Vermi-composting is a process by which worms make high quality fertilizer for the garden. I have a large outdoor worm bin as well a smaller bin that stays in the house during the winter and on my deck the rest of the year. I blend most of the food scraps I put into both worm bins, but last week I decided to put some bigger pieces of food in the small bin so that I could watch the worms at work.
First, I gave them part of a large round zucchini that had been partially cooked. I tore it into 4 pieces before I put it into the bin. Within 36 hours nothing remained of the zucchini except the skin and the hard stalk that had connected it to the plant.
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Next, I decided to put an acorn squash that had fallen off of the vine and was starting to deteriorate in the bin. Again, I tore it into four pieces. This time the vegetable was raw so it is taking considerably longer for the worms to eat it.
I took these photographs over a three-and-a-half day period. It is clear that only the seeds and probably the skin will be left when the worms finish their meal!
I’ve had a garden in my front yard the last few years, but it has never been like this before. Maybe it is because of the new raised beds, or the extraordinarily hot weather, or the vermi-compost.
Whatever the reason, I am marveling at what is unfolding in front of my eyes! There have been times when everything was growing so fast that I wondered if I was living in the Jack and the Beanstalk story.
This may not amaze those of you who are used to successful gardens but this is the first time I’ve had this experience!
One of the things I am especially happy about is that the garden is full of bees. Most are bumblebees but there are honey bees as well. Two years ago bees were rarely to be found in my garden.
On June 29 and 30, Amma conducted programs in Atlanta for the first time. At one point, my daughter Chaitanya asked if I wanted to visit Martin Luther King, Jr.’s church and the other buildings at the MLK National Historical Site. I jumped at the opportunity. We went during the short break between Amma’s morning and evening programs. Our plan was to see as much as we could this year, and view the rest the next time we go to Atlanta. The first place we visited was Ebenezer Baptist church. Starting in 1960, Martin Luther King, Jr. co-pastored that church, along with his father. As we sat in the pews, a recording of one of Dr. King’s speeches filled the air. I closed my eyes and imagined myself being present at the time the speech was first given. I would have been content to stay sitting there for hours. When I looked around, I noticed many people were taking photographs. I resisted doing the same, but in time changed my mind; I wanted to be able to share this memorable experience with others.
At King Hall there were many exhibits about the lives of Dr. King and his wife Coretta Scott King. In addition, the hall contined rooms that were tributes to Rosa Parks and Mahatma Gandhi.
In Rosa Parks’ room, there were many pictures and mementos. I was particularly drawn to a quilt that was hanging on the wall.
Among the items in Mahatma Gandhi’s room were one of his walking sticks, a pair of sandals, a portable spinning wheel, and framed quotes. I was not aware that Dr. King had so much respect for Mahatma Gandhi. I also didn’t know he had traveled to India. Dr. King once said: “To other countries I may go as a tourist, to India I come as a pilgrim.”
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Next we went to the place where Dr. and Coretta King’s bodies are interred. It was beautiful and felt like very sacred space to me.
We had planned to visit the home where Dr. King was born, but once there we discovered they only let visitors in twice a day and you have to get tickets ahead of time. We did appreciate having the opportunity to see his house and stand on his porch, but will have to wait for a future visit to go inside. We spent the last half hour of our visit at the National Park Visitor Center. Below you will see parts of the huge mural that is across from the entrance to that building. I wish I had had time to look carefully at all that was contained in that artwork. Inside the Center there were enough exhibits to keep us busy for most of a day. Several of the displays were interactive. An example is in the picture below, where visitors were able to walk alongside statues of the civil rights marchers. We will definitely spend more time at this Center in the future.
The night before our visit, I read about the National Historical Site in the tourist book in my hotel. I found a story that really surprised me. In preparation for writing this post, I learned more about it. When Martin Luther King, Jr. was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, not everyone supported the decision. The first ever integrated dinner in Atlanta was planned to celebrate it. Black business owners signed up to attend but the white business establishment wanted nothing to do with it. J. Paul Austin, chairman and CEO of Coca-Cola, and Mayor Ivan Allen brought some of the prominent white business leaders together. The message Paul Austin gave them was:
“It is embarrassing for Coca-Cola to be located in a city that refuses to honor its Nobel Prize winner. We are an international business. The Coca-Cola Co. does not need Atlanta. You all need to decide whether Atlanta needs the Coca-Cola Co.”
The event sold out within two hours! During our time at the Site, I experienced deep emotions and many memories. That era had affected me and my life decisions profoundly. There is no doubt that Martin Luther King, Jr. contributed significantly to making me the person I am today. I feel blessed to have visited Dr. King’s memorial site and look forward to returning to it in the future.
I have been wanting to go to one of Justine’s virtual tea parties for some time. I could make lots of excuses for my lack of attendance. The only one I will mention is that in February I ate an incredible S’more tart at the Columbia City Bakery in Seattle. I finally had found something I could bring to Tea Time!
The problem was that I didn’t have the idea until I had left the bakery. There was no way for me to get a photograph of the tart that day. The next day, I called the bakery and asked when they would be serving it again. I was dismayed to be told that had been a Valentine’s Day special and would not be re-made, at least not until February 2016.
A few months ago I discovered a website that I have come to love. It is called Minimalist Baker. The recipes are healthy, generally 10 or less ingredients and are easy, and quick, to make.
I decided I would bring their “Immune Booster Orange Smoothie” to the tea party. It is remarkable that I love this smoothie so much, because sweet potatoes are a major ingredient. I have disliked sweet potatoes for as long as I can remember. Almost all of the vegetables my mother served when I was a kid were canned. Canned sweet potatoes….. yuuuuuccccckkkkkkkk. No wonder I didn’t like them.
But this smoothie is delicious… and doesn’t taste at all like canned sweet potatoes! I will show some of the process of making it and then give you the link to the recipe.
You can make the smoothie thick and creamy, like this one, or add more liquid to thin it out.
Amma has been leading a beautiful meditation this summer, one that has us visualize white flowers of peace falling from the skies and covering everything in the world. The meditation inspired me to make a collage of white flowers.
The Dungeon Prompt for this week asked us to identify a life pattern, one that we see repeating again and again. Since I already write regularly about the patterns in my life, I decided to answer this prompt in an unusual and fun way.
As I looked for a pattern to explore, I realized I have a nearly fifty-year-old pattern (something that happens in a regular and repeated way) of making items that are patterned (a repeated decorative design) and/or are made from patterns (a set of instructions to be followed in making a sewn or knitted item)! While I certainly don’t have pictures of everything I have made over the years, I do have a good sampling.
In the late 60’s and 70’s, I knit sweaters for myself and people important to me.
I also liked to sew. I made my blue wedding dress and the dashiki Al is wearing. I also made shirts and other clothing items for us.
I believe I crocheted the outfit Chaitanya wore when she came home from the hospital. I made the three sweaters below when Sreejit was a baby and have loaned them to friends with new babies many times. They still look as perfect as they did in 1975!
In the 70’s, I made several blankets. Two of them I still use.
In the 80’s, I made quilts for my daughter and my mother. When my mother passed, the white quilt was returned to me. It took me many years to finish Chaitanya quilt. By the time I completed it, she had moved to India where a quilt wasn’t needed. Both quilts are still used from time to time.
Sometime during the 90’s, I started making tiny Gods and Goddess dolls. They are sold during Amma’s tours as a way of making money for her humanitarian projects.
Saraswati
In the 2000’s, I worked with other Amma devotees to crochet blankets for homeless women who were moving into transitional housing.
Some years later, we worked together to crochet items out of recycled plastic.
Made from coffee and chip bags, strap and newspaper wrapper
Made from grocery bags
I can see that patterns are even a factor in the gardening I do now!
This has been a very interesting prompt for me to write. I am realizing how important projects such as these have been throughout my life.
It has been a very long time since I have immersed myself in any of these crafts. I hope to begin some of them again in the not too distant future!
This is an amazing time in which to live. Since June 18, the Pope took powerful stands on environmental and weapons issues and the U.S. Supreme Court voted to preserve the Affordable Care Act and to uphold the rights of gays and lesbians to marry.
Due to a horrific shooting in South Carolina, Confederate flags are coming down across the South and there is a movement to have it removed from the South Carolina statehouse. Businesses such as Walmart, eBay, Target, Sears, Etsy, and Amazon have banned sales of the flag.
A friend just sent me a video that talks about the history of the Confederate flag. I learned much from watching it and thought some of you might also be interested in viewing it.
For some time, I have been thinking about writing a post about a small lemon tree I purchased during the summer of 2013. My plan was to call the article “A Tale of Endurance.”
Then on Thursday, Sreejit posted his Dungeon Prompt for the week. He asked us to address:
How do you measure up to your eight-year-old-self’s plans for the future? We all had childhood dreams, or fantasies. How did you imagine the world as a kid? When you were eight years old, what did you plan on being when you grew up? What would that version of yourself think about who you are now?
Responding to this prompt posed a problem as I have almost no memories of my childhood. My mind went blank when I thought of my eight-year-old self. As I reflected on my childhood as a whole, it occurred to me that that my growing up years could also be seen as “A Tale of Endurance.” I wondered if I had that attitude about life by the time I was eight.
I decided to include both endurance tales in one post!
A Tale of Endurance #1
What did my eight-year-old dream of? I have no idea. My only clue is that I know my primary past-time during my childhood was reading. I do remember loving the Bobbsey Twin series. I think those were books an eight-year-old might read. I have no doubt that when I immersed myself in my books I was transported to other lands. It is likely that most of my childhood dreams came from the books I read.
Since I couldn’t answer the prompt by talking about my dreams, I decided to see if I could learn more about my eight-year-old self. I searched for some pictures and found two. I believe I was eight in the first one and nine in the second.
Me at 8?
On our way to Germany
I grew up as an army brat. I was born at Sandia Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico and lived there for the first years of my life. At some point during the Korean War my father went to Korea and my mother, brother and I moved to West Palm Beach, Florida, the city where my mother’s family lived.
I thought I had attended three different schools in the third grade but as I looked through old belongings yesterday, I discovered I had gone to two schools during the second grade and two in the third. When my father returned from Korea, we moved to Fayetteville, North Carolina; I would have been seven at that time. After two quarters of school in Fayetteville, we moved to Ft. Bragg, which is also in North Carolina. I finished the second grade there. I attended third grade at Ft. Brag for half a year and then moved to Pirmasens, Germany for the last half of third grade.
I can imagine the difficulty that switching schools so often would cause a child who was a strong introvert. In an army brat’s life, friendships were usually short; either we moved, or our friends did. I have no memory of any childhood friend, other than the cousins we visited on vacations.
I remember my mother saying that my pattern was to have one friend and then if they moved on to another best friend I would be devastated. I can imagine myself developing a “why bother” attitude when it came to friendship.
Yesterday, I also looked through all my elementary school report cards. I probably had read them sometime in the past, but it would have been decades ago. I paid particular attention to the report cards from the years I was eight and nine.
At that time, my teachers described me as earnest, pleasant, a hard worker, cooperative, and a good student who was creative, read well, learned quickly and had a wholesome attitude. In the second half of second grade and the first half of third grade, I received “Excellent” and “Good” for grades. When we moved to Germany and they used A, B, C, etc. as the grading system, I received A’s and B’s. The area where I consistently received the lowest marks and negative comments were in Writing. One teacher wrote “Carol (my name at that time) writes large enough but her letters are poorly formed.” Those comments continued throughout my elementary school years. I have no memory of my writing being an issue, although I’m not surprised considering how poorly I write now!
After writing positive comments on my report card, one teacher added- “I’m afraid she doesn’t receive much challenge.” I wonder what she meant?
Other comments that interested me were:
“She is slow to express herself.” That seemed reasonable for an introvert.
“Carol has improved some in writing but seems tense and not able to relax when writing and other times also. Have you noticed this?” My mother, who was also a teacher, responded “I have never noticed any tension in her writing at home but then she has an eraser at home (which she uses far too often) and I think her not having one at school may cause the tension. I’m not sure. She is a sensitive child and may be trying too hard to succeed in a subject she knows she’s having trouble with.”
I don’t know how soon my life began to feel like a tale of endurance. As I aged, I became more and more unhappy at home. At one point, I counted off the days until I could leave for college. I hated moving so often and wanted to create a life where I could stay put. Hmmmm. I wonder if that was a dream when I was eight. If so, it was one I created as I have lived in the same house in Seattle since 1973!
I have loved getting some insight into my eight-year-old self. Thank you Sreejit for offering this assignment and thereby prompting my exploration.
A Tale of Endurance #2
In the summer of 2013, I bought a small lemon tree. There were several lemons on it when I purchased the tree and I had visions of all of the lemons that were to come. The nursery staff told me to bring the tree into the house before the temperatures dropped, so as winter neared I put it indoors. One by one, the beautiful lemons turned black and fell off. Then most of the leaves fell off. Soon there was nothing left but the trunk (if you can call something that small a trunk) and a few leaves.
Spring came and nothing happened. The same few leaves stayed on, but there were no new ones and there were no buds. I took the plant to a nursery to see if it was possible to save it. They instructed me to use a particular kind of fertilizer. Months later there was still no new growth. It wasn’t until late August that a few flower buds formed. The plant was still alive but it seemed too late in the season for any fruit that formed to grow to maturity.
As it started to get cold, I once again brought the tree into the house. And again, the few small lemons that were on the tree turned black and fell off. This time the rest of the leaves fell off as well. I decided to leave the tree in the house even though it was just a stalk.
Sometime in late winter, I concluded that the situation was hopeless and put the tree outside on the balcony. I would compost it in the springtime. However, when springtime came and I picked up the container to take it to the compost heap, I noticed there were many tiny leave buds!
This tree seemed determined to live. Over the next weeks, the leaves grew, flower buds formed and then blossomed!
After a difficult childhood, my life blossomed and has been filled with friends, adventure and learning. It is interesting for me to see that many of the characteristics that my teachers pointed out on my eight-year-old report cards are characteristics that I am known for now. I think my eight-year-old would like the adult I have become.
It appears that this year the lemon tree is moving forward on its journey towards health. Perhaps in time it will even bear fruit that will become ripe!
I appreciate all the ways, past and present, that I am learning the value of endurance.
“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.” “Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.” “Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.”-William Shakespeare
Living, Learning and Letting Go 