Never Alone In The Quiet
This guy is the last to leave the garden party. There isn't much for him to eat but he's still hangin' around. 
I got two six packs of rainbow chard planted.
Looks pretty messy out there. It's an Obsessive Compulsive's nightmare.
I adore the optimism of seeds. Tiny dill seedlings are volunteering in the bed. Frost will probably kill them all before they mature enough to harvest.
Sunshine streamed into the chicken run and the girls fought over some cucumber I brought them. Non-local cucumber that Max has been eating.
There were quite a few bees trying to gather the last bit of pollen for the season. My roses obliged.I made it outside yesterday just as I promised myself I would. I want to describe the warmth of the light as malty though I know it's a stretch to smell it and feel it as I did-sweet and sluggish, rich and mature. Unlike the weaker colder sun of winter, it was like a day from summer accidentally popped into our fall week and it shook itself all over the place; all over me. It even sounded like a summer afternoon; lawnmowers were busy in the distance; bees lending a lazy humming to the quiet; the hens clucking and shuffling in their run.
I planted my baby chard in the bed that grew my cucumbers and dill this summer. Everywhere in that bed were tiny dill seedlings, bright slender green notes of ever-hopeful life. I shook weeds out of the way and as I removed them they released the scent of the dirt into the warm air. I had to sit down and just listen and breath. I actually forgot how the garden can be such a great place to be at peace. I'm always so busy planning, plotting, and trying to get things done in minus time, I rarely go out there and just sit in the quiet.
Or the peaceful unquiet. Perhaps what I find so soothing about it is the great industry of organisms that undulates all around you in happy accord with the fact that their lives are short and they are driven by instinct, light, and hunger, to do what they need to do in order to complete their own cycle. The tiny worms curled up in the dirt don't ever ask "what is the meaning of life?" nor question the fairness of having to die in a few days or a few months or one year. It seems so greedy the way humans suck up life and feel entitled to a long one, feel cheated when someone gets only a few years, or worse, when someone gets seventy long ones and still-it's never enough for us.
Who are we to say that a fetus that lives only a month in it's mother's womb didn't live the perfect cycle of life? Who are we to know what that spirit wanted or what it should have had? Who are we to declare that the spirit of a man who's lived for eighty years and then packs it in in violent crash wasn't relieved to have left this mortal coil?
I once inspired great ire in a man I worked with by suggesting that humans aren't superior to ants. In fact, I think I asked "how do we know that we are 'more intelligent' than ants?" I had been reading a nonfiction book about ants and it occurred to me that a human measure of intelligence cannot be used to measure an insect's intelligence. Some ants milk aphids. They herd them like we do cows, to plants the aphids like, and then they harvest the "dew" that the aphids exude from their skin. Nutritious substance that the ants feed on. Hello!!! We are not the only beings on this earth who have figured out how to use other creatures for our benefit.
The man I worked with was deeply offended that I could even question such a thing. I was surprised, actually, because I really didn't see my questions and my curiosity as a threat to human existence. So what if we are not necessarily the most superior beings on earth? We're still pretty high on the food chain and have got the whole world in our destructive grips- are we so insecure?
If humans are too afraid to even ask these questions then our belief in our own superiority must be pretty weak.
Out in my garden I don't count myself as the superior being. I don't really count myself at all. I just move in it. Building. Planting. Smelling the air. Watching as the insects live their lives and wondering at their view of the same world. I sat on the edge of one of my raised beds and listened and felt the warmth of the light heat up the fibers in my shirt. I could almost hear the soil moving.
When you are that aware of the universe of small life around you it is impossible to consider unloading a jug full of Round Up. When you are aware of the universe of small life around you, you also become aware of the universe of small life that makes up your own body. There is no real difference between your own flesh and the soil. All of us made up of molecules of matter; all of us made up of colonies of smaller beings than ourselves. When you pour killing concentrations of any substance into the ground you are disrespecting yourself most of all.
I don't go around preaching to people about using chemicals in their yards. I'm not even trying to do that here. I'm merely saying that when you stop all the talking in your brain, when you shut up and listen, you will find that your place in the world is not separate from the dirt but right smack in the middle of it. And when you realize how connected you are to soil, the ultimate source of all of life on earth: dirt and water, you just can't knowingly pump it full of toxic matter. Because it's like pouring bleach down your own throat.
This is all very earth-mama and the part of me that rebelled against pot smoking earthy women with long arm pit hairs would like to whip out a gin and tonic and put on some Frank Sinatra REALLY loud so I can pretend I didn't say all the things I just said. I do NOT wear patchouli. (anymore.)
It's interesting how talking about my jaunt in the garden yesterday I am making it sound like it was so serious, dark and grim...yet I just meant to tell you how good it felt. How hopeful. How peaceful. How wonderfully loud with life it was.
I planted my baby chard in the bed that grew my cucumbers and dill this summer. Everywhere in that bed were tiny dill seedlings, bright slender green notes of ever-hopeful life. I shook weeds out of the way and as I removed them they released the scent of the dirt into the warm air. I had to sit down and just listen and breath. I actually forgot how the garden can be such a great place to be at peace. I'm always so busy planning, plotting, and trying to get things done in minus time, I rarely go out there and just sit in the quiet.
Or the peaceful unquiet. Perhaps what I find so soothing about it is the great industry of organisms that undulates all around you in happy accord with the fact that their lives are short and they are driven by instinct, light, and hunger, to do what they need to do in order to complete their own cycle. The tiny worms curled up in the dirt don't ever ask "what is the meaning of life?" nor question the fairness of having to die in a few days or a few months or one year. It seems so greedy the way humans suck up life and feel entitled to a long one, feel cheated when someone gets only a few years, or worse, when someone gets seventy long ones and still-it's never enough for us.
Who are we to say that a fetus that lives only a month in it's mother's womb didn't live the perfect cycle of life? Who are we to know what that spirit wanted or what it should have had? Who are we to declare that the spirit of a man who's lived for eighty years and then packs it in in violent crash wasn't relieved to have left this mortal coil?
I once inspired great ire in a man I worked with by suggesting that humans aren't superior to ants. In fact, I think I asked "how do we know that we are 'more intelligent' than ants?" I had been reading a nonfiction book about ants and it occurred to me that a human measure of intelligence cannot be used to measure an insect's intelligence. Some ants milk aphids. They herd them like we do cows, to plants the aphids like, and then they harvest the "dew" that the aphids exude from their skin. Nutritious substance that the ants feed on. Hello!!! We are not the only beings on this earth who have figured out how to use other creatures for our benefit.
The man I worked with was deeply offended that I could even question such a thing. I was surprised, actually, because I really didn't see my questions and my curiosity as a threat to human existence. So what if we are not necessarily the most superior beings on earth? We're still pretty high on the food chain and have got the whole world in our destructive grips- are we so insecure?
If humans are too afraid to even ask these questions then our belief in our own superiority must be pretty weak.
Out in my garden I don't count myself as the superior being. I don't really count myself at all. I just move in it. Building. Planting. Smelling the air. Watching as the insects live their lives and wondering at their view of the same world. I sat on the edge of one of my raised beds and listened and felt the warmth of the light heat up the fibers in my shirt. I could almost hear the soil moving.
When you are that aware of the universe of small life around you it is impossible to consider unloading a jug full of Round Up. When you are aware of the universe of small life around you, you also become aware of the universe of small life that makes up your own body. There is no real difference between your own flesh and the soil. All of us made up of molecules of matter; all of us made up of colonies of smaller beings than ourselves. When you pour killing concentrations of any substance into the ground you are disrespecting yourself most of all.
I don't go around preaching to people about using chemicals in their yards. I'm not even trying to do that here. I'm merely saying that when you stop all the talking in your brain, when you shut up and listen, you will find that your place in the world is not separate from the dirt but right smack in the middle of it. And when you realize how connected you are to soil, the ultimate source of all of life on earth: dirt and water, you just can't knowingly pump it full of toxic matter. Because it's like pouring bleach down your own throat.
This is all very earth-mama and the part of me that rebelled against pot smoking earthy women with long arm pit hairs would like to whip out a gin and tonic and put on some Frank Sinatra REALLY loud so I can pretend I didn't say all the things I just said. I do NOT wear patchouli. (anymore.)
It's interesting how talking about my jaunt in the garden yesterday I am making it sound like it was so serious, dark and grim...yet I just meant to tell you how good it felt. How hopeful. How peaceful. How wonderfully loud with life it was.
Labels: dirt, garden, insects, life, my sunny corner, philosophical crap