What to do in the garden right now

Fertilize the sprouting bulbs that are coming up.
Cut down ornamental grasses.
Amend those garlic sprouts with blood meal (ick).

Bel canto

Isn't that a lovely turn of phrase?

Well, I'm reading (or listening) to this book right now and thoroughly enjoying it. A novel with a terrorist group taking hostages, an opera singer, a young priest, a Japanese businessman. A cast of very interesting characters and building drama as their captivity goes on. I'm not big on opera, but it is such a part of the story that I picked up an opera DVD of Maria Callas to put me in the right musical mood. I definitely think that some books have soundtracks. This one's is operatic. The author is Ann Patchett, in case you want to go out and find it. I like her style, her voice.

I spent the morning in the garden with Debbie putting down compost, weeding and general Preparation for Spring. There are so many bulbs coming up. Tulips galore, daffs, etc. Very wonderful to see. Also got some shrubs out to put in....drum roll please. Blueberries! I've decided that I'm going to turn more and more of the landscaping into edibles (or flowers, as you can never have too many flowers). Why have a row of bushes that produce nothing more than leaves when you could have juicy berries too? I've been reading about blueberries and what they need to thrive. Full sun, good drainage, rich composty soil, water in the dry summer. I'll have to take a shot of before and after. Very exciting.

Talking to God

I'm sure nearly everyone on the planet has their own complicated relationship with God. Over the past few years I've been rediscovering a real relationship (an adult one), and like any relationship, it is not easy. I've been angry, disappointed, and confused at times (those were the low points), with the high points filled with gratitude and love. Yoga, some books (The Shack comes to mind) the altar, the garden...all these things help bring God into the daily mix of things.

My latest discovery has been the rosary. Really. I can't believe it myself, as someone who hadn't done it in years (maybe 35?) and just remembered it as being some really rote mindless boring Catholic ritual that my abuelita did (do you think I could have had a more negative attitude?). I had to relearn some of it (what are the mysteries?...sounds so....mysterious), and now, at the delightful age of 44 I get it (or am starting to get it). It is comforting and meditative. I like it more than I thought I would.

Botanical drawing

I found the perfect storm of my interests: drawing and plants. I just started a PCC class on botanical drawing, and the first class was cool. The teacher is the right blend of smart, nice, and passionate. The students are a nice bunch. This is a perfect continuation of the PNCA drawing class. The teacher had us start out with a couple of cool exercises guaranteed to break the ice. Draw a fellow student. Twice. I can tell you that her name and face are now engraved on my brain, probably forever. Anna. The contour drawing was hard. No looking at the paper. The second sketch was fun. She's beautiful to look at, and so I was delighted to stare at her face and try to capture her on paper. Drawing an apple was a bit of a letdown after her.

What I'm watching

I haven't (yet) seen the swifts in person. They are on the other side of the river, so that is my excuse. I'm sticking by it. Seriously, I wanted to do it last fall, but things got away from me. So my goal for this fall is to see them in person. Looks amazing. Any Portland blog readers who want to come along, let me know! It looks like a fun picnic and hanging out opportunity.

Talking about Haiti with kids

I had my first conversation with G about the earthquake, and I'm sure it won't be the last one. I got some tips from a newspaper article that I liked, plus a web link with a lot more resources.

Here is what I found useful:

Ask questions and don't make assumptions about what someone is feeling or thinking. Find out what the concerns and thoughts are.
Answer their questions, clear up misinformation.
Don't offer more info than what they've asked about..avoid the too much information syndrome.

http://mentalhealth.samhsa.gov/cmhs/TraumaticEvents/tips.asp

When a world falls apart, reach out

As I go about my day, there is another world that has fallen apart, another world away in Haiti.

I read the newspaper accounts (it is merciful not to be able to watch video coverage at home), and I cry. The suffering is beyond my comprehension, because I knew that long before this disaster Haiti was the poorest of places on our side of the world. This event pushes a nation past disaster, to the brink of God knows what. I pray and hope that the relief effort is able to help save and heal the survivors, and that a rebuilt Haiti will rise from the ashes of so much destruction.

I want to encourage all my blog readers to make a donation to the relief effort (if you haven't already). I've always been inspired by Doctors without Borders....they do remarkable work.

Additional note: very good article that lays out options for donating to Haiti relief efforts:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/24/nyregion/24critic.html?hp

http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/

Gratitude journal

I'm so grateful that my mom's heart is healthy. Very grateful for my little sis and brother-in-law who take care of her and papi.

Grateful for my altar and daily prayers that keep me centered.

Grateful for those calls, emails, cards. All the ways that my friends connect to me, and I to them.

Words of a wise man

"I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. That is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant." – Martin Luther King Jr., Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech, Dec. 10, 1964

What I'm reading

I love this book. It is wise, hilarious, and fascinating....You follow this sardonic NPR reporter on a world tour of countries in a search for what makes humans happy. Right now I'm in Iceland, a hub of creativity, binge drinking and darkness. The one thing I have to get over is listening to this in the car and having fellow drivers wonder why I am laughing. Another crazy woman on the road.

What I'm watching

This is a totally adorable movie that sneaks up on you. A French road film with 2 unlikely guys encountering misadventures in the French countryside (Brittany to be specific, which is where the title Western comes from). The friendship is sweet and real, and the scenery and slice of rural French life are also a part of the movie's charm.

http://www.sinematurk.com/film_fragman/18836/Western

Gratitude journal for Saturday

I'm grateful for my brother-in-law and good friend. He's fun to hang out with and has good taste in movies and food (plus appreciates my cooking).

I'm grateful for the time I get to spend with Gladys and all the things I learn from and with her....

Sing along

This is one of my favorite dance numbers right now. I love the move where you dance on "un solo pie" or one leg, and somehow doing it with a group of people at 6 a.m. in the morning is inexplicably fun.

Enjoy!

Gratitude journal

I've been listening to this amazing audio book on gratitude, which is something I've been working on cultivating. The author is a cultural anthropologist, so she weaves in all kinds of morsels of wisdom from around the world...which I love. The thing about cultivating gratitude is that you also need to face down the envy and comparison in your heart, which gets in the way of being really grateful. That is the first time I had heard that stated so plainly, and it is giving me plenty to work on and think about.....

One way to nurture gratitude is to keep a gratitude journal, so here it goes. I'm going to use this blog that way....

Today I'm grateful for:

• A fabulous dance class this morning and being comfortable enough in my own skin and joyful enough to sing along with the music as I dance. Plus I just love the music...I can't stop from singing!
• Working with people who are open and come to me with their joys, sorrows and feedback
• My job
• Being able to do the pigeon pose in yoga class deeper and longer than ever before and my wonderful yoga teacher who has guided me along the way.
  
• Glimmers of sunshine in a rainy week
  

Netherland - an update

I'm winding down this audio book, and the verdict is that the book is ok. I think it is that I have yet to be really compelled by the characters, and somehow the author doesn't take me deep enough. I think it is because the narrator seems to live that way, and there is something sad about him..and boring.

I do think the reader does a marvelous job with all the accents, and reading about Trinidad brings back many happy memories of my Carnival there. Gosh that was fun and so totally unique to a part of a band, dress up in little more than a bathing suit and face glitter, parading through the streets with hundreds of others. With a lot of great music. I also like reading a novel so contemporary that it mentions actual current events, like the Iraq war.

Would I recommend it? Probably not, just because I'm not passionately in love with it. Unless you really want to read a novel about post 9/11 NYC, are into cricket or West Indian immigrant stories filtered through the eyes of a Dutch banker...then I think you'd want to read this one.

Places to go, places I've been

New York Times did an interesting article on 31 places to go in 2010. I've been to Costa Rica, South Africa, and Vancouver BC.

I'd really like to go to Bahia, Patagonia, Istanbul, Norway and Nepal.

Musings on history

I'm immersing myself in all things Tudor right now. I'm watching series 3 of The Tudors with Yves, reading historical novels and also watching the films on Elizabeth starring Cate Blanchette. A thread through all of it is torture. Racks, fire, water, boiling, quartering, beheading. A fair amount this all took place in public view.

Fast forward more than 500 years. Now we have "advanced interrogation techniques." Oh, things are neater. Less gory. Far far less public. Medically supervised a fair amount of the time.

Watching these films I can't help but think about how far we haven't come. Have not progressed. That if you demean a person's physical dignity they will often say anything, do anything. It was true in the reign of Henry VIII, and it is true when W ruled.

If there is anything I hope for it is that the rule of law, basic human rights, is restored. Because this torture is hidden away, how do you know?

What I'm reading and watching

I just started another novel - Netherland. I chose it because I read somewhere that President Obama was reading it. So far, I'm not loving it. Not the characters, not the writing style. Not enough passion or drama, perhaps. Coming off Tudor intrigue is hard to match. A nice but dull European financier in a mid-life crisis, set in post 9/11 NYC. I'm going to give it some time though. Books deserve some time to pull you in.

I'm watching a very compelling documentary Un poquito de verdad about the uprising in Oaxaca and the way people took over radio and TV stations to communicate their stories and reality when the mainstream media was distorting and not covering their stories. Powerful stuff. Real. I love how one woman said that once she saw real women broadcast news on a TV station that was taken over she stopped watching the soap operas and other crap. Amen sister.




Que viva Oaxaca y la libertad de expresion!

Eating in season

With 4 delicata squash in the kitchen, I found some delicious recipes on the Internet to use them up. One was a roasted squash salad...vegetarian and easy. Another was quinoa stuffed squash, a bit more involved in terms of steps...very healthy and vegetarian. Here are some pictures of the squash before roasting, then the sauteed chard which goes into the stuffing, and the final product. All this in an effort to eat seasonally and with less meat this year of 2010. I'm easing back into that anti-inflammatory diet.

Besides a bit of cooking I've been finishing up the intense and long book "The Other Boleyn Girl." I'm finding the whole Tudor England thing by turns grim and fascinating. One unexpected thing is facing numerous depictions of miscarriages, both of Queen Catherine and Anne. I can't say that I've read many accounts in fiction, so reading this book had some painfully personal moments.

On a more upbeat note, I woke up and did my own yoga practice at home. It was lovely to stretch out and breath. I played some mellow yoga music and really relaxed. What a nice way to start the day. Another goal for 2010 is to do more yoga!

New Year projects

Two long overdue projects got started this weekend - clearing out the garage and finishing up Gladys' scrapbook (which occupied a messy chunk of the office). These weren't really New Year resolutions, but timing is everything in getting the year off to a good start.

The scrapbook project is such fun that I'm not sure why I didn't do it (something about a block of uninterrupted time). I love pouring over pictures and memories, organizing and figuring out how to make it fun and informative. When I create scrapbooks I'm always thinking of the distant future....what will people want or need to know about these photographs 30 years from now? 50 years from now? Will they want precise geographic locations, dates, names, what we were thinking or feeling? Who will be looking at this book? No idea if other scrapbookers go through this same thought process. I wonder what Gladys will be like when she's an older person. Oh, then more questions buzz around. Married? Kids? College?

The garage is a less fun or creative project, but it has the potential to be a real boon to gardening. Once I get rid of old cans of paint I'm going to have more space for plant starts and potting materials. Yeah!

Happy New Year

Today has been a real treat.

I started the day with a two hour vinyasa yoga class at Exhale Yoga Studio http://www.exhalepdx.com/ with Juliet. It was fantastic for many reasons, and one of them was that I could notice, really notice, how wonderful my body is and how much I could do (vs. noticing what I couldn't do and having that negative voice echo and reverberate). It was joyous to do pose after pose and enjoy being in my body. A year ago I was using a walker. Now I am doing the warrior pose! The class was not too hard, nor too easy...it was just right. Juliet had us focusing on an intention for 2010, and I loved her way of integrating this into the entire practice. A truly special way to start a year....

My intention is loving-kindness towards myself and others. Especially the people who drive me up the wall.

Then I headed to Common Ground for a soak and sauna, which was delicious and perfect after 2 hours of yoga. More relaxation, more being present in my body.

Then I headed to my next door neighbor's house for a New Year party, which was a lovely gathering of neighbors that I know in that passing friendly way....it was a chance to hang out and really get to know them. They are all friendly, interesting and nice...so I feel so fortunate.

So many good things all packed into one day.