27 October 2014 A GARDEN MEDITATION
Whistling to the Birds
These days I am whistling to the birds. First, in the early morning the mockingbirds wake me up with their melodious, sweet assertions. They implore the air, and me, to attend to the day.
After I have had breakfast, I walk out into my garden--a paradise of cool, sweet air--a resurrecting experience much like waking up from sleep without the conscious, nagging mind. I then feed them, casting about their seeds under the rose bushes. I do this every morning because they are my constituents and will always vote for me, especially the black headed grosbeaks (senior members) who are the sure sign that all is well.
The mockingbirds perch way up on the whippy, swaying tips of the timber bamboo and sing out their territorial challenges. I, of course, whistle back to them. They wait a long moment eye me, process what they have heard, and whistle back songs from their repertoire; and, at the end of their birdy litany, they call out that which I have whistled to them. My son and daughter affirm that there is a communication going on for sure. However, they say that it is probably unknown what I have said, that which is whistled. But, that is not the point. I conclude that my whistling creates a mysterious communion of sorts, a connection with the minds and spirits of the mockingbirds.
Mockingbirds imitate cell phones and Caltrans whistles, so what communication is there? A bird with a machine? Come on-no way!
Nevertheless, the mockingbirds seem to enjoy my garden; a genuine part of its ambiance is this whistling on my part and their response. An antiphon involving living creatures.
I suppose that for eons people have whistled to the birds--hunters certainly have--and the curious birds have appeared. Now, people don't whistle as much as they once did, and besides what would shutdown, disaffected neighbors say. As a matter of fact, I cannot remember the last time time I heard a person whistle. Maybe people lose it with age or the loss of imagination and joy. I whistled a lot as a boy.
Well, as far as I am concerned, my proper neighbors here in rights-ville, middle class suburbia don't have much fun, let alone real joy. Neither are they appreciative of the scents of morning flowers, of the dew that caresses the grass and other plants, and of the calls of the birds. They don't even know the names of the birds that visit their "lands".
True, I don't know what I am whistling or saying to the birds. I simply like to do it. But, I do know that I feel their presences in ways that some people never feel the core of others in simple, human conservation. So, I suppose you could say that I am having a conversation, I am talking with them, the way dogs bark in the late twilight before going to sleep.
This is the main point; to be open to the Being of others, even to the Being of plants and birds.
Isn't that what Francis of Assisi experienced when the birds trusted him, coming to him and perching on his shoulders and hands when he spoke to them with affection and joy? He touched their Being.
Monday, October 27, 2014
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
Write a Letter--use pen, ink and paper---- 25th March 2014
To receive a handwritten letter is a beautiful event, and to write a letter to a friend, a relative, or a loved one is an act of gracious recognition and respect, especially if one writes on good paper with pen and ink.
I am reminded of Alexander (Sasha) Barantschik, the the concertmaster of the San Francisco Sympnony, and of his words. My bassist son Charles tells me that Sasha says a document is worthless if it isn't handwritten on paper with pen and ink. This is irrevocably true even though the nouveaux of the present electronic world tell you otherwise. Emails have their place, but they are never a substitute for a real letter. Emails are the junk food of our non-caring, egocentric, disaffected times. At best they are utilitarian and fast, at the worst cold.
Can you imagine Obama or Putin doing a signing on an email, for the affordable care act, or, for the annexation of Crimea? How many times have you seen these two leaders on TV signing those documents, and with expensive pens? And what about signing a marriage document? The Mexicans sign it on the altar! Think of how many times you had to sign for your house mortgage, and with a pen. I still have mine.
Like Charles Krauthammer, I remember, when I was seventeen, the letters from my girfriends written in a sweet feminine hand, on pastel paper, containing some real or imagined subtle scent of their beings. Nothing of the electronic age can come even close to that.
I received , the other day, a letter from my daughter who is studying art in Adis Abiba, Ethiopa. She enclosed a single leaf of an indigenous Ethiopian tree--dryed, brown, and flattened out--yet when I smelled it there was a fleeting, ephemeral scent of Africa! Volumes were spoken to me by this leaf, and it opened a new botanical world for me. It sent me to my botanical reference works.
The tree, Kosso in Amharic, Hagenia abyssinica or African redwood, grows throughout most of Africa, even down to Congo.
Oh, and I must add, that Marianna wrote her letter to me from Adis Abiba in ink, and before the ink dryed she had inadvertently touched a word and left her partially smudged fingerprint on the paper. I have seen similar fingerprints several times on thousands of years old ancient pottery and on some paintings too. Is there a similarity between finger prints and the written word. Take a look at the whorls on your finger tips; they look like writing. Did writing evolve from finger marks and finger prints? Then, there is the parable of Jesus writing in the sand with his finger. Fingers create the identifying signiture, and the California DMV certainly thinks so as well.
Many years ago, my father sent me a tiny sprig of Spanish moss in a letter; that sprig has grown thirty years later now into a thriving drapery beneath my trees in a corridor of grey-green ambiance, reminding me daily of my father and his great love of plants. One cannot send seeds, plantlets, or cuttings by email.
May I be so brash in an inqusitive avuncular manner to ask how many people will "peg off" having never written or received a real letter? And, do not forget that letters are more permanent than emails. Real letters are of material substance. There are in the Amherst, Massachusetts library precious tiny bits and pieces of envelopes written on by Emily Dickinson. They are called "The Gorgeous Nothings" (Dickinson's own name for them) and have now been collected in a book by that same mysterious name, edited by Christine Burgin and published by New Directions. To see them and read the snippits of poetry on them gives an uncanny view of her presnce. I wonder what it would be like to touch them? Among these "nothings" is a tiny pencil stub she once sent to a friend who was tardy in writing to her. How witty.
Emails are ephemeral, fugacious. Where do they exist? Out there in abstract space somewhere? Letters are the blooded-cryptic-code of real human beings. I love to see the ink (green, blue, black, or brown) from a pen nib flow quiveringly down onto paper with my own intentionality to be sent to another human being. We say, "I don't have time for that. Please tell me,what do we have time for?"
I am reminded of Alexander (Sasha) Barantschik, the the concertmaster of the San Francisco Sympnony, and of his words. My bassist son Charles tells me that Sasha says a document is worthless if it isn't handwritten on paper with pen and ink. This is irrevocably true even though the nouveaux of the present electronic world tell you otherwise. Emails have their place, but they are never a substitute for a real letter. Emails are the junk food of our non-caring, egocentric, disaffected times. At best they are utilitarian and fast, at the worst cold.
Can you imagine Obama or Putin doing a signing on an email, for the affordable care act, or, for the annexation of Crimea? How many times have you seen these two leaders on TV signing those documents, and with expensive pens? And what about signing a marriage document? The Mexicans sign it on the altar! Think of how many times you had to sign for your house mortgage, and with a pen. I still have mine.
Like Charles Krauthammer, I remember, when I was seventeen, the letters from my girfriends written in a sweet feminine hand, on pastel paper, containing some real or imagined subtle scent of their beings. Nothing of the electronic age can come even close to that.
I received , the other day, a letter from my daughter who is studying art in Adis Abiba, Ethiopa. She enclosed a single leaf of an indigenous Ethiopian tree--dryed, brown, and flattened out--yet when I smelled it there was a fleeting, ephemeral scent of Africa! Volumes were spoken to me by this leaf, and it opened a new botanical world for me. It sent me to my botanical reference works.
The tree, Kosso in Amharic, Hagenia abyssinica or African redwood, grows throughout most of Africa, even down to Congo.
Oh, and I must add, that Marianna wrote her letter to me from Adis Abiba in ink, and before the ink dryed she had inadvertently touched a word and left her partially smudged fingerprint on the paper. I have seen similar fingerprints several times on thousands of years old ancient pottery and on some paintings too. Is there a similarity between finger prints and the written word. Take a look at the whorls on your finger tips; they look like writing. Did writing evolve from finger marks and finger prints? Then, there is the parable of Jesus writing in the sand with his finger. Fingers create the identifying signiture, and the California DMV certainly thinks so as well.
Many years ago, my father sent me a tiny sprig of Spanish moss in a letter; that sprig has grown thirty years later now into a thriving drapery beneath my trees in a corridor of grey-green ambiance, reminding me daily of my father and his great love of plants. One cannot send seeds, plantlets, or cuttings by email.
May I be so brash in an inqusitive avuncular manner to ask how many people will "peg off" having never written or received a real letter? And, do not forget that letters are more permanent than emails. Real letters are of material substance. There are in the Amherst, Massachusetts library precious tiny bits and pieces of envelopes written on by Emily Dickinson. They are called "The Gorgeous Nothings" (Dickinson's own name for them) and have now been collected in a book by that same mysterious name, edited by Christine Burgin and published by New Directions. To see them and read the snippits of poetry on them gives an uncanny view of her presnce. I wonder what it would be like to touch them? Among these "nothings" is a tiny pencil stub she once sent to a friend who was tardy in writing to her. How witty.
Emails are ephemeral, fugacious. Where do they exist? Out there in abstract space somewhere? Letters are the blooded-cryptic-code of real human beings. I love to see the ink (green, blue, black, or brown) from a pen nib flow quiveringly down onto paper with my own intentionality to be sent to another human being. We say, "I don't have time for that. Please tell me,what do we have time for?"
Wednesday, January 29, 2014
Redirecting the Energy Force of Roses
Well, as I walk around the neighborhood viewing the frontyard gardens, I observe that almost all the gardeners have pruned their roses. One or two intransigent gardeners have not pruned their roses at this late date of 28th January, but that really doesn't matter. Most roses, except hybrid teas, will do well with little or no pruning. Of course most people in the suburbs adore hybrid teas--good and showy in the front yard. And, they feel so horticulturally correct.
I suppose there are only two reasons for pruning roses in late winter (such as it is here in Southern Calafia). The temperature in my garden dipped to only forty-seven degrees F this winter. It's warmer and drier here than it was forty years ago and the pinch is on. If we want to continue gardening, we will have to change our watering habits or move.
First, roses need pruning back (severely or minimally) to redirect the plant's energy or elan into new growth that will in turn produce a healthier rosebush and better blossoms. Trees and plants in the wild get trimmed regularly by wind, ice, some animals, and their own self limiting growth. A healthy, compact tea has a good reserve of energy, but if left unpruned, teas become a bit spindly, unkempt and weak. The yellowish,leaves hang on forever, looking dissolute and weary here in Califia, thus weaking the entire plant. The energy has not been redirected back into the plant base and the roots. So, pruning will create stronger force for the production of future blossoms. Shakespeare says in "Richard II" that Richard would have been a real king if he hadn't been so narsissistic and pseudo poetic and had taken a pruning hook to his garden, his realm. His realm was rank with sycophantes and he lived in the world of his own self centered ideals. So, unfortunaely he learned the hard way; he was violently deposed and lost what he thought was "his" realm.
Cut the roses back to about fourteen inches, or even lower if that feels good. Cut the cane at a slant just above a bud that points in the direction that you want the new stem or cane to grow. The slant allow moisture to drip off. Cut down old canes to the base of the bush. I usually remove two or three of these every year. The big thick canes get old and weak, and new shoots from the base need to form new ones.
It's that simple. Why "cane" I do not know--they don't look like canes to me except in standard rose buhes--the bushes that grow at the top of a three or four trunk-like cane. Must be some esoteric rosarian jargon word. And, I never use a sealenton the cuts, and neither do many of myexperience and worthy mentors. It is good also to to cut above directional buds so that they point outward from the center of the plant. This will create a rose bush that looks like an open "lovely" vase as the English rosers are want to say. This vase form looks good for some special reasons. More practically, the the rose bush is opened up letting in sun and air. Make the bush an orant form with outstretching arms to embrace the Cosmos. I think the English and the French might be the best growers of roses, both amatuer and professional. Some gardener says that the English roses are among the very best, and I agree. And do not forget that "Peace" ("Mme. Antoine Meilland") is a French rose. And just think of Miss Jane Marple musing in her cottage garden when you think of English rosarians.
Roses other than the ubiquitous flashy teas need little pruning. I cut out dead wood, spindly stems, and weak branches, and I use my feeling sense to help create a satisfactory looking rosebush form, as opposed to a shape. Feeling sense is the hardest thing for me communicate to some people. A "shape" reminds me of that Victorian thing or mold made with colored jello to be set on the table as a center piece to be "ooed" and "aahed" over before it gets too slimy and melts.
Second, roses need the pruning ritual because it cleans out dead branches, recreates the form and makes the rose beds look good in anticipation of the vegetative leaf buds yearning to push out the new year's growth. Roses also "need" (I suppose they expect it) the pruning ritual because people like to do it as a symbolic turning point for the new year. Actually, rose can be pruned at any time of the year, if necessary. The pruning can also become cause for a social get together. I get invited to at least one such ritual every January. Why, I do not know as I never attend, even though I love my roser friends.
Now, about water. We have received less than three inches of rain this last year and that is a serious matter! We will not be able to sustain roses if we don't get more rain. I don't know if this is temporary or long range. The water rates are going up, and as we all know, and the potter Michael Cardew says, "roses like artists are rich feeders." So, I shall write this in regard to what we would normally do if we had plenty of water.
After you prune the roses, you can spray them with a dormant spray, if you wish, to kill vermin and fungi. Then, apply a good organic fertilizer such as "Dr. Earth". I have found that the organic fertilizer with myccorhiza fungi (good fungi that help direct nutients to the rootlets) are the very best for healthy plant growth and blossoms. Organic fertilizers rejuvenate the soil and energize the plants into a mellow, steady growth, and they last longer than that hot-flash chemical stuff. No "hot shots" as with chemical fertilizers that are immediate and short lived! Use the organics now at half strength, and then apply it every six weeks thereafter, working the granules into the soil well and soaking them in. I really enjoy this earthy, dirt driven fun down on my knees. You will see a wonderful development of the leafage and blossoms. The tone of bushes simply becomes stronger and more vibrant. The leaves and petals have a depth that I can't quite describe.
Roses are the archetypal garden plant, the flower of spring and love, the scent of beautiful feelings. How could one have an evil thought when smelling that lovely rose scent? I hope I will always live in a clime where I can grow roses--as a boy growing up in North Miami, roses never lasted more tha a season, two at the most. The burned out because they had no rest.
Emily Dickinson wrote that every blossom is a resurrection, and I feel that she might have had the rose in mind.
I suppose there are only two reasons for pruning roses in late winter (such as it is here in Southern Calafia). The temperature in my garden dipped to only forty-seven degrees F this winter. It's warmer and drier here than it was forty years ago and the pinch is on. If we want to continue gardening, we will have to change our watering habits or move.
First, roses need pruning back (severely or minimally) to redirect the plant's energy or elan into new growth that will in turn produce a healthier rosebush and better blossoms. Trees and plants in the wild get trimmed regularly by wind, ice, some animals, and their own self limiting growth. A healthy, compact tea has a good reserve of energy, but if left unpruned, teas become a bit spindly, unkempt and weak. The yellowish,leaves hang on forever, looking dissolute and weary here in Califia, thus weaking the entire plant. The energy has not been redirected back into the plant base and the roots. So, pruning will create stronger force for the production of future blossoms. Shakespeare says in "Richard II" that Richard would have been a real king if he hadn't been so narsissistic and pseudo poetic and had taken a pruning hook to his garden, his realm. His realm was rank with sycophantes and he lived in the world of his own self centered ideals. So, unfortunaely he learned the hard way; he was violently deposed and lost what he thought was "his" realm.
Cut the roses back to about fourteen inches, or even lower if that feels good. Cut the cane at a slant just above a bud that points in the direction that you want the new stem or cane to grow. The slant allow moisture to drip off. Cut down old canes to the base of the bush. I usually remove two or three of these every year. The big thick canes get old and weak, and new shoots from the base need to form new ones.
It's that simple. Why "cane" I do not know--they don't look like canes to me except in standard rose buhes--the bushes that grow at the top of a three or four trunk-like cane. Must be some esoteric rosarian jargon word. And, I never use a sealenton the cuts, and neither do many of myexperience and worthy mentors. It is good also to to cut above directional buds so that they point outward from the center of the plant. This will create a rose bush that looks like an open "lovely" vase as the English rosers are want to say. This vase form looks good for some special reasons. More practically, the the rose bush is opened up letting in sun and air. Make the bush an orant form with outstretching arms to embrace the Cosmos. I think the English and the French might be the best growers of roses, both amatuer and professional. Some gardener says that the English roses are among the very best, and I agree. And do not forget that "Peace" ("Mme. Antoine Meilland") is a French rose. And just think of Miss Jane Marple musing in her cottage garden when you think of English rosarians.
Roses other than the ubiquitous flashy teas need little pruning. I cut out dead wood, spindly stems, and weak branches, and I use my feeling sense to help create a satisfactory looking rosebush form, as opposed to a shape. Feeling sense is the hardest thing for me communicate to some people. A "shape" reminds me of that Victorian thing or mold made with colored jello to be set on the table as a center piece to be "ooed" and "aahed" over before it gets too slimy and melts.
Second, roses need the pruning ritual because it cleans out dead branches, recreates the form and makes the rose beds look good in anticipation of the vegetative leaf buds yearning to push out the new year's growth. Roses also "need" (I suppose they expect it) the pruning ritual because people like to do it as a symbolic turning point for the new year. Actually, rose can be pruned at any time of the year, if necessary. The pruning can also become cause for a social get together. I get invited to at least one such ritual every January. Why, I do not know as I never attend, even though I love my roser friends.
Now, about water. We have received less than three inches of rain this last year and that is a serious matter! We will not be able to sustain roses if we don't get more rain. I don't know if this is temporary or long range. The water rates are going up, and as we all know, and the potter Michael Cardew says, "roses like artists are rich feeders." So, I shall write this in regard to what we would normally do if we had plenty of water.
After you prune the roses, you can spray them with a dormant spray, if you wish, to kill vermin and fungi. Then, apply a good organic fertilizer such as "Dr. Earth". I have found that the organic fertilizer with myccorhiza fungi (good fungi that help direct nutients to the rootlets) are the very best for healthy plant growth and blossoms. Organic fertilizers rejuvenate the soil and energize the plants into a mellow, steady growth, and they last longer than that hot-flash chemical stuff. No "hot shots" as with chemical fertilizers that are immediate and short lived! Use the organics now at half strength, and then apply it every six weeks thereafter, working the granules into the soil well and soaking them in. I really enjoy this earthy, dirt driven fun down on my knees. You will see a wonderful development of the leafage and blossoms. The tone of bushes simply becomes stronger and more vibrant. The leaves and petals have a depth that I can't quite describe.
Roses are the archetypal garden plant, the flower of spring and love, the scent of beautiful feelings. How could one have an evil thought when smelling that lovely rose scent? I hope I will always live in a clime where I can grow roses--as a boy growing up in North Miami, roses never lasted more tha a season, two at the most. The burned out because they had no rest.
Emily Dickinson wrote that every blossom is a resurrection, and I feel that she might have had the rose in mind.
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