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.

Chipmunks in the Stone Wall

I have a little garden bed right in front of a stone wall. When the wall was first built a few years ago, i thought the little south-facing bed would be perfect for hot weather crops such as peppers and eggplants. It turns out the stone wall is a perfect home for chipmunks, and chipmunks eat pepper plants.

For the past three or four years, i've tried putting milk carton "collars" around the pepper plants with mixed success (read: many failures).

Oh, how many times do i fight the current of Life, trying to row in the direction I want to go.

This summer, i give up. I surrender my garden bed to the chipmunks. After all, i do enjoy watching them dash and dart here and there.

I'm planting Russian sage in this hot spot of a micro-climate. The peppers and eggplants are going somewhere else--farther away from the home of the chipmunks.

Milk Carton Collars

My neighbor walked over in her pajamas at 6 a.m. to deliver a couple of empty milk cartons. I cut off the top and bottom of milk cartons and use them as a "collar" around little broccoli, kale, pepper, eggplant, and tomato plants to defend those taste treats from voles. Those critters managed to sneak under a couple of carton-collars and polish off the pepper plant inside each one.

From the outside, the milk cartons may look like a barricade (to the voles--I hope!). The plants inside have the ability to grow big and strong.

We too grow stronger in our spiritual practice when we take time to close our self off from the world--through 20 minutes of meditation, perhaps, or through going on retreat. Meditation retreats strengthen our practice so that we can taste the fruits (or vegetables) of the spiritual life.

If we allow cyberspace to sneak into our retreat or into our morning meditation, our peace of mind will be nibbled away.

Protect your practice. Protect yourself.

Eggplant

By Guest Blogger, Bettina Berg

Living as we do, in a place and at a time where the push for farmer’s markets and locally produced, organic food and products is at an all-time high, I get a bit of a chuckle in thinking back to my childhood when frozen vegetables were all the rage. While not an important fact in general, for the purposes of this telling, it might help to know that I grew up in Central Ohio in the 60’s and 70’s. Despite being a fairly agricultural state, the part of Ohio that I called home was small town, suburban. Despite being female, the woman I called my mother was busy, not housebound. The combination was a perfect storm for the ad men of Madison Avenue and the Jolly Green Giant of Minnesota.

While I grew up loving spinach, green beans and squash, I did not know them as anything but frozen blocks in the freezer compartment of the Frigidaire. Their counterparts, peaches, pears and pineapple could be found in brightly colored cans on the bottom shelf of the lazy Susan in the corner of the kitchen. I did know about lettuce. It was called Iceberg and came in a tight, round, crunchy head that got chopped up into bits and was delicious with Kraft oil and vinegar dressing.

My friend Janet and her family vacationed in Canada in the summer, and Janet often spoke of asparagus as something that she relished during their time there. I wondered what it was and how it tasted. I was fairly sure I wouldn’t like it--you had to pick it, for heaven’s sake. Another friend Lila sang the praises of artichokes, a vegetable the likes of which I had never seen. When I visited her family in Boston, I begged off by saying that I didn’t care for them rather than admit my ignorance of how I would even begin to eat the spiny thing before me. When asked once to collect some watercress from a walk-in refrigerator, I stood and looked around taking stock of the things I didn’t recognize and returned to the kitchen with an eggplant.

So how does any of this connect to doing the work of hospice? To me, it is a reminder that we bring what we know to any given situation. It is easier to be tolerant of my missteps when I remember that my upbringing, my opportunities or lack of them, my culture and my beliefs all influence how I approach and understand a situation. It is a reminder that after eleven weeks of training and several years of volunteering, I cannot know what another person’s dying is to them. What I can bring now is curiosity (what does asparagus taste like?) and a willingness to ask for help and clarification (oh, you pick off the leaves of that thing?) in order to try to understand what someone may be saying to me. It is a reminder that I need to be forgiving of myself for not being knowledgeable about everything (so, I’ve heard of watercress, but I’m going to need a little bit more description here.) It is also a reminder that I may be able to offer another something that has been unknown to them because of their life’s path. By listening carefully, I hope to know whether it is eggplant or watercress that is being asked for.

So, summer appears to be here, and soon the local markets and farm stands will be rife with produce for our consumption. I plan to partake fully.

End of a Season

Peppers and eggplant like it hot. Now that cool weather has arrived with refrigerator nights, the peppers simply hang on their bushes. Many have turned red, thanks to the length of the season. Eggplants are small, and it's tempting to think they will continue to grow in size--but highly unlikely. Having seen marble-sized eggplant in Thailand, i pick even the thumb-size eggplants, knowing i can cook something with them.

This season reminds me of the end of my parents' lives. I couldn't imagine life leaving them, yet life was definitely waning. No medical intervention could stop that downhill slide.

No amount of hope can reverse the path of the sun as daylight slides into darkness earlier every day.