And Now for Something Totally Different: Crossing Over

It began as one frantically stressful day. The company I work for (in its usual stroke of marketing genius) had broken ads for two different sales, in two different ad slicks running simultaneously with another promotion we had already been offering. Get the picture? This is a small community with a huge demographic of seniors on fixed incomes. Mix that in with a generous influx of winter snowbirds (who have nothing better to do), and the shoppers come out in droves.

The company had recently run a promotion where "your age is your discount," and I was obliged to give product to a 100-year-old man. Can you say "corporate stupidity," boys and girls? But I digress...

For six hours I detailed the parameters and exclusions of each promotion trying to determine the customers' best deals. My fingers flew and my calculator fairly smoked with percentages and computations.

"The ad doesn't say that," I heard often.

"That's why it says 'see associate for details,'" I countered repeatedly.

"Seems like bait-and-switch to me," a few grumbled.

After six breakless hours of this, I was ready for a tall glass of wine and Jimmy Buffett singing about "one particular harbor." Don't get me wrong--I am the consummate, glass-half-full kind of gal, and an extreme extrovert. But six hours of smiling and letting comments roll off my shoulders had taken its toll. When my relief coworker arrived at 4:00, I fled. All I wanted was to kick off my shoes and escape with Jimmy.

But I had to stop for that gallon of milk at the local big box store. And as I cruised by the dairy cases, I realized they had yogurt on special. Double coup--I just happened to have a coupon for 50 cents off six yogurts. So I picked up a case of eight, feeling pretty smug. That is, until I got to the checkout.

"This coupon isn't good on the cases," declared the surly checkout clerk.

"Why not?" I countered.

"It only shows the individual serving cups on the coupon," she argued.

"I don't see where it says that anywhere."

She quickly finished the transaction, giving me the brush-off, and I slunk to the door with my tail between my legs.

I sat in the car, replaying the scene in my mind. Shoulda told her I didn't want the damn yogurt. Shoulda asked to speak to a manager.

The music on the radio teased at my consciousness. What was that tune? It was something familiar I'd heard many times before, but in another lifetime. 70's? 80's? ...Pink Floyd! That was it...yeah..."Money...it's a crime...share it fairly...but don't take a slice from my pie." The song was from their 1973 album, The Dark Side of the Moon.

And then it hit me--I had crossed over to "The Dark Side." I had become one of--them! I was one of the haggling, penny pinching consumers I had been combating all day. When had it happened? What was that pivotal moment that had driven me over the line to negativity?

Sometimes, if you're really listening, the Universe sends you a little wake-up call. That's my theory and I'm stickin' to it.

Be Careful What You Wish For

Do you think I've been obsessing a bit about this little herb garden? Yesterday I would have said "no." But when my kitchen garden starts to intrude on my dream life, you have to wonder.

If "a dream is a wish your heart makes," as the song goes, let's just say that last night I made one doozy of a wish. I dreamed that my little pods of reticent rosemary finally sprang to life. And how! In the dream, I awoke to the smell of coffee burning in the kitchen and the sound of my puppy's whimpers. I followed her yelps into the kitchen. What I found there was Little Shop of Horror-esque.

The four tiny rosemary pods had taken over the entire kitchen. The lid to the starter hot house lay on the floor, crushed by a heavy blanket of shrubbery. All the other herb sprouts had died, choked by the overgrowth of the rosemary. Rosemary climbed and hung everywhere. Like kudzu, it smothered the walls, the appliances, the china hutch. The air in the room was sauna-thick with the moist, cloying scent of rosemary. A snakelike vine wound its way around the foot of the kitchen table, hog-tying my puppy to one of the chair legs. A tapping patter drew my eyes up to the ceiling which had morphed into a clear, plastic canopy. The kitchen was now an apocalyptic greenhouse, and the rosemary was straining to crack through the roof.

At that point, I awoke for real--(thank God!) CoCo was barking to get out of her kennel and a light rain was tapping on the skylight of our bathroom.

Had my herb garden taken over the kitchen overnight? Hardly. The docile little rosemary sprouts poked shyly through the soil pods. The other herbs looked equally benign. Over a cup of coffee, I relayed the dream to my husband and together we analyzed it. "Think I'm too fixated on my seed pods?" I asked.

"Naw. Not you," he teased.

Yeah. Maybe I need to look for another project or two to occupy my time (and subconcious.) In the meantime, I think I'll repot some of the larger sprouts away from the rosemary. As soon as possible. You can never be too careful.

The Kitchen Garden Novice

The Kitchen Garden Novice Sprouts

Okay, so it's been one week since my last post. And what do I have to show for that week? Well it's been a week of lessons learned. One of the things I've learned is that you can't rush nature.

Everyday, I've whispered to my tiny herbs and to my reluctant rosemary seeds. True. At times I've caught myself looking over my shoulder to make sure no one is watching me talking to plants. Then I have reminded myself that if nothing else the carbon dioxide I exhaled was good for my babies. I have fought the urge to start transplanting the basil and oregano which sprouted first and definitely seem the heartiest. I contemplated reseeding some rosemary. After all it has been almost three weeks since this experiment began.

In the meantime, I have worked on focusing on the now. But it's so difficult! What is the point of planting seeds if you are not looking to the possibility of them germinating and sprouting? That's not finding joy in the "now." That's hoping for joy in the future.

In my exercise of the power of now, I have been taking daily walks with the dog. I can learn a lot from my dog. Some would say she has a poor attention span. But, she is so focused on the joy of the moment! She spies a rabbit, and strains to give chase. We encounter another walker and she is sure that he is there to personally greet her. A leaf takes flight and she springs to pounce upon it. There is no worry of "Where will my next meal come from?" or "What will we do when this walk is over?"

Yes, in my next life, I think I need to come back as a dog. I could use a shorter attention span. Maybe then I could find more joy in the moment.

And just when I was sure that I would never learn the lessons of "now," it happened. Today, I came home from our walk and checked my little Zen garden. Two tiny rosemary sprouts have poked their heads above the soil! I am giddy. I couldn't be more proud if I had given birth to these little herbs myself.

So what have I learned? For the moment, it is enough to be pleased with where I am. I don't have to concentrate on making plans for transplanting and repotting. I am content. I am.

Consider the lilies of the field. They neither labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how
God clothes the grass of the field...how much more will God clothe you...Luke 12:27

That Reluctant Rosemary

That darn rosemary! Who would have thought rosemary would be so hard to start from seed? We had rosemary for several years on our desert terrace and it didn't seem like anything could kill it. But try to get it to germinate from seed--that's another story.

All my little herb pods are blissfully sprouting, except for the rosemary. And I'll be darned if I will surrender defeat over four reluctant pods. Should I try talking to them? There are people who do that, I'm sure. I've always thought that bordered on lunacy, but then...maybe that's why I have never been able to boast of a green thumb.

Hmm...I wonder if this is crop karma. After all, we had some perfectly hearty rosemary growing off that terrace before my husband, the bonsai master, decided to yank it all up and replant the plot with cactus. I was not responsible for that rosemary's removal; but I confess I did little to stop its demise. In my husband's defense, I must admit those bushes were less than endearing. Although their fragrance was intoxicating, the plants drew bees to our pool area by the swarm. And it was a rather headstrong shrub, hardly neat or trainable.

Still...it probably didn't deserve to be cast aside in such a cavalier manner. Somewhere in the cosmic universe is that discarded rosemary whispering to my herb seeds? "Don't sprout for her. She's fickle. She'll only tire of you and throw you away."

So...I'm off to whisper words of encouragement to my reluctant seed pods. It couldn't hurt.

The Kitchen Garden Novice

Wax On/Wax Off

A week of the kitchen garden experiment and this novice has yet to feel a moment of deep satisfaction. "Just what did you expect?" you might ask.

I confess that I did anticipate a bit of enlightenment by now. What could produce more joy and energy than co-creating with nature? But since I'm still awaiting that epiphany, and since I must resist the urge to poke about in my fragile seed pods, I guess I'll clean carpets. We have, after all, established that I am more of a "human doing" than a "human being." More later...


Two and half hours of carpet shampooing and it's time to take a break. I have been rereading (and restruggling) with Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now. Tolle says that true enlightment happens only when we are able to disconnect our concious thought patterns, the noise inside our heads, from our real nature--the Being within. He states that when we are able to find peace and joy in the mundane, only then have we reached enlightenment. Apparently I'm not there yet. Two hours of focusing on the Now, emptying my mind of nothing but the strokes of the carpet steamer, and I have nothing to show for it but carpal tunnel.

I tried the techniques I'd learned, listening to my own breathing as I worked. The steady "inhale/ exhale." But my mind wandered. Even when I jerked it back to the task at hand, I could not stay in the present. I found myself thinking about how great my carpets were going to look after I'd finished. I couldn't help remember that film, The Karate Kid...you know the scene where Daniel comes to Mr. Miyagi to learn karate and the master sets him to washing cars.

The student still has much to learn. And so it is with my little Zen garden. As I wait for the sprouts to take root and grow, I fight the desire to focus on the results. Is it not enough to take joy in the sprouts as they are right now? Wax on/wax off.

The Kitchen Garden Novice

The Kitchen Garden Sprouts

Operation Kitchen Garden..Day 6: We have lift off!


Eight of the little seed pods have sprouted. Only the dill and the rosemary remain reticent. Correction: one tiny bud has appeared in the dill pods, but I believe it is a rogue sprout from the neighboring cilantro pods. It looks suspiciously like the buds next door. Perhaps it is a spy doing reconnaissance for greener pastures for its fellow cilantro sprouts. Is the cilantro plotting a coup? Testing a strategy to expand its territorial borders?


What to do next? Should I tip the greenhouse lid? Should I water? The temptation to meddle is palpable. And there is a fine line between nurture and nagging. Just ask my kids.

No. I shall resist the urge to tamper with nature. At least for another day....

The Kitchen Garden Novice

The Kitchen Garden Novice Waits

Day four of my agro-experiment. I'm beginning to realize that seed-starting is not a dynamic activity. Once you bury the seeds in the pods it becomes a whole lot of waiting...and waiting... It's a bit like going fishing, and I never had the patience for that, either.

On day two, I tamped down a few of the seeds that had not been quite buried in the wet soil. On day three, I lifted the small greenhouse cover to discover something that looked suspiciously like mold forming on one of the starter pellets. I fluffed the peat moss a bit. This waiting for germination was going to kill me. And the seed packets predicted that the least time it might take for me to see any sprouts was 7-10 days. On day three, I had to resist the urge to poke about in the soil. If God created the earth in 7 days, surely I could wait a week. But then, God had instant gratification. I did not.

I have always been a result oriented activist--more a "human doing" than a "human being." Perhaps while I wait, it would be wise to review what motivated this project.

In the past year I had acquired a semi-vegetarian lifestyle, a regimen that, although healthy, could be at times a bit bland and boring. Then I discovered that spices were a god-send. I was adding jars of coriander, cumin, and basil to my weekly shopping lists. I tried purchasing fresh herbs, and found that they were twice as aromatic and flavorful. But I seldom used my entire purchase before the herbs began to sour. And they were very expensive. So were the spices in those little jars, but at least they didn't spoil.

Then, several weeks ago, a friend at church treated us all to home-grown butternut squash she had harvested from her yard in Oregon. She talked of the satisfaction of turning her entire lawn into a vegetable garden (much, I'm sure, to the bafflement of her neighbors.) It was an act of sustainability and co-creation. And the tangible fruits of her labor were absolutely delectable. I was inspired. I was transformed. I was...okay so I was naive.

I was not so foolish to believe that I could grow an entire vegetable garden in the rocky soil of Arizona, but surely I could start a simple herb garden on my kitchen windowsill. Couldn't I?

And so I wait. In the meantime, I shall blog.