Gardens, Monks, and Sock Drawers

In the Spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt."

--Margaret Atwood

Thanks for the quote, Kim. :)

I haven't been blogging as regularly as I used to--Spring is here and I get rather busy outside. My garden is my child and it's growing up nicely--but it's a rather messy kid and I'm the one who has to run after it. I haven't been spending much quality time in front of the computer.

As you can see from the photo, the bunny rabbits did not get all my tulips! These are the ones I planted late. If you get lazy in the autumn and don't plant your spring bulbs, you can hold off to February and still have them come up, at least in these parts. Oh, and I do get lazy in the autumn.

I also seem to be spending a fair bit of time spring-cleaning lately. I like things spacious and uncluttered, but stuff kinda creeps in and fills up the empty spaces.

I'm reminded of a class in Buddhism I took last year. The monk teaching the class told us about the time a friend of his arrived in Canada from Tibet with his meagre possessions. While staying at someone's home, he happened to see the contents of their sock drawer.

There were seventeen pairs of socks in the drawer.

Seventeen pairs! The visiting monk's mind reeled. He could not fathom why anybody would need so many. What was the purpose? Did Canadians need so many socks?

As a girl who rather likes socks,( and who also likes to have cozy feet in the winter and who probably has at least as many as seventeen pairs in various funky colours and patterns), I could gently explain to that poor bewildered monk why someone might have so many. But he does have a good point. I realize there is a saturation point when a person just has TOO MUCH of something.

This anecdote in class segued into a talk on letting go of possessions and the philosophy of non-attachment to things, but it was the story about the socks that came back to me this evening as I savagely went through my closet and drawers.

I filled three garbage bags full of clothing items to donate to a charity run that picks up tomorrow morning. Some of the clothes were given to me by friends to wear or sell, some items were things hopelessly too small or unfashionable or worn-out. Some things were just things I've let sit on hangers while I pondered what the heck I was thinking when I spent good money on them.

And I get the feeling I could do the same thing again if I pondered a bit more.