Garden Kami?

Morning temp: 50F
Afternoon high: 69F
Tonight's projected low: 54F
Humidity: 76%
Moon: Waning, just 12%

It's been a cloudy morning, with little breeze to speak of. We're supposed to see thunderstorms this evening and into the night, followed by a return to cooler weather tomorrow.

1. I went to Pike's Nursery for one more bag of peat moss for Beds #8 & #9. I also weeded and fertilized the Garlic, Lettuce and Mustard Greens with organic bone meal and dried blood. With rain due in this evening, though, I'm holding off on watering. So far, I've been carrying our plantlings out to the front porch for hardening off. Today I put them out in yard beyond the fence (to keep them safe from the dogs), as they require exposure to greater levels of wind, sunlight and temperature variation. We want them to be well prepared for full-time residence in the Garden, which should begin this coming Monday, provided it's not too cold. I also brought the remaining wood up from the Pipeline. I still have a mind to build a Garden fence and trellis from these thick, twisting branches. This time, I plan to sink 4' posts along the entire perimeter of the Garden (each to about 1' in depth), and let the earth settle in around them, providing a more firm and stable foundation, waiting a while before putting on the top rail. Also, I think I'll limit myself to one horizontal railing running atop the posts. Clearly, this structure is meant only for discouraging deer and for M's flowers to grow up and along.

2. Just a few weeks past, I drove to St. Louis to visit an old friend and his family. From where we live in Zone 7b, this ride takes about 7 hours, so I started off quite early in the morning. My pre-dawn departure found me in the rolling, jagged hills and mountains just north of Chattanooga, TN. (on Hwy. 24) at the first break of day. With the roads wide open before me (I was virtually alone at this early hour), I think I understood, or I think I experienced, a taste of the feelings and sensations that led ancient peoples the world over to built Temples and Shrines to honor the divinity found within nature. There really aren't any words for it; let's just say the power of this landscape was remarkable. It certainly felt as if I was not alone during my solitary drive.

That the divine should be encountered in nature is nothing new. It is not difficult, for instance, to find a Christian mystic who, after considerable time in prayer, sees and feels God radiating out of every blade of grass. In other modern day traditions, indigenous Japanese religion (commonly known as Shinto, or "way of the divine beings"), for instance, the elements of nature are themselves held to be home to powerful spirits, or kami. Earthly kami, this tradition teaches, can be found virtually anywhere, in mountains, rivers, lakes, oceans, rain, wind, trees, any earthly place marked by power and beauty. Heavenly kami, who dwell above us, appear as the Sun (a great Goddess figure around whom all things revolve, or circle), Moon, stars and sky. Of course, there are also the kami we would rather not have to deal with, who manifest as tsunamis, hurricanes, floods, disease and tornadoes. Essentially, the kami reside in those aspects of nature that inspire awe, or dread, or both.

Well, if I'm in a calm and peaceful frame of mind, and if I look carefully, it's immediately obvious to me that there's divinity within and around our Garden. Perhaps this is why St. Fiacre and his angels respond so quickly and easily when invited. In recent years, it's seemed to me that this reality is more readily felt on an emotional level, more easily harmonized with than understood in a purely rational way, the way we understand geometry, or algebra, for instance. As a scholar of religion, I was drawn to the commonalities and especially to the differences found among the world's religions. As an aspiring Homesteader, I'm intrigued to perhaps be plugging into some of the realities these traditions describe from first-hand experience.