State of the Garden


This morning I misted the orchids. None are blooming right now, but an orange catteleya I received as a gift several years ago is budding, as is my favorite epidendrum, which offers up a host of delicate, greenish, spidery blooms every February. It brightens my day to spend a little time tending the house plants when it is most wintry outside.
I rinsed sprouts. I have both bean sprouts and a salad mixture going. I started new batches of sprouts as soon as I returned from NYC. I was grateful for the offerings at the grocery store, but pine for at least a little something truly fresh. I’d had a little chard, parsley, and chives that made it through the snow storm. Much to my surprise, I even managed to salvage enough from the garden to include in an omelet after the ice storm the other morning, but the day-time subfreezing temperatures and icy winds have finished off the outdoor garden until March. I think I am going to get some burlap and start some micro-greens in addition to salad and bean sprouts.
Samsara and effulgence.

Secretary Hilda Solis sent workers at the Department of Labor an email invitation yesterday to do some volunteer activity today to honor those who lost their lives in the tragedy of 9-11. She did not remind us of terror or enmity or need for war.
It resonated with what my teacher John Friend, who often discusses the need to serve as part of our practice, counsels in times of distress. He admits that it is not, as the t-shirt would have it, “all good.” We can choose, though, how to respond to violence, to suffering, to meanness, to evil. We can, he urges, seek to respond from “the highest.” We personally have the choice to try to bring light when we encounter darkness.
I do not always succeed, particularly with the small things, but I continue to try, and I deeply appreciate all the teachings and reminders I get.

The sky emptiest of moonlight, the darkness of the absent moon of mahashivratri lets the stars reveal themselves and illuminate the fullness of possibility. That it is also the first day of meteorological Spring and was the State of the Union feels like quite a confluence.