Photo Friday

A mother-daughter project.

We both post a photo every Friday - no description, just a moment from the week we want to capture and remember.

Inspired by SouleMama's {this moment} and 3191 (blog and book).

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

R.

B.

Garden Inspiration and Resources

Since this is the time of year when I am dreaming of and planning for the gardening season to come, I thought I'd share some of my new and old favorite gardening resources with you.

Photo from You Grow Girl

Books/Magazines
Eliot Coleman's The Winter Harvest Handbook, Four-Season Harvest, and The New Organic Grower
John Jeavons' The Sustainable Vegetable Garden or How to Grow More Vegetables and Fruits (and Fruits, Nuts, Berries, Grains, and Other Crops) Than You Ever Thought Possible on Less Land Than You Can Imagine
Gayla Trail's Grow Great Grub and You Grow Girl

Organic Gardening Magazine
Mother Earth News
I also love to browse the gardening section at my local library for books with lots of photos and garden plans. Though I rarely use specifics from this sort of book and don't recommend buying them, they can help generate ideas for my own garden.

Seed/Plant Catalogs
Fedco
High Mowing Organic Seeds
Johnny's Selected Seeds (also has great tools)
St. Lawrence Nurseries - cold-hardy fruit and nut trees
Lee Valley (tools only, no plants)

Photo from Organic Gardening

Online Resources and Eye Candy
Seed starting chart from You Grow Girl
Farm Hack - a resource for making your own farm and garden tools and equipment
Martha Stewart Gardening - also features some practical DIY projects
Path to Freedom - Urban homestead in Pasadena, CA

What are your favorite gardening resources and inspiration?

Mondays Musings -- Meditation

A couple of weeks ago, Rebecca and I wrote that we were participating in Winter Feast, a 40-day worldwide meditation practice.
Although the Feast asks for people to commit 40 minutes a day every day of the time period, I tried to commit to a more realistic expectation -- 20 minutes of meditation at least 4 days a week.

I am proud to say that I have sat every day since the beginning, today being the 15th day;
I started at 20 minutes and have increased to 30 minutes on most days.

Things have changed during that time. I've gotten more comfortable and less fidgety sitting quietly and I look forward to the sit. I have had to cut back on some other activities to fit meditation into my schedule. I am OK that I have decreased computer time in the morning but not so happy that I am also exercising less days a week. For now I won't pressure myself about that. Yet I want to fit both mediation and exercise in my regular schedule and will deal with that after my practice seems more regular. I don't want to place the two in competition.

The most important thing is for me to -- just show up. What I call -- Tusch to the Cush.
This same advice is often given to artists and writers. So I try not to be concerned about the results and just go to the meditation cushion consistently as I do to my desk to write on a regular basis.

Self-criticism is my biggest obstacle
I can still fret... I'm not doing this meditation thing right, I'm not doing this well.
But all I really want to do is sit quietly and comfortably and focus on breath or my mantra (repeated phrase).

Meditation teachers often describe our busy thoughts as Monkey Mind.
I think of my own mind-clutter like a Walmart shoppers crowd on Black Friday, a jostling mess of humanity.
And I turn to meditation to slow down a bit.

What I prefer is to think of meditation as me being  in a small boat on a narrow calm river.
The current is slow and smooth and no effort is needed to move forward.
But there are many things along the shore lines that draw my attention. From colorful laundry, to barking dogs, to individuals and groups of people talking companionably, or arguing, or calling out to me. My job is to not get engaged with any of these things or interactions. Notice them and move on.

What that translates to is for me to simply acknowledge any thoughts, worries, images, plans, or aches and pains that I experience while sitting  and then to gently return to my focus (my breath or mantra).

As the teacher Sharon Salzburg says, "If you have to begin again a million times in the course of one sitting that's the practice."

Well, I am practicing being quiet daily. It is both easier and more difficult than imagined.

Wondering what you think -- do you meditate? Why or why not?

Photo Friday

A mother-daughter project.

We both post a photo every Friday - no description, just a moment from the week we want to capture and remember.

Inspired by SouleMama's {this moment} and 3191 (blog and book).

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

B.

R.

What I Do, Part 2 - Food Not Bombs

Read my first post on what I do (an overview) here. Over the next few months, I intend to write more about the specifics of some of my current projects and interests, as well as more generally about what it means to be a Scanner.

I've already mentioned a few of the ways I try to live my beliefs... including eating locally, growing my own food, and dumpster diving. Some of these changes mostly just affect me, others have a larger impact. I guess I'm always looking for ways in which my own small changes and actions can have a larger ripple effect .

One project I'm involved in that I hope falls into that category is Food Not Bombs. Food Not Bombs is an international organization with autonomous regional chapters like the Binghamton chapter which collect food that would have otherwise gone to waste (through arrangements with natural food stores, grocery stores, food pantries/food recovery programs, and yes, occasionally dumpster diving) and use it to prepare meals which are then shared with the community. 

Like other programs that offer community meals, one of our intentions is to help those most in need. But some of our other goals differ - we strive to reduce food waste, build community and bring people together (by allowing anyone to participate in preparing, eating, and cleaning up after meals), and also to serve food that is both tasty and nutritious.

 

So how have we done with these goals?

• We have absolutely reduced food waste by using food that would have been wasted to prepare meals. All leftovers are given away or taken home by volunteers and all food scraps are either fed to our chickens or composted. 
• There is a strong sense of community at meals. I love coming and eating and chatting with different people each week. One of my favorite parts of each week is listening to the person who brings and plays a different musical instrument each week. This was not something we arranged, but something that grew spontaneously out of this community.
• We serve vegetarian food. Most of the meal consists of well-seasoned fresh vegetables (we do incorporate canned and frozen veggies as needed, but that is usually less of the meal), grains, and beans. We provide exposure to a type of food that many regulars on the community meal circuit do not get anywhere else and try to get people to realize that vegetables are both healthy and delicious! We also share our recipes and cooking tips with anyone who is interested and many people try our recipes at home. Volunteers also learn a lot about cooking and safely utilizing food that others might throw away.

While Food Not Bombs has no formal leadership structure and is a non-hierarchical organization, it seems common in many chapters for a few individuals to take on the majority of the responsibility. While we have many wonderful volunteers, I think Dan and I have fallen into that position and gotten a bit stuck there. There are pros and cons to this, but at this point my goal for working with Food Not Bombs is to make myself obsolete. I'd like to continue to be involved because I enjoy it, but know that the chapter would be able to continue with or without me. Towards that end, I intend to continue trying to help develop leadership in others and examine whether there are ways that I am unconsciously clinging to power and control (and try to let go of them).

I hope this will make the organization stronger, grow my skill set a bit, and free up some of my time and energy to work on other projects. Because there are always other projects.

Baby, It's Cold Outside...

Winter Is Certainly Here and I have a tendency to complain about it.

And when I recently posted on Facebook that it was minus 8 degrees Saturday morning, I certainly got a lot of responses. Well, it was minus 20 this morning!!

I am not a winter person. I don’t like going outdoors when the temperature is in the single digits and less so when it is in the negative zone. Most of the year I don’t use a hair dryer and only do so when the temperature is below freezing. I hate driving up Belden Hill when it is blowing snow and I still remember sliding out on black ice four miles up I88 on my commute into Binghamton and that was at least ten years ago.

It no longer makes sense for me to drive to a local state park to go skiing or snowshoeing because when I do go out it is for such a short time. I’ll go up and down the hill behind our house a couple of times and then rush indoors for a cup of hot chocolate.

In July I wrote here:

I intend to not grasp summer. And I’ll try not to complain when it is SO hot and humid...to remember that this summer weather is what I crave when months later I’ll complain about icy winter roads. But now I want to get outdoors to breathe in the summer air, to pick a few weeds out of the garden, to pluck a few berries off a backyard bush to top my cereal, to read on the back deck. Summertime...the living is easy...the time is now.

So, I do appreciate summer and spring is my favorite season….the season of promise and new blooms, of fresh bursts of color, of the re-awakening of smells and tastes, the time to shed the coat, to be outdoors more. I get impatient for spring to arrive.

But with focus on my One Little Word, Present…it is my intention to be more Present in winter. To both be mindful of winter's positive seasonal attributes and to be aware of the Gift of each day.

Some of my favorite winter activities include:

Reading novels  in the living room with the woodstove cranked high, cooking and eating a pot of hearty soup accompanied by good bread, more Netflix watching, more online volunteering (Voices of the Future at World Pulse), working on organizing old family photographs and scrapbooking and participating in online workshops and classes (I’ve already mentioned Strathmore’s free art journaling workshops and One Little Word at Big Picture Scrapbooking). I also taking an online class via Ed2go.

And  traveling, getting away from the cold. I am.looking forward to seeing family in FL and being warm.

Alan has a number of winter activities outdoors like stacking wood, and preparing equipment for maple syrup season. He continues to walk/run most mornings outdoors -- while I am indoors "jumping around" with an  aerobics DVD.

One of the winter activities I most appreciate watching Alan do is plant. The photos are of him planting onion seeds. This week he planted 200 onion seeds of three different varieties. He'll tend them for the next few months and they will be ready to plant this spring. Alan said that last year he didn't start onion seeds till February -- and showed me that the results, onions that we store and are eating now, were smaller than they could be. To me, the whole process is magical and hopeful. In essence, we are now eating in winter 2011 the seeds that Alan planted in winter 2010.

Add to the reality, the provocative metaphor....What will I start this winter and grow throughout the year? 

How does your life change seasonally?

Where do you spend winter? What do you like/dislike about winter? And what are you starting to grow now that you will tend through the year?

Meditation Tool - Meditation Timer

I always appreciate tools that make my meditation practice easier in some way. I often use my digital watch as a timer when I meditate, but it takes a little while to set, especially if I don't meditate for the same period of time each day. The electronic beep ending my session is also a bit unpleasant.

Recently I have been using a very helpful tool my dad passed along in lieu of the watch timer. It consists of two mp3 files - one of 5 minutes of silence and one of a singing bowl chime. I've created a playlist in iTunes using these files with 3 segments of silence and 3 chimes, for 15 minutes of meditation ending in 3 bells. I can add more tracks of silence at the beginning to make my session longer, or select a later silence track to start on if I want to meditate for a shorter time. You could also burn the tracks to CD if that works better for you.

The only thing to watch out for is that your computer speakers are on and set at a suitable volume. I have gotten into the habit of playing the chime once or twice to adjust the volume before I start. You could also put a chime at the beginning of your playlist to begin your meditation that way, and it would also alert you if the volume were turned off or too loud.