“We never forget how to ride a bicycle but we often forget how to be kind.” ~Two-bit Guru

• If you’ve been having trouble making sense of the universe, reducing it down and cooking it up into patterns and colors that make absolute sense in the same way that fruitcake makes sense, well, your worries are over. Charles Fleischer’s TEDtalk will have you smacking your forehead with the palm of your hand as you say, “Of course! Everything is moleeds.” Enjoy.

• Not only did Thomas Jefferson write the Declaration of Independence, serve as president of the USA, invent the hideaway bed as well as macaroni and cheese, and a macaroni extruding device (among other things) he also had one heck of garden. Read all about it, and find a link to some Jeffersonian recipes. Wow! What a guy!

• Here’s a 16 year-old who has spent the past year building his own house, all 130 square feet of it, using used materials wherever possible, with plans to take it with him to college. Yep. It’s got wheels. Another Thomas Jefferson in the making?

• When I was in school I thought most of it was a waste of time. Now that I’m older and wiser with oodles of experience I still think it was a waste of time. I didn’t think it was dangerous until I read this oh-so-right-on and entertaining piece.

• Combine a stress test with a stress-relieving online breathing exercise to make you melloooooow, both offering the opportunity to take a stress-reducing online course. If I’d have scored any lower on the stress test I’d be dead. Meditation pays off!

We may laugh when we see some angry fool carrying on, at least until he or she breaks something or hits somebody, or worse. At that point we might unleash our own angry fool, and a battle ensues. We might not so easily see the anger as a parasite within ourselves.

The angry fool most likely got inside us when we were children, placed there by parents, grandparents, teachers, siblings, friends, and anyone else who made us afraid. The anger we learned from them we learned because they inflicted wounds, physical or emotional, on us, and we acquired an alien known as Anger.

Anger is a role we play, not by choice, but if we play that role long enough we begin to believe that the Angry Fool is an aspect of our being. We are likely to defend our anger as justifiable because, after all, we believe the Anger is Me.

I once knew a woman who was quite intelligent, had a great sense of humor, and was regarded by casual acquaintances as the most delightful person you could ever hope to meet, as she essentially was. Except, from time to time she ran the script of her deceased Judgmental, Impatient, Critical mother. Jabbing her finger in the air, she angrily ordered people to do this or do that for their own good. She pointed out their failures and belittled their efforts. It became painful to be in her presence at those times.

I don’t believe the woman was haunted in the conventional sense. Being inhabited by fears from the past that generate anger and its associated ill-will is creepy enough. The good news is that we can free ourselves from the fearful, angry, hateful, childish dictator that smothers our own good Self.

In my own experience, there is no relief in the anodyne of controlling oneself, or the equally popular belief that letting the anger out is a good thing, like opening the relief valve on a steam engine.

By finding the calmness within, we realize that anger is a lie, an untruth, a collection of bad memories. We are not steam engines. We are beings of clarity and peace, if only we can allow ourselves to recognize that truth.

Still from the second garden cam. Notice the raspberries in the foreground. You can also see the second cold frame and the apple tree just behind it.

Here’s a look at what’s going on with Garden Cam 2. You can read Part I here.

You can see parts of the 3 rows on this camera. The second raspberry plot is at the bottom of the frame. The raspberry canes are about 2 feet high now. The semi-dwarf Honeycrisp apple tree is toward the corner of the hedge at the top of the frame, opposite the Jonathan tree you can see on Cam 1.

The Honeycrisp tree blossomed beautifully but the Jonathan blossomed early and now it looks like it might not yield fruit. This is the second season for both trees. Last year the Jonathan didn’t bear fruit but the Honeycrisp did, although many of the apples were damaged by worms.

As an organic gardener I refuse to use any unnatural chemicals on the property and I am challenged by the many critters that want me to share apples with them. If the worm tea spray doesn’t work I’ve got a few more ideas that might do the trick. If nothing works this season then the apples become food for the worms which, although depriving me of a tasty treat, will contribute to the larger cycle of nature.

We’ve got all the paths covered with salvaged silt fence now. We expect to get a bunch of free wood chips soon to cover the silt fence. And finish cultivating the beds, and get the transplants in, and get trellis’s up for beans and tomatoes, and so on.

I moved my second cold frame and put most of the remaining plants that were started indoors into it. You can see that this second one doesn’t have a top on it. Temperatures are probably high enough that the plants will do well without the tops but if they start looking sad I’ll put the tops on.

I’ve ordered rock phosphate and greensand a little late but I expect it will get here in time to do some good for the plants. My preference is to spread it on the beds early but things got a bit away from me this season. It seems that something gets away from me every season.

Rock phosphate provides phosphorus for the plants, which might be obvious, and other nutrients. Greensand provides potassium, calcium and other nutrients. It also helps the garden retain water. Nitrogen is provided by the horse manure we dug in last fall, and by worm castings which we use as a top dressing around the plants. The basic three nutrients, Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potassium (N-P-K), are provided as well as a whole lot of micro-nutrients, all natural.

We’ve heard “All things in moderation,” over and over and over and over and over. ~Two-bit Guru

• The length of your life is directly related to the length of your telomeres. If you want to learn what telomeres are, and how to encourage them to grow longer, or at least not get any shorter, check this out.
• Here is the anodyne for everything that ails you. Really. Everything is OK.
• The stillness of introversion is not only creative and inspirational, it has provided us with thinkers and leaders that have changed the world. A terrific TEDtalk by Susan Cain.
• Can a bracelet imbued with ionic hoopla or magnetic abracadabra heal your body? Apparently not, unless the placebo effect is doing the healing. In defense of metallic object healing, though, I admit that I have worn a copper bracelet for elbow and shoulder pain. It worked, and I don’t feel that it was the placebo effect.
• A being after my own desires, the writer of this blog, a Presbyterian Chaplain, loves trash.  Includes an epiphany and a slide show of art created from junk. A delight, although a bit long on the religious connections.

Still from Garden Cam 1 showing Richard raking.

Now that both garden cams are merrily humming along, I thought this might be a good opportunity to describe the garden, or what you can see of it on cam 1.

The garden is comprised of 7 wide rows, from the narrowest at 3 feet to the widest at 6 feet. You can see parts of four of the rows on cam 1. This is all surrounded by a hedge on three sides made up of Hick’s Yews. The hedge is about 5 feet high. A Jonathan semi-dwarf apple tree grows in the corner of the hedge, near the top of the frame.

A number of salvaged picket fence segments are piled toward the left side of the frame. Last year I made a 4-sided “temporary” fence using the picket fencing. Chicken wire was stapled to the bottom of each segment to keep even the smallest bunnies out of the carrot patch. It worked well and there is yet one bucket of carrots buried in sand in the root cellar from last season.

The row farthest from the eye is about 6 feet wide. The soil has been turned over with a broadfork and raked smooth. At the far end, lettuce is poking up near the apple tree, and there are about 80 onion sets on the row inward from the lettuce.

The next row is 4 feet wide, and has been turned over with the broadfork. Richard is raking it smooth. The broadfork is a marvelous tool for loosening and aerating the soil. The one we use was designed by Eliot Coleman, creative market gardener and brilliant writer. You can’t go wrong reading Eliot Coleman. Johnny’s Selected Seeds sells the broadforks, and a whole lot of other hard to find tools.

The next row, 4 feet wide, hasn’t been turned over and is full of weeds, with the exception of the tarp. Although some folks have suggested there might be a dead body under there, the fact is that the tarp covers what’s left of the horse manure we dug into the garden late last fall.

The partial row (also 4 feet wide) in the lower right corner of the frame has raspberry canes, about a foot high. I sprayed them with a foliar feeding of worm tea earlier in the spring. We dug out the ones that had migrated into the path. They started two smaller beds which I also sprayed with worm tea. The transplants are all thriving, too.

Next time, we’ll go over to cam 2 and I’ll describe the layout and the action in that part of the garden.

Meditation is breaking out all over. Doctors are meditating and advising their patients to meditate. I advised my own doctor about meditation years ago, and now he’s advising his other patients. Knowledge of the physical and emotional health benefits of meditation is widespread, and becoming more so. Lower your blood pressure, reduce stress, reduce anxiety, etc. etc. etc.

Athletes, actors, celebrities, spiritual people, religious people, non-believing people, all kinds of people are meditating.

And I have just become aware of one politician who not only meditates, but is promoting meditation as the key to solving many of our problems. There may be more politicians thinking along these lines, or better, practicing along these lines but to the best of my knowledge, Tim Ryan, Congressman from Ohio’s 17th District, is so far the only one.

Congressman Ryan recognizes that as more of us get in touch with our inner being, the better off our society will be. He even dares to call it a “quiet revolution.” This is one kind of revolution I can embrace wholeheartedly.

The quiet revolution, the gentle revolution, has already begun with groups such as the Global Coherence Initiative, that practice meditations at specific times with meditators in all parts of the world. Yoga and meditation center participants meditate individually at the same time as others to promote world peace, for example. Spiritual groups conduct full moon meditations to promote world-wide love.

At one time, meditation was thought of as an esoteric practice. This isn’t so anymore. The most accessible, simplest way to meditate is to sit with your spine comfortably straight (not military-straight), close your eyes, focus on the inhale and exhale of your breath. Breathe through the nostrils. Accept any thoughts that might come by, and then let them go.

I am working on an article (or short book) for Amazon about how to meditate. Meditation is for Everyone.

Congressman Ryan has already written a book, Mindful Nation, furthering the idea that we can change our world for the better by embarking on the inner journey.

Principle source for this post: Natural News

I’ll be in the studio on The Mothership Connection Radio Show tonight. I’m scheduled to appear between 8 and 9 PM CST. I always have a lot of fun hanging out with Dobie Maxwell and the Mothership Crew. The last time I was on the show I got to hear a very inspiring story.

If you’re in the Kenosha, Wisconsin area, you can tune in on AM 1510 WLIP. You can also stream the show worldwide HERE.

“There are two kinds of people in the world. If you divide each of those two kinds into two more kinds using a different criterion, you will have four kinds of people in the world. Do that over and over and over long enough and you will have a world of individuals. That’s the one I want to live in.” ~Two-bit Guru

• There is nothing funny about this one. Prenatal exposure to pesticide chlorpyrifos may cause abnormal changes in the child’s brain.
• Kompost Kids make Kompost to Remediate the Soil. Go Kids, Go!
• It might sound like new age hocus pocus to say that electrically grounding your body is good for your health. Speaking from my own experience, electrically grounding your body is good for your health. The practice is called Earthing. If you don’t believe me, read Dr. Mercola’s article and read Clint Ober’s book Earthing.
• If you’re jumpy and think you can’t meditate try reading this.
• No matter how old or how young you are, yoga is for you. Just read this and see.

A still from the new garden cam shows the other half of the garden. Notice the cold frame on the right side.

On April 19 I speculated that the second garden cam would be up and running within a week. It’s turned out to be closer to two weeks, but now everything is working well.

As with any project, or any part of a project, you might start with a general idea and then alter it as you go along. The original idea for the web cam, compliments of Nate and Jason, was to do a time lapse two-minute video showing the evolution of the garden through the season. We still plan on doing that in the fall.

As things change in the garden I hope to offer something of a play-by-play description. For example, garden cam 2 shows part of a cold frame that we put up last Friday. I use the cold frame to harden off the plants that have been growing inside. Broccoli and kale are happily waiting in the cold frame before being planted in the garden.

I’ll get tomatoes out there within a day or two, at least that’s the plan. Peppers are lagging this year, about two inches high, and cabbage should be ready to come out within a week.

Both cams give me the opportunity to share garden successes (and failures) during the growing season. My approach has always been to try this or that and see what happens. For instance, I have been fertilizing the seedlings with worm tea (made from worm castings in water with a few added ingredients). It is a wonderful fertilizer and has been used to prevent disease, such as blight. I’ll write more about worm tea in the future.

Feel free to check in with the cams anytime, day or night, although night shots are gray and white, thanks to the infrared feature on the cams. Without the infrared we’d see nothing but the blackness of night.

You can view cam 1 here, and cam 2 here. You can also view them by clicking the thumbnails on the upper left column of the homepage.

Part 1 can be found here.

I found the wire shelving for the indoor greenhouse as one of those remarkable coincidences that seem to not be coincidences at all. I was thinking about where I might find adjustable height shelving at a bargain to start seedlings for the garden.

I had imagined what sort of shelving I wanted and a week later four such units manifested themselves in the basement of my office building. What a pleasant and useful surprise!

An accounting office was moving out of the building and they were willing to sell the units at a very reasonable price. Not only that, they had nine more identical units for sale. These are very well-built, adjustable, and with substantial locking casters to boot. I use the original four to start seedlings and for houseplants year-round. I use the other nine for storage.

After years of experiencing favorable coincidences, I have come to the conclusion that such events occur when we are doing something we are meant to be doing. For me, good things often happen around the garden and garden-related activities. Sometimes I feel as though it wasn’t my choosing gardening as a major part of my life, it was the universe choosing gardening for me.

It’s quite possible that the one Source guides us by putting good things in our path when we are on the right path. All this could be an illusion but I don’t think so.

A valuable lesson in this might be that we shouldn’t waste our time striving to accomplish something in an area where we just don’t seem to be in harmony. This becomes obvious if we know someone who has, say, a significant musical talent. If they don’t pursue music we are likely to think they have made a big mistake.

In different areas the talent may not be so obvious as it is with music. It may not even be obvious to ourselves. How should we deal with that situation? In my life I have found that intuition has been the best source of guidance for me. Rather than trying to rationally choose a direction, when we trust our intuition we discover our passion. Passion feeds harmony and harmony sets the stage for favorable coincidence, even if it’s something as simple as finding the exact shelving we need at that time.