The excessive dryness and unseasonable warmth make me anxious. Sixties fahrenheit and dry may feel good in San Francisco, but here it just is out of place for the existing flora and fauna. Still, I made sure to get out and enjoy the exquisite afternoon that it was. I find the skies of drought achingly beautiful and mysterious.
It was also nice, but peculiar to go out into the backyard and pick nearly a pint of ripe grape tomatoes.
This weekend’s work in the garden continues on removing summer plants that are no longer productive to make way for cold weather planting (various greens and root vegetables).
The cherry tomatoes and a couple of the hot peppers are still flowering in addition to fruiting. Those I will leave in place as long as they are producing or until a frost, whichever comes first.
I ruthlessly pulled up all of the other pepper plants, gleaning the last of that cycle of the harvest (some years there are lots of peppers to pickle and roast and enjoy into winter, but not with this summer’s weeks of blasting, arid heat followed by the flooding storms).
With the limited space in my tiny garden, frittering away time or space from sentimentality, attachment, neglect, or lack of knowledge, has a significant impact on the possibility of flourishing. Sometimes I relish my ability to be ruthless in the garden–to tear things up that do not serve, let them go, and invite in new and more nourishing and productive things.
When thought about in relationship to the vastness of possibility, my life is not unlike a tiny and limited garden, the limits being space and time and the particular and peculiar collection of quirks, challenges, and talents that came in this incarnation. Oh to be as ruthless in discarding what does not serve in this life as I can be in the garden.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
It is good to get outside as often as possible. Though I spend most of my time in the city, by commuting and doing many of my errands on foot and by gardening I spend a good amount of time outside (perhaps even more than people who commute by car and then drive to “nature” to go hiking), attuning with weather and the seasons. Like my friend Reya, I think it is important to spend time outside nearly every day. Though I do not leave the city much, I know the weather and the seasons fr0m my walking around and through the neighborhood to work and to shop and in the green urban spaces that are so precious.
Do you have a favorite green spot near you if you live in the city or the suburbs? Do you give energy to support and share green spaces?
Bronx River, New York Botanical Gardens
My dear friend from college, Dan Harper, just posted the following on his website. I feel fortunate to have a friend who inspires me to me more learned and more concerned.
Martin Luther King would have been 80 today. On February 25, 1967, not long before he was killed, he spoke about the Vietnam War and its effects on our country. The following excerpt from that speech could easily be delivered today, with just a few minor changes:
“This confused war has played havoc with our domestic destinies.
“Despite feeble protestations to the contrary, the promises of the Great Society [anti-poverty program] have been shot down on the battlefield of Viet Nam. The pursuit of this widened war has narrowed domestic welfare programs, making the poor, white and Negro, bear the heaviest burdens both at the front and at home.
“While the anti-poverty program is cautiously initiated, zealously supervised and evaluated for immediate results, billions are liberally expended for this ill-considered war. The recently revealed mis-estimate of the war budget amounts to ten billions of dollars for a single year. This error alone is more than five times the amount committed to anti-poverty programs. The security we profess to seek in foreign adventures we will lose in our decaying cities. The bombs in Viet Nam explode at home: they destroy the hopes and possibilities for a decent America.
“If we reversed investments and gave the armed forces the antipoverty budget, the generals could be forgiven if they walked off the battlefield in disgust.
“Poverty, urban problems and social progress generally are ignored when the guns of war become a national obsession. When it is not our security that is at stake, but questionable and vague commitments to reactionary regimes, values disintegrate into foolish and adolescent slogans.”
Full text of the speech on Stanford’s Web site. Crossposted on PaxPac.
