a few of my favorite things...charm breon pottery

Let me introduce you to a significant part of my life. My mug. I know it seems trivial, but this mug goes with me almost everywhere. I love everything about it. I love the rich earth color. I love the throw marks on the side that are highlighted by glaze. I love the little thumb perch. I love that it is narrow at the top and wide at the bottom. This is the ultimate travel mug. It doesn't tip and it keeps tea warm because the shape keeps the heat in better than any other mug I own. I know because I've tested it.

My very good friend, Charm Breon, made this mug. Last summer she gave me my original favorite mug. One day I was coming home from early morning Qigong and toting my empty mug back into the house from the car when Sophie, my weimaraner, bonked her head on it. I heard a crack and my heart just sank. Sure enough, there was a very large crack in the cup. I tried to use other mugs, and I just couldn't do it. My tea actually tasted different. So I used the mug with the crack for 2 months until a large chunk fell out of the side.

My original favorite mug...I was doing a little brown green color study in this shot

You have to be Charm's friend to get one of these perfect mugs...so I don't have a website to refer you to unfortunately.

Let me tell you a little about Charm. Contrary to the image her name my stir up, she is one tough cookie. She was a professional mountain biker, and we raced together on a road racing team for a few years together (but that was about a lifetime and a half ago). She can outride most men on a bike. She also used to have a Harley. When I saw her a couple of weeks ago at the Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts, I asked her what she was doing these days. She said, "I'm logging." My reply was, "of course you are."

I told Charm about my devotion to the mug she gave me the previous year. She said she would bring me another one. And true to her word, she delivered my new favorite mug on the last day of the show. And my tea has been outstanding ever since! Thanks Charm...personally, I think you should be a potter, but you'll always be one of those women that run with the wolves.

homemade...green goodness soup

This is a food tonic that was adapted from Bieler's broth. Dr. Henry Bieler used this vegetable soup to heal his patients and determined that due to the nutritive properties of the ingredients the soup was good for cleansing the liver and other organs. It is simple to make and tastes really yummy. This is one of the few dishes I will eat even if it is out of season, but now that the ingredients are in season and readily available in my garden it is a real treat!

You need a zucchini and a cucumber. I got this lemon cucumber from our CSA. I forgot to take a picture of the zucchini, but I think you know what they look like.

Chop into small cubes.

My celery is still pretty small so I used several stalks. Usually, I would use 3 regular sized stalks so that I have equal parts zucchini, cucumber, and celery.

Place all these into a steamer and cook until they are soft.

While the vegetables are steaming, chop up about a cup of fresh parsley.

Place the parsley into a food processor or a blender with 1 Tablespoon of olive oil.

Cut off about 1-2 inch piece of ginger root.

Peel and cut into small chunks add to the food processor or blender.

Add a 1/4 teaspoon of cayenne to the food processor.

Add the steamed cucumber, zucchini, and celery to the food processor and give it a whirl.

Process or blend until smooth.

Add a bit of salt after transferring to individual bowls. This makes two large servings or 4 small servings.

Cheers to your liver...enjoy!

moment of mindfulness...clearing brush

This weekend we did a major overhaul on our property. There were many small trees growing up where they didn’t belong. Our lovely wedding veil shrubs were in dire need of a trim. And the poison ivy, Virginia creeper, wild grapes and roses were threatening to overtake anything and everything that provided a way to get up.

Despite our best efforts to haul as much of the trimming and cutting debris away as it was created, there were still several piles of large branches scattered around the yard today. So this afternoon I donned my gloves and my working clothes and began the task of clearing it away.

We have a narrow strip of woods on the northern edge of our property, and there is an abandoned railroad without rails or ties that makes up our property line. We have used this is our composting area for large brush for a long time. Really it just becomes great habitat for groundhogs. But nevertheless, the idea is to let nature take care of it rather than burning it or hauling it to the landfill.

As I made trip after trip across the road to our woods, I thought this is much like meditation. Thoughts arise, some are just small like sticks, not hard to carry but there are a lot of them. When I find that deep place of peace these just roll away. But other thoughts are like trees. Difficult to carry and heavy…sometimes they have thorns and making your way to the deep place of peace is very hard. There are limbs that smack you right in the face, wet leaves to slip on, and the fears that arise. It so hard to get rid of these thoughts when you have all sorts of fears pop up…like the snakes that might be hiding in the woods, or the dread of getting poison ivy.

The more times you make the trip, especially with the really unruly trees and vines, the easier it becomes. The path is clearer. You’ve remembered to push those face smacking limbs out of the way. The practice and persistence pays off eventually. And in return we earn a subtle peace that we carry with us wherever we go. We earn patience. We earn clarity.

When it is all said in done, this process of clearing away and releasing, difficult though it may be, leaves us with much more. And the light can shine again.

week in snapshots

1. watching the fireman's parade, 2. radicchio, 3. muddy creek, 4. fireman's parade cherry picker, 5. herb patch, 6. zinnias, 7. obedient plant, 8. pine seedling, 9. throwing rocks, 10. shell and caterpillar, 11. butterfly bush and bee balm, 12. fence garden at end of july

Definitely a garden focused week here with some excitement of the fireman's parade and carnival to top it off. Unfortunately, I ran out of batteries before we made it to the carnival and missed shots of Jude's first ferris wheel ride. He loved every bit of the parade and carnival. You can click on the links above to see the full sized pic and descriptions.

keeping it real...off kilter

Oh...this has been quite the week. I started off with all kinds of inspiration...but things quickly unravelled. I had big plans to post another recipe, introduce a new artist (might happen tomorrow). Interestingly, our meditation early Tuesday morning at Qigong was about letting go. Just how my instructor intuits what my needs are or will be so perfectly every week is a little amazing, and I am ever so grateful for it. Letting go...was exactly what I needed practice for this week.

I set out on Wednesday morning to make blueberry muffins. I used Ruthie's 8 Grain Muffin recipe which I have made countless times for really delicious muffins. I use the same recipe every time and change the fruit or add nuts. Everyone loves these muffins, especially my husband. Well, somehow I forgot the egg and the salt and made a general mess out them. They were still tasty, but of course their was no binder so they were a crumbly mess.

Later that day, I had some dental work done. It involved me being upside down for 3 hours. This triggered a condition that I have called benign positional vertigo. Now when I lie down or get up from lying down or move at all when lying down, everything starts spinning out of control. (See top picture) Fortunately, I am fine when I am upright, but getting up this morning was really challenging.

Apparently, there are tiny crystals that are suspended in a jelly like substance in our inner ear that help us maintain our balance. When you have a head injury (I've had a few) these can get knocked out of the gel and then they spin like crazy creating a very disturbing and disorienting sensation. The first time this happened to me, I was staying at someone else's house that I was unfamiliar with and I just remember not being able to see at all and running into everything. It's not fun. In order to "fix" it they have to lie you down and put your head in several different positions to get the crystal to roll out of the labyrinth that makes up your inner ear. I haven't gone yet this time, but if tonight is like last night I'll be going tomorrow.

I love finding feathers, but not like this. Apparently a hawk captured this little bird in our yard, and I came across these remains this afternoon. My husband claims that a weasle or other mammalian bird predator would have carted the whole body off and that this was the work of a bird of prey. About 3 minutes before I found this, I found a dead opposum (I didn't take that picture!). And right before I saw the feathers, I discovered holes all over the one part of our yard that the grass was relatively nice looking looking. This was the work of a grub hunting skunk. At least it didn't smell like a skunk.

In the spirit of keeping it real (that I appreciate on other blogs), this has been my week so far. And I'm just letting it all go in hopes of prettier pictures to come.

moment of mindfulness...a baby step towards sustainable living

Saturday, Jude and I were invited to harvest the garlic at our CSA. I jumped at the chance. Earlier this year, I gave them a standing offer to help with anything they needed help with because having visited the farm before I knew the place was incredibly inspiring to me. Johnny and Leah are so conscientious and knowledgable about organic farming and sustainable living that I knew I would get way more out of a day of helping than they would. That’s just the kind of place it is and the kind of people they are.

I was given the task of harvesting a 3 x 40’ row of garlic and managed to do most of it myself before Leah finished her job and helped me with the last 1/4 or so. The garlic was beautiful with all the rain we have gotten this year. After the garlic was pulled Johnny and Jude strung it up to dry in the top of their barn, and Leah pulled the straw mulch off the bed as I pulled the weeds that remained in the bed. They were planting cauliflower later that night! In Lewisburg, this weekend there was an annual event called the cavalcade of champions, a drum and bugle competition. Johnny and Leah joked that they would be doing the cavalcade of cauliflower!

I came home really tired, but it was a really good tired and I felt fulfilled on so many levels. I haven’t been physically tired like that in long while, and it stirred up some deep urges to take the experience I had at the farm and use it to push our family one step closer to living more sustainably.

Today I sat down buried my nose in the seed catalog and dug through my own seed stash to organize a fall/winter garden plan so I can grow vegetables year round for our family. We have approximately 70 days left before our first frost so there really is no time to spare. There are cold frames to build, and beds to raise…despite a lot of unknowns and hard work required, a force of inspiration is driving me to step into this dream of mine without trepidation even if it is a small step.

week in snapshots

1. blueberries and bluegrass, 2. cone flower and queens anne lace, 3. blueberry pie, 4. jude with carrots, 5. nasturstiums, 6. wild flower patch, 7. bee balm, 8. the garlic harvest, 9. boys eating blueberry pie, 10. garlic at tewksbury farm, 11. pulling carrots, 12. quilt raffle

The focus was definitely flowers, blueberries and garlic this week!

take my picture...please

These majestic sycamore trees beckoned me to take their picture every day when I walked up Allen Street in State College. They are so massive and their colors are really beautiful mossy green, tan, soft gray. I don't think the picture captures the color all that well.

The funny thing was when I walking by the tree in the first picture, I could here a boy saying, "take my picture. take my picture. please." He was saying this to his mother, who replied, "I'll take your picture, but not in front of that tree!" So I obliged them both, the boy and the tree.

Everyone's idea of beauty is a little different, a sentiment that is always obvious at an art show, as well as in many spheres of life.

And on a somewhat related but different note...I'm doing a series of articles for handmade in PA on marketing your craft business through shows. The first one is on matching shows to your demographic. It my little effort to give something back for all the help that other artists have given us over the years.

a moment of mindfulness...or in this case un-mindfulness

"The bad things in life open your eyes to the good things you were not paying attention to before"

I’m holding two cups of very hot beverages…John’s coffee and my tea. I walk out of the store and see that people are crossing the road that I need to cross. I rush toward the street and hop off the curb thinking I need to hurry before the light changes. I’m at the tail end of the people rush with a significant gap between me and the person ahead. I hear honking. Look up to my right and see a very large red truck speeding up towards me. I look over at the street light and see that the light is green, in fact, in a second of horror and deep humiliation I realize that I had blindly followed a crowd of people across the road when the oncoming traffic absolutely had the right of way.

Obviously, the red truck with its angry resentful driver somehow found the compassion not to hit me since I’m here write about the incident. I was so shook up after I did get across the street and safely into the safety of the sidewalk that somehow two little books quoting Bible scriptures ended up in my hand, and I have no idea how they got there. I vaguely remember being handed something, but I cannot remember by who or where or when.

I wasn’t mad at the driver at all even though I didn’t agree with his way of handling my error. I wasn’t concerned about the people who witnessed the whole thing and their thoughts about me. I was mostly just amazed at how thoughtless I was. Those few seconds of un-mindfulness could have cost me my life. I had no reason to hurry really. I made a choice and acted on it based on what a group of people I do not even know did. This is not being conscious. This is the same kind of everyday thoughtlessness that results in pollution, arguments, and loss of life.

I spent the rest of the weekend consciously looking at the pedestrian signal at every intersection I needed to cross. I waited patiently for the signal to change from the red hand to the white man walking even if there was clearly no oncoming traffic and other people crossed. And I was filled with gratitude each time I could make that choice.

favorites from the central pennsylvania festival of the arts

1. pistol stitched clutch, 2. full moon flower farm collage, 3. grate circle, 4. daphne olive chrysanthemum necklace, 5. festival flags, 6. susan levi-goerlich stitched "painting", 7. pam cummings vase, 8. jenny pope woodcut print "invasive corn", 9. jake johnson shino ewer set

1. lovely, lovely purses by Ali...she even designs the handles which have a hip Asian flair! You can check her out on etsy too, but hurry her purses are hot.

2. beautiful collages made from pressed flowers, herbs, etc...Lisa is starting a new line of mini-collage pendants and these are for sale in her etsy shop.

3. my entry for this week's it begins with a colour challenge found on the streets of State College.

4. super new line from daphne olive...bamboo cut botanicals!

5. love the festival flags that are hung on Allen Street every year.

6. these "paintings" are done completely in fiber and thread by susan...hard to explain but absolutely stunning and mind-boggling.

7. this picture does not do justice to the beautiful pottery of pam cummings...her work is at the radius gallery in Harrisburg.

8. jenny's wood cut prints have amazing detail and great color combinations...besides being great art they educate...her site is awesome!

9. little vessels by jake...I loved his salt and pepper vessels too.

it's show time...

We are loading up for the Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts. Well, I should say John's loading up because obviously I'm sitting here in front of the computer. This is our fifth year doing this show, and we were invited artists this year, which just means we didn't have to go through the jurying process because our "score" was high enough last year from the judging that took place during last year's show.

I just wanted to give you a peek at our treasure boxes...of many shapes and sizes. We did a custom order for someone on etsy earlier this year, and we liked the look so much John made several squattier looking boxes.

The first show John ever did, I put a little piece of treasure in each box to make them fun to look in. One little ring box that John made, had tiny little shells in each of six comparments. A guy bought it because he thought they looked like little skulls! Neither of us were happy that was the reason he bought the box, but it made it that guy happy...Now I use fancy, schmancy fabric to line the boxes with for the surprise factor, but also because it makes them each unique. Here's a group peek...

And some of my favorites...okay this ended up being most of them...

Whatever we don't sell this weekend may end up in our etsy shop if I can find time to post them. And I am thinking of bringing back my little treasure sharing game because the best part about treasure is sharing it with someone else;)

I'll probably get a chance to post favorites from the show on Sunday...hope you are having as beautiful a day as we are!

a fairy house for the raspberry fairy

Yesterday, Jude and I made a fairy house to honor our raspberry fairy. Our humble fairy abode was inspired by this one that I saw earlier this spring, and making mud bricks on a rainy day was the perfect activity for a little boy who was ready to beat the door down to get outside despite the dreary day back in May. We let them cure for a few weeks (until the raspberries were ripe:) and assembled our little fairy hut complete with a feather flag. Jude was really happy we found that feather. And he adores the little fairy house that we built. And I have to say we probably just as much fun making the mud bricks as we did building the house.

Going to get the goo by the creek to make mud bricks

Digging goo with a lot of effort

another getting goo shot

gathering hay for the bricks

filling up the ice cube trays to make bricks

our curing method

(we let the mud dry in the trays for a bit before

placing them on greenhouse flats to dry completely)

putting straps on the roof (not sure where he got this idea but it made sense)

the little hut for our special raspberry fairy

Just so you know a few raspberries were consumed to celebrate the completion of the project;) And now we have another reason to "check" for ripe raspberries.

There must be fairy dust in the air or something because Gardenmama posted an amazing description of her son's celebration of the tooth fairy today. And let me just say right away, her and her son's fairy houses are absolutely beautiful, and I hope that our raspberry fairy doesn't feel slighted. Even though I'm sure she doesn't have an Internet connection, fairies know these things.