Perking Up Our Flower Bed

My fenced-in vegetable garden is surrounded by strip beds. The strips are about 3 feet wide and separated by a lawn-mower's width of grass.

Some of the strip beds have vegetables that don't need to be fenced--garlic, onions, leeks, rhubarb, asparagus, and winter squash. Other strips are flower beds filled with re-seeding annuals, such as annual poppies, nigella, nicotiana, and silene. But in April, i also sow larkspur and whatever else tickles my fancy.

Since we are having thunderstorms this week, after a 2-week drought, i am hurriedly transplanting these annuals into the gardens near my house. The extra color really perks up my perennial beds, some of which have sagged into green, in this in-between season.

What perks up your meditation?

This morning i was practicing the restful states--see rest, hear rest, and feel rest.

I feel quite ho-hum about see rest: with my eyes closed, it's just sort of dark behind the eyelids and it doesn't change much.

I do like the moments when internal chatter dies down--"hear rest."

But "feel rest" is the state that draws my attention because it feels pleasant, even really pleasant. Feel rest perks up my meditation.