Fortifying the Mind

 I fortified my unfenced winter squash bed early on because, last year, someone nibbled my squash plants to death. Maybe it was deer. But I suspect turkeys were the main culprits. A bed full of dirt looked like an enticing dust bath to them.

This spring, i staked out the squash bed and then ran string between the stakes until it looked like a cat's cradle. For extra protection, i added tomato cages all along the sides so deer would be deterred from sticking their noses through the tangle of string.

During these COVID times, we are setting up our own fortifying protections--some more than others. Masks, gloves, hand sanitizer. Some protections have been rescinded: i can now use my own bags at the food coop.

I'm already looking forward to my 10-day silent retreat in October--with the side benefit of missing out on 10 days of pre-election news. I'm protecting my mind from various news pests.

I have a bumper crop of winter squash setting butternuts, pumpkins, and Long Island Cheese (whatever that turns out to be). Ten days of silence will yield a beautiful harvest of calm.

Sharing Butternut Squash

Last night at 8:00, i went down to my neighbor who has chickens to get a couple of eggs so i could make scones this morning. In her garage sat 2 dozen butternut squashes. Wow! We are ready for winter. I have a dozen butternuts myself.

It's time to share the harvest of the garden. Or of the chickens.

So, this morning i made pumpkin scones, with cranberries, to take to my writing group.

Sharing squash. Sharing eggs. Sharing scones.
Share your life. It feels delicious.

A Hard Nut to Crack

My 93-year-old neighbor Esther has a butternut tree in her front yard. Butternut is also called "white walnut" (as opposed to "black walnut.")

This year must have been a mast year for the nuts, because Esther said she had thousands of butternuts littering her yard. She filled dozens of containers, and finally gave them away to Martin, who filled the bed of his truck with Esther's butternut harvest.

Martin rakes the nuts onto a concrete pad, covers them with metal roofing, and then runs over them with his tractor to crack the fragrant green shells. Then he shovels that mess into a cement mixer, using a lot of water to wash them all clean. Butternuts are hard nuts to crack.

We ourselves can be a hard nut to crack, especially when we get going on one of our favorite grudges. How do we loosen the shell when we've hardened our heart against someone? Sometimes, life will grind us up until there's nothing left for us to do but let go. Let be.

But more often, we just keep grinding away on our grudge. "He shouldn't have...." "That's not fair." "She should...."

We wash that grudge clean in the water of loving-kindness. Simply rinse your mind with your favorite phrase. "May i feel safe." "May i have ease of well-being." It will take a while. Days perhaps. Or even months.

Simply keep rinsing your mind with loving-kindness until your heart cracks open.

Squash to Pie

In the basement, while putting away extension cords from the holidays, i discovered 2 butternut squashes going south. I brought them up to the chopping block in the kitchen, cut off the brown parts, and soon had 3 bags of cubed squash for the freezer, as well as sauteed squash-apples-onions for dinner. My sweetie had been begging for a pumpkin pie, so i made a squash pie instead. (It looks the same.)

Illness surprises us. We go to the doctor for a check-up and find something not quite right. My 47-year-old step-daughter just emerged from a week in the hospital and a bout with inflamed colitis. My 96-year-old hospice client has leukemia, but she subsists on a diet of Pepperidge Farm cookies and Boost, a nutritional drink.

My middle-aged winter squashes had begun to bruise and brown. Most of my friends in their 60s have had skin cancers removed. The women almost all have osteopenia, the predecessor of osteoporosis. Bones begin to weaken inside, unnoticed.

The body only lasts so long. And what it does is beyond our control, no matter how well we take care of it.

Knowing this, knowing that Life consumes Life, what's the harvest of our life? What do we make of our "one wild and precious life"?

Pie photo from farmersdaughterct.wordpress.com

Butternut Stress and Butternut Calm

Harvesting winter squash and pumpkins is sort of like looking for Easter eggs. The long vines winding off into the tall grass that had grown up around them meant i missed a few butternuts. After my sweetie mowed that tall grass, i found a perfectly good squash that had been sheared right in half by the lawn mower.

So we had Butternut Black Bean Burritos for dinner. Delicious!

Our meditation practice can get lost in the tall grass of our busy life. Then some sort of unexpected stress(es) come along, and there's nothing left for us to do but meditate. Today. Now.

Taste just a moment of delicious calm that reminds us that, yes, we are indeed sane. Behind the chatter or the downright meanness of the monkey mind lies one second of peace. That tiny second is our relaxing vacation from "The Mind," which is trying to overwhelm us with its false beliefs, over and over and over. In that jungle mind, there is a still forest pool. Under that tidal wave of beliefs, the ocean is calm. And so are we.

Generosity Grows

My neighbor, Connie, gave me a dozen butternut seedlings in early June. To begin with, they looked puny, then i lost track of them. But enough survived so that i have a couple dozen butternut squashes. So does Connie, So does our neighbor, Whit, who only planted 2 of Connie's seedlings.

We are all looking for winter squash recipes, so help! Send me your recipe.

Whit's wife, Tonia, is taking most of their squash harvest to her exercise class, and the women there are very grateful.

Generosity (Connie's) begets generosity (Tonia's). Who knows who the ripples of generosity will touch next? Connie has already given me some of her last night's squash casserole with sunflower seeds.

Our actions do not happen in a vacuum. Our actions ripple out to affect everyone around us. Sometimes our unskillful actions come back to bite us in the behind. So, choose your actions wisely. Generosity is a great place to begin.