Thinning Out

A friend gave me 2 zucchini plants yesterday. Her two hills had each sprouted 4 plants, so she needed to thin them.

Isn't thinning out hard to get around to? It goes against the grain to pull out little green plants. This is the reason i now have 3 dozen broccoli seedlings, spaced a foot apart, in my vegetable garden. I did manage to give away one 6-pack of broccoli. Maybe i should give away some more. What am i going to do with 3 dozen (or even 2 dozen) broccoli? Give them away.

No matter which way i turn, giving away is the answer to the problem. Give them away now or give them away later. What would you choose?

My summer squash seeds still have not sprouted. Well, they were packed in 2004, so i expected a low germination rate. I just hoped it wouldn't be 0%. Oh well, it's time to replant.

I just finished teaching an 8-week class called Begin Again. The students all had previous meditation experience, but meditation had fallen away from their lives. So they began again, as we all do, every time we sit down on the cushion.

It's time to replant our intention to meditate.

What do you aspire to?

In the garden, i aspire to a crop of summer squash (my favorite!)
In meditation, i aspire to daily sitting. I am inspired by the Dalai Lama who arises at 3 a.m. and meditates for 3 hours before turning on the BBC World News at 7:00 a.m. What a great way to start the day.

I've already started my day with a long sit and with writing this Dharma blog. Now it's time to walk out into this summer day and plant summer squash :)

Photo from klesickfamilyfarm.com

Red-bellied Woodpecker

A red-bellied woodpecker lives nearby. This is a southern bird that i've never seen before in our neighborhood. At first, i thought it was a flicker (they're on succeeding pages of my bird book), but then i looked more carefully at the distinguishing marks. Surprise! It's a red-bellied woodpecker.

Our mind can fool us too. Then we look more closely at a particular thought, or a type of thought, and we find out it's not what we thought it was.

Desire feels good. But look closely at those desiring thoughts--desires for your children or grandchildren, desire for a vacation. We recall the pleasantness and bring it to mind time and again. Then we realize: desire is a stressful thought. It's not as pleasant as we thought it was :)

Take a closer look. Work on identifying those thoughts. Are they useful? Or useless?

Things are not as they seem. Let's aim to see life as it really is.

Photo from fsc.fernbank.edu

All Balled Up

7 years ago, i bought 3 little 6-inch tall PJM rhododendrons and put them in my holding bed. I transplanted one, one died, and the other one has limped along looking quite puny.

I found that puny one yanked out (by a deer?) and lying on the ground. No wonder the small-leaved rhododendron was still only 6 inches tall. Its roots were growing in a circle, as if it were still confined to a three-inch pot.

Sometimes we confine ourselves--our emotions, our activities--to a very small space. Perhaps we were trained by authoritarian parents or suffered from a trauma that caused us to contract. Our own "rootball" may be confined to a very small space.

Notice how contraction feels in the body.
The mind may believe it's safer to stay small and fly under the radar.
Question that belief.

Life is calling you.

Simplify Your Flowerbed

My theory of flowerbeds is small clumps near the house, which can become larger the farther you go away from the house. Near the house, a clump of flowers can be about a foot in diameter; farther away, 2-3 feet in diameter.

In practice this means on-going division and taking "spreaders" (such as bee balm or phlox) out of the neat little beds altogether. It all depends on your tolerance for dividing. Some gardeners can't bear to divide their clumps at all.

Flowers can overwhelm our little gardens, stuff can overwhelm our house, and multi-tasking can overwhelm our lives.

Simplify your garden, your house, and your to-do list. Create some breathing space for your plants and yourself.

What one thing can you let go of today?

Photo from www.landscapinggallery.info

What gets you out of bed in the morning?
The need to pee? Your cat? Your dog?
The desire to go out to the garden?
The chirp of a bird calling you to put out a few sunflower seeds for its breakfast? (But no more than 2 tablespoons, so you won't attract bears.)

What wakes us up in our spiritual life?
Usually some form of stress, sorrow, or heartbreak calls our attention to a spiritual path. We are seeking relief. We want to reduce our stress.

We learn to practice mindfulness and begin to gain insight into the workings of our mind. We begin to see that our culture, our society normalizes greed, aggression, and delusion. Naively, we thought that was how the world was supposed to operate.

But our tender hearts were right all along. We want to follow the path with heart.
That's what will wake us up to Life.



Photo from http://mindfulbalance.org/2012/01/02/a-path-with-heart/

Labeling

Since i can't bear to throw plants away, i pot up my extras to give away. Then i use popsicle sticks to label them. "Yellow daylily" or "Russian sage." Sometimes i use the Latin name "Brunnera macrophylla" or "papaver somniflorum."

In meditation, we label our distracting thoughts. We have several systems available to us:

• We can label thoughts simply by naming them "past" or "future."
• We can label thoughts with words such as "planning," "worrying," "dreaming," etc.
• We can use the 5 Hindrances as a forced-choice exercise. By sorting every thought into one of these 5 categories, we gain insight into what, in particular, hinders our meditation.

sense desire

ill-will

lethargy & sleepiness

restlessness & worry

doubt

 Labeling thoughts increases our mindfulness. Labeling plants helps the recipient to know what plants they are receiving.