where I'll be...joyous prosperity retrest

Last June, I attended the You Are the Gift retreat by an Exquisite Life.  At one point during the day, I remember consciously thinking to myself I should be presenting to this lovely group of women.  I left feeling quite inspired.

This May while I was preparing for Mindful Connection teleseminar that I gave, I told a friend of mine that I had a feeling there was going to be some way for me to use the material again locally.  An hour later, I found out about the retreat that I spoke at last week, and a week later I received information about the Joyous Prosperity Retreat that is happening this Saturday....talk about manifesting intentions quickly. 

When I contacted Tonya Anderson, the retreat organizer, I did not have a clue how I could contribute so I pointed her in the direction of some of the work I have been doing since the beginning of the year.  And I am quite excited that the topic of Sacred Mothering came up in our discussion and has really nicely brought together a lot of the work I've been doing but taking it in a new direction. 

The retreat will be great opportunity for women to discover how to bring more prosperity into their lives.  And prosperity is not just about money and material wealth.  It is about discovering ways to love and enrich your life.

If you are near Pennsylvania, it would be great to see you there!

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This week on threading light I shared a story about walking the walk, and magically Lisa imagines what I shared without knowing what I was going to share (really)....come discover the Universe with us.

wabi sabi moment: sacred geometry

small tendril

reveals

its

 sacred geometry

my eyes and heart

unfurl

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you can find the whole wabi sabi moments collection over at flickr

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have a great weekend!

blessings~

elizabeth

nap alternative...quiet listening

For those of you that have been reading along, you know that I have been lamenting over our lost naptime.  Jude gave up naps a year ago.  I tried so many tricks, I woke him up early.  I let him stay up later.  I walked like a thousand miles with him strapped to my back and finally in a stroller.  I even drove, for no reason other than to encourage a nap (I cringe reading that, I do.).  There has been a theme of letting go in mothering that has surfaced this week among our tribe.  But I have to admit, I really struggled with letting go of naps. 

And the real problem is not just about me getting some down time.  The problem is Jude really needs a nap.  He seems so sleep deprived most of the time.  He will have days of crazy behavior and finally crash.  Like he did this morning sleeping until 10:15am.  These cycles are hard on all of us.  Oh the late sleep in is great, but the days leading up to it make me feel like one out of control mama.  And yeah, that too is just letting go of expectations that I have about how my child should be, but it is also about a lack of balance that helps our family cohabitate our home in peaceful manner.

So over the last few months I have been on a mission to institute a quiet hour.  We have taken walks in the woods.  We have picked berries.  And we swam in natural water at a cool mountain lake.  Today with really high temperatures and a threat of thunderstorms in the forecast, we listened to an audiobook that we picked out from the library.  I wasn't sure he would be content to listen to a story without pictures, but he did for an hour.  It was heaven.  I was listening with him for the first half.  He seemed so into it that I decided I could sneak away and do a few things on my own.  Ah...a successful nap alternative indeed.

I'd love to hear about any nap alternative tricks you have up your sleeve....

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Over at threading light this week, it's all about taking chances.  Take a chance and join our conversation. We want to hear what you have to say.

{this moment}

{this moment}

one image

no words

a moment to savor

inspired by Amanda Soule and many others

homegrown...a peek into our midsummer garden

Here is our garden midsummer, we are always a couple of weeks behind everyone else.  I don't strive to have the first tomato of the season.  We've had some setbacks, but things are coming along.  It is so helpful to have a good perspective on gardening.  I try not to get too attached to things being a certain way (try...I do try).  We have mostly a no-till garden in raised beds.  This works best for us growing as we do on a rocky creek bank.  To get the beds ready for planting I add compost to the top and use a digging fork to lift the soil without turning it over.  Then I rake smooth.  This retains the natural composition of the the soil structure and keeps all the helpful critters beneath alive and well and happy.

By far, the crop that has done great through drought, flea beetle infestations, and a very hungry groundhog was the swiss chard.  I guess groundhogs don't like chard.  We do.  

The radicchio, however, was a prime target for the groundhog.  The odd thing is that I had a little fence around the radicchio for the longest time when I first set out the plants.  I babied these along for so long I could sense their vulnerability.  But at one point, it didn't appear that we were having any hungry visitors to our garden so I took the fence down. silly me.  But fortunately, despite being eaten almost to the ground, they are coming back and heading up nicely.  I think we will have radicchio and fennel salad at some point afterall.

We have some baby zucchini coming on finally.  Our drought situation really slowed everything down.  It was almost as if everything was deciding whether it worth the effort to grow if there was no rain.  I had those thoughts as we were having to water every day at first by carrying 5 gallon buckets of water from the creek and then we got smart and borrowed a submersible pump. I would really like to have a rope and washer pump at some point.

The dinosaur kale is finally growing faster than the flea beetles can eat it.  I had almost given up on this crop completely.  Anyone have a flea beetle solution?  I will be getting beneficial nematodes to help with next year's situation, but if someone has a way to get rid of adult flea beetles, I'd love to hear it.

Speaking of beetles.  I found this guy 5 feet up a butterfly bush.  I'm not sure what he was doing there.  

This is Jude's little garden plot.  He has a lot growing in a very small space.  Radishes, beets, purple beans, lemon cucumbers, bird house gourds, marigolds (that he picked out and bought with his own money).  I'm wondering how that trellis will hold up with all that wants to climb it.  You can't see them, but there are little bubble bee garden ornaments in there and on the right hand side you might be able to make out a dragonfly that we put in to scare away the groundhog so they would stop eating the beans.  And what seems to have worked for the whole garden, was stringing a line of aluminum pie plates at groundhog level along the side I was pretty sure that he (or she) was entering.

The best part of gardening is reaping the harvest.  We chopped all this up for our dinner last night and braised it with a little bit of olive oil and salt.  Simple and delicious!

How is your garden growing?  I'd love to hear...

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If you haven't heard, Lisa has launched a great project for all of us who love to garden...

{this moment}

{this moment}

one image

no words

a moment to savor

inspired by Amanda Soule and many others

moment of mindfulness... the robin's nest

A few weeks ago, we discovered this beautiful robin's nest in an unplanted window box.  A pheobe had nested there the year before, but Mrs. Robin came along and dumped the old nest off to the ground and rebuilt the entire nest herself.  We had so much fun watching this nest develop, I thought you might enjoy seeing some of the pictures we managed to take when mama and daddy were not around.

four beautiful blue eggs

It was so interesting to watch the mama bird care for these eggs.  When it was rainy and cold she would poof out her body and wings to make a large umbrella to shield the nest.  If anything came near the nest, she instantly flew off so we were really careful to stay away, but we could peak between the blind and the window and see what was happening without disturbing her.

the first hatchling

feed me

I shared this one before, but I really loved this moment.  The baby bird mistook the dark shadow of my camera for its mama and in one fluid motion that happened instantly, it flipped its heavy head back and opened its beak wide.  Who wouldn't want to give that little beak something to eat???

the next day,there were two floppy baby birds

it took two more days before the next egg hatched

we waited and waited for the fourth egg to hatch

meanwhile the three baby's got bigger and grew feathers

the one left behind

I didn't check on the nest for a few days, and when I did I was surprised to see that there was just one little egg left and no baby birds around.  I don't think the baby birds were old enough to fully fledge, but they may have been moved to the roost.  That is my hope at least.

A week or so later, the egg was gone.

:::

Nest usually come into my life when I have a lot of projects coming up or babies.  Right before Jude was born I kept finding nests and hatched eggs.  I even found one when I was at my midwife's house for a visit.  When this last egg didn't hatch at first I thought...wow...what does that mean?  But then I thought, how dull life would be if all your eggs hatched and you expended all  your potentiality.  When the egg disappeared I thought it represented all the dreams that might have been, if other paths were not taken.  And it turned out that a lot of things were happening in my life to help me reflect on life choices I've made in the past.  I love when nature reflects what is happening in my life.  I have launched three  projects recently...and they are off and flying.