Green kale is an attractive and nutritious vegetable, growing to a couple feet tall, useful in every kitchen garden. Towards the end of fall, the gardener should monitor overnight temperatures, although kale reputely is cold hardy and can tolerate occasional frost. This recent autumn, however, an overnight rainfall froze to heavy snow in the morning, and the cold of hours was too much, freezing the kale in layers of snow. Too late to salvage the kale, hard in the frozen soil, the gardener left the kale as a memento mori.
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A Japanese death poem reads thus: “I only regret that I did not plant more flowers.” This line can be taken literally, but a perkier interpretation is that one should cultivate more friends along the way. The hermit will prefer flowers, though.
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The Tang-era Chinese poet Po Chü-i is representative of the old Confucian dilemma to serve the bureaucracy when it does good, and to recluse when it does not. Being outspoken,Po Chü-i frequently offended supervisors and rivals, suffering banishment to outlying regions to serve petty or important but nominal positions. However, he always took advantage of the quiet and isolation of wherever he lived, visitig hills and mountains, old temples, and found hermits. One place where he was supposed to represent the government he found the populace so aloof, unperceptive, and obtuse, that he concluded that they were not unlike the pes that inhabited the nearby mountains. When, at an advanced age, he finally retired, Po Chü-i, qn avid poet (writing for himself and a few trusted friends) retired to a hut. Here he was quiet, occasionally ill, but relishing simplicity and nature. He had long forgotten about court life, though twinges of painful memories would surface once in a while. One winter day, he wrote a poem reflecting on his present days:
“Lined coat, warm cap and easy felt slippers.
In the little tower, at the low window, sitting over the sunken brazier.
Body at rest, heart at peace; no need to rise early.
I wonder if the courtiers at the Western Capital know of these things, or not?”