Datura

 

I bought a pale yellow datura in the spring. Since the summer was hot and dry, not much happened, but now that it's cool and dry, the Georgia O'Keefe flower is blooming.

I've grown the lavender daturas (a.k.a. jimsonweed) before and sworn off the thorny seed pod because next year, datura pops up in several places. Mostly, i weed out the little seedlings, but this year i kept one lavender datura out in the vegetable garden. 

Like the scattering of datura seeds, we never know how the effects of our actions ripple out, but ripple they do. That's a good reason to speak and act as skillfully as we are able.

In these days of heated political dissension, it's especially important to act and speak as calmly as we can.

 Victory begets hatred; 

the defeated dwell in pain. 

Happily the peaceful live, 

discarding both victory and defeat.

Datura is a poisonous plant. Speaking poisonous words only poisons our own heart.

Hungarian Bread Seed Poppies

This year i have a flower bed full of Hungarian bread seed poppies. The blue-black poppy seeds are used in baking Hungarian poppy seed rolls and strudels.

The flowers are a stunning purple that i've been trying to grow for years. Year after year i buy a packet of seeds. Finally! Success! These annual poppies reseeded themselves from last year's poppies.

We try to grow wholesome qualities in our mind. Sometimes, we plant the intention--for generosity, for patience, for compassion--over and over again. And then--It blooms, perhaps unexpectedly, in some situation.

We can't really say that those previous attempts were failures. We have faith that by re-setting our intention for a skillful quality of mind, that beautiful mind state will eventually show up.

The purple poppies proliferate.


Photo credit: https://www.selectseeds.com/annuals/poppy-seeds-plants/poppy_hungarian_blue_seeds.aspx

Older and Wiser (?)

My sweetie has been bothered by an incomplete pruning job for the past few weeks. So he belted on my pruning saw, climbed up a ladder, and into the hemlock tree.

Yes, that's an 83-year-old man hanging by one hand in a tree--20 feet off the ground. All for the aesthetics of sawing off one offending branch.

Is this an example of "older and wiser"?

What is wiser, anyway? What is wisdom?

Part of wisdom is having good judgment. Judgment doesn't necessarily need to be good or bad, right or wrong.

Wisdom can simply discriminate between what is a skillful action and what is an unskillful action.

My sweetie had an exciting time climbing the tree, and he was very pleased with how the tree looks now--minus one branch.

Ornamental Sweet Potatoes

My brother asks whether he can eat the sweet potatoes he found in his hanging pot with a sweet potato vine. The tubers are radish red, but shaped like a potato.

Yes, they are edible--if you haven't fertilized your hanging plant with chemicals. These "ornamental" sweet potatoes aren't as tasty as regular sweet potatoes that are bred for sweetness. But i daresay, that wouldn't matter much in a side dish of roasted roots, for example.

Harvesting vegetables from your flower pots feels like a 2-for-1 deal--beautiful vines in the hanging flower pot all summer, and, after frost, a harvest of vegetables.

This reminds me of Pascal's Wager. The seventeenth century philosopher, mathematician, and physicist, Blaise Pascal, says that a rational person should live as though God exists. If God does not actually exist, such a person will have only a finite loss (some worldly pleasures), whereas she stands to receive infinite gains (represented by eternity in heaven) and avoid infinite losses (eternity in hell).

We could fine-tune Pascal's Wager by recognizing that unwholesome, unskillful conduct leads to stress in the here and now. Yes, unskillful conduct can feel like fun, but our conscience knows. We don't even need to believe (or not believe) in God. The proof of Pascal's Wager lies in our very own emotional bodies.

If we act with wholesome intentions, we can harvest the flowers and the vegetables of a life well-lived.

Good Luck Food Potluck

On New Year's Day i attended a neighborhood potluck. The theme was Good Luck food, a legacy from a Southerner who died a few years ago. The hostess cooked up the black-eyed peas. I brought boiled cabbage from my German heritage. Long noodles (meaning long life) were on the table, as well as a kale salad. Greens represent life and living things. Pork, which was once reserved for the Chinese elite, symbolizes wealth and prosperity. A lentil salad because lentils look like coins.

Luck seems like a roll of the dice, a turn of the wheel of fortune. I'm placing my bets on karma--acting as skillfully, wholesomely, and compassionately as i can right now, because this moment conditions the next moment. Compassion begets compassion. Kindness builds the habit of kindness.

These beautiful qualities are our true wealth any day of the year.

Hostess Gift: A Bottle of....

We went over to a friend's home for Easter dinner. Although my sweetie and our host couple drink wine, i do not, and i don't feel quite right about bringing a bottle of wine to dinner. I finally solved my little problem: I now take a bottle of olive oil. The bottle sometimes looks like a bottle of wine, and yesterday's olive oil came from a company that also sells wine.

I can't tell you how happy i am to have put this niggling not-quite-rightness to rest.

As we go through our day, we have all sorts of trifling little ruffles of our conscience. We may breeze over most of them. No one else may even notice, but in our hearts, we know something is not quite right.

Living a skillful life calls on us to be true to ourselves, whether or not anyone else notices.

A Flock of Ladybugs

Ladybugs are flocking in the air this warm autumn day. One alights on my body every minute or two, stays a few seconds, and then takes off again. Open the door to go outdoors and a ladybug or two fly into the house.

Ladybugs are beneficial insects because they eat aphids and scale, which seem to show up on my houseplants about mid-winter.

What if we developed our own beneficial qualities? Which ones would you choose? My top 3 are patience, kindness, and skillful speech.  Generosity, compassion, voluntary simplicity, calmness, tolerance, gratitude, joy are other possibilities.

Let's develop a beneficial quality and watch it "eat up" frustration, annoyance, bother, anticipation, or desire--whatever the "pest" in your mind might be.

Today, the air is thick with ladybugs.

Flat Plastic Vase

For the New Year's Eve sit at Vermont Insight Meditation Center last night, Drew brought a bouquet of alstromeria and a flat plastic vase. How handy! And easy to carry on an icy night. Just puff out the plastic, fill it with water, and the plastic holds its vase shape.

We ourselves hold the shape of our past actions. By this time in life, we've acquired lots of habits--gestures, ways of thinking, manners of speech, and a raft of opinions and judgments. We call this collection of habits "I."

Really, our physical container is puffed up with 60% water. Our container may be naturally good looking, or maybe not so much. But really it is just a container that will one day be flattened by death.

Our habits, our actions are the only thing we own. In this new year of 2014, let's focus on skillful and wholesome and beautiful actions.

I'm beginning by being grateful to Drew for the beautiful bouquet.

Too Much Squash

I harvested 10 large summer squash last evening. Then, since we're going away for a long weekend, i grated them all in the food processor and froze them in baggies.

10 large squash are unpleasant. Actually, the squash themselves are pleasant, but the thought, "What the heck am i going to do with all this?" is unpleasant.

We could grumble and complain and thereby perpetuate the unpleasant, but that just makes us grumpy.

The Buddha suggests we recognize unwholesome mind states and end them.
He also suggests we give rise to wholesome mind states and figure out how to continue those.

So how can we give rise to a wholesome or skillful mind state around 10 BIG summer squash?
(Your suggestions are appreciated.)

1. Give them away (and thereby practice generosity).
2. Put them in the neighbors' mailboxes and get an additional chuckle.
3. Grate them, as i did, and freeze for winter localvoring. 
4. Throw them away. There. That was way too easy. Done. And your compost pile will be so happy.

Here's my favorite recipe for grated summer squash or zucchini:

Blond Brownies
Mix:

• 1/3 cup canola or coconut oil
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla

Then add:

• 1 cup flour
• 2 teaspoons cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• dash of salt

After mixing, add:

• 1 cup grated zucchini or summer squash, drain and squeeze all the water out
• 1 cup chocolate chips
• 1 cup walnuts 

Turn into a greased 8x8 pan.
Bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes.

Photos from vegetablegardener.com and ihopeyouarehungry.blogspot.com

Abundance of Watercress

I picked watercress yesterday. In 2 minutes, i filled up a 5-gallon bucket.

Now for the sorting. I pinch off the top one-third of green leaves on stems and compost the remaining stem and yellowing leaves. I am separating green from yellow, separating a preponderance of leaves from the stem, which happily roots on any damp surface.

The Buddha suggests we separate wholesome from unwholesome. Just for today, imagine you are putting your skillful thoughts, words, and actions in one pile, and your unskillful thoughts, words, and actions in another pile.

Uh-uh-uh. No fair beating yourself up for having unskillful/unwholesome thoughts and actions. We are playing the part of an impartial observer here. Oh! Isn't that interesting? We are acting as a referee and calling the move "fair" or "foul" from a balanced viewpoint.
Apply the scientific method; be curious. How did that happen? What happened just before that unwholesome/unskillful thought, word, or action appeared?

Meanwhile, i have about 3 gallons of watercress stems to go into the compost. This quantity of green being added to the mostly brown (at this time of year) compost will hurry the composting process along. And that makes me smile.

Sweet Onions

This year my onions are all the size of baseballs. No weenie onions. Not one.

Of course, i expect the Walla Walla (Vidalia) onions to be that size, but the golden onions and the red onions are only marginally smaller and are at least the size of tennis balls. Maybe this summer's heat relaxed all of them into rotundness. After all the onion capitals of Walla Walla, Washington and Vidalia, Georgia are hot places. Whatever it was, the conditions were excellent for onions this year.

Sometimes the conditions are just right for the skillful habits we want to grow in our own minds. Years may go by when the fruits of our meditation practice seem rather piddly. Then one sit or one stressful situation, perhaps one where we feel hot under the collar, our new skillful habits save us. That's when we harvest the fruit of the spiritual life.

Did you know that some people eat those sweet Walla Walla onions (the onion-ring onion) like apples?

Bloodroot

The bloodroot are blooming. This ephemeral wildflower grows in little colonies--but not where i originally planted it.

Right now, it's blossoming in the middle of a triangular flowerbed--right where i've planted all the tall stuff. But the tall perennials haven't peeked their heads out of the winter bed yet, so the bloodroot may as well flower there in center stage.

One is also blooming in between two stones in the walk near the front door.

Never mind that i can't control it. I simply put it in a place where i thought it would look good, and now it grows of its own accord.

We also plant wholesome thoughts and actions in our everyday lives. And then one day, we notice, "Oh, i used to be mad at this person. And now i'm not." Or, "Oh, this situation used to make me anxious. And right now it doesn't."

That's the benefit of sowing skillful seeds. You never know where they will show up.