Halloween

My dear friends, the trees, mountains, and rivers

How does your internal garden grow?

We had a small apartment in San Diego. It was on the second story, in a complex that we shared with several other apartment renters, and it was expensive. We had a balcony, on which I kept a small container garden and there were other plants around, some palm trees, but there wasn’t any grass except for in front of the very nice houses further down the street. The thing with living in apartments in a metropolitan area is that nobody really takes responsibility for maintaining anything. The owners just figure that it’s going to get trashed eventually anyways, so why bother. And the tenants, they think that somebody else will pick up the trash. Somebody else will sweep up the broken glass or water the plants, or pick up the cigarette butts, but no one ever does. I always wanted to be the one that was responsible for taking care of things, to step forward and create a beautiful atmosphere, and now I have the opportunity. We have moved to Utah to a house with a huge yard full of living breathing grass, trees, bushes and flowers. Needless to say, I am finding out just how difficult it is to take care of. When we moved in I was told that I would just need to water everything and mow the grass occasionally. I have done that, and it has made a considerable difference. Water makes everything very strong, the grass, the trees, the flowers, and also the weeds. No one mentioned anything to me about the weeds, but we have a burgeoning population. They are everywhere! There are big thorny weeds and little thin ones that grab onto other plants. There are these little red rubbery ones and these deep rooted ones with round leaves. Then there are the dandelions.  I have found that of all the weeds in my yard the most difficult to be freed from are the dandelions. I can sit down and begin to pull them up and not stop for hours. Dandelion is used medicinally for cleansing the body. It takes the toxins and fats and flushes them out of your body, it does not let anything escape, and it has a similar demeanor in the earth. Wherever it is present, the other plants are driven out. Any water that is poured onto the ground goes directly to the dandelion and any nutrients that may have been in the soil are sucked up by it. It soon grows to be large enough to create a depression in the earth around it, and then starts producing small yellow flowers which turn into small puff balls of seeds that in turn become hundreds of new dandelion plants. As I care for the lawn and the flowers I must constantly pull out these weeds. It seems endless at times. There is a powerful analogy in this for the attentive person. Within each of our hearts is a garden, where all of our habits and our proclivities are growing. When one first comes in contact with a spiritual guide, he is given a seed, and if he takes that seed and plants it in the garden of the heart it will turn into a plant, a creeper of devotion. With care and regular watering this creeper will continue to grow and produce fruits, but as in any garden, it can also be choked by weeds. In plain words this means, that as we progress spiritually we may notice unwanted qualities, or weeds, in 0ur character. To continue to progress we must develop discrimination for what is welcome in our character, and what is unwelcome.

Autumn

Llama location

Our house

This is our new house. We are finally all settled in. The house is 3 bedroom, hardwood floors, big kitchen, and a beautiful yard. Compared to where we just moved from it is heaven. There is such a feeling of safety. Everyone else that lives in our neighborhood seems so happy and content, it is quite a shocking change from the people I would see in our corner of Pacific Beach.

It has been a real treat being so close to my family. Below are some pictures of a picnic we(Jeannette, my Mom and Dad, my Sister Tina and her Husband Chad, and their kids Harley, Dylan and Valerie) went on a few days ago in the south fork of Provo Canyon.

Multi-tasking