The hot summer weather has finally hit, and since there are a good number of new plants in the garden, I've had the sprinkler running a lot today. Everything is looking good, except the new achillea plants, which are the last to have gone in, the least established, and so the most susceptible to the heat and dryness. Now that they're getting water, they're perking back up. I'm sure they'll be fine.
Here's what's funny. No sooner did the heat hit than I found myself wondering, "When is it going to break?" Not that I'm sweltering or suffering at all. Far from it, really. I do enjoy this kind of weather. But it's curious that as soon as something relatively new arrives, I start anticipating its going away.
There is a skillfulness to that attitude, of course. Whenever I find myself needing to reroute because the president is in town (why couldn't he be from Montana or something?), or standing still in a traffic jam, I tell myself that I'm not going to be in this position tomorrow, that sooner or later it will settle out, and things will continue apace. Impermanence is one of the marks of conditioned existence, and there's every good reason to take solace in that from time to time.
But what gets me in this case is how quickly my mind not only accepts the transitoriness of phenomena but seems downright driven to move on to the next batch. How strange, really, how very very strange, this hunger for the next – whatever it happens to be.
This is why gardening is such good practice for me. The achillea is droopy, so it's time to water. While I'm standing there with the hose, feeling the cool of the spray, squinting in the late afternoon sun, watching the robins eyeing for worms, I know without a doubt in skin, flesh, bone and marrow that there is here no yesterday, no tomorrow, no today.
Here's what's funny. No sooner did the heat hit than I found myself wondering, "When is it going to break?" Not that I'm sweltering or suffering at all. Far from it, really. I do enjoy this kind of weather. But it's curious that as soon as something relatively new arrives, I start anticipating its going away.
There is a skillfulness to that attitude, of course. Whenever I find myself needing to reroute because the president is in town (why couldn't he be from Montana or something?), or standing still in a traffic jam, I tell myself that I'm not going to be in this position tomorrow, that sooner or later it will settle out, and things will continue apace. Impermanence is one of the marks of conditioned existence, and there's every good reason to take solace in that from time to time.
But what gets me in this case is how quickly my mind not only accepts the transitoriness of phenomena but seems downright driven to move on to the next batch. How strange, really, how very very strange, this hunger for the next – whatever it happens to be.
This is why gardening is such good practice for me. The achillea is droopy, so it's time to water. While I'm standing there with the hose, feeling the cool of the spray, squinting in the late afternoon sun, watching the robins eyeing for worms, I know without a doubt in skin, flesh, bone and marrow that there is here no yesterday, no tomorrow, no today.
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