The Kitchen Garden Novice Croaks

The other day during a worship service we were watching a video of Esther Abraham-Hicks, and to say the least, I became distracted. (We've already established that I have the attention span of my puppy, so let's just leave it at that.) It wasn't that she didn't have a powerful insight to share. But she kept using the word "croak," for dying. She was making light of death, pointing out that "croaking" is not a bad thing in that it returns our essential selves to the Source from which we came. But all I could think of was all of the outlandish euphemisms we resort to when we speak of death.

My mind wandered off to an old Monty Python sketch called "The Dead Parrot." For those of you who've never seen this comedy, you can still catch it on YouTube. The skit still holds up today. In it, John Cleese goes on a rant, listing every euphemism he can think of to describe a dead parrot, sold to him by a disreputable pet store owner.  He lists quite a few. But it seems to me, there are a number he overlooked. Here in no particular order are some that popped to the top of my wandering imagination.

For the pirate lovers we have:
     "He took a long walk off a short plank." Rather self-explanatory, wouldn't you agree?
     "He sleeps with the fishes," (also used by Mario Puzo in The Godfather to describe Luca Brasi,) and
      "They rest in Davy Jones' Locker." (Did you know that the name Davy Jones comes from the term Devil Jonah--a reference to the dark angel God sicced on Jonah until his shipmates threw him overboard?) Arrrggghhh! Where was I?

Of the recently deceased archeologist we might say:
     "She lies entombed." or
     "He's become extinct."

For the belly-up bulldozer driver we could say:
     "He's taking a dirt nap."

Might we not refer to a mortified motorcross racer as having
    "bit the dust?" (Okay. Yes, I know that was a Wild West shoot-out term.) But we might also say:
    "He made the big jump."

Of a late agriculturalist might we not say:
     "He bought the farm," ? (Actually this euphemism is thought to have originated with WWI soldiers whose death insurance benefits were used to pay off the family homestead mortgages.)

Of the departed milkmaid shouldn't we report:
     "She kicked the bucket?" (This probably alludes to hanging oneself, but everytime I hear this phrase it connects itself in my pea brain to "crying over spilled milk." Hmm...

For the resting-at-peace airline pilot might we say:
     "He bought a one-way ticket," or perhaps:
     "He's gone off to that big hangar in the sky,"?

For the deceased real estate agent we might say:
     "She's selling pine condos."

For the passed on hotel desk clerk we might say:
     "He's checked out--permanently."

Couldn't we say of the lifeless florist:
     "She's pushing up daisies."?

Of the late, great Julia Childs might we not say,
     "She's cooled to room temperature,"?

And, last but not least, for one brown-thumbed Kitchen Garden Novice, who kills off everything she plants, I'm sure they'll someday observe,
     "She's gone into the fertilizer business."

And Now for Something Totally Different: The Ghost of Curmudgeons Past

"Cheer up--things could always be worse!"

Isn't that the dumbest advice you've ever heard? It draws on your imagination to conjure up the most depraved of scenarios so that you might feel better about "what is." I know that. And yet, every once in awhile I find myself falling into that old pattern of thought.

In my line of work, we are routinely occasionally required to deal with the classic curmudgeon. (Can you tell that there have been a number of those lately?) Curmudgeon is such a good word. It even sounds so...well... curmudgeonly. Anyway, I happened to be in the office on my day off this week (first mistake), when I heard my boss setting up an appointment with "The Ghost of Curmudgeons Past." This individual had made my life miserable a year ago. She had an issue with our doctor, and since I just happened to be standing in the way, she took it out on me. She and her husband made a scene, pitched a fit, called me names and totally denigrated me to my district manager who happened to be in the office that day. He, in typical middle management mode, schmoozed them, rewarding them for behaving badly. I still get worked up just thinking about it.

Breathe...let it go...breathe in...breathe out.

Anyhow, flash forward eighteen months, and here was my boss, setting up an appointment with Lady MacBeth. I was outraged! Surely she would come back and make my life miserable once again!

And then...after several hours of personal turmoil...my inner Christ whispered to me. Have you forgotten who you are?

Almost instantly I was relieved. I realized that I was letting my false sense of ego define who I was. When I let go of ego, I could make a choice. Did I want to be a victim to another of God's children? Or did I want to be a willing servant to her? Sounds a bit the same, doesn't it? It's a subtle distinction. But oh, the difference.

The irony is that I'd bolstered myself to be the most humble, gracious individual the Ghost of Curmudgeons Past had ever encountered. And...she cancelled.

Perhaps the Universe just sent the student a practical exam. I like to think that I passed, at least this time.

The Kitchen Garden Novice's Chagrin

I am convinced the Universe is mocking me. You be the judge.

I took a weekend trip to visit my daughter, another reluctant convert to the vegetarian life choice. Our plan was for a marathon culinary session to teach her the basics of cooking. I gathered my food processor, tongs, peelers, oils, vinegars, and spices. I almost packed one of my basil plants for her, but...since I had just harvested the top layer of leaves for lasagna, I decided against it. My puny little basil was hardly an impressive gift.

Our first stop was at the local farmers' market. Lots of great produce, and in the first booth I spotted a familiar bit of greenery among the tomato plants. Let me say here, the resemblance to my puny basil buds at home extended only to the shape and color of the leaves. This fragrant plant was the size of a growing teenager next to my baby buds.

"Sweetie, would you like a basil plant?"

That was the beginning of a purchase never meant to come home with us. Five booths later at the market, I realized I had laid the basil pot at one of our stops and walked off without it. So we backtracked to retrieve the orphaned plant. There it set, four stops back. No matter. We had scored most of the produce for our cookathon and were heading home, anyway. We just needed one quick stop at Trader Joe's for whole-grain pasta.

And there in the entrance to Trader Joe's we spotted them--basil plants so large they made my daughter's little orphaned herb look like a dwarf. They were like basil on steroids. How did they do that? I eyed the tags suspiciously. Yep, they were organically grown, and...50 cents cheaper than the plant I'd picked up at the farmers' market.

"Gee, Mom, guess you should have waited, huh?" my daughter observed.

We spent the rest of the day peeling, shredding, sauteing, seasoning, and baking--a joyous celebration of cookery. Somewhere amidst all that activity we contemplated the best place for the junior basil plant. It temporarily found a spot on the floor in front of the dining-nook windows.

Sunday morning, the realtor called to say she was in the neighborhood and would be stopping by--in twenty minutes! Yikes! Frantic clean-up ensued. In the melee, my daughter kicked over Basil Jr. and had to sweep up dirt. It was an omen.

The realtor arrived with a house warming gift. Can you guess what it was? That's right. One of Trader Joe's Incredible Hulk-sized basil plants. "I'm taking Basil Jr. home with me," I sniffed.

But it never happened. In my scurry to pack up the car for the ride home, Basil Jr. was forgotten. It's probably just as well. I'd hate to give my Baby Basil an inferiority complex. Then again, it might have given him someone to look up to.

So you tell me. Is the Universe mocking me? I think the joke is on me. Ha..ha..ha.

The Kitchen Garden Novice Evaluates

It's been ninety days since this Kitchen Garden Novice began her experiment in cultivation. Perhaps it is time to review. Here, in no particular order, are ten things I've learned about kitchen herb gardening.

Gleaning is a mercy pitch from the Universe. When I was a child, I was a terrible athlete. I was the kid everyone gave four strikes when she got up to bat. Embarrassing, huh? But if you're that kid, and you manage to connect with a hit, it no longer matters that it was on the fourth strike. If you have to glean your rosemary from the cactus bed, so be it. The Universe is sending you a slow pitch.

Children are a hazard to controlled agronomy. Planting with my granddaughters might have been an inspired notion, but they taught me a bit about scattered seed and divine plans.

Thyme slips by as quickly as...time. You can never have too much thyme. It sprouts in the blink of an eye, and that tender herb is gone just as quickly. Once it is gone, you can never get it back.

Critters like plants. That includes both bugs and puppies. Guard your herbs well. You are not the only foodie in the Universe.

I still have a brown thumb. Forget all of my good intentions and lofty ideals. It kills me that I can over nurture and/or neglect my sprouts to death when Mother Nature produces better produce with no (apparent) effort at all.

Sowing is more fun than nurturing. Sowing is a bit like giving birth. We can see all the promise and hope for our babies and none of the hard work required to raise them to maturity.

Over tending is just as bad as neglect. If you handle young seedlings before they have developed their own inner strength, they will never learn to find the sun on their own.

Harvesting is worth the wait. Nothing tastes as sweet as that first sprig of basil or oregano. The flavor is made that much more savory for the wait.

Introspection is what happens while you wait. I've probably grown more in this process than any of my little plants. (Actually there are those who would say I've gone to seed.)

No one really needs cilantro. Okay, so I threw that one in just to finish with a full ten. But since I've had so little luck cultivating cilantro, let's just say, who needs it, anyway?  True--it's hard to imagine a great salsa without it, but then there's always Whole Foods, right?

The Kitchen Garden Novice Gleans

Lookee what I found on my walk today! The bones of long dead cacti are fairly common here in the Southwest, but totally unexpected where I spotted it. The skeleton lay on the sidewalk in front of our local grade school. There are no cacti in the vicinity, for the obvious reasons. Schools don't usually landscape with sharp, thorny plants. "Can you say 'liability,' boys and girls?"

I presume this honeycombed carcass was carried and discarded by a child on the way to school. Cactus bones such as these are used in quite a few neighborhood yards as ornamental offerings to Mother Nature.

But to find it on the sidewalk--it positively screamed to me, "TAKE ME HOME!"

First let me say that I am not a collector. I seldom feel the need to gather treasures, just to take them home. For example, on one of my walks, I spotted an amputated leg from some poor Barbie doll. Day after day, I took the same route, just to see if Barbie's missing limb was still there. Never did I feel the compulsion to pick it up and bring it home, even though my writer's whimsy conjured all sorts of imagined scenarios for its dismemberment. But I digress...

Some might call me a scavenger. I prefer to view it as gleaning. Sounds so much more benevolent, doesn't it?  And gleaning has served me well. When that darn rosemary refused to germinate in my kitchen garden, the Universe sent me sprouts in my old rosemary beds to glean. It would have been an offense to Mother Nature not to do so. But this cactus skeleton could serve no real purpose for me, could it? And to call this gleaning would require that I had some purpose or plan for carrying it home. The first two exercises in A Course in Miracles assert that nothing we encounter has any meaning other than that which we attribute to it. Was I reading too much into my serendipitous discovery? Probably. But I have to believe that if the Universe led me to notice that skeleton, it intended it to have some meaning for me. So I guess I'll just have to take an "F" in Miracles 101. 

The cactus skeleton came home with me. Stay tuned...

Resurrection Moment

A long, dismal week
filled with appointments, obligations, responsibilities.
When did life become so mundane?

I drag my weary body out for a walk.
Exercise is good for the soul.
But even my route seems routine--
      each step another obligation,
      like one more thing to cross off my list as "done."
      Mile one: check.
      Mile two: check.

And then...

I crest the hill, and turn the bend, out of breath.
Is it the steep incline or eager anticipation
     that quickens my pulse?
Before me, a panorama unfolds--
     eons old, yet ever new.

Sunlight dances on yellow brittlebush,
mesquite and palm trees
lining the road, revelers at a parade.
Black pavement winds to
       blue waters,
          pastel desert,
             shadowy mountains,
       azure skies.

Like Lazarus, stumbling from the grave,
I awaken and weep with joy,
   reborn,
       reunited with the Source from which I came.

Psalm 118: 24   This is the day the Lord has made;
                                let us rejoice and be glad in it.
      

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