• Tag Archives fruit

  • Yama

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane                                                                                Waxing Garlic Moon

    Still learning about fruit tree management.  Gonna go out and inspect the fruit trees one by one on a ladder this morning.  Then, mid-morning, the bees.  Later, tai-chi starts up again.

    A busy week ahead so tomorrow is a Latin day.  I will be in the story of Pentheus for some time, Book III: 509-730.

    Death.  A friend whose brother is dying and whose wife has been diagnosed with cancer said the other night, “I can feel them circling.”  This is, I imagine, a frequent sensation as we enter this last stage of life, no longer attending weddings so much as funerals.

    The wonderful mandala and one thanka we have at the MIA speak to this.  They both celebrate Yama, the Lord of Death.  In Tibetan Buddhism Yama has a distinct role, he moves us toward enlightenment by teaching us how to reconcile with our own death.  A key move for Yama involves getting each person to embrace their own death, not shrink from it, or fear it, but understanding it as only the end point to this particular life.  In Tibetan Buddhism this has importance because the dying persons emotional state at death has a lot to do with the next incarnation.

    In my (our) case I find Yama an important god because coming to grips with our own death does liberate us (can liberate us).  Yama represents that sacred force moving within us that wants us to live today because we know we may (will) die tomorrow.  When our fear of dying crimps our will to live (fully), then death has taken hold of us too early.  Instead, by accepting the eventual and definite reality of our own death, we can paradoxically gain new energy for living a full, rich, authentic life.


    📂This entry was posted in Aging Art and Culture Asia Commentary on Religion Faith and Spirituality Friends 📎and tagged

  • Moving From the Theoretical to the Concrete

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Lughnasa                                            Waxing Back to School Moon

    Kate has had a nasty cold since Monday and I can feel it trying to claw its way up my esophagus, making my throat scratchy.  My hope is that the recent two time bout I had with some bug in July, then August has revved up my immune system.  With rest I can pound this sucker down before it takes hold.

    Starting back on Latin today.  I took part of July, all of August and the last couple of weeks off with the bees and the vegetables and the orchard.  Thought I’d get work done on Ovid, review, but in fact I got very little done.  An old student habit of mine, if it’s not pressing, it’s not getting done.  I’m looking forward to the weekly sessions, building toward enough confidence to tackle Ovid and others on my own.  It’s a project, like the bees, that keeps the gears turning, not giving them a chance to rest.  Best that way.

    A few years back it was the MIA docent training.  Then the move into permaculture and vegetables and fruit.  That one’s still underway as I learn the complicated dance of seasons, cultivars, pests, harvest and storage.  The MIA training, for that matter, only gives you enough legs to get into the books and files yourself, training you to look and think about art, but each tour demands specific self-education on the objects and the purpose of that tour.

    (Minoan Gold Bee pendant from Crete, circa 2000 BC)

    Part of my impatience with the seminary experience is that I’ve moved so deeply into more concrete endeavors.  Art has the object as an anchor, then its history and context.  Latin has words, grammar and literature as well as Roman history.  Vegetables and fruit have real plants, particular plants with needs and products.  The bees have the bees themselves, the colonies, woodenware, hive management, pest control, honey extraction.  This is, probably, the world I was meant to inhabit, but philosophy and the church lead onto another ancientrail, that of the abstract and faraway rather than the particular and the near.  It’s not that I don’t have an affection, even a passion for the theoretical, I do, but I find my life more calm, less stressful when I work with art, with potatoes and garlic, with conjugations and declensions.

    I now have almost three decades of life devoted to the theoretical, the abstract and the political so I bring those skills and that learning to my present engagement with the mundane, but I no longer want to live in those worlds.  They are gardens others can tend better than I can.


    📂This entry was posted in Aging Art and Culture Bees Commentary on Religion Faith and Spirituality Humanities Literature Politics 📎and tagged

  • Extra Work Raises Grade

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Lughnasa                                 Waxing Artemis Moon

    Up early and out in the garden.  This is the way I like it, working in the garden before and during sunrise, a coolness, some damp lingering from the night, stillness carrying only the softest of sounds, the earth friable and eager, weeds willing to come up and the garden’s purpose easy to discern.

    Kate worked on in the orchard, going back over intensive weeding of a week ago and pulling up sprouts and rhizomes, making the place just that more inhospitable for the weedy plants.  With a second load of mulch we’ll have this place looking ship-shape heading into fall.

    A few grasses have begun to turn brown and there’s a slight hint of autumn in the morning air, a certain clarity and crispness.

    After inspecting the garden again yesterday, I’m moving my grade from a B- to a B+.  Why?  I did three plantings of beets, greens, carrots and beans.  Now the second planting has come to maturity after many other plants finished their summer and gave up their yield.  We have a good crop of young beets, a lot of juicy carrots, plenty of greens and enough beans for a couple more freezer bags at least.  This planting weekly or so for a while, creates a series of gardens, all in the same place.  We even have a number of Cherokee Purple tomato plants which I did not plant.  They are volunteers from last year’s tomatoes.

    Add to these the onions, garlic, greens, beans, beets and various fruits already harvested we have a good gardening year, not a great one, but a good one.

    Plus those potatoes are still in the ground, the raspberries have begun to fruit and the fennel and leeks look good.  All in all, not bad.  I said at the beginning of the growing season that I saw this as a consolidation year, a year when we make sure we can care for what we have.  A week ago I would have said we hadn’t even met that mark, but now I believe we have.  Caring for the orchard, the vegetable garden and the new plantings from last year in there, managing the bees and getting ready for the honey harvest, plus pruning out and restoration in the perennial flower beds.

    This advance is mostly thanks to Kate’s back surgery and her hip surgery.  She can now care for the garden, too, as she has in the past and it requires the both of us, what we have now.  Getting back to normal speed.


    📂This entry was posted in Family Garden permaculture 📎and tagged