Pink Thunbergia

Pink thunbergia is blooming in one of the front step flowerpots i brought indoors in October. Thunbergia is a vine, usually with a yellow flower. When i saw this pink flowered variety, i splurged.

Although the plant's name honors a Swedish scientist, we can think of it as honoring another Swede--Greta Thunberg, who, at the age of 15, became a world-known climate activist.

Due to climate catastrophe, hundreds of plant varieties are being lost forever every year. Hundreds of creatures go extinct every year.

Yes, change happens, but fatalism is not the answer. We do what we are moved to do. 15-year-old Greta was moved to call a school strike in Sweden. What are you moved to do?

Lettuce Wagon

My meditation friend Paula grew her lettuce in containers this summer and had lettuce all summer long. Here's how she did it: She put her pots of lettuce in a wagon. In the morning, she let it welcome the sunny day; in the afternoon, she wheeled the wagon into the shade. On 90 degree days, she parked her lettuce wagon in her cool basement.

What's the best climate for growing our mindfulness?

I sit outdoors on the deck at 6 a.m. The coolness keeps me alert. Even just a little warmth can make me wilt.

And what good is wilted lettuce?

Wild Grapes

While on retreat last week, i took several quarter-mile walks along the country road which is more like an extension of the retreat center driveway. Every few hundred feet, i could smell grapes! Wild grapes. So deliciously grape-smelling.

I picked a few. The grape skins were sour; the seeds were mouth-puckeringly sour; and the inner grape--well, it was sour too. Oh, but that smell of grapes was over-powering.

The sourness of New England grapes stems, in part, from the acidic soil in which they grow.

What's your inner mood? What's your "inner soil"?

Meditation helps us change our natural mood setpoints toward positivity. When the inner climate is sunny, the words that come off your tongue will be sunny too.

Giant Hellebores

At the Lindisfarne Gospel Garden on Holy Island, way up in the northeast corner of England, the hellebores were gigantic.

So this is what hellebores can look like when they are in a perfect climate--cool and damp and just barely freezing in winter.

Our meditation practice can bloom profusely when we get serious about our personal meditation climate. Yes, "cool and damp" may sound unattractive to our friends, but we know that cooling down the demands of the world and damping down our social media time can be its own reward.

In fact, there's a new acronym now: JOMO--the Joy Of Missing Out. Missing out on the ups and downs of the lives of our acquaintances; missing out on the daily news; missing out on social media--all this missing out gives us time and space and heart to practice joy.

And feel the wonder of giant hellebores.

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.

Cyclamen: Warm & Chilly

On the left: Kept in the kitchen. On the right: Kept in a chilly room.

In December, i gave a talk on holiday plants. I encouraged people to keep their cyclamen in a cool spot. Joanna did an experiment. She bought 2 cyclamens at the same time.She placed one cyclamen in her kitchen, near the wood stove. The other one she put in her study, which is too chilly for her to use in the winter. Three months later, here are the results. The leggy cyclamen with no flowers is the warm one. The compact fabulously blooming cyclamen has been living at 50 degrees.

It's counter-intuitive that warmth would lead to legginess and no blooms at all, and that chilly leads to continued blooming. It's almost as though too much pleasantness leads to a "lazy" plant. Resilience comes from a seemingly difficult climate.

This conforms to my experience. My siblings and i have a high level of resilience, perhaps partly due to a slightly chilly upbringing. Children who are accustomed to having everything provided for them lose their vigor. Uber-protection can lead to a lack of resilience.

Resilience is a key factor in happiness--happiness despite outer conditions.

Gray Water

Our Airbnb casa here near Big Bend National Park drains kitchen dishwater directly into the tiny garden outside the kitchen window. This morning I saw a toad sitting happily in the 3-inch wide PVC drainpipe in a very small puddle of water. Bill was washing breakfast dishes, so more water was coming out. When I leaned over to take a photo, the toad hopped away.

Using gray water to water plants is a must in this climate that receives 10 niches of rain per year. Conserving water is the name of the game here in the Chuhuahuan desert. The gray water creates a tiny habitat where plants grow happily.

At the end of the drain pipe, several things are growing--some sort of mallow, a small yellow daisy thing, and a large yucca.

We meditators need to create habitats for ourselves where we are well-watered. Depending on our larger environment--family, political, work--our refuge may be quite small, yet sufficient for us to grow and bloom. Or sit happily and comfortably like the toad.

Spring Calm

I flew to North Carolina today to visit my friend Samantha before i go to Southern Dharma Retreat Center this weekend for Spring Clean-Up. Yes, it really is spring here in zone 8. Redbuds are blooming in the woods, which itself is tinged with green. Daffodils, tulips, hyacinths smile in lawns. Oh, my. This weekend, at my home in zone 5, temperatures will drop into the single digits.

Samantha said that since she's let go of her expectations of her family, she feels so calm. She had been so accustomed to feeling anxious that feeling calm is a brand-new sensation. Calm is possible! Calm is possible once you let go (let go, let go) of those stressors you've been carrying around with you like extra weight. You don't realize how weighty that extra is until you let go and feel a heck of a lot lighter.

But actually, all anyone can do is report to you from a different climate zone. It's spring down here. And calm feels really, really light. This is something you have to see/feel for yourself.

Sow Poppy Seeds on Snow. Now.

Is this the last snow of the year? We can't be sure, but if it is, it's time to sow poppy seeds. Strap on your snowshoes and trek out to the flower beds where you want your annual poppies to grow. April is too late. Sow poppy seeds on snow. Now.

(If you need poppy seeds, email your snail-mail address to me at cheryl.wilfong at gmail.com, or message me through Facebook, and i'll send you some.)

What seeds do you want to sow in your life? Kindness, patience, tolerance, skillful speech?

We can sow those seeds now, even if our inner climate is cold and snowy, dark and dreary. Simply begin now with a few moments of mindfulness.

Bulb Show

My women's group drove down to the Smith College Bulb Show today for a blast of spring. Two greenhouses filled with daffodils, tulips, and hyacinths, blooming apple trees and forsythia, and a multitude of other, smaller bulbs.

While we were there, we walked through the Palm House, the Succulent House, and the Orchid House. Oh, it was so hot and humid in there.

It was 2 degrees here at home this morning, winter still wearing her full regalia--2 feet of snow, frozen in place.

Sometimes, we just need a reminder of the possible.

When your inner climate feels cold and dry, warm yourself up with gratitude and loving-kindness.
Write down 3 gratitudes right now.

I'm thankful for friends, flowers, and home-grown food.
And i'm very grateful for you, dear reader.

On the coldest night of the year (so far), i went to the Some Like It Hot yoga studio for a yoga warm-up.

Afterwards, i walked into my mudroom and looked at the cyclamen on the windowsill. Some like it cold--cyclamen, for instance. In London, in January, you can find windowboxes filled with blooming cyclamen, and maybe a bit of 30 degree snow.

What's your inner climate when you sit down to meditate?

Really, we are just watching weather patterns blow through our mind. The scorching heat of anger. The chill of rebuff. The rains of grief or sadness. The tornado of too much change happening too fast.

We don't need to have an opinion (or a judgment) about any of these weather patterns of emotions. Just watch them come and go.

As they say here in New England, "You don't like the weather? Wait 5 minutes. It'll change."

Photo from fineartamerica.com

Outer and Inner Climate

I am fortunate to have my own well that produces 12 gallons a minutes. So the only cost of watering the gardens for hours and hours on these sweltering days is the cost of electricity.

On these sunny days, our electricity comes from solar-voltaics, which is to say, the sun. So my electricity is "free."

Friends who live in town have a brook running around the back of their property, so they put a little pump in the brook, attach it to their hose, and water their gardens from the brook in order to avoid a startlingly high water bill.

The combination of sun, water, and rich earth means the plants in the veggie garden are growing by leaps and bounds.

In the 90+ degree afternoons, i drive to nearby ponds or rivers to immerse myself for relief from the sun's heat. Ahhh. Cool water refreshes the body.

When our inner climate heats up with irritation or desire, how do we cool ourselves down?
Mindfulness is the cool water that refreshes our senses.

Yes, we may still have to suffer a bit with the inner heat of "I can't believe they...." or "I want....." Feel where those thoughts reside in your body.
Put your attention on those sensations like an acupressure point.
Hold your attention on that tender spot.
Hold it. Hold it.
Tears may come to your eyes.
This is the water that cools down the inner climate.