Picks beans

 Join me for a walk around during a heat wave? Good. We can sit in the shade afterward.

This is the sunflower everyone says is thirteen feet tall. I think it's more like ten feet, which is impressive enough. It was very late forming a head, but it looks like that's going to happen.

Here's the path between the grapes and the compost bins, that goes from the house to the "field garden." It supposedly goes all the way to the apple trees by the street, but has been taken over by extremely aggressive winter squash, most of which have turned out to be spaghetti squash. Duck pools at right stay busy year round, but especially in the heat. I used to carry buckets of the rich brown or green water to all the fruit trees, but I suspect those days are behind me.

A bit of color. We keep a bit of basil growing near the cherry tomatoes and snack as we go by, wrapping a tomato in a basil leaf.

Larger tomatoes have been slow to change color this year, but a few 60F-or-better night lows have awakened them. 

Beloved is sitting in the swing in this image, but you'd never know it looking there from the gate this time of year. Our idea of privacy is to wrap the "courtyard" in useful greenery every year.

Greens are currently being used mostly to support the poultry, who have all run out of grass. I've made about a gallon of powdered solar-dried greens, which is more than we use, and put away the dehydrator for the year. 

I've begun harvesting potatoes; the crop is not so good, about a pail full per row -- but there are sixteen rows, so that's all right. Larger ones sit around for a day or two, then go into storage.

Smaller ones are washed and then go straight to the kitchen.

Green beans were hard to start but eventually we got some growing and they have been very welcome. Behind them, the lettuce and carrots are managing in the heat nicely.

:::

 I trust those who are only here for the garden pictures will know to tiptoe away at this point. 😅 But if you want a glimpse into what's going on with me, have a go at the remainder of this post.

In preparation for my participation in Treeleaf's 2020 Ango (beginning September 4th), I have been re-reading Shohaku Okumura's Realizing Genjokoan, an exegetical exposition of the most crucial chapter of Dogen's Shobogenzo. 

Okumura: 

I often use the example of a hand in speaking about emptiness; we can call it a hand or we can call it a collection of five fingers. As a collection of five fingers, each finger is independent and has a different shape and function. We cannot exchange the little finger with the thumb because each has its own function, shape, and unique way of being. A thumb cannot do precisely what a little finger does and a little finger cannot do what a thumb does. Each finger is truly independent. And yet, from another perspective as one hand, all five fingers function together, and there is no separation between them. When we see the fingers in this united way, there is really just one hand.

That's the task I have set myself for the ninety day retreat: to learn how to ride this bicycle. 

I'm neither fingers nor hand.

I'm both fingers and hand. 

I'm the middle between both and neither. 

"I" am clearly here in the garden as this bald-headed old nun, but am also only here in the sense that the entire garden, planet, solar system, galaxy, universe is present in the present: one being-ness. 

Words cannot convey all this, or even any of it, but as a priest I have the job of opening the treasure box of this being-ness to any who ask, so I try. 

When no one is asking, when I am alone, I train. Get up in the morning, sit zazen, eat, walk out to the garden and see how the potatoes and sunflowers and beans are getting on. Without ideation of any separate (permanent unchanging soul or identity) existence, hand reaches out, grasps basket, picks beans.

 

I've Become Apple Mary

As usual, the early August post is much the same as the mid-July post only everything is bigger. We'll spare you the giant zucchini photos and will just mention that, sliced small, they have sustained Beloved's chickens and ducks during the season of basically no grass.

Here's the obligatory rooftop view. Near the top, assorted apple varieties. Low production year. At right, the Gravenstein. It has made a lot of fruit this year, but ... well, more about that below. Lower right, grapes -- low production year. At bottom, sunflowers, vigorous growth, no heads yet. Left, tomatoes and onions, lots of foliage mostly. Center, kale, collards, beets, beans, lettuce (in August!), carrots, all doing well. Towards the back, sunchokes are looking productive, potatoes are all right but will only make about five tubers per plant, more green tomatoes, winter squash and pumpkins. The bulk of the winter squash will be spaghetti squash, not our favorite but they are the ones that sprouted best, so we planted out the entire flat.

Here is a closer look at the tomato/onion bed. The pots on the tomato supports are for keeping the supports from punching holes in Remay cloths which we have to spread over this bed when the temperatures exceed 90F. It's the most heat sensitive bed.

Lettuce is thriving in the shade of the beans.

A closer view of the sunchokes. I haven't looked in the ground yet to see how their roots, Jerusalem artichokes, are doing, but they're probably all right. Some of the stems are ten feet tall.

Potatoes are beginning to look a little peaked but are not yet ready to pull. Behind them, the vining squash have overrun everything in sight.

A look back toward the house. You can tell it was owner-built and not well maintained over the years. We are the third owners. We tried, but oh well. At least it was something we could afford and it has served us well.

Now about that Gravenstein. Some years it makes a full crop, and raises our expectations, only to drop all the apples just before ripening. This is one of those years. They fall, bruise, wait about 24 hours to ripen, then become hopeless in another 24 hours. We've learned to anticipate this and make all our applesauce and apple butter from this one tree. I roam about beneath it, apples bouncing off my head and shoulders, carrying a basket and a sharp Japanese sickle affixed to a longish hazel stick. With the sickle I impale acceptable-looking apples, then lift and rap the sickle against the basket handle, so that the apple transfers itself to the basket. All in lieu of bending over, y'see. Then it's off to the potting shed to peel, core and slice, then process into apple butter in the big crock pot.

 

Oops, an end slice has a peeling -- I'll fish it out and add it to the leavings, which will go to the chicken yard and vanish quickly.

My supply of Mason jar lids is a bit short this year, and we can't find any at the suppliers. So to conserve them we're saucing into quart jars instead of the usual half pints. We're going to be looking at some serious applesauce recipes this winter, I think.

:::

I've been to the dentist for some emergency care -- now, instead of later, in case the pandemic gets worse. They wore the best PPE they could get, which wasn't much, so I'm isolated from the family for a week. After apple buttering, gardening, and cutting up wood, I retire from the heat of the day into the hut, where I'm living at the moment.

Here, in a space eight feet by ten,  I have plenty to eat and drink, Internet access, and a few good books. A dear friend has sent me a copy of The First Free Women: Poems of the Early Buddhist Nuns. It's a new translation, in partial paraphrasis, of the Therigatha, or Gathas of the Elder Nuns, done into English by Matty Weingast. These gathas were written in the time of Buddha, twenty-six hundred years ago. I've just read:

One

moment 

gives birth

to the

next.

What we do is who we become.

What we do is who we become ...

Well.

I guess I've become Apple Mary.