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Blanco, Texas : Thyme Traveler : July 2007
Attila the Bug
July 8, 2007 09:10
Attila the Bug, grandson of Hasim the Assassin Bug, is one of my best friends.
He zooms over from his home in the bonsai tree (where he looks like a creature from a Japanese monster movie), lands on my shoulder and goes for a ride around the backyard, scouting for likely prey. When he sees a tasty victim, away he zooms to snatch a snack.
He's hell on baby grasshoppers that I scare up with my skirts!
Atilla has many brothers, sisters, and cousins, all descended from the first Hasim to become friendly. They live all over the garden now, protecting me from the Infidel hoardes. You can hear them, big loud buzzzzzzzz coming in for a landing on your back.
We have wonderfully stimulating conversations on important matters of life and death - I have learned a lot
from my friend the bug.
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Diet, Exercise, and Feeling RIGHT
July 31, 2007 09:26
So many of us are getting creaky and aching, overweight or short of breath, and almost everyone complains of "fibromyalgia".
I am living proof that kundalini yoga classes will cure ALL of those problems, except maybe over-eating. But there are classes in "yoga for round bodies" that are very good for everyone.
Without going into the long list of my own aches and pains, I will say the broken collarbone-disjointed neck thing I've had going for years is almost GONE, my congenital hip and knee displacement that was made worse by breaking my pelvis in childbirth hardly EVER bothers me unless I've been standing up all day, and my digestion now is so perfect it's amazing!!!!!
Kundalini yoga is not the weird posture exercise athletic style, but more of a way to get the energy flowing up and down your center all lined up and running smoothly. It teaches you to sit still and think straight, while relaxing your muscles into stretching out to their full length and letting all the bad vibes go.................saved my life, you should try it.
A good yoga teacher will not charge you scads of money, either, but will probably take donations in a basket near the door on top of the meager charge for the classes.
You will meet other souls in search of calm and light, you will not be embarassed because you can't do funny "yoga
postures", and you will find yourself in the middle of all the bizzy thoughts and feelings that clutter up your heart and brain.
Almost nobody in America eats right.........plus, almost nobody in America has a job that fulfills their basic human-animal needs for fresh air, free movement, and a sense of purpose. When you get in touch with your inner
"animal" you find all sorts of human ideals and goals are free to work out their destinies, once they come unstuck from all the miseries accumulated with "experience".
It's the great paradox of human life.
So, if everyone ate about 4 times the amount of fresh veggies every day, and spent an hour doing their yoga, we would be living in an America full of vibrant, active, and interesting old people. I want to be one of those!!!
[Note from editor: Find Blanco's Yoga Studio at www.CasaDeYoga.com.]
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In 30-something years of trying to reap as much as possible from the most primitive of garden sites, it seems to me that the best solution to the Bug Problem is to give them plenty of their natural, native food to eat. Which
means letting the weeds grow EVERYWHERE except the smallest possible space that we, as humans, deserve.
Period.
There is a Law of Thirds that guides good gardeners and wildcrafters: a third for me, a third for the animals, and a third for the soil. If nobody ever took more than they needed, wouldn't this be a very different 21st century habitat?
Plants do not read your landscape designs, they freely seed themselves wherever a seed-size niche can be found, or give themselves up to recycle as food for the next generation. At least one-third of the plants at any time
will be dying, a third will need thinning to increase their chances for survival, and a third might give you the food and flowers you crave if you have done your chores well.
You will never have 100% - it just doesn't work that way. The arrogance of our species is our sense of Dominion, rather than a sense of Responsibility.
Bugs and diseases only "destroy" plants that are unhealthy, somehow --- whether crowded, undernourished, or just planted in the wrong place by humans wanting whatever we want.
Spend some time contemplating your space before you empirically declare your right to move every stone and tree.
You'll save yourself a lot of weeding, watering, and putting up shade screens in the long run.....and isn't the No-Work Garden what we all dream of?
If you don't NEED it, leave it alone. Can you live with what's there, without trying to improve on Mother Nature?
People thinking that way turned the Garden of Eden into downtown Baghdad, you know. Your yard was perfectly happy before you came along and wanted tomatoes and green beans and sidewalks to keep your feet clean.
When you turn under the "green manure" expecting to replace the weeds with flowers and veggies, all the critters who, for the last few million generations, have been accustomed to eating free food, now have to learn to eat tomatoes instead of nightshades and snow peas instead of loco weed, but they will learn.
And then, we complain that the bugs are eating "our" garden!
Arrogance was the original sin that got us kicked out of the Garden in the first place, yes?
Be careful what you call "mine", you are creating a minefield wherever you focus your desires.
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June 2007 « » August 2007