A Banana Tree Grows in the North Country

I'm moving my houseplants outdoors for their summer vacation. It's a good opportunity to divide and repot the houseplants or at least to refresh the potting soil.

The 5-foot tall banana tree, as usual, has a one-foot tall sucker in its pot, so i divide the little one off, into its own pot. Then i keep the little one, and i take the tall banana tree down to my neighbor Connie, so she can plant it at the corner of her driveway and the private road we live on.

I like the visual joke: a banana tree growing in New England. I like to imagine the neck-snapping moment of visitors driving on our road: Is that a....? No, it can't be. Banana tree?

Generosity freely offers a gift from the heart. The donor reaps joy. Well, in this case, it feels more like glee, but joy comes in many different flavors.

What's your favorite flavor of joy?

Spring of Springs

Spring has sprung, and around here, springs are gushing. Many of these rivulets begin at seasonal springs that form seasonal streams--rills--that dry up in April and don't start running again until mud season next March.

These dancing, energetic watery children grow into swift-flowing creeks, and run on into slower rivers. Streams around my home flow into Salmon Brook, which hasn't seen any salmon in a couple of hundred years.

Salmon can taste their home water and return there to spawn and die.

We too can taste the flavors of calm, of joy, of love, and of compassion.
When we begin to recognize these tastes we can sit down to meditate and head straight toward home.