No hindrance

Gardens occupy the mind/bodies of gardeners. The vegetable gardener benefits from the garden not by receiving vegetables alone, but also by having a relationship to the natural realm; by exercise, fresh air, quietude, focus. And the world benefits from the gardener's renewed equanimity as well as, perhaps, some of the food. 
 

Monastery gardens focus on food but also on medicinal plants and plants for craft, ranging from bamboo to indigo, as well. Asian monasteries are often located in or near forests to which they have access for making anything from furniture to roof-beams.

Hermits often don't have as many resources as monasteries, unless they reside near one with which they have an arrangement, or near a kindly disposed settlement, perhaps. Most hermits are agile enough, until near their end, to be their own gardener, herb-gatherer, wood-cutter, carpenter, glazier, cook, tilesetter, candle-maker, or whatever needs arise. Their resources are, within reasonable limits, whatever or whomever they can reach. I reach for many things, in season, right here on this 1/5 acre lot. There are dandelions, cat's-ear, spearmint, peppermint, lemon balm, blackberrry, Oregon grape, calendulas, marigolds, nipplewort, deadnettle, plantain, self-heal, thistles, herb-Robert, camellias, cascara (use with caution), ash, Douglas fir, and cedar right at hand, and a short walk along the street provides, with permission, rose petals and hips, birch foliage, hawthorn, bigleaf maple, assorted pines, deodar, crabapples, pie cherries, broadleaf plantain, chickweed, chicory, and on and on. Some are for topical agents, some for medicine or tea, some for walking sticks or to prop up peas or beans.

Concerning the peas or beans, we do have the usual variety of vegs and fruits, and the family also collects a bag of vegetables each week in summer from the Youth Garden CSA. These they use during the week, and then the day before the next batch arrives, I raid the leftovers for things to add to my own stash of vegetables for chopping and pickling.

It's a small, satisfactory, labor-intensive and meditative practice. I'm more in-the-zone at the cutting board than anywhere else. Enough diced root and leafy veg to fill the rice steamer is enough to fill several half pint jars with pickles, or combine two batches to fill several pint jars.

I mostly don't use quart jars for this any more, because I go through the contents too slowly. I still have a number of half gallon jars from my more manic canning days, and these I'm using to keep bulk dried sundries on hand.

 

 

The idea, then, for much of the year, is to steam a handful or two of (soaked) black beans, pinto beans, chickpeas, split peas, lentils, or rice or tofu or pasta, open a small jar of pickles to throw in at the last minute, serve into a bowl, sit down, be thankful, and eat.

Stonehouse noticed his food routine made up the bulk of his practice.

Lunch in my mountain kitchen
there’s a shimmering springwater sauce 
a well-cooked stew of preserved bamboo
a fragrant pot of hard-grain rice
blue-cap mushrooms fried in oil
purple-bud ginger vinaigrette
none of them heavenly dishes
but why should I cater to gods
(tr. Red Pine)

Life is short. If you have salt, reach for the salt. If you don't have salt right now, reach for the dried kale flakes you've made. There's always something, until there really truly isn't. And "really truly isn't" comes to us all in its own time. As it will do so whether we have salt or don't, there's no need to rush around or fret. This is called "no hindrance."

-- shonin

  

  

Pretty good stuff

Ling Xingpo visited Master Fubei Heshang to pay her respects. They sat together and drank tea, and she asked him, “If a true word can’t be spoken no matter how hard you try, how will you teach?”
Fubei said, “Fubei has nothing to say.”
Ling was not satisfied. She placed her hands inside the opposite sleeves of her robe and cried out: “There is grievous suffering even within a blue sky!”
Again Fubei had nothing to say.
Ling said, “To be a human being is to live in calamity.” -- Hidden Lamp, page 260 

The assertion that true Dharma cannot be conveyed by words goes way back. 

"After old man Shakyamuni had attained the Path in the land of Magadha, he spent three weeks contemplating this matter: "The nature of all things being quiescent extinc­tion cannot be conveyed by words; I would rather not preach the Dharma, but quickly enter nirvana." When he got to this point, even Shakyamuni couldn't find any way to open his mouth. But by virtue of his power of skill in technique, after he had preached to the five mendicants, he went to three hundred and sixty assemblies and expounded the teachings for his age. All these were just expedients. For this reason he had taken off his bejewelled regal garments and put on rough dirty clothing. He could not but turn towards the shallows within the gate of the secondary meaning in order to lead in his various disciples. If we had him face upwards and bring it all up at once, there would hardly be anyone in the whole world (who could under­stand)." -- The Blue Cliff Record, tr. T. Cleary and J. C. Cleary

Changqing once said, “I would rather say that arhats have three types of poison than say that the Tathāgata [Śākyamuni Buddha] has two kinds of expression. It’s not that the Tathāgata has no expression. It is just that he does not have two kinds of expression.”
Baofu Congzhan asked, “What is the Tathāgata’s expression?” Changqing asked, “How can a deaf person hear it?”
Baofu said, “I knew you were speaking on a secondary level.” Changqing said, “Then what is the Tathāgata’s expression?” Baofu said, “Have a cup of tea.” -- Shingi Shobogenzo

"Whenever Chao Chou saw a monk, right away he would say, "Have you ever been here?" Whether the monk said he had or he hadn't, Chou would always say, "Go drink some tea." The temple overseer asked, "The teacher always asks monks if they've been here or not, then always says, 'Go drink some tea.' What is the meaning?" Chou said, "Overseer!" When the over­ seer responded, Chou said, "Go drink some tea."" -- The Blue Cliff Record, tr. T. Cleary and J. C. Cleary

In some depictions of Manjushri, such as one well-known one from the Dunhuang Caves, he has 1000 arms and hands, each one holding a begging bowl, and he is said to be offering Buddha/Dharma to us, the Sangha, from each bowl. Us is everyone; we are all the Sangha either in the past, the present, or the future. It is said that the offer is good until we accept it, though we resist for kalpas. 

Wu Cho, a traveling monk, visits Diamond Cave on Five Peak Mountain and meets an old man there who offers him tea. The old man drinks from a crystal bowl. He shows the bowl to Wu Cho and asks, "Do they have these where you came from?" "No." "What!? How do they drink tea then?" Later, Wu Cho realizes he has been drinking tea with Manjusri. (Blue Cliff Record)

Yunyan was boiling some tea. Daowu asked who he was making it for. Yunyan answered, "nobody special."
-- Soto Zen Ancestors in China, Mitchell, 72.

Chongxin of Mount Longtan was making rice cakes for a living. When he met Tianhuang, he bowed and left his household.
Tianhuang said, “Be my attendant. From now on I will teach you the essential dharma gate.”
After one year passed Longtan said, “When I arrived, you said that you would teach me the essential dharma gate. I haven’t received any of your instruction yet.”
Tianhuang said, “I have been teaching you for a long time.”
Longtan said, “What have you been teaching me?”
Tianhuang said, “When you greet me, I join my palms. When I sit, you stand beside
me. When you bring tea, I receive it from you.”
Longtan was silent for a while.
Tianhuang said, “When you see it, you just see it. When you think about it, you miss
it.” Longtan then had great enlightenment. -- Shingi Shobogenzo

There is no getting out of the calamity. But Fubei's tea is probably pretty good stuff.

-- shonin