Maple Trees Compartmentalize

The 200-year-old maple trees that grow along the stone walls on the border of my property are big, but usually not beautiful, trees. The sweet maple sap attracts carpenter ants, and carpenter ants are the main diet of the pileated woodpecker.

One of our seemingly-healthy middle-aged maples has giant holes hollowed out by a pileated woodpecker. A few weeks later, the smaller woodpeckers take their turns. A year later, a green leafy branch falls during a wind storm.

The tree service guy says, "No need to worry. Maple trees are very good at compartmentalizing."

I begin to look closely at old maple trees. They have all lost branches, big branches. Sometimes, half the tree will split off during a thunderstorm, yet the other half is still vibrantly alive, even if gnarled.

This process sounds like our own aging. We start out so young and beautiful. Pests are attracted to us, and sometimes they wound our heart. Sometimes we lose branches of our family tree--grandparents, parents, siblings, cousins, and other dearly beloved. Still we live on with visible and invisible scars. By the time we are ancient, we look gnarled and even ugly, yet the maple sap still runs in our veins, and we are vibrant and sweet.

Breaking the Heat Wave

Thunderstorms broke the heat wave last evening, and more thunder showers are predicted for today. Which means that today is a good day to transplant.

I have volunteers growing in all sorts of places i don't want them--cherry tomatoes in a little flower garden, and flowers in the vegetable garden. Today is the day for them to switch places.

In the summer of our lives, when we are busy with family, job, and paying the mortgage, it's hard to focus on our spiritual life. It's harder still to transplant meditation into our busy lives.

But sometimes, our lives don't play out "like they're supposed to." A thunderstorm rolls through our life, alerting us to the need to do something different.

Transplant mindfulness into your life today. Reading this blog mindfully, clicking the mouse mindfully,  touching the keyboard mindfully. Allow mindfulness to walk with you away from the computer and out to the garden. Transplant yourself into summer.

Golden Light

Yesterday late afternoon, a terrific downpour of a thunderstorm with nearby lightning strikes was followed, in town (where i was in yoga class), by sirens racing down the street. One could practice compassion for the people at the destination of the firetrucks, but my mind automatically went to gratitude.

Aren't we lucky to live in places where 9-1-1 brings a firetruck or the police? In this rural state, we were only 9-1-1ed with street addresses (replacing the old Rural Route addresses) a few years ago. Before that, there was fumbling for the right phone number.

Aren't we fortunate to live in places where volunteer or professional fire fighters receive a call of desperation and can arrive minutes later?

And thank goodness for all that equipment and training.

On my drive home from yoga, the post-sunset sky glowed with golden light, and all the white clapboard houses passed had suddenly been painted the most beautiful creamy pale yellow. When i arrived at my destination (home: safe and dry), i went out to the garden to bathe in the golden light. And also to plant yellow summer squash seeds in what had been dusty soil just a few hours earlier.

Dryness. Gone.
Rain. Gone.
Thunder. Gone.

And then the golden light was gone.