Cheers

“The land knows you, even when you are lost.”
― Robin Wall Kimmerer

This has been an odd fall and even odder December when it comes to apples.

There is snow on the hills to the east of Stony Run, yet all the early fall varieties have hung on and hung on (as opposed to just the Granny Smiths*), and I find myself repeatedly wandering out to gather and press -- well, the "press" has been put away, but Daughter has gifted me her old juicer, and it's powerful enough to do interesting things.

No idea what the climate is up to, but we're not likely to pass up a silver lining around here. If there's a lesson in all this Solstice largesse, I hope I'm listening, but while doing so I'll also harvest.

“To garden, you have to be extremely aware of your surroundings, of where you sit and walk and the specific tastes and flavor of the land. You need to understand where the stream runs and how the trees bloom, to take the pulse of your garden, and train your powers of observation. A garden is not natural. It is all artifice. We make it, respecting the rules of nature and the ecosystem.” -- Wendy Johnson of Green Gulch Farm in Garden Design

I dunno, I think whatever exists is "natural," but "respecting the rules" is something I do get: giving up greed, anger and delusion so as to be able to pay attention -- makes sense, don'tcha think? So I've learned to mulch, compost, chop-and-drop and intercrop, but I do still feel rather ignorant of what's going on out there.

There are plenty of vegetables and herbs around this winter. The kale is happy:

but it often is at this time. Notably, so is the lettuce.

Plenty of parsley.

I have gathered the medlars. Not being into making jelly, and having no better idea what to do with them, I put them through the juicer --

-- and chased them with a carrot, a beet, some kale, and a basket of apples.

This resulted in a refreshing drink one might call "Holiday Red," to be quaffed with some Bach harpsichord works. Cheers.

No more moon

For this online Rohatsu I found myself, most of the time, sitting with twenty or so other people (sample here), so that the hermitage became a virtual monastery.

Between sits we walked kinhin, a form of walking meditation that gets the blood flowing and gives relief from sitting zazen -- useful when there are twenty-two sits in two days. In daylight, while purportedly focused inward, I found much going on outside my window. As it was stark reality, it seemed all right to have a look. Horses pawed at washed-out grass. A flicker hammered on the wall right in front of me. Starlings murmurated.

From time to time I would stop and visit the images above the altar. At top, here (obscured by the reflection from outside), we have Monju with his sword of wisdom; at right, Niaoge sitting in the crook of a pine tree, with a magpie; at bottom, Prajnaparamita; at left, Mugai Nyodai's official portrait sculpture.

These are my current personal collection of superhero posters. Monju is said to have said: “Not abiding in appearances is abiding in prajñā-pāramitā.” Niaoge is said to have said: "If you are searching for Ch'an [Zen], I also have a little here." And blew a feather toward his leave-taking disciple. Prajnaparamita personified reminds me of the wisdom of emptiness (no abiding essence through time). And then there is Mugai:

One of Bukko’s students was the first Japanese woman to receive a certificate of inka. Her Buddhist name was Mugai Nyodai, but she is remembered by her personal name, Chiyono. She was a member of the Hojo family by marriage and a well-educated woman who long had an interest in the Dharma. After her husband died and her family responsibilities had been fulfilled, she went to study with the Chinese master. After completing her studies with Bukko, she became the founding abbess of the most important Zen temple for women in Kyoto, Keiaiji.

A teaching story with no apparent basis in fact suggests that before coming to study with Bukko, Chiyono had been a servant at a small temple where three nuns practiced Buddhism and hosted evening meditation sessions for the laity. According to this story, Chiyono observed the people practicing zazen and tried to imitate their sitting in her quarters, but without any formal instruction all she acquired for her efforts were sore knees. Finally she approached the youngest of the nuns and asked how to do zazen. The nun replied that her duty was to carry out her responsibilities to the best of her abilities. “That,” she said, “is your zazen.”

Chiyono felt she was being told not to concern herself with things that were beyond her station. She continued to fulfill her daily tasks, which largely consisted of fetching firewood and hauling buckets of water. She noticed, however, that people of all classes joined the nuns during the meditation sessions; therefore, there was no reason why she, too, could not practice. This time she questioned the oldest of the nuns. This woman provided Chiyono with basic instruction, explained how to sit, place her hands, fix her eyes, and regulate her breathing.

“Then, drop body and mind,” she told Chiyono. “Looking from within, inquire ‘Where is mind?’ Observing from without, ask ‘Where is mind to be found?’ Only this. As other thoughts arise, let them pass without following them and return to searching for mind.”

Chiyono thanked the nun for her assistance, then lamented that her responsibilities were such that she had little time for formal meditation.
“All you do can be your zazen,” the nun said, echoing what the younger nun had said earlier. “In whatever activity you find yourself, continue to inquire, ‘What is mind? Where do thoughts come from?’ When you hear someone speak, don’t focus on the words but ask, instead, ‘Who is hearing?’ When you see something, don’t focus on it, but ask yourself, ‘What is that sees?’”

Chiyono committed herself to this practice day after day. Then, one evening, she was fetching water in an old pail. The bucket, held together with bamboo which had weakened over time, split as she was carrying it and the water spilled out. At that moment, Chiyono became aware.

Although the story about her time as a servant is certainly apocryphal, the part about the broken pail precipitating her enlightenment seems to be based on her actual experience. She commemorated the event with these lines:

    In this way and that I tried to save the old pail
    Since the bamboo strip was weakening and about to break
    Until at last the bottom fell out. 
    No more water in the pail! No more moon in the water!    

(Story by Richard McDaniel, per Terebess. Poem by Reps and Senzaki, tr.)

Ready as I'm gonna get

I'm preparing for my first online-based Rohatsu. This one is two days of zazen, kinhin, samu, and oryoki with twenty-two sits. I don't know if I can do that many sits, but it has been mentioned that we can get up and do kinhin, or lie down if necessary, as needed.

I've repaired Gogo-an's Mountain Gate. It's ... more like an idea than a gate, but that's the idea. The "benevolent kings" on either side of the gate are a couple of stones, for example.

I've given most of the vegetables in the two beds to the chickens, as the bugs never went to sleep this fall, laid eggs everywhere and made lace of all the kale leaves. For samu, at least one of the times, I plan to cover the beds with leaves and grass clippings (yes, fresh grass clippings in December).

Jizo is in constant shade this time of year and bits of him are flaking off when there is frost. He doesn't seem to mind, which may be a lesson for me. I'll offer him some leaves during Rohatsu -- no flowers available around here just now. His cloak could use renewing -- if I find something appropriate, I could stitch it up for additional samu.

I've got some other stitching lined up -- but not on the kesa. It's all done as of a few days ago, and I'm waiting for my next assignment -- perhaps the zagu.

Inside, I've added a small table -- it's a bench from our picnic table, actually -- to put in front of the computer for oryoki, the ritual meal. It's parked in front of the altar here to keep it out of the way until needed. The altar looks a bit dowdy right now, but I'll leave it like that until a samu session, and clean it up during that time.

Because of my execrable hearing, I've brought an alarm clock out of storage and plugged it in. I cannot always hear the bells and clappers that announce the next activity, and get left behind, so this is insurance, so to speak.

I'm testing the ten year old laptop for the Zoom connection -- seems pretty stable.

When I'm sitting alone with Zoom I sometimes stare right into the camera. This is called Mirror Zen and was practiced by nuns in Kamakura back in the day. They would meditate in front of the mirror and then write poems. It can be a little unnerving.

There's a lot of sun today. During the Rohatsu it's supposed to rain. I brought in some heavy curtains, though, to help regulate the light during sits and keep out some of the cold at night.

Yes, I use an office chair for sits. I have a blown back and blown knee, both of which are legacies from tree planting days. So it goes.

I've brought in flip phone, food, tea bags, change of clothes, toothbrush and sleeping bag, and turned on the water hose. Ready as I'm gonna get.

_________________________________________________________

The mirror poem of abbess Shido:

If the mind does not rest on anything, there is no clouding,
And talk of polishing is but a fancy.

All things always change

Gogo-an has been a going concern for three years and may be for another three to five. In five years, if I'm around, I'll be seventy-five and not very able to keep up a rural mini-farm. Work has continued at Daughter's urban house to provide for food production and a measure of "self-sufficiency" so that, should those of the family long in the tooth need to sell out and occupy a refuge in town, said refuge will have been adapted to meet some of their needs as well as those of any others involved.

Gogo-an in its current form

 I've enjoyed part-time hermit work and would like to continue doing it awhile longer. Watching the sun stream in through the eastern window, throwing the shadows of trees on the walls, has been a large part of this work.

At La Finca, the contemplated location-to-be, diverse aims must be accommodated. Renters occupy a studio (projected to later become Son's abode). The covered area out back was spacious but exposed to winter winds, and could provide, with some modification, a room for storage for the renter (projected to later contain the composting potty), for example. We have tried, with each new idea, to meet multiple needs.

The collapsing little tool shed at the end of the former collapsing carport has, for the last three years, also met renters' needs, but I saw in it a potential replacement for Gogo-an. Bit by bit, often working around piles of other people's belongings, I roofed it, let in a little more light, and used its abandoned furnishings as shop tables for the various projects. Fruit trees, meanwhile, have been strategically placed to eventually filter the sunlight at the eastern window that has been so crucial to my inner learning curve.

Exterior work has been easier to access, so I have been updating the building to match the house.

Progress has been made. The shop, consisting of three of the junked bits of furniture, has been at least temporarily relocated into the now half-enclosed patio.

I have moved in a table for a desk/kitchen counter. It was my grandmother's, and family members used to tell me that I collided with it while tearing around her house on a scooter in 1950 and pitched quite a fit about the pain. Welcome to the world, little one.

Morning light, streaming in through the eastern window, already looks pretty good to me.  For the time being, though, if I want dappled shade, I must take up my sticks and go for a walk round the heavily treed neighborhood and nearby parks.

That's okay; I can wait! The Japanese name of the hut means, loosely, "sufficient." It does not necessarily mean "expectations will be met." Something lovely may come of this adventure, or it may not. All things always change.


Beauty is the convenient and traditional name of something which art and nature share, and which gives a fairly clear sense to the idea of quality of experience and change of consciousness. I am looking out of my window in an anxious and resentful state of mind, oblivious of my surroundings, brooding perhaps on some damage done to my prestige. Then suddenly I observe a hovering kestrel. In a moment everything is altered. The brooding self with its hurt vanity has disappeared. There is nothing now but kestrel. -- Iris Murdoch

...recognize the functional value of  structures as tools and vehicles, but... also recognize their temporary nature and refrain from attachment to them even while using them. -- Thomas Cleary, Introduction, The Book of Serenity

October cidering

It was a beautiful bright autumn day, with air like cider and a sky so blue you could drown in it. -- Diana Gabaldon

  So, the Young Man (actually, he's now in his late thirties; time has flown) has become interested in brewing and started out with mead, using local wildflower honey and blackberries that were picked on the premises. It sat in a small carboy, thumping away in the airlock, for a few weeks, and then was transferred to an oak cask that he got over the Internet, for mellowing. It turned out really well, and his friends are praising his work.

I could see he was ready for more, so I mentioned the trees are still groaning with apples for cider. "You pick and process, and I'll kibitz. There are thousands of apples still out there, of five varieties -- they're hanging on late and looking good. Also quince," I added, "which might brighten the flavor a bit, seeing as we don't have crabapples."

This proposal met with his enthusiastic approbation, so a day was set aside for the adventure. First, he gathered a basket from each of five apples (Honeycrisp, Cortland, Gala, Granny Smith and DunnoButPrettyGood) and one Pineapple Quince.

These we shredded into pomace into a tub.

From six full baskets we felt we would get sufficient juice to make three gallons. Well, really seven baskets -- we hit the IDunno tree twice, as its rather small apples promised flavor returns.

We hoisted the pomace and let gravity do its thing. This makes about half the juice you would get from an expensive press, but the chickens get the rich juice and make it into other useful stuff, some of which is eggs.

Never lift more than your old bedsheet will carry.

Note the conspicuous lack of yellowjackets for a change, which usually cover everything in sight on cider day. A low of 25F will do that. I have been known to cider in the garage, to get away from a mixture of wildfire smoke and yellowjackets. It turns out, if they are not protecting the nest, they are pretty mellow and I actually kind of missed them.

Beloved helped the Young Man pump the cider into his carboy.

It made the three gallons and then some. He added slices of Honeycrisp to add some excitement for the natural yeasts that live on the peelings.

There was enough left over for a quick bit of canning, which is how I roll.

The Young Man  then made an offering of the pomace to one of the medlar trees.

No, this isn't too close to the trunk. The hens will do the spreading.

Three days later I called him up. "Your carboy is thumping."

"No, really?? I thought it would take three weeks with the natural yeast."

"Maybe natural likes you? So, come over next week, we can watch bubbles."


A generous and trustworthy mind is like a spring breeze that warms and enlivens. The ten thousand beings encountering it thrive. -- Hong Zicheng

Work is play

Be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play. -- Alan Watts

Strictly speaking, Buddhist samu is communal labor toward the construction and maintenance of the monastery, zen center, or hermitage, or toward some helpful outcome in the wider community, such as building a bridge to help people cross a dangerous river. Samu is also dana, or giving. Working for family is generally held not to count. 

(A separate issue is work that is wage slavery or actual slavery; work that is good work is not compelled.)

In the course of a lay Ango in the midst of modern life, samu is wherever you find it, including working for yourself or family, as the mindfulness is paramount, just as with meditation. 

I was raised on the notion of self-sufficiency: "no work, no eat (this is also a Zen saying)," not merely as a form of selfishness, but, by means of doing my share, or sometimes more than my share, of the things that must be done, benefit society by at least not being a burden to it.

Which is great when you're thirty and bursting with energy, but by seventy, some of us are dead, some of us are immobile, some of us can't remember who we are, and nearly all of us are beginning to produce work that is beginning to be a bit lopsided. Where better for the elderly half-time hermit to do samu than within the family, where the effort can hopefully be appreciated without too much criticism of the outcome? But when called upon to do a thing, one does the best one can.

Raising or preparing food, with the object of feeding family but also producing gift baskets for others, is pretty obvious samu, and very much in line with monastic work. Dogen famously gave detailed instructions for the monastery head cook, but also for the head gardener. Masonry and carpentry are only mentioned by implication in most texts, as in "a monastery was constructed." 

Daughter bought a house in a very walkable section of town not too long ago, with the encouragement of the rest of us, to build her equity but also, as she put it, provide a place for the oldtimers (Beloved and me) to die of old age, and for her alter-abled brother to have somewhere to live if we all predecease him. She calls it, with some optimism, La Finca.

Stony Run Farm, where she was raised, is an acre plus with run-down buildings and will certainly be too much for us before very long -- in the best case we have less than ten years left here, and whoever takes it on after us will have their hands full. The house should be razed and replaced for safety's sake. None of the kids plans to undertake this. The acre was sold to us with the understanding that the house was a total loss, and it still is. On our budget, what kept us well and happy here was our somewhat haphazard homesteading skills, the most haphazard of which were carpentry, plumbing, and electrical.

I have been working (haphazardly, of course) at Daughter's to prepare us all for the transition. The little house is sound (for a change) but tiny, with scant storage. The lot, a fifth of an acre, came with grass and blackberries mainly, and this in a neighborhood where all the neighboring homes have beautiful landscapes -- achieved mostly by mounding up earth and planting on the humps -- the water table is right at the surface of the ground, at least in winter and spring.

I have the run of the yard, so I drew up a tiny sketch of what to do and am pretty much on schedule. 

The carport is now gone. Patio enclosed. Trees planted the first year are shown in green, those planted the third year are shown in red. Future rain barrels are blue. The greenhouse, chicken pen, and garden beds along the back (north) fence have not yet appeared

So, after getting the blackberries under control, I'm planting fruit and nut trees hither and yon, and preparing to do some raised bed gardening for the first time.

Making tree boxes at Stony Run

Siting tree boxes at La Finca (name of the new place) and planting fruit trees

I'll be in need of a new hermitage, of course, and am converting the old dark, leaky wooden tool shed for the purpose. It's nine by eleven, so actually has more floor space than Gogo-an. But the floor is asphalt. Much to do.

Lumber for my projects is courtesy of the rotten carport that had to come down.

Beds are constructed between tree boxes and are slowly filling up with compost.
Windows that have been lying around for decades are appearing in tool shed walls.
Steel shed in background is beyond repair, we think, and will be replaced with something.

Leftover paint from the house is used to match the house paint scheme. Salvaged door was too tall for the door frame so I simply suspended it from two two-by-fours nailed on.

I found a tiny Guanyin at a thrift for two bucks.
She has some fingers missing, so I have appointed her as shop steward.

The hut will be called Manzoku-an. Nobody likes the name but me, as they find it a tongue twister, but it suits me: Hut of Contentment. Contentment is thought dangerous in Zen, as there is a struggle-ish onward-and-upward aspect to practice, but things are already what they are, yes? When you're seventy, just sitting in the shade watching an apple drop can be pretty damned good practice. So Manzoku-an it is.

Currently, I'm enclosing the back "porch," at least the part where the concrete slab is, for increased storage and activity space. It's not really a room, as there's plenty of airflow at top and bottom, but more a hey-burglars-you-don't-see-what's-in here space. 

Plywood is up, scrap window installed, exterior primer applied (just ahead of a storm).

The entryway provides access to the meter reader (meter on wall off to the right) and has a door (also at right) leading into the house and another (shown here) leading into the "porch" room. Brown rafters are being painted gray, a laborious business.

Bright and airy, suitable for storage, shop work, and maybe cider making. It certainly helps that there was already a roof!

Exterior painted. Next, the remaining posts and rafters.

After all this, maybe a greenhouse/shadehouse behind Manzoku-an. Yah? Because, as some say, work is play.