right or wrong.

Wisdom can simply discriminate between what is a skillful action and what is an unskillful action.

My sweetie had an exciting time climbing the tree, and he was very pleased with how the tree looks now--minus one branch.

Seed Savers

One morning last week, my sweetie and i were sitting outdoors in the hot tub when a nuthatch lands on our board-and-batten sided house. He pecks at the siding a few times.

Odd, i thought. Is he looking for bugs, as the woodpeckers do? In this cold weather?

Then he extracts a sunflower seed from between a batten and a board.

Aha! He uses our house to "bank" his seeds, so that when he's hungry, he can make a withdrawal from his savings account.

Now when i hear a light tap-tap-tap (3 taps) on the side of our house, i smile because i know the nuthatch is making a deposit into or a withdrawal from his seed-savings account.

Berry Bowl

The church Christmas bazaar season has begun, so i went to one of my favorites--the Unitarian-Universalist meeting house. I like to buy a couple of berry bowls--little terrariums filled with moss and partridge berries with cling wrap over the top to keep the humidity inside.

I'll be going on retreat from January 1 to mid-March. I'll be in my own mini-micro-climate--meditating for several hours each day here at home. Letting the outer world go. Becoming calm and quiet, and seeing what beautiful mind states grow.

Blood Spatter

There's blood on the railing of the deck. Right where we scatter sunflower seeds for the birds. And the squirrels.

Is it a murder mystery? Blood spatter? Or is it the estrus cycle of the female gray squirrel?

Death? Or birth? (It's seems too early and way too cold to be thinking of little squirrel kittens.)

Just in case it's death, i pause for a moment at the sacrificial altar of the railing where we feed the birds. Such easy pickings for a predator.

It's easy to imagine an owl swooping down in the cold winter night.

Death is certain. The time of death is uncertain.

Thanksgiving Prayer

Max Coots’ Thanksgiving Prayer

Let us give thanks for a bounty of people:

For children who are our second planting, and though they grow like weeds and the wind too soon blows them away, may they forgive us our cultivation and fondly remember where their roots are….

For generous friends with hearts and smiles as bright as their blossoms;

For feisty friends as tart as apples;

For continuous friends, who, like scallions and cucumbers, keep reminding us that we’ve had them;

For crotchety friends, as sour as rhubarb and as indestructible;

For handsome friends, who are as gorgeous as eggplants and as elegant as a row of corn, and the others, plain as potatoes and as good for you;

For funny friends, who are as silly as Brussels sprouts and as amusing as Jerusalem artichokes, and serious friends, as complex as cauliflowers and as intricate as onions;

For friends as unpretentious as cabbages, as subtle as summer squash, as persistent as parsley, as delightful as dill, as endless as zucchini, and who, like parsnips, can be counted on to see you through the winter;

For old friends, nodding like sunflowers in the evening-time, and young friends coming on as fast as radishes;

For loving friends, who wind around us like tendrils and hold us, despite our blights, wilts and witherings;

And finally, for those friends now gone, like gardens past that have been harvested, and who fed us in their times that we might have life thereafter;

For all these we give thanks.

Undone Projects

It has snowed 3 times in the past week--all before Thanksgiving. I keep thinking, Oh, it will melt, but temperatures here are dropping into the teens. The ground will freeze, and that's the definite end of gardening season.

Oh, the projects left undone. Things not put away. Stalks and stems not cut down. Bulbs not planted. Sigh.

We thought we had a future, but the future turns out differently than we expected. The future was a figment of our imagination. And now we are disappointed that reality doesn't match imagination?

The future is always in the imagination. The future is only in the imagination.

We live and breathe in the present moment, and every new moment is a surprise.