In Silence Is All Potentiality
                                                                          May  


   We perceive the silent center of the vortex in our own gardens, just as Orpheus did as he was

playing his harp to all the animals and plants of the  forest. The silences occur between the beats--

between the beats of music, between the beats of our hearts, between whatever is happening

in our own lives. All that we need to do , as Franz Kafka said,  is to wait in silence, to be still, and all

will come into us.

In the garden there are sacred, silent moments, like moments in a whirling vortex of being.

In my garden, and yours, the silences come and bring with them the buzz of bees and other insects,

the cricket's song between the pausings, the special spaces among the bird songs,  the waitings for the

the woodpecker to resume its staccato hammering; these are the sacred interstitial centers of all life,

and Orpheus heard and knew them all.




I think of the heart in its gracious, consistent beating. It does this all our lives, yet it has its silent

moments between the systolic and diastolic muscular actions (between the pulses), and in between

these two actions where are the silences?  They are there, between the systole and the diastole,

between the contracting and expansion of our heart. These silences are actually little deaths.

I often wonder if mystics can hear the sounds and the silences of growing seeds. I think that Orpheus

heard them ,and this is why the animals and plants listened in awe to his music.

                                           
                                                   SILENCES

                                            The bees whisper

                                             their musical humming

                                             through noon's sun washed

                                             susurration of soothing sound and light--

                                             eternal Orpheus moments--

                                             between their beating wings.

                                             These are the stillnesses--

                                             the silent pauses

                                              that wait and hide

                                              among the wings,

                                              like frightful voids separating

                                               the systolic and diastolic

                                               pausings of the heart,

                                               creating a necklace

                                               of golden threaded beads--

                                               intermittent moments

                                               of life and--

                                               little deaths


                                           
                                             
                                                                                                      Frank La Rosa Mazza
                                                                                                      May 2020
 

                                           

                                                   



       

                             

                                     


   

 

April is the Month of Openings

                                                 April is the Month of Openings
                                                         Evocations of Seeds
                                                                      by
                                                      Frank La Rosa Mazza


   I will spare you the many words written about April--"April is the cruelest month'' and all that stuff  academics adore. I am certain that you have heard many of these platitudinous intellectualizations  about April. So, I shall write of my own experience of April and Spring.  As I see it

   Yes, April is the month of openings, and the greatest of these is the Opening that comes into and out of ourselves. And,  it is also that marvelous Opening, inward and outward, into the dark silent rooms of the Soul that leads to the inner Self that occurs in our own  garden. When we are truly alive,  present in our own protected garden, called the hortus conclusus (the walled garden), the Self peers out to us from the fecund wet, spongy earth  through which the insistent spear-leaves pierce with audacious certitude; this leaf demanding display of lily blades and their flowers, the buzzing of bees and other insects, the sunning lizards, the feel of the sun on ones cheek--all of this is an Opening.
    The greatest of these Openings is that miracle of sprouting seeds.
     I spend my pre-April days looking at the pictures of flowers and fruits and plants in seed catalogs: the " Strictly Medicinal Seeds" catalog by Richo Cech and family and the "J. L. Hudson Seedsman Ethnobotanical Catalog of Seeds"  from La Honda, California. These are true seed catalogs prepared by people who dearly love seeds and plants and have devoted their lives to them. Both catalogs have a special voice and tone. These are qualities you don't get with the corporate world writing. Then, I order the seeds. I await them to arrive in the mail.  "Will they come today? Ah, they've come!"
    If you want to sprout the seeds early indoors, it is best to sterilize the earth that you plant the seeds in. This will prevent the gardener's bane called damping off. The most crucial and dangerous point in a seed's existence (or any birth) is immediately after it sprouts. This is when damping off can occur, and then one could feel so very bad. What had looked like a new beginning has died.  All you have for your efforts is a limp, seed stalk, two limp seed-leaves, and no hope for the future.
   To avoid all of this, wash out the seed growing containers in extremely hot even boiling water, or with chlorox water  (one teaspoon per gallon), or best of all, use a microwave proof dish to zap the earth you have placed in it.   Zap for five to seven minutes the earth that you will need, or even ten minutes if you are compulsive.  Do this zapping by microwave,  and the fungi, viruses,  weed seeds, and the other enemies of the sprouting seeds will be rendered inert. Now the seeds will sprout safely and healthily.
   I have a neat set up in my garage. I load the zapped earth into clean plastic pots and place them on electric seed sprouting heat mats. These electric mats keep the earth and the seeds at about 75-80F degrees, thus avoiding that cold, wet time of cool weather if the seeds are sprouted outdoors. Later, after two or more true leaves appear, I place these pots and their inhabitants out in the sun, gradually hardening them off to their new environment. I often bring the pots back indoors at night, especially if there is bad weather such as cold heavy, hard rain.
   In the garage set up, I have a controlled  seed sprouting situation that is safe and relatively easy. And, I can sleep easy at night. Yes, I am overly responsible
A soil thermometer (Ugh-'soil,' an ugly word at least to my mind) helps to make sure that the mats are working,  keeping the temperature right for germination. Granted,  'soil' is an acceptable word in some gardening contexts.
    What a gift, that after only three days you will see  lettuce seeds sprouting with their hypocotyls  (stems) heaving their bent over baby backs out of the damp earth, and the first seed leaves will be greeting you and this world of light. Everything seems right again when this sprouting birth happens.
    If there is anything that I believe in at all, it is this: seeds are always sprouting anywhere and somewhere in the world. Claire Leighton, the wonderful engraver artist, observed this and said that seeds are "beyond borders". They don't bow down to political regimes, dictators, repressive governments,  nasty people, or "their lonely betters." They love  cracks in sidewalks. In fact they can heave sidewalks. They will not be repressed. They are audacious!


                                                                                                                              FLR-M
                                                                                                                              18 April 2020


   

 

                                  Nature is a temple where the living pillars
                                  Permit, from time to time, confused words to escape . . . .

                                   "Correspondences"  by Charles Baudelaire
                                   William H. Crosby, translation


                                                MARCH  CORRESPONDENCES
                                                               by Frank La Rosa


   March is the month of the living Force of nature that the Romans named after the god Mars. This essential Force of nature is the life energy that flows through all plants and animals; the Romans observed it as a 'vis' or 'virtu', and it can also be seen as an 'elan vital'.  Being a living Force, the Romans also saw it manifested as an agricultural power to be propitiated with spring rites and rituals.
   Mars is the god of boundaries and limits. The Force marches inexorably to the climax of summer, the season of deep green leafiage, blossoms, fruits of all kinds, and intense growth. I see the Force marching in step like a Roman legion to its appointed destiny on the edges of the empire. The Italian province of Marche was once considered a borderland or frontier between two ancient kingdoms both facing the sea. It was the same in regard to Wales, the border of western England.
   For us as gardeners, March is that month of sun,  plants, and  bees infused with a primal, energy that proceeds  in a relentless march  to high summer.
   In my garden the plants and blossoms are burgeoning  announcing the end of winter; the roses are in leaf of rich red, above all, the citrus trees are in bud and blossom. The bees have taken notice of this scented citrus blossoming, and I see them hurrying, shuffling, and rushing into the hive with lovely white, yellow, and buttery rich yellow pollens sacks on their hind legs. All of their pollen gathering is proof that the Mother-queen bee is laying eggs and that the workers are feeding pupae that will grow into new workers; they bring in such large quantities of pollen that I see the remnants of it dusted like gold flecks on the landing board of the hive. And, as I place my ear right up to the wall of the hive box, I hear a marvelous gentle roar of the living Force that is called the Spirit of March.
   This powerful roar makes me think of another creative roar, that of the wonderful roar of my pottery kiln that is also in my garden. If at all possible, a living, growing garden should have a beehive for honey or a kiln for the firing of ceramics--pots and sculptures. I cannot conceive of it being any other way. The two are so merged in my psyche, that when I think of one I feel the other. I remember the Cardews who had a magnificent kiln and rich red roses growing up the wall of their county home in Saint Breward, Cornwall

   The heart is both a beehive and a kiln. I do not add the word "like" because they are so very similar. Through great living heat or passion (one of the Force of nature, the other of man instigated flame-fire) magical transformation take place through heat and energy. The focus of heat and intentionality causes transformation to occur. A natural law of the Cosmos.
   Within a shield or containment barrier, (a refractory of firebrick in one case, or, the wooden walls of a beehive) the heart roars with life. There is a pulse of the fire as the kiln begins  its moment to moment climb to the required heat (to cone) to vitrify clay and melt glazes. My pots fire to about cone 5 to cone 7, requiring about eight hours of heat-work.
    The same is true of the heart pulse of blood as it flows on its course nourishing the life of the body and it organs; the energy which is not burnt" thoroughly is deposited on the heart just as in the kiln's unburnt energy (or carbon) deposits itsel as  black splotchings called "flashings" on the walls of pots. On the pots the flashings are quite beautiful, perhaps not so much so on the heart, for obvious reasons that anyone can understand.
   The very first time that I fired my kiln many years ago, I felt an excitement rising up in my chest and heart--a correspondence with the rising fire of the kiln. It was a marvelous simulacrum of my body corresponding to the soul of the rising flame and heat. After many years and numerous kiln firings I still feel the excitement at the surge of the heightening heat.
   The firing begins with a fluttering orange-yellow flame called a  "candling" to drive off water in the clay body. Then, the flame is gradually increased  until it takes on a blue, almost clear resonance. With this stage the kiln atmosphere is clear and hot (free of unburnt carbon) and  breathes so powerfully and  its  sound is a sweet susurration that purrs, or more aptly, buzzes like the core of bees working around the Mother in a hive. The kiln works its magic of permanence on the pots and the beauty of the glazes. Both the kiln and the hive have alchemically created out of earth, air, water and fire eternal forms and healing honey.
 
 
                                                       The Perfume of Poison
                                                                     By
                                                        Frank La Rosa Mazza

   The poison of a bee's stinger has the most intense, beautiful fragrance in the plant or animal world.
Only the alchemy of the bee's body and soul can create this magical scent. It is actually a scent that is expressed by the death of the bee. This fragrance is released when the bee stings and its entrails and stinger are torn from its body, thus killing it. The fragrance of this wounding is transitory, fugitive, pealing on the air for only a few seconds if that. It is a sweetness and pungency and colors of flower petals, stamens, pollen, and nectaries. The perfume of this sacrificial death is like Rilke's crystal bowl that rings as it is shattered.
   I wonder how many people (even beekeepers) have experienced or acknowledged this lovely, precious perfume? It is as a Wallace Stevens suggested--death is the mother of beauty. There resides in all this a poignancy the possibility  that we as human beings perceive something about which the bees seemingly know nothing (I wonder), I suppose.













                   

February the Get Ready Month

We are in the midst of February, the cleansing month,  and the roses should have been pruned by now.  It is not too late to do so, but that little chore should be done now. I Pruned about fifty roses at the Shiley Pavilion in La Jolla and they are already leafing out because they are so close to the profoundly beautiful Pacific Ocean within view. Now is also the time to feed them with a very light application of nitrogen, either chemical ammonium sulphate or steer manure. Water it in well. Then a little later in the season (about a month or so), give them an application of Baer Three in One Rose Care; this fertilizes, protects from fungi, and kills insects. This is a systemic product and does a good job of helping the roses along for the blooming season. You only have to apply it about twice per season,
   And, of course, as the roses bloom don,t forget to dead head the old and ragged blossoms; this saves plant energy that needs to go to the rose bush itself. Cut the blossoms off about 7 or 8 leaves down the stem, or where you think is best for the plant to put out new growth, or to where the bush looks balanced. In providing this care you are the best gardener to assess where the balance--new growth or aesthetic appeal should be. For me, gardening is always about good plant care and how beautifully pleasing the plants and garden look. These elements are what gardening is concerned with.
   Going back to the beginning of all this, February is the cleansing or purification month. February is the second month of the Gregorian calender, and the word February derives from the Latin 'februa' which means expiatory offerings, cleansing, or by  extension,  a kind of fever that heats up and makes for cleansing by some sort of excitement. In my conception of the word, February is that month latent with plant energy that is on the brink of Spring. It is Nature's ready to go month.

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.
 


                                       

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?"




  

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.