Everyday Celebrations

What I want Is

C.G. Hanzilcek

What I want is

Enough money

To Do what I want

What I want is

My own hill

And beneath that hill

A pond

In the pond a lazy

Bass or two

And duck feathers

Resting on the mud

Of the shore

Between the hill

And mud a patch

Of grass where I

Can lie and count

My seven trees

My seven clouds

And count the coyotes

Coming down the hill

To drink

Coyote 1 Coyote 2

Wonderful rainy day.
Baked 6 minute vegan chocolate cake
Baked 4 loaves of bread
Made soup
Listened to children on the monitor play all day with no fighting, pretending they were English (accents and all)going to Madagascar for some lunch and "tea"
Did some laundry.
Watched the rain.
Kissed the baby.
No Jury duty for Jim- case cancelled!

In the here and the now

Interested in: and can't wait to use awesome homeschooling/school tool from nytimes (Thanks lady Laura)

 Trying:  to take dear old Dumbledore's advice and be in my life and not only in my dreams. (Ab is loving HP, the boys- not quite as much.)

loving: our outside reading time and adventures in sunlight and fresh air.

Not really missing: the "blue-berry-hot-berry" (blueberries and milk) concoction that is a new kidlet fave. Though I am really missing milk chocolate.

compassion. or what I had for lunch

"If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete."

The Buddha

30 day vegan is an opportunity for me to do some things differently. The spring inside me, that is not yet here is asking me to make some changes. And though the beautiful recipes that Heather has provided for us this far in the workshop do not differ greatly from the general normal menu around here, there is an important difference. The difference is the focus.  I am focus. 

Such focus requires attention and time and work. Yesterday I devoted those to cooking. I know myself well enough to know that if I didn't have a bunch of food prepared already, I would get down on myself and overwhelmed, which would defeat this whole shifting to taking care of my "whole" self purpose.

What you see above is a quinoa chili. I tweaked the recipe a bit by using red quinoa and adding a jalapeno pepper at the start and also some white beans. I also put mine over a bed of long grain basmati brown rice. I made a whopping 3 cups (before water added).  I think it will last me all week. 

These are my roasted root veggies from the farm: parsnip, rhuetabega, carrots and as we like to call them "sweet badadedas".

So this beautiful lunch was waiting for me when we got home from the Y's Quigong class and now sitting in front of me is an empty bowl. I'm full of its goodness. Cheers to all who are joining me in a quest to take good care of themselves.  Be gentle, have compassion.

ordinary love

The Orange

by Wendy  Cope

At lunchtime I bought a huge orange--

The size of it made us all laugh.

I peeled it and shared it with Robert and Dave--

They got quarters and I had a half.

And that orange, it made me so happy,

As ordinary things often do

Just lately. The shopping. A walk in the park.

This is peace and contentment. It's new.

The rest of the day was quite easy

I did all the jobs on my list

And enjoyed them and had some time over.

I love you. I'm glad I exist.



How do I know I am loved?

Joining them outside for some sunshine with a book and some snacks in hand, I am met, as I come around the corner, with this. 

The answer. 

What had been a tangled mess of a skein of yarn, something I had already worked on a few days before for an hour at least, was between this man's fingers, other end hooked to a tree. Without a request or even a hope that anyone would help me untangle this mess, he took it out into the sunshine and began the work that it beckoned- amongst three noisy children and a dog, in silence. 

 It is this human grace that catches my breath from around a corner.  A divine gesture of an analogy.  Taking the frustrated mess that I alone have made of life and spending time with it. Untangling it for me. So I may knit something out of it with my two hands. To give to the world.

Ordinary things

Are you so poor

you've never hugged an apple tree?

So poor

you've never found a penny?

Poor dear!

A fortune is easily made.

Begin with the apple tree.

                                                                        Else Holmelund Minarik- from The Winds That Come From Far Away

This week my hope is to post often with photos of the small and ordinary happenings of life here.  Sometimes wishing for and dreaming of spring is not enough.  You have to stay focused on the tangled mess of winter that is still here.  You have to trudge on with the ordinary work of everyday life even when you are hoping for fresh air and change to come.  There is more work to be done in the present and focusing on the little things; the minute details of everyday work, can get you through and anew, alive with grace at your heart from all the listening. There is so much sweetness to be found in what we might deem unnoticeable and small, if only we look harder and hang on.

Spring coming early

Last post I mentioned being unbalanced in the element of wood. I was referring to Chinese Medicine and one of its five elements: wood.  Wood is the element associated with spring and new growth. Being unbalanced in wood can produce stagnating results. How does one feel at the beginning of spring (especially if your unbalanced)? Like  "a stream with too little water" as my accupunturist close friend put it. And it's true. It's cramped in here, not enough water to move my dreams into being, my visions into fruition. What accompanies this? Frustration- a more intereseting word for anger.

To cope and begin to do the things that will get my liver (one of the body parts associated with the element, the other being the Gallbladder) and life balanced once again,  I have been reading one of my "go-to" books. Staying Healthy with the Seasons, by Elson M. Haas. It is a great place to look for some basic remedies and direction for a person new to Chinese Medicine.  In the start of the book, Haas quotes Hippocrates,
"Whoever wishes to investigate medicine should proceed thus: In the first place, consider the seasons of the year and what effect each of them produces."  As my daughter just pointed out, "the end of winter is too hard.  we are sick of the snow, we want it to melt.  we want to use our roller skates and there is nowhere to use them." aka " the kids are bored- they want new .  I feel stifled, and so do they. 
What to do, what to do?
 Make a plan. Use all of the thoughts youve been thinking about on the inside, this winter and take out a pen.  What is the "new" inside of you that wants to be born? And.... what might you want to let go of?  Letitng go is just important in order to take hold of all those new and differnt things.  Let the old, unwanted junk fly.  Intentionally have a clear out. Now some may say that it's a little early for the spring to be setting in, but I know what I have to do to get these big goals sprouting.  This is the year of the rabbit (t) and amazing, wonderous, huge, full of life dreams and changes are going to happen. So it's time to organize. Send some stuff to the "Salv." Take a good look around, don't like what you see?  Intentionally change it....

 then grab some of those on- their- way -out fair trade roses

light a candle.

                                                                     and have a nice long tub.

 As Elson Haas points out, " A lot is going on in the springtime of life. It is important to clear out the past to create spaces for the future to come into being now. If there is no room for it, the new energy will get all clogged up in the system.  When spring arrives, remember, "elimination equals illumination."

When relaxation comes, pull the plug and let winter flow down the drain.
Would love to hear what some of you might be doing to help balance come?

tap tap tapping the tree

shhhhhh... can you hear it? listen..... the sap is running.

Last Sunday the five of us tramped outside to the behind of our backyard that butts up against the old (graffitied) creamery and tapped one of the three sugar maples we had marked back in the fall.

40 degrees and still pretty icy on the hill that slopes down, it was a small adventure, especially for the littlest among us. But I have to tell you, I am one step closer in my dream of having a"Tasha Tudor" lifestyle.

Congregating at the sugar bush has been a reverie I have wanted to make real since I was a small thing myself.  The kids were amazed that sap really came out of "our" trees. As if it was magic. And it was.

 How beautifully clear and woody smelling it was.  Though, to be honest (tbh, as J always says) we weren't completely sure we had tapped a sugar maple because upon tasting it, we didn't taste the tinge of sweet we had heard would be there.

persevere we did (really J did, as he woke up even earlier than his 5:30 norm to go out and empty our make-shift sap buckets (espresso cans) into our lobster pot. He did this almost every morning and every evening this week upon returning home.  And guess what?!!!! We collected a whopping 3 gallons! Granted, it takes 40 gallons of sap to get a gallon of maple syrup, but unlike his cynical wife, my sweet sappy man was not deterred. Not in the least.

The "sap boys" as James called himself, Sam and Dad since the adventure, rose early Saturday morning, rolling up their sleeves to start the boiling.

 and this is what I woke up to....

 the amazing sweet and earthy smell of sap boiling down to maple syrup. I couldn't help myself from returning to the pot time and time again, keeping my face there for a moment to suck up the magical moisture and somehow familiar sweet smell.

 After about 6 hours of simmering, we have had about 1/4 of a pint. And it is delicious. And it is ours.  Right from the veins of our backyard maple.  Used  (just a teensy bit) on panny-cakes this Sunday morn.  Just what this mama seeking a balance in her wood element needed most.