Sunflower Seeds from Bulgaria

The farm and garden store didn't have my usual brand of sunflower hearts for the birds, so i bought 50 pounds of "Valley's Finest" sunflower chips--whatever those may be. When i got home, i read the tag which said "Product of Bulgaria." 

My local birds are eating non-local sunflower seeds. I try ever so hard to locavore my diet, but the wild birds around here are eating Bulgarian sunflower seeds. Bulgaria is the largest exporter of sunflower seeds in the world.

Hmmm. I wonder where the sunflower seeds i use to make granola come from. Maybe i'm not as locavore as i would like to think.

Today, i express my gratitude to unknown farmers in Bulgaria for sending sunflower seeds to my home. My birds couldn't live without them. In fact, we need everyone in the world in order for our own lives to continue.

Contrary to the beliefs of the individualistic culture of our Western society, no one is a self-made man or woman. We all require the support of invisible millions of people. People who are not simply our minions.

The farmers who grew these sunflower seeds suffer and love just as we do. We are all inter-being together.

Composting with Bears

Wednesday's bear got into my neighbors' compost. Diana had put out some burned granola on Tuesday, and when she looked the next day, the granola was gone, and everything in the black plastic composter had been mixed up. How's that for "turning" your compost? Have the bear do it for you!

Isn't this just what our minds do? Our minds are burning about someone or other. We try to set that infuriating issue/person aside. We want to throw our problem away like we throw away our trash. But the mind revisits that bear-of-a-problem when we don't have our defenses up. Like not having the lid on the black plastic composter. The bear revisits our mind and jumbles everything up.

If we are truly going to compost our grudge or our garbage, we have to practice a lot of patience. We have to treat ourselves (and the other person) with kindness.