Rusted Vehicles

Today, our local tour began with Rusted Ford Trucks on the side of the road. I recognized two or three of my grandfather's 1940s and 1950s trucks. I recognized my Aunt Jenny's 1949 Ford sedan. All the vehicles completely rusted--rather like my body.

My sweetie and i looked at the new cars on the road and the rental Kia we are driving. In 20 or 50 or 70 years, they will look so old-fashioned, so rusty, so impossible to imagine as new. Just as children and young people cannot imagine that we were ever their age. They are young, and we are old. Thus has it ever been.

My dear Ford Ranger truck--the one i use to haul manure, wood chips, mulch, mulch hay, and dozens of plants--even it will, one of these days, rust in peace.

Truck in the Garden

My walking onions are now flatter than a flitter*. 

Every November, my sweetie backs the pick-up truck filled with firewood over my back door garden. This makes sense to him. Driving over any garden never makes sense to me. 

Views and opinions. There you have it. He has one view; i have another. We do not agree. Yet we do have communal harmony.

For lunch, i made a squash soup with onions from the back door garden. "What's this?" he asked.

"Squash soup with braised truck tire onions," i said.

*Etymology:  German flitter.

‘A minute square of thin metal, used in decoration; collectively, a quantity of such squares

Mulch Hay

Part of putting the garden to bed includes mulching the vegetable garden. First, the onion beds, then the winter squash bed, and finally the potato bed.

I call my local farmer, Bonnie, who knows how to load my pickup truck with 22 bales of hay. Right now, i ask her for only 10. The mulch hay i put on the garlic bed, the gladiola bed, the potato bed in the spring has become thin. The local turkeys are taking dust baths in the dirt there. I need a new thick layer to prevent grass from creeping in to the beds. By next spring, the hay will have dissolved into dirt. Oh, the soil in those beds is so deliciously dark and writhing with earthworms.

It's hard to believe, but taking a break from the world--meditating or going on retreat--can make us feel more alive. We mulch our world by muting all the incoming texts, phone calls, emails, and news. Stress dissolves. We begin to actually feel our bodies. Hey! I'm alive! Feel that.

These winter months of hibernation are a great time to retreat. I'm doing a 10-day silent retreat in October. How about you?

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.

New Compost Bin At Long Last

I finally did a project yesterday, which had been waiting for 8 months. I rebuilt one of my three compost bins. Two compost bins were full of last fall's garden detritus. I use a third bin as compost for potting up plants i've divided from the garden. But that bin was completely empty. The pallets that make the bin were burned in the winter solstice bonfire.

Finally. Finally, i stopped procrastinating and went looking for pallets. This was the unpleasant task i dreaded. My usual sources of pallets had dried up, so now what?

As an introvert, i avoid making phone calls, except in those moments when i just pick up the phone and do it. I had managed to not drive the truck to town to scout out possible pallet sources; I'd rather drive my car to town.

So many avoidance strategies. Such a long line of unpleasant thoughts: need new bin; don't know where to find pallets; don't want to call and ask; don't want to take the time; don't want to stop and ask.

And then the day came. Someone told me where to find pallets. I drove there. I asked. I loaded up my truck. As simple as that.

Multi-use Herb Garden

Running over the chocolate mint.

Every November, my sweetie and i disagree about my herb garden. Since it's at the back door, he wants to back up the truck full of firewood right to the back door. "But it's a garden," i plead to no avail. In truth, it's a multi-use area. For 5 days in November, my herb garden is a driveway for our truck.

Can you see how i get myself into this feeling of ill-will?

1) i resist what is happening: a truck with firewood.
2) i believe the word "herb garden." In true truth, it's an ever-changing patch of dirt. As soon as i give it a label, i create a concept, which i can then believe. The world becomes dualistic--this? or that? If it's an herb garden, then it can't or shouldn't be a driveway. But, in fact, both are happening.

Our woodshed is filled to the brim with firewood for the winter. The chocolate mint, the onions, the thyme have survived.

The kale stays out of the way of those tires.

Sharing the Hay

Last evening, i went to pick-up some mulch hay. As usual, Farmer Bonnie knew exactly how to stack 21 bales into my little pick-up truck.

I delivered 10 bales to my neighbor. My gardener wants 6 bales for her goats, which leaves me with 5 bales. Just the right amount for mulching the vegetable garden.

I love sharing the hay.

Shoveling Manure

Last week, it was "too cold" to garden (according to some), and this week, it is too hot--96 degrees. I really intended to be out in the garden from 6 a.m. to about 10 and then retire for the day, but i didn't have my logistics quite right. At 7:30 this morning, i picked up a truckload of manure. Since i needed the truck to carry a load of plants to the Perennial Swappers meeting at 6 p.m., i needed to unload the truck in the heat of the day.

We have our plans, and then they (or we) go astray. Life doesn't go the way we expect it will. Life doesn't go the way we want it to.

Can i accept life just as it is? Without complaint? Shoveling hot, steaming manure in the mid-day sun?

I could shovel the manure of the mind along with the manure in the truck. Or I could just shovel manure.

Compost from the Curbside

I went to the landfill to pick up a truckload of compost.

Where does all that curbside compost / garbage go anyway? Into a big pile at the landfill where it cooks at a hot temperature. Then they pour it through a giant sifter, and it becomes fine and crumbly.

For $30, my truck was filled with 1100 pounds of beautiful, brown compost. Maybe that's a problem with those truck scales at the entrance to the landfill--they tell you more than you really wanted to know.

1100 pounds sounds like a daunting amount to be wheelbarrowing to the side garden.  Yet, wheelbarrow load by wheelbarrow load, my truck was finally emptied.

11 minutes of meditation can sound like a daunting amount to a person just beginning meditation. Yet, even 11 minutes yields results. Day after day of a consistent 11-minute practice adds up to steadiness and persistence. After all those repetitions, you might decide to add another minute or two.

Whether you are meditating or pushing a wheelbarrow or being mindful while pushing a wheelbarrow, you are building strength of mind.

Car-Identification

We don't identify with our cars--at least most of us don't. Oh, we may identify with driving a certain model of car. "I drive a Prius." Already that speaks volumes about my personality. My sister dries a Jaguar, which tells you about her.

Station wagon, van, mini-Cooper, truck. Vokswagen, Chevy, BMW. But while we are driving our alter-egos on the road, we don't mistake our car for our self. The car does our bidding--faster, slower, turning, right, turning left, passing, stopping.

What if we felt the same way about the vehicles we seem to inhabit--our bodies? What if we looked out the windows of our body--our 2 eyes--and saw? Simply saw? Simply looked at the landscape passing by and realized that we are just a passenger in this body-vehicle? It affords me great mobility, but the body is not what i am, and certainly not who i am.

How silly to say, "I am my Prius." "I am my pick-up truck." Perhaps it's equally foolish to identify with our bodies--thin or fat, big or small, well or sick.

What if the body is simply a vehicle.