Empty Wreaths

I bought 3 grapevine wreaths at the last Farmers Market of the summer season. The last Farmers Market i could go to in person. Now, the Farmers Markets around me have switched to order on line with curbside pick-up.

I thought the wreaths would be fun to take to the annual wreath-making party at a friend's house, but, of course, she has cancelled that event for this year. So now i'm home alone with 3 empty wreaths. Sigh.

Empty. Thanksgiving empty of friends to eat with, but not empty of friends to share thanks with. A wreath-making party empty of party, but not empty of wreaths.

Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme

 

Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme. This bouquet of herbs sounds like a recipe for Thanksgiving day stuffing. 

I have the parsley, sage, and thyme in my herb garden. But alas, no rosemary.

And on this Thanksgiving Day, no true loves to visit, except the one i live with.

Gratitude is the name of the day. Giving thanks for what i have. Even if Rose and Mary can't come to the feast.

Farewell Alyssum

 Alyssum is still blooming, but just barely. 23 degrees this morning, and alyssum's life energy is waning.

What a pleasure alyssum is. I sow the seeds along my walkways in mid-April. Alyssum is cold tolerant, so she isn't fazed by a cold snap here and there. She starts blooming June 1, and five months later, she's still full of charm.

But now, the week before Thanksgiving, her seeds are ready to be harvested. 

I like a resilient plant, and i like resilient people. Resilience is the ability to endure the pain of a dart that someone throws, often unintentionally. Yes, that thoughtless remark hurts. Can you, I, we endure that pain with mindfulness? One second, five seconds? Maybe as long as a minute.

Then we notice we are breathing. Still breathing.

Tulip Surprise

Tulips surprise me every year. I buy them half price after Thanksgiving and force them in pots in the garage. By early March, their green shoots poke up out of the dirt, and I bring them indoors to warm up. As soon as one blooms, I take it and its pot full of sister tulips outdoors to the front step. Soon, a dozen pots of tulips decorate the front door.

Left in the refrigerator of outdoors, the potted tulips bloom for about three weeks, though this year, they held their color for nearly six weeks. Then I dig a hole in a flowerbed and plop the spent tulips into it.

A year later, a few tulips survive and surprise me. The chipmunks did not eat the tulip bulbs. It feels like a miracle, and I am grateful.

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.

Glorious Gourds

The bedraggled mums on the front step are being replaced gourds. Glorious gourds. Colorful gourds. Weird gourds. They are pretty in their own strange ways. But i start to wonder, What's the purpose of gourds anyway?

Gourds used to be used as tools, as implements, as kitchenware--cups and dippers. But nowadays we put them on our front door step in October or perhaps on the Thanksgiving table. Then it's good-bye gourds.

Gourds are impermanent--here this month and gone next month. It took five months for them to grow. I use them for two months, and then good-bye.

For now, i enjoy the beautiful gourds and know that their life span is short.

And so is mine.

Does a Bear S**t in the Woods?

Does a bear s**t in the woods? Apparently not. This morning my neighbor reports a big pile of doo-doo in her driveway.

We have all learned from our forester neighbor to pick scat apart with a stick to see what the critter was eating. At first glance, we might guess Thanksgiving dinner. (Just kidding!)

The clue you can't see is that this pile of scat is about 100 feet from the dumpster shared by 10 households. The 2 dumpster divers on our private road keep begging people to wash out their food containers, and, please, don't put food-infused paper (e.g., pizza boxes or used microwave paper towels) in the recycling dumpster, which sits right beside our trash dumpster.

A fed bear is a dead bear, because a fed bear becomes a nuisance to the neighborhood, and then....

The bear is trolling her usual food sources (including our dumpsters), just like we shoppers troll our favorite stores, the places where, in the past, we found something that we like.

Unfortunately, our mind trolls our problems, turning them over and over and over and ..... Even if they are a pile of s**t.  Er, "scat," i mean.

As one Tibetan teacher says, "Have a good time with your bad time."

Eventually, we do realize that whatever s**t we are putting up with, it's just not worth it.

Coconut Chia Seed Pudding

Last year, i spent Thanksgiving on retreat in Maui. I loved meditating outdoors most of the day surrounded by bougainvillea, palm trees, and chirping birds.

The vegetarian Thanksgiving dinner was delicious. For dessert, we had delicious coconut chia seed pudding. In memory of that delicious meal, i made the same pudding at home this year.

Here's the recipe:
1 can of coconut milk
1/3 cup chia seeds
a tablespoon or so of your favorite sweetener (i use maple syrup)

Refrigerate and it's ready in 20 minutes.

When i'm on retreat, i often eat three prunes every morning for regularity. A day's worth of sitting plus not drinking enough water means that my internal digestive tract often slows down and dries out. At a wilderness retreat in 2016, the cook served chia seeds with every meal--no prunes at all. To my surprise, i had lovely visits to the outhouse. Therefore, i'm a big fan of chia seeds, which are high in Omega-3s.

What goes in--so deliciously--comes out in an unrecognizable form. Smooth move.

Days of Giving Thanks

The day of giving thanks is not over, even though Thanksgiving was yesterday. Every day is a day for gratitude, and this day after Thanksgiving is a day to remember.

Gratitude is an antidote to greed. Greed often comes from a sense of not having enough, or at least not having as much as everyone else has. Gratitude assures us that what we have is enough; greed and gratitude cannot peacefully coexist.

Desire is a strong emotion. Today, Black Friday, is a great opportunity to watch desire in action. "I want...." "I want...." Simply watch desire, and, if you can remember, say a few words of gratitude and feel what happens.

Dynamite Cranberry Relish

I made a delicious cranberry relish for Thanksgiving dinner. So easy! This from a person who has avoided cranberry sauce for decades.

I chopped up (via the food processor) 1 apple, 1 clementine with peel, and 2 cups of cranberries. I added a couple of tablespoons of maple syrup, but you can use your favorite sweetener.

Dynamite!

How many things do we feel rather lukewarm about until we actually try them?

My friends tell me they could never meditate, never be silent, never go on retreat, never have a quiet mind.

You don't know until you try it.

Two Months Worth of Tomatoes

Cherry Tomatoes from One Plant

Frost is coming so i'm harvesting the very last of the cherry tomatoes--from one plant. This is the single plant that i blogged about on September 17. It turned into a jungle as it clambered down a stone wall. (Think: heat!)

What abundance! That's 2 gallons of tomatoes from one plant--in October! I smell like tomato leaves.

We are a month away from Thanksgiving, but i am feeling very grateful for this overflowing harvest.

Thawing the Frozen

The flowering kale on the front step has had a long run. I bought them the day before Thanksgiving, and, due to our nearly snowless winter, they have looked pretty good for 2 whole months. But it is time to bid them farewell, except that they are frozen in place.

This is just like our habits, which we adopt at a younger age because they are pretty or funny or sassy. Then, as we become older, some of those habits just don't look so good on us anymore. Imagine if you were still as loud and self-conscious and self-loathing as a teenager! No thanks. But some of those old habits are frozen in place, and they show up at inconvenient times. They are one of the nubs around which our ego coagulates.

It's time to let go. But how? The thaw happens, not by kicking at that old frozen-in-place habit. Breathe. Relax. Release the wanting. It will return. Watch it return. Watch it leave again, maybe for just one second. Notice that.

I'm waiting for the frozen flowering kale to thaw.

True Generosity

Three weeks ago, Jane brought me a bouquet of flowers for Thanksgiving dinner. Thanks Jane, for the gift that keeps on giving! These white mums are still making me smile.

This is what generosity feels like--ripples of happiness are still tickling me.

True generosity from the heart. Not to be confused, in this season, with spending more money.

Pure Green

I made almost a gallon of parsley pesto and stored it in half pint containers. That means I have a dozen containers in the freezer, which translates into a dozen meals of parsley pesto pasta this winter.

Parsley pesto--just the paste of parsley plus olive oil that comes out of the food processor--is so green. It's St. Patrick's Day green. In contrast to basil pesto, which turns brownish-green when it comes in contact with the air. (i.e., almost immediately). Parsley pesto loses its strong parsley flavor and fades into the background, mixing very comfortably with garlic and Parmesan.

I'd like to emulate these qualities of parsley--it maintains its purity in the company of others. It even antidotes the garlic!

Too often, in the company of others, we are carried away by their unskillful behaviors--gossiping, complaining, drinking. We pledge ourselves to act more in accord with our conscience, but then.... Belonging to the group overrides our best intentions. Sigh. Our behavior turns a bit brown around the edges.

One verse of the Greatest Blessings Sutta that I read for 2 different Thanksgiving services, says:

Avoiding those of foolish ways,

Associating with the wise...

These are the greatest blessings.

Perhaps we can't or don't really want to totally "avoid those of foolish ways." They may be people that we dearly love. So, for balance, we spend more time associating ourselves with wise people. Oh, that feels so much better, even though we "only" feel friendly; we don't love them particularly.

"The wise" can give us the strength of character that we need to practice our good intentions in public. We might even, in an unseen or low-key way, antidote the unskillful behavior of others.

Oh, that pure green parsley pesto is so beautiful.

Substituting Kindness for Complaining

Since we went to a community Thanksgiving dinner, we don't have any leftovers. So I tried parsley pesto pasta for dinner. So delicious! And so green-green.

Instead of basil, I substituted a half pint of the parsley paste I made 2 days ago. Instead of pine nuts, I used walnuts. As usual, I used garlic, Parmesan, and my own sun-dried tomatoes.

When we substitute a good habit for a bad habit, we develop our strategy before the bad habit strikes (again). For instance, we substitute loving-kindness for irritation, impatience, and frustration.

Lauren, my step-daughter, has Asperger's syndrome and is very sensation sensitive. In her new apartment (and she has had 3 new apartments in the past few months), the downstairs neighbor, an old man, turns his TV quite loud. Instead of complaining to the management,  Lauren took him a pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving. (She's a very good cook!) She chatted with him and noticed that his TV is not loud in his  living room. She substituted kindness for her usual why-don't-people-understand-what-I-need attitude.

What a delicious and refreshing change of habit, change of heart.

Pumpkin for Thanksgiving

Today is pumpkin day. Many of us are eating pumpkin pie. I'm baking pumpkin bread (with chocolate chips and walnuts :) for the gratitude sitting this morning at Vermont Insight. And since i'm using my own home-grown pumpkin, i made a batch of tamari pumpkin seeds as well.

I thought you might enjoy watching a porcupine eating pumpkin for his Thanksgiving dinner.

Let's give thanks for all creatures, great and small. Especially the ones we are related to.

Plenty and Enough

I'm forcing hyacinths in vases. Right now, they're living in the basement where it's dark and cool. Usually, they start blooming in early February.

I've been collecting vases all year long. Every time i go to the thrift store or to the Swap Program at the landfill, i keep my eyes peeled for vases with narrow necks. Once or twice a month, i find an actual forcing vase.

Yes, it would be easier to just order a case of forcing vases, but also more expensive. I haven't found a supplier since my previous one dried up. Perhaps i could go to the florist and order a case through her.

 

But i have 50 bulbs in 50
vases, and really that's enough.

How much is enough? This week of Thanksgiving we give thanks for our plenty. Then some of us go out on Friday and shop for plenty more.

Enough. I have enough. My family has enough. A conversation with my 10-year-old grandson revealed that he doesn't really care about the stuff. He likes experiences--like rock-climbing camp or like shoveling manure out of Granny's truck. "Hey, I'm a farmer," he says. That's a feeling he won't forget, and that's enough for me.

Photo from maydreamsgarden.com

Taking Things For Granted

I drove my truck to the nearby farm yesterday to pick up one more load of manure.

"Don't know if i'll see you again till spring," i said to Charlie, the farmer.

"Yes," he said. "There's a woman who comes for manure who has said 4 times, "Well, i guess this is the last time."
"We just don't know if it's the last time or not."

My father came to visit me for the last time the Thanksgiving before he turned 75. Of course, at the time, i didn't know it was the last time.

Taking things for granted is a type of thoughtlessness, of mindlessness really, that results in ingratitude.

Since this is the season of giving thanks for the blessings of our lives, take time today to express gratitude--maybe for all the things you take for granted.