The Appalachian Forest

yesterday we all (except for aaron who was flying away to california) went over to our friend mary bartlett's house (that she shares with her daughter lily). she's gentle, wise, and so much fun. she's been gardening and growing her own food for about 30 years. we're all very excited about coming to know her better.

so we showed up at her house to help out in the garden. yesterday was on the biodynamic calendar a root day so we were planting beets, turnips, onions, carrots, potatoes... i think that's all.

what an awesome day we had! there was much camaraderie and love shared on the little hillside garden behind her house.

we're planning to participate in the garden tending regularly this season to help us grow our connection and relationships with mary (and hopefully with lily), learn from her experience, and participate in growing a good portion of our own food. woo-hoo!

she loaned me a few books before we left, one of which is The Appalachian Forest, A Search for Roots and Renewal by Chris Bolgiano.

the inside flap of the cover says:
"In the coves of southern Appalachia are fifteen hundred species of flowering plants, including more kinds of trees than in all of northern Europe. here are bewildering nuances of biodiversity, with mosses, fungi, spiders, salamanders, mussels, fish, birds, and people like none other on earth. Searching for home, we moved into one of the grand old mansions of the planet....

"The Appalachian Forest describes a place once rich with old-growth woodlands – American chestnuts ten feet in diameter, tulip poplars more than two hundred feet tall, warblers and wild turkey abundant beyond imagining – whose landscape has been systematically devastated by cutting and mining. Comparing the past and present land and people of this region once known as The Great Forest, Chris Bolgiano finds the promise of ecological recovery.

"More than a biological overview, the book explores mountain life and its many contrasts, such as generations of human poverty amid a wealth of natural resources. The mountain farmers, Cherokee, foresters, biologists, bear hunters, and grassroots activists that Bolgiano comes to know all define a part of the diversity of her Appalachian home.

"Meticulously researched, yet lyrically personal, The Appalachian Forest reveals a powerful message: the need to preserve mature, connected forests for the benefit of all living things in this great wilderness – including people."

oh wow. i think this is the book i've been looking for. perhaps it's been looking for me as well. thanks to mary b for bringing up together. i'm so excited to let this book help to introduce me to the history of this place i'm learning to love to call home. i'm excited to let this book help me proudly call myself one of the inhabitants of this land.

i'm drooling in anticipation.

living in the light

(this post is dedicated to the lovely and amazing dana -mother to ayani, and partner to efrain- who just wrote me a letter that said she appreciated reading a recent blog post on my motherhood journeys)

i'm so incredibly amazed by how blessed i am.
i can't believe how many of my dreams are coming true and even are true in THIS VERY MOMENT. and the thing is it feels like it's less of a change in what's going on in my life (though there certainly is a TON of amazing synchronicity and beauty) than it is a change in perspective. a step towards living in the light. i'm waking up to reality all over again. i feel like it's enlightenment creeping up on me.

one of the definitely significant aspects of what's allowing this to be true for me though is the amount and quality of childcare i have access to. everyone here loves and cares for me and asher in extraordinary ways that help make space for self-care (and thus sanity for a new mom!).

here's some of the more daily details:
last week asher got a real tongue fascination going, pushing his tongue out over his gums and bottom lip over and over. it just happened all of a sudden and then one day he stopped. and lo and behold, there were two little teeth popping out of his lower gums. two teeth at once!

he seems to be saying words in the copy-our-sounds fashion. he said something like hot after i touched something hot on the stove and said hot to show him how i was cautious around the stove, twice he said something like bark after karin did while identifiying trees when we were all on a hike in the woods, and 4 times on his 9 month birthday he said a dog sounding word when a dog came near us. whoa! it's surprising to me that he's exploring talking before he'e ever seemed to

he had his 9 month birthday yesterday on one of the most magical days i've had in a while. karin, aaron, asher, mary, and i went down to charlottesville and hung out with max (newly nicknamed maxleesworth) for a funtastical weekend of swing dancing, friend making, timber frame house touring, veggie juicing, hula hooping, trampoline jumping, sock wrestling, sun basking, and grocery shopping. we got to meet kristin (who let us stay at her house) and tommy stone, old friends and fellow community members of mary and rannie.

lisa's back from her ayahuasca excursion to amazonian jungle in peru. she says her trip was wildly successful and she's currently taking a long bath soak to cleanse and purge on the outside to match what has happened for her on the inside.

there's recently been a slew of visitors passing through: my mom and my dad on separate trips, my best friend since first grade emily, and my kindred soul friend from college days kathryn. nancy was also going to be visiting because she's relatively local in levittown, pa with her grandmother who's having health concerns. but the concerns turn out to be greater than expected and so she's hanging around in pa instead.

our group continues to figure out who we are, how we're relating to each other, who we want to be and what we want to do in the world, and we're constantly materializing these new aspects of ourselves in quite beautiful and healing ways. we're creating new social inventions that work better for who we are in this incarnation.

the flurry of activity that came along with visitor frenzy was so much fun and invigorating at the same time as it was tiring and confusing because of the lack of clarity about what my days mean. every day is a new adventure in creating a schedule for me and asher. within the context of sorting out our new lives together it made for a complicated set of transitions from guest to guest and also helped add some clarity to what we're doing by helping me get some different inputs and gain an outside perspective.

tonight mary, lisa, and i are going to our 4th class out of 8 in a beekeeping course put on by our local bee club. whoa. we're learning so much amazing information. and in our morning meeting today we decided that we're overwhelmed enough with all that we want to get done this year that we're satisfied just to begin to do these learnings and to make these connections and that we're going to hold of on actually deciding to get hives and care for colonies on our own.

one exciting thing that happened in last week's class is that i met this guy who brought a cultured juice he makes from juice and champagne yeast, a culture he's been continuing for years now. now when he gets to the bottom of a bottle of his yummy fizzy juice concoction he swirls around the thick yeasty dregs and begins a new bottle by adding this starter to a new batch of juice. tonight i'm bringing him a scoby (symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast) mother from the kombucha batches i'm brewing. and today i started a new sauerkraut from the old kraut juices left in the crock and some new cabbage, carrots, and salt. fermenting and new fermenting buddies. yum yum.

oh yeah, and speaking of all we're planning on doing this year, that may as well be the topic of my next blog, eh? updates on community plans out here in my new life and adventures on the east coast. wa-hoo.