For my grandchildren

I miss you.

I miss you and I think of you everyday when I am in the garden. I snap pictures of the broccoli growing or the cauliflower and I think about how you could watch how my garden grows. I think about how I am happy that I get to watch you grow.

It's summer; and the gardens here in Upstate New York, where I live, grow and grow. I know (because I had the opportunity to live with you when I worked in Tampa General Hospital as a chaplain) that it's too hot in Florida in the summer for gardens, even though I and your dad tried to grow tomatoes.

Tomatoes, here, grow just fine. (Mine are still green and small.)

Here's some pictures from my garden.

My best head of lettuce, ever. It's hard to tell, but this is a very nice head of Romaine lettuce.

I took this picture of a banana pepper because it reminded me of a Pinocchio nose pepper. I think the peppers are going to grow really well and I am happy that this one is yellow. It goes well with the green lettuce.

Here is one of the broccoli; its the fastest one and it will be ready to pick before the others.

Here's another one that's not quite as far along.

Finally, here is an "art shot" of my herbs that I am going to use in the salad with chili rellanos that I am cooking for a party for a friend of mine who is visiting from Texas.

I'm sit here smiling as I picture your faces and hear your voices in my head. Even though I'm far away, it's nice to remember my love for you on this summer evening.

And you know what? It's hot here too!

Rabbit

A rabbit was on the inside of the fence when I approached the garden this morning. I watched as it slipped through the bottom of the fence where the chicken wire had rusted away. A moment later it ran from behind the bale of hay and paused some 10 feet away. I yelled at it, just to be inhospitable, and Dodger took off after it. "You get 'em," I called as after my 15-year-old dog took chase.

Once in the garden, I looked around for what it might have been eating and didn't see any nibbling. Later, when I saw this pathway through the green beans, I realized that left unchecked, or on the wrong side of the garden fence, that we and that rabbit would be fighting over the beans. Stepping back, I took a picture of bed and a closeup of the plants.

While I am really not willing to share, I see that there is great abundance.

And that there will be a great crop of beans this summer.

When I'm ready to return to the house, I reinforce the chicken wire that the rabbit had slipped through with a piece of hogwire fencing, and vow to mention to husband Stephen how the rabbit is keeping pace with his efforts to keep him out.

In the eye of the sunflower

I stood naked in the rain today and honored the four directions and the old rose bush in the side yard. Acknowledging that the generations before lived with the same knowledge that this precious piece of earth sustains us, I hoped it would always be so.

Second story flowerbed view

From my second story window, my tangle of a front flowerbed is a garden of life abundant. (If you click on the picture will will make it larger) Look for the bees on the lavender lemon mint, (at bottom center, and imagine more bees, look at dark spots) and check out the humming bird on the lower left, drinking the nectar of the bee balm.

I appreciate the varying heights of the perennials and am thankful that I let it rest for long enough for it to reveal itself. I begin to scheme how I can co-create with its vision.

The pause.

A cauliflower grows

A cauliflower grows in my garden.

I say that because 1) the cauliflower is, indeed, growing in my garden; and 2) because it reminds me of the Joyce Carol Oates book "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn." I don't remember much about the story. What I do remember is that it was one of those books that I was sorry when it ended. I actually liked all of the books that we read in elementary and junior high school and find it fascinating to think about iconic books that we read as a culture. (I know, I know, it's not happening as much now and we have pause to wonder what the world is coming to.)

Still, because it's all about me (are we really so different from the 'me' generation?) and I'm enjoying looking back/reflecting on my formative years as insight for the present, I remember not liking the process of the school reading and I am wondering whether it was the outcome that I didn't appreciate. Was it that everything in the '60s was focused on the written word, the testing, the book report? Was it having to talk about it in class? Might I remember more of the story if I had incorporated what I knew in the arts?

Of course, I remember that sometimes I made a diorama and I don't remember that being engaging or inspiring either. Perhaps I was put off by the evaluation. Perhaps I was just shy. Perhaps I just need to re-read "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" and get reacquainted with the story. I imagine that it's even a movie I could watch.

Getting back to the cauliflower: in my garden there are four. And fortunately at least one of them is way behind the others. (Meaning it will be ready to eat after the others, thereby stretching the cauliflower season a bit.)

I love garden abundance!

I've been changing my screen saver for the past months, updating it as the season progresses. This is the one I be using for a couple of days. Lemon mint. It's doubly lovely because it is attracting the bees, a species that I worry about as it has been in decline, getting lost from their hives in the commercial world.

I'm hoping the screen saver picture reminds me that it's not necessary or even helpful to worry. Rather I move to revere, savor and shepherd our universe of expanding consciousness.

Last thought: if earthworms have consciousness, so do the bees. How about the mint?

Earthworm consciousness

This morning, with my overall's getting longer and longer as I worked, I reclaimed the bed where the peas had been growing. I pulled the diseased vines and placed them carefully in a heavy plastic bag. I don't really know what was wrong with the peas; it could have been mosaic or maybe, as my sage farmer friend Greg Swartz put it in a recent email "Peas don't like having wet feet for extended periods of time, aka this season!")

Rolling back the newspaper and hay that I had mulched the peas with (yep, the same newspaper/mulch combo that could have contributed to the right conditions for those wet feet) I uncovered a couple of earthworm. I noted how the soil was fluffed all around.

I always feel rich when I uncover earthworms in the garden. Efficient filters of soil, I celebrate them whenever I come across them. Sometimes I move them from one bed to another, and once moved canfuls from one compost heap to another. They had fled from me then. I have wondered whether they understand I'm after them. I try to tell myself that they are just sensing the light and retreating and not that they are sensing danger and acting according.

From there I wonder if there is any real difference between retreating from the light or reacting because you feel threatened. Aren't they both some form of consciousness?

I asked Nathaniel Whitmore, of the Upper Delaware Mushroom Society, when we were out on an impromptu mushroom foray in Honesdale's Cliff Street Park last week, whether he thought earthworms had consciousness and he related how he never liked to put worms on fishing hooks because they always resisted. Made sense to him, he said.

From there, I wonder if the world is fundamentally changed by actually allowing, by empirical knowledge, that earthworms are a part of the web of consciousness?

It's a curious and quirky thought that makes me joyful.

The real estate is reclaimed, the garden in renewed.

Now you see 'em ...

Now you don't.

The pause

I hurry out in the morning; I have no time to work my 30 morning minutes in the garden. I take a quick picture just to remember.

I read the second installment of my Spirituality and Practice e-course, "Pausing with Terry Hershey" and he talks about how there are two spaces in our lives. One for hurrying and accomplishment; one for reflection and silence. Check out this video explanation.

The pause

The wisdom stays with me through my busy day, and in the middle of the hectic, hurrying energy, I remember the pause. I breathe and sink into the energy of the earth.

With cookies in the oven for refreshments for an evening forum on letter writing, and being focused on finishing my Riverfest poster, I celebrate the refreshing pause awareness.

Garden potential

Pumpkin pie

eggplant parm

dill pickles

What we tend to

I am in the garden early this morning, working in the cool of the day. On my mental list is the tying up of the tomatoes.

I flit from one task to another and am sure that I have attention deficit disorder. Chastising myself for thinking too much, I tie up some of the tomatoes, side dressing them, and the cucumbers with lovely sheep manure that Stephen picked up for me from Fallsdale Farm last Wednesday. I pull weeds, transplant a volunteer tomato plant into the last empty space I just couldn't deal with last week, and create a pot with extra basil plants for a friend. I am aware that, while not staying on one task until it is finished, I am accomplishing things and moving the garden along in spurts. I recall a friend telling me yesterday that I am too hard of myself. Mostly I desire to be meditative in my garden work.

I'm getting better at being clear about asking for help and explaining why it is that I need whatever I am requesting. For instance, I would really like a dump-truck load of manure from a neighboring farm. I talked with someone with a dump truck who said that they would help. Talking with Stephen, however, it seemed that really pulling that off right now will be difficult. When I told him what I really needed was just a few buckets for side dressing the plants, he was able to get that accomplished when he was doing other tasks on Wednesday.

We were efficient together, and the plants grow lush with the extra nutrients.

My summer is made more lovely in remembering last year when I was in the Florida heat while doing my Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) at Tampa General Hospital. Then I went from air conditioning to air conditioning and rarely stepped outside. In contrast, I am in awe of the Upper Delaware and its pastoral and greening landscape.

The lawn in hardening under foot, but the garden beds where we tend and water remain soft.

A deepening web

I spent the first hour of my day composing a blog post that talked about the three New York Times articles that I read this morning, which had me marveling at how many less-than-adequate decisions, particularly concerning asset use, that we could possibly make. And while I was jumping back and forth to retrieve the links, so that you could read the articles if you were so inclined, I jumped off my blog input screen without saving and lost it all.

I decided to go into the garden after that.

In the garden, I side dressed many of the plants, peppers, onions, zucchini, eggplant, swiss chard, with some beautiful aged sheep's manure. I work around the peas, which I believe have Mosaic, and am moving closer and closer to pulling them out and planting something that will grow for the fall.

There are a few peas on the vine, but it is a tortuous existence for them. I try to convince myself to give up on the small handful of peas that I will pick and value the garden real estate that pulling them will create and plant again.

It's hard to give up on things -- even when they're not working. Perhaps that is something that I have in common with my standout stories of the morning.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/15/science/earth/15frack.html?src=recg

In this story, Joe Martens, new DEC Commissioner says that produced water from hydro-fracking can be treated in our non-hazardous wastewater facilities with minor modifications; the gas industry is concerned that local zoning would actually deter gas drilling in some areas of towns, and that it is estimated that there will be 75,000 wells drilled in the next 30 years.

The next story that caught my eye was http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/15/science/earth/15herbicide.html?_r=1&nl...

This story explains how Dupont came up with a new herbicide, Imprelis, that landscape companies are using to kill invasives in grass. Unfortunately, it also disturbs the conifers, which are dying by the tens of thousands. For some of us in New York and California, which has its own review process, the chemical hasn't been used yet because it has been found not to attached to soil, and therefore runs into the groundwater. Additionally, the chemicals do not break down so if you happen to put your grass clippings in your mulch pile and then use it on your flowers and vegetable garden, it will kill those as well.

Lastly, I read about food companies that are making a bit of a fuss about not advertising non-nutritious foods to children and a move to make children's menus more nourishing. The argument centers around whether Goldfish are junk food, but I'm not buying that the argument actually is about nutrition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/15/business/food-makers-push-back-on-ads-...

Now hours later, from that morning post, I find myself wondering why it is that we have such a hard time cutting our losses and admitting that we can't control and harness the universe for our own self-interest, however benign or not!

Is it the same reason that I cannot give up on my peas as the corporations cannot give up on fossil fuels, manufacture of chemicals and looking at children as the newest marketing group to go after?

Same, perhaps, and different.

Bottom line? the peas have got to go; and the corporations have to start applying themselves to fostering healthy living.