Dog Poop and Wasps

Have I told you of the bright white and yellow flowers of mustard and daikon all throughout Nepal? The way the people set mustard leaves in the sun to dry and then add chilis and garlic to go with the pigeon peas, what they call daal, the only thing I ate there on my first weeks when I traveled with the Nepalese and did as they did, no forks or spoons, only my hands.

In the heat of New Orleans, the bugs reign supreme. Then the wet comes to decimate what some have manicured. Amidst this there are plants that remain untouched. The molokhia slips up and through the cayradia Japonica. Moringa stretches to the sky. Papaya reaches high and flowers on the South facing wall.

There is much to learn from places I have not been. Many opportunities where I may have seen problems. 

I worked with Kenny for a couple hours this morning, moving an extension ladder along a wall of windows to put up boards that would protect them from hurricanes. He’s been working at this house all week. He said it was a good job, not without difficulties.

He said, “I keep stepping in dog poop and getting stung by wasps.”

I told him that it’s not the dog poop or the wasps but the thoughts that come afterwards. If I keep with thoughts like these, next thing you know I’m up on a ladder and I drill a hole through my hand, or rain comes, slows down the traffic, and I crash into a pole.

When I see what happens as the natural flow, I’m able to take onions and mushrooms from the clearance section at Hong Kong Market and mix them with vinegar and oil to eat on for weeks. I’m able to take a fallen papaya tree and turn the fruit into cash. I’m able to learn that ripe papaya will break apart in oatmeal.

Many people say that they don’t like papaya. I wonder how many of those people have tried it fresh, just picked, or better yet, fallen from the tree. 

I would like to make a commitment to eat at least one thing grown nearby everytime that I put food in my mouth and not the same thing over and over. There might be the need for creativity, the need to explore other cultures. This curry tree outside the window can surely go to a better use, to be eaten, shared, sold. I wonder if the chef who said he would be down with talking plants might be interested in the garlic taste of anamu.

I wonder about more opportunities, about how the trees over on Needle Street will do. I wonder what the old school garden might look like now. I don’t know whether I mentioned the opportunity I thought I might have at the place where I swim.

Months ago, I put down purple podded lab lab, pigeon pea, and some kind of celosia or amaranth that makes big white and pink flowers. I added long beans that snaked through all of this. People told me how great this all looked, especially compared to the other four concrete rectangles with only dying boxwood inside of them.

I emailed the powers that be and they told me they already had somebody taking care of the boxes. I was proud of myself for not saying, “Well…they don’t know what they’re doing.” I said that I hoped they would consider me for the future. On my way in to swim today I saw that all the pigeon pea had been yanked out. Long beans gone. Two moringa and a sunflower ripped out.

Those were my wasps. My dog shit. 

I swam. Love stroke abundance stroke love stroke.  I thought how I will be able to create in other spaces. I thought that whatever I charge is worth my knowledge, worth the time I have spent battling and then working in conjunction with chickens. Battling and then feeding bugs. Battling and then watching thoughts.

This is the great gift that we get when we can simply witness the dog shit and wasps and laugh, but the laughing isn't easy when I'm alone. Both me and Kenny know this. When I’m alone these are my new shoes and I'm allergic and I’ll probably need benadryl and would you look at my face.

I get to drive all the way over water across the tall tall bridge of the Intercoastal Waterway and on the way back home from the giant woodchip pile I get to see the entire skyline of New Orleans. I get to play these keys along with whoever plays that piano when Stan Getz stops blowing his horn and oh holly holy, this is the gift of creation.

This wonder and presence. These are what bring the answers, and it hits me on the way back how and why I am getting paid and why I am worth what I do. To heal this soil we start with three cubic yards of rotted down wood chips and these become the base for the low low price of 200 bucks, including my time and gas and a tip for Wesley.

This is the rolling of the world together, the excitement that never could have been predicted. The excitement that comes with not knowing. Were it not for this I never would have been able to get seven plantains for my baby for a buck nineteen.

When I cease fighting anything or anyone I think about giving. And when I think about giving, I am in communion with what is, shit or no shit.