Rusted Vehicles

Today, our local tour began with Rusted Ford Trucks on the side of the road. I recognized two or three of my grandfather's 1940s and 1950s trucks. I recognized my Aunt Jenny's 1949 Ford sedan. All the vehicles completely rusted--rather like my body.

My sweetie and i looked at the new cars on the road and the rental Kia we are driving. In 20 or 50 or 70 years, they will look so old-fashioned, so rusty, so impossible to imagine as new. Just as children and young people cannot imagine that we were ever their age. They are young, and we are old. Thus has it ever been.

My dear Ford Ranger truck--the one i use to haul manure, wood chips, mulch, mulch hay, and dozens of plants--even it will, one of these days, rust in peace.

Putting the Garden to Bed

On October 1, i gave a talk to a garden club about Putting the Garden to Bed. Seven weeks later, my gardens are indeed put to bed, and almost everything on the check-list is done. Garden hoses put away. Outdoor chairs now sit in the garage. Birdhouses are cleaned out. Most of my vegetable garden beds are mulched with hay.

The gardener topped off the compost bins with manure on her last day. Oh, sigh. The gardener is gone. I miss her already.

The gardens have gone to bed, ready for their long, long sleep. Now that i have an extra hour or two each day, i can get going on some of my writing projects. I can work on de-cluttering the house. Again.

Getting ready for the time when i myself go for the big sleep.

Mulch Hay

Part of putting the garden to bed includes mulching the vegetable garden. First, the onion beds, then the winter squash bed, and finally the potato bed.

I call my local farmer, Bonnie, who knows how to load my pickup truck with 22 bales of hay. Right now, i ask her for only 10. The mulch hay i put on the garlic bed, the gladiola bed, the potato bed in the spring has become thin. The local turkeys are taking dust baths in the dirt there. I need a new thick layer to prevent grass from creeping in to the beds. By next spring, the hay will have dissolved into dirt. Oh, the soil in those beds is so deliciously dark and writhing with earthworms.

It's hard to believe, but taking a break from the world--meditating or going on retreat--can make us feel more alive. We mulch our world by muting all the incoming texts, phone calls, emails, and news. Stress dissolves. We begin to actually feel our bodies. Hey! I'm alive! Feel that.

These winter months of hibernation are a great time to retreat. I'm doing a 10-day silent retreat in October. How about you?

Sharing the Hay

Last evening, i went to pick-up some mulch hay. As usual, Farmer Bonnie knew exactly how to stack 21 bales into my little pick-up truck.

I delivered 10 bales to my neighbor. My gardener wants 6 bales for her goats, which leaves me with 5 bales. Just the right amount for mulching the vegetable garden.

I love sharing the hay.

The Honor System

A nearby farmer loaded 26 bales of mulch hay onto my Toyota Tacoma pick-up truck. Wow! She really know how to stack hay! She did this while she as milking her handful of sweet brown Jersey cows. Every Monday, i pick up a half gallon of raw milk from her. While i'm there, i may get a dozen eggs, a pound of butter, or some cream for whipping. It's all stored in a refrigerator along with a cash box in a tiny shed, so i can go there any time of the day or night. Everyone pays on the honor system.

If you look closely, you see that we all depend on the honor system. 99.9% of our interpersonal transactions with each other are indeed honorable. We don't take what isn't freely offered. We pay our share.

We feel right when we do the right thing, when we act honorably. Our conscience bothers us when we act dishonorably. We may dismiss our little cheat with a shrug of the shoulders, and think, "They'll never notice." But WE notice. We know of our own dishonesty. We are our own judges. We charge ourselves with dishonorable conduct. No one else may ever judge us for that little, tiny cheat. But if you were dying a few hours later, would you feel absolved? Or would you feel regret and remorse?

Acting honorably puts our mind at ease.

Mulch Your Mind

My neighbor Connie borrowed my truck to pick up some mulch hay. We both put our vegetable gardens to bed by covering them with a heavy quilt of hay.

I know. Hay = weed seeds. It takes a leap of faith to willingly cover the garden with hay after spending the summer pulling weeds. But i converted to the Ruth Stout method several years ago. Watch this video of 92-year-old Ruth showing us how to Have a Green Thumb Without An Aching Back.

Our spiritual practice requires leaps of faith as well. I am not talking blind faith here--the believing of something that cannot be proved. I am talking about the scientific method of faith: You try out this theory of meditation with good intentions. After a while, you evaluate your effort. Did it pan out? Did it pay off? Was your faith verified by your experience?

Mulch hay in both fall and spring keeps the weeds down in the vegetable garden.
Mulch your mind with meditation today!

A Small Protected Space

My neighbor Connie uses four bales of hay as a make-shift cold frame. Placing them so that they form four sides of a rectangle, she sows her lettuce and spinach in that small protected space.

In meditation, all we need is just such a small protected space—a single chair.

When i visit friends who meditate at their homes, I'm sometimes amazed at their meditation space. A few people have an actual room (usually quite small). Others, a chair, maybe a slightly out-of-the-way chair, a chair that you walk by all day long, but early in the morning, or in the evening, that's the small, protected space where a meditator finds respite from the worldly winds that blow.

Mulch Hay

I picked up a truckload of mulch hay yesterday to use on the vegetable garden. It took nerve, but i converted to the Ruth Stout method about 10 years ago after watching the video "Ruth Stout's Garden." 92-year-old Ruth hobbles along on her cane, but she still gardens. She can't bend over to pull a weed, so she plops a big handful of straw or hay on every weed she sees. She smothers the weed and improves the soil at the same time.

We can do the same thing with weedy thoughts. We can "kill them with kindness." By practicing loving-kindness or patience, we lay to rest a moment of weedy irritation.

8 bales of rotting hay will smother a lot of weeds in the vegetable garden.