According to yesterday’s Washington Post, we are officially in a drought. We are short 7.3 inches of rain since October, 5 inches since January. The recent rain is merely returning to near normal rainfall and is not addressing the deficit. Please do what you can to conserve water. See previous post for some tips: https://rosegardenyoga.com/2009/02/rain-not-quite-enough/
Please comment to share your own water saving tips.
Snowpeas, tri-color beans. Peppers. Cherry tomatoes, basil (blueberries and strawberries did not make it out of the garden).
A student asked me the other day why I garden–was it to save money, he asked, was it for better tasting food?
It does save money to grow food and food eaten straight out of the garden is a foodie’s exquisite pleasure, but those are not my primary motivations.
I garden for the delight it brings through all of my senses and for the joy of knowing that the garden never questions nurturing. The more I give the garden, the more it gives back, without question or judgment.
I garden for the sense of relationship with the deeper seasonal patterns. To experience at an intimate level the impact on health and thriving of variations in seasons, light, heat, and rain.
With the drought and extreme heat in our area, the garden is struggling. Peppers are fruiting before having gotten tall and full. Cucumbers are yellowing and drying, though a couple have grown large enough to eat. There is a surfeit of kale, but the snow peas, which prefer cool weather, barely had time enough to grow enough to flower before it was too hot to thrive.
Part of the reasons some recipes have many ingredients is because they are premised on there not being enough of any one thing to make a meal. I am getting a few servings of vegetables every day, but the blasting heat is preventing the kind of abundance for some things I might have in another year. The grapes, though, may be outrageous; they like this crazy heat.
I want to be conscious of these challenges and serendipities. I want to know how I might need to change and adjust to thrive in a world that is ever more out of balance. I garden because it helps me be aware of crisis and challenge, but always and first providing extraordinary pleasure and beauty.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
One of the important principles of yoga practice is viveka — discrimination. The longer and more steadily one practices, the greater ease with which one will find path that leads towards recognition and remembrance of our own light and the light in others. In modern culture, I think one of the critical aspects of practicing viveka is having a healthy doubt and willingness to question claims that consuming certain things will make us happier, or better, or will make the world better. Paying too much attention will probably just create a tangle of intellectual confusion that will not lead to a greater openness of spirit. Learning to listen well to your body and mind and what and how you feel and hear on and off the mat will help you start to know better your body and mind and how they interrelate with all around you, is likely to shift your choices and actions.
It is now fashionable to be “green.” Discerning what that means, though, is where we need to practice discrimination. For example, claims of “natural” foods, “organic” foods, and “green” products are now ubiquitous by companies that are part of the existing Wall Street profit-driven industrial and marketing complex because they think they are money-makers and expect most consumers not to question the claims. We are also seeing more and more articles and stories debunking these claims and calls for regulation so that consumers will understand what is bunk. If we stop and pause, we can probably figure out some of this without reading about the pros and cons. Do you know who is selling it to you? Does it come in packaging with a lot of small print? Is the packaging recyclable? Are shareholder profits critical to the entity selling you the food or garden supplies or other consumer good?
Taking the example of the success of the big companies, small entities are using “green” in their names and advertising without discrimination. Around town I see fairly regularly, landscaping companies with cozy-sounding “green” names. When I watch them working, though, they are using Round-up or other chemical weedkillers, throwing into the trash compostable yard waste, and planting non-native shrubs. They may be making a garden the color green, but they certainly aren’t doing “green” gardening.
Here’s some great information on having a “climate-friendly” garden from the Union of Concerned Scientists. The tips are more helpful for a yard large enough to have a lawn, and do not fully apply for my small patio (though I have a tree in front, don’t leave bare soil, and do not use pesticides or chemical fertilizers. I haven’t yet tried planting winter crops in my containers, but I’ve rearranged the patio so that I have a place for a raised bed (to sit on the brick where the table and chairs once were). This winter, I’m hoping to add the bed and a cold frame to lengthen the growing season.
