* * * * * * *
Almond blossom is beautiful - and fleeting
Cultivating the
power of presence in the Dharma Garden
October
2012
People think that gardens are slow
places – but I am often a little dismayed at how fast mine moves.Especially at this time of year, when
the spring blossoms are succeeding each other at what feels like a
rapid pace. The tulips are almost finishing just as I am wondering
whether I took enough time to really appreciate the daffodils that
came before them. Plum blossom, almond blossom, cherry blossom, apple
blossom – all glorious and all succeeding each other so quickly
until the flowers are gone and everything is plain green again. Yet
in just two months the first cherries will be red and ready to pick,
and after them the plums, and then the apples...
But at least they'll all be back again
next year, and even if I don't get time to be present to each and
everyone of them this year, I will stop to dwell on a few, and let
the experience seep into me. As I stopped on one hurried progress
down the path between the house and the vege garden, and sniffed
deeply in recognition at two fleeting scents of spring – the
vanilla tree and an early viburnum, both at their peak for just one
week in September.
I am also in training to be present
when the bellbirds start their evening chorusing for their year (I think it happened while I was away
from home in late August this year, because they were doing it when I
got back) and for the first shining cuckoo call of the season. Now if
I could only manage to be present to the bellbirds – and nothing
else - for the full 15 minutes or more in which they do their evening
chorus, I would consider that I had truly mastered the art - and
power - of being present.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
Taking Refuge in the Dharma Garden
September 2012
My garden of flourishing trees,
flowers, vegetables and herbs is certainly a refuge to me when the
rest of the world seems impossibly violent and mean. I also try and
make it a refuge for creatures who did not ask to have their habitats
cut down or sprayed to death, or be prey to introduced predators. My
partner Martin has created a very special refuge for one such rare
creature. The Banks Peninsula jewelled gecko is a gorgeous little
lizard found only in this part of the world. It is vulnerable to
predation by stoats, ferrets, rats and wild cats – and also to
being squashed by careless feet or tyres. By fastening a length of
old corrugated iron along the top of a large fallen log, leaving
enough space for small lizards to enter but not enough for larger
predators, Martin has created a warm, secure refuge for the geckos.
Humans
need safe physical spaces to take refuge in too, yet it is a very
fortunate human who lives an entire life without ever being deprived
of a safe space. Wars, earthquakes, storms, domestic violence,
fires... there are many ways in which our physical refuges can be
taken from us. What does one do then? For me, my dharma practice has
become a refuge which works even when I am far from my safe garden. A
strong and steady heart and mind are the greatest refuge, and so I do
walking and sitting meditation in my real garden against the day when
I will have no garden to take refuge in, but only a well-trained
self.
* *
* * * * * * * * * * *
Letting Go in the
Dharma Garden
August 2012
Being a good gardener involves making
plans; being a happy gardener involves letting go of plans. Last year in the autumn I bottled 36
half litre jars of tomato and herb puree, made from tomatoes and
herbs I had grown that summer. At the rate that our household eats
pasta and other dishes that use tomato puree this number lasted until
about the time I planted the new season's tomato plants in October. I
planted more than I had done the previous year, and I favoured the
traditional Italian bottling varieties, Roma and San Marzano, because
I planned to make at least 50 jars of puree this autumn.
But the weather had other plans, and
remained so cool, wet and/or overcast for most of spring and summer
that my tomato plants barely grew at all, set very little fruit –
and then got blight! Instead of 50 jars of tomato puree, I bottled
none. I even had to buy tomatoes to make my usual annual batch of
tomato sauce.
Long before then I had had to let go of
my plans of bottling more tomatoes this year, and even of my hopes
that the weather would improve enough to make even a few jars
possible. I tried to console myself with the fact that what is bad
for tomatoes is great for cucumbers, which grew abundantly. But much
as I love cucumber pickles they are no good for pasta dishes, and I
never need to make more than half a dozen jars of them to see us
through the year. This year I still plan to plant LOTS of tomato
plants, along with the rest of the summer veges – and I will also
plan to be ready to let go of attachment to results.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
The entrance to my 'English Tea Garden' in spring. New Zealand, Asian and European plants grow happily together, and in summer we take tea on the lawn in the shade of the willow tree.
Finding our way in the Dharma Garden
July 2012
Gardening is like every other
occupation in life that requires an accumulation of experience and a
an ongoing honing of skills before it can be practised confidently.
This does not mean that it can not be enjoyed right from the
beginning, and good results achieved early on, but it does mean that
things can only get better as the gardener grows in knowledge and
skill. Also in understanding of the connections between who she is as
a person, and therefore what sort of garden suits her best.
When I was in my teens I used to design
houses and gardens in my head before going to sleep at night. At
this early stage of being interested in gardens I could never decide
what style of garden I liked best. So I would design a different
style of garden for each face of the house (a Japanese-influenced
garden to the east, a New Zealand natives garden to the south, and so
on) and put appropriately-styled fences or hedges between each aspect
so that there was a proper demarcation and transition, rather than a
rambling jumble of styles.
Now that I have been gardening for
forty years I have found my way into designs which reference but do
not copy other styles; designs which are more expressive of my love
of plants, and of the particular plants I love, rather than of any
rules from a style book. I have the confidence to say that I do not
like formality or a lot of hard surfaces in a garden, and the skill
to design informal plantings and soft spaces which create the sense
of peaceful ease and enjoyment that I want to experience myself, and
share with others. I can mix up Japanese trees, NZ shrubs and
European flowers in ways which seem natural. Having found this way, I
find I still have a lot more digging and planting to do! which I
anticipate with pleasure.
* * * * * * *
Bulbs sit still under the ground for most of the year, and then push up when they must - even through the snow.
Sitting Still in the Dharma Garden
June 2012
Now is the time of year when the garden
sits still for a month or so. Or almost still. I notice when I am
sitting still that a lot is going on that I am not aware of when I am
moving around, or engaged in a task. Breathing happens whether I
notice it or not, just as leafy trees continue to take in carbon
dioxide and release oxygen, winter or summer. More subtle things that
I can't see or feel are going on in me, and in the plants. Water is
circulating; cells are performing their appropriate functions; some
cells are coming into being and others are passing away. When I sit
still for long enough I sometimes get a sensation of this concert of
cellular processes inside me, and their relation to what is outside
me.
These metabolic processes (from the
Greek root 'metabole' – to change) occur in every living thing,
plant or animal. In the biological sciences the technical meaning of
the word is the sum of the chemical processes in a cell or organism
by which complex substances are synthesized and broken down, and
growth and energy production are sustained. It also refers to the
rate at which these processes occur. Sitting still, I think about
these processes going on in my body – and also in my mind. Thoughts
and feelings arise, are synthesized or broken down into new thoughts
and feelings, and give rise to still more thoughts and feelings.
Sometimes this happens quickly, sometimes slowly. I don't feel the
connection of the thoughts with my body as much as I feel the
connection with the feelings. Although, sitting still in a state of
concentration, I can sometimes catch the thought turning into a
feeling, or identify the feeling that underpins a thought.
I know that even in the depth of winter
when my garden seems to be sitting still, a lot of invisible
transformations are going on, maintaining the plants for their next
spurt of growth in spring. In the same way, how busy I really am when
I am 'just' sitting still.
* * * * * * *
Lincoln University students look at the worm farms at the Biological Husbandry Unit. Under the corrugated iron lids millions of worms are turning organic waste into rich compost.
Service in the Dharma Garden
May 2012
When I am out in the garden digging,
planting and weeding for a few hours a week, I think I am working
hard, but really I am not doing anything compared to what nature is
doing 24/7, every week of the year. The worms are aerating and
fertilising the soil, the micro-organisms are transmitting nutrients
to the plants, the sun and the leaves are doing the dance of
photosynthesis, the rain is watering things, the bees are pollinating
all the flowers, and birds and carnivorous insects are munching on
vegetarian bugs. If I had to pay for all these ecosystem services
there is no way I could afford a garden.
So I try to give nature the respect it
is due, and work out ways to get best value from these free services,
from mulching bare ground in summer to keep in moisture (but not so
thickly that rain can not penetrate the mulch) to planting flowers to
attract predator insects. Yet little as I do in the cosmic scheme of
things, my efforts are still worth something, and my service to the
garden pays off in terms of better crops.
When I am gardening on Sundays I think
about other people going to church services, and remember a joke told
to me by a South African friend. There was a Boer farmer, van der
Merwe, who was not turning up at church on Sundays because he was
busy working on his farm. After a while the minister came to visit
him, and ask why he was not attending services. Van der Merwe took
him on a tour of the farm, and showed him a field where two stalks of
wheat grew where only one grew before. The minister was impressed,
but he said 'All this was achieved with God's help.' In the next
paddock were potatoes twice as large as usual. The minister lifted
one thoughtfully, but he said 'Isn't it wonderful what can be achieved
with God's help?' Then van der Merwe showed him the dairy cattle
feeding on thick, lush grass and giving twice as much milk as the
cows on the neighbouring farm. 'Very good', said the minister 'and
all this was achieved with God's help'.
So it went on, paddock by paddock,
until finally, right at the back of the farm, they came to a paddock
that was nothing but stones and thistles. 'What happened here?' asked
the minister. 'Here', van der Merwe replied. 'God worked alone.'
* * * * * * *
The Zen style Japanese Garden in the Hamilton Gardens
Simplicity in the Dharma Garden
April 2012
I have always been struck by how the most simple gardens can also be the most emotionally moving. When I visited the Big Goose Pagoda in Xian, China, in 1974 I knew next to nothing about Buddhism, let alone why and how the pagoda came to be built so long ago, and what its main purpose had been for centuries. (It was built in 652 A.D. for keeping the Buddhist sutras and Buddha’s relics brought back from India by the extraordinary Buddhist monk, scholar and traveller, Xuan Zang.) Nor did I know that the beaten earth paths between simple stands of bamboo would have been trodden for centuries by monks doing walking meditation. Yet when I walked those same paths in the warmth of an early evening in midsummer, seeing only the yellow-brown earth of the path and the green of the bamboo towering over my head, and listening to a gentle breeze rustling the bamboo leaves, a peaceful and graceful feeling filled my heart.
Thirty years later, in Rio de Janiero, I encountered the garden which the great modernist Brazilian garden designer Roberto Burle Marx designed around the Museum of Modern Art. Part of that garden consists of only three main elements – river stones, large slabs of granite recycled from building demolitions, and spiky agaves. So simple, and yet so powerful – I was moved to tears. Although not designed as a garden for contemplating in, like the pagoda garden, it was certainly a garden which provoked contemplation.(See photos of this garden and learn more about the designer in My Favourite Garden Books.)
Yet not all gardens which are in theory simple (because they contain only a few elements) are restful or conducive to contemplation. The classic grand Italian garden, which has mainly trees in avenues, grass, wide paved areas, and sculptures, seems to my eyes to be designed more for chattering and staged spectacles. So designing a truly simple garden which tends the mind and heart towards restful simplicity may be no simple matter. It seems that it is not what you do, but the way that you do it, that makes the difference. But how that works is something I am still pondering on.
* * * * * * *
From the darkest dirt, and rotting leaves and logs, beautiful fungi emerge.
This Body/This Earth
March 2012
You can’t garden without getting dirty. I wear a hat, gardening gloves, long trousers, thick socks, rubber boots – and still dirt sticks under my finger and toe nails, darkens my knees, and streaks my face and arms. Sometimes I give parts of myself to the earth in return. Combings from my hair brush and nail clippings are good to go in the compost and hence back to earth. Last week I ripped up an old pair of cotton gardening trousers, which were full of holes, and put them in the compost too. Grey water from the washing machine (human ‘dirt’ and earth ‘dirt’ mingled) is good for watering the garden, if you have used an eco-detergent or other natural cleanser.
The literal earthiness of existence is not a common topic of conversation, even among gardeners. It is still far from common knowledge that ‘dirt’ is essential to health. For example, children raised on farms with greater exposure to all the bugs found in natural ‘dirt’ have been found to have much lower levels of allergic illnesses and auto-immune diseases than children raised in ‘clean’ urban environments. Vitamin B12, which plays a significant role in the metabolism of every cell of the body, is made by the bacteria that live in ‘dirt’. It is indeed possible to be too clean, too far from intimate contact with earth.
Everything that lives came from earth (some by a longer route than others), and everything that dies will return to it. Every body is an Earth Body. How important it is, then, to ensure that our earth bodies live on and with healthy earth, good clean dirt, full of life-giving micro-organisms and free from death-dealing toxins.
* * * * * * *
A huddle of paradise ducklings beginning life on the river bank in the
Christchurch Botanic Gardens
New Beginnings in the Dharma Garden
February 2012
If you want a beautiful garden in spring – start in autumn. If you want a productive garden in autumn – start in spring. At this time of year, as I begin harvesting tomatoes, peppers and other seasonal vegetables from plants that were put in the ground (or glasshouse) five months ago, I am reminded that if I had not begun anew with sowing seeds and potting on the seedlings in spring, there would be nothing to harvest now. The bulb catalogues also start arriving at this time of year, and as I pore over them, envisioning where and how a pool of blue irises or a post of red tulips might enhance the garden in spring, I am also focussed on how something new may have its beginning a very long way back from when it first manifests itself as gorgeous flower or delicious fruit.
Bulbs are especially intriguing in this regard, because when you plant them they mostly look small, brown and dry, and it is hard to believe they are ever going to amount to much. Then they need to sit in the soil for several months before they start to strut their stuff, and that makes me think – what are they DOING down there? Just sitting? Really? When exactly do they begin the root and shoot formation process, hidden in the cold dark earth?
Their processes are mysterious to me – but they provide a good metaphor for the mystery of my own processes of beginning anew. Of the ways in which something in my psyche that feels hard and dry and even painful, and unlikely to amount to anything good, may – with appropriate cultivation and care – transform itself into something useful and even beautiful after months or even years. It could be a skill or a quality that I never had before – something new and valuable. But as I appreciate this new capacity, I am aware that it was not gifted from outside, and that I had to grow it from whatever unpromising material was its true beginning. So now I try and look at my faults and challenges as bulbs, not weeds, and see them as the ‘old beginnings’ for the new qualities they may become.
* * * * * * *
This crab apple tree at Lincoln University manages to have its flower self and its fruit self on the tree at the same time. Which is the 'true' tree?
Self/Not Self
December 2011
A home garden is very much an expression of the Self. It expresses what the gardener likes and dislikes by way of colour, form and arrangement of plants, and also the way she wants the garden to be experienced. Even when the gardener does not think about this consciously, inevitably a series of many, many small choices create a big picture of who the gardener is and what she values most. Each garden has a personality which is a reflection of the gardener's personalilty – a love for straight lines or curves, formality or informality, bright colours or muted ones, trees or cactus, vegetables or lawns, and so on.
A recent visitor to my garden said she could see that I had created a place for others to enjoy. This is true, although I never once said to my Self – I am going to create a place for others to enjoy. Rather, the part of my Self that finds pleasure in growing and arranging plants in ways that being joy to others besides my Self was unconsciously at work. Where did this aspect of my Self come from? How long will it last? I have no idea – like so many aspects of the Self, it is totally mysterious.
I do know, from insight meditation practice and from my reading of neuro-psychology, that the Self I experience as 'me' is created incrementally, by building up patterns of thought and behaviour, reinforcing some and neglecting others. Every time I think about gardening or do gardening, this process is at work, and of course it connects to the other parts of my Self that value beauty, peacefulness, contemplation, biodiversity and all the other invisible, abstract components of a garden which people can find enjoyable.
This is my gardening Self for now – and yet because this Self is a process, not a product, tomorrow it may change. I will learn new things, change my mind about old ones, and so on. Thus my gardening Self is also Not Self – an open space of possibilities for me and also of connections with other humans and other species. The dark soil from which all things can grow.
* * * * * * *
Ahimsa in the Dharma Garden
November 2011
The main reasons why I cultivate an organic home vegetable garden are
(1) it provides my household (and sometimes others) with healthy, delicious food;
(2) it saves me money;
(3) growing veges is the most pleasant and rewarding form of exercise I know.
Practising ahimsa (non-harming) is not a reason why I do it, but it may be one of its most important 'by-products'. I don't use poisons in my garden, but I have been known to squash the odd spittle bug or throw caterpillars to the birds, so I am not completely non-harming towards invertebrates with designs on my food. All other beings in the garden, however, whether pleasant, unpleasant or neutral from my perspective, are protected from harm by my refusal to use poisons. Furthermore, by growing a lot of my own food this way I am practising a far greater form of ahimsa, a form which I feel sure that the great practitioner of non-violence, Mahatma Gandhi, would thoroughly endorse, if he were still around to do so.
Gandhi was a great proponent of good work and self-reliance, and he saw ahimsa as closely linked to these goals. Here are some of the ways he made the linkages, taken from a book of Gandhi epigrams which I found on-line at http://www.mkgandhi.org/epigrams/index.htm.
“Ahimsa is nothing if not a well-balanced exquisite consideration of one’s neighbour, and an idle man is wanting in that elementary consideration.”
“All my experiments in Ahimsa have taught me that nonviolence in practice means common labour with the body.”
“Khadi has been conceived as the foundation and the image of ahimsa. A real khadi-wearer will not utter an untruth. A real khadi-wearer will harbour no violence, no deceit, no impurity.”
“One who hooks his fortune to ahimsa, the law of love, daily lessens the circle of destruction and to that extent promotes life and love.”
Khadi is home-spun and woven cloth, cloth made with hand labour by Indians, for Indians, as opposed to machine-made cloth made from exported Indian cotton which involved the exploitation in labour in growing the cotton and spinning and weaving it in the mills of Great Britain. Gandhi was acutely aware of the harming involved in the nineteenth and twentieth century textile trade. If he were alive today he would be making the same connections that contemporary Indian food activists such as Vandana Shiva, Devinder Sharma and the Karnataka Farmers Association are making – the global food trade is imposing unnecessary hunger and a huge environmental burden on India.
Using the 'common labour of my body' to grow as much of my food as I can, and grow it without poisons, turns out to be also a great method of practising non-harming in a way which goes beyond my garden. Thanks to Gandhiji for pointing that out!
* * * * * * *
Contemplating the simplicity and beauty of the primrose can provide
a little moment of relief from a difficult mind state
Dealing with challenging mind states
September 2011
If there is a better place than the garden as a good space for dealing with difficult thoughts and feelings, I have yet to find it. Although I love to walk in a mountain forest or along a wild beach when my heart is sore and my head confused, I can rarely spare the time to get to such places when my need is greatest, whereas the home garden is a constant resource. I find that having physical work to do while I mull over my feelings is helpful in lots of ways. The regular, practised movements of gardening work against jerky emotions, providing a sense of familiar competence to offset whatever emotional incompetence I am feeling. Doing something useful even when feeling lousy is also a bit of a consolation. Even not doing anything, but just allowing myself to be distracted by the movement of birds and bees, the scents of flowers and the feel of the sun on my back is therapeutic.
Once I used gardening and praying – to the point of exhaustion – as a way to deal with some very difficult emotions that had arisen after being rejected as a friend by two people who (at that point) I admired and felt close to. I didn’t plan to do this, it just came about when I was making my first visit to Southern Star Abbey in Hawkes Bay, a Trappist monastery where a friend of mine is a monk. Although not a Catholic (or any kind of Christian) I decided to join in the (900 year old) Abbey routine of chanting the Psalms seven times a day (starting at 4 a.m. and finishing at 9 p.m.) and in the spaces in between to help my friend with his gardening.
Mostly I did this alone, because he was busy with other things, and I did it as hard and fast as I was able, both because there was a lot to do and because it suited how I was feeling. I did this for three and half days, and by lunchtime on the fourth day I was so tired I knew I could not do any more. So I washed up, had a good meal, went to the 2 p.m. psalm session – and then sat on the verandah of the guesthouse feeling a very deep peace. My difficult emotions were gone, and I was at peace with myself and with those who had disturbed my peace. I expect this form of ‘self-medication’ would only work for keen gardeners, and abbeys are even harder to get to urgently than mountain forests, but it was an interesting experience, and showed me yet another way one work with, as well as in, the garden.
* * * * * * *
The Himalayan blue poppy is a cousin of the common red field poppy of Europe - but who would have thought it?
Relationships in the Dharma Garden
August 2011
The relationships in the garden that I find most interesting (and most mysterious) are the ones between plants which help or hinder each other. Some trees (e.g. hoherias) put out substances in their roots which discourage other species from growing near them, while walnuts give the same ‘stay away’ message with their fallen leaves. There are lots of other examples of plants which do not want to relate closely to those that are not part of their own species, and the gardener needs to note what they are in order to keep everyone happy.
On the plus side of the ledger are the plants that actively help each other, a characteristic which gardeners can put to good use by planting them side by side. The usual name for such a planting strategy is ‘companion planting’ and one can buy whole books (such as ‘Carrots love tomatoes!’) that explain which veges like to grow together and which are best kept apart. I have never had time to do this systematically, but I have tinkered with planting what I hoped would be pest-repellent plants (the artemisia or wormwood family) near cabbages to see if this would be a good protective relationship – but no such luck.
The science of what is going on underneath the soil to make a plant relationship supportive or otherwise is fascinating, and there is still so much to learn in this regard to help us garden with nature, rather than against it. I sometimes wonder if one can extrapolate from plants to humans. Are some types just meant to get on with each other, while others will never click? We like to think we can use our will and our reason to over-ride instant attractions or repulsions where it seems to make sense to do so, but how often do we find that despite our best efforts we become fond of someone ‘unsuitable’, and just can’t bond with someone who appeals to others? I doubt there will ever be a science of what is going on in the soil of our souls, but meditation can be a good way of investigating the basis of our relationships with others.
* * * * * * *
July 2011
Rosa 'Comte de Chambord' was named for a Frenchman -
and shares even more with humankind.
Interconnectedness in the Dharma Garden
July 2011
I was out pruning roses in the garden this afternoon, idly wondering how many genes I share with these thorny beings, which (for plants) are very good at defending themselves. My train of thought was prompted by reading an article about the extent to which the first true humans, Homo sapiens, interbred with other hominins (such as H. erectus and H. heidelbergensis), which had left Africa much, much earlier, and were already living in Europe and Asia before H. sapiens made the big move north and east. By examining the DNA relating to the immune system and its functions from hominin fossils, scientists have determined that there certainly was interbreeding, especially as H. sapiens moved further east. If there had not been, H. sapiens may not have survived the move, since the earlier hominins had evolved resistance to the local diseases, which the more recent migrants out of Africa had not had time to develop.
Standing in the sun clutching my secateurs in a quiet New Zealand garden, it is almost impossible to imagine the vast distances in time (millions of years) and space (from here to Africa) that lie between my existence today and that of the first hominins. Yet hard though it is to comprehend, we really are connected, and we most certainly inter-are. The building blocks of their lives – the genes in sperm and ovum – are also the building blocks of my life, and some of those same building blocks can be found in other life forms in the garden, from welcome roses to unwelcome rabbits.
The more I think about it, the more mysterious and incredible the extent and nature of my interbeing with everything else in my garden seems – not to mention the equally long chain of time and chance that brought us all there together. Reflecting on these facts of life, I find them full of reasons to respect and honour all the other life forms, past and present, without whom I would not have my being now, and with whom I share my being here.
* * * * * * * 
Much is going on beside (and underneath) the woodland path in the
Eco Garden
Daily Life Dharma in the Garden
June 2011
My house is surrounded by my garden, but I can't really be said to lead my daily life in the garden, unlike the thousands of other creatures (by name) and millions (by number) who really do spend their whole lives there. Most of these creatures I never see, since they are microscopic organisms which live in the soil and perform all sorts of useful functions there. There are also a lot of invertebrates which live in or very close to the soil which are also very small, and rarely seen. Then there are the insects which live on plants, and the insects that live on the insects that live on plants, and the birds that live on plants and insects.
The life of all my garden dwellers revolves around the same utterly fundamental and basic preoccupations as my own – food, water and an optimum environmental ambience. I have no idea how earthworms hydrate themselves, but I do know that (just like humans) if they get too wet or too dry, they die. So I see them moving downwards through the soil when the topsoil is dry, and upwards when the sub-soil is wet, in search of their optimum ambient environment. Similarly, I move out of hot sun and driving rain. Just like everybody else in my garden, I pay a lot of attention to getting enough nourishment for the day When I am working in the garden I also pay attention to whether everyone else is getting fed what they need in order to be able to feed me.
Last week, for example, I dug over a bed for planting garlic in a month's time. It already had a lot of worms in it, thanks to earlier feeding of the soil, but since worms are much better at loosening, aerating and fertilising soil than humans with metal tools and bags of synthetic fertiliser, I gave them more to dine on and keep them on the job – a layer of crushed sheep dags, lightly raked in, topped with a layer of pea straw.
I only prepare the garlic bed (in a new place every time) once a year, but I eat garlic almost every day, thanks to the daily dharma of the earthworm, doing the only thing it knows how to do, and doing it so well. The lesson I take from those humble worms is – whatever you have to do to survive, do it with care, do it well, and make a contribution to a wider whole.
* * * * * * *
Wilby the Border Terrier has no worries when the ground shakes
Dealing with Fear in the Dharma Garden
May 2011
When working in the garden I sometimes hear a bellbird sound its alarm call if I get near to where it is concealed in a tall shrub. Once I accidentally got too close to a pheasant on her nest in the long grass, and her raucous shriek as she leapt into the air certainly frightened me for a moment, as it was no doubt meant to. For the last few months, when I have been working in the garden, I have heard and felt earthquakes. Once I was kneeling on the soil, weeding a bed in preparation for planting tomatoes, when I heard a low rumble, then the sound of the house starting to shake and rattle, while the ground rippled beneath my knees.
However quakes which are felt in the house, because they shake the wooden floor and rattle the sash windows, are often not felt outside. After the big quake on February 22, even though we were in no actual danger in our one-storey wooden house, the garden still felt like the safest place to be. We sat out on the lawn with a cup of tea, and saw and heard the house shiver and groan with each big aftershock. I decided to garden for the rest of the day, as it was soothing to be outside.
But awful news of the devastation of Christchurch and the loss of lives was coming through on the transistor radio, and I feared for my family and friends in town. I also empathised with the fear of those on or near falling buildings. At the same time the radio also brought news of the outbreak of civil war in Libya, and the attack on Benghazi, and I imagined the terror of the children being bombed and shelled, and the double fear of their parents, for their own lives and those of their children. Not even their gardens were safe places to be.
There is nothing dangerous in or about my garden, yet the fears of others are constantly present, whenever I allow them into my mind. As I grow good food I especially think of the one billion people in the world who are already malnourished, and live in constant fear of starvation. My garden is a safe place in which to contemplate these fears, and to refresh myself over and over again for the dharma practice of compassionate action.
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The Buddha smiles in the Dharma Garden
A comical 'headless man' carrot from the Eco Garden
The Buddha smiles in the Dharma Garden
April 2011
Sitting very still in the garden – as still as a meditator – and keeping watch, I usually have no trouble finding something to smile at. It often involves a bird. In mid-summer it is comical to watch the fat bulge of a cherry plum bob its way down the thin neck of a kereru. One day something landed on top of my (hatted) head, said 'coo', and flew off. It was one of the neighbour's doves. Once I got over the surprise I laughed. I also have comical conversations with the fantails as they flit around me looking for insects, and I try to match their high-pitched squeaking. (They are not meant to be funny, but I am sure they sound like that to any humans overhearing them.)
I don't have that many laugh-out-loud moments involving plants, but I have had a few smiles at vegetables that grow oddly, by design or accident. These have included beans which as they grew split into two 'legs' on their lower halves – and then crossed them. I also have a grin or two at ugly vegetables, such as overgrown Brandywine tomatoes, and the amazingly warty skin of the French heirloom pumpkin Galeux d'Eysines.
However most of my 'Buddha smiles' in the garden are smiles of contentment, as I see nature doing its thing in all its diversity, and producing good food and beautiful flowers and leaves for me while it is at it. It is an enjoyment which comes with a built-in warning against attachment. One knows that the glossy purple skin of a ripe eggplant will only look that beautiful for a short time, and that one is going to eat it as soon as it looks that good anyway. The red tulip will only glow for a week or two, and only once will you see it backlit by the setting sun so that it looks like a transparent red goblet. Maybe these experiences will come around again next year, and maybe not. If they are here now – now is the time to smile at them, to enjoy them to the full.
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Cherries have such a short season.
What delicious teachers of impermanence they are!
Impermanence in the Dharma Garden
February 2011
We had to harvest a whole tree full of apricots all at once this year, because the birds were starting to peck at them. We ate some fresh, and I made the rest into jam or bottled them. When they were all gone, we still had strawberries and raspberries to eat for breakfast and dessert, but presently I began to think that it must be about time for the peaches on the tree at the back of the stone fruit orchard to be ready. I kept thinking about this, on and off, over the course of a busy week – and kept forgetting to actually go out into the paddock and check.
When I finally did, there was not one peach left on the tree. Dozens and dozens of the juicy, furry things had been eaten by other juicy, furry things, namely possums. Here and there a peach stone remained attached to a stalk, with the flesh neatly and entirely nibbled away.
The possums are clearly more aware of impermanence than I am. They checked the tree every night, I am sure, and their vigilance paid off. They know that the time of the perfectly-ripened peach is short, and quickly hastens away, and they are waiting ready to help it go. Whereas I am so busy thinking about other things, doing other things, that the reality of impermanence – in peaches and in life – is obscured to me. If I were more aware of it, I would enjoy more tree-ripened peaches, and who knows what other rapidly-pasing good things I might come to appreciate.
Sometimes impermanence seems the saddest thing in life, but of course it is neither good nor bad in itself, it is just how things are. Naturally I cursed the possums for scoffing the peaches - but what good Dharma teachers they turned out to be.
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Garlic is good for many ailments.
Despite having arthritis I can still grow plenty of it -
and lots more good food as well.
Illness as Practice in the Dharma Garden
December 2010
The weather has been fine lately, and ordinarily I would be out in the garden for six or seven hours a day over the weekend - digging, weeding, planting, pruning and generally enjoying nudging nature into producing especially fine food for our bodies and souls. But my left knee, which has been suffering from mild arthritis for some time, recently started to become painful if I kneel or stand for long periods. Digging with it is even more problematic. (In desperation, I have tried to change the way I have been digging for forty years, and put my right foot on the spade instead of my left one, but the experiment has not been very successful as it involves so much retraining.)
I also have arthritis in my fingers, which means that pulling out tough weeds by hand and using tools like handshears and secateurs is sometimes painful, or too difficult. As I am still only about halfway to achieving the garden which is my vision (and in my plans), and as gardens at any stage need lots of care to realise the gardener's vision, if I think about how these disabilities can only ever get worse, not better, I can get quite gloomy.
So my practice is to stay with the insights I have received from dharma teachers, and explored for myself in meditation, rather than wallowing in gloom. In particular, I keep coming back to two core insights. The first is that resisting reality is more painful than accepting it, and that even when reality is painful, a large component of the pain can be found to be due to the strength of one's resistance to the reality of suffering. I have found this to be true of both physical and emotional pain. One does not want to take this to silly lengths, such as ignoring a broken leg or staying with an emotionally abusive partner, but for everyday pains it is a good thing to remember and act on.
The second insight is to stay in the present, and not fantasise about the future. No one can accurately predict when, or even if, my knee and hands will no longer be able to garden - so why be miserable now over what may never happen tomorrow? If it does, I'll deal with it then as best I can. For now, I also do the best I can with things as they are. Sometimes I seem to hear the weeds sniggering behind my back at my feeble fingers, but mostly I see the flowers being gorgeously grateful for whatever care I can give them.
The second insight is to stay in the present, and not fantasise about the future. No one can accurately predict when, or even if, my knee and hands will no longer be able to garden - so why be miserable now over what may never happen tomorrow? If it does, I'll deal with it then as best I can. For now, I also do the best I can with things as they are. Sometimes I seem to hear the weeds sniggering behind my back at my feeble fingers, but mostly I see the flowers being gorgeously grateful for whatever care I can give them.
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Seeds first bred in many lands have come to New Zealand,
and can be bought in all sorts of places
(such as the Running Brook Seeds stall at the Clevedon Farmers' Market).
Journeys in the Dharma Garden
November 2010
At this time of year I am busy sowing and planting out my vegetable garden. I like to grow 'open source' seeds - traditional varieties that have not been hybridised. This means being able to eat a much wider and more interesting range of vegetable food than the limited offerings of the supermarket. As I sow the seeds, I reflect on where they came from, and their long journey to my garden. The zucchini 'Cocozelle di Napoli' originally came from Naples and 'Nero di Milano' from Milan. The basil variety 'Bolloso Napoletano' was obviously bred in Naples, while 'Sweet Genovese' is from Genova, and the pumpkin 'Marina di Chioggia' comes from the other side of Italy.
No prizes for guessing where Roma tomatoes come from. I also have lettuce from former Yugoslavia ('Yugoslavian Red'), pumpkins ('Queensland Blue') and beans ('Hawkesbury Wonder') from Australia, 'Carentan' leeks from Normandy in France, 'Tall Utah' celery from the USA, Lebanese cucumbers and 'Copenhagen Market' cabbage. Closer to home, the initial journey of 'Whangaparaoa Crown' pumpkins and 'Pukekohe Long Keeper' onions was only from the North Island.
No prizes for guessing where Roma tomatoes come from. I also have lettuce from former Yugoslavia ('Yugoslavian Red'), pumpkins ('Queensland Blue') and beans ('Hawkesbury Wonder') from Australia, 'Carentan' leeks from Normandy in France, 'Tall Utah' celery from the USA, Lebanese cucumbers and 'Copenhagen Market' cabbage. Closer to home, the initial journey of 'Whangaparaoa Crown' pumpkins and 'Pukekohe Long Keeper' onions was only from the North Island.
With these seeds, I can take a journey of taste that spans the world - without leaving home. That feels so much more nature-friendly than buying tragically tasteless 'fresh' food that got flown in from somewhere far away. I'd rather have a healthy planet, and gardens (not shops) full of long-distance travellers. Today, when so much of the vegetable food sold globally starts its life on a chemical-drenched plantation tended by badly-exploited workers, and then travels thousands of carbon-emitting kilometres to its final point of consumption, following the way of compassion means that we need to ask of our food, as well as of ourselves - ''Is that journey really necessary?''
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Renunciation in the Dharma Garden
October 2010
One of my good gardening friends is a Trappist monk, while another excellent gardener I know is currently exploring the possibility of becoming a Greek Orthodox monastic. Monks (of any religion) are supposed to renounce the things of the world that lay people find important – money, sex, fancy food, personal possessions of all kinds – and subject themselves to a regime of prayer, meditation and simple living in community that lacks entertainment and excitement. But I never yet heard of a monk being asked to renounce gardening, and indeed some monasteries (both Buddhist and Christian) have beautiful gardens, tended by gardeners as devoted to growing things as they are their spiritual practice. Or perhaps they see it as one and the same thing, and perhaps it really is.
This thought occurred to me when I was weeding among the vegetables planted by my friend at Southern Star Abbey, and the following poem came into my head:
Weeding as praying
This is the Earth
that God has made.
These are the plants
of ever-renewing Creation.
Do not despise
the humble, common plants,
nor seek to destroy them
with strong and indiscriminate poisons.
No. Move them gently
from one place to another
where they may contribute
to a compost for renewing Creation.
Kneel on the ground to remove them,
bowing your head under heaven.
Be thankful to be alive.
Be thankful to be touching Creation.
Be thankful it is touching you back.
Is there a better way to pray?
As the poem shows, I like the slow process and uncomfortable crouching involved in manual weeding much more than I like the idea of using toxic chemicals to avoid such weeding. It is a curious paradox of our existence that the hard way is often much more richly rewarding than the superficially easy way. While everyone else is rushing towards the ease of ride-on mowers, chemical sprays and such like, dharma gardeners (in and out of monasteries) are renouncing these supposed conveniences in favour of hard yakka.
Amazingly, it doesn’t seem to be doing them any harm.
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| It is always wise to honour the primary place of the original inhabitants of the land. |
Wise Action in the Dharma Garden
September 2010
There are a number of jokes about wise men, of which my favourite is 'Forget about the Three Wise Men bearing gold, myrrh and frankincense - I'd settle for just one man of average intelligence bearing pinot noir.' I like it for many reasons, but especially because it punctures the pomposity that can be associated with the concept of wisdom.
What exactly is a wise action, anyway? Does one have to be old and venerable to act wisely? I prefer to think of wisdom as being the ability to act skilfully or appropriately to the circumstances. This is possible at any age, by anybody. I was out the Sunday before last 'gardening' with fifty wise people, some as young as six or seven, and some over seventy. It was a special sort of gardening - planting native trees beside a fenced-off stream in Koukourarata/Port Levy, where I live. The tangata whenua, Te Whanau o Koukourarata, have started a native forest protection and revegetation programme on their land, and they have plenty of willing helpers from the local community and further afield. Even from the other side of the world, with visitors from France, Germany and Ireland enjoying the opportunity to mix with the locals and make a lasting contribution to the land.
In just two hours we planted eight hundred trees - kanuka, kowhai, totara, karamu, kohuhu, ti kouka (cabbage tree). We also planted lots of flax right beside the creek. In just ten years (I know this because I have seen it happen beside the creek that is one boundary of my garden) these knee-high plants will have become a forest taller than me, and birds and insects will be living there. The stream banks will be protected, the water will be clearer, and fish and other stream species will be more abundant.
When the land has been stripped of its natural cover, so that soil is eroding, water is being polluted, and plant, bird, insect and fish numbers and diversity are declining, what could be more skilful, more appropriate - more wise - than to take action to restore the ecosystem to its former glory?
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| The split, dying trunk of the rewarewa tree exposes its distinctive wood pattern. |
Death and Dying in the Dharma Garden
August 2010
To be a gardener is to be preoccupied with death - preventing it or inflicting it. We want to prevent our cherished plants from dying. Even though there may be no necessary connection between keeping those favoured plants alive and well, and killing other plants (or animals), the modern mindset seems to slip very easily and quickly into killing the one as the way to protect the other.
I am always amazed and horrified by how often gardeners in the popular media want expert advice on how to kill things, and how often the advice they get involves toxic chemicals that can damage or kill humans and other non-target species. Is it really true that some living things can only be kept alive and healthy if certain other living things are eradicated from the vicinity?
In over thirty years of gardening I have never found this to be the case. Yes, caterpillars have indeed shredded my cabbages at times, and cherry and pear slugs and I are at daggers drawn when they proliferate on my young trees. Yet there are non-lethal ways of avoiding or preventing cabbage caterpillar attacks (timing of planting, netted beds, clever companion planting). Similarly, although the cherry and pear slugs are a pain when the trees are young, and I fling (non-lethal to other species) wood ash over them, once the tree gets bigger and has plenty of leaves they are not a problem. Insects and their larvae which are deemed a pest by humans may be the staff of life to another species, and spraying poison around may cause that helpful species to die.
It is the same story with weeds. With a few exceptions they are friends, not foes. If they are sprayed they are no good for mulch, compost, feeding animals, adding to salads or using as vegetables (chickweed, miners' lettuce, puha), or even making wine (dandelion flowers) and herbal medicines. Hoed or pulled by hand they have all these uses and more; sprayed they are no use at all.
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| The winter rose - Helleborus orientalis |
New Light in the Dharma Garden
June 2010
June 2010
After an unseasonally warm, dry May, the weather turned wet and cold early this month, so that when I went out into the garden to see what was going on, it was wet below me and wet above me. The sky was grey, with clouds halfway down the hills. The days are drawing in to the winter solstice. The shortest day; the day on which the Earth turns back to the light.
In the garden it seems as though some of the plants are still looking back to autumn, while the rest are looking forward to spring. For a few special plants, however, this is their best time. In the darkest, coldest days the bell-like flowers – white, purple, pink – of the winter rose or Helleborus orientalis rise from under its leaves, which grow like the fat green fingers of a giant's hand on top of their stalks. In the food garden it is time to start picking citrus fruit, kiwifruit and tamarillos – just when we most need their range of flavours and nutrients. It is also time to plant broad beans for spring harvest, and garlic to be harvested in midsummer.
These seeds will lie in the dark for two months or more, and then their shoots will come into the light. The bean seed that weighs less than a gram will grow into a plant at least a metre tall, weighing kilograms when all its beans have filled their pods. All it needs to do this is soil, water - and a lot of light. Mostly light. I once read about an experiment where a tree was grown in a big container. The soil in the container was weighed before the tree was planted, and after it had reached a height of several metres. By this stage the tree was far too heavy to lift – but the soil was only about a kilogram lighter. It was photosynthesis – the process of turning light into matter – that contributed most to growing the tree.
I think about this experiment every time I think about an 'unenlightened' fertiliser obtained from dubious sources and by dubious means – phosphorus from mines in illegally-occupied Western Sahara, or from dug-out and dug-over Pacific Islands, for example. Or nitrogen from rapidly dwindling natural gas supplies. Gas formed, like other hydrocarbons, from ancient plants which grew thanks to light - not fertilisers.
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