Strawberries Next Year

Strawberry season is almost over, and a friend just gave me strawberry plants. This means i won't be harvesting strawberries until next year.

We plant ourselves in meditation and may or may not have immediate results. We are investing in our mental health by reducing our stress here and now. With care and tending, our meditation practice bears fruit.

Strawberries next year!

Plop in the New Mums

I ordered my mums through the local Garden Club. The mums are so large ($8 each) that eight mums nearly filled my truck.

The change of seasons means it's time to change the flowerpots on the front step and the back step. Some of those flowerpots still look pretty darn good; others look tired or even very tired. I take the tired ones out of their ceramic pots and plop in the mums. There! That was easy.

We too go through a change of seasons--retirement, moving, or the death of a dear one, to name just a few. We can't just plop another friend in to replace the dearly departed one. We have to adjust to the new season, and often this means losing a part of our history. When we retire, we lose our working identity. When we move, friends who have known us for decades drift away. When a dear one dies, it feels like part of our heart has gone with them.

These transition times are good for realizing the self we thought we were, we actually aren't.

Season for the Squeezin'

Citrus season is here, as fresh oranges and grapefruit come to the supermarket, and fundraisers are offering boxes of citrus. Back in the day, an orange or a tangerine in your Christmas stocking was a great treat.

I pull the juicer out of deep storage and squeeze fresh orange juice for breakfast. Or how about freshly-squeezed grapefruit juice?

Although we can buy orange juice any day of the week, and although we can buy oranges and grapefruits every week at the grocery store, those fruits have probably been in storage. The season for fresh citrus is now through about April, when the juicer returns to deep storage.

It seems odd that the cold season in the North is the harvest season for citrus in the South. The end of life is the time when we harvest a lifetime's worth of learning.

A friend in California is dying just now. Her request was to be in solitude, to not be bothered by visitors. Her close family is close by as she silently harvests the lessons of this life, as she has one foot on the dock and one foot in the boat that will carry her away.

Late Harvest

photo from www.quickcrop.ie

We are leaving for vacation tomorrow, which means giving all the vegetables in the refrigerator away. Finding a home for the red peppers was easy. I sun-dried one rack of Sungold cherry tomatoes. I decided to keep my 6 red cabbage, ranging in size from small to smallest.

In order not to have any leftovers, i cooked up the smallest cabbage tonight with some homegrown onions and the only remaining apple. Delicious.

When it comes to the end of our own season, we will be harvesting the mind we've been training all these years. The untrained mind may be unpredictable. The trained mind, the mind accustomed to mindfulness, has a much better chance of viewing the ending of the season of the life more calmly.

The seasons change.

A New Season

The garden has entered a new season of irises and geraniums, columbines and coral bells. May's daffodils and other bulbs are gone, gone, gone.

The non-gardener barely notices this subtle yet definite change. For the gardener, there's a new garden out there every month, every week, and, if we are really paying attention, every day.

For the meditator, every breath is a new breath, every sound a new sound, every sensation a new sensation.

Keeping the mind in tandem with the body is called mindfulness.
Keeping the mind in tandem with the garden is called gardening.
Keeping the mind in tandem with the body in the garden is called mindful gardening :)

Photo from stephendanko.com

Mum Meditation

The mums on the front step are looking well-worn, so i plant them into the garden. Ah, yes--the ever-hopeful gardener. Will they survive the winter?

Most will not, but one or two might. My garden is just now coming into bloom with mums i planted years ago. I pick a bouquet, and it last 3 weeks :)

Often these late mums don't have much of a season, but these late October days are warmish with temperatures in the 50s, so the perennial mums are smiling.

It's never too late to plant ourselves in meditation. If we get an early start, we may bloom early, but some of us don't get started meditating until late in the season of our lives. Still, our meditation practice can bloom:)

Tall Plant Season

It is the season of tall plants blooming. Phlox, bee balm, and all manner of yellow sunflower-y looking things. In April and May, the short ones bloom--little ground cover type things. Johnny jump-ups and forget-me-nots. Some plants are so short that you may not even notice or recognize them--draba or mazus or arabis. What welcome patches of color they offer in early spring.

Now, after months of inching up, butterfly bush, eupatorium, and verbascum are taller than i am.

Meditation practice also varies from person to person. Some, few, bloom early on. Most of the rest of us, grow and grow, inching along before flowering. Whatever our own personal growth habit, let us simply be content with growing in our practice, knowing that we too can reap the fruits of the spiritual life.