State of the Front Garden

ByElizabeth

The baby from the back garden 30-year old rose bush, blooming in the front (in a relatively shady place)!

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    Arugula and Green Garlic Pesto

    ByElizabeth

    There’s lots of arugula in the garden.  Some still new enough to save for salad, some that has bolted in the heat.  The cilantro is just about gone with the dry heat.  The basil and parsley have gone to flower.  As I thought about how best to enjoy all of what was there while simultaneously best tending the garden for optimal growth (much like yoga practice), I remembered that I had seen a farmer with arugula pesto at the Dupont Circle Fresh Farm Market last week.  I bought something else from the farmer to honor the idea, fully conscious of my own garden full of arugula calling out to me.

    Making pesto was a great way to optimize the bitter tang of the flowers on the older plants.  (I left a few of each type of plant to go to seed for a second crop starting in late summer on a volunteer basis).  I added enough of the young arugula and some tender parsley and basil leaves, along with the basil flowers, to bring out the arugula taste that would have been hidden by the bitterness in the plants that had flowered if not been combined with other foods.  I pureed the chopped greens with olive oil, walnuts, and green garlic.  Salt and pepper to taste.

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    State of the Garden — Close Up (and Anticipation)

    ByElizabeth

    To deny or ignore the future is not the same as living in the present.  To live perfectly in the present as a responsible and engaged part of the collective being, one must still plan for the future that will become a present.  It is the perilous attachment to a particular outcome that can make bitter the present, not the engaged expectation of the future that is an inevitable part of living in the present.

    As I worked in the garden this morning, I thought how much presence I find in the enjoyable anticipation of what will ripen in the future.  And while anticipating cucumbers and tomatoes (and taking note of the damage caused by the birds), I set myself to enjoying fully the greens and herbs–the current abundance.

    Blueberries, purple Cherokee tomato, grape tomato, echinacea, burpless cucumber, Italian eggplant, red Concord grapes,  snow pea, green bean (Kentucky wonder)–June 10

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    State of the Garden

    ByElizabeth

    The polar vortices must have been good for the grape kiwi. After years of being barely productive, it is flourishing wildly. 

    Sometimes it takes, as we can learn from mindfully practiced yoga asana, a stressor to stimulate growth or needed change. It isn’t stress that holds us back, but distress.

    As for the kiwi vine, even if the birds get all the fruit, I still had the delightful scent of the flowers.

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    “Do you have an umbrella?”

    ByElizabeth

    As I was headed out at lunch, a co-worker in another office whom I know only from the hallway, asked, “do you have an umbrella?”

    “Yes, I do, how are you?” I replied, knowing that she was trying to be helpful. So many of us work in spaces without windows, it was not unreasonable for her to think I might not know it was raining.

    Another woman who I did not know said, “I heard it might rain all weekend,” revealing herself as one who gets all knowledge of the weather from tv.

    I thought, but did not say, “yes, there is that pesky hurricane coming.”

    Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.

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