Coltsfoot--Early, Early Sign of Spring

Coltsfoot is blooming in damp sunny places--one of the first flowers of spring. So named because the leaf supposedly is the shape (or size?) of a colt's foot.

Many people assume the bright yellow flowers on the side of the road are dandelions, but hold your horses. Yellow, yes. Dandelion, no.

We are often confused by look-alike emotions. One of my favorite targets is niceness. Niceness is not the same as goodness. Goodness comes from the heart. Niceness comes from wanting other people's approval.

Of course, we need other people's approval. We want to belong. We try to be nice to them.

Goodness doesn't really care if the other person likes us or not. We act wholesomely for our own benefit. We practice goodness simply because it feels good.

Coltsfoot is blooming in the ditch alongside the well-traveled road. Sometimes, we need to practice goodness even in the ditch of life.

Galloping Gardens

The garden is galloping through the summer. No way can i rein it in--pull all the weeds i want to, transplant flowers, rearrange the design here and there. Nor can i harvest everything that's in the vegetable garden.

Company, day trips, swimming. Ahhh. Summer. It's all so delicious. And the garden comes in third, or sometimes last, place.

The mind is way ahead of the body. The mind wants this, wants that, wants a beautiful garden. The mind plans to do this or that.

The body says Relax. It's summer. Let's go to the lake and meditate beside still water.

My Father's Legacy

My father died 16 years ago, but today is his birthday, so i'm thinking of him. He had absolutely no idea about flowers, but, as a farmer, he knew his grasses, something i do not know. He could identify wheat, rye, oats, and timothy. And he knew alfalfa and the clovers that he cut for hay 3 times every summer.

His idea of gardening was to plow up a quarter-acre with a small Massey-Ferguson tractor, then put us kids to work with hoes while he went to jog his harness horses. He himself was not much of a gardener, having plowed too many fields barefoot with horses during the Great Depression. He liked to move earth with equipment of any sort.

He did like to grow tomatoes and cucumbers though. That was his idea of a garden, out behind the horse barn, fertilized with horse manure, and growing plenty of weeds.

Three of his four kids (including me) got the gardening gene. The other one got the mechanical gene.

My father is gone now, but the fruit of his actions lives on. Three of us will be starting tomato seedlings sometime soon.