Feeding the Buddha

We finally managed to hire new gardeners this month - with the almost incessant rain falling during the past two, our grass, vines, flowers, and trees had become a completely jumbled *mess*. Honestly, I liked it that way, but we're preparing to leave and it just didn't seem right to impose my own wild aesthetic on the next potential tenants.

The team consists of two local guys, brothers - and they come every weekend to chip away at one section of the garden at a time. It's looking a bit like a half-shaved head at this point and certainly isn't to my liking, so naked. But they do a great job and we're lucky to have them here. They work hard, sweating in the blessedly sometimes-present sun and laughing with eachother over Mooshy's relentless tailgating while they're trying to work.

They've cleared out the dead and brown corn crop, cut back the squash and bean vines that had crept out of their marginal sidegarden and toward the house; wrapping themselves up and around every possible vertical surface along the way. And they've mowed about one fifth of the gigantic lawn; grass now clipped golf-green short near the balconies, still a foot high out toward the compound walls.

I peek out at these nature tamers every now and then, not to check up on them as their work is efficient and nonstop each time they visit us, but just to make sure Mooshy hasn't crossed that threshold from cute to absolutely annoying as he is so often inclined to do.
Yesterday, during one of my regular spy missions I watched as one of the brothers took an ear of corn, harvested from what was left of our garden's seasonal bounty, and place it at the base of the large black statue of Buddha that sits at the right of our house. He lit a stick of incense and added it to the shrine. Then, carefully picking an individual kernel from the orange cob, he stuck it smack dab onto the Buddha's mouth.
A gentle gesture of respect for his God.

He sat quietly before the statue, head bowed, while the incense burned and wafted around him...meditating. And then, as soon as the scented stick had run its course, he reached behind him, snapped up his clipping shears and jumped up to return to work.

Mooshy, never one to show respect for much of anything, immediately slunk in behind the devotee's turned back and stood up on his hind legs to sniff the offering that had been left behind. For a moment it looked just like he was kissing the Buddha. He then quickly made off with the ear of corn at the icon's feet. I dare say, the Buddha wouldn't mind much, and our little canine thief was kind enough not to steal the morsel of food directly from his mouth.