Gathering More Than Moss

Last week, I arrived for a forest yoga class - and in that chit chat with other practitioners that happens before class I shared that I recently become a certified Forest Bathing Guide. The collection of ladies cooed with their support. Everyone my age said, “Cool, now you need business cards." Everyone younger than me said, "Cool, now you need a QR Code." So I thought I'd splt the difference, dust off a blogspot habit I formed years ago, and create a space to share the journey I'm on with all of this.

Sunrise Service

I rolled over in bed this morning. The house was still cold. The muffled noise of my daughter sleeping from the other room. I stared up at the darkness. 

I breathed a quiet 'thank you' without anything specific in mind. Then I laid still and watched the sun come up slowly as if to say 'you're welcome'.

Swimming Upward

“Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it. You must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it.” ― Elizabeth Gilbert,

Late Fall

“I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.”   -L.M. Montgomery

Exceeding Expectations

This was the first year that I took up the vegetable side of the garden. I planted everyone's cast offs. My mom had one too many pepper plants, the neighbor had a butternut squash with nowhere to go...garlic, broccoli all acquired the same way and tomatoes. Oh, it was a crazy, good year for tomatoes. My backyard was hot, humid and tomato-lucious all summer long.

I had so many tomatoes I couldn't eat all of them. I tried to offload a batch to the delivery guy from my favorite Chinese restaurant. He was polite about it but had to say no. Against company policy. So I stuck the whole lot of them into my slow-cooker over a late summer weekend. Boiled them down with oregano and garlic in an attempt to make marinara sauce. Jarred up the sauce and froze it in the deep freeze until our house had a hankering for lasagna last night. 

We boiled up noodles, thawed out the marinara, grated some cheese, stuck everything into the oven and gave it a go. Cooking is like that for me. Slap a whole bunch of stuff together, set it in the oven, and spend about thirty minutes just living on hope. The hope this particular collection of ingredients will turn out OK.

This one? This lasagna? OK, wow. I'm a lasagna lover but the homemade sauce kicked it up a notch or two. Dinner exceeded expectations.    

Morning Trail Run

Amherst, MA (3miles)

Peppered

I made use of the dry, warm weather today by planting thirty crocus bulbs. I looked then at the bare ground and tried to imagine it peppered in yellow and purple petals next spring.

Blowing Around

Spent the day in pleasant company. The cold weather blowing around outside. The sort of day that makes for long, involved conversations. The sort of day where my voice, my brain feel a little exhausted by the end of it. I climb into bed wondering when we can get together again? Hoping the answer is 'soon'.

My Sunday

Sometimes you just have to kick your other plans to the curb.

Air Outside

The air outside had a cool, wet skin this morning. The stars thinning out, I felt closer to the light sky than usual.

Rain Save

Four girls caught by a downpour on the walk home from Middle School. Nobody has an umbrella. N dials for a rescue as they took shelter under a tree. 

Ten minutes later the car doors clap closed. Every surface inside the car is instantly soaked. We're smooshed inside with kids and bikes and backpacks. 

The windows fogged up from all that giggling. 

It's nice to occasionally provide the rain save.

Indian Summer

Blue River Lodge (Sept, 2013)

I dangled my feet off the dock and into a mud bottomed lake this morning. It was murky lake water that it seems everything disappears into. Feet dangling, coffee in hand, I closed my eyes and listened to this place. 

There's a difference between listening for something as opposed to sitting still enough to listen to a place. It's in the brain filters. Listening for something selects one sound, it disregards other sounds as noise.

I spent this morning listening to whatever came. Birds or bugs, the sound of truck tires on the gravel road, the wind kicking up dry leaves that are yellowing soon. 

There was an expanse in me that the outside world opens. A welcome sensation that I live in a large, complicated, noisy world. One that drowns out the chatter inside my brain. I felt grateful for the very air around me.

Greening Forward

N came with me last weekend to the TedxYouth conference in Lincoln. We sat audience to a young man from Atlanta named Hasib Muhammad who started  Greening Forward as a resource for young activists. 

He gave an amazing speech. I barely had the presence of mind to scribble down a couple of thoughts that fell from his microphone. At the end I looked down at a page that read "Harness hope: learn, fear, grow, fix."  

Heliophilia

Heliophilia - (n.) a desire to stay in the sun; love of sunlight. 

Take Your Time

Thanks, J.

Soak

I woke up to a slow, soaking rain this morning. Opened up all the windows to let the wet weather inside.

Green Camera Action

Grab your camera and submit an entry into tve's 2013 biomovie competition.

Mud Season

Photo Credit: Wendy Jane Bantam

I make a mud pit out of my back yard twice every day. I've reworked some of the grading recently. Planted some grass seed. I've been watering ever since.

I love it. I love the way the way the water rains down my hands. The washed skin that's slick to the dirt surface. The water lasts just an instant before soaking in. The rich, musty smell that rises up from a wet ground. The speckles of a mud sticking to my shins. The cold, strangely clean feel of mud. It's something I make twice every day.

Ripening

 

 

This is the first year, ever, that I've taken up the backyard effort to grow vegetables. I'm a little nervous, so, wish me luck.

International Mud Day