I am the vessel.

Today's "Life Note," inspired by a Morning Pages review.

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Sustainable Reading

When Bel at Green out Every Window invited me to participate in the Earth Day Reading Project, I loved the idea immediately. Share three books that have most inspired you to choose to live more sustainably. Fiction, nonfiction, graphic novel....it's all about what has made motivated you to turn ideas into actions. Full rules and a great list of gardening blogs can be found here at The Sage Butterfly.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver inspired me to action almost immediately.  We had begun to garden and had a compost bin. We were buying less "processed crap" with all the coloring, additives and packaging, but weren't quite sure what else we really could do. After all, we live in the suburbs...it's not like we can feed ourselves from this tiny bit of earth, right? Within a year of reading this book, I realized the power that comes from reconnecting with our food sources. I love Kingsolver's fiction, but her sharing of her family's commitment to eat only locally for an entire year (no bananas!) changed how I think about food.

I picked up a copy of the Kitchen Garden Planner at a bookstore's going out of business sale. We lived down in Florida and had asked (and received) permission to plant a small garden plot in the back yard of our rental. I dreamed of what I might do with a home and yard and garden of my own. As it turns out, I plant squash in the flowerbeds. All of my planted space is a kitchen garden, each year more beautiful and each year more edible.

I know, I know. Insert joke about garden gnomes here. But the interior of this book is filled with amazing illustrations detailing the many ways sentient being  might live in harmony with nature, might balance needs of self with needs of the system of which we are all part. When I was a child, I discovered this book next to a rocking chair in my grandmother's guest room. She had placed it there purposely so a little girl weary of grownup conversation might find some magic with which to amuse herself. Whenever I harvest herbs, I think of the gnomes in this book. If I ever make my own dandelion root tea (not unlikely, these days), I will credit this book for the inspiration. 

So that's three. I considered including Bill McKibben's Eaarth, for its influence on my planning and thinking, but there is no action yet I can directly attribute to reading the book. Square Foot Gardening was also a strong contender for the Top Three, because he makes it easy to get started with gardening no matter where you live. I appreciate that he thinks growing things should be mostly fun.

My "New" Pillow

I can't bear to throw out a perfectly comfy pillow just because its colors clash with our current paint scheme. Of course, it's not really embracing frugality to stash them up in the attic and buy new ones either. So, I found some cute fabric at Etsy, bought a stash of zippers and searched for a blog tutorial that didn't look too difficult.

After having all of this accomplished, I let everything sit for several months until yesterday, when I finally devoted that precious hour of "naptime" to get the zipper part done. I surprised myself by finishing the cover in one afternoon and I learned several new things in the process. Most important tip: you really do need to sew a basting stitch over that zipper if you want to actually use the zipper. I love learning useful things and it's good for my children to see me struggle with something but learn how to do it right.

And I love my "new" pillow!

Lint comes after Festivus and before Oyster

Anyone raised in a Catholic family is familiar with Lent, a forty-day period of penance, reflection and fasting leading up to the Easter celebration.  As a child, I thought Lent was kind of silly.  I didn't really understand how not eating chocolate had anything to do with Easter.  But as an adult, I began to appreciate the value of having this period in my life.  I began loosely observing Lent, most effectively by adding something (thus "giving up" time) instead of just stopping something.

When I finally left the Catholic church, I also left Lent behind me.  In recent years though, I've begun to try to find a way to incorporate this tradition back into my life.  I was initially inspired by Kevin Gillespie, who shared on Top Chef that he and his wife went full-on vegetarian each year for Lent.  I felt a twinge and realized that I missed the positive growth I had found during Lent. Then one of my neighbors announced she would disappear from Facebook "for a while," and I suddenly saw the obvious: I didn't have to do "Lent" to have a period of reflection.

And so, this year -- today, in fact -- Lint was born.  I had already decided to observe a 40-day period and said, "I should come up with my own name," when my husband immediately suggested "Lint" and once I stopped laughing, I knew it was the perfect moniker.  Instead of Fish Fridays, we do Meatless Mondays.  Observation of Lint in our home comes just after Festivus and is followed by Oyster; of course precisely where Lint falls on the calendar is a very personal choice, so timing varies greatly from one individual to another.

This year, I am giving up all adult cocktails, wine and beer, beginning today.  My husband plans to begin his Lint tomorrow.  I'm excited about my "Linten" journey and do plan to cap it off by eating Oysters, possibly with champagne!  It is my intention to use the next forty days to reflect on ways to be healthier, to give more of myself to my community and others and to make time for quiet and prayer in my daily life.  I will also practice discipline, self-denial during my own season of conversion and simplicity.

It doesn't matter if you're Catholic or Methodist, Pagan or Pastafarian.  Lint is for everyone!  Join me if you dare!

I'd love to know what others are giving up or doing for 40 days, whether it's Lint or Lent.  

Death and Color in the Autumn Garden

I've noticed that my garden looks very different since I began to look at it as my own Bit of Earth instead just a flowerbed.  I expect both beauty and nourishment from my labors in the soil, so it is not quite as "perfect" as the "professionally landscaped" look to which I formerly aspired.  I find much more beauty in it though.  Nothing in nature is perfect and what grows around my house is much more organic than ever, both in form and in fact.  This, I like.

Color is rampant in the fall garden and many flowers continue to do well despite some frost.  I think being close to the house gives plants like the Sweet Alyssum (in the first picture) a little more protection from freezing temperatures.  I did not plant pansies for the first time ever this year, but plan to mulch over in December and plant early spring lettuces instead.

We had our first frost this weekend....and our first fire crackling in the fireplace!  Before the frost, the pineapple sage was a riot of color, but alas it is now withering quickly; I will cut all this back in January and have a wonderful, herby shrub by the front steps.

This year, we made our first scarecrow as a Halloween/Autumnal decoration.  Next to him, you can see the paper bag scarecrows that were a fun craft for the toddlers in the house.  They loved making them despite my inability to locate googly eyes.

After the dry heat of August, I cut back all of my tomato plants and, lo and behold, they sprang to life again!  Most of these were harvested green and I'll use them for some fried green tomatoes.  These Cherokee tomato plants are done for the year, but I do have lots of seeds for next year.  Even my children know that inside a seed is a whole living organism, a miracle, just waiting for us to plant and nurture it.  

The square-foot gardens still had quite a lot of flowers and herbs growing last week, but I think the Genovese and Thai basil will not make it much longer.  I do have some broccoli and snap peas growing (my first fall crop ever), and we'll see if we get to harvest them in a few more weeks.

The cherry tomatoes continue to grow in the front flower bed.  Perhaps they derive heat and shelter from the large holly that also supports them to a degree.  I plan to leave them as long as possible since my four-year-old loves to pick and eat them whenever he passes by.  This is the beauty of fall.  The savoring of the last moments of life as we watch all the leaves fall and all the flowers wither.  We see the world die, but we know that it just a stage before it is born again into something new and wonderful.

I used to dread fall, to dread the coming cold and darkness and bareness it heralded.  Those bright colors on the trees didn't fool me!  Now I welcome it.  Life is full of those cold and bare spots, but without them, we could never enjoy the spring.  So now I welcome fall and winter and even the dying of the light, because it offers a chance for rest and, ultimately, rebirth.

Notice the Change

It's starting to look a bit like Fall here in the Southeast.  Thought the days are still quite warm, the nights are chilly, darkness falls earlier and bits of bright color are easily spotted in the green tree canopy.  Today, we scouted all round the yard to find interesting things and then made a fall collage with our favorites.  Despite the extravagant use of "Big Elmer" (as the kids call the white stuff) and a lesser use of glitter glue, this is still a budget-friendly project that entertained my toddlers for the better part of two hours!

Extremes in a Rectangle

Change your habits, change your life

That's the slogan for habitforge, a really neat and free web site that helps people develop positive habits.

I stumbled across it a few months ago at zenhabits, right when I'd decided to start a new exercise regimen.  The idea is that if you DO something for 21 days in a row, it will be a well-established habit.  If you are going on vacation or get sick, you can put your habit "on hold" for a bit, but otherwise it will track the numbers of days in a row you succeed and also an overall percentage.  Thus far, my daily exercise percentage is hovering around 70%, which is not bad, but I do find that it's a helpful too to keep me motivated in general.  The longest streak I've had, just for the record, is 13 days.  

So if you have something you've been working to incorporate into your daily life, whether it be exercise, reading, cooking, prayer, meditation, complimenting your spouse....habitforge is a simple and helpful tool that has certainly helped keep me motivated and focused on my goals.

Consider the dandelions

So there I sat one night, sucked totally into some mindless show in TV.  I was totally drawn into this amazingly lovely shot of a girl, about to blow the white, puffy dandelion..  A Perfect Childhood Moment.  Inhale and.....

And then....
Then it ended abruptly, with her father running out (ineffectively, I might add) to try to stop her from enjoying that moment, so that his perfect, green-blade grass would not be destroyed with.....(oh hold your horses)...flowers. You can see the slo-mo "glory shot" of him yelling "noooooooooo."

Well, I was bothered by the whole concept of that commercial.

My kids love dandelions. They love to pick them.  They love to blow them. And they love to eat them (well, that varies, but they do eat them more than I would imagine).  If you had a country gramma, you must know that you can eat them in a pinch.  I've never done it, but I like knowing that I can.  They are incredibly nutritious. So there!  But mostly, they like to pick them and/or blow them.  I've always loved this myself.  The dandelion has adapted itself really beautifully for things we like to do.

Dandelions are one of the first flowers to sprout in the spring and they are so very welcome.  They are heralds of growth. They pop out with the daffodils and provide In-Your-Face evidence that Our Earth keeps on keeping on.  Then, when you're distracted by the other bulbs or flowering trees other things you might want to plant, they can grow big and green and cover the ground if there's nothing else there.  But really those dandelions would rather to just chill out and let the clover have its day -- to hide down there and meditate under the fragrant flowers and soft leaves (and the honeybees)...and the occasional lawn mower..  The word "weed" is very subjective, truly.  It just means "a plant that grows well in a place I don't like it."

So think about letting the dandelions grow.