We come back to a simple technique which combines factors that we have used before. The sense of Presence, brought forefront in many ways through our practice, is one aspect or feature of this technique. The heart another. The fresh factor is purposeful non-modification. Letting smooth and unfabricated BE unfabricated.
Just like an egg yolk and its albumen.
These tomato seeds display a primordial form which Mother Earth invented and then has used countless times, for myriad and diverse life forms. Clearly, the “egg” is an excellent way to bring forward the next generation.
It has been wondered if early life forms were similar: a primitive center of cognition and sensation floating within a type of egg-sack, itself floating in the first oceans.
In the garden and in Nature around here, several renditions of this design are seen. Chinese Elms (now naturalized to the area) put out millions of circular white paper shapes with a single, tiny black seed at the center. Mountain Spinach, orache, does the same but a hundred or so rather than millions.
When harvesting cucumber seeds, one sees that each single seed in the rows of seeds is caressed in gelatin. As the seeds dry for storage, some of the gelatin is subsumed back into the seed and the rest evaporates. Summer squash and zucchini seeds are similar. Winter squashes and pumpkins, however, don’t look like they have a “sack” of nutrients, yet when the seeds are dried, each has a thin coat of dried film, like dried egg white.
But, as I harvest seeds each season, it is the tomato seeds that make me giggle. Each a perfect egg; their “albumen” the color of the tomato juice and flesh of the tomato.
Once Mother Nature and Mother Earth landed on this design, it was replicated; and to this day, all fish, amphibians, reptiles, and birds lay eggs. All insects lay eggs. Plus, for every mammal, including humans, the egg design is used. In all of these cases, the eggs lay infertile until sperm activates gestation. But for plants, the so-called male and female exchange – called pollination – is what creates the seed.
As you garden or stroll in Nature, notice the primordial designs. We are surrounded by such wonders!
The keepers and will-grow-again-ers from this year’s play in the garden are:
Rattlesnake Pole Beans: sweet taste and delicate texture up to five inches long. After that, pickle them or let them go to seed. (which they are doing now)
Yellow Cauliflower: the photo says it all.
However, by using seeds harvested from those fruits, the next season is bountiful. I think the altitude is the issue the first season. The mother plants were grown at more common altitudes. Yet, once seasoned, the second year plants usually excel.Non-returners
Grown each season because they are just soooo good
Japanese cucumber: sweet taste, burpless, and long. This is trellis variety whose shape is similar to an English cuke, though the Japanese has more ridges and is 8-9 in. long rather than 12. My favorite way to eat them, other than plain as a side veggie, is cubed with cubed cherry tomatoes (all colors), some feta, little olive oil, and squeeze of lemon juice. Finely chopped parsley, too, if its in the garden.
Purple Bush beans: Beautiful flowers, compact plant, abundant production. Delicious, delicate string bean. Easy to harvest seeds. The trick is to stop picking them and let them go to seed!
Winter Squashes:
Diversity is the key! Six to nine varieties of tomatoes, six or so winter squashes, a variety of greens and of lettuces, bush and climbing cucumbers, same for beans. Next year’s experiment will be Fava Beans for early crop and Scarlet Runner Beans on the trellis.
Happy Harvest!
The vibe is palpable. Textured and layered. Densified tingles of Mother Earth’s magnetic field ripple through feet adorned only with socks, then up through the body. And an endless variety of textures greet one.
The outside of Purple bush beans are slender, smooth and graceful. They are a long-time favorite. Rattlesnake pole beans (green, long beans with purple striations) seem to initiate an ever-so slight additional texture, kind of like hands that need a little cream. Then the Kentucky blue pole beans (classic green beans) have the outer texture of really fine-grain sand paper. Yellow bush beans are similar. Then, the Cranberry bush bean comes in. The pod is rougher, tougher, and more stout. They are all string beans, though Rattlesnake and Cranberry can be grown for shelling and dried beans. But, goodness gracious, the textures!
A garden is a sensorial delight! A heaven world for pollinators, worms and underground creature, for devas and other ethereal beings, as well as the human beings that play in this display of emptiness and form.
Emptiness is the mother of all the shapes, textures, scents, herbs and produce. Emptiness is the womb which births food as medicine and herbs to address almost all ills. Emptiness brings forward bright red berries from green leaves, and thorns. Beauty, intimacy, joy, a sense of belonging, of being grounded, embraced, and welcomed are my morning repast and twilight tantra – every day. Woven. From magnetic field to the different softnesses of flower petals, the nowness of a butterfly – defying gravity unto itself – landing on a goji berry flower, so small as to almost not be seen. Emptiness.
The trees parade abundance too! Shapes and types of leaves, differing color tones, spikes on one tree, and the conversations of the Aspens in the wind. Emptiness is cornucopia, diversity, abundance; and yet so terribly misunderstood if its only meaning is void. Void of. Naught. Not.
Early on, Romans and then Christian missionaries, both steeped in philosophies of dominance, of human beings being flawed from the get-go and of rectification or atonement necessary for this, translated sunyata (Sanskrit) as emptiness as in a complete lack. Null. Void and void of. The yes/and of sunyata was totally incomprehensible to them. It continues to be in various circles and conversations.
Yes, lack. As in lacking of glommed-on fabrications of personal mind. Lacking projections that the me casts onto everything.
Yes, void. Just as the space in front of one’s face is void, will always be, and has always been. And, because of this quality, emptiness provides and is the matrix from which all can come. Endless variations, textures, colors, experiences, awakenings.
Sunya, the root word, indicates zero; as in it was not raining, now it is. There were zero buildings or parking lots on such and such meadow, now there are. There were domiciles inhabited by people, now they are not; or now the domicile has returned to the Earth from which it came.
Even as a contemplation or in meditation, emptiness is never a lack. The experience is unmistakenly vibrant, clear, blissful and peaceful all at the same time. No lack there!
So, as the garden enters Autumn phase, its abundance might be more appealing to humans but abundance has never been absent. In every dimension relatedness has invited all beings. Gardening is a lot of work; and it is intimate presence. Every moment. From seed starting to seed gathering; from first taste to last munch. From soil, to compost pile, and back to ground again.
Hand on the heart. So simple.
We reflect upon that and meditate. Deep.
