Tis a gift to be simple...tis a gift to be free

Isn't it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day, 

with no mistakes in it yet?

 -Anne Shirley

I don't know about you, but 2012 has been a doozy of a year around here.  Good and bad, yes, but a challenge on many fronts for me.  New year's resolutions are not a tradition of mine, but somehow I am drawn to the idea a bit.  Perhaps this is a way of petitioning the universe to honor my bargain--if I start fresh, then it will too?   

I have been pondering the older, seasonal truths that make up the fabric of this time, the juxtaposition of the darkest, longest nights with our ancient faith that sun and warmth will come again.  I am fascinated by our stubbornness and the small, silent light that persists and nests defiantly in our hearts.

Christmas was good this year, filled with family that I see too infrequently.  There was a whole crop of new babies this time, snuggled little baby birds tucked here and there in the crook of an arm, alongside lots of good food and laughter.  My heart, usually so capable of absorbing it all, is tender and easily overwhelmed this year, and my eyes a bit leaky.  It is strange and poignant to hear my dad's voice when my brother sings a carol, the echo of my nephew's childish giggle when his son laughs at a joke.  It is weird and lovely and staggering to love all of these people and belong to them and accept the risks that such loving brings.

Of all the things that I didn't get around to, I was able to whip up a few goodies to give away, and my favorite of the bunch is the new recipe for hand and body cream that I've been making lately.  This recipe is from Making It: Radical Home Ec for a Post-Consumer World, and the cream is rich and luxurious.  It goes on a bit shiny but quickly absorbs.  Best of all, it has five ingredients, all of them pronounceable.

 Coconut-Vanilla Cream
6 oz olive oil
2 oz coconut oil                                                                
1 oz beeswax (grated or chopped fine preferred)                         
                                                                                                      
1 cup tepid water, filtered or distilled is best
essential oils as desired (I used a splash of vanilla extract)

Tools:  Blender or hand mixer, Mason jar, sauce pan, spatula, empty jars

Combine the oils and beeswax in a wide-mouth mason jar and set the jar in a small saucepot with several inches of water over low heat.  Stir occasionally as the beeswax melts.

Prepare a blender or deep mixing bowl by filling with boiling water to warm the container.  Have the cup of water and any essential oils mixed and ready.  Dump out the hot water and immediately pour in the hot oil mixture. Turn the blender on the lowest setting or start mixing the oil with a hand mixer.  Slowly pour the water into the middle of the oil.  The mixture will quickly turn to cream and the blender will start to rev and be unable to continue incorporating the water.  Stop the blender, scrape down the sides and mix with a spoon, then turn the blender on again.  Repeat until the mixture is smooth and the water fully incorporated.

If the cream is still liquid enough, pour into clean jars.  If not, scoop it out with a spoon.  Tamp down the jars to eliminate air bubbles.  Let cool, add labels, and enjoy!



Many delightful blessings to you and yours in the new year. 

Fall...and snippets of Summer

We've had so many warm, sunny days this fall that I've been able to sneak in a few last-minute outdoor chores and harvests that I might otherwise have missed.  Of course, as I type this, snow is falling thickly outside, so it looks like winter has arrived....

Ethel helping with the garlic

Yesterday, I finally got around to planting the garlic. I chose a bed along the western fence of our garden that I had left fallow this year, after applying a good dressing of rabbit manure in the spring.  There was some red clover growing there over the summer, along with a jungle of lambs quarters which will make a nice crop of greens in the spring when it self-seeds. 

I pulled all of the greenery and smoothed out the soil.  It is great to see the soil after three years of amendment--finally starting to resemble the rich, organic loveliness that is the goal.  Between the reliable source of rabbit manure, and the manure/bedding from the girls, my garden flourishes no matter how much I neglect it.

My plan for the bed is to plant the garlic now and then following with a planting of pole beans and/or squash vines in late spring.  Since the garlic will be ready for harvest by July, it will be out of the way for the later crops.  I plant two varieties of garlic, one that doesn't keep as long but has a soft stem that can be used to braid the bulbs together...which I love in theory and yet have never done.  *sigh*  The second variety is a great winter keeper, but the bulbs are slightly smaller and the stem is very rigid.  They both require the same growing conditions, which for today means that I need to give them fairly loose, fertile soil and a good mulching since it is so late in the season and cold is just around the corner.

Soft- and hard-neck varieties

Since the soft-neck variety doesn't keep for very long I don't plant as much of it, but plan to use it up during the summer and fall after harvesting.  Of the four rows I planted today, 2 1/2 were the winter-hardy and 1 1/2 were the soft-neck.  Then I piled several inches of bunny manure over the top and capped that with straw bedding.

A quick word about rabbit manure:  it is the one manure that is safe to put directly in your garden; it will not burn the plants like other uncomposted manures will.  It makes a nice, if stinky, mulch for taller plants because there is so much grassy bedding along with the manure pellets.  If you can find a source, definitely take advantage--check at 4H events, county fairs, etc.

I am happy to have the garlic in the ground; it is the one thing I grow in which we are self-sufficient, and I feel as though I have a standard to uphold!

Next I moved on to split up the daffodils at the end of the driveway, which for the last three years have sent up more and more leaves with fewer flowers--a sign, I assumed, that down in the soil the bulbs were dividing, multiplying, and making many smaller bulbs without enough room to flourish.  The problem, and the reason why I've been avoiding this chore, is that the daffodils come up each spring through the heavy mat of vinca and ivy that the former owners of this house planted every last place they could think of.  Arggh.

Clearing the ivy requires a ridiculous amount of sheer tugging and yanking, working through the soil with my hands to pull out roots...I already know how sore I will be tomorrow.  But the fun part was finding the little gnome-like colonies of bulbs, whiskery with roots, and separating them between my fingers.  I spaced them out and replanted them, covering the soil with a 2' x 3' piece of chickenwire to keep the squirrels out, and then topping it all with a heavy mulch of rabbit manure.  

Finally, it was time for the big event. Okay, the big event for me--which is not everyone's idea of excitement, I'll grant you.  Anyway:  echinacea root harvest!  I started these plants from seed the first spring we were here in our house, and they are just now old enough to try for roots big enough to be worthwhile. 

Roots of Echinacea purpurea

Here's the thing with herbs and healing--this is something that I've always had an interest in, no matter the guise--from traditional Chinese medicine to modern American herbalism, or within the paradigm of women, midwifery, and reproductive health.  I have no clinical studies or controlled experiments going on, but I know that over the past few years we've adapted several homemade remedies that work for us when colds come on or there are wounds to heal.

So, onto the echinacea tincture:  To get at the roots, I pushed the shovel in all around the plant and then tugged it gently up out of the ground.  I turned it over, cleaned off as much soil as I could, and snapped off the roots I wanted, and then replaced the plant in its hole, filling in around it and tamping it back into place.  I added a thick manure/bedding mulch for good measure.

I think that I could have waited another year for these plants...I've read that finger-sized roots are best, which are old enough to have developed full medicinal potency, and I didn't have as many roots that size as I'd hoped.  Of course, this wasn't exactly a summer of heavy growth for any of my unwatered native plants, so we'll see what next year brings.  I chopped up the roots into small pieces and filled a pint jar with them.   I poured 80 proof vodka over the roots, capped the jar, labelled it, and put it on the shelf to wait six weeks.  (The alcohol should be 100 proof ideally, but I used what I happened to have.)

These last warm and rainy weeks have allowed me to harvest comfrey and plantain, healing plants whether used fresh as a poultice or infused into a healing oil which can be used as is or made into lotions, creams or balms.  At this time of year, I want to preserve whatever I can because the dried versions seem to miss some essential greenness.  So I picked the wide, furry comfrey leaves that grow by my garden and the smooth green plantain leaves that grow in my lawn, let them wilt and dry for a day, and then cut them up into separate mason jars.  I poured in olive oil slowly, stirring with a stick to release air bubbles, until the oil topped the herbs with space to spare.  Now they will sit in the sunny window sill for a few weeks, slowly infusing the oil with their goodness.

I also put together a few new items and one old standby:

First, we were out of toothpaste--which is actually a peppermint tooth powder that I've been making for the past year or so out of baking soda, stevia powder, and peppermint essential oil.   I have never measured my formula, which isn't helpful, but it goes something like this:  2-3 big spoonsful of baking soda, one medium spoon of stevia, liberal sprinkling of essential oil.  Mix.  Repeat until jar is full or you've made the desired quantity.  To use, spoon a heaping portion on a wet toothbrush and brush teeth.  (Or if you get lazy about using the spoon like we do, then dip your dry toothbrush in the powder, wet with a few drops of water under the tap, and brush.)


As for the new stuff, I decided to work on a hair & scalp oil-- specifically, jojoba oil infused with rosemary, lavender, nettles, and horsetail.  Once the oil has infused for 4-6 weeks, I will add a few other essential oils such as clary sage, lemon, and patchouli, and then use this as an overnight treatment for my scalp, which gets dry at times.  All of the herbs and essential oils are ones that are either good for hair and scalp in general or for dandruff or itchy scalp.  It will smell amazing.

Lemongrass honey and rosemary lavender oil.  Mmmm.

Lemongrass Honey--this was a last minute idea and an easy one--I snapped off one of the thickest stems at the base of the plant I'm attempting to over-winter, chopped up the green leaves, and then peeled the dry outer leaves from around the heart of the stem, which I cut up into small rounds.  The leaves and stem pieces I put in a small jar and covered with honey.  This can steep for weeks, and will be completely wonderful in tea over the winter.

Oh and one final announcement:  I have a wonderful new addition to my office, in memory of my friend Cathy's mother, Molly Malone.  This hutch held her recipe boxes and china for over thirty years before she passed away last month--and now it holds all of my crafty herbal homesteading paraphenalia.   An apothecary hutch?  A potion cupboard?  Who knows what to call it...but thank you, Molly.  I have no doubt that you would approve of the new purpose for this lovely old piece.

Books, herbs...and room to work.

Finally, all of the herbs in jars.

Chickens, gardening, homemade cleaners--ta da!

Lemon verbena.  Best scent ever.

Whole lotta love & loss

Consider yourself warned:  I've been trying to write this post for most of my life.  


(If that is a bit too dramatic for you, then at least believe that I've been wrestling with it all summer.)


So here's a question:

Do you ever look back and see distinct eras in your life? Do you think:

I wish I'd known that chapter of my life was closing.  If I'd known, I would have cherished that time, savored that good-bye, lingered just a bit longer and soaked it all up before leaving.


Lately I am being slowly and surely pushed into another stage of life, one that I understand intellectually, if not emotionally.  A chapter is ending, folks, and although I am aware, I am not necessarily any more equipped to face this change with grace than if I were walking in blindly.  It is, apparently, my lot in life to mourn things preemptively and then still get smacked completely out of orbit when the dreaded event finally occurs. 

The Year of our Lord 2012--a la Maggie--is riddled with milestones:  I turned 35, my dear papa turned 80, my baby sister turns 30 this month. 

I found to my surprise, in the months leading up to my birthday, that some part of me was extremely reluctant to accept this new thirty-five-ness.  I considered this for a while, pondering it and turning it over like a pebble in my hand.  Why?  I am not particularly worried about aging, truly, or at least I never used to be, so what was wrong with me this year? 

What's wrong is that I celebrated my 30th only a few short months ago.  Now, 25--that's been a while, I'll grant you, but 30?--no way.  It is simply not possible that five years have already gone by.  If this is how time has started to pass, then we are all in big trouble.  I might blink too many times and end up 105 years old and the only person I know left alive. 

And then, my friends started losing parents.  Right and left, willy-nilly, a universe gone suddenly mad and vengeful:  six deaths in eight months.

2012 is claiming its pound of flesh, by God. 

Each time, I have found myself without words, blindly stumbling through the stash of exquisitely inadequate phrases I learned as a pastor's kid at funerals long ago: 

I'm so very sorry for your loss. 
My heart and my thoughts are with you. 
If I can help with anything, please let me know. 
If you ever need to talk, or a shoulder to cry on, I'm here. 

Each friend and parent are unique, of course, and each loss has its own sharp edges and hidden, deadly quicksand.  Each time, I retreat to my safe space with Jason, cats, chickens, garden, our shady green yard and the river nearby, constant in its silvery flow.

I come home guilty with a secret and overwhelming relief:  it isn't my parent that is gone--the child in me is still safe, still loved unconditionally, still a part of a familiar, well-ordered world.

And now we are at the crux of this post, this life-long never-ending post:

Dad was very sick over the winter, hospitalized twice, and the bad news started to pile up in layers as we watched him sleep in the hospital bed:  infections, kidneys, heart.  If I live a thousand years, I will not forget my dad sitting at the dinner table, newly home with his IV-bruised hands, so fundamently exhausted that his head hung down chin to chest, bowed and cowed like no big, strong dad of mine should ever be. Tuning in and out of the conversation, a bit bewildered, shaky, skin thin and papery, eyes occasionally losing their fire entirely.  This was bone-deep.

I've been trying since I was a teenager to be prepared for my dad to turn eighty.  And now I find that I've wasted all of this time in preparation for something that it is not possible to emotionally anticipate.

I am the oldest in a second family; my parents have always been older than my friends' folks, and that has largely been just fine.  We've had running jokes about AARP, Modern Maturity, and senior discounts at restaurants, and all the while strangers are shocked to learn that my parents are the age they are.  We keep them young--my little sister and I laugh and roll our eyes, and we will continue to do so.  There are no certainties here.  We may well celebrate Dad's 95th in fifteen years, and I will look back at this post and shake my head at the self-imposed drama, yet again.

But with every friend's loss, my faith is shaken.  When is it time to shrug off other pressing responsibilities and fly away home?  When do you drop everything and go?  How can I make the most of the closing pages of this particular chapter, the one in which I walk around the earth with my family healthy, lucid, and intact? 

While I was growing up, my parents suffered the loss of one of my older sisters, and a vivid lesson that I learned from the aftermath is that the death of a child is unnatural and the grieving almost unsurpassed.  The implication was then, and is now, that losing a parent is...natural...and therefore somehow more tolerable, a fact that I've tried to comprehend ever since. 

As a witness to my friends' grief over these last months, it seems to me that the only generalization that we can attribute to any death is that it is always unique and intensely personal to those left behind, and I know, even as I write this, that there are no ready answers to the questions that have seemed so monumental to me this year.  I have been wrong:  this is a new chapter, a blank page yet to be written, and I know that this, truly, is where adulthood begins.

****

I remember:

We were on the road, six hours through the country side, heading to the town where all of my dad's earliest stories were written, and where my own began.  The news had come that my dad's mother was dying, and we were trying to get there in time to say good-bye. 

We stopped for gas (and candy--this is my memory, after all) and for my dad to use the pay phone to call the nurse's station for an update on Grandma.   When we returned to the car, Dad was back in the driver's seat, and he was crying.  He had never done that before.

He said:  I'm an orphan now--and certain substantial and permanent parts of my universe shifted and tumbled out of place.  For the first time, I understood that he was someone's little boy, that he could be my dad and that boy at the same time...that he had been all along. 

And I know now, that it is okay to be that bewildered child still in my heart, that being an adult means inwardly balancing that child with the outer grown-up...and allowing both to do the best they can.


Outside of my window, after months of dryness, things are green again, and they are starting to grow.

Summer: in the Midwestern Sahara.

Whelp.  This is, I'm certain--but without actually checking, naturally--the longest I've gone between posts.  It has been a summer of preoccupation.  With work, primarily, which poses the constant challenge of trying new things and reluctantly stepping out of my nicely arranged comfort zone...



Plant sale in May



...but always, every moment, better than working in a cubicle.  (Or anywhere that I clock in or can't open the windows.  I really don't ask for much, seriously.)  I am, above all, glad to be having this experience, as Fall Creek Gardens becomes its own self, a non-profit entity.   This is a free education in starting an organization from the ground up, and I am so very glad that I have found such fantastic, helpful people to help keep things, well, growing, as I find my way up the mountain.



The community garden

 When work is over for the day, you would think I could write a simple blog post occasionally though, right? 

Well, yes.  I should.  I have guilt here, okay? 

But to be plainly truthful, when I am stressed, I go a bit overboard with rewarding myself.  And really, it is summertime, after all.  My after-hours life lately has been spent either hibernating at home with Jason & the animals or cooking dinner with friends.

Weekends are largely taken up with work, at least on Saturdays, and I find after my year of unemployed homesteadery that I am fiercely protective of my non-work time.  Moreover, I like it best when the non-work time is consecutive and not sprinkled about.  Even worse, as far as blogging is concerned, I spend a lot of time on the computer during the day, which results in a distinct resistance to getting out the g.d. laptop once again at night or on the weekend in order to wrack my brains for the examples of urban homesteading that I've a) had time to do and b) haven't already written about.

Wow.  Sorry.  I guess I had to get that off of my chest.  I am a bit torn between being engaged and excited about my work...and wishing that I had all the time back to explore the eco-friendly DIY world and write about my discoveries here.

With that long-winded disclaimer, I am here to tell you a few things about how I've spent the last many weeks.  But I've decided that this is best done visually, since I tend to take pictures of the fun stuff...not the endless hours at my desk.  :)  And don't worry, I have another post percolating right now.  I'll get there soon.  I promise.

But, for now, here's my summer so far:


First, there is keeping chickens cool when it is well over one hundred degrees outside.  Please note the yogurt beak...

I'm still managing to keep us supplied with lotions & herbal balms, which is always fun.

 

...Camping here.  I vaguely remember how relaxed I was just then...



 Seed starting for work.  We are so lucky to have access to the greenhouse on the State Fairgrounds...

Ahh.   More from the camping trip.  Did I mention how much fun we had with the canoe?? 

We made a quick trip up to Fort Wayne at the end of June...Dad's 80th birthday!

Please note my virtuous summer knitting.  (Now, if only I would start tackling the Christmas presents....)

Two of my favorite people, at a "The Head and the Heart" concert.  What a fun!

Not nearly enough time with the girls these days...but they are doing just fine, at least so far, despite the horrible heat.  Lots of cold treats and fresh, clean water!

Colby, however, had to have that gorgeous fur coat shaved down to the wrinkles  :)

Craftiness!  Thanks to Amy, a chicken feeder that only cost $2.

Four batches later...and I'm set for laundry soap for the foreseeable future.

I am secretly in love with my new climbing rose.  But his name is Don Juan, so I guess it's understandable.

...and, finally, what may be the only thing I harvest out of my poor, ignored home garden this year:  garlic!