In the depth of Fall, a flower begins to bud and bloom. What could it be?
It is my sense that it is just as possible to know inner truth
through reflecting upon nature than going to church or attending an
ashram or spiritual meeting place. But to do it requires wonder. And
joy. If you can approach it with this sense of newness as though the
day has just dawned for you the first time even though you KNOW it has
dawned countless times before, you have the opportunity to glimpse this
incredible thing. Through it, you can glimpse the masterwork of the
Maker. In seeing this masterwork, you can get an idea as to the level of
dedication and truly incredible detail that has gone into just such a
production. I awoke extra early today, at four in the morning for some
mysterious reason, but it served to give me a nice jump on the day which
also meant I was out and doing some garden work extra early, planting
some seeds for a fall garden and preparing a bed that is perfect now for
some new things to over-winter…..
I am finishing up some notes on this book I have been working on for
the last four years now and I was reading through this one section early
in my awakening experience where I wrote this piece that came out so
fast….and it got me thinking about all of these issues, these ideas,
thoughts, feelings all tied to ourselves, to our landscape, how we are
connected to it and how we can live in harmony with it. And when I say
that, I mean an evolving real sense of harmony based on things that are
real and tangible. Its a great thought to WANT to be in harmony, but
you aren’t in harmony unless you ARE. You know? Hunger in Mogadishu
continues even though I wish there wasn’t hunger there. For it to end
something substantive has to be done about it that doesn’t make it worse
and makes it possible for it not to happen again. So what I am getting
around to saying is, I think it would be great if we could develop
technology more along the lines of green things…..chemistry that is
entirely in harmony with its environment that doesn’t make things
worse. Is that possible? Do things plants put off wind up degrading
and turning into harmful substances in larger numbers when they wind up
being carried down, say, a watershed into bays and lakes?
The new mystery flower buds up close
Nature
has a lot to teach us about cooperation, about technology and how we
can have a clean and verdant future by developing ways of living with
nature that harmonize with it instead of possibly poisoning it. Imagine a
world where solar panels are tree leaves and store energy like trees
do….wait….that means that solar panels ARE leaves. Exactly. Perhaps we
need to consider how we can extract energy cheaply from the energy
stored by living things without the creation of deadly chemicals in the
process. Or, perhaps we can create technology that merges with nature
in some way where there are fewer conflicts, such as what GMO’s are
known to do. If you aren’t up on it, the issue with GMO’s is how the
modified genetic material made by humans can wind up in other native
species of plants through cross pollination or by other means. We say
for example that we have ways to keep these things out of the
population, but there have been instances of genetically modified fish
making their way into native populations and wiping out the native
populations out because these newcomers take on weight faster and
compete more aggresively for food, for example. So I know I might be
going far afield, here, but the thinking here is that nature itself has
done an incredible job in getting things figured out. We should be
spending more time studying how nature did it and emulating it based on
its millions of years scale rather than a CEO’s ten year tenure, or an
engineers career in the GMO industry, for example. Nature has had time
to figure all these things out. Its an off-the-shelf miracle we could
learn a lot from if we knew how to.
I know by looking to nature that our lives could be very different
were we to want them to be. Instead of the old way where we create all
kinds of compounds hostile to nature, we could put our inventiveness to
ways to NOT harm nature while still growing the food we need to feed the
humans on the planet.
What I am saying is that its really worth it to get out into nature.
Even during this time of year, in the Northern Hemisphere, when
everything seems to be falling away and going to sleep, there is a great
deal of life happening.
Today, as I walked through my flower garden at the house I noticed
that a flower I had planted but had not yet ever flowered, was now
starting to flower in the presence of cooler weather! In fact, this was
a plant I had lost track of and could not figure out what it was
exactly. It was BIG….and I wondered, why was it not blooming? I had
some plants that did not come up from their seed this year, but this one
plant was a mystery. It grew big and bushy but never put out a single
flower all summer long! But wait! Not so fast! Her come the blooms!
So just as I am getting ready for things to go bye-bye, something new
comes along just to give me a delightful curve ball! All of this since
my last post about my work in the garden preparing seeds for next years’
growing season. The flower I am speaking of are the buds that are
shown at the top of this page. The other flowers are all flowers that
are blooming as of today.
I also found that my Thai Basil is looking truly incredible with its
purple flowers. I snipped a sprig and tasted it; sometimes I really
love herbs when they are
flowering. It seems their flowers add
something interesting to the flavor of the herb. The Rosemary, for
example, is suddenly flowering, and this was a new plant that I put in
this spring and it has quite suddenly begun a growth spurt. I put it
nearest the steps so that I could smell its fragrance as I go out to
snip a piece of it for cooking. I like that my herbs are in with my
flowers. It makes me feel that much closer, more intimate with them.
My Thai Basil in flower ~ Isn’t the flower so beautiful? Like an iris or snapdragon or….
Not very long ago a hummingbird discovered my flower patch. It was a
brilliant peacock green colored hummer. I noted that it was making a
habit of coming to the flowers and spent a lot of time going around to
each one many times each day. I noticed that it often came around lunch
time, so I made a plan to spend a little time out by the flowers in
early afternoon. I was rewarded the first time I tried this. A
hummingbird came to the flowerbed within minutes of my walking outside.
I had been standing stock still for many minutes and the hummingbird
came in perfect timing. I was able to watch as the bird flew from
flower to flower just a couple of feet from me. Realize that the
flowerbed I am talking about is right along the walkway in front of my
house, so I was standing almost in the flower bed. The hummingbird did a
curious thing, though, and I think it was checking me out; it flew in
front of me and looked at me and then it flew up and then flew to my
side farthest from the flowers, which resulted in its flying from one
side of me to the other by going over my head. Its path, though, was
within about a foot of my head as I could hear and feel it track in a
very even path around me as it checked me out. I have gotten close to
hummingbirds, but never like this. It is events like this that make
creating a flowerbed so worthwhile.
There are ants on my plants!
What I like is how nature creates so much opportunity for life. Ants
come to check out the cigar plants (I forget the Latin names) as there
is something that attracts them, and that the ants probably help with.
The Peonies are attended by many ants that take the nectar that come
from the flowers and seem to assist with the bloom of these remarkable
flowers. There are several bees found everyday at the flowers, and a
number of butterflies and moths as well as spiders. All this life
springing up, creating a teeming island of life. it makes me wonder
what will happen when I expand the gardens next Spring and include sweet
smelling flowers of many different kinds.
I
go to the raspberry bushes and I note with a great deal of amusement
that bumblebees LOVE raspberry blooms and even now my raspberries
continue to bloom and bear. As they do, the bumbles seem to camp out,
going over them over and over like some star-crossed lover might. I
know it may not be fair to place such human traits on a bee of all
things, but to watch them you would think they are drunk with their
affection for these berry blooms. I wonder why raspberries of all
things? A rabbit has taken to liking to hide out in the growing bush of
the raspberry patch and often shoots out like a cannon ball from a
canon after I have plucked a few ripe berries from the bushes.
This is a simple form of worship, but it is worship just the same. I
do worship this masterwork because I know to even mention what a sheave
of grass represents is nothing short of an entire miracle or twenty
miracles all working together in some amazing way. And it is in such
places I put my attention and miraculously I find peace, a strengthening
of the flow of energy within me, a sense of health and happiness I
often miss when bound up in other work. Being an artist, I love to make
things, and perhaps I observe nature for hints on design and on the
still deeper nature of….NATURE! I can see how observing nature levels
the self and enlivens the soul. I smell a flower and it sends me to
other worlds now. I see something new crawling over the fence and I
follow it back to its source, amazed at where its seed could have
emerged. I have stroked flowers and felt a jolt of energy that was so
clear and so perfect that I have come to realize there is something in
nature. Actually IN nature for me to find that heals. It means slowing
down and observing, rolling around in the grass a little.
Once, a very long time ago, I used to have dreams my first year in
art school about Picasso. Now, I want you to know I really do not like
Picasso’s work. In fact, there isn’t a single piece of his work that I
really feel COMFORTABLE around. Be that as it may, something in me
chose to create him or I had some exchange with someone who came as
Picasso. He came about three times and each time he had something to
impart about art. The first one had him with his bottom up in the air
and his head in the grass. He had planted himself just outside my dorm
room building in a small patch of grass. I walked up to him and he saw
me under the crook in his arm and turned to gesture for me to come
close. He said for me to get down to his level and look closely. He
said “There are worlds in things….but you must first learn to see
them….” so we sat crouched over ourselves in this patch of grass and as
I did so, my vision took in a piece of grass maybe six inches square.
As I did this I saw how I noticed ants and small mites of some sort
along with a spider and a whole world of things growing down there.
Pablo watched me with those big eyes of his and said “Look closer….” and
as I did I noticed that there were these very small mushrooms growing
down beneath the level of the grass. I watched and saw grains of sand
and all kinds of things I had never seen before. It was a world down
there in a small inconsequential patch of grass! As I watched, the
mushrooms began to light up! My head moved up and out of the grass as I
had, no doubt, a stunned look on my face. Picasso looked at me with
eyebrows arched as the dream faded. I think that nature is like this….a
world of things that we often miss, but could learn so much from.
Kale in my summer garden, ready to become my winter garden….
Gardening is incredibly therapeutic. I encourage you to give it a
try since it increases your enjoyment of your space. I am sure someone
has a study that reveals the link between something remarkable and what
we do when we garden.
Over the last few days I have been sprouting mustard seed in order to
grow mustard in a fall garden. I am told that cool weather improves
greens so I am growing both kale and mustard to try this out. The
mustard was taken from a large packet of seeds bought four years ago,
seed that ought not to be fertile, and yet is showing a remarkable level
of fertility for being so old and not fresh. These were seed I bought
the Spring before I moved from my home during a separation from my-then
wife. It was a garden I never got to plant, and yet this seed has
returned two years’ worth of growth from this packet of heirlooms. A
squash plant that was lovely that I had planted he year before skipped
growing the three years that my ex was in residence at my home but then
chose to sprout up in the yard whereupon it grew a nice fat Italian
heirloom squash that makes great stuffed squash. It was like some weird
gardening miracle or something. I sowed the sprouted seed today into
my compost area, which is a large planter I have taken over for the
task of “growing” new soil of special projects (like a flower bed, or
berry bushes, or my fig trees, etc.).
The truth is, its the life force that is in all of these things that
fascinate me so much. I wish I could give everyone the awareness that
has settled in and made nests in my heart and soul….for this sense has
liberated love in a way hard to explain so that it can be rightly
understood. It is wonder taken beyond what I used to feel until it
becomes something like love struck fascination, amazement, wonder and
awe…..and all of this because of something like GRASS or a flower
petal! These, oldest of all life on the planet, rooted still, seem to
bear such hidden wonder to our too quickened ways….it is time for us to
slow down a little and garden….
