Posting Frenzy

I started the day by gathering an abundance of limes off a neighbor's tree and tidying and working on my new sprouting project.

Jasmine started her day eating yellow watermelon while putting together puzzles with her mom. Recently Jasmine has been into jigsaw puzzles. This puzzle phase reminds me of other "educational" phases of reading, writing, and 'rithmetic. A giant leap in ability without "practice makes perfect" phase. Could it be we are confusing children's development with that of adults and even then not allowing for cyclical nature of adult development?

And speaking of the three R's, I prefer the Waldorf three R's: rhythm, reverence, and ritual.

I spent a good chunk of time today finishing a number of half-finished posts I started in September and posting them (Any redundancy in this sentence?). Jasmine watched Ballet Favorites and Mary Poppins and went on adventures around the yard. I gave her my old camera a few weeks ago and she was out and about taking pictures. She's back to playing with the chickens now that the weather is so nice.

And in the inbox today, something so great I just had to share it (from Scott Noelle's THE DAILY GROOVE)

Is Joy Knocking On Your Door?

She knocked on the huge palace door. The peephole cover slid open, revealing the grim face of the palace guard. "Who goes there?"

"I am Joy," she answered with a smile, "I'm here to visit the Queen."

The guard shut the peephole abruptly. A few minutes later, it slid open again and the guard said, "The Queen is upset because her children are misbehaving.You may not enter until conditions improve."

"But I bring good tidings, and if she would let me in, the children would surely abandon their mischief."

"Sorry," the guard grumbled, "I must do Her Majesty's bidding." Then he locked the door and left.

But Joy did not leave . . . She just kept knocking.

Today, if you feel upset for any reason, ask yourself this: "Am I using these conditions as an excuse to disallow my natural state of well-being?" Decide that when JOY knocks on *your* door, you'll let it in... no matter what the conditions!

If you like this, visit Scott Noelle at his website. There's some great articles and you can sign up for free daily e-mails like the one above.

This evening we rode our bikes to the library to return and pick up books. We both had cookbooks in; Jazz got Cookbook for Girls and I, Living Cuisine: The Art and Spirit of Raw Foods by Renee Loux Underkoffler.

And then an impromptu bike ride to the park to watch a baseball game. Jazzie's been wanting to watch one ever since T-ball season. Jasmine enjoyed the game and playing with friends and I got to read my new book.

Came home and perused recipes together and read from Nina Jaffe's The Uninvited Guest and Other Jewish Holiday Tales.

Just Gotta Share

Well....I haven't posted in a while, BUT I do have several half finished posts I intend to finish and publish sometime soon.

I found this and just had to share it.

Aren’t humans amazing Animals? They kill wildlife - birds, deer, all kinds of cats, coyotes, beavers, groundhogs, mice and foxes by the million in order to protect their domestic animals and their feed.

Then they kill domestic animals by the billion and eat them. This in turn kills people by the million, because eating all those animals leads to degenerative - and fatal - - health conditions like heart disease, stroke, kidney disease, and cancer.

So then humans spend billions of dollars torturing and killing millions of more animals to look for cures for these diseases.

Elsewhere, millions of other human beings are being killed by hunger and malnutrition because food they could eat is being used to fatten domestic animals.

Meanwhile, few people recognize the absurdity of humans, who kill so easily and violently, and once a year send out cards praying for "Peace on Earth."

~ Revised from Old MacDonald’s Factory Farm by C. David Coates

I got it off Raw Living Foods Lifestyle . This is an awesome blog if you are interested in learning more about living foods. I've been working toward a raw food diet for about 3 years now and have recently transistioned to nearly 100% living food. It is so amazing. It's hard to describe but do it. Try eating more foods uncooked and start learning more about living foods. There's a huge amount of information and lots of recipes on the WEB. It's so worth it. A good place to start is to read Dr. Ann Wigmore's Why Suffer? How I Overcame Illness & Pain Naturally. It's out of print but the entire book is here.

I've been reading a few quotes from it and I am ready to start up my wheatgrass and sunflower sprout growing project again. I'm off to soak some wheat and sunflower seeds. You may be seeing pictures soon.

Creating beauty inspires cleaning house

A couple of days ago, I got an overwhelming urge to make window stars. These are popular in the Waldorf school movement. They are made from kite paper from Europe. My mother--my crafty but oh so busy mother--had the paper and a book on how to make them and I asked her if I could use them. So for the last three days gorgeous window stars have been blooming. Today we started putting them up on the windows.

The window stars have inspired Jasmine to clean. Yesterday she rescued her dollhouse from the back room and cleaned it and today helped me with deep cleaning the dining room to honor the beauty of our window stars.

Several nights ago, I checked up on all the homeschooling blogs I have links to. A post about cleaning and chores on The Sparkling Martins has been at the edge of my mind ever since. Dana writes that her children help with housecleaning without any coersion because she's always cleaned with joy. I have aspired to this but it has not happened. Actually Jasmine does joyfully help with chores fairly often BUT...this girl knows how to create a mess and definately has a different standard of cleanliness than I. We live in a fairly small house with my cluttery mother and I am sensitive the clutter so....I want Jasmine to keep her things neat.

We've tried to come to solutions that are mutually acceptable mostly to no avail. Eventually, a few weeks ago, I moved all of her stuff out of living area into the back bedroom and have allowed her to keep it how she wants as long as there is a pathway to my clothes.

Back bedroom-photo 1

Back bedroom-photo 2

The cool weather is finally here. Yeah. Time to get out and play. I'm feeling so vibrant and alive like the electrons in my cells are spinning faster. I am so so grateful for this living food lifestyle. I don't even want to eat cooked food.

The soundtrack for last couple days--Jasmine choose The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and I listened to a couple Bill Frisell albums Blues Dream and Ghost Town, Putumayo's South Pacific Islands, Putumayo's Brazileiro, and a Mercedes Sosa album.

This evening, Jazz handed me A Course in Miracles and said "Read this" I opened to...

"I do not know the thing I am, and therefore do not know what I am doing, where I am, or how to look upon the world or on myself.

Yet in this learning is salvation born. And What you are will tell you of Itself."

and....

"You see the flesh or recognize the spirit. There is no compromise between the two. If one is real the other must be false, for what is real denies its opposite. There is no choice in vision but this one. What you decide in this determines all you see and think is real and hold as true. On this one choice does all your world depend, for here have you established what you are, as flesh or spirit in your own belief. If you choose flesh, you never will escape the body as your own reality, for you have chosen that you want it so. But choose the spirit, and all Heaven bends to touch your eyes and bless your holy sight, that you may see the world of flesh no more except to heal and comfort and to bless."

I am filled with waves of gratitude that I have been led on this path and my little angel who helps remind me.

International Day of Peace

International Day of Peace is a big event in Ajo due to one woman's efforts, Mimi Phillips. This year I contributed little to the effort as my focus has been creating peace in my own mind. But Jasmine and I helped paint the Peace Day mural last month and I helped with the solar oven demo yesterday and today I spent an hour and half painting children's faces at an after-school festival. I was reluctant to go and wished I hadn't committed to it but once I got started I loved it and wouldn't have missed it for the world. Painting faces is an intimate experience and I enjoyed getting to know some of Ajo's children a bit better.

The Peace Parade started from the after-school festival at the school and wound its way to the Plaza. The parade included several large peace doves and many desert creatures. Groups from Sonoita, Mexico and the Tohono O'odham nation participated.

Kenya Masala, who later led a drum circle with 200 drums, leading a group

in front of a giant peace dove from the O'odham Nation.

Women from Sonoita, Mexico carrying a headress later used in by a

high school Aztec Dance group from Sonoita.

A desert tortoise

Crows in the shadow of a giant peace dove.

Upon arriving at the plaza a festival commenced. Jasmine's Folklorico group danced.


Other acts included Native American Basket Dancers, an amazing Aztec dancing by a group from the high school in Sonoita (the little town across the border in Mexico), a community drumming circle, the high school band from Sonoita, and a Hispanic musical group. And through it all wandered stiltwalkers from Flam Chen, out of Tuscon.

Flam Chen stiltwalkers

The evening ended on a perfectly peaceful note. Our local utility company is replacing and moving waterlines in our part of town and last week the construction crew came through our yard. One of the workers enjoyed our garden telling me it reminded him of his grandfather's garden in Mexico. He wanted to give me some heirloom seeds from that garden. Tonight as we left the festival he ran up to let me know he had left some seeds for me in my mailbox.

Heirloom seeds from Mexico--Fava beans and some sort of pea

Solar Oven Madness

I've been doing a solar oven demonstrations at a few different events around town over the past year or two--baking something in the oven and giving away free samples and then answering questions about solar ovens. But today I participated in the biggest demonstration yet.

Ajo celebrates International Day of Peace in a big way. It's one of the biggest celebrations of the year here. This morning was the kick-off celebration with a free community breakfast in the Plaza put on by the International Sonoran Desert Alliance (ISDA) in conjunction with our local grocery store. Nina, our CSA coordinator, organized this grand solar oven demonstration for the event with her usual flair.

Yesterday, I made a couple of batches of Mesquite Sweet Potato Bread so we would have samples available before the first batches came out of our ovens this morning. We also handed out information about mesquite flour and our CSA. (The whole wheat flour and the sweet potatoes came from Crooked Sky Farms, who supply our CSA.) During the course of the morning we gave away over 20 batches of Mesquite Sweet Potato cookies and 4 batches of Mesquite sweet potato sweetbread. Nina wrote an excellent article about the event here.

Besides the commercially made SunOven I brought, we used a home-made solar oven constructed for ISDA by Sue Reiman and later in the day Aaron Cooper brought four solar ovens, created by his high school students at San Simon School. These were simply a wide squarish funnel created out of cardboard covered with tin foil and then propped up to catch the sun. The cookies were baked in oven bags in aluminum foil pans. This worked surprisingly well and opens up the possiblity of designing a simple oven using a wide reflector and using--and reusing hopefully--oven bags to cook in.

The oven on the farthest left is our solar oven, a comercially made Sun Oven, available at http://www.sunoven.com/ and many other places. After having cooked in this oven for over three years, I can recommend it. It cooks well and is very portable and easy to use. The biggest drawback is its size. It barely fits a 9"x13" pan, if it has any handles forget it, and definately cannot fit a cookie sheet.

Anne Ashton Goldfeld of a Phoenix area Roots & Shoots program (they've created a community garden with the children) and AZ Homegrown Solutions is also the area's solar oven queen. She prefers the Sport from Solar Oven Society. I haven't used this oven yet but I think if I were to buy an oven now I would choose this one.

It comes with or without the optional reflector and you can save $25 by buying two. Also included are 2 pots, thermometer, WAPI (water pasteurization indicator) and instruction manual (.pdf)

Here's some information from their website.

The SOS Sport oven cooks food of all types, and also pasteurizes water. The casing is rugged recycled plastic (post consumer soft drink bottles) and the insulation; closed cell foam insulation that does not absorb moisture. The lid is a double layer with dead air space to enhances insulating qualities. It holds two 10-inch pots (3 quarts each) and the floor dimensions of the oven (for cookie sheets, etc,) are 9 1/4 inches x 17 1/2 inches. It reaches temperatures of 300 Degrees Fahrenheit in equatorial regions and includes an optional detachable reflector to lengthen the cooking seasons in areas further north. Here in Minnesota, the cooker works great without reflectors April-September and with reflectors it works well all winter long (when there is sun!).
It is light weight – 10 pounds and stable (normal winds cause no problems)

If you want to order a Sun Oven or a SOS Sport online please use the Resources for Health vender ID to help Anne's groups. For Sun Oven enter the code RES HEALTH 09 for $25 off your purchase and they also send $25 to Resources of Health. For the Sport, the number is #2371.

Art First! was The Soundtrack of Our Life

This morning I did art first and then cleaned the kitchen and it was wonderful. Why don't I do this more often?

The Quotes are from The Presence Process by Michael Brown the two in orange are:

Although we may not know where we are going right now or how to get there, there is and aspect of our Being that does know. There is an aspect of our Being that knows everything.

A joyful, abundant, and healthy life is pouring itself upon us in each moment. When we "live in time", the vessel that we are is turned upside down. We, therefore, spend our life experience getting instead of receiving.

Jazz joined me and made here own artwork with poems and quotes she likes.




I'm inspired today to post about the Soundtrack of our life--what we listen to. Today it was Putumayo's Acoustic Brazil and Lila Down's Tree of Life. Often, as today, if we're absorbed in something, I'll listen to one album several times. Yesterday, the mood for me was Meditative Gregorian Chants.

I like Gospel music, spiritual music of many traditions, Jazz esp non-traditional, world and ethnic music and more. Jasmine likes most of the previous but sometimes gets bored with the spiritual music. She also really likes classical music especially ballets, musicals, and anything with a great rhythm. Lately she has been into The Nutcracker and Jazz for Kids: Sing, Clap, Wiggle, and Shake.

We also listen to spoken word albums. I have taped myself reading several books including Byron Katie's A Thousand Names for Joy, Michael Road's Talking with Nature and Journey into Nature, Kenny Werner's Effortless Mastery and parts of Abraham-Hicks books, A Course in Miracles etc. I listen to these when I am cleaning or cooking. For the most part, Jasmine enjoys these tapes and sometimes even asks for them.

We sometimes listen to books on CD, especially when we clean together. The last one was The Wizard of Earthsea and The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula le Guin and upcoming The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain.


Today I met the muse for the first time while playing the piano. I don't know how to explain it except that I felt an actual presence of an energy I would describe as the Muse. It was exciting for me because it is exactly the kind of thing I would love to have happen, but I wasn't expecting or even hoping for it. It just came out of the blue. Ain't life great!


Jasmine has built a house with chairs and sheets in the dining room and today I found her in it teaching one of her girls to read.


And in the Living Foods department--More Fun Things to Eat.

This week I've been playing with some new things. We are getting lots of green peppers and onions in our CSA share so I slice them thin and mix with lime, date paste, chili powder, and salt and dehydrate until soft and then store in fridge to add to salads or other things.

Local greens are still hard to come by, but Nina brings me back arugula and collard greens from the farmer's market in Phoenix. Believe it or not, collard leaves make an excellent wraps. I've been filling them with Guacamole, living salsa, and the pepper-onion mix OR with the following filling: diced apples and green tomatoes, fresh basil, lime, garam masala, date paste, and salt.

This filling is also excellent in green apple coconut wraps--if I don't eat them all first. They are made by throwing apples, mature coconut, lime, a bit of chia seeds, and a pinch of salt in blender and then dehydrating.

I also made my first batch of living spaghetti, with partial dehydrated tomatoes, fresh basil and oregano, onion, garlic, date paste, apple cider vinegar, and salt and served it over pasta made from zucchini. It was so good that I called up Nina, our CSA coordinator, and volunteered to do a raw food demonstration for them as soon as we are getting tomatoes and summer squash. I am definately hooked.

Corn chips have been a big staple of mine whenever we are getting corn in our CSA share. I usually do a batch with about 3 cups of fresh corn off the cob and add lime, chili powder, salt and a tomato if I have one. This week I made the best batch of corn chips yet, by adding an apple and an avocado. They were so delicious that I polished them off before I could share with anyone, and now corn is out of season for another month or so.

And with my non-local cauliflower I made raw popcorn to die for. Just cut up cauliflower into small pieces and add olive oil, nutritional yeast, spirulina, and salt. Then sit down and enjoy.

Shopping in the City

Today we went to the city--Tucson--to go shopping. I've always had a love affair with mountains and usually where ever I live there is a mountain I am totally in love with. Here in Arizona it is Baboquivari Peak. This is the sacred mountain for the Tohono O'odham people and I can totally understand why. In order to get to Tucson, we cross the O'odham reservation and pass Baboquivari Peak. Today the summer poppies were in full bloom from our recent rains. I have a thing for these poppies also and was in total heaven.

Baboquivari Peak--ain't she a beauty....

...and summer poppies. What more could a girl ask for.

And while I was admiring mountains and flowers, Jasmine was enjoying her most favorite book on CD, Suzanne Fisher Staple's Shiva's Fire.

We had a lovely time shopping and playing in the city. And, oh my word, am I going to have to binge on veggies for a while. I bought organic but not local or in season kale, cauliflower, tomatoes, romaine lettuce, celery, and peaches and stocked up on frozen fruit. Local Gala apples were on sale and so I bought 15 pounds.

On the way home we listened to my favorite program on the local community radio station, Onda Suave, which just happens to air on Wednesday evenings. It's a Latin Jazz program and this evening, the host did a short interview with a home boy who made it big in the Latin Jazz scene. Unfortunately, I do not remember his name but I had an interesting experience while listening to the interview. The host asked the musician about the support for his music he had received as a child. I imagined myself supported as a child and got a vision of how different my life would be today. It was magical. And then, of course, realized that I now need to give myself that kind of support.

Later on the drive I realized my purpose-- "to open to the depths and watch joyfully as the beauty unfolds". This is something Arnold Patent talks about in his book--defining your purpose in a short phrase or sentence and then repeating it often. I absolutely adore this purpose and if I remember to say it often, I can imagine how much fuller and more beautiful my life will be. Long drives often bring new realizations to me. Thank you for these.

Friends and rainwater

My mom's house is in the historic district of town and for some reason no families with children live here. Several monthes ago, Elizabeth (age 7 just like Jasmine) and her family moved in a block away. Lately Jazz and Elizabeth have been spending a lot of time together on weekends.

Elizabeth's family is quite different than our--a lot of media and not much else--and she used to get bored really quickly at our house and want to go home. Lately however she is enjoying all kinds of new experiences with us including playing with chickens, going to the library and getting her very own library card, going to paint murals, going to the public swimming pool, and climbing trees. A whole new world is opening up for Elizabeth and Jasmine has a playmate that lives close by.

I finished taping Arnold Patent's You can Have It All. I can't say enough about this book. I am so grateful that it entered my life, that I had the idea to tape it, and that I can listen to it often.

And again I can't say enough about Arnold Patent's book, You Can Have It All. Beg, borrow, steal if need be, but get this book. Or do as I did and order it through Interlibrary Loan at your Local Library and read it into a tape recorder and then listen to it often.

This evening Jasmine went off to a sleepover at Elizabeth's house and I decided to work on one of my latest projects--actually a somewhat on-going project. Last winter, I wanted to give a set of talks at the local library on sustainable design. To this end, I started creating some Power Point presentations. Thanks to Brad Lancaster, author of Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond Vols 1 & 2, and his website http://www.rainwaterharvesting.com/, I have developed a fairly complete slide show on passive rainwater harvesting. A few days ago, a friend showed me around the Ajo Community Garden and I realized they could really use this particular presentation. So now I'm completing that slideshow. In this process I found a couple of videos that give a great overview of using earthworks to collect rainwater.

May you enjoy an A-bun-dance of water--free, beautiful, healthy rainwater.

An Art Journal

This morning before Jazz got up, I created this page in my newly started Art Journal. Last night I had popped over to La Paz Home Learning to see what she was up to lately--it's always interesting. A post she had on journaling inspired me to start an art journal.


The poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson is:

Finish each day and be done with it.

You have done what you could,

some blunders and absurdities have crept in;

forget them as soon as you can.

Tomorrow is a new day,

you shall begin it serenely

and with too high a spirit

to be encumbered by your old nonsense.

When she woke up, Jazz joined me and created words to put on her SoulCollage cards.

I even figured out how to use the backs of pages that have watercolor or Art Marker bleeding through--A Gratitude List and An Ideal Life Exercise. It does me good to do them and to read them.

Jazz has continued to write her story and also a cookbook she is creating, She eagerly helped me to hose off the front porch and the hardscape in front yard and sweep up the mesquite pods. We trimmed back the exuberant growth of mesquite and palo verde threatening to take over the pedestrians walking in front of the house. Yes, the weather is definately getting cooler.

I'm finishing taping Arnold Patent's You Can Have It All. It is such an amazing book and I'll be very glad to have it on tape. I could listen to this everyday for a while. It helps me get through my least favorite household task--washing the dishes.

Writing the Natural Way

Today Jasmine wanted to play school. I was busy with something or other and told her to write a story. She's been working on it with a lot of intensity on and off all day. Jasmine went to school for four months starting almost a year ago (at her own request). This is the first time since that she has written anything without worrying about spelling. This story is written completely phonetically--so the spelling is "atrocious"--but she is using complex words and ideas and rewriting sentences to prevent redundency (on her own initiative).

In school, writing began with learning to spell simple words. She was expected to write a sentence everyday using a new spelling word (ex The cat sat in a box.) This induced both a concern about spelling correctly but also a crimp in creativity. And I believe it is the root of many people's writing block.

In her own natural process she writes what she is passionate about and plays with how sentences sound and how they go together to create a mood. As she reads more and more the spelling will become more natural and she can write creatively and spell correctly. David Albert wrote in one of his books about his daughters' writing process. He told them at an older age (maybe 11 or 12) that people judge someone who spells incorrectly as stupid irregardless of whether it is true. At this age his girl were ready and motivated to learn to spell correctly. This makes perfect sense; spelling is introduced after much writing has been done not before.

Absorbed in writing

Jasmine took breaks to build a little house out of twigs, to play cribbage with her mom, and of course to dance.

And mom...well I've been helping grandma prepare for her first ever back-packing trip by dehydrating food for the trip including green smoothie fruit leather. I have not yet published my post on green smoothies, but hold tight. Between my living foods and my mom's back-packing food, the dehydrator has been going for days.