Flowers

23/4/10

Cosmos

21/4/10

I am looking out of the window of my study. It is twilight and some cosmos that self-seeded this year is waving gently in the breeze. It is very peaceful here, despite the fact one of the busiest roads in Australia is at the end of my street. Lane Cove National Park is at the other end.

Today I meditated in the garden. As usual my thoughts scattered in all directions and I had to reel my concentration back time and time again, but by the end of half an hour I felt serene and just sat, looking at a cloud passing and listening to the lorikeets. On the way home from visiting a sick friend last night, T suggested I need not read Buddhist literature, rather, I should simply live life thoughtfully, think of others and do something for someone every day. 'Simple'. He said. I do question Buddhism and see that one can easily stray into narcissistic introspection if one is not careful. The reason I started meditating was as a preventative strategy for depression. The concept of mindfulness, of being aware of what one is doing all the time and awareness of the moment is a practical skill that is bound to assist in decreasing the tendency to ruminate, which occurs when depressed. The capacity for gloomy reflection is lessened if one does not place the mind elsewhere when brushing one's teeth or eating or cooking....

Lunch with the girls

On Friday, after arriving home from Bowral, I planted lots of lettuce, some celery, mint and more thyme. The garden bed near the front gate is shaping up to be a scented garden, with lemon geranium, cherry pie (heliotrope) and thyme. The aim is for people to be able to brush against the plant when they come in the front gate and release delicious scents.

Today two friends came for lunch. I baked some bread and made vegetable soup with pistou. Kath bought over a lovely raspberry cheesecake and I poached pears in red wine spiced with cinnamon, allspice, cloves and peppercorns. We sliced the pears and ate them with blue cheese. The combination worked really well together.

Mini-break

16/4/10

Yesterday I took one of my nephews to visit my brother in Burradoo, near Bowral in the Southern Highlands. I spent the afternoon hacking away at jasmine that was smothering a cherry tree and encroaching on a number of camellias and other trees and shrubs. Blackberry was also flourishing. I cut about 3 skips worth of green waste and hardly made a dent. Sometimes I become dispirited, knowing it will be difficult to convince the family to have a working bee to try and tame a bit of the 1 and a bit acres of garden at the family home, then I become immersed again and it's ok.

Today I bought two punnets of cut and come again lettuce, some lovely dark green thyme, mint and some celery. I planted the mint near the parsley, so it will be easy to pick for tabbouli. I will plant the spring onions, when they are ready to plant out, nearby for the same reason.

Reading Delores Claiborne by Stephen King as well as Living Meditation, Living Insight by Dr Thynn Thynn and Barnaby Rudge. I have been meditating each day but become distracted very easily, even by wondering whether I should be practising different types of meditation. Next week I want to go down the the national park at the end of our street and sit.

Broccoli and Buddha

14/4/10 If you look closely to the right of the broad bean tripods you can see some green leaves-that is broccoli. I hope in a few months time I can post an after shot with sinuous beans twining around the tripods and bushy plants heavy with heads of broccoli. The other picture is of about to go basil and miniscule carrot seedlings, which I thinned out today.

I have been meditating twice a day with varying results and reading a lot of literature obtained from Buddhanet. The day before yesterday I was sitting in the sun and my mind was troubled and distracted. I continually had to drag my thoughts back to my breath, the all of a sudden, after about half an hour, I felt very calm and my mind was quiet. It was as though my mind was a lake's surface ruffled by breeze, then still as a mirror as the breeze died.

Yesterday and today I have had less success, with thoughts continually straying to planning, remembering, worrying etc etc. Meditation is hard! I was nearly put off completely when I read an essay by a psychologist who was a Buddhist monk for some years. He went on a retreat and became obsessively irritated by two noisy practitioners. He fantasised about shoving a meditation cushion up one guy's nose. This went on for 3 days! And this was a man who has been practicing for years and years! Anyway, I have been trying to generate metta and not get irritated and live in the moment and I blew it all in 15 minutes of a tirade this morning, complete with shouting. And the person I shouted at was my nephew, who I am trying to help with school work. Nice.

Obviously I have a long way to go.

The Last Station

11/4/10

Saw The Last Station today, about the end of Tolstoy's life. Enmity between he and his wife and his wife and his acolytes marred his last days. Tolstoy was portrayed as being an unselfish and self-effacing individual, which contradicts other accounts I have read of him, particularly Paul Johnson's in Intellectuals. Johnson describes him as a narcissist with a God complex. I liked the film, I thought the portrayal of the deteriorating marriage convincing and nuanced.

This afternoon I potted on some broccoli 'Shogun' and planted out broccoli 'Waltham', as well as potting on some silverbeet and replacing the parsley that had been devoured by beasties. Carrots have germinated and some are showing their true leaves.

Dabbling in cow poo

7/4/10

On Easter Monday Trevor and I visited friends in Blackheath, who kindly gave us two laurel trees. I am going to use them to screen the watertank. I also took cuttings of artemesia, hydrangea and two succulents. I carry secateurs in my car. 'Snip snip, Barry, it's an Australian tradition'. If you don't know where that paraphrase comes from you're a mug. Spellcheck seems to think I should be carrying provocateurs around in my car, which would be a good conversation starter but no good for cuttings.

Today I sowed lots of poppies, cornflowers, nigella and phalecia in the hope that a tiny meadow garden will bloom this spring. I noticed Digger's Club doesn't even give a germination count for poppies and I have never had any luck with them before, so I am not holding my breath. I planted out the Honesty seedlings next to the Souvenir de la Malmaison rose, spread cow manure over the veggie garden and weeded the old veggie garden under the dining room windows.

I have been meditating twice a day for about 15-20 minutes each time. I have read quite a few different authors about the purpose of process of meditation but still find articulating the purpose a bit elusive and sometimes I wonder if it is self-indulgent. Overall I think not, if it will promote calm, lovingkindness and selflessness it is a worthy activity. When I am gardening I sometimes get into a state of 'flow' that is much like meditation. I become completely absorbed by the activity-be it pulling out weeds or spreading cow poo or planting seedlings. I suppose that is a version of 'mindfulness', although I am not detaching myself from the situation, I am immersed in it.

The parsley lives!

Purple space plant.

An inspection of the newly planted parsley confirms the snailbait has done its job. I mindfully looked at the soon to be scarified corpses of a number of slugs this morning. I read somewhere that there is a famous and very senior Thai Buddhist monk who believes it is acceptable to kill Communists. I think that puts my slug murder in perspective.

Say yes to snail bait

2/4/10

Good Friday. Slugs ate my cavalo nero and baby beans. Decided I have to use snail bait until there are enough veggies to share around. At the moment the slugs are just too greedy, so they must be destroyed.

Which brings me to the subject of hypocrisy! I have started reading a lot about Buddhism and sitting (meditating) daily, for 15-20 minutes. Meditating is difficult. I have to bring myself back to concentrating on my breath probably hundreds of times but I do believe it calms me eventually. Of course after a few days I began to feel smug, wandering around with a painful little loving-kindness smile on my face, then bang! some trivial annoyance occurs and my temper flares.

The internet has many, many useful resources for meditating, including downloadable audio guided meditation. Buddhanet is a wonderful resource.

Anyway, the first precept of Buddhism is not to take the life of any living thing and I have just killed about five slugs. Hmmm. And I eat meat. The Dalai Lama, in his excellent book How to Practice, advises that Buddhist monks are not necessarily vegetarian, as they will eat whatever is given to them. Interesting.

Last week I spent three mornings doing some one on one teaching with a Year 10 student, which was very satisfying. I haven't written much more of my story, my motivation just kind of petered out, unfortunately. I got bored with the story. I will finish it, though.

Sowed lots of carrots, which have just germinated and prepared some soil to transplant three roses. Weeded the driveway, cut back the ficus and secretly dead-headed the neighbour's roses, my version of guerrilla gardening.

My goal for the week is to keep sitting and reading Buddhist literature, prepare the veg garden for planting, make bread every four days or so and try and be mindful.

Later

I planted the roses. Planted out the lurid purple plant grown from a cutting taken from Mum's nursing home, some nasturtiums and lots of parsley. The latter is smothered in snail bait.