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worse
good evening everyone
thank you for inviting me to do this i'm almost completely terrifying it's really amazing
i've been now
working on this garden berkshire five years not always as wholeheartedly as i ah
why should have should should should should should have but it's never not in my mind and it's often not in my hands
so i'd like what i'd like to do is to run
offer you a m harvest for some of the work i've been doing in secret working secretly
like an idiot and a fool
i've i've been very fortunate that writing that i've been able to do has been supported by the kindness of arm wider sanga around gringos the book began actually and i'm gary and trish's little cabin out at muir beach overlooking the ocean for long time i rode in march and leaves little
hut again overlooking the ocean the tree's coming down all around
all of that extraordinary life right there and i've worked up mostly on my own kitchen table early in the morning sometimes
getting up before the han and working on the book a little bit knowing i have to take my daughter school and do all the things that are a huge part of my life natalie goldberg said to me years ago on the mistake that women writers make is that they think they can seclude themselves from the world and half an ideal writing retreat
eat when in fact her experiences that women writers right right in the middle of their lives that she reminded me the gone with the wind was written on the kitchen table a wonderful book that is setting a fire the minds and hearts of young children right now called harry potter and the sorcerer's stone was written on little scraps of paper by a single mom
in cafes in northern scotland she sent those scraps of paper into a publisher and they said this is wonderful support you to finish this book and she continued to do it in in the cafe so this garden book has been written everywhere little bit of everything in sections in the greenhouse sections are sitting by redwood
creek in the last period of time i've been working had had the honor of working on them
girl she's writing table janet avon rand's a wonderful place at the end of this valley there's a little on other medication world down there she has a small zendo and a girl she left her his writing table it's a low black lacquered table
so i took up underneath fair covered with in the winter covered with tibetan rugs and try to evoke and call up the garden
poets have been help
one or two things says mary oliver
one or two things are all you need to travel over the blue pond over the deep roughage of the trees on through the stiff flowers of lightning some deep memory of pleasure some cutting knowledge of pain
but to lift the huff for that you need an idea
i have so many ideas
five years of experience of working and practicing in this farm and being invited for those of you who are new to my particular story just from being invited more than five years ago to write a book about the principles of i'm farming and ten center what's really mattered

i'm so i began you know and i've been working on hard tonight or read to you from worked it's brand new work into this morning and i read you from work i did a few years ago about the principles of gardening i have the wonderful exp
variance of working with 'em
an editor who says and priest she's a student of category roche's good old dharma friend of mine i see her once every three weeks and make the pilgrimage just the best pool and like myself in with g shall we spend one hour looking around her
tiny is an temple that's their on her property and i'm talking about the plantings help how do up aerator compost pile better on how to keep the bulldog off of the lilies think essential matters like that and then we sit down together and she turns on the clock and we grind away at the book so she's
very much in my mind and heart tonight and i think should be happy i'm reading because i haven't shared my writing with the community for i think almost two years
ah in fact i think that's why i'm so nervous because i don't read it out loud except to myself i kind of will read to see what's there and when lives lived here before going to touch the her as she was very kind she helped me with every try single piece for a number of seasons are talking with man i'm putting putting the ideas to lives really helped
so i'm gonna read the new aesthetical piece that went in about three days ago so you'll get to hear
how to hear that
it's been a hard year i've been numb
very much on altered by the death of my parents and by am a number of changes with my route teacher with dignity on and the number of changes in my own life and psyche and body ah but i'm learning from everything that happens and i'm grateful for that opportunity and i'm grateful for your support even though i'm not
with you in the zendo i am awake and working during that time and and for many many months i was sitting at home with my i'm and an altar i haven't home to my parents so it's been quite a year and it's evolving and on
a rich tapestry spread out in front just like the garden now i want to say something about time but maybe i'll wait just stop talking about it and put it out
what i'm secretly hoping things
follow our orders early must have dropped these books fairly soft
okay yeah
from poet eq poems and teacher eq
okay
so are an invocation to begin stare at it until your eyes drop out says and master eq this desk this wall this unreal page
norman said to me in the morning a warm up just start to right right what's there and are and have a good time and don't obey any rules and don't punctuated and let it be a mess and when you warmed up you can get to the work so this is a warm up from this morning called on entering the garden
some mornings i don't arrive in the garden until very late i'm stopped by the gossamer trap lie and this won't be in the book this is just a warm-up they will be in the fire to my i don't i don't keep them i'm stopped by the gossamer trap lines of the wolf spider thrown out from the green eyed cave of madame hardy's rose across to the
back of the border to wear this
sternly upright you hedge stands if i try and duck under the web or be arrested caught on my hands and knees again by the legions of weedy willow herb that i reach out to pull up from the base of the black dragon lilies
i've already dropped out of sight so i asked myself how low can you go and then i dropped down another notch to breathe in the warm humid animal wind blowing out of the underworld boroughs of that pocket gopher who's been gnawing at the cinnamon colored roots of the angelica plan
it's for days
other mornings i push on through my been of the beneficence colonel leaving a trail of trampled carnage in my wake we have fourteen boxes of baby lettuce the crop today and packed for greens before the sun gets the kitchen garden and i'm a little late and moving the oscillator from the speckled cranberry beans over the florence fennel transplants my
mind pulls me along careening i'm self important and august through all the pale green silk strands stretched across the loom of the garden pea
they stabbed free and i march unrepentant through my own collateral damage into the heart of the tangle
it's a fancy way of saying sometimes they don't getting to where it all because i'm paying attention and other times i couldn't give a shit about mean even i just plough it all down and get on with what i have to do

oh
it's always good to have emma here because it's good to have people that don't believe in books and don't believe in the written word and don't believe in none
spinning spinning the stories
so you're my balance thank you for sitting in the back there knitting yeah to keep to keep her
stable
on

i think what i would i'd like to do is to read you from some old work
when the when the invitation came to write the garden book of twenty burbank was the editor from bantam press who solicited the book and came to green gulch and spent came to bring out and spend a week here
ah she wanted to see if there was a book in in this place a book that would describe gardening and she and i met and we talked and we talked a lot we we were made very strong connection with each other we spent a number of hours together and she worked in the garden with me and built compulsively on as
and ah got very dirty hurt her clean elegant long white hands got all mucked up with the mess around here and then she went spent three days at tassajara to get to know and center to see
should we do they should we endeavour in this is what unusual situation to have an editor invite you to write a book and after the meeting she spoke with michael katz as the agent for the garden book and dumb said it really isn't the book about how to garden per se nor is it a book about the green gulch garden only but it's a instead of book
about the principles of gardening at his own place and let's have that come through so it's a book about the principles on
so knowing their additional show gave me the assignment of writing about on what principles motivate me as a gardener and i'd like to read them to you and of their seven and i hope there's the sink and i hope they're clear if they're not i hope you'll ask me about it or m
tell me it's called into the tangle
seven basic principles of gardening when i was a brand new gardener i planted my first bed of sweet corn at tassajara zen mountain center i was working by myself in the upper garden wrapped with concentration dry shriveled kernels of bantam sweet corn filled my fist i stretched a string line the full length of the sea
sixty five foot row where i was planting the corn and just under this line i scratched out a two inch deep furrow with my favorite home the string showed me where to plant and it kept me straight every two inches or so i dropped a kernel of corn into the furrow i wasn't sure that i would have enough seed so i left the furrow
uncovered until the entire line was planted i was working on my hands and knees head down and deep under the spell of the ancient ritual of planting i imagined green blades of corn rising up out of the black skirt of the ground
i was so focused on the seating that i didn't notice anything else that was happening in the garden that day finally the line was done i looked up from my supplicants crouch a rotten stellar blues blue jay was at the bottom of my corn for hopping fearlessly down the line gobbling up each of my carefully sewn kernels a sweet corn she paused for
moment fixed me with her bright eye and continued to feast and my life as a gardener cracked open into group
i nearly killed her
i'm experimenting with using the feminine of the young feminine gender for my enemies it's been very interesting think i told you that last for two years ago when i'm at i'm still trying to do it what i realized that summer day was fundamental gardening is about awareness and relationship consequential relationship it's also about taking a stand
the same time it's about giving up control and your stands and learning from your mistakes
this hasn't been easy lesson for me
when i recovered from my stunned shock and the tulsa her according for why i left to my feet bellowing war cries that the retreating back side of my fed corn fed j muttering under my breath i register beauty the mere remaining corn seed in the row and stamped close the for oil but today twenty five years later i'm still pursuing blue jays and they're still
suit me
show off with the one in the greenhouse of a corn last year the hopi core gardening is a lifetime's work all about picking and choosing and about following your passion i have some very basic principles that inform how a garden they come out of my love for gardening and out of my deep love for green gulch farm the home place where i live in war
and where the champions of my life are anchored to day i count seven principles tomorrow they may change a bit because they are alive and i'm alive like the garden my principles do not always behave in a predictable orderly way they come out of a wild and rangy rootstock from the bottom of time i want to say before i go into further that when i
began writing the book one of the first and strongest things michael katz said to me is i hope that you will not we us to death
we do not want to be we'd buy the generic zen center you have to make it personal please make it personal use the first person pronoun don't be afraid to say i garden like this even though you know it it includes suki liz l peter ah you know snip and jerry all those beings are included but use
to take a stance and don't weigh us to death so you'll hear this may seem a little egotistical on and of course it is but there isn't awareness in the words that i stands i stand for all beings when he is that
letter
so my first principle is to learn gardening from the wilderness outside the garden gate as i work i want to keep the links alive between wild land and the cultivated role i received my clearest gardening instruction from listening to the voice of the watershed and surrounds our garden i know the january is the time to prune are japanese
his elephant heart plum and the garden but just when in january is always linked to the unfurling of the first white blossoms on the wild plum tree in the canyon outside the meditation hall
there's very little true wilderness remaining in the modern world and yet when the row rights that in wildness is the preservation of the world he reminds me that wildness at least persists it endures and are a culture rated cities as well as on the fringe of urban farm land it persists in patches insults in
wallows in witty tangles everywhere on earth
a few summers ago peter and i were driving in west berkeley through an industrial neighborhood not far from the san francisco bay we passed an abandoned garden that had gone to seed fascinated with aged to a halt and pressed up against the sagging fence that bordered that forgotten plot old carrot plants towered above us eight feet high
raining down torrents of seed onto the sidewalk tattered gourmet lettuces stood as loans centuries near the overgrown entrance to the garden the whole place home with the wine of and collecting insects working that abandoned paradise
in honor of wildness inside and outside of the gate every spring i leave a random corner of our garden untended and anna neglected tangle we let it go
throughout the growing season we pass by this fellow spit of wilderness but in early autumn when i bent over with our domesticated harvest of slim white stockings lakes and read mustard i look across the ordered rows of the garden to that far tangle of cd cow parsnip and skunk weed and my own true wild roots
stir back to life
my second principle of gardening is to know the soil where i work in every way even though i pretend to be cultivating crops of italian ready keel and long-stemmed bouquets of dame's rocket but i really doing is getting to know the heavy bottom soil of the gulch
our soil is made up of the work of countless invisible organisms digesting the land and running it through their intestines soil the species and everything gardens
no darwin said from the earthworm as the intestines of the earth
remembering as i worked there are more micro organisms in one cup of fertile green golf soil than there are human beings on planet earth i have a renewed humility about my own scale and context in the great life of the garden and your soul by digging we work hard at and center double dicking our garden just as alan chadwick taught us thirty years ago often
people marvel that we go to such lengths to cultivate our land here at zen center couldn't we use simpler less labor intensive methods to grow these crops wouldn't it be more than then not to work so hard maybe but for me the fact that we dig the soil so deeply and thoroughly and move all those feces around is my life and my zen practice
yes
when we first began to double dig at gringotts i could get the blade of my dicking spade only about four inches into the ground that's how heavy are old c bottom soil was i remember crying by myself in frustration as i tried to dig are stiff clay soil i heard the quail queueing under the hut cyprus hedge where they took the
dust baths no one noticed me i had blisters on the pads of my fingers and all along the palm of my right hand from digging and i kept on digging i went down into the soil inch by inch i was hooked in spite of myself
the third principle of gardening is to feed the soil and to work to build fertile land not just to grow crops and old japanese proverb says a poor farmer grows weeds a mediate mediocre farmer grows crops and a good farmer gross soil
a green gulch sweet grow soil by planting a green mantle of cover crops to build soil fertility year round we also cultivate deep-rooted crops like burdock and american sweet clover which break up hard pan and consolidate minerals and nitrogen and their roots and we build soil by making compost piles and celebrating decay life and death into life
is our motto for the work happening in every compost pile and we make excuse me in every compost pile that we make out of rod garbage and layered straw this work is so fundamental to how we garden at and center that we often joke that even though we don't proselytize about then we should do about conference
my fourth guiding principle is to protect and encourage biodiversity and props this principle comes out of a bottomless love for plants and out of a passion for preserving biodiversity and the plant kingdom kingdom because there are no kings in the long lineage of plants so why should we say kingdom let's try
my kingdom were only participants
perseverance of biodiversity depends on growing a wide range of plants from seed and on supporting small seed companies that make a special effort to protect or fashion varieties
eighty per cent of all the vegetable varieties that are available if that were available in the united states in nineteen oh to eighty per cent have now disappeared
on
this is because of a huge centralization of the sea trade in the hands of very few multinational corporations even though i nationally teeth over the erosion of genetic diversity i also remember that agriculture is fifteen thousand years old and commercial seed merchants only appeared above three hundred years go
there are an endangered species this gives me fresh hope and encourages me to be a seed saver myself despite our foggy cold climate
and are less than half acre flower garden we grow more than seventy species of flowers and herbs in the vegetable rows of our kitchen garden we grow crops for greens restaurant and for our own kitchen we plant sixteen distinct varieties of modern and heritage lettuces as well as many other vegetables
ups
most of our flowers and vegetables are raised from seed gathered from all over the world we share our seed stock with all interested gardeners and we have no secret pet varieties of plants when the principle of protecting and encouraging biodiversity is central to your gardening philosophy you quickly observe that this principle also prove
vides for protecting and encouraging the named and unnamed insects and small mammals that serve as pollinators and van officials in every diverse garden there are some seventy thousand species of catalogued insects buzzing around in our time
of these numbers only about four hundred or pest difference and of these four hundred only about one hundred are serious serious agricultural pests the other thousands all of a primary place in the garden
these forced first for principles are about what to do in the garden their fundamental practical principles learned from the wild know your soil inside out build fertility and preserve biodiversity in the garden i learned these principles by working in the garden shoulder to shoulder with many people and with to str
wrong gardening teachers who were practical dreamers alan chadwick and harry roberts labored with a steady vision of worldly paradise always in front of their hands they passed this vision on me and my life as a gardener has been marked like the red groups like the red roots of rhubarb chard and winter
association with my teachers and by working the earth of our modern garden of eden with love and attention
the word principal comes from the latin for first taker or first beginning a principal then is a basic truth law or assumption principles are essential
principal stand at the front at the beginning of all good work the word principle has an interesting cognate prow as in the front hall of a sailing ship
i like this image since principles do push headfirst into uncharted waters into the deep
since the waters around the boat are always moving principles must be alive fit for change and surprise and ready to respond and relate always to the world
the last regarding principles are about how to be in the garden like my first for principles these next guidelines are deeply practical they're gathered around a fierce love of plants and of the natural world around celebration of the intricate unfolding of dinosaur kale leaves around the smell of young ginger in the rain
these principles are old old and new at once garden economically and ecologically work in mindfulness and engage with the world outside the garden gate if you asked me to repeat these principles are tomorrow i may say them a little differently but they remain the hull of my ship where cold heartedly pay attention to what's under your
feet and share the bounty of the garden
wholehearted work and it an ecological gardening is the fifth principle this may sound lofty huge but it's not the principal is second nature to most gardeners
it means work with care and protect the elements of your garden soil the treasure clean water the good fresh air to economy and ecology in the garden depend on a loving relationship with your home place even if you're only privilege to garden in your spot for one short season the prefix eco which is a prefix for ikaw
enemy and ecology comes from the greek oi kiss for household or home home economics and depends on knowing and protecting ecology of your place and i'm getting to know yourself and your place inside out to her hard work
and i'll have to preach to still open
or continued fruit
gardening is economical at its core and ecological when we remember not to take more from the land that we give back this admonition harkens back to the second and third principles no-one one protect your soil build fertility in the garden ecological and economical gardening is organic gardening knowing full well the harm that comes from applying chemical fertilizers and can
esta size to the earth i am determined to study and teach ecological gardening which has practiced organically
and it would wear you out
wholehearted love of the economy and ecology of your home place is infectious it spreads to be wholehearted means to be undivided from your place to dwell in love and dependence on your particular spot of earth and to know your dwelling place in every way when this
happens to economies intersect the natural and the human than as poet and farmer wendell berry rights each economy is the others hope of a durable and livable life
it takes time to know your garden well it takes as long as it takes this awareness is the foundation of my sixth gardening principal garden mindfully with full awareness of your body and breath and the body and breath of the garden itself
even was a billowing see of work all around you take the time to feel a spacious sense of leisure as garden this does not mean that you wind down and aesthetic and mobility in order to follow your breath but find your own rhythm and your own pace as you work energetically dynamic
buckley in the garden it means you're willing to live in the present moment and to adjust your pace you're willing to give up your idea of what it means to be mindful you're willing to let the garden get under your skin listened to throughout his traffic he says there were times when i could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moma
want to any work whether of the head or hands i love abroad margin to my life sometimes on a summer morning i sit in the sunny doorway from sunrise to noon i grow in the seasons like corn the night
growing like court in the night brings me back to my blue jay natasa pecking at the corn as i concentrated right and only on what was ready for me to mindfulness offers a broad margin to life a wide peripheral vision that includes awareness of a living j and concentration on the foreign see this kind of mine
from this practice begins by slowing down and becoming aware of the body breath and the mind mindfulness is a primary principle and path for me because without it i'm lost in paradise and cut off from the living world
mine is core practice simple spend five minutes every day just sitting still and your garden give yourself a broad margin and sink down into your breathing watch the ruby throated hummingbird poor wrecked read nectar out of your full blown salvias listened to the rain on the leathery
purple colored leaves sink down and join the breath of the garden
i promise that you will feel that you will resurface refreshed you're not leaving home when you take hold and mindfulness for coming home the old texts from the time of the buddha remind us that mindfulness practice is the unfailing master key for knowing the mind the perfect tool for shaping the mind and the manifestation of real free
edam of the mind realized by being fully alive in the present moment
dwelling in mindfulness working in awareness the garden comes alive all around you and you become fit to make to meet the mystery moment after moment
my last prince principles
engage with the world outside the garden game
this principle is very simple to realize since gardening is all about relationship but the garden lead you out there is no way to guard without being aware of the cries of the world my friend catherine snead who been teaching gardening to prisoners in the san francisco county jail for this last decade of her life says this principle
most simply most bluntly garden save lives so help people aren't a going
there are many ways to reach out to the wider world from the heart of your garden share the bounty of your own crops give away a zucchini cake fresh brandywine tomatoes to your senior citizen center and sit down and eat them with the ancient ones taste raw a life together drool read paul
just waterford draw red polka volunteer to help set up a community garden and your local town work in your public school to get a line of russian sunflowers planet for hungry birds you say there's no sewage soil at your school only pavement that's what we heard john muir school in san francisco you say there's no soil at your school on the pavement okay
okay so then plant sunflowers with kindergartners in deep five or eight gallon containers like they have did and create a garden of eden rooted in black plastic pots let your imagination lead you out from the humming core of your own garden to the dusty world and plant paradise wherever you got
ah thank you

eq says it as so much for such
pow don't wait for the man standing in the snow to cut off his arm help him now
so i want to give you some breathing room around what i know is very dense high cholesterol writing i'm aware of that new my mind which is that way needs to get on the treadmill pump for on
on glass time after i read martin said well it's good for writing but hasn't thing to do about them as though we had a booth at a year long dialogue ever since the fear grabbed him by the shirts and harder who sufficient fear the ultimate compliment i called michael and is that
oh
i think of martin are you sure ah
i am
we've been in a working hard to see how we i mean i really mean a team that i work with cause i'm so well endowed with a wonderful team of people that help small team enough small but i'm really looking to see how how does this come out of practice them part of it is the whole
mr johan
making what's not really the present moment the present moment or drawing from a history of tradition practicing and sensing and presenting it as if it's happened just yesterday so i think you'll hear that as i continue to meet you i'm interested where those principles clear
good
it's a real important part of the book and took me months to write those
the average getting the treadmill
i can see where they're going to get on the treadmill again
because it's been a couple of years since i read them
anyway they are the in the first chapter first chapter of the books all about this place and about this a section about harry roberts and one about alan chadwick and one about of my route teacher tick nine hundred and what it means to practice with a route teacher all your gardening and there's a lot of work about george we all in about how we about commute work how it used to be years ago
it's kind of
thick with history and ends with the principles of gardening
hmm
so i do a little more came from
this is the tricycle peace and it follows the principles it's called i'm not cutting corners and it's dedicated to him gardens for the y two k crisis
it'll be coming out in early august
i'm a steadfast refugee from the computer age a modern minerva tv born too late and disinclined to type to send email or surf the net i know that in the time it would take me to learn the computer i could become decent at budding and grafting disappearing strains of heritage apples a far more compelling task from
my gardeners hands and mind even though i am a techno twit hiding behind the brocade skirts of black peppermint cool mint lettuce and burgundy amaranth from the roar of the twenty-first century i know about y two k computer panic was all of its triplicate zeros and threats a real disaster i know about it and also brood over the potential day
danger of worldwide shut down at nuclear power and weapons plants caused by millennial computer failure closer to home by two k panic is expressed as fear of scarcity and of interrupted food and water service since most of the food we eat in the developed world travels at least one thousand two hundred
miles and this is a verified truth my friends even in california most of the food we eat in the developed world travels twelve hundred miles before reaching our tables this breakdown fear is quite real so i have a simple timely non computerized response to y two k panic join with your friends and neighbors and grow a small guard
eden this fall this fall and draw your table closer to the garden there's ample precedent for this suggestion during world war two victory gardens were planted to help provide food during a time of rationed supplies if there was a lack of arable land for starting these gardens breaking up tarmac and pavement was widely sanctioned so that fresh food
could be grown and that's truly was actually a provision to take out pavement if you couldn't he didn't have laughed
victory gardens not only breed good vegetables they also give me victory gardens not only fred good vegetables they also spawned a vital sanga of intertwined gardeners and strengthened the roots of urban suburban and rural life planning a y two k garden in these times has similar to practicing tongue like meditation works by breathing in hot disaster
and exhaling
cool bright light so take your so taken to your lungs the smoky fear of computer shutdown and a real lack of food and water and breathe out confidence and generosity bolstered by gathering your wits about you growing food for those who are hungry and afraid it's quite simple really winter gardens can be started throughout the continental you know
did states in the season as long as you have a few months before the first heavy frost since it is a little late consider transplanting hardy open pollinated seedlings to get a jump on and season and if you must start from see be sure to choose cold resistant varieties that mature and under sixty days begin by planting robust winter vegetables like
swiss chard red russian kale nelson storage carrots and to chico sprouting broccoli all great in stews soups and surprise for january salad greens praise be to osaka purple mustard miner's lettuce marsh and minute tina a crunchy salad green that re-growth mightily after each cutting for new your flowers to welcome the target
the millennium plant warning brides kbs clothes and stock and flame colored calendula is that exude warmth and cheer then instead of protecting your garden see how much of it you can share or give away
in the six thousand year old history of agriculture there has always been the lively tradition of growing for the hungry
written in the biblical book of leviticus is the clear admonition not to cut the corners of your field but to leave the crop standing to be gleaned by the poor the hungry in a stranger
so practice tanglin meditation and donna parramatta the old perfection of giving as you harvest your crops on new year's eve do what we do plan a potluck dinner gleaned from the unlocked y two k gardens in your community eat together practice sitting meditation until the wee hours of the morning and garden wholeheartedly without cutting any corners

i have to make up my mind of an agricultural history of six thousand and fifteen thousand new support of the a little
variation the matter
and appreciate any help because most expensive britain six thousand spread there we go go from us be or yeah and the agriculture is older now who knows
better rectify it though right
bass
yeah yeah we don't really know that we know that agricultural centers in the world and there are places where people sat where they sat down you know where they sat together sat down candidate the ground grew crops
the garden books divided into sit down about seven chapters first ones about the place and there's one about the soil one about fertility basically following the principles really what about see what about tending the garden and includes the pests and watering one about on
can't remember
complicated i think what about oh yeah what about on
ah irrigation
that kind of work and then the last ones about and facing the world connecting to me
so there about a five of them are done
one of the biggest problems in this in the book is that i've done very little writing about plants actual plants
ah which is interesting because a years ago on when suki first came to work in the garden she'll
she was reading a secret garden and asked me who i related to he told me she was relating more to call him to the while to college
the while being the wild boy
you don't remember this not calling
what's his net what's the name of the boy who was wild goose free bless con so suki was relating to feeling his life where she said she used to be more connected with the sickly boy i thought he couldn't walk you have to know the book if you don't it's an inside her story and she asked me on who do you relate to of the characters and if it kind of trusted to the garden
alien characters i always felt like that was my identity was in the garden and with the plants just been really interesting there's been very little emphasis on plants in the book so there's not going be a chapter on irrigation the champ fitness interesting i forgot at the chapter that's missing is a chapter about plants
because i've been feeling lately you know that
and i met luis halberd was a butterfly garden or and i felt at the end of our encounter for she was giving oliver plants over the butterflies i thought she was charming and picturesque but her garden with like hell and was eaten to the quick because she was gardening for butterflies i began to see her as a as a rancher and me as a farmer
you know i'm growing the plants cause i love the plant she's growing them for livestock move
hello
you learn a lot when you sit down with
a dyke and says to me there's only one secret to writing two three three simple words black on white
so when you sit down to put black on white or pen on paper or however you wanna do it
you learn a lot about how you put together
ah
so i have a two more pieces that i wanted to read you one is a piece that i wrote read a pretty close after my mother died and it came out of a retreat that we did with
veterans of the vietnam war we did this retreat out at fort cronkite in a military base and we spent veterans day out there practicing meditation and we worked with maxine hong kingston who's a great writer she's the author woman warrior and a wonderful teacher she's only teaching now two groups veterans he's only speaking about
stemming the tide of
come up and it came out in the writing and on their last night together we read the work that we've done that came out of meditation and
so magazine gave us a one assignment and she said on
take on an object from the natural world and put it in front of you and really look at it and then practice writing what you see use your senses call up your senses
and then she said look away and right what's there underneath your senses underneath your sensual apprehension
so on my mother died of dementia alcoholic lee induced dementia she drank herself into a stupor that lasted for a couple of wonderful years for she was on very sweet and absolutely marvelous
open and friendly and she smiled at us like a toothless pumpkin and but you didn't know who we were who are daughters were and she didn't recognize that she couldn't speak he do anything by yourself and problem
she died last september a few a few months before this retreat so when it was time for
the writing practice on i looked out the window was a stormy day on the headlands and on this november was veteran's day
their halloween pumpkins had been put out on an old wooden on
ah post men weren't decaying and i looked at the pumpkin
and this piece came up it's called day of the dead compost pile

by halloween at gringotts farm all the covercraft for the winter season and the tulips and narcissus the fritillary and blood red lit riga lily bulbs of spring must be planted halloween is the cut off point the hatchet falls on all hallow's eve for after october thirty first it's for
it's too late to plant
this is the time of year we celebrate and field deals with those are the day of the dead that day standing between auburn trust indian summer and rainy black eyed winter when the veil between the worlds thins out and gardens are called home to sleep in the long throw a rock
this year we celebrate the day of the dead by making a huge and of the season compost heap in the middle of our autumn fields know being escapes the yawning jaws of this halloween compost pile today is our final chance to scrape all broken and shattered beings off the empty field and into one steaming mad
sound we work all day long cleaning the field in a solitary corner of the field i pull broken sunflower stocks out of the exhaust to grow often these stocks or ten feet long with thin ghost-like next at their summit snapped off next broken by the weight of huge island hands of gouged out russian sunflowers
these stocks are heavy as the grave and i hold them out of the earth lay them down in a criss-cross mound for the base of our halloween heap
in the top of the second field dave is pulling up cards and card and carts of dry being litter he lays out tangles of brutal being vines on top of my sunflower stocks vermont cranberry beans trail of tears and dragon tongue beans themselves have been harvested weeks ago they glow in their wide
rimmed burlap sacks standing in the corner of our seed room like burnished gems dug out of the bottom most shaft of dwarf and minds are like small enchanted eggs incubating in a vast prehistoric nest
on top of the dry being litter alison stacks armloads of cornhusks from the flint corn rainbow inca and blue hopi corn that we will grind up into meal and a few weeks and bake in the moist thanksgiving bread these husks and sheaves of mother corn or the paired off toenails and old bunyan skins of a seiko
good crop eight thousand years old the staple grain of the new world but today corn husks are fine fodder for the furnace of decay i muttered to myself and alison hurls another barrel that would have broken cornstalks and black and silks onto the dung heap
our halloween compost pile of totters between six and seven feet high already twenty five feet long and growing like a black segmented drag and worm sloughing off its skin and crawling out of the molten core of the earth kevin backs up old yeller our farm truck to the pile and he and some child
hurl shovelfuls of ripe green worship and moldy old straw wreaking drenched with horse piss onto the pile
for the last few hours now we haven't spoken at all we find our work rhythm dictated by the old music that broods at the roots of hundred year old yew trees and pours out from the bells of the earth in this season
our day of the dead compost pile is a fearsome being with curved nails that have never been cut and long unproved crone whiskers growing out of a to nostrils
the pile already begins to steam and the cold evening air
as invisible drifts of micro organisms fall on the exposed jugular vein of alas crops of the season night hovers showing its ribs at the edge of the field
retired now and we know it we worked hard all season and i feel it suddenly even though the ghost of long limbed summer still paces the field measuring the land for next year's robe she
hums from memory her slow seductive song but i'm tired now and i'm tired her i can't be wooed tired of plump kernel corn and striped sunflowers and i'm tired of burden baskets full of oily great and gleaming beans i'm not hungry now at least not for crops have been not
out by death and decay
when our compost pile is finished it's dark for crowning touch we take all our old halloween pumpkins and sit them in a crooked line on the crest of pile
i can see their silhouettes on the humpback spine of accomplice mound he sagged and pumpkins with collapsed grins beckoned me through the grey moss mould growing out of their broken tooth holes they call me
they hes alive with the k blocked us my garden friend my young garden friends are already walking up to dinner laughing way ahead of me
i hear the gate swinging open and clang shut behind them
hi and the cyprus windbreak that overhangs are day of the dead compost pile a great horned owl opens and closes her winks i put down like a pitchfork wipe my hands on the front of my overalls and walk through that thin veil of steve that separates the world's into the bright clean fire
decay

and again eq commenting nature's a killer i won't sing to it i hold my breath and listen to the dead singing under the grass

alison pointed out to me that the chronology is not quite right in this piece of i promise i'll fix it

home so that a taste of what i've been working on and now if you're not tired and if you'll allow me to indulge myself i read you what i wrote today is that would be good natalie said you should read shit read what you think it's not good read what's
you think is what's fresh off the press go ahead and read it and i just put it out and so this is completely all these pieces are fairly oh no unedited their their worked but not so edited but what's hot off the press i'm hoping i can even read because at such a mess
but i'd like to do it enough because it begins the plant chapter of the book
and it's about of it's called black bamboo green wind and it's a true story
a hoot embellished by true
trillium embellished
oh so i'll start by chastising myself with eq it takes horse shit to grow bamboo
and it too
but i'm gonna mess this up
i can't read my own writing what a what a pain
what does that word
so
that's bad for layla backwards to types all this stuff but she isn't she can read my writing better than i can
see also usually corrects discrepancies like i notice there's another when a heroic of corns eight thousand years old below
but they'll get it won't they these editors will get that
an inconsistency
who
so is it okay one more
draw your chair session
if scott for steel draw your chair cost the precipice and i'll tell you a story so this is the story
and you know i'm gonna i'm gonna run a lot of stuff together you'll notice sookie and listen and kinda
others that know the garden well we'll see that there's been a melding of chronology here but you'll have to it's called inventing the truth and it's a sanctioned practice you can get away with for a little while this book said natalie is is a memoir thinly disguised as a garden cookbook think that's unfortunately true but
i'll put in more fast and the usda and hope it flash and
and i know beans and shelf and people be on the coronation green gulch and book com
we want i wanted to call it on ah a field far beyond form an emptiness
the tony burbank look like that it might have been ads
interesting
the second that can be at work in the green gulch garden how about gardening at the green dragon gate and she said if it's not much better than
a so right now they're boringly calling it the green gulch garden book and it has to be in by january third the year two thousand and peterson you should hope for a computer glitch
that's going to help you to pray for it cursed like computers
black bamboo green wind
the in nineteen eighty two we began the present gringos garden i worked with my friend and colleague skiff kimura a long time student of allen chadwick's and a fanatic gardener skip was not as and student
he came to green gulch the year after allen died to help us design and lay out a new garden skips soul practice was organic gardening and i was his primary or i should say and i was his soul apprentice and accomplice skip plotted the garden methodically
and unceasingly we were very different we are very different and we fought continuously usually over conflicting tones and hues of lavender and soft peach or about whether or not to enter plant short lived perennials among the regal shrubs of the grand herbaceous border curiously the
garden only got stronger when skip i locked horns the garden benefited from strife
since green gulch is a meditation center we designed to main ornamental gardens dedicated to contemplation repose and resounding emptiness the herbal circle around garden within a square washed with all the colors of the plant rainbow and beyond the rainbow and the altar garden or peace garden
a quiet some world of pale white soft cream and deep greens these two gardens took their place in the central core of the body of the garden just across the road from each other from the first i was drawn to the herbal circle garden like a hummingbird pulled down into the long red throne of durin urgency on a stage
huge interest by the tucked bustles of the french roses and by the faint lingering perfume from paladins korean lilac i was held captive hostage to this fickle well ruched garden throughout her prolonged year of gestation skip sought refuge from the herbal circle by working
in the cool green shadows of the altar garden he immersed himself in the subtle world of bark texture and naked branch of well rolled lawn and rough craggy island's of stone
painting the garden from a complex palette of grey green merging into smoke green contrasted with pitch dark forest green squeezed out of the drifting needle tips a fog bound alaskan for now and then a surprise meteor of wild chartreuse plant mature
ariel would careened down steering the cool facade of the peace garden and unblinking tropical iguanas would step out of a fiery pool of light
each of these medication gardens had to be contained they were separate worlds not meant to mingle to anchor the herbal circle we planted a formal hedge of classic you a perfect foil for the overdressed plants of the inner circle the you hedge became the sturm chaperone of the herbal circle gathering
all the thoughts into the somber full of his cliff embrace
the altar garden called for a softer border a semi permeable membrane of undulating green we chose bamboo skipped delight we excuse me he had just returned from a gardener's pilgrimage to savannah georgia where u s the a testing station set up in the early nineteen twenties was being disbanded skip brought home a rare color
section of chinese bamboo a truck load full of phyllis stashes twenty six distinct species including quickstep timber and golden bamboo
did you bring back in black bamboo i ask him as he unloaded the overburden traf i wish he said under his breath
i'm not a fan of pimple
either his early
i'm not a fan of bamboo i share the prejudice of many that bamboo takes over can't be controlled and invades every corner of the civilized world the black bamboo like bamboo is different
elegant and mysterious was slender polished ebony keynes rising to thirty feet i first encountered black bamboo waving its spring green banners of foliage and the center of suzuki roshi garden and tulsa her twenty years ago i thought it was the most beautiful and exotic plan i'd ever laid my eyes upon
suzuka she had only been dead for two years when i first saw his garden no one was allowed to work in this inner sanctum but the roche's anja or attendant and it reflects still true but i checked it out with he wanted and she said it was really true for the first years after there was a real
protectionist as a girl she's garden
somehow i was assigned to help anja georgia
du temple cleaning and suzuki roshi inner garden one windy autumn day
we worked on our hands and knees collecting fall sycamore leaves from the floor of the garden it was a fruitless task good for your practice but fruitless since fresh sycamore litter rained down and windy torrents all around us as we worked during one particularly blustery gust i looked up to
see the black bamboo startling against the inner dome of tassajara laugh this lazily sky a fire of black bamboo lust and greed ignited in my heart on that day
when we planted the all older garden at green gulch twenty years later we dedicated it to the to to the three friends of japanese folklore
these three friends are plants that represent primary virtues to be cultivated
yoshiko goodbye or pine bamboo and sharing pined for strengths bamboo for flexibility and cherry for beauty and for the coming apart of beauty
dedication to the three friends was expressed in secret as we planted pine bamboo and cherry seedlings in the altar garden and green gulch
flexible bamboo was chosen as the guardian of the altar garden skip rented a ditch witch and cut a two foot deep channel around the outer border beds of the garden and in this deep channel he placed corrugated fiberglass to stop the bamboo from running outside of its borders but bamboo represent
it's flexibility and it taught us this virtue well especially as it kept surfacing ten feet or more from the outside of its fenceline season after season after season even when we pursued it with sharp machete and polished paid
after two years the young bamboo hedge filled in and the altar garden rooted becoming a deeper glade dream
we set a wouldn't alter up deep into the thicket of bamboo and enshrined a weathered granite figure of jesus body sought for the patron saint of children and travelers overhead the bamboo billowed and rolled freeing the liquid song of a swainson's thrush at daybreak
a long time matriarch and benefactors of zen center died in the first years of the altar garden nancy was a steadfast friend of the gringos garden
she willed us a beautiful carved stone figure of a buddhist are hot that had practice diligently for years in her elegant long island home our hearts are not afraid of hard practice they sit in meditation day and night are rock are hot was no slouch he had a
fearsome scowl of determination etched into his stone features even naughty children fell to hushed silence in his presence and tiptoed past the our hearts you garden perch at the base of the bamboo border not far from the alter our hearts practice by themselves often a corner
slide with our our hearts secret wishes i set him on a lovely low sycamore stumped shelf and left him profoundly alone under the bamboo
a month or so later in early summer i came down to the altar garden just at daybreak the or had had been up ended and was lying face down on the wet lawn looking at most undignified
a called skip over and together we write it the poor heavy fellow marveling that his meditation stump had been split asunder a blast of sudden enlightenment no i'm sorry to report only a vigorous snout of wild bamboo rooting around under the litter and poking up under the
our hearts
apparently this sharp nose shoot at surface just under the grumpy meditator split it stump into and and goose
a noble an oily from below sending him ass over teakettle into the world of foolish common people
re brushed him off careful not to show arts can remember that ammunition that the laugh and sure your to be around arts are this worked with okay but i couldn't resist of that will certainly be a out of your guru sooner we brush we brushed him off careful not to show our
teeth as we smiled and return the are hard to the floor of the bamboo forest where hopefully his practice has grown somewhat more flexible
to me
oh and it's one hundred percent true
not long after this seismic event
he had found a dried up minako bamboo buried in the compost buckets from page street i heard him
from all the way across the garden i think of
he said excitedly scraping old oatmeal and coffee grounds off his treasure
it must be from some cooking she's garden at toss a car maybe from city i thought to myself noticing that the plant looked particularly dry and dead
but to skip took is fine to the glasshouse and planted it in loamy compost rich soil and minister to it all winter long while more orthodox and students were practicing thousand in the zendo skip dropped away body and mind and willed a dead bamboo clump back to life
by early march a small red shoot with black whiskers was poking up out of skips folly unfurling it's first black flag skip move the revive bamboo to a deeper pot and then to a deeper pot still and the plant flourished by midsummer
when it was planted out and when it was finally planted out in the altar garden this black bamboo was as vigorous at any well loved amply nourished teenager
the pound at it's chest gave a loud roar and too cold
now more than ten years have passed since they're planting skip moved on years ago from green gulch to found a thriving two acre garden for profoundly handicapped people i couldn't have done it without my training at zen center he said wickedly
huh
later this garden passed onto a local elementary school and is still pumping out voluptuous pumpkins and rich dark kale seedlings for kindergarten to fifth graders i think of skip every time i walk past the altar garden with its fifteen foot long waving patch of by
black satin bamboo growing just across the road from the north gateway leading into the herbal circle don't say dead don't say a lie whispered an old zen master centuries ago holding up a bleached white skull in the empty line so it is with gardeners who persevere and are not fooled by appearances
as we just continue under all circumstances not taking no for an answer and receiving strength from a handful of dust blowing across lonely pine trees beauty from scattered she's beauty from shattered cherry blossoms on muddy water and flexibility from
black bamboo moving in the green wind

that's your words he has a full day's work and i'm tired and night and i did it because you guys we're here and i thought i should write for my friends read something true and i've been i've been studying the bamboo have been circling the bamboo for looking at it coming up and and items
and watching skip and last night i sat in the garden with yvonne and bill for about an hour and we look at the bamboo and i and book it came off and so yeah will took all day to write them
and the first two pages i'd done the day before so it's really only blessed
so the black hand do that just in the guard here at tassajara that it did yeah into the garage she's garden and you're kidding knowledge no left of a lot some back
about two years to go try to replace because he was a on state that summer starts hassle of black thing is not like
this has a black while you could see it in the garden woods it's just as i described
oh it's not it's wind whipped and to appear hurt on the bag and looks like it's been flailed by a
petulant which on the back on the ocean side but inside the garden it's very beautiful and stunning plant on not sure how he had pets cat how he he worked really hard that your unhappiness and then trying it
bring some back and where santa hats interesting even said that in the first years as the city girl she's guarding that actually when when it was his garden he really was his garden and it wasn't not many people came in that you know he really took care of it and and tended it in a certain way he taught us a don't when you're cleaning the garden don't sweep litter as
side of the garden pull it toward you and then you can take it out the garden if you want but don't don't think that you can throw anything out of the garden books federal everything in the garden that you want to get rid of pull toward you put it onto a waste basket and take it to the compost pile that way don't try to get it out of your mind from any a lot of those
of memories are recorded in the wonderful a test of our gardeners log for those of you been lucky enough the garden customer can read that log it's a terrific on
history
it's an it used to be in the garden shed
yeah there's a chapter in the garden book on called keep the links live tracking the trustless garden which is about keeping records and i remembered writing in the test of our log in reading everybody's experiences it's a wonderful journal little bit like the ten thousand your book peppered with zen exuberance and discouragement on the
page usually from the same gardener depending on all lot on the underground malls in the blue jays those qualities anyway
so every every plant has a history
and story

thank you mr eq you can't make cherry blossoms by tearing off pedals to plant only spring just that

if you have any questions i'm happy to
do what i can for five more minutes and then it's time prepared you've had your debt nighttime stories

i'm learning lot of lagarde garden in about practice to the book

k pretty soon you're only going to see me walk into the dining room carrying my food out and looking like a grumpy bear
this is your chance
gasps
while for this period of time for five i've been working on it for five years but i'm not steady in my life is er verder never it's it's fresh i'm a reader i've loved i'm from my dad was a a a law you know i spent my entire life see my dad bury himself in books and music and my mother to and my mother
yeah it was a big part of my life growing up with great books my mother read to us for hours and hours and hours and your children we used to scratch your arm and if we scratched her arms should keep reading shiftless a really sensuous
we scratched or i mean she just kept reason we'd kept her going for keeping the is about that
me
stunning thank you permitted improves its that i know thanks
in fact fertile for to squeeze it in oil pokes and infrastructural yeah
pat this photographs of i have a picture of a bottle and mimi and i'm errand with roast lush pass it around with rose petals on their lips i keep it on my desk in case things get too serious and then i have a picture of
natalie of
natalie a two years know i guess it was less directly for my mom died she invited me to do or retreat with her a new mexico and i went in wasn't it was zen and writing retreat and we sat together every day and wrote in the afternoon and i'm it was a wonderful experience in at the and we read together at it
cafe it was the first time i've ever read in public and this is a picture of her adjusting the mike
i keep that on my desk to adjusting my mike
the crowd was very tolerant they were waiting for natalie and they had to go through me know how it is to put up
so we had a a a good time and steve allen was in the audience and surprised us female internationally grinned the i wouldn't believe bodies
we read in a little love cafe and toast
and it was raining
yeah
sure will feel fulfilled
all that's a great question that i'm so glad you asked that my dream always was for michael to illustrate the both michael scheuer and because he can draw fog and the kind of ah so we we talked about it but you know this see let me know a few years back that that was a good dream but i should look on and so am
i've been talking to davis to sell who the an illustrator who gives a beautiful picture of the m the lithograph of the oak tree down in the dining room and he's doing some drawings and we'll see ah they've said from the very beginning that this book shouldn't have photographs because photographs or too literal on the book isn't
and although they're thinking for the cover their thinking of a close-up of of a lit lettuce seedlings in the feeling flat of picture the jim boehm struck and i said to tony what you'd forfeit the long view of green gulch for ratty lettuce seedlings and styrofoam flash you can't really see to start from it's just like looking down at the funnel of lettuce and she said yes because it would be a mistake to think that this book is
about green greengart
even though it's complete as you can hear it's completely about green card
so ah she said it's about you know of about the principles that are the influence a garden so we can think we can look forward to seeing i don't know emulator or little know what led us that is on the front it's a very dark red beautiful lettuce with ruffled edges
now that would be so cool that where the cover and the drawings i don't know if we've we've been experimenting with what they'll be i think i really want a friend that knows the garden and noticed our practice to do the drawings like annie when when fields of greens came out annie it was a woman working in the kitchen who was credible illustrator and michael katz took the
risk with annie and her drawings are so beautiful take a look at them they're living vegetables and and he knew because she worked with her so this was annie's debut as a writer and and the woman's tibialis it as an illustrator and that's nice to have their collaboration you know davis not how to draw on oscillators at morning that's good
and he doesn't really mean i mean really great woodroffe he's really good at that not not the norwegian wrath that we're dealing for it now but a little naughty would read it is hasn't a lot of spirit and spunk
so that's the idea not to have photographs but there will be some drawings that show how to hold a second tears when you're pruning the rose there is more practical teaching in the book the minister i gleaned for you cut some corners
my
really thank you for listening
any other any other questions or comments before we chant
please
a wild spirit says you were talking i could feel how
if current and stripped graham
but it is is
spirit keeps us all going but somehow or focus like this it said
it's wonderful
encouragement
not thinking you know raymond sitting in the bag and raymond was a student of alan headers for many years long before i was really happy you're here thank you for coming it didn't lsa to leave part of the garden while all the time into
ill
him and we used to do i'm actually wasn't well enough when i practiced with him which was a nineteen eighty we done in the spring of nineteen eighty may twenty fifth became came the gringos with a cancer prostate gland but he didn't cancer wasn't in his world system so he didn't acknowledge it anymore more than i acknowledge computer so they were
just not in our world system so he wasn't really said every time he said saw me he said i i intend to be in the garden tomorrow he never made it to the garden in person so we brought a lot of the garden to him but he used to do these walks out into the wild french to get an idea of how to garden to deepen approach
creation
think
i hope that on with this will be a continuation dialogue between us and how i feel i feel it's a i was really really nervous i'm very happy that you let me do this linden biden the do listen that i had the chance to share their work with you
and pray pray that that i'll get it finished by gin with her because it's a it's an arduous task of to pull this off norman you and aren't normal knew that it would be really hard but it's much harder than i thought and know it's also great honor and indulgence to be trusted to do this
i appreciate your support in on
attention really makes a difference
to be equivalent five pm dedication
if we get closer to january and
you having
really enriched by making thinking for me

feel like i should cause with eq do what next i just open fuck

hmm
ah okay good thank you the mind is exactly this tree that grass without thought or feeling both disappear
thank you very much