I'd love to discuss gardening, plants, and vegetarian cooking with those interested here on the Encounter Board, but wasn't sure where this thread best fit. I am an avid vegetarian cook and "budding" organic gardener and would love tips or swapping gardening/cooking secrets with anyone as this spring season begins!

Also, my partner and I are members of a CSA here in the Chicago area, which stands for Community Supported Agriculture. We purchase a "share" of a local farm every year (for the spring and summer seasons) and pick up our box of goodies each week at a local drop-off site. Any of you do that? Perhaps we are getting the same veggies and fruits and can share ideas about what else we can do with a box of beets or kohlrabi!

Finally--and this is almost off topic--but what do you think of the spiritual life of plants (or their spiritual residue of past owners or their spiritual interaction with humans)? Clearly, nature is infused with the spirit source--thank you, Whitman, Emerson, Thoreau, Coleridge, Oliver, Berry, Muir, Abbey, etc, etc, etc! I have a specific example/question that I am reminded of during each morning meditation sit. In my yoga/meditation room at home, I have two plants that belonged to my dear (best) friend who died 2 years ago (a sudden tragic death at the young age of 37). In the room, there are other artifacts of her as well . . .but the plants--lately, I have had the realization, or question rather, that the oxygen that her plants are breathing out to me now as I sit in meditation each morning may actually be the residual effects of her breath--her CO2--that she gave to those plants? I don't know if this is biologically correct at all, but it is quite a powerful thought to meditate upon each morning . . . a beautiful circle of life . . . creation and destruction . . . and the ongoing presence of spirit . . . om shiva om.

_/|\_
steph

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"I wasn't going to spend my life doing what had already been done." - Georgia O'Keeffe