I bought a rake

I have an odd sort of rule that I don't often get to implement (That's a rake pun, right there). If I get two consecutive days off and I don't have a backlog of work to catch up on or lessons that need to be tweaked or housework to trudge through, then one of those days is spent doing absolutely nothing. I spend no more energy than it takes to do my daily stretching, make a pot of coffee, round up a book or two and turn on the computer.

Yesterday was such a day, but the weather was so warm and inviting that I just couldn't resist a little excursion. Morioka is the kind of city that has so many Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples dotting it's landscape that you can't swing a small monkey around without running into one. They are generally the quiet idyllic kind of place that allows you to come to terms with your place in the world and gives realization that you don't really have much time to waste doing it.

You might notice his disapproval of the way I spend my time.

Just behind the place that I call home is a fairly decent sized parcel of land that lets me do the same kind of reflecting from my verandah that I can do at a shrine. On sunny days I watch the local kids run around and make noise and play games that seem to have no rules to them. I sit with my guitar and enjoy the effort my neighbor makes at turning the area behind her apartment into a flower and vegetable garden. During the winter I stand at the window and watch the snow fall and bemoan that I will soon have to drive through the frozen precipitate on my way to work.

But that space wasn't always like this...

It needed to be reclaimed from the wild, tamed and made worthwhile- 

see my previous post about how this all started. http://thenyd.blogspot.jp/2008/11/no-man-is-island.html

The problem with doing something like this is about the same as adopting a pet...your responsibility never ends.
The energy we expend on nurturing and maintaining the things that have importance to us is never truly wasted. Over time we are invigorated and rewarded with far more than we have invested  and on this particular project I even get a fair amount of physical exercise. 

It's important to keep the clutter and undergrowth from encroaching on the order you have struggled to create in your life. Personally, I like to put all my problems into neat little piles and deal with them one at a time. You still have to get that stuff out of the way and onto the garbage heap, but you don't have to strain with the whole damned miserable mess in one fell swoop.

That's why I needed the rake...