Dirty hands

Face your fears head on, we have all heard this one before. I have many fears that I have kept wrapped up so tightly packaged away for no one to see and surely for me to ignore. One is writing and another one is gardening. So here I am doing both "facing my fears". I would never of thought that one year ago I would meet someone so special that I would drop my guard and open myself up so freely. Thanks Michael.

To create change powerfully, one must powerfully change. This change only occurs when you braid together the four human dimensions of your physical self, emotional self, mental self and spiritual self. This is the tapestry of life.

Are you wondering yet why I am mentioning the four human dimensions of life yet in a blog about gardening?

Getting my hands dirty (as my mother would say) takes all four human dimensions of self and life.

Physical self - double digging (need I say more)
Emotional self - waiting and watching for your new babies to peak through the ground
Mental self - Oh my! will anything grow, do I have the right PH, will the worms like their new home and this one can go on and on
Spiritual self - putting your hands in the dirt, walking in the paths with the sun sitting and just yesterday seeing the new babies sprout up.

I believe the journey into the self requires that we learn to work with our fears and believe in ourselves, we can grow just as our seedlings are growing.

lisa, for a barefoot garden

Bird on a wire

The hummingbirds are here. We put up three feeders, although are a little embarrassed about the red food coloring in the supposed "nectar". Anyone know of good hummingbird juice that has a natural red?

Watched them when resting between digs. Three things I haven't really noticed as much before. They stop and rest a lot. They sing (or talk). And they dart up and hover directly over the center of the garden and then look north, east, south, west as if surveying the area before heading up to the top branches of a larger border tree.

Today was a phenomenal day. Started out early morning with one planted bed, one prepared, and one in the middle of digging. By day end three planted. AND THEN...we discovered our corn, beets and peas had all sprouted. Strong (inch tall), healthy, happy sprouts. Will wax philosophical about this soon. Too tired.

Perhaps a pictorial post.

ps...Lisa says she is going to post soon.

michael, from a barefoot garden

Bed and breakfast

The worms have landed! One small squirm for worms, one giant leap for a barefoot garden.

Such great guests. They stay in bed all day under the covers. You don't actually even have to feed them. They eat all sorts of random shit on their own. They clean up their own room (bed). They don't play loud music. Don't complain. Don't poop in the toilet. And don't make a lot of noise when having sex. Don't drink (alcohol, that is). And don't use credit cards.

Could be worse!

Arrived in our mailbox yesterday. I thought it would be a good sized box for 250 live worms. No. Smallest USPS mailing box, and in a cute little Uncle Jim's worm bag. They are shipped in bone dry peat to absorb all the moisture during mailing. Keeps them from freezing in winter and getting too hot in summer. They loose 70% of their body weight in the few days of transit, but bounce back to full size in a couple of days.

The guy at Common Ground in Palo Alto was convinced they would all be dead on arrival. "Why are you getting Red Wrigglers from Pennsylvania?" Well, I kinda dig East Coast people. A bit caustic and opinionated from time to time, but solid folks. Here's a rule: Don't take too seriously anything "religious" organic folks say. If the worms were going to die in transit, how does Uncle Jim's Worm Farm stay in business?

For that matter, don't take ANYONE "religious" too seriously, in my book. Too dogmatic, not so fun, never have a REAL open discussion, and rarely speak from direct experience (just from book learning).

So, 250 worms. I thought I was going to have to poke holes, put some water in and place them all in one by one. Nope. Just dump a bunch on the top of a moist bed and within seconds these guys are coursing there way across the bed top looking for a place to dive in. Definitely not dead worms. By morning, all gone. Down deep in bed below. Do it at night so the birds don't grab em (or if during the day, put a burlap bag or piece of plywood over the bed for a time).

Think I got to get a bunch more, I put like 80 per bed. Hey, worms regulate how many kids they have depending on the local population. Voluntary, cooperative birth control. Both democratic AND republican worms. No birth control or abortion needed. They may be more evolved than we are!

Also, ran out this morning and got a bale of straw to mulch our newly planted seeds to keep them wet, warm and protected--corn, snap peas, red beets and orange beets so far (next bed--onions and leeks. Broccoli coming real soon now). I'm thinking of "broadcasting" the next bed (no impossibly small holes, just spread em out on top and then cover, thin later).

Barefoot is ALIVE!

michael, for a barefoot garden.

I'm for Peas!

A new bed. And a second bed planted.

When you make your own first big raised double-dug composted bed you get why it is called a bed. After a final flat top raking and sprinkling water to moisten and darken the rich compost laden soil, you turn off the water, stand and stare, and you totally want to roll right up over on top of it. It looks so soft and rich and inviting. Yep, just curl right up and become a little seed and lay down in the middle.

We are jamming a bit. Got this garden thing started late summer, mid-august, and want to get plants in for fall and there is still a WHOLE BUNCH of double digging to do. Ahhhh! Not to speak of fencing, gopher guards, snail thingys, watering systems, bordered paths (there is a reason we are calling barefoot, will tell you later).

It's more than getting some sort of harvest this early winter. It's wanting the plant roots in there working, aerating the soil, creating little magical honeycombs that hold water and air and enzymes and micro-organisms and worms and nutrients.

Even if nothing ripens this year, fine. We will be ready for spring.

And we are all bozos on this bus! None of us had ever done larger raised bed semi-organic gardening. We don't know a whole lot and the information we can get often contradicts. Last night we were sparring with sundown to plant beets (yellow and red). One book says 1” inch apart for the seeds at 1” deep initially, seed pack says ¼” deep (give me a break, have you ever tried to bury anything ¼” deep real composted soil? It's like trying to stack sugar out of the package on the counter). One site says to bury your soaker hose, another says to lay it on the surface.

And I'm clueless how much to water these seeds, is it OK if it dries out during the day when I'm away, and whether to mulch now (checking underneath the mulch to see when they start to sprout, to make room) vs. wait to mulch til they are up a few inches.

So we are punching little holes, dropping insanely little beet seeds (seeds? they look like clumps of toe jam) and we all stand up and get into these discussions about one inch or two, water first or after (the seeds float!) and I'm going, “Hey, hey, we are loosing light, who cares, just get em in!”

I think it will be fine, it's an essential part of the fun, not knowing exactly how to do it but enjoying it all in faith that nature is probably a whole ton smarter than we are and fairly resilient.

And the digging, it's good. Very good for me. I parse it out. It is a conscious practice for me. I do it as long as I can stay in the moment. I do it in a meditative rhythm, methodical, that lets me go beyond the physical tedium. I've got a history with this. I did construction, largely natural building (rammed earth, hay bale, solar, etc.) for ten years. You get used to long periods of intense manual labor. I usually dig for an hour in the morning before driving to work (that takes an hour itself in traffic) then an hour after getting home. Then on the weekend I'll put a 6+ hour stretch in.

This is the deeper power of gardening. Enjoying the slow rhythm of the work. The deep breaths sucking in oxygen expelling toxins. The mind finally slowing from a day spend over-saturated with media, long brain dead commutes, pointless heartless work, stupid self-involved ineffective over-busy co-workers and clients. So the sore muscles, the feet hard to walk on from stomping on the shovel, the tweaked wrists, the thorns, the lower back, oh the lower back...all actually very ok with me. Because it goes with a mind finally, truly rested and quiet for the first time that day and a heart that softenes right along with the soil.

As soon as I start getting too goal oriented I stop. Ernest Hemingway said an interesting thing about writing (in his book "A Moveable Feast"). He always stops for the day before totally finishing a chapter or story. Then he doesn't think about it anymore. He says then his subconscious can keep working on it. The blog helps me a lot.

But the physical is all good. I want it. You see, I have healed before from a life stage crises and know that the best way is to go through it is to get active, focus first on the physical (basically get in shape), and THEN go on to emotional/psychological work, and finally bring in the spiritual. It's a continuum. From the grosser to the more subtle. A fascinatingly parallel process to starting and growing a garden. First you double dig. Then later you weed and thin. Only then can you harvest.

You see, this is a healing garden. That is what it is for.

We do hope to eat wonderful things grown there (and share them with lots of people), but that is not it's real purpose.

Lettuce Unite!

Yesterday Lisa's son N. came home from high school. In two minutes he was back out the door, down the path asking “Can I help?” This is a brilliant and very contemporary young man. This means he spends the largest percentage of his day in short attention span media facilitated environments. Like his peers, even when with other people there, there is also the simultaneous cell phone calls, text messages, TV in background, video games.

Even when we do things together they tend to be activity based and goal oriented. Golfing, ping-pong, pool, computer, googling, i-Tunes, etc. We don't spend a lot of time in quiet, rhythmic, introspective, physical, mental, emotional, spiritual—being. "Being" while together. But we can and do do this naturally working in the garden. And there is something about the reality that we are dealing with living things and need to pay attention or they might die that hovers in the background of our minds and hearts.

Quiet mind. Open heart. Pay attention. That's it.

My Uncle Arlo had a 6000 acre ranch in Montana when I was N's age. Ya, 6,000. Think about it. He had long cattle drives each year on his own land, land which went as far as you could see and more and included a whole small mountain range with antelope and big-horn sheep.

I would visit but unfortunately couldn't stay all summer like my older brother Mark did, irrigating all day long every day, because of my allergies. I so remember the mornings. 5:30 the big bell would ring, long dining table and about 20 strapping men and women (my cousins and hired hands) being fed this huge breakfast, eggs, bacon, sausage, biscuits, gravy, orange juice, goes on and on. The women and girls had to get up at 4:30 to get it on. After that, EVERYBODY out the door for chores for two hours, including my junior high and high-school age cousins. Serious chores like feeding cattle, pigs, sheep, milking cows, pitching hay and shoveling shit.

Very important chores. Critical. My cousins knew if they blew it, it could mean an animal dying or in severe pain. And they have seen an animal in pain. Worse, they could threaten the life income of their entire extended family.

Then fast clean up, change clothes, and hop on the bus and the 20 plus mile ride to high school. Get home like 4:30 or so in the afternoon, 2 plus more hours work. Big family dinner. Homework. Collapse in bed at 10:00 pm or so. TV? Video games? You're kidding! Who has time?

But these cousins, and my brother. They had, and still have, this quiet contented power. And an inner radiance. And you always knew, push come to shove, they would be there for you. Solid. They are the ones you want in the lifeboat with you, regardless of your personal differences.

Stay with the Beet

When a young person sees an older couple (well, guess I am now one of them! Lisa and I go for a walk most evenings.) walking along a rural road at night quietly talking and watching the orange glow recede behind silhouette tree shapes against the backdrop of purple-gray mountains--they might think “Not so exciting, not the life for me".

But they aren't (and few of us older folks are either) able to see the real energy behind that common facade. There is a spiritual law (and in many ways a scientific law) that the greater the energy and power, the subtler the manifestation outwardly. If you take water and add energy it boils. At this first level it appears wild and full of power and life, roiling and boiling. But add more energy it turns into vapor, a vaporous mist floating in the air. But careful, that mist can burn and kill and pull freight trains, it is so filled with vitality. Add even more energy and pressure, sooner or later the vapor turns into a plasma, all but invisible but now manifesting the molecular power of the universe.

So with people. Often the quiet and soft looking ones are overflowing with a calm yet magnetic power, and an almost ecstatic beauty and humming inner life experience that more than rivals the wildest and craziest outward expressions of youth. You can't just look to know. You have to feel, and be capable of deep feeling and intuition to empathetically know what's really going on. As it says in scriptures from India "He (she) who knows, knows. None else knows."

Peas be with You!

michael, from a barefoot garden.

The seed will need the darkness

We have planted!

Sunday was a very big, tiring, and fabulous day. I'll write more later on (I was too tired and happy last night).

Our first beds are planted with corn and peas. It is the moon shaped bed that is just on the outside of the vesica. Here is pic of Lisa's son making careful seed holes.

I'm reminded of the lyrics from my favorite Rickie Byars, the album "In the Land of I Am", the song, "All fades into God":

early in the song:

"In my pain, there inside my weakness, is the seed of something greater in me..."

then later

"the seed will need the darkness to change into new light."

michael, from a barefoot garden

Center of the pumpkin

A short post today. We had a planned trip to Pleasanton, CA to the fairgrounds to visit family and friends at Alameda County Fairgrounds for the big hot-rod show--which really means a bit of looking at the cool cars and a bunch relaxing and visiting with good people.

But I was so excited to get the center bed complete today (and more tomorrow) I got up at 6:00 am and worked thru til about 10 before we had to get ready to go. Just got home a few minutes ago. We do this garden but we both work very full time. And right now my commute to work takes two hours a day. So you have to rigorously work in garden time early or late some days.

Some years ago I was part of a group of people who were invited to 300+ acres on Coleman Valley Road outside of Occidental, CA (on the ridge over Bodega Bay) to start an intentional community. In the late sixties and seventies this area was magical, a garden of another variety. The first radical back-to-the-land "free" community started there, called "Morningstar". Another followed called "Wheeler's Ranch". The fun and crazy alternate to Greyhound bus, called "The Green Tortise, originated just around the corner, and down the road was the Farallons Rural Intsitute.

We called our new community "Oceansong". It was a beyond idyllic setting, gorgeous rolling Sonoma County hills, beautiful redwood groves, black oak, deep fog misted canyons, dark rich soil. We started a garden (I wasn't one of the gardeners), a school, a construction company, and a meditation teaching center. There is still an educational foundation there called "Oceansong Farm and Wilderness Center". I lived in a large canvas Mongolian style yurt and worked in the Gurdjieff center owned bakery and coffee shop in the nearby town of Occidental.

The owners had a small community on the land before that they called "Center of the Pumpkin". I always enjoyed that name. There is a story about the naming, something about a group of friends having a wonderful evening full of music and spirit and sharing around a large stone fireplace. Someone had set a pumpkin quite close to the fire. Late in the evening people snuggled into blankets on couches and rugs, and fell asleep.

In the morning they woke to find the pumpkin perfectly cooked, and ate it for breakfast. So they decided that day to name their community (based on organic farming and rural life skills) after the event.

Its funny to think about the center of pumpkin. It either seems to have no center, or it seems it is all one big center. An great Indian sage, Paramhansa Yogananda, said that God is "center everywhere, circumference nowhere." Like a pumpkin.

So I have been yearning to bring the center of a barefoot garden to life. Lisa and I talked about plants that we both feel have exceptional power and radiance. We both agreed on sage, lavendar and basil. And thought the colors of lavendar and regal grays and deep greens all resonated together well. So you can see in the picture here our first organic seedlings, our first babies, ready for planting. There are several sage varities, including the healing and aromic "Clary Sage". A lavendar (can't remember the specific type) and an Italian basil. Perhaps we will plant our first plants tomorrow!

We'll see. Has to feel right. No real hurry. There is no end game, just the enjoyment of the journey.

michael, from a barefoot garden

The softest of things, the hardest of things

Water. I have been thinking about it.

Top of mind decided soaker hose better than rain-birds, sprinklers, open channels or drip lines for organic gardens (especially these pie shaped raised beds). It can direct the water to plant lines more accurately, slowly seeps deeper, and can easily be adjusted for different planting patterns.

I'm not totally sure but am going with this intuition til I know differently.

We put the garden into two main patterns, the larger one an octagon and the smaller two circles intersecting. A neighbor looked at the circles and said, “Oh, venn diagram.” I was thinking more vesica pisces, the ancient symbol that fascinated Pythagoreans and later became the most known mystical symbol for the feminine. A beautiful version covers the Chalice Well in Glastonbury, England.

One of things I love about this pattern thing is everyone can see what they want to see. The generic phrase that doesn't invalidate anyone is “Well, we are doing more of an English mixed decorative garden, even though vegetables.”

A plumber working on the house said (after looking at my plan and a rendition of how it might look from the air.) “Oh, it's kinda a crop circle!” Our landlord seemed quizzed when he first saw it and I could feel him thinking “Wonder why they didn't just do straight rows? Would have been SO much easier.” He had a 1” PCV line ready to go with 3/4” outlets every couple of feet to facilitate row watering straight down the plow lines.

The octagon isn't for me an octagon, nor a pizza pie (as my partner Lisa's son calls it). Actually a bagua. From the Chinese, it literally means “eight symbols” but is most know in the west as the foundation of Feng Shui, the ancient Chinese art and science of creating healthy, vibrant and aesthetic living environments. I helped an author and renouned Feng Shui consultant from Albuquerque, NM put out a book on Feng Shui, and did the cover, layout and diagrams. I love it.

Lisa and I both feel that even a vegetable garden should be not only productive but seriously beautiful. Not something just to weed and harvest food from every so often, but a place to actually live in and renew, a place to absorb the power of growing things. A good garden, an organic garden, yes—but much more. A personally significant work of art. A nature-cooperative earth sculpture. I have missed this so much living and working in the city. I lived for 24 years on an 800 acre cooperative outside of Nevada City, CA. Raised my family there.

Now I want to be outside all the time. In a barefoot garden.

So, water.

All this is to tell you why I had to have the water flow, even if mostly hidden, match the layout. Yep. An eight sided water main. I got this hit a couple of days ago, and $165 worth of PVC and hose bibs and two more days diggin 'n gluin, and we are just about there! I will have an independent bib at the top (towards the center) of each bagua (pizza slice) section and one in the middle (another line will run over to the vesica pisces section). I also ran a waterproof/conduited electric line to the middle circle. We have plans for that, you will see soon.

The water layout just feels SO good. As it took form, we had to run out to look several times a day, ya, at the soon-to-be underground white PVS pipes. It's like a big crystal hidden in the center of the garden.

Water is the most amazing thing. The first, and foremost element. We are made of water. We can go quite a while without eating, but not long without water. And water in motion is SO soothing. The sound, the smell, the feel of it. Have you ever in your life sat by a creek or river and not immediately relaxed, felt your mind stilled, your heart opened and rested?

In the Tao, the “water-way” mysticism of China codified by Lao Tzu sometime in the 6th century BC, it is said that water, the softest of things, overcomes rock, the hardest of things. Water flows around all obstacles large and small while ever-so-slowly, patiently rubbing away and softening any and all rough edges until soft, rounded and beautiful. Like water. Idea is, we should live our lives more like water flows.

My favorite about water. The Catholic mystic St. Teresa of Avila wrote that God created water to show us how spirit works in this world. She wrote a little book about the deep “prayer of quiet” called “Interior Castles”. If you haven't read it, you must. She likens the stages of meditative prayer to exploring a castle where there are many rooms nested as you move to the center. As your prayer deepens, you begin pass through the rooms experientially, going deeper and deeper into a vibrant, living, conscious silence and peace. And you come closer and closer to spirit.

Around the 4th chapter, (and 4th room), she begins to use water as a metaphor for the direct experience of spirit. She relates the satisfaction we grasp through good works and right living to drawing water from a well, or a pieced together plumbing system (I don't think she could run down to Home Depot and get PVC parts easily like I did early this morning!).

Just like any water system, we know that by doing a bit of good work, living in integrity, being kind to others, serving, going to church on Sunday—we can essentially turn on the tap and get a fairly predictable dose of feeling goodness in our hearts.

But she says that the divine gift of a spontaneous experience of spirit, “consolation” she calls it, which comes from habitual, passionate and deep mediation, is like coming unexpectedly upon a gushing, clear spring in a lush forest glade on a hot day. It surprises and cools and refreshes and renews and overwhelms you. It is beyond description in words. Hence metaphors. Sacred. And it changes you forever.

So, Lisa and I plan to meditate in our garden. And when we do, we will imagine the living water flowing in and around it, in 8-sided crystalline and circular patterns, and flowing in the myriad of vessels in our own bodies--water and spirit, without which all would be dry, brittle and lifeless.

michael, from a barefoot garden

Worm poop

Yea worms! I have 250 scheduled for delivery next week. Bought them online of course. Only the best, Red Wrigglers, from Uncle Jim's Worm Farm. Worm poop is good stuff.

You see, a worm will excrete his/her...

(wait, are there “she” and “he” worms? Let me check, wait a minute...)

Nope, they are hermaphrodites. Apparently they can fertilize themselves but prefer to mate with another. Wow! I'm even more impressed. Some sort of unattainable holy grail for the male of the human species. If a woman is around, great; if not, not worries, I'll just do myself. Is it weird to wonder what it's like for worms to make love? :-)

Back to poop. Worms excrete their body weight each and every day. And their “castings”, as they are euphemistically called, are the most amazing, nitrogen rich, enzyme and mineral impregnated, free natural fertilizer in existence. And more. Worms un-compact the soil, aerate it, and their little tunnels become effortless pathways for deep plant roots.

I feel a bit un-sustainable arranging for my new worm friends to board on a plane in Pennsylvania--but the price is great, quality guaranteed, and my soil is SO BAD in many days of “double-digging” I have encountered one solitary, emaciated, lonely worm. I will repent my ways after I've gotten all the beds dug and find local worms, on my bicycle (no fossil fuels involved), I promise.

Double digging? Will speak of this more in future. It evolved from French intensive bio-dynamic gardening and has become the present day independent organic gardener's magna carta . As you sit at whole foods sipping your organic green tea (yes, it also hopped a plane in, this time from China), and as an aside mention to your table mate you are starting an organic garden, if they are in cult the retort will be “You double-dig”? Only acceptable answer “Of course!” (advise not having the word “rototiller” in your vocab).

You see, the founding concept of organic gardening is “feed the soil”. If you have rich, light, aerated, ph balanced, microorganism rich, mulched, composted soil (not dirt, soil) the seeds WILL grow, WILL flourish and flower, WILL express their innate divine, creative power, WILL bear amazing, nurturing fruit—and the weeds and pests WILL cooperate and adjust themselves to a balanced co-creative eco-system. No agent orange required.

Now as I am sweating breath heaving double-digging in the hot sun ordering worms online during green tea breaks, I am actually thinking most of the time how all this is transforming ME. Well, I think about myself most the time, but I feel this joy in all of this. And begin again to forget myself. And others feel it in me, and feel it in this newborn garden (not even a plant yet).

In the last three days we (me and my partner Lisa and her son) have had more unexpected visitors (most whom we have never met) who appear and immediately launch into dream-laden, fun personal conversations with us standing in our future garden area , than we have had since we moved into the house. (“If you build it, they will come.”)

I relate soil to heart. That's how I spend my days in the garden, really, thinking about these kind of things. We all have this amazing innate heart power. In India, they have a word for it, “shraddha”. A great teacher defined shraddha as “the energetic tendency of the heart's natural love”. The idea is if you remove the obstacles to that magnetic, joyful love (reactive emotions, unfilled yearnings, resentments, fears), and “feed the soil” so to speak--in the subsequent calm and peace you WILL experience, not a void, but a deep, almost overwhelming, spring-fed flood of your own natural love.

As I feed the soil, I feed my heart.

michael, from a barefoot garden

More and better...

I am saying "yes" again to life. It is wonderful and I wanted to write you about it. No matter how dire or fearful it all gets, there is this subtle thread of purpose, adventure and joy. If I carry on, it comes back. Again, and again.

It has never failed me and I suspect it never will.

Hence this blog.

Daybreak on the land...once again.

michael, from a barefoot garden