Visiting Roman Ruins

For years, my sweetie has wanted to take a tour of spring in The South. I drag my heels on this idea because April is my get-started-gardening month, and i don't want to miss a single rainy day of it.

This year, we find ourselves in the British Isles in March where... It's spring!!! Yellow daffodils everywhere. Primroses and pansies. We are staying at a hotel in an old abbey where our room has a backyard and a magnolia tree in bloom! Ruins of a Roman fortress are also within sight.

The ruins of our own life are within sight, but it's so much more delightful to focus on the new, on the spring of life.

My traveling companion is older and slower. We tour the Roman baths, the Roman amphitheater, the barracks--all now just rock walls at ground level.

We too are returning to Mother Earth.

The Promise of Pansies

Violas are a smaller form of pansies.

The farm stand is open for the season and selling pansies! That's about all they are selling right now--pansies, bulbs, and seeds. All with the promise of flowers and future flowers.

I'm just home from a fantastic week-long meditation retreat. The practice instructions were clear and hold promise for reducing my stress so that seeds of wisdom and kindfulness can bloom in my life.

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?

Leggy Pansies

Those pansies that looked so sweet in mid-April are hanging their heads and dragging their tongues now. They are leggy and floppy. I've moved them from a planter on the front step, where they've greeted me for the past 10 weeks. Now they're hiding in a shady spot where they can loll around on the ground to their heart's content. And my heart will be more content if i'm not secretly complaining about how gangly they are.

Every good thing is accompanied by trouble. Have you noticed? Those good children of the flower world--pansies--are now gangly, floppy teenagers who have outgrown their home. It's time to turn them loose in the world of the flowerbeds.

I know where this is going to lead. They're just going to go to seed.

Oh, their pansy faces are as cute as ever, but, really, they're lost in the crowd of colorful summer annuals. Every good thing comes to an end.

Smiling Pansies

Pansies are trembling in the chill April rain, but they like cool weather. Their adorable little faces look out at each April day, whether sunny or gray, no matter the adversity, and say, I'm happy to be alive. Aren't you?

I have to agree.  This morning, I listened to 2 cancer survivors talk with each other about how darn grateful they are for every single day. The grass is greener, right in their own backyard. Really! They feel more alive now than they did before their cancer diagnosis. Life is a miracle.

Isn't that odd? You stare death in the face and feel more alive than ever.
Contemplate your death today.
While the pansies are smiling at you.


Listen to this song about The Holy Now.

Back and Forth

The other person in my house moved the winter flowerpot, with greens and a gazing globe, off the front step in December. He didn't want to shovel snow around it. So today, while he was taking the lights off the outdoor Christmas tree, i surreptitiously moved the greens + gazing globe flowerpot out of the garage and back onto the front step.

A month from now, i'll decorate the front step with pansies, but until then, a dash of green looks pretty good. Well, yes, snow is predicted for tomorrow, but shoveling the front step is my job, so i'm happy to have snow and a flowerpot.

The flowerpot stresses him; it doesn't stress me. Taking the lights off the outdoor Christmas tree stresses me (sigh!); but not him. He dislikes gazing globes; i enjoy them.

We could go back and forth all day, claiming our point of view is right, and his (or their) point of view is wrong. The mind seems to love this right/wrong, good/bad duality. And therein lies the source of our stress.

In truth, the Christmas lights have been taken down. I don't really need to have an opinion about it. My opinion = stress. I've moved the flowerpot to the front step, but tomorrow i may find it back in the garage again. Change happens. That is all.

Photo from greenlandgarden.com

Hot Weather / Cold Weather

My brother just returned from a vacation in Palm Springs, California where he saw a little flowerbed that made him think of me. Poppies and pansies growing together.

Poppies are a hot weather flower and pansies are a cool-weather flower. They don't grow together in my garden. Pansies bloom in April and May, and poppies bloom in June and July. But they're both cute and their colors complement each other.

Sometimes we want both-ness in our own lives. We want friends or family to visit and we want our solitude. We want a paycheck and we don't want to go to work. We want a garden and we don't want to garden.

Our minds think we can have it all, just as we want. Our bodies act out another message. Still, our mind believes it is in control and drives the body to do its will.

What does your mind want? And what does your body "say" about that?

Palm Springs, a city in the desert, has more than 100 green and luscious golf courses. What might the body of Mother Earth "say" about that?

Lobelia Basket

I visited a friend who had a hanging basket of blue lobelia. Oh! How glorious. She told me it won't withstand the heat of August, but that she'll get about 6 weeks of joy from it.

Meanwhile, the pansies of April are leggy and languishing in the warmth of early summer.

My fiscally conservative self wants flowers that will last for months, but if my artistic self wants constant, beautiful flowers, i am going to have to pay.

Desire for more--more flowers, more beauty--keeps our attention on the pleasant and prevents us from noticing the facts of life. Pansies come to an end. Lobelia comes to an end. Our selves come to an end--in every moment. The fiscally conservative self dies, and the artistic self is born.

Photo from network54.com

Refreshing the Front Step

This summer my front step is burgeoning with flowerpots. I've found a discount store where i can buy big glazed flowerpots from Vietnam for $15-$25. Since i bring the potted plants indoors in September, and since about 70 percent of them survive the winter in my solarium, i now have quite a collection of colorful plants.

Still, it's time to refurbish the two pansy pots. They looked good in April, but July is too hot for cool-weather pansies. So i've been tucking various colorful leaves into the pansy pots and even another flower or two. Pulling out live flowers goes against my grain, but the pansies are leggy, wilty, and blooming sporadically. I want the flowers at the front door to look happy and welcoming.

When we get strung out, wilted, or only bloom sporadically, we know that we, like the pansies, are stressed. A friend with an intense summer job sometimes goes to bed at 7:30 in order to refresh herself. Her intention to meditate daily has gotten lost in the daily crush of work. Ironically, she took this summer job so she can afford to go on a month-long retreat next February. :) She will be pulling herself out of this stressful job come September.

What are your stressors? What stressful situations are you in right now? Is there some situation or some relationship that you can pull yourself out of? Or maybe it's as "simple" as a stressful thought.

Let go. Let go of stress. Relax into summer. Relax into your garden.

Smiling Pansies

I transplanted three 6-packs of pansies into 2 flowerpots on my front step. This way i can see a pansy blast every time i walk toward the front door. I can't help but smile when i look at their smiling little pansy faces.

I used to buy a flat of pansies and scatter them throughout 3 or 4 flowerbeds, but i soon lost track of them in the midst of the burgeoning growth of spring. The advantage to a flowerpot of pansies is the concentration of blooming happy faces for 3 months, until July's heat wilts them.

Sometimes we scatter our spiritual practice around, trying first one teacher then another, trying one spiritual path and then another.

Our meditation practice can lead us to smiles if we concentrate our efforts. Focus on the path with heart.

What is your path? Where does your heart resonate?

The Happiness of Pansies

The pansies in a pot on my front step are looking rather bedraggled now. After 5 days of rain, summer heat has arrived, and the cool-weather pansies have their tongues hanging out.

In April, i depend on pansies for a spot of color, and they bloom sweetly all the way through May, but now, they are leggy and lost in the lushness of June.

In April, the pansies' smiling faces make me so happy. Now i barely notice them, and when i do, i frown at their deadheads and long-legs. That which was pleasant becomes unpleasant.

Where does true happiness reside?
Are we content with the perpetual chase for pleasantness?
Does pleasantness = happiness?

The pansies and the outer world are in a constant state of flux. Our happiness cannot depend on ever-changing outer conditions, which shift from pleasant to unpleasant and back again moment to moment.

Happiness lies inside us when we see and accept things as they really are. Pansies blossom and die. Can we find our peace of mind right there?