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    Another Storm Passes Without Any Rain Falling Inside the Beltway

    ByElizabeth

    What’s a gardener and concerned for the trees and the health of the planet citizen to do?  I’ve got enough water in the rain barrel to water the vegetables and herbs once or twice, but what impact does that really have?  At work, people were grumbling because it was cloudy.  They seemed shocked when I advised them that we are an inch under normal rainfall for August and have a fairly significant deficit for the summer despite the July rains.

    Wouldn’t it be great if we could move some of the flood waters that have fallen only a couple hundred miles away to irrigate our fields without disrupting our eco-system?  Part of me just wants not to know about the consequences of global climate change, but it is hard not to notice that all the weather patterns I used to know and understand do not seem to apply quite the same way anymore.  What do we do when the systems and practices we have in place for our ease, comfort, well-being, and understood day-to-day peace of mind are disrupted?

    Yoga will not fix the big outer problems, but it can provide us with the steadiness and ease needed to stay present and be flexible in the face of crisis, upheaval, or disease.  It can also provide insight into how we can live in better alignment.  In the meantime, I am practicing gratitude.  I know how blessed I am that, so far, the wild upheavals I read about in the news have not kept me from all the food and comfort that a person could possibly want.  And I pay attention, because to be ignorant ultimately never serves ourselves or others.

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    Grandma Rose’s Philodendron

    ByElizabeth

    The other day, when I was in NY visiting,  I told my mother about the blog entry on Robert’s dendrobium. (Being physically present and discussing the blog entries is the low-tech way of getting comments).  She pointed to the philodendron and some cuttings she was rooting from it and said, “that philodendron was your grandmother Rose’s; it must be 70 years old.”   It might not be 70 years old, but it is at least 40 or 50, as my grandmother left her body in 1977, and I remember her having houseplants.  It is possible, even, that the plant originally came from a cutting from my other grandmother, as that was how we obtained and grew most of the family houseplants.

    My mother offered the plant for me to take home.  I declined, but thought about taking a cutting.  By the next morning, I had forgotten, but I will take a cutting one day.  I did not need the cutting to enjoy thinking about bringing home a bit of life that had been living in my grandmother’s apartment and remembering both my grandmother and a space that I had loved.  That was delightful enough.

    (ps — one of the many reasons for the name “rose garden yoga” is in honor of my grandmothers — for my grandmother Rose’s name and for the love of gardening I learned from my grandmother Ann).

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    State of the Garden

    ByElizabeth

    I was staying at a retreat center in Peru on 9/11. I was not with anyone else from the United States. I remember at the first meal after the planes hit, another guest suggesting that the United States deserved it. I also remember the brief moment of gathering sympathy that, as a country, we threw away with the aggressive response.

    The best thing about the retreat center was that instead of tea bags, every morning there were fresh herbs from the garden for tea. I continue to make my tea that way as much of the year as the garden is able.

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