Blue Potato Vine

My friend in Olympia, Washington, has a blue potato vine growing up the bricks of her chimney. Solanum crispum looks like nightshade to me, and the berries it produces are likewise poisonous.

It turns out that other poisonous substances are also beautiful. I'm thinking of the word "toxic" hiding in the beautiful word intoxicating. Intoxication sounds likes a lot of fun, until you realize, decades later, that you've been poisoning your liver.

Shall you be seduced by the thought that beautiful people drink wine? Or will you recognize the poison?

The blue potato vine is beautiful.

Primroses on the Front Step

With the warmish weather, i've been dying for pansies, which won't be on sale until mid-April. However, i did find primroses at the garden store. I bought four, which i grouped together in a pot on the front step. What a nice bit of cheery color to greet me every time i leave or return home.

By putting them in a flowerpot, i can bring them indoors on the freezing nights we are having and take them outdoors again during the day.

Primroses may look prim. Perhaps we feel a bit prim when we stick to the 5th precept of refraining from intoxicants while, all around us, friends are drinking their wine or beer.

So here's my question: what's the difference between being a prude and being prudent?

Though others may judge us as prim and prudish when we politely refuse alcohol. "Oh, i'll have a glass of fizzy water, please." Perhaps we are simply being prudent.

Or could we say that alcohol leads us down the primrose path?

Walla Walla Onions

I had a fantastic onion harvest in August.  My Walla Walla (Vidalia) onions were as big as softballs. No kidding!  But those big onion-ring type onions have a short shelf life. So I'm cooking up as many onion recipes as I can. Onion soup. Onion quiche with bacon bits. What's your favorite recipe that uses a lot of onions?

These big onions are surprisingly mild and sweet. We think of onions as causing us some distress, bringing tears to our eyes. But not these. People in Walla Walla eat these onions like apples. Crunch!

 Several things on our Buddhist path may initially make us put up our right hand like a stop sign. "No thanks. I don't want any of that."

For instance, the 5th precept of not taking intoxicants. Oh a little glass of wine never hurt anybody. Or the third perfection of renunciation. No thanks. I want more not less. Or the third characteristic of existence: Not-self. Of course i have a self! Or the 5 daily reflections on aging, illness, and death, followed by impermanence and karma. Really, do we have to talk about those? What a bore.

Yet when we bite into any one of these teachings, we find our life becomes sweeter.

So send me your onion recipes Sweetie.

Intoxicating Flowers

Those poppies that we sowed on the last snow in March are blooming now. Papaver somniflorium--the flowers of sleep--otherwise known as opium poppy.

I pick a bouquet every day, or several, and give away as many as i can. Yesterday i took a bouquet to the receptionist at the jail where i volunteer to teach meditation on Thursday mornings. Most of the women i meet are in jail for possession of heroin. Or perhaps we should say possession by heroin.

Intoxicants, of any kind, alter our consciousness and take possession of us for a few hours. Meditation offers the possibility of altering our consciousness more deeply and more permanently than wine or heroin. If you spent your wine money and wine time on a meditation retreat, how much would that add up to? And the effects would be more long-lasting.

We take intoxicants to relieve our stress and pain. Now. We are aching now, even in the midst of our wonderful lives. Notice that. Wake up, and take the stress reliever that offers you an actual remedy.