Walking in the Garden

I have been at home for the past seven days recovering from some recent surgery on my thigh.  I take numerous short walks in our garden during the day, and take care of the watering.  I also gently practice Qigong and Taijiquan.  I saw my physician yesterday, and he encouraged me to walk to improve my chances for recovery. 

Our "sunny" vegetable garden has been highly productive this summer.  As we come to the end of summer, a number of fruit trees are producing delicious fruits.  The Marianna prune plums, and figs, are still providing plenty of delicious fruit.  The persimmon trees are loaded with fruit that will ripen in late October - likewise for the pomegranates.  

"If you look for the truth outside yourself,
It gets farther and farther away.
Today walking alone, I meet it everywhere I step.
It is the same as me, yet I am not it.
Only if you understand it in this way
Will you merge with the way things are."
-   Tung-Shan   

"It's amazing how much time one can spend in a garden doing nothing at all.  I sometimes think, in fact, that the nicest part of gardening is walking around in a daze, idly deadheading the odd dahlia, wondering where on earth to squeeze in yet another impulse buy, debating whether to move the recalcitrant artemisia one more time, or daydreaming about where to put the pergola."
-   Jane Garmey, A Writer in the Garden  

Ways of Walking: Quotes, Poems, Sayings

"An early morning walk is a blessing for the whole day."
-   Henry David Thoreau  

"Walking is a man's best medicine."
-  Hippocrates 

Walking Meditation: Quotes, Bibliography, Notes


"The sum of the whole is this: walk and be happy, walk and be healthy. "The best of all ways to lengthen our days" is not, as Mr. Thomas Moore has it, "to steal a few hours from night, my love;" but, with leave be it spoken, to walk steadily and with a purpose. The wandering man knows of certain ancients, far gone in years, who have staved off infirmities and dissolution by earnest walking,--hale fellows close upon eighty and ninety, but brisk as boys."
-  Charles Dickens