Satisfied Mindfulness

I should have pictures of the garden, but I don’t. There is lettuce, beautiful red sails I think it is, ready to eat. We will thin it and the rest will grow bigger and fill in the spaces in the deep bed again. There is one bed of spinach almost ready. Wonderful spring garlic which always makes me think of Wang Lung in The Good Earth speaking longingly of when he found satisfaction in a simple piece of wheat bread wrapped around a sprig of spring garlic.

How many times have you heard one man say
If I had his money, I could do things my way
But little they know that it’s so hard to find
One man in ten with a Satisfied Mind

That’s part of an old song.

For money can’t buy, your youth when you’re old
Or a friend when you’re lonely or a love that’s grown cold
The wealthiest person is a pauper at times
Compared to the man with the Satisfied Mind.

Wang Lung had gotten rich and lost his satisfaction. At least partly because he had lost his hunger. It seems it is only when we have too much of something that we become dissatisfied with it instead of grateful.

Anyway, the potatoes need more mulch, as do many other things, but very soon we’ll have new potatoes (in peppered cream sauce, mmm). The carrot project is growing well, although more need to be started in the hothouse. The peas are needing support and the second planting is peaking through the ground. There are odd things, things I can’t remember the names of, but they taste wonderful. I’m always snacking on something or the other while in the garden. We added poke to the stir-fry last night. Lambs quarters, perhaps the world’s finest wild green, is up. So are the stinging nettles, another fine green. The first of the hard corn got planted yesterday. We’re still catching mice out of the garden but seem to have managed to get enough of the peas through. There have been flea beetles on some things, and the cut worms have gotten some cabbages, but a little pyrethrin and bacillus thurigenisis will take care of those. We’ll put up a web of thread over the corn patch to keep the crows out until it’s up about a foot high and ready for the beans and squash to be added.

The pig has been getting out about every day. He’s huge. We won’t be able to kill him until the first cold of the fall and he’ll be huge -er by then, so that we’ll probably get bacon and, well, a lot of meat from him. We’ve got to move his pen and that might get on the agenda for today, depending, and we hope to cure his getting out. Although he just hangs out in the field for a while but soon comes up to the house to see what there is to eat and then he gets put back in. So far he hasn’t caused any mischief. We’re planning to make a tomato jungle out of his old pen area.

There is always something to do now, and always something to make plans for, to be thinking about, studying on. Not much time to be anything but blessed.

Except husband did have to go to town today to perform the civic duty of protesting the new assessment of our property (the bloodsucking government is never satiated), and is taking the opportunity see the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy picture. At least, I hope he will go ahead and allow himself that luxury instead of coming home to cut wood for the fire that we almost never have in May but have today.