Confession

The gardening year is winding down, and I'm doing everything I can to get the beds taken care of before the real cold comes in.

The past months have been spent eyeing what comes up when, where the sunlight falls at the summer solstice and at the equinoxes, where it's dry and where it's wet.  The last month and a half has been spent digging up more rogue short bamboo than I ever thought imaginable, lifting the irises from their too dry, too sunny locations to more favorable terrain, cleaning up some forgotten corners of the front and side beds, and now I'm getting a lot of new bulbs in.  I split up the bleeding heart into about 6 new clumps.  I expanded the small bed in front of the back door, and I edged the bed where the short bamboo had been.  A sangha member contributed some tall ornamental grasses, and they went in yesterday.  Today I hope to get the last of the bulbs and relocated irises in.  If I have any luck at all, the leaves from our birch and the neighbor's sycamore will have fallen so I can have them all cleaned up before the first snow. 

I know my gardening violates the noble code of the Vinaya.  Before all Buddhas and Bodhisattvas and before the Mahasangha I therefore openly confess my transgressions, and with hands pressed palm-to-palm I repent of the karma that makes me so inordinately fond of digging in the soil and working with plants.