Perennial Vegetables

We choose perennial flowers for our gardens because they come back year after year. How about perennial vegetables? Nature provides many of these green "provisions."

The spring begins with dandelion greens that can be dug out of your front yard (assuming you don't "chem" your lawn.) Wild leeks live in the woods, so require foraging in the forest. Egyptian or walking onions are poking their pointy tips up in the herb garden. Now that last year's onion supply is gone, use fresh green onion leaves from your garden in all your cooking, whenever a recipe calls for onion.

Now sorrel is showing up. I have French sorrel and buckler's sorrel in my herb garden to make a delightful lemony green soup. Acidic soil around here grows sheep's sorrel in profusion--tiny, tart leaves that can be added to a salad for zest.

Nettles are next. Wear your nitrile gloves and cut the top few inches of green, which are mostly not stinging--yet. It is said that the 12th century Tibetan saint, Milarepa, lived on nettle soup for decades. Nettles are rich in Vitamin C, iron, and also contain protein.

Fiddlehead ferns are beginning to uncurl, so go harvest them now. (The ostrich ferns with the brown papery covering. Not the fuzzy-heads.)

Perennial philosophy--wisdom that cuts across all religious traditions--also sustains us. For instance, the Golden Rule is found in all the world's religions.

Just for today:
Practice doing something for someone else as you would like another to do to you.

Practice not-doing something that you would rather not happen to you. (e.g., that brilliant stinging comment.)

Perennial vegetables sustain our body. Perennial wisdom sustains our mind.

A Native Flower Naturalizes

I brought some bloodroot into one of my flowerbeds about 10 years ago, and there it stayed, dependably returning every year. Then i transplanted some of these little white wildflowers into my white garden. About 3 years ago, i started seeing bloodroot, little colonies of bloodroot in various places: in the middle of my bulb garden (where tall things usually grow), in my blue garden, and under an old apple tree. This year i am finding them in the woods.

I love when a native plant naturalizes itself in my gardens.

As we meditate and then contemplate teachings that inspire us, beneficial qualities begin to naturalize and flower in our inner garden--calm, kindness, generosity. Perhaps the happiness of a half smile.

Be the garden you would like to see.

So Good to See You. Can You Remind Me What Your Name Is?

My old friends, my perennials, are poking their heads out to say, "Hello again." I am SO happy to see them, one by one. But, just like acquaintances i haven't seen for several months, i can't remember their names.

I smile and open my arms wide. "So good to see you again. Ah-ah-ah. Can you remind me what your name is?"

Minutes or hours later, their name comes to me, and that memory/thought is a pleasant feeling, all by itself. Oh yes! Alchemilla (al-Camilla?) Lady's Mantle.

That name, that pleasant feeling is sufficient to start a whole train of pleasant feelings--thinking of how she looks just after it's rained, and her mantle-leaf has caught jewel-looking raindrops that roll around like mercury. Yes, she's a mistress of alchemy, all right. Turning water into chem-istry.

Pleasant. Pleasant. Pleasant.

Ode to Shovels

I needed a snow shovel yesterday to clear away the 2 inches of wet snow on the hot tub deck. However, the snow shovels were in deep storage, hanging on nails on the wall of the garage behind the stack of 8 snow tires.

I say snow shovelS (plural), because, in the winter, we keep a snow shovel at each door--the front door, the back door, and the deck door. But, of course, they had all been put away weeks ago.

I also have three D-handled shovels that i scatter around: one lives at the vegetable garden, one at the compost pile, and one in the lower flower gardens. (My house is built into a hillside.)

I prefer the D-handled shovels because i am 5'3" and shrinking. I do have a long-handled shovel just in case someone tall (ahem!) wants to help me. But it hangs on a nail on the garage wall 364 days a year.

I also have a spade that i love--a transplanting spade with a long, narrow blade that goes deep (good for planting bulbs), but is incisive because of its narrowness.

My latest acquisition is a spear-head spade--a shovel that slices through thick bundles of roots (hosta or daylilies, for example) and is easy on the back.

We dig into the Dharma with a mind that is as calm and sharp as we can make it today through our meditation practice. Some days, perhaps many days, the mind won't be all that calm or all that sharp. Nevertheless, after our 20 minutes (or longer) meditation, we can spend 5 or 10 minutes contemplating some aspect of the Dharma. Choose any page from The Meditative Gardener. Or a paragraph from the Dharma book or other inspirational book you are currently reading. Focus your attention on that teaching and roll it around in your mind for a few minutes.

A calm mind is an incisive mind that can dig right into the roots of stress.
Use the tools you have to dig into life--as it really is.

Easter Bunny Visits Today!

It's snowing! All the easier to track the Easter bunny tomorrow :)

The Easter bunny is visiting me this afternoon with a REALLY big present--a truckload of bunny manure. These little chocolate-colored balls are mild enough that they can be scattered right on the gardens; they don't burn plants and the manure is weed-free.

Think about it: pellets in, pellets out. No weeds in the bunnies dinner means no weed seeds, unlike other, larger animal manures.

This chain of cause-and-effect applies to our lives as well. By practicing Right Speech that is true, useful, and beneficial, both outwardly with other people, including cyberspace, and inwardly, in our own mind, we'll find we have fewer weeds growing in our minds.

So, when visitors to my garden look puzzled and say, "Hey. Isn't that bunny...?" i just nod and smile.

Bugs--on the Plants and in the Body

The houseplants have been cooped up in the house all winter, and, now, with the change of season, they're getting bugs. And i've caught a bug too.

I set the sickest houseplants on the front step to sun themselves, have a rainwater bath, and get some fresh air. Their anti-bio-tic is the bigger bugs that will dine on the little aphids and spider mites. I myself am taking hot baths and bundling up to stay warm in order to balance the cold that's affecting my respiration.

We are of the nature to become ill. Sickness is unavoidable.

I didn't ask to become ill. I don't want to be sick. Yet, here is the body, feeling poorly and fighting off some intruding bug. Sunning myself today, after a hot water bath, will ease the discomfort.

Pleasant AND Unpleasant

Overcast skies. Misting rain. 46 degrees.
The weather looks unpleasant, so i avoid going out to the garden for as long as i can. I want to work in the garden, and i don't want to go outdoors. Approach/avoidance.

I think about a project i want to do. A project that is part of a line of dominoes: i want to order another truckload of bark mulch, but i have to clean up the load of wood chips that is sitting where the truck will dump the mulch. In order to use the wood chips on a path around the moss garden, i have to first of all widen the path. This means i have to move the big rocks that border the path and reset them.

Are we tired yet?

Finally, after repeatedly looking out the window at the project area, desire (pleasant) trumps all those little unpleasantnesses--rain, chill, and the labor of hauling the wood chips and moving rocks. From indoors, all those unpleasantries are just thoughts. Once i bundle up in boots, my garden coat, and garden gloves, i walk outdoors into bird-singing spring.