Berry Bowl

The church Christmas bazaar season has begun, so i went to one of my favorites--the Unitarian-Universalist meeting house. I like to buy a couple of berry bowls--little terrariums filled with moss and partridge berries with cling wrap over the top to keep the humidity inside.

I'll be going on retreat from January 1 to mid-March. I'll be in my own mini-micro-climate--meditating for several hours each day here at home. Letting the outer world go. Becoming calm and quiet, and seeing what beautiful mind states grow.

Chipmunks in the Stone Wall

I have a little garden bed right in front of a stone wall. When the wall was first built a few years ago, i thought the little south-facing bed would be perfect for hot weather crops such as peppers and eggplants. It turns out the stone wall is a perfect home for chipmunks, and chipmunks eat pepper plants.

For the past three or four years, i've tried putting milk carton "collars" around the pepper plants with mixed success (read: many failures).

Oh, how many times do i fight the current of Life, trying to row in the direction I want to go.

This summer, i give up. I surrender my garden bed to the chipmunks. After all, i do enjoy watching them dash and dart here and there.

I'm planting Russian sage in this hot spot of a micro-climate. The peppers and eggplants are going somewhere else--farther away from the home of the chipmunks.

What's Your Micro-climate?

My grandmother's birthday was May 1, and my sister and i always went into the woods to gather a wildflower bouquet for her--spring beauties, jack in the pulpit, and dutchmen's breeches. I still love these ephemeral wildflowers that only bloom for a few days.

Over the years i have tried transplanting wildflowers into my woods, but i now live in a dry, pine-y woods that is slightly acidic. The wildflowers i love grow in a damp, calcium-rich soil.

Transplanting a meditation practice into our lives, we need to find one that will grow in our very own internal micro-climate. The formality of Zen? The "Catholic-ness" of the Tibetan tradition? The no-frills approach of Theravadin? Or perhaps we add meditation to the tradition we grew up in--Christian, Jewish, or Moslem. Maybe we add meditation to our heart path of Nature-based spirituality. The Buddha's teachings form an internally-consistent hologram that can deepen our foundational practice.

Sometimes meditation practice just doesn't "take." A plant needs a particular combination of sun, water, and soil. So do we.

Keep experimenting.

I keep moving my wildflowers from bed to bed. Now, dutchmen's breeches have spread all over my wildflower nursery bed. That's the habitat they like, and i'm not moving them. They can stay right there where they are multiplying. I'll find another nursery bed for the other wildflowers.

Cold Feet

The snow on the septic tank melted today--a perfect rectangle of brown-green grass in an otherwise white yard of snow. In town, crocus and iris reticulata are already blooming, but my country-cousin climate lags a few days behind.

I've planted crocus on my septic tank in order to have some early blooms--a patch of yellow and purple in the center of the yard.

Noticing the particulars of the micro-climates in your own yard requires observation and a bit of curiosity. Those same skills are very helpful in developing a meditation practice. I doze off if i'm wearing socks when i sit. My personal climate does better when the body is cool. Cold feet can actually prevent my restless legs from twitching uncontrollably.

After all, if the crocus and snowdrops thrive with "cold feet," so can i.

The Perfect Microclimate that Fosters Blooming

My variegated Dracaena is blooming for the first time. A first-grade teacher gave it to me 7 years ago after i spent the school year as a volunteer in her classroom once a week helping children learn to read. That 5-inch plant is now 5 feet tall, so last summer i placed i beside my front door in the white garden. Its green-and-white leaves added interested to the shady and therefore mostly leafy flowerbed.

This particular plant seems to like to be wet, so i put it in a glazed flowerpot that had no hole in the bottom. Then it rained for 25 days in June and another 25 days in July. The flowerpot overflowed with water.

The Dracaena was so well camouflaged among the variegated Solomon's seal that i nearly forgot to bring it indoors. Then i "saw" it in early October and hurried it into the solarium. Now, for the first time in its life, it's blooming.

We all need the right conditions for our meditation practice to bloom. Some of us need to be inundated--perhaps by going on long retreats; some, like geraniums, need the soil to dry out in between waterings. I like to meditate in the wee hours of the morning; others prefer afternoons or evenings. I like study AND practice; others prefer mostly practice; and those with a sporadic practice obtain deep benefit from studying in a weekly class.

It takes time to discover our own perfect microclimate that fosters our own blooming.