A hermit monk that lived for a long time, alone in an outpost monastery, once sent message to his order. He had grown very old and requested

The blackberries are growing through the fence again, not long since they were cut back. The blackberries...brambles some call them, are they not some of the most hardiest survivors?

This morning, when I was bewilderedly staring out of my body and out of my window, into the grey blue wild sky and down onto the little wall

It does not really brighten up this morning, the guards do not move, a cold nightly stream from the North, moist and silent

I was pruning the willows, 'coppicing' as they say in that case. I remember years when I was pruning vine stocks this time of the year and for long:

Built a beautiful scaffold for the runner-beans today decorated it, beads and feathers, always feels like a sacred act, escorting, guiding life into vertical direction

Dug a potato-patch this blissful cherry-blossom morning, turning grassy ground for humble tubers, found a 20-cent coin deep in the soil, stamped in the year 1884

Midsummer day. Late July midsummer day and blistering heat, can you feel it on your skin...smell it? Close your eyes...can you smell it, feel it again?

I am watching the duck for a minute every day, she is breeding in the duck house since two weeks and another two ahead. Six eggs, perfect pose, no motion: Zazen...just sitting. Once a day she comes out, stretches, takes a short bath, eats a few seeds, bugs, grubs, takes a shit and returns four weeks, then: magic happens!...