Winterberry Feast

 

The winterberry shrub is becoming a bird and squirrel feast. Today several chickadees were eating the berries. Then a squirrel visited.

That wallflower of a shrub is the center of attention now that December has arrived. What fun to look out the kitchen window and see surprise visitors eating to their heart's content.

What contents our hearts? What contributes to our contentment?

Contentment is wishlessness--not wishing for anything different than what is. When we eat to our heart's content, we are satisfied. One definition of dukkha is dissatisfaction.

Look around you right now. What satisfies you? Our negativity bias wants to focus on dissatisfaction. 

Calm down and look at your environment right now. Temperature? How does sitting feel? Desire for food? In a lot of ways, my heart is already content. Simply notice that.

Beauty

 

Three flickers sat in the winterberry shrub eating berries. So exciting to see a local bird eating local berries in my back yard.

The flickers are beautiful all by themselves. The red winter berries stand out against the tan and gray November landscape. Beauty all around me.

I love the Beauty Way prayer of the Navajo. Here's an excerpt.

I walk with beauty before me. 

I walk with beauty behind me.

I walk with beauty below me. 

I walk with beauty above me.
I walk with beauty around me. 

My words will be beautiful.
In beauty all day long may I walk.
Through the returning seasons, may I walk.

 Substitute the word "mindfulness" for the word "beauty," and feel the prayer in the body. Then return to the word "beauty."

May we all walk in beauty.

The flickers fly in beauty.

Winter Berries

All summer i've been looking at a non-descript shrub outside my kitchen window. That shrub is spreading. What the heck is it? What was i thinking when i put it there?

Now that it's covered with red berries, i see that it is a holly called winterberry. The red berries are a pleasure to look at while i'm doing the dishes, and the berries will last 5 months, until the end of winter.

The shrub has teeny-weeny flowers in the spring, and the plain deciduous leaves have no fall color, but now winterberry is the star of the winter garden.

Meditation practice may look boring and dull in the summer of our lives, but it really bears fruit when we are reduced to the bare bones of life. 

The Joy of Holly Berries

Winterberry is a form of native holly (Ilex verticillata), but without the pointy leaves. It loves to grow in full sun in marshy areas. I don't have enough full sun for it, and my marshy area is in the shade. So i have to be content with seeing it along the way in my daily travels.

When i saw these ice-encrusted winterberries alongside the food coop parking lot, i stopped to take a few pictures. Stopping and looking is one way to savor the moment. Savoring several small moments every day rewires our neural networks.

One garden friend took on the challenge of taking one photo a day for a year. It was her way of stopping and savoring a moment--or several--every day. At the end of the year, she gave a beautiful slide show to the garden club, and her moments of joy transmitted themselves directly to the rest of us.

Stop and savor the moment. This one, for instance.