Killing fields!

          The first two photies: sometimes you just have to take a photie out the window!

           The second two photies: when I got back from the Samye, I visited the allotment to discover that most of the cabbage seedlings and brussel sprouts seedlings had been eaten up by culprits, vermin or varmints, unknown. I had, against my better instincts, surrounded them with slug and snail repellent, but these did not repel whatever it was deciding the gobble up my plants.

          So I spoke to a gardener about this. It seems gardening is like some kind of war against nature. I asked him what to do with these wee white eggs you sometimes find in the soil when you are digging. Kill them. What about the white grubs with the brown heads? Kill them. In fact, you should put out a wee bit of carpet so the slugs go there during the day, and then you know where to find them, and, of course, kill them.

          The only vow I took to become a buddhist was not to kill anything. There might not be much difference really between a big life and a small life. It's life. You shouldn't kill it. Of course, you can't avoid killing things. I suppose if you rub your hands together, you kill lots of things. So if I'm going to grow cabbages, it looks like something has got to get it in the neck. If you buy cabbages from the shops, someone has already done the killing for you, and that's just like eating meat surely.

          I'm going to eat two boiled eggs a day while I'm in Edinburgh and surround a cabbage with eggshells thus.

           Gardening seems to me very suitable for those who have had to endure the strict Calvinist toilet training regimes of the evil bourgeois. You have to kill weeds immediately, according to the gardener. Classic stuff! Keep your room tidy! Keep your shoes polished! By the left ... def, dight, def dight, defdight!

            I don't believe there's anywhere I'd rather be than here in Stockbridge when the sun shines! Yesterday I went out on the bike and cycled down to Cramond. I avoided the Cramond Inn and cycled along to the falls, and meditated on a bench looking out at where the last photie was taken. I had my eyes closed. I heard something and opened them to find someone with a big fancy camera taking my photie. I said ti was okay when he asked. Such a sombre moment, he said. He'd stopped me meditating of course, but that's what flatheids do.