The First Morels …

 The First Morels ... I keep hearing the headline in my head to the tune of “The First Noel” — but here they are, the first morels of the season. It got hot here this weekend — into the eighties — and after our long cold wet spring, I just knew there must be mushrooms out there. These “yellow” ones show up in woodsy copses along the river, then later, the black ones emerge in the mountains. I didn’t find very many yesterday — this is maybe a pound or a pound and a half — but I only hit one spot. Ray and I had a lovely little morning looking for mushrooms — I poked around, doing the mushroom-hunt-Very-Slow-Hike while Ray hunted bunnies and doves. He’s gotten to be such a good boy — he’d disappear for a few minutes, then come circling back when I called. All in all a nice morning, and a little dinner of reheated chicken and rice with a morel cream sauce (cream from my lovely gallon of local milk) was quite delicious.

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Dog Walk Sutra

Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva,
doing deep prajna paramita,
Clearly saw emptiness of all five skandhas,

Ray! What are you doing? Get over here!
Thus completely relieving misfortune and pain.
O Shariputra, form is no other than emptiness,
Emptiness no other than form;
Form is exactly emptiness, emptiness exactly form.
Sensation, conception, discrimination, awareness,
Are likewise like this.

Whoa! What are you doing? You’re not allowed in the street.
O Shariputra, all dharmas are forms of emptiness,
Not born, not destroyed,
Not stained, not pure,
Without loss, without gain.
So, in emptiness there is no form,
No sensation, conception, discrimination, awareness,
No eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind,
No color, sound, smell, taste, touch, phenomena,
No realm of sight, no realm of consciousness,

Come on Ray — out of there — don’t eat catshit!
    No ignorance and no end to ignorance,
No old age and death, and no end to old age and death,
No suffering, no cause of suffering,
no extinguishing,
no path,
No wisdom and no gain.
No gain and thus the bodhisattva lives prajna paramita
With no hindrance in the mind
No hindrance, thus no fear.

Come on lovie. This way.
Far beyond deluded thoughts, this is nirvana.
All past, present, and future Buddhas live prajna paramita
And therefore attain anuttara-samyak-sambohdi.
Therefore know prajna paramita is the great mantra,
The vivid mantra, the best mantra,
The unsurpassable mantra.
It completely clears all pain—this is the truth, not a lie.
So set forth the prajna paramita mantra.
Set forth this mantra and say:
Gate! Gate! Paragate! Parasamgate!
Bohdi svaha! Prajna Heart Sutra!

Up Ray, through the gate. Good boy. Want a cookie?

(with apologies to Gary Snyder, whose translation this is.)

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Scarecrow!

So, ever since my ancient calico cat, Patsy, went off to the great beyond I’ve been plagued by neighborhood cats who think my nicely turned and raked raised beds are big litter boxes. Ugh.

Last year I tried cayenne sprinkled on the beds, and finally resorted to draping them all in tree netting. Which was fine, but as the plants grew up through it, it became a pain in the neck.

So this year, I went for more drastic measures. I ordered this fabulous sprinkler scarecrow from Amazon. You hook it up to the hose, and set the sensitivity level, and if anything comes near it it explodes with a blast of tat-tat-tat water and noise. The first night, clearly, I set it up facing the wrong direction and didn’t make it sensitive enough, because the next morning there was a gross horrible disgusting pile of catshit in one of the beds. So I moved it to face the back of the property, toward the alley from which the cat clearly enters my yard, and yesterday morning there were tracks, then a divot where the cat fled, but no cat crap. And this morning — nothing! Pristine garden beds with tiny seedlings growing in them. I love my sprinkler scarecrow!(Apparently they’re also pretty successful for folks who have deer issues.)

The next use for this fabulous device is going to be as a dog training aid — Raymond and George next door have an annoying game they play where they indulge in Very Fierce Barking through the gap in the fence. I think little motion-detector water should solve that, as well as the issue we have when I’m having a peaceful glass of wine on my front porch in the evening, and Raymond thinks he needs to rush back and forth along the picket fence barking at anyone who passes by — like I said. I love my sprinkler scarecrow.

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Lamb!

I just had a terrific little visit with Barb Marshall of CrazyWoman Farm. She brought me 18 pounds of lamb — about half a lamb — a nice big bag that included a whole leg, a whole shoulder, a bunch of chops, some kebab meat and some ground lamb. She delivered even, all for six bucks a pound. And she’s really cool — we had a nice little chat about my urban farming — turns out she used to live on the next block over.

It’s one of the things I really love about living in this particular rural place. I know how lucky I am — not only do we have a lot of ranchers, but we have small slaughterhouses and organizations like the Corporation for the Northern Rockies helping farmers and ranchers market their stuff.

So, looks like lamb chops on the grill tonight — yum! And time to start thinking about a party — goodness knows I can’t eat a leg all by myself …

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