Big-eyed weaving of enthusiasm
Oh dear, I’m a very bad blogger. Nearly six weeks since the last entry. I seem to need some kind of external stimulus to get me going again – this time it was Joel Biroco’s kind mention of my blog in his link to my website.
It’s funny, that. I mean, one of my deeply held beliefs is that the world mirrors us back to ourselves. Often, I find myself speaking in an impassioned way to clients, and some hours (or days) later, realize that what I said applies equally to myself. A few days ago, I was doing an I Ching reading for a lovely man in New York; one of his lines was 16/3, part of which reads “Looking out for enthusiasm” – Wu’s translation is “Eyes wide in astonishment at pleasure”; LiSe Heyboer’s is “Big-eyed weaving of enthusiasm”, which is itself a delightful combination of words.
One of the meanings I attach to this line is an enthusiasm or delight that needs to be externally sourced. It should be a yang line, but it’s yin – it can’t initiate, only respond. Now there’s nothing wrong with responding to the world with delight – but so often I inhabit a space in which I need a gentle nudge to get moving. After so many years of being this way, I’ve come to accept that it’s a pretty fundamental aspect of my nature – and that my best option is to choose wisely who and what I respond to.
Anyway, just a word from the brilliant Biroco got me up off my derriere - or rather on it, in front of the computer. It’s not that I haven’t been writing – just not blogstuff.
Changing the subject entirely…For all fans of fado, Mariza is appearing at the Royal Albert Hall on 22nd November. I'll be there for sure. I first saw Mariza several years ago at WOMAD, which was her first UK appearance – then again last year at the Brighton Dome, when she received so many frenzied standing ovations she ran out of encore material, and sang ‘Summertime’.
Garden news: the Jerusalem artichokes are in bloom – small buttery sunflowers, twelve feet high. The garden is full of frogs, shining and shy, invisible until they move. One visited my clinic room last night.
I’m debating whether to dig up the salsify or leave it until Spring. My gardening bible, “The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers from Seeds and Roots” (1899) by Sutton and Sons (presumably of Sutton’s Seeds fame), gives detailed instructions about sowing them in “a deep sandy soil with a coat of manure put in the bottom of the trench…but there should be no recent manure within fifteen inches of the surface”… It goes on to say that “If carelessly grown, they become forked and fibrous, and are much wasted in the cooking.”
I regret to report that I consulted Suttons too late, and my salsify was indeed carelessly grown. It is a new (to me) garden, and for at least a hundred years has been covered in a sad stunted lawn littered with celandine. I’m gradually digging up the grass and creating vegetable/fruit/flower beds – muddy and satisfying work. The salsify is growing in the first bit that was dug up – the topsoil was only three inches deep, the rest is stony clay – and though I dug down at least a foot and filled the trench with good soil, it’s hardly sandy, and the requisite segregation of manure did not occur.
So perhaps it would be better to leave the salsify in its place until the Spring, when, according to Sutton and Sons, it will produce Chards: “These are the flowering-shoots which rise green and tender, and must be cut when not more than five or six inches long. They are dressed and served in the same way as Asparagus”.
O that we may all rise green and tender in the Spring…even if we were carelessly grown.
It’s funny, that. I mean, one of my deeply held beliefs is that the world mirrors us back to ourselves. Often, I find myself speaking in an impassioned way to clients, and some hours (or days) later, realize that what I said applies equally to myself. A few days ago, I was doing an I Ching reading for a lovely man in New York; one of his lines was 16/3, part of which reads “Looking out for enthusiasm” – Wu’s translation is “Eyes wide in astonishment at pleasure”; LiSe Heyboer’s is “Big-eyed weaving of enthusiasm”, which is itself a delightful combination of words.
One of the meanings I attach to this line is an enthusiasm or delight that needs to be externally sourced. It should be a yang line, but it’s yin – it can’t initiate, only respond. Now there’s nothing wrong with responding to the world with delight – but so often I inhabit a space in which I need a gentle nudge to get moving. After so many years of being this way, I’ve come to accept that it’s a pretty fundamental aspect of my nature – and that my best option is to choose wisely who and what I respond to.
Anyway, just a word from the brilliant Biroco got me up off my derriere - or rather on it, in front of the computer. It’s not that I haven’t been writing – just not blogstuff.
Changing the subject entirely…For all fans of fado, Mariza is appearing at the Royal Albert Hall on 22nd November. I'll be there for sure. I first saw Mariza several years ago at WOMAD, which was her first UK appearance – then again last year at the Brighton Dome, when she received so many frenzied standing ovations she ran out of encore material, and sang ‘Summertime’.
Garden news: the Jerusalem artichokes are in bloom – small buttery sunflowers, twelve feet high. The garden is full of frogs, shining and shy, invisible until they move. One visited my clinic room last night.
I’m debating whether to dig up the salsify or leave it until Spring. My gardening bible, “The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers from Seeds and Roots” (1899) by Sutton and Sons (presumably of Sutton’s Seeds fame), gives detailed instructions about sowing them in “a deep sandy soil with a coat of manure put in the bottom of the trench…but there should be no recent manure within fifteen inches of the surface”… It goes on to say that “If carelessly grown, they become forked and fibrous, and are much wasted in the cooking.”
I regret to report that I consulted Suttons too late, and my salsify was indeed carelessly grown. It is a new (to me) garden, and for at least a hundred years has been covered in a sad stunted lawn littered with celandine. I’m gradually digging up the grass and creating vegetable/fruit/flower beds – muddy and satisfying work. The salsify is growing in the first bit that was dug up – the topsoil was only three inches deep, the rest is stony clay – and though I dug down at least a foot and filled the trench with good soil, it’s hardly sandy, and the requisite segregation of manure did not occur.
So perhaps it would be better to leave the salsify in its place until the Spring, when, according to Sutton and Sons, it will produce Chards: “These are the flowering-shoots which rise green and tender, and must be cut when not more than five or six inches long. They are dressed and served in the same way as Asparagus”.
O that we may all rise green and tender in the Spring…even if we were carelessly grown.
posted by Cesca Diebschlag at 12:50 PM
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