knitting

i've been knitting a bit this winter. we have a spinner at the market, and she sells beautiful wool from her own sheep, which she dies and spins by hand. we've been trading vegetables for wool. she gave me some nice brown wool, and i made myself a cardigan which i love to wear, and i also made sena a whale dress, which you can see in this picture. she is really excited about it.

i really like to knit at night by the fire. i find it very relaxing and meditative. i like how repetitive and simple it is and how it allows me to focus, to bring my wondering mind back to the present moment over and over again, with every stitch.

 aiyana wanted a picture by herself. she came up with this pose, which really made me laugh.

peace

saturday's market

we had a market on saturday, and managed to bring 22 bags of greens picked in the greenhouse (spinach and some salad mix). they sold out by 3:05 (the market officially opens at 3). people really want fresh greens at this time of year. i felt bad that for the rest of the market we had nothing on the table except for turnips. i kept appologizing to people for not having more...
soon enough though, there will be plenty of fresh vegetables again. although with all the snow that's still on the ground, we will be delayed somewhat in planting. our plan was to start planting in the ground next week, but that won't happen. we have to wait until the snow melts, and then another few weeks for the ground to be dry enough to work. working the soil when it is too wet is really bad practice. it ruins the soil organic matter. so we'll have to wait, but i hope not too long.
peace

four onions germinated so far. it's been 1 month since we planted them, and they take a long time at this time of year. i've been checking on them every day for the past week. hopefully with some sun and warmer weather this coming week more of them will poke out of the soil....

a day away

sena and i spent a really nice day in new haven last week. we went to the yale university peabody museum, to a nice cafe for lunch, back to the museum in the afternoon, then a nice vegetarian restaurant for dinner, and we ended with an unplanned, but very exciting visit to a planetarium. sena loved the peabody, especially their dinasaur and mamal evolution exhibits. we both liked the geology exhibit a lot. there was an entomology exhibit as well, and we tried to identify insects that we see around our farm and find out more info about them. there was another exhibit i really liked, on black holes, but sena was not too interested in that. there were some school kids running around that one, and sena wanted to get out of there. there was a big difference between sena and the school kids that were visiting the museum. some of them really didn't want to be there, you could tell, and only came because their class did. so they made a lot of noise and were pretty disruptive. sena really wanted to read and look at the exhibits, so we ended up just trying to go to the parts they weren't at first. after they left, it was more peaceful and we could go wherever we wanted.

by the end of the day sena was pretty tired, but i convinced her to come to the planetarium anyway. it was well worth it. we saw the night sky and had an astronomer point out different planets and other things of interest. we also saw a short movie on the search for water in the universe. i always feel awe when our lives are put in perspective this way. i am always blown away about how amazing the universe is. also, whenever i see a picture fo the earth taken from space, i instantly want to cry. it just seems so beautiful, and i feel so protective of it.

it was a really nice day, and i felt very inspired at the end of it. i think sena learned a lot, and most of all, we both had a great time hanging out together.

peace

greenhouse news

2400 onion soil blocks done.
200 cabbage soil blocks done.
all waiting to germinate in the greenhouse.
the season has started!

my 39th birthday

i turned 39 last thursday. i was planning to spend at least part of the day in the greenhouse, but when i woke up in the morning, i felt very mellow and didn't really want to get out. so i sat by the fire and knitted, listened to music, and relaxed in the sun looking over the snow-covered field. i hung out with my sister and the girls when she came over to bring food. i enjoyed the silence when ed took the sena and aiyana out. i made pizza from scratch and ed and i ate it all when he got back.
it was a good day.

peace

Callahan

just finished reading a fascinating book: "Exploring the electromagnetic spectrum", by Philip Callahan.
wow! i've been waiting for something like this for a long time. i'd say that the quote that best sums up the book and callahan's central theme is "everything is connected to evertyhing else, especially by the electromagnetic spectrum".

callahan says that form and frequency go together, which means that different life forms sense and emit different frequencies as a means of communication with their environment. that includes us. most of us are only aware of a small slice of the spectrum, in the visible and audio ranges. that's what we're tuned to, but there is so much more out there, which other forms of life can perceive (like dolphins with echolocation, and moths who are able to perceive ultraviolet radiation).

callahan's work covers many areas, but it always comes back to electromagnetic radiation as the form of communication between all things. one idea i find fascinating is that insect antennae are tuned to infrared radiation emitted from specific plants which the insects like to eat. related to this is that healthy plants will not attract insects and will not experience as much damage (just like healthy humans are less likely to become sick). i really want to learn more about this.

i just ordered another book by him called "Tuning into nature", which i can't wait to read.
check out his work!
peace

indoor pics

taken over the past month or so:
sena, celebrating her 7th birthday with good friends and new books

 sena and aiyana (their moods seem a little dissonant in this one...)

aiyana practicing guitar. she's making lots of progress, and can play two songs quite well now (twinkle twinkle little star, and the little monkey song). it's amazing to see how fast those little fingers can move, and how coordinated they can be.

peace

more frozen sparly landscape

the ice has melted now, but i took these last thursday when i was shoveling the greenhouse (which you can see on the far right)

our hoop tunnels are somewhere under that snow...

 peace

snow, rain, ice, sparkles

we had lots of snow here over the past week. the greenhouse was starting to rip under the snow load. ed's back was hurting from bringing in lots of fire wood, so he couldn't shovel.
our greenhouse is 100ft long by 20 ft wide. shoveling it seemed daunting. but once i started i found that it really wasn't too bad. it took me two and a half days to do it, but i actually enjoyed myself. it felt nice to be out again, working, surrounded by white snow and blue sky. i finished just in time, because it started snowing again, and then it rained, and then everything froze solid. i don't think the greenhouse could've taken that.
the kids have been loving the snow, of course. it's so freeing to see them and their response to these gifts we are given everyday.
aiyana could barely walk through the snow at first...

sena resting after some serious sledding

aiyana

my sweet aiyana

 just to give you an idea of how much snow we got (we actually got more since these pictures)

some serious fun, even the frozen rain

our frozen clothes line

this morning, when i woke up, the sun was out and everything looked magical, all sparkly and white. i felt so uplifted, i went out in my pajamas to take some pictures. driving the kids to class, all we said was "wow", look at this, and look at that, the entire way.
these pictures do it no justice...

 peace