Give me this day my daily veg...

Because After The Rain...

 

 

 

The sun will always shine again.

Embracing The Rain

The tulips that we stored diligently in the crisper drawer of our urban Californian refrigerator are blooming. They are blooming in the garden of course - having since been removed from their 'winter' of domesticity. Bulbs, we decided, were for years two and three - advanced planting that was best approached once we had some experience and felt adequately prepared to move onto something new. We dug a deep trench into the hard dirt around the plum trees and dropped the dormant brown bulbs in. Little World War I soldiers hunkering down in the mud.

And then we waited. It could all go very badly, I thought. As I am apt to. There is something very unnerving about growth you cannot see. Life that occurs beneath the surface. I wanted to dig it up and inspect it, poke my fingers in and prod around, or watch a motion capture video of any growing that was happening, speeded up to the point of recognition. But, instead, you just stare at the dirt and count the days. You let go and believe that even though you cannot see it or touch it, something is becoming something under there.

The tulips began poking up a few weeks ago. They emerged vibrantly and with such an air of certainty, that I felt foolish for ever doubting their arrival. Such strong, robust plants. The first bud to open gloriously spread out her petals and revealed a stunning center of black and yellow speckles, set dramatically against her lush pink crown. I kowtowed to her and decided she was winter's great warrior princess, defiant and indestructible in the face of frost and freezing rain.

Well, not entirely.

 

Today it is cold and rainy. It is empty and quiet in the house, save for the wet soundtrack of the dishwasher competing with nature's constant percussion of dampness. I look at my tulip heroine and see her closed up tightly, holding everything inward to protect herself from the elements. Her beauty hidden deep within and the raindrops sliding like tears down her blushing cheeks. And I think  to myself, No. I think, and I promise, I will not fear the rain. I can survive a winter and I can grow in the darkness. I can bloom against the odds and I can do it gloriously. And when the sun decides to slip away for a day or two, when the cold creeps back in and the clouds fill up with sadness, even then, I can embrace the rain. I can. And I will.

 

Recipeas

 

So many snow peas! I'm thinking I'll just eat them solo for lunch...lightly sauteed with a little garlic, salt and pepper. Maybe a shaving of parmesan if I get crazy. Wanna know what I did with the cabbages? With the beautiful, gorgeous cabbages?

 

 

Onions, garlic, spicy Italian sausage, white wine and fennel seeds. Sauteed and slow roasted for an hour. Sweet, smokey, buttery and delicious.

 

Sigh.

Black Gold. I done did it.

 

Ok, so I don't know if anyone who really knows about composting thinks it is cool. I mean, the idea is cool. It's awesome, taking all that waste and garden excess and turning it into a living source of nutrients, saving the planet, recycling your tiny carbon footprints...blah blah blah.

No.

Composting is tedious. It takes FOR. EVER. Especially if you do it au naturale like yours truly here, and just shove a big pile of leaves and spent vegetables in a corner. For most of a year or two it just looks like a huge mound of trash. And if you can keep adding to the top of the pile without it ever getting any bigger, then you are composting. Exciting, huh? I kept waiting for the compost fairies to come over in the dead of night and sprinkle some hurry-up dust on my pile of trash. I thought maybe one morning I'd go out there and it would be all lusciously dark and crumbly and perhaps even bagged up, ready to go.

No.

After more than a year of ignoring the fact I had a never-ending 6ft stack of crap in the corner of my garden, I decided it was time to change the way I did things. The pile got disassembled. It was by far the most strenuous, sweaty thing I've done and I hated every minute of it. I'd stop after three or four heavy, dusty shovels and whimper to no one in particular, then start up again. Because, you know, once you start to take the crap apart there's really no turning back. Composting sucked.

The ending to this is obvious, right? I dug down deep enough and found that it hadn't been a wasted exercise at all - because there at the bottom (I mean, waaay at the bottom) - was COMPOST. Worth waiting for? No. Cool? Yeah, okay, maybe just a little.

But that's not what I learned. Because, I didn't really make the compost, or even do the composting. That's just life. And it's only called composting because I've been watching it. Watching life.

The final step to get to the sweet, soft black gold was the sifting. That part I can say I did do. And as I separated dirt from rock and soil from twigs, I thought about the wheat and the chaff, and about my first thoughts on simplicity, months ago. Without conscious effort, I realized I had set myself on a course of wanting my soul to be sifted through. I had asked to be disassembled, to have the goodness within me dug out, and to have it separated out into something pure. I've said it before, but it is worth repeating a million times in my opinion; Everything we ask for comes around eventually. It may seem to take forever, or it may be manifested in a way you never imagined. It may happen long after you've forgotten you even wanted it. But, I believe, if the intention is good and genuine then somewhere at the bottom of the never-ending 6ft pile of crap - is black gold.

Oh.

And maybe a rogue potato.

 

Peas And Carrots

 

 

Ohhh...now I get it. Growing in the same season.

Cool.

Awakening

 

A chain of events has been occurring. Small things. Moments here and there. Little dots I dare not join up because I already see the picture they are forming. A whisper comes along through the mountain road and I claim it as my own. A tree bares itself wide open against the blue winter sky and I click it safely into a picture frame. I am careful to keep all the pieces lined up and separate lest they form a distinguishable whole, one that might call me out into the light.

Last night I dreamt that I went out into the garden. It was raining and I was not alone. The water was pooling in the vegetable beds and running in rivers down the path. In the centre was a large raised bed and standing upright in it were three tall grapevines. "Wow" I said to my companion in the garden. "I didn't realize I had grown grapes, I don't remember planting them at all. Look how big they have gotten, how did I not even know they were here?" My companion did not seem impressed. And so I looked again, and looked closer. The vines were brown and withered, standing barren beneath the falling rain. I was not so easily discouraged, "Oh Well," I said "At least I tried, right? I mean, look they got pretty big!" My companion was silent, but His silence said so much. I woke up in a vacuum and lay alone in bed with my thoughts, my mind telling me it was nothing while my heart beat out an undeniable and difficult truth.

I hold all the reins to my life and pull on them so tightly and impatiently. I listen to myself all day long and then I hang up the receiver. I work through my inbox of problems and my outbox of solutions. I juice my greens, do my yoga and then I call it a day. Somewhere along the way, I have forgotten that there is more. That there is a vineyard always being planted and tended to, and when I choose not to see it, it dies. I spend so much time in my own garden, carefully nurturing and cutting back, growing and harvesting. I have forgotten that to someone else, I too am a garden.

I have forgotten. It is not about me.