Showing posts with label gifts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gifts. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 5, 2019
Can this World Be Anymore BEAUTIFUL?
Wonder, wonder everywhere. Truly. Look around. Find it. It's here. EVERYWHERE. Live in it and see how it changes your life. Magic. Miracle. Whatever you call it, I promise wonder will fill your heart with gratitude. Sometimes life is better felt than parceled into words and descriptions so I share this post with pictures. Don't think too much. Just feel. Much love to you all.
Friday, December 21, 2018
Happy 2018 Winter Solstice! Gratitude reigns supreme....
Dear friends,
We are at the longest night length of the year and the shortest day length and it's a momentous day for many. The return of the light is everything to us....two outdoor souls ill equipped for long luxurious night time basks in the dark and cold. The return of light and warmth once again frees our spirits and we appreciate it more with each passing year.
We spend our precious daylight hours outdoors, soaking up the magic of the winter season and the dear friendship of kindred spirits.
We marvel at lepidopteran life that awakens with the warmth of sunshine and move about in their little grass homes munching a bit here and there and finding a new cozy slumber spot to nestle into. This Virginia Ctenucha caterpillar roamed the old field on this little 3.5 acres in mid-December. Adults of these moths number in the dozens and dozens and dozens here in the summer time; that tells us they are happy here...all they need to survive is right here on this small, but mighty patch of ground.
Our love for this planet, one another, our family, our friends, for respect and gratitude, for our furry and feathered friends and so much more grows infinitely more important every day we live...
and every time we say good bye. Flora left us at only 8 or 9 years old on 12/5/18, a victim of cancer. She was so loved every day of her life since she found us and we miss her in that black hole kind of way. We look for her unconsciously in all her spots, don't see her and sinkingly remember. She now returns to the Earth next to her long gone friend, Bobcat. Wildflowers will grow from her gift of nutrients and we will spread them far.
With every death, we are reminded of the preminent importance and joy of life. Our years are adding up and we are slowly learning the gift of presence...something always talked about, but not really experienced or understood until we found that place that puts us in our hearts, not thinking, just feeling and loving and appreciating.
That place is one you know, no doubt, if you follow this blog.
We find presence and joy every single time we look around this big, beautiful planet.
And so we hold onto hope, knowing the efforts we put forth to help our planet are small in comparison to the destruction wrought by powers so much larger than us, but we continue to join with you, to put forth goodness and make sure to let joy and gratitude seep in and overwhelm us. What better gift can we offer this life we get to live?
We soaked up much-needed sunshine this past week, while offering goodness: sorting native seed - the bearers of tremendous functional medicine for this planet.
In case you missed our Wonder Wednesday videos on You Tube, I've linked to the most recent below. These are a glimpse of the spark that lights us up - captured just for you. Please share yours with us too because we feel we all need more light and understanding in our lives...
Saving Birds
Tipping Plants Pt. 1 Tipping Plants Pt. 2
Witch Hazel, Clear Streams and AZT plans
Happy Winter Solstice dear friends and family. We are so excited for the returning light!
Many hugs and much love.
j&s
P.S. Soundtrack:
Atlantic City
House of Winston
I Believe
We are at the longest night length of the year and the shortest day length and it's a momentous day for many. The return of the light is everything to us....two outdoor souls ill equipped for long luxurious night time basks in the dark and cold. The return of light and warmth once again frees our spirits and we appreciate it more with each passing year.
..This is the solstice, the still point
of the sun, its cusp and midnight,
the year’s threshold
and unlocking, where the past
lets go of and becomes the future;
the place of caught breath, the door
of a vanished house left ajar...
― Margaret Atwood, Eating Fire: Selected Poetry 1965-1995
We spend our precious daylight hours outdoors, soaking up the magic of the winter season and the dear friendship of kindred spirits.
We marvel at lepidopteran life that awakens with the warmth of sunshine and move about in their little grass homes munching a bit here and there and finding a new cozy slumber spot to nestle into. This Virginia Ctenucha caterpillar roamed the old field on this little 3.5 acres in mid-December. Adults of these moths number in the dozens and dozens and dozens here in the summer time; that tells us they are happy here...all they need to survive is right here on this small, but mighty patch of ground.
Our love for this planet, one another, our family, our friends, for respect and gratitude, for our furry and feathered friends and so much more grows infinitely more important every day we live...
and every time we say good bye. Flora left us at only 8 or 9 years old on 12/5/18, a victim of cancer. She was so loved every day of her life since she found us and we miss her in that black hole kind of way. We look for her unconsciously in all her spots, don't see her and sinkingly remember. She now returns to the Earth next to her long gone friend, Bobcat. Wildflowers will grow from her gift of nutrients and we will spread them far.
With every death, we are reminded of the preminent importance and joy of life. Our years are adding up and we are slowly learning the gift of presence...something always talked about, but not really experienced or understood until we found that place that puts us in our hearts, not thinking, just feeling and loving and appreciating.
That place is one you know, no doubt, if you follow this blog.
We find presence and joy every single time we look around this big, beautiful planet.
And so we hold onto hope, knowing the efforts we put forth to help our planet are small in comparison to the destruction wrought by powers so much larger than us, but we continue to join with you, to put forth goodness and make sure to let joy and gratitude seep in and overwhelm us. What better gift can we offer this life we get to live?
We soaked up much-needed sunshine this past week, while offering goodness: sorting native seed - the bearers of tremendous functional medicine for this planet.
In case you missed our Wonder Wednesday videos on You Tube, I've linked to the most recent below. These are a glimpse of the spark that lights us up - captured just for you. Please share yours with us too because we feel we all need more light and understanding in our lives...
Saving Birds
Tipping Plants Pt. 1 Tipping Plants Pt. 2
Witch Hazel, Clear Streams and AZT plans
Happy Winter Solstice dear friends and family. We are so excited for the returning light!
Many hugs and much love.
j&s
P.S. Soundtrack:
Atlantic City
House of Winston
I Believe
Wednesday, December 27, 2017
A Few Thoughts on Forest....
Happy Holidays dear friends and family; we wish you goodness and love for 2018!
Before the deep freeze set in, we enjoyed a super balmy December walk and wanted to share the beauty we discovered on this particular hike made more poignant because we are digging deep into some thoughtful reading material this winter (listed below) and are reconnecting with our solid rooting in nature. What a JOY to remember it's all about the relationships...to know, instinctively, we are not separate from this planet that we live on and that we are bound by visible and invisible threads uniting us to all life. The immensity and grace of this remembering continues to reshape our thoughts and feelings and all we previously learned to be true. It's time for a reckoning, I believe.
American Holly makes me so darn happy every single time I see it - those festive berries and brilliant evergreen leaves lend such artistry to winter landscapes.
As many of you know, both of us have a complete and thorough love affair with vast wilderness and mountains and alpine lakes and clear streams and sunshine and any and all things rocky and ancient and that we also have this innate, homeland love of Eastern Deciduous Forest. What you may not know though, is that this love of these Eastern forests is really hollering at us lately and when I say hollering, I mean HOLLERING.
I think somehow growing up where we did (IN) we loved the trees, but took them for granted in a million ways and forgot to talk to them and to listen to them. We didn't use the right language to talk about them and we didn't always see that trees want to grow in forests and that forests are different than trees and that the forests' elegance is in their unity, in their inclusivity, in their binding of threads. Trees give us so much and spending time amongst them is such a gift. I mean pinch me! Do I really get to live amongst these beings? Walking down the trail, I can hardly keep my hands off their trunks in total and complete reverence of their lives as plants, their longevity and fortitude, diversity, beauty....
Because these trees share so much with us, we want to know them and to speak of them not as "its," but as kin (thank you Robin Wall Kimmerer). Part of knowing them is listening to them, but also paying homage and observing.
Flowering Dogwood (Cornus florida) grows bark similar to all other Flowering Dogwoods, but unique to that species so we can begin to know trees by looking at the architectural masterpiece of cork cambium. Steve is the true master of bark id and I owe my knowledge on this topic pretty much solely to him. (This love of trees rooted deep in that boy at a very young age!)
These small round plates always introduce Flowering Dogwood.
The sinewy Musclewood (Carpinus caroliniana) shows strength in the bark sinuosity.
Dead and decaying wood and organic matter is without question the foundation for all future growth in forests. With overwhelming gratitude, I thanked this Turkey Tail for the noble work of decomposition. Where would we be without it? (Yes, I do this. Yes, I am eschewing much of my learned science-without-heart crap.)
The dark coloration and thin ribbons of bark acquaints us with American Redbud (Cercis canadensis).
This particular tree tells us not only who ki is, but also a story of the past - a time when an American Beaver attempted to utilize this tree located near water to help dam the water. The wound is now scarred and healed so that the tree continues to live and photosynthesize and offer food and sustenance and shelter to so many others.
This tree grows very tall and straight, with furrowed bark, often tinged with white amongst the furrows....the spectacular Tulip Tree (Liriodendron tulipifera).
Forests hold and clean water and offer that water to us and myriad other life forms in so many ways, including as places to breed for the spectacular Wood Frog and Spotted Salamander and all the other vernal pool (seasonal wetland) dwelling life. Vernal Pools are my heart.
Somehow their pulse is my pulse and if you are someone who knows about vernal pools, you know my heart is shattered routinely as I pass plowed fields with scars of destroyed vernal pools or witness humans digging out these seasonally wet areas for their big pond, which destroys the life that depends on their seasonality. (I love big ponds too! Just not at the expense of a vernal pool.) These vernal pools are synonymous with forests because many of the species that inhabit them need both....the pool briefly for breeding and upland forest the rest of the year for food, water, shelter and room to live.
This is what we see right now on I-71 North of Columbus on the East side of the road. Another forest for sale that is filled with vernal pools. What will go there? Something that can replace the irreplaceable?
This forest and all the vernal pools are now completely gone. When we first moved here in 2010, the forest had been mostly destroyed, but the vernal pools left protected somewhat by laws and regulations. What those laws and regulations failed to consider is that vernal pools are not isolated places; they function within the relationships of the forest. Now, due to more lax laws and the questionable practice of mitigation, these vernal pools are forever gone unless some dear soul buys up this giant chunk of land, breaks the tile draining away the precious water and lets the forest heal.
And this, my friends, is where my mind and heart go daily - the goodness of the forest, the awfulness of a society based almost solely on consumerism, the goodness of people and the magic of this planet. So, we hold hope close and we put our feet forward as part of the planting revolution and part of the choir singing the praises of respecting life and one another.
Books we are reading:
The Living Forest
The Lost Language of Plants
Finding Peace through Spiritual Practice
Songs listened to while writing:
Future People
Meet Me in the Woods
The Obvious
Video:
Steve's video on drainage tile. How ironic! Listen till the end....
Before the deep freeze set in, we enjoyed a super balmy December walk and wanted to share the beauty we discovered on this particular hike made more poignant because we are digging deep into some thoughtful reading material this winter (listed below) and are reconnecting with our solid rooting in nature. What a JOY to remember it's all about the relationships...to know, instinctively, we are not separate from this planet that we live on and that we are bound by visible and invisible threads uniting us to all life. The immensity and grace of this remembering continues to reshape our thoughts and feelings and all we previously learned to be true. It's time for a reckoning, I believe.
American Holly makes me so darn happy every single time I see it - those festive berries and brilliant evergreen leaves lend such artistry to winter landscapes.
As many of you know, both of us have a complete and thorough love affair with vast wilderness and mountains and alpine lakes and clear streams and sunshine and any and all things rocky and ancient and that we also have this innate, homeland love of Eastern Deciduous Forest. What you may not know though, is that this love of these Eastern forests is really hollering at us lately and when I say hollering, I mean HOLLERING.
I think somehow growing up where we did (IN) we loved the trees, but took them for granted in a million ways and forgot to talk to them and to listen to them. We didn't use the right language to talk about them and we didn't always see that trees want to grow in forests and that forests are different than trees and that the forests' elegance is in their unity, in their inclusivity, in their binding of threads. Trees give us so much and spending time amongst them is such a gift. I mean pinch me! Do I really get to live amongst these beings? Walking down the trail, I can hardly keep my hands off their trunks in total and complete reverence of their lives as plants, their longevity and fortitude, diversity, beauty....
Because these trees share so much with us, we want to know them and to speak of them not as "its," but as kin (thank you Robin Wall Kimmerer). Part of knowing them is listening to them, but also paying homage and observing.
Flowering Dogwood (Cornus florida) grows bark similar to all other Flowering Dogwoods, but unique to that species so we can begin to know trees by looking at the architectural masterpiece of cork cambium. Steve is the true master of bark id and I owe my knowledge on this topic pretty much solely to him. (This love of trees rooted deep in that boy at a very young age!)
These small round plates always introduce Flowering Dogwood.
The sinewy Musclewood (Carpinus caroliniana) shows strength in the bark sinuosity.
Dead and decaying wood and organic matter is without question the foundation for all future growth in forests. With overwhelming gratitude, I thanked this Turkey Tail for the noble work of decomposition. Where would we be without it? (Yes, I do this. Yes, I am eschewing much of my learned science-without-heart crap.)
This particular tree tells us not only who ki is, but also a story of the past - a time when an American Beaver attempted to utilize this tree located near water to help dam the water. The wound is now scarred and healed so that the tree continues to live and photosynthesize and offer food and sustenance and shelter to so many others.
This tree grows very tall and straight, with furrowed bark, often tinged with white amongst the furrows....the spectacular Tulip Tree (Liriodendron tulipifera).
Forests hold and clean water and offer that water to us and myriad other life forms in so many ways, including as places to breed for the spectacular Wood Frog and Spotted Salamander and all the other vernal pool (seasonal wetland) dwelling life. Vernal Pools are my heart.
Somehow their pulse is my pulse and if you are someone who knows about vernal pools, you know my heart is shattered routinely as I pass plowed fields with scars of destroyed vernal pools or witness humans digging out these seasonally wet areas for their big pond, which destroys the life that depends on their seasonality. (I love big ponds too! Just not at the expense of a vernal pool.) These vernal pools are synonymous with forests because many of the species that inhabit them need both....the pool briefly for breeding and upland forest the rest of the year for food, water, shelter and room to live.
This is what we see right now on I-71 North of Columbus on the East side of the road. Another forest for sale that is filled with vernal pools. What will go there? Something that can replace the irreplaceable?
This forest and all the vernal pools are now completely gone. When we first moved here in 2010, the forest had been mostly destroyed, but the vernal pools left protected somewhat by laws and regulations. What those laws and regulations failed to consider is that vernal pools are not isolated places; they function within the relationships of the forest. Now, due to more lax laws and the questionable practice of mitigation, these vernal pools are forever gone unless some dear soul buys up this giant chunk of land, breaks the tile draining away the precious water and lets the forest heal.
And this, my friends, is where my mind and heart go daily - the goodness of the forest, the awfulness of a society based almost solely on consumerism, the goodness of people and the magic of this planet. So, we hold hope close and we put our feet forward as part of the planting revolution and part of the choir singing the praises of respecting life and one another.
Books we are reading:
The Living Forest
The Lost Language of Plants
Finding Peace through Spiritual Practice
Songs listened to while writing:
Future People
Meet Me in the Woods
The Obvious
Video:
Steve's video on drainage tile. How ironic! Listen till the end....
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