Spirit is Here

I only dug half a bed yesterday though my intention had been to dig an entire bed. Then I remembered that I had a camera near by and there is such incredible beauty here!
I took over hundred pictures before the battery died.

Of course Spirit is wherever each of our are. Spirit is so evident where I live. Sometimes I forget that Spirit is here right now, and in a twinkling of an eye Spirit is available to me.

Pinch Me 

Let Lettuce Be 

Artful Artichoke 

Mellow Mullen 

Out of my Hands 

A Wonderful Tiredness

I had a hard time getting up this morning. I woke up at 10 AM and decided not to fall back into dreaming again like I had been doing since 7 AM. I just laid there feeling my body totally relaxed. The heaviness of all of my body parts pressed into the mattress felt so good!!! No where to go and nothing to do (well, actually I have many things that I want to do today) but nothing that I have to do. I am on the humpday of my Spring Break. I don’t have to go to work. I had fun staying up until 1 AM reading Harry Potter and the Goblet of Power.

I know that I worked my butt off in the garden yesterday. I turned a garden bed (one that hadn’t been tilled for over ten years) and pulled out all of the weeds and grasses. I can still feel it in my shoulders and arms, that sweet ache after using my body. And then I turned a large compost pile and added lots of fresh plants and weeds that I had pulled to it.

We have four table grape vines that are over 20 years old. I weeded out the nettles around them (over a garden cart full, and there are still more to pull) and then put manure around them. It was a cold and windy day yesterday, I don’t know that it got out of the forties, so I had to wear silk long underwear and wool outerwear to keep warm.

Today is a new day. The sun is shining and the green grass is vibrating and trying to call me out doors. There are more weeds to pull, that are easier to pull while the ground is still wet. We had around eleven inches of rain come through the last several storms, and the ground is still saturated. It would be good to turn another bed that can be planted with summer veggies.

On my kitchen counter, I have four mangos that I want to make into a fermented Mango Chutney, and I also have two cabbages that I want to make into sauerkraut. Well, I better hop to it. While there is nothing I must do today, there are lots of things that I want to do.

Preparing a garden bed 

Passion or Obsession

OK, if you really knew me you would know that many times I have gotten really excited about one thing or another, way, way into them, and then my passion withered as though it had never been. I don’t see this as a character flaw, it’s just the way that I am. Maybe I was born that way.

For example, right now I’m totally infatuated with blogging. It seems to be just about all I can think about. So, I figure I’ll ride it while the wave is breaking (yes, I used to be way into surfing too). I am not making any promises. It is my intent to blog a couple of times a week, and it is OK for me to do it more often while the “iron is hot.”

Foggy Spring day in my neighborhood 

Foraging Wild Plants

Just think, there was a time not so long ago when many people grew most of their own food. Before the Industrial Revolution, this country was an agrarian culture. Immigrants brought their seeds with them, though many staples, such as potatoes, corn, cocoa, and tomatoes were found already in use here. Long before civilization rose and people started staying in one place to grow food, they wandered and gathered their foods. Our ancestors, whether they were hunters, gatherers or farmers, were in touch with the moon and earth cycles. People knew which foods to gather and when to gather them.

I love gathering wild edible plants. They don’t have to be watered or fertilized. All I have to know is which ones are edible, and when and where they grow. Where I live in Northern California, late Winter and early Spring is the best time to find greens. My two favorite wild greens are Miners Lettuce and Chickweed. In the Summer, I love finding wild berries.

Bradford Angier’s Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants was one of my first books to turn
me on to the idea that there are plants waiting to be picked and eaten. A more recent book I like to use is Edible Wild Plants—A North American Field Guide by Thomas S.
Elias and Peter A. Dykeman. A highlight of this book is that it has a guide key that includes the season, region, habitat, and edible uses.

Miner's Lettuce--Yum, yum 

Trillium--I don't pick this rare and beautiful plant 

Living in Heaven

It finally stopped raining after 7.5 inches since Friday (5 days). So, I was able to go out and take shots of where I live. The beauty astounds me! I have been able to live here for 30 years, and this place deeply touches my soul.

Our view to the north this evening 

Sunset tonight, two days into Spring, 2005 

Our Water 

My Kind of Worship

Tonight, the wind is howling as rain lashes the skylight. My husband measured over five inches of rain in the last few days. Even though it poured yesterday I felt the need to get outside. I used a hoe to open up some water bars to help drain the rain off our dirt driveway so it wouldn’t wash so much of the soil away and leave a washboard to drive on.

I also put cow manure on some of the fruit trees my husband and I pruned last month. I did this in the rain, because I wanted to feed those trees, before the rains stop. Well, if you really knew me, you’d know I love being in nature, and being outside in a rainstorm is a form of worship for me. Here in the Coastal Range of Northern California, in Mendocino county, where I have lived for over thirty years, there are two seasons—Wet and Dry. I wasn’t quite sure if the wet season was ending, but thankfully it is storming again. The earth will stay green at least a few weeks longer.

After two hours of working in the rain, my woolen outer clothes had finally soaked through and my core temperature took a dive, and it was time to go inside to the welcoming warmth of the wood stove.