It’s the Bindii hunting season. Lots of ‘ooh’ and ‘argh!’ involved.
Bindii’s are a bane for an Australian gardener. They hug the ground - looking like a gorgeous, soft rosette - spreading tendrils which then mass. They aren’t soft. They’re vicious little sods with tiny pricks ... hmm ... sounds like a personal description but it isn’t. Usually Bindii’s are poisoned but that process leaves the plant there - albeit dead in the ground. No ‘bare feet welcome here’ sign ... for evermore.
I was ‘ delightfully gobsmacked’ when visiting the Mangrove Mountain Ashram a few years ago. During a break, I saw two women sitting on the grass, having a quiet chat as women do, and both using cutlery forks on the ground in front of them. What were they doing?
Removing bindii’s. What was ‘gobsmacky’ was the view when expanded. The women were sitting in an area the size of a small football field and completely unconcerned by the scale of the task before them.
Apart from the old folklore about there being ‘More than one way to skin a cat’, the message was that ‘Every little bit helps.’
I’ve taken that image of the two women and applied it to my garden which is nowhere near the size of a football field. Each year, I go out and scour every square inch of a patch of garden, removing the problem. Not long thereafter and I do another patch.
It’s no different to looking for Sapphires. Firstly you have to get your eye ‘in’. I’ll do this task of looking for and removing bindii’s for twenty minutes or so and, for the following hour or so - if I close my eyes - I have vivid and close up, three dimensional images of bindii’s in the grass.
Apart from the pricks, it’s actually both very enjoyable and a moving meditation....... I could say the same about life.