Lessons In The Garden

The other day in the Temple garden I was surprised by wonderful scent. At first, I suspected the one of the various late-blooming daffodils. But when I investigated up close, they were innocent of fragrance. Distracted by other garden tasks, I gave up the search, but later that day and the days after, the sweet smell came back again. This particular perfume was new to me. It wasn’t the subtle cinnamon smell the mighty katsura trees release, that only happens in the autumn. It wasn’t the petunias which have their own intense and slightly addictive odor, you have to get quite close to smell them. This aroma was floating easily through whole sections of the garden and besides, the petunias weren’t blooming yet. Where was it coming from?

I’ve been trying to teach my grandson how to smell flowers. He’s just fifteen months old now and has shown a great interest in moving vehicles, dirt and flowers. Melissa and I have been doing childcare for him a day or two a week since before the pandemic began. Our bubble of isolation is the two of us and our grandson and his parents. I feel slightly guilty about this arrangement, while we are clearly helping his parents both be able to continue their fulltime jobs, the pleasure of spending time with this growing bundle of life seems vaguely improper at a time of so much suffering and dislocation.

Our lessons include instruction in two basic types of flowers: those you can pick (dandelions, violets and buttercups these days) and those you can’t (daffodils, tulips, pansies and flowers in other people’s yards). He’s doing pretty well with dandelion recognition. On walks he will go right for their sunny yellow heads and with one hand and great glee detach the flower from the stem. He then happily clutches one or two or three heads in each hand as we walk down the sidewalk (to the corner to watch and listen to the cars passing by on the main street.)

I suspect it’s the urgent tone in my voice that calls him back from the pruning of the other flowers. I realize that for him, it’s all be totally arbitrary. The small pansies that you shouldn’t pick are no bigger than wild violets that are fair game. So far, he mostly seems willing to take my word for it.

The smelling lessons began with holding him near a pot of sweet smelling pansies and then swinging him away before he could make a grab for a fistful of them. I was generally able to appease his tactile desire by dead-heading one of the spent blossoms and giving it to him for holding. Then I would lean in and smell the blossoms myself, then put his face right near the fragrant flowers. He seemed to like it, but a grandfather’s eyes often see much more of the brilliance and perceptiveness in his grandson than could be an objective outside source.

Now we’re into advanced training. Yesterday, in the garden with him walking on his own, I crouched down to smell a daffodil. Its smell was subtle but interesting. He then went toward the daffodil on his own. I feared for the life of this still blooming garden flower, but since it was one of many and nearly spent anyway, I took the risk. He crouched down, hands on knees, put his nose close to the flower and made heavy breathing noises. As his tutor in residence, I took that as success and gave him full credit for the exercise.

But back to the mysterious scent in the Temple garden. For several days it mystified and delighted me. Finally, I located the culprit. The delicious aroma was coming from clusters small white bell-shaped flowers that hung off of three or four inch stalks growing close to the ground. The leaves are much larger than the flower stalks and nearly hide the fragrant delicate blossoms. Lily-of-the-valley was and is the sweet culprit.

This invasive ‘weed’ that I am currently campaigning against turns out to not only produce mats of roots that choke off competing plants, but also gives off, for a short period every year and most arresting fragrance. With such a successful propagation by root strategy, I’m not sure why the plant would put so much effort into producing a smell. To attract pollinators?   To appease gardeners like me who would otherwise and still may totally eradicate them? (Though just to be clear, at this point I have no hopes of ridding the garden of these sweet smelling nuisances, just to limit their field of conquest to minor patches.)

Mystery solved.

Maybe next I’ll uncover some endearing and useful quality of mosquitoes. Who knows?

Daily Practice – On your next outdoor excursion, pick a flower that no one pays attention to and carry it in your hand as you walk. Dandelions and violets are in full season and quite plentiful these days. Also notice the scores of tiny flowers and plants that no one cultivates, that are happy to appear in random patches of dirt and in unchemicalized lawns. Appreciate the inventiveness, determination and beauty of the mysterious life force that continues with our without human intervention.

Limiting Time and Space

Yesterday, in Worcester, MA, the sky was bright blue and the sun shone all day. With temperatures in the low sixties, it was a glorious spring day. I had the great good fortune to spend a good chunk of the morning repairing the edging of one of the woodchip paths that leads to a sitting bench under the katsura trees.

The woodchip walkways we have in the Temple garden require constant maintenance. The woodchips themselves last about two years before the multitude of microorganisms quietly dissolve them back to rich dark soil. And the stones and bricks that edge the walkways seem to want hide themselves in the earth. Every year they sink into the dark coolness beneath them.

My job is to interrupt their entropic desires and get them back to their job of boundary sentinels for the path. I don’t think they mind. In fact, I like to imagine they are happy for the attention and enjoy their momentary participation in the multitudinous patterns of the garden.

To refresh the walkway, I unearth each stone and reseat it. As I work, I have to remember to step back often to make sure the width and curve of the path remain inviting and steady. This is wonderful work on a fine spring day. The part I enjoy most, aside from the pleasure of stepping back at the end and feeling that order has been restored in the universe, is that the task itself facilitates a limiting of time and space.

It’s not a challenging task, but it requires gentle attention. The random shapes of the rocks help me resign myself to imperfection so I just do the best I can—moving stones, digging and shaping the earth and woodchips that will guide the feet that will come. For a couple hours yesterday, my time space was delightfully limited to this particular activity in this particular space.

It’s such a relief to be where and when we are.

Gardening—whether actively cultivating or the gardening that is simply the walking through or looking at a garden—is a wonderful way to accept this endless invitation to be present.

Personal Practice: Find some simple physical task to do today. It should be small and fairly easy to do. Cleaning and tending and sorting are all good activities. As you work, allow your task to be what you are doing. Can you work easily and trust what your body knows and does and sees? Enjoy the job. Then step back and appreciate how this small corner of the universe sparkles just a little brighter.

Simple Pleasures

I made bread yesterday. For the first time in twenty-five years. It was wonderful.

Melissa and I have been doing our best to shelter-in-place, including radically limiting our trips to the grocery store. Through the assistance of a friend who did a couple small shoppings for us, the delivery of one box of fresh produce and one huge shopping trip at the beginning, we have not been to the grocery store in about a month.

I had, however, before the stay-at-home order began, bought two five-pound bags of flour with the intention of baking bread for us during these days of social isolation. I had had good intentions, but the garden and writing and meditating and watching Netflix had taken precedence until yesterday.

It was when we put two of our last three slices of bread into the toaster that I was pushed into action. Of course we could just put our masks and gloves on and go carefully to the grocery store, but we’re kind of enjoying the creativity that comes when there’s not much in the cupboard and going out to dinner is not a possibility.

So yesterday morning, I got out our beat up copy of THE TASSAJARA BREAD BOOK to guide my efforts. I made the ‘sponge’—carefully beating it the requisite 100 times with a wooden spoon. I was delighted twenty minutes later to see the bubbles rise as the yeast came to life—enjoying their good fortune amidst the lukewarm water, honey, and flour. I mixed in more flour, turned the sticky mess onto the floured counter and kneaded the dough into shape.

I can’t remember exactly what is happening to the flour at this point—something about stretching the gluten or creating elasticity—but I do know that kneading is good for the bread. I also find it good for the kneader as well as the kneadee. It’s a sensuous and engagingly physical thing to do—like playing with clay or getting all dirty working in the garden or diving into a lake on a warm summer day.

Our hands were made to touch and press—to shape and know. The touching, of course, works both ways. We touch and are touched by the world. This skin is the boundary that connects us to the world around us. Everywhere we are touched—by our clothes, by the air or water or by this sticky ball of wheat and water that ever so slowly became smooth and pliable.

Back into the bowl and an hour later, it had doubled in size. Punch down (twenty soft blows are recommended) and let rise again. Divide in two. Let rest five minutes. (Why?) Shape into loaves. Let rise again for twenty minutes. Then into the 350 degree oven for an hour.

The house filled with the wonderful aroma of cooking bread. I couldn’t resist carefully peeking a couple times. Then a little before an hour, when the crust was nicely browned, I pulled out my two loaves. They fell easily out of the loaf pans and passed the thumping on the bottom hollow sound test so I let them rest.

Twenty minutes later we had fresh bread and butter with hot tea. Smell, taste and touch – such astonishing and ordinary capacities.

The whole adventure left me inordinately happy and satisfied for the rest of the day.

Personal Practice: As you prepare your food, turn your attention to your senses. Notice smells and textures as you pour, cut, and mix. Appreciate how skillfully your hands know how to hold and release – each finger a ancient miracle of engineering – performing with its own internal wisdom.

Extra Credit: Before you eat, take a moment to appreciate the many people who helped bring this food to your table—the growers and the pickers, the loaders and the truckers, the unloaders and the shelf-stockers, the check-out clerks and you yourself who prepared the meal.