A jolt from the Dalai Lama

I love this quote. I'm sure I've put it on this blog before, but I just spotted it among my files and it's been so long since I read it that my eyes sprang open wide and I got a bit of a jolt.

The Dalai Lama, when asked what surprised him most about humanity, answered,

 “Man. Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, then dies having never really lived.”

Do you like it too?

Why Buddhists let possums eat bird eggs

As I've written before, I went on a Buddhist meditation retreat in Easter this year. It was held in a beautiful valley lined with native bush, north-west of Auckland.

The Vipassana meditation centre north of Auckland, NZ.

Had I not been trained during my 10 days there to be equanimous about everything - "This too shall pass" - I would have got more angry at the end. You see, Buddhist won't-kill policy means that they let the possums and rats breed and eat unhindered. Possums wandered around the buildings after dark. "We don't bother them, and they don't bother us," I was told.

Most of the nesting attempts of forest birds in New Zealand end in the eggs being eaten by rats and possums. Considering the setting of the place, birdsong was notably quiet. The exception was the incredible chorus of morepork at night. I suppose carnivorous nocturnal owls are not only awake to see egg-hungry possums, but able to defend their nests. Most forest birds are defenseless at night.

My solution - an instant-kill Timms trap. I caught this possum
near our house last weekend. I'm sure I heard tuis sighing with relief.

When Buddha made the don't-kill call 2500 years ago, humans hadn't brought possums and rats to New Zealand. Today they (and the stoats) have decimated our stunning birdlife, which isn't equipped to deal with such predators.

What do you think? Should the Buddhists exercise their moral muscles, or remain committed to the old teachings?

Postscript: Buddhism is a wise and lovely approach to life and has helped me hugely. I just think this unfortunate conundrum is worth discussing.

Plants, or gruesome news?

As I ate breakfast this morning, I contemplated the little forest of vegetable seedlings on our dining room floor. I sowed the seeds about five weeks ago. Each night we tenderly carry them inside out of the cold, and each morning they go out into the sunshine of our front porch. They are thriving, and the tomato plants have that unique ripe tomato smell.

Some of the tomato plants will be sold
- we're not planting out that many plants!

What else am I to think about as I eat my first daily meal? We cancelled the newspaper. The ipad could provide me with a world's worth of terrorist beheadings, priests molesting children and political scandals. To me, these things are a bit like junk food and malicious gossip - juicy and inviting to gorge on, but completely unhelpful to a calm and happy life. (Watching TV may also come to mind, but it's thankfully it's not in the house.)

I could talk to my children. This morning, however, after almost an hour of lunch and breakfast making, calming arguments (calming is the wrong word - I yelled 'Cut it OUT!') and requests for things I don't have the energy for, I wanted an escape while I ate. I'm a productive and functional mother on school mornings, but not a particularly warm-hearted or patient one.

It's amazing how different strains of tomatoes have such different leaves, artichokes are already furry when still tiny, and basil leaves are so tidy and compact when young.

Baby basil leaves almost look like cartoon leaves!

I do love reading selected blogs, and would have done so this morning except I was already up to date. My current favourites are Soulemama for her daily dose of calm and creative inspiration, Ben Hewitt for his amazing writing and unconventional thinking, and tinyhappy for her little posts that so nicely represent her own handmade New Zealand style. Homegrown Kitchen also gives me a nice healthy foody buzz.

These lovely people, and my baby plants, leave me in a much better place than beheaded journalists do.

Let there be flowers

Every spring I am stunned at the beauty of flowering bulbs, and swear I'll plant some in autumn. Every autumn I forget. Thank goodness for the 'instant tulip' garden on sale at The Warehouse two or three weeks ago. I carefully transplanted the almost-flowering tulips into an old planter, and look what appeared.

They make us smile every time we step in or out of the front door. But truly, our entrance way is a bit less beautiful when you see the wide angle shot.

We also have blossom trees, which will give us summer fruit. The white blossoms are on our two plum trees (a red and stunningly flavoured Hawera, and a yellow and almost nectarine-like Luisa) and a pink-flowered miniature peach, which strangely is taller than me. After a week of high winds and rain - just when we need the bees most! - today has given us enough stillness and sunshine to allow those most vital insects to come. I couldn't see any on the blossom when I checked, but hopefully they've visited and done their good work.

We love summer fruit, and plums grow very well in Hamilton.

When I get our 2015 calendar, I'll be writing 'bulb time' on the April page in big capital letters.

Meditation, my best anti-migraine drug

If you found this page by searching 'meditation and migraine', I know why you're here. You are desperate. The rest of you probably know someone who does suffer from migraines. Maybe this post will help them.

Please also read the postscript to this post.

I meditate, almost every day, and it's worked better than any drug I've ever taken. My migraines have gone from several times a week, to about once a week. I can mostly control those I do get with abortive medication (triptan drugs). I salute the people who discovered those, over and over again.

How I do it
I wake up in the morning, drag myself into a sitting position and meditate, without even getting out of bed. I tuck my pillow under me and sit cross-legged.

Eyes closed, I let my awareness sink into my breathing, trying to notice only the breath going in and out of my nostrils. It's like submersing in a freshwater pool on a hot day, losing myself in the cool stillness of the water.

After about 10 minutes, I change and just 'dwell' inside my head, feels like cruising in a fine blue sky. I notice how calm and clear it is, and how lovely it feels just to sit quietly inside it without thinking. Sometimes I explore different parts of it - eye sockets, temples, base of skull. As I think about each part, it relaxes.

This second phase is by far the most pleasant for me.

After another 10 minutes, I open my eyes and dive into the day. Or, more often, reluctantly drag myself out of bed and go and make some school lunches.

How I fail, but it works anyway
Ah, how good it would be just to stay focused on my breath, or perpetually inside a mind that is like a clear blue sky. The trouble is that my brain begins to chatter and thoughts begin to roll, one following the other. I notice this, and move back to my breath/clear mind. This re-focusing happens over and over again. It happens to everyone, I understand, except for monks who have been practicing for decades.

Note: my thoughts are not that fascinating, but my mind repeatedly tries to trick me that they are vital. I remind myself firmly that this is not true, not for every minute of the day, and that the benefits of leaving the thoughts and going back to the meditation are enormous.

Too simple to be true?
It seems like nothing, really - 15-20 minutes a day repeatedly trying and failing to dwell in a calm part of the mind. But bizarrely enough, whatever happens in my brain is profound.

I've written earlier posts about this. This post talks about what meditation changes in the brain, and this post talks about a meditation retreat I went on, and what I learnt.

My own style
I've read a lot about the science behind meditation over the last few months. The evidence for its benefits is amazingly strong for many different common problems (including anxiety, immune function and so much more). I also learnt that the benefits are there no matter what type of meditation you do - and there are many different types, which, like religions, all think that their way is superior. Therefore, I just do what I like best and feels easiest.

How to start
I started by thoroughly exploring the Headspace website, listening to the founder's TED talk here, and doing his online meditation (the first 10 days are free and thereafter the cost is very reasonable). Since returning from my meditation retreat, I stopped paying Headspace and just did my own meditation. My own version is quite similar to Headspace's, though.

How long it took
My migraines improved instantly after I began the free 10-day online meditation. I've been meditating almost daily for eight months now, and with time the stability of my brain (as in how easily it slips into migraine mode) seems to get stronger and stronger. Still, if I get a nasty stressful shock, or get way too busy and tired, I will get one. (I take a caffeine pill or drink coffee if I think one is imminent, and this works if I do it quickly enough.)

Of course, weekly is still too often, but I hope that with time the length of time in between them will lengthen. I'm still a baby at this meditating business.

Placebo effect?
I would have written about my success earlier, but was reluctant because in the past I've had other apparent successes. I'd do something new (which usually involved spending money) and it would seem to work for a couple of weeks. Inevitably I'd end up disappointed. This time, after eight months of improvement, I'm cautiously optimistic.

Preying on desperation
There are a lot of people out there wanting migraineurs to part with their money for a 'cure'. When you're desperate, it's very tempting to pay up. It's just SO disappointing when the cure doesn't work. I've tried different supplements, acupuncture, an osteopath, and a gluten and dairy-free diet. They all seemed to work for a couple of weeks. The preventative medication made no difference to me.

But this works for me. Maybe it will for you, too?

If you have any questions or experiences to share, please leave a comment.

POST SCRIPT

I stopped meditating about 18 months after I wrote the post above, because my migraines got much worse again, and I decided the meditation wasn't helping. As soon as I stopped, they got a lot better. How's that for crazy? Possibly I'd been getting so quietly annoyed at my wandering mind that I was sabotaging my own efforts. That was a year ago. Since then the migraines have got worse, got better, got worse again... they are like an ephemeral cloud that appears and blows away again, and usually I don't know why.

I'm sorry if I got anybody's hopes up - but maybe it will work for you. I do still find the mind-training tricks I learnt from meditation to be very useful in my life.

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Creating ecosystems in the garden

Outside, everything seems to be trying to reproduce. The mizuna, broccoli and lupins are going to seed - and so are our broad beans, the seeds of which we shall eat. We haven't grown them before, so they're an adventure.

Flowering lupins in front.

Broad beans, garlic, parsnips and lettuce.

Then there are daily eggs from our chickens, and the tuis are chasing each other and singing their hearts out, no doubt getting frisky.

As I look at the garden photos I took today, I realise how much I''m now trying to create little ecosystems in the garden. Maybe 'recreate' is a better word, because everything in nature exists in ecosystems.

I'm trying out a combination of the three flowers that are apparently proven to be good beneficial insect hosts: alyssum, buckwheat and phacelia. Many more are said to be so, but according to the scientist that writes in NZ Gardener magazine, those three are backed by solid evidence. I've mixed them together in a jar, and simply sprinkled them over the soil, which I'm keep moist and watching hopefully. Alyssum and phacelia sprout incredibly easily - I know that from experience - and I expect buckwheat does too.

Blueberry bushes newly mulched with pine needles. The pine needles
acidify the soil a bit, and blueberries like it a bit acidic.
Buckwheat, phacelia and alyssum seeds are sown in between.

Strawberry plants. Peas are popping up under the trellis,
which will feed us and add nitrogen to the soil.
Radishes have sprouted between the strawberries,
and will hopefully be eaten before they bother the strawberry roots.
To the right of the strawberries are either alyssum or marigolds
- I can't remember which seeds I sowed!

A few more garden peeks, not 'ecosystem' related:

Purple sprouting broccoli. Divine stuff.

Tulip bulbs approaching flowering.

Tomato seedlings - are yours done yet?

Big, healthy mint leaves, sprouted from a couple
of manky roots from a neighbour's plant.

Lying around to teach children

A week or so ago I eased up on my usual frenetic pace and sat around a bit more. (I've had a sinus infection - all gone now - this stuff is magic for sinus infections but only if it's been opened in the last two months or so. Better than antibiotics.)

Lying in bed, I become a magnet for my children (and the cat) who cosied up next to me and chatted. "I wonder what humans looked like while they were evolving?" "Could we make wool from the cat's fur?"

Last night I sat down after dinner to stroke and scratch the cat. "What does DNA look like?" asked Jack. (He'd been reading a New Scientist on the coffee table.) Then he asked about atoms and electrons and how many atoms would be in his bedroom.... (not infinite! Just extremely hard to count!).

Too much science in this house, probably! We talk about lots of other things, too. Due to the smoochiness of our darling cat it's often about how nice the cat makes us feel, what he might be up to on his outside adventures, etc. Maybe it doesn't matter what we talk about, and what matters is the feeling of closeness and the opportunity to bring things up in a relaxed fashion.

I first learnt this lesson when I was pregnant with Anna. Two-year-old Jack turned out to adore me lying in bed all day with terrible nausea. We discovered that bent Mama knees make a good slide, and little boys can be happy for hours on end with a constantly available mother.

Nearly nine years later I learn the lesson again... a slow learner, for sure!

Lazy ways of doing things well: some tips

The soft spring rain falling this morning has inspired me to share a few tips. I like them because they are low energy time savers.

1. Put houseplants outside in the rain for a few hours. They transform: the dust is washed from their leaves and they spring into good health like magic. (I choose soft rain and avoid strong wind, cold or direct sun.)

2. To defrost something quickly, put it on an aluminium oven tray. My husband - who understands physics much better than I do - tells me that aluminium is very conductive. If the tray has air circulating underneath it speeds things up even more. (If I'm defrosting meat I put it on a plate and then on a tray. It's not quite as fast, but I don't want meat juices dripping off the tray. That wouldn't be a problem if I had an aluminium tray with a lip around it to catch juices. That said, I have been known to place almost-defrosted steak directly on the tray for half an hour - the runny juices seem to mostly ooze out in earlier stages of defrosting.)

3. Stand on one foot, often, with the other leg reasonably straight. It's an instant buttock workout, and it's practical: you really want your muscles to be strong enough to support you on one leg only, both to prevent falls and generally have a fully functioning human body. It can be done while peeling potatoes, washing dishes, brushing teeth, reading, watching TV...

Yay to being productively and sustainably lazy. Do you have any tips to share?

Amazing creative pottery

Anna (aged 8 years and 3 days) is doing a weekly clay pottery class. It's amazing to be surrounded by the incredible things sitting around drying in the studio. I tend to trip along through life forgetting how incredibly creative humans can be. My eyes have been opened by Anna's class.

These fairy tale towers were made by the class's lovely teacher, Tania Hollatz, to give the children ideas for their own towers. They are freshly made, and still damp.

Anna's made a tower too, but it's not quite ready. Here's her teepee from the first lesson. Who would have thought that pottery could also be a lesson in architecture?

How lucky Anna is to do the class and have her mind opened up to these possibilities! Sometimes it's good to forget sport and academic pursuits and just throw ourselves into creating lovely things.

Why we cancelled the newspaper

We cancelled our local newspaper about a year ago. A year before that, the children who pushed the paper into letterboxes after school were laid off, and it changed to a morning paper which came wrapped in plastic and was thrown onto our driveway out of a car window.

Plus, we were sick of spending some of our precious time and brain power absorbing bad stuff. Another dairy owner attacked, another fraudster convicted.

Just now I read a relevant post on the most excellent blog of Ben Hewitt. This chap opens my eyes to a completely different way of life.

This is what he wrote, and, as usual, I like it. You might too:

"In my life, at least, I have noticed that the less time I spend captive to events I am powerless to influence, the healthier I feel. Perhaps more importantly, the more energy and optimism I have to disperse into the very small corner of the world over which I do have influence." From this post.

How to create a garden that feeds you all winter

We have been eating from our garden all winter and it's fantastic. New Zealand is a great place to garden, even in frosty and sometimes-foggy urban Hamilton.

A lot of people don't bother with a winter garden. (Do they really have to eat that floppy, expensive supermarket broccoli?) We've been mostly sustained by salad and to-be-cooked greens from our garden. It's in our fairly small backyard which gets several hours of shade from our house when the sun dips low in winter. Yet things grow sufficiently and they are delicious, convenient and so, so cheap. Here's how we did it.

When and how to start the garden

The secret is to get cracking early. In February and March, when there's so much garden produce you're giving it away, we sprouted our winter seeds. Firstly I went through a seed catalogue (Kings Seeds, but you might also consider Koanga Gardens or Egmont Seeds). I much prefer to look through a paper version of a catalogue, scrawl out a list, and place my order on-line. Do not be stingy here: a packet of seed costs little more than a single head of broccoli when prices climb in winter.

If you leave it too late, the plants won't get enough growth on them before it gets cold and the days get too short. If this happens many of then will stay small until spring, at which point you'll have missed the winter boat and have been at the mercy of supermarkets and suchlike. Still, you'll well on board the spring boat.

Then I got sowing. At that time of year seeds sprout really fast. The two drawbacks are that because it's so hot you need to be very careful they don't dry out, and there are generally clouds of white butterflies around that lay eggs on many seedlings, which are then devoured by caterpillars. Such a waste of effort!

The solution is netting of some sort, for example old net curtains, draped over top. (This post shows our draped late-summer garden, and this post shows how I now cover my seedlings with the help of a fortuitous side-of-the-road discovery).

Plant the seedlings out as soon as they're big enough and you have space, preferably with large amounts of home-made compost. If you know how to avoid using slug and snail pellets, tell me how and I'll spread the word. At this point we have to use them or we'd have no vegetables.

Choosing seeds

Salad greens. Look for salad greens that thrive over winter. Most lettuces survive fine, but they don't grow much. We planted purple and green mizuna, mustard greens, rocket and beetroot. (I don't like beetroot, but their leaves are pretty good.) These plants thrive in the cold and don't mind a frost. Plant as much as you can: even if you can't eat it all, it protects the soil and suppresses weeds all winter, and when it flowers in spring it feeds the bees. Plant it among brassica plants to cram more into your space.

Green mizuna

These greens are slightly bitter, but I have developed a taste for them and now crave my wonderful salads garnished with sundried tomato, red onion and feta. I'm almost dreading the mildness of summer lettuces - will my tastebuds even notice them? - but my taste will change again.

Just remember to harvest this stuff when it's not frozen stiff by frost because it goes mushy.

Another alternative is to grow some summer lettuce in a warm sunny spot. The big polystyrene box I use was given to me by a fruit shop when I asked - their grapes come in these boxes. Polystyrene, though environmentally foul, is a good insulator.

Brassica. You want a long harvest season, not 12 heads of cauli in July and then no more. I chose different types of broccoli, a couple of 'sprouting' types and some standard heading types. Also look for a mixture of 'early' and 'late' varieties. That way you can plant them all in late summer or early autumn so they reach a decent size, then harvest each as it comes ready.

The other thing to look for is re-sprouting ability, which broccoli are great at. The secret is to leave a little side sprout when you cut a head of broccoli. That side sprout will turn into another big head for your dinner without you having to do anything else. Often that happens even if you don't leave a side shoot. Happy, lazy gardening.

Not beautiful, but continually productive.

My finger's pointing at the place I first cut a head
off this broccoli plant, about 2 months ago. It quickly
went rotten at the site of the cut - but the
plant keeps producing.

Also, grow kale! I avoided it for ages because it was so fashionable that I was suspicious of it. But it's very easy to grow, gives a long and constant harvest when you just pick a few leaves from each plant, and tastes great. It's much, much more delicious than cabbage, and seriously healthy. I feel a kale and herb omelette coming on for lunch. My hens are being generous these days.

Cavolo Nero kale among thousands
of self-seeded parsnips.

Dark green leafy things
I never have much luck with spinach, but a few silverbeet plants are excellent. Ours have been getting an annoying rust problem which we don't know how do deal with (tips, anyone?), although not all of it at once. If you have chickens, keep them strictly away from silverbeet. (Do as I say, not as I do!) Otherwise you'll have a silverbeet famine and be deprived of green smoothies.

Herbs
Our oregano, sage and parsley have done well all winter, and the coriander's been fine too. Coriander prefers cool temperatures - probably not as cool as it has been, but at least it doesn't bolt to seed like it does in summer.

Also, don't work too hard. No one's going to give you an award for a weed-free garden, the weeds grow fairly slowly at this time of year, and the vegetables still keep coming. I do try to pull grass out from the garden, though, because it's hungry and steals nutrients from the vegetables. The chickens love it.

DISCLOSURE: I have bought 4-5 heads of broccoli and a cabbage this winter. Once or twice a week we have frozen peas or beans. I think we provide 80% of our own greens.

Hopefully you can find this post again at the start of next year when you need it! Maybe you could bookmark or pin it on Pinterest? In the meantime, it's summer seed raising time NOW, and our strawberry plants need to get into the garden - they're already trying to fruit. More on that soon.

Trading skills with rainbow looms

In our house, like in so many houses with children, there are rainbow looms. This involves a plastic loom and many, many small coloured rubber bands. The children spend hours weaving intricate bracelets and charms. They get their ideas and instructions mainly from YouTube, so their weaving time - hours a day, in this house - is usually spent in front of a screen.

Recently we bought some rainbow loom rubber bands from a shop in town. It had a few bracelets on display to show what could be made with the loom and bands. We thought we could do better, so I rang the shop and suggested my children supply them with some clever and inspirational bracelets for their display, and perhaps they could give us some rainbow loom merchandise in exchange.

It worked! The children each came home with an 'original' loom - as opposed to the inferior cheap copies they'd been using - and the weaving went on and on into the evening. What a great deal! I had hoped they'd get more sales as a result of the donations, but when I went in for some more bands a few days later, the whole display had gone. Strange.

My boy Jack (10) is the family leader in this adventure. It's turned into another one of his passions, and he spends most or all of his free hours thinking and finding out more about what he can make. Did I really write this post a couple of months ago about him being like a caged bird? Since he's found this new passion the bars of the cage have dissolved. For now.

The new loom from the trade has led to even better bracelets! He was even part of a business the children at his school set up, making loom bracelets to order. Sadly the deputy principal put a stop to it - a learning opportunity lost.

But there are girl bracelets around here too. Oh yes.

Is it 'good' for the children? Not for their bodies, I think, as they sit hunched up and still for hours - apart from their fine motor skills, which definitely get a work out. Here's an article about all the other skills they develop - persistence, patience, visualisation, creativity etc. It's from the Rainbow Loom website, of course.

There might even be some Mama creations in future. Not with rubber bands - the loom products are non-biodegradable junk. Instead, I'm going to try crochet! Have hook, have wool, have instructions, have inspiration....

A free pattern at Ravelry

The three images above were found on Pinterest.