I love the tree sculptures by Roxy Paine. This one is in the Sculpture Garden on the National Mall. They are exquisitely beautiful and beautifully crafted. In addition to just appreciating their form, though, they make me think of the perils of society preferring the shiny, the seemingly permanent and indestructible, and the constructed over the breathing, shading, nourishing, life-sharing presence of real trees.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
After washing up the dinner things and making a sweet bread with one of the about to be overly abundant butternut squashes, I stepped out on the catio to be greeted by the nearly full moon. The thunderstorms this afternoon were modest, but they cleared out some of the smoke.
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.
It is good to act consciously, to move and react from a place of sensitivity, discrimination, and understanding. It is good to know both the big picture and the details. When does paying attention and thinking things through, though, become “overthinking?” I think (ha ha) that it is when thinking things through takes us away from the heart, when it desensitizes, instead of assists us in acting with discrimination.
A gift from a friend–from a cutting from a cutting from my friend’s mother’s garden. It almost always blooms around this date.
