Acid Soil or Acid Tongue

Now that the garden chores are slowing to a crawl, it's time to do some annual maintenance. Today, it's time to sweeten the lawn and gardens with lime.

 Here in New England, we typically have acid soil, due to pine needles and acid rain blowing east from the smokestacks of the West and the Midwest.

Certain plants love acid soil and grow well here in New England--ferns, pachysandra, begonias. Certain weeds also tell us that the soil is acid--dandelions, stinging nettles, lambs quarters, and sheep sorrel, among others.

Lime is slow-acting and eventually "sweetens" acid soil.

We too can sweeten our own acidic and acerbic tendencies by practicing gratitude and kindness. Feeling like a sourpuss doesn't really feel good anyway. As much as we might love to zing out a tart reply when our feelings are hurt, a zinger is meant to sting the other person into recognizing us. Speaking harshly only pushes people away.

Let's sweeten our own inner soil with some gratitude right now. Name 3 things you are grateful for.

That's the way to grow friendliness.

Eat Your Weeds

My friend, Trudy, age 88, recently self-published a book of her watercolor paintings of edible weeds. She offers wild weeds as a free source of organic vegetables. Her freezer is full of nettles, sorrel, and fiddlehead ferns. She digs up dandelion roots and keeps them in her refrigerator crisper drawer where they sprout green leaves all winter. Her kitchen is a veritable den of red clover blossoms, sumac staghorns, and who knows what else.

Nature can be our outdoor grocery store. Shall we eat healthy, natural food? Or shall we consume junk food?

What healthy "food" are your senses consuming these holiday days?

What "junk food" of TV, shopping, internet, etc. are your senses of sight, sounds, touches, smells, and tastes consuming?

Take a walk outdoors, perhaps a mindful walk. Look at the weeds alongside the road. Eat/see/feel your weeds.

Wild Food for Wild Women

My women's group came over for lunch and to tour my garden, so
I served a wild lunch to these wild women.

Stir-fried fiddleheads, wild leek miso soup, and roasted jerusalem artichokes. Fritze brought sorrel and nettles. (Oh, i love nettle soup.)

Every woman in this group is on a different spiritual path from all of the others--i'm the only Buddhist, Deb is a Congregational minister, Josephine is a yoga teacher with a strong affinity for Hinduism, Sam is a non-practicing Jew, Barbara is earth-based, and Fritze refuses any and all categories.

Nevertheless, we've been together for 19 years, and we love each other. You could even say we're wild about each other.