10-31-2007  [This was an email to a friend.]

In the summer I planted some loose-leaf  lettuce but the bugs ate it before it got an inch high.  If it got more than an inch the leaves were soon full of moth-worm munchie holes.  Then I found that lettuce cannot handle the full sun and it all died.   So I built a screen enclosure that circled my lettuce box and threw in the rest of my seeds, which I got at the flea market for 10¢ a bag.  I put a cloth over the top for shade as well as to keep the moths out.  The lettuce grew.  When the weather got cold the moths disappeared so I took the cloth off but I didn’t pick the lettuce so it would produce seeds for next year.  Lettuce likes the colder weather.

Last night (many weeks later) I was going to make a salad but I didn’t have any lettuce left in the fridge, so I went out to the forgotten lettuce patch. To my surprise I found several huge organic lettuce plants with the healthiest light green leaves I’ve ever seen.  I harvested enough lettuce for 2 salads without making a dent in the lettuce patch.  Another reward for gardening.

The moral of the story?   Maybe the work of meditation and reading and self inquiry is like planting lettuce seeds – one day just when you think you can’t have a salad you realize you have the whole lettuce patch!   Pip Bogwalker