"Spiritual Window Shopping " Written by Jalaal'uddin Rumi (translated by Coleman Barks) and now taken from a page of a book written by Robert Beer, "Tibetan Symbols and Motifs" These spiritual window shoppers, who idly ask. "How much is that?"-"Oh I was only looking" They handle a hundred items, and put them down again, shadows with no capital. What is spent is love, and two eyes wet weeping. But these walk into a shop, and their whole lives pass by suddenly, in that moment, in that shop. "Where did you go?"-"Nowhere" "What did you have to eat?"-"Nothing much". "Even if you don't know what you want, buy something, To be part of the exchanging flow. Start a huge foolish project, like Noah. It makes absolutely no difference what people think of you. "Jalaal'uddin Rumi> Reading this reminds me that I am greatfull for simple minded use of the word Zen that have touched my life indirectly leading me to Japan and Eastern thoughts. From Chevy Chase in "Cady Shack" goin Nanananannnana NAaaaananananaaaaa while puting those golf balls to the Link Herb has willingly provided showing commercial enterprises of Zen garden boxes . Read the bottom of this poem again. For I do not know anything. Please excuse my ignorance. I little confused. I am starting to wonder if anything that has the word Zen is good. Maybe its not good for you. But why not just get the word out ? Keep repeating Zen. Let a culture learn and adopt new concepts slowly. Two women claimed an infant. One who riased the infant and one who is natural mother. King Solomon said , "I will solve this, I will Cut the infant in half and give and give each of you half. One women says ,"Noooooo ! She can have him ". King Solomon then knew this to be the real mother. Moral of story is aside of illustrating remarkable intelligence of King Solomon, true nature of love is not intelligence. Wisdom is not intelligence. When the Buddha Shakyamuni suddenly held up a flower and looked at it, Mahakashayapa smiled sharing in the true nature of the shared reality seen in the flower.Essence of Zens founding Wisdom. I have very little understanding of these words . No idea. I think I do. But really deep down inside I know I cant grasp this. Hard to swallow the truth. Wisdoms are complex . Absolute truths are simply amazing. Peak expereinces..now those change me in a huge way.I would like to be a good man. "What Makes a Zen Garden" is teaching me this path. My path started when I picked up a pebble in our backyard when I was around 3 years old. I dropped it when seeing my father. Lost concentration of pebble.. I remember his legs. haha. Thats all I recall of that moment. Another day I picked up pebble again. My father said white. I recall his bending down and taking the pebble in both of our hands. He looked in my eyes and said white. I loved my Dad. dropped the pebble when he let go of my hand. I followed him . Sometime within that week my mother took me outside. I recall finding a pebble and going to my mother white. She looked at me with wide eyes smiling. I dont recall my feeling. When she took the pebble from my hand to look. I went to the ground and looked for white. I do not remember anymore of this learnings. I do recall nursery school. Going to the car with my mother and picking up a Quartz stone . While in the car wearing my Cowboys Footaball leather jacket I held this Quartz in my hand. " White" The thought creeped in and I knew I had not seen a white stone since the week with my father teaching me white. From this thread of thought I came to know of white , quartz . Somewhere in there is pebble and stone. I dont recall. But those were Peak Expereinces. Those are the memories that bring me to Japan. I seek to know who I am. Materials of a garden need words. Without words one does not see. I see white quartz pebbles everywhere now. Zen, Japanese Garden , Kare San Sui , Suiseki ,Zen. How one comes to know a word is more importent than the word itself. Zen will not come untill I know how I became me. I am part of the Flow . Zen and Japanese Gardening is within me. One must have the will , desire to find new words to see with. Keep open heart to see wisdoms also. Dogen. King Solomon. Basho. Three new influences in my life this week. Good thread : )

I have found an effective way to keep cats from my raked gravel garden. I modify mouse traps to soften the catch bar and bury them just below the surface. When triggered by a cat's pawing around it snaps and scares the bejeebers out of them. It is a little aggressive but I had real problems with cat mess and smell. I hope not to hurt them but I mean business. I don't own cats due to an allergy. To soften the catch bar [the nasty part that catches the mouse] I cut a piece of 1/4 inch plastic tubing to the width of the bar. I split the tubing so it can slide over the bar. This slows down the trap and softens the blow if it should catch the cat. This works on crows too which is unfortunate because they used to eat the insects and snails from the garden. Now they will only perch on the rocks. I came home from work one day and 3 of my 4 traps were triggered and laying on the surface. The cat never returned. Me, on the other hand, I got a good fright the next morning when I forgot about the remaining trap and began raking my garden in the gentle morning light!

Hi Trapper, They also have pH paper, which is reliable, reasonably accurate, and inexpensive. The pH meters can get out of calibration -- otherwise they are the most convenient to use. " Need to check out this RO thing " I got an under-the-counter Reverse Osmosis unit from The Perfect Water I actually purchased it from among the Reverse Osmosis units at Amazon There is a wide variety of units to pick from. When we first rented this farmhouse, we inspected the well and looked down there and you could see a bloated possum floating in the water. It was an old fashioned kind of well, consisting of a hole about 6 feet in diameter, maybe a little more. We had them put a secure wooden cover over the hole, because a child could fall in there and drown. And obviously the water was not pure, with a drowned rotting possum floating in it. So we referred to our tap water as "possum juice" and set the hot water tank temperature to near its maximum, so the hot water was near scalding. That much heat would at least kill any thing that was living in the hot water that we were washing our dishes and clothes with. We knew the well water was very hard, and my first indoor plant project ended in a heavy fatal salt accumulation in the pots after 5 or 6 weeks. We had the same problem with the well water killing our plants when we lived in Maine, only it had a modern pipe-in-the ground configuration, so creatures drowning in the water was not an issue. But its salts would accumulate and kill plants. However, in Maine we had an endless supply of snow, so I simply melted snow in big plastic tubs and the melted snow was nearly like distilled water and worked fine all Winter for our plants. But here in Kansas we didn't have a dependable supply of snow, so I settled on a Reverse Osmosis unit. I considered an electrical water home distillation unit, but the cost of our electricity was going to make the price per gallon of home distilled water too high. Our Reverse Osmosis unit works on our water pressure. It does use a small amount of electricity in its ultraviolet sterilization cell, but it costs a negligible amount to sterilize a gallon with intense UV. Since we are drinking and cooking with Walmart bottled water, we didn't need the re-mineralization feature that is an available option. The unit we wound up getting was the Home Master TMULTRA Ultra Undersink Reverse Osmosis Water Filter System We are pleased with the system. The RO water is very close to distilled water, or the equivalent of very clean rain water. The plants love it. However, if your plants are doing OK with your Topeka water, save yourself the expense and hassle of installing a Reverse Osmosis unit. As they say, if its not broke, don't fix it. ZM (not associated with any product or vendor mentioned or linked)

Hi Oakley, " when do you gather seeds? Or can I deadhead a faded bloom and dry it out for seeds? " There is a lot of flexibility on that, but you can actually gather zinnia seeds while they are still green and plump, and dry the green seeds before storage or nick them to defeat the waterproof coating. That lets you start a second generation of zinnias from a plant that is still developing new branches and new blooms. You can learn which petals have viable seeds by close visual inspection, or by gently squeezing the seed a bit. The viable seeds are "fat" and contain an embryo. You can cut the green seed covering to give water access to the embryo inside. You can plant the green seeds with exposed embryos to get a nearly immediate start to a second generation of zinnia plants. Or you can dry the green seeds for a few days for storage. If you store them "wet" you risk some pre-germination in storage. " I can either leave dead blooms on the plant until the seeds blacken, right? " Yes, that is what people usually do with zinnias, and other flowers as well. However, there are a couple of disadvantages to that. You increase the risk of seed-eating birds eating your zinnia seeds, and you risk pre-germination of the seeds in the seedhead during a prolonged rainy spell. The green seed technique has been a big help to me in my zinnia breeding hobby, by allowing me to get a second generation of zinnias outdoors. And it really irks me when seed-eating birds eat some seeds that I hand pollinated. ZM