Randall brought me these geodes yesterday. He has had to confront ‘poachers’ on his land looking for these monsters. They are each about the size of a human head. Inside each there will be a treasure cave of crystals. What to do?1) Allow the imagination free play?2) Break them open to reveal their hidden beauty?Nature loves…
I woke with my life cloaked in mist. Pneumonia in its last stages of cling. I buttoned up and walked up to the lakes, huffing and puffing, hoping to watch the mist rise over the water and my mood with it. I came late - the mist had lifted. The cats asked to be caressed…
Sarah Childress made this film at Yellow Bird last year.Starring ‘Jonathan’ as the man. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjr_XoaoaCU&feature=youtu.be
Hannah came two weeks ago and left today for her next wwoofing stop, an apiary in N Carolina. She rescued the garden from my neglect, and finished planting seeds. Among other things. Here she is pressure washing the oak boards I’m cutting up into wedges to make a giant round bench for the lake firepit.…
This evening Yellow Bird really delivered. Everything was fresh from the garden, except the olive oil they were fried in. Green beansYellow cherry tomatoes (Coyote)Red tomatoes (Russian)Blue potatoes (Peruvian ?)BasilZucchini (half charred) So many colors - glad I wasn’t eating in the dark. You can almost feel the anti-oxidants (e.g. anthocyanins in the blue pots)…
This is a helpful article! http://www.touchingstone.com/Wabi_Sabi.html Tsukubai silver-gelatin print ©Tim Wong A Crow’s Caw silver-gelatin print ©Tim Wong Mystic silver-gelatin print ©Tim Wong
Mulberry by the Airstream Mulberry fruit I have tried planting pears, peaches, nectarines, apples, plums, and I have never had a single fruit off any of them. One nectarine survives, bent and crippled, and all its fruit end up as dried black mummified corpses. All the others have been ravaged by deer and especially goats.…
Does one need to sit in order to meditate? No. Even within Zen there is ‘walking meditation’. But it raises the question of what specifically is the point of sitting. And whether its goals could be achieved in another way, perhaps even more effectively. What are its goals? Undoubtedly there are many opinions here, but…
One view - Wabi-Sabi is an aesthetic: “Wabi-sabi is the quintessential Japanese aesthetic. It is a beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete. It is a beauty of things modest and humble. It is a beauty of things unconventional… It is also two separate words, with related but different meanings. “Wabi” is the kind of…
Woke up to a turkey family hanging out by the garden - two adults and nine chicks. The very slightest squeak from my screen door and they made a very slow but deliberate beeline for the trees. Physiologically there is doubtless a connection between these wild creatures that welcomed American colonists in the 17th century,…
Sox is slowly learning not to jump up. She much prefers to have her tummy scratched. Afterwards she sometimes forgets about jumping up, sometimes tries to fit that in too. She is part Blue Heeler, part Great Pyrenees, part Tennessee farm dog (=?), with (it has been suggested) some Belgian Malinois mixed in somewhere. Belgian…
Zen Temple? Paradise Garden? Meditation Retreat? Healing Center? Wildlife Refuge? Art Farm? Sculpture Park? All of the above? What could YB be? Friends from Green Gulch Farm (San Francisco) came by to advise! This is the kind of building they have there. We marked out possible sites for a zendo (meditation hall), plus dining room…