for you...

Wishing you love and blessings on this beautiful Summer Solstice! It's time to reflect on the experiences, accomplishments, and transformations of the first half of 2012. What blessings has the year brought you so far? It's also time to celebrate and set strong intentions for the second half of the year. What do you want to bring into (or cast out of) your life by December 21, 2012?

Sending you lots of bright sunlit solstice love,

I live on an island

The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears, or the sea.     ~Isaak Dinesen

Happy Heart Day

'When you begin to touch your heart or let your heart be touched, you begin to discover that it's bottomless, that it doesn't have any resolution, that this heart is huge, vast and limitless. You begin to discover how much warmth and gentleness is there, as well as how much space. Your world seems less solid, more roomy and spacious. The burden lightens.'

   ~Pema Chodron, in Start Where You Are

May your heart be touched today.

I want to let you know that my heart was touched deeply by all the responses I got to my last post - in the comments, and via email and Facebook. What a beautiful, wise woman you are, dear reader. It amazes me what you have survived, how strong and loving your heart is, what courage you have, what creativity and gentleness. Thanks for being here, and I'm so happy if I can bring a little extra beauty or inspiration to your life.

Today, whether you are with a partner, a friend, or just with yourself, and whether you are happy or sad to see this day, I hope you can love yourself deeply and give yourself exactly what your heart needs.

not too early....

It's never too early to bring a breath of Spring into the house. There is a sprinkling of snow on the ground today, and more in the forecast. My cupboards are full, we have lots of firewood, and I'm ready to be snowed in - I actually love the snow.

But I needed a reminder that green life will return. I redid my centerpiece this morning, with narcissus and hyacinth to force, vintage glass with tea lights floating in water - it really is a breath of Spring. I can't wait until that hyacinth blooms and fills the room with sensual fragrance.

What can you do today to remind yourself that Spring is around the corner?

By the way I have a treat for you guys, coming later today. It's to help you with your 2012 Intentions. You're going to love it. Stay tuned.

holiday highlights, walls & beds.

Sometime this afternoon I hit the wall - two months of hospital and hospice vigil, grief, grueling travel days, crazy work catch-up, then Hello Christmas - I got through all of it, somehow, strong and in good spirits - and today I just felt my knees buckle, so to speak. Time to be quiet and fill the well. Time for an immediate mini-bed-retreat. Cozy PJ's and a spritz of Betsey Johnson perfume. Twinkly lights on, bed curtains closed, hot cocoa on side table, in bed with MacBook, 2012 Goals Journal, idea book, new Steve Jobs biography, and pug. Not coming out until tomorrow!!
But I wanted to share some of my holiday highlights with you before the Christmas mood slips away...
so here is a selection of my favourite holiday moments:

arranging flowers in a silver bowl for the coffee table, just like Grandmother would

pugdeer

daughter, sweetie, & pug seek the perfect tree...

and here it is...

handmade ornaments

lunch at the bistro with my daughter is a rare treat

daniel made us a beet  and apple salad with minted goat cheese

turkey dinner for everyone at the Community Hall is an annual event

lots of cooking from scratch

and mother-daughter cookie baking marathons

this years handmade gift for friends

stayed up late making labels (hand painted, scanned, then text added with photoshop) & tying ribbon while sipping mulled cider and listening to Christmas stories on the radio...

handmade solstice wreath

On Saturday, I participated in a handmade wreath workshop at our little Arts Centre. What fun! The instructors, two island fibre artists, brought in great bags and piles of fresh locally gathered greens of all kinds, and taught us how to adorn a simple willow base with this bounty of nature. I added peacock feathers gathered from my meadow, along with lichen and bay leaves and a big soft satin bow. I love it!

I wanted to share some how-to's on this with you, and because we used very traditional methods and all natural materials, it was hard to find any how-to's on-line! I did find this excellent series on a blog from the UK, so if you live somewhere with an abundance of natural greens, you can try it!

today in the garden

A lot happens in a garden in two weeks in July.  While I was gone tomatoes ripened, dahlias bloomed, slugs attacked the lettuces, beans twined around hollyhocks. And the weeds grew and grew and grew.

I spent most of an afternoon and most of the following morning weeding.

The garden is a big metaphor for life, and the time I spend there is nourishing on many levels. It's healthy to work outside with my hands in the dirt; I love growing food and flowers to bring into my home; and I love the lessons of the natural cycles, and the time for contemplation that comes with the work of a garden.

I came home from holiday with a deep knowledge that I needed to get clear and simplify, that I needed to make much more conscious choices about where to invest my energy, that I needed to get rid of the things (activities relationships ideas commitments beliefs) that draw on my energy without feeding back into my life.

It's easy to tell a thistle from a sweet pea. Not so easy to pull the whole thistle out by the tough, deep root without disturbing the delicate flower that grows side by side with it. I'm doing my best, and I'm ever thankful for the beautiful lessons offered up in abundance by the cycles of nature.

stone soup

   When I was a child, I loved the story  "Stone  Soup."  I'm still not sure why, but I found it very exciting, the idea of creating something from nothing; or maybe it was the idea that we really do have everything we need, if we have the courage to begin to create.

Anyway, I still love making soup. There is something so comforting and wholesome about the activity, especially on a day like today: wet, cold, drab, and threatening snow.

One of the facts of island life is that we don't have access in the sense most people have become accustomed to. I can't order in a pizza or Thai food on lazy nights (frozen pizza from the General Store doesn't really cut it, although it is a last resort...) Also, I only grocery shop every 10 days or so. We don't have a big grocery store here, just the General Store for essentials like milk and bread (and frozen pizza.)

So on the days at the end of my grocery cycle (like today),  I'm often in a "stone soup" kind of situation. And it's fun, I enjoy it. I've always loved the great cuisines that developed from so called "peasant" food: the Italian and  Indian cuisines, for instance, are great examples of how simplicity, necessity, devotion, taste, and love brought forth miracles from the simple ingredients of farmyard, kitchen garden, and countryside.

Today I am making an Italian minestre, a hearty soup with what I have on hand, requiring improvisation and a bit of scrounging. I can smell it cooking as I write, and in a moment I will venture out into the muddy, dormant garden to see if my rosemary, oregano, and thyme plants will give me a few tired but pungent winter leaves.

At dinner we'll drink cheap but good red wine from handmade clay cups, tear pieces from an island-made baguette, and enjoy steaming bowls of this simple, soulful soup.

happy day of love...

red velvet cheesecake, shared on our Valentine's date @ our Bistro

  


"Love is the capacity to take care, to protect, to nourish. If you are not capable of generating that kind of energy toward yourself - if you are not capable of taking care of yourself, of nourishing yourself, of protecting yourself - it is very difficult to take care of another person. In the Buddhist teaching, it's clear that to love oneself is the foundation of the love of other people. Love is a practice. Love is truly a practice."
          -Thich Nhat Hanh

"Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart. And try to love the questions themselves. "
-Rainer Maria Rilke

the green fuse

these miniature irises are blooming on my kitchen table

The next day or two are powerful times to set intentions. Not only are we having a new moon, but we have arrived at the half-way mark between winter solstice and vernal equinox, variously known as Imbolc, Candlemas, St. Brigid's Day, and Groundhog Day. This is the day that the spark of spring ignites. A day to consider:

• what am I conceiving now?
• where does my inspiration come from?
• what dreams need to be brought to manifestation soon?
• what "lights my fire?"
• what is it inside me that has lain dormant too long?

My wish for you for the coming days is that you have time to enjoy this profound and quiet moment just before the stirrings of Spring. Time to:

• meditate
• bathe in a sea-salt bath in a candlelit room, 
• sip tea in front of the fire with your journal
• force spring bulbs or blossoming branches in a beautiful glass vessel
• write poetry
• refresh your personal altar and adorn it with white cloth, white candles, white flowers, and clear crystals, plus your dreams for Spring written on beautiful paper
  
• adorn yourself with green and white clothes and the scent of flowers, or dress in red to invoke the spark of inspiration
• go outside and watch the New Moon rise

P.S. The name of this post, as you may have noticed, comes from the Dylan Thomas poem The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower. You can read the whole poem here.

reverb10 - party

Hi Beautiful,
This is an inspiring on-line project I've decided to jump in to! "Reverb 10 is an annual event and online initiative to reflect on your year and manifest what’s next. Use the end of your year as an opportunity to reflect on what's happened, and to send out reverberations for the year ahead." Every day in December there is a new prompt for writing and reflection. 

December 9 – Party Prompt: Party. What social gathering rocked your socks off in 2010? Describe the people, music, food, drink, clothes, shenanigans. 

As you may know by now, I live in a small, relatively isolated  island community. We have no pubs, cinemas, nightclubs. We have one really great restaurant, but they serve dinner only once a week (once every two weeks in Winter.) What we do have is a community of lively, creative souls who have become expert at creating our own entertainment. Parties tend to be pretty great around here. It was hard to pick just one highlight of 2010, so I'll tell you about the last party I went to - it was pretty wonderful.

The Full Moon Supper Club was founded this year. A group of 10 or so couples meet monthly to eat and drink, hosting rotates. The November supper club was exquisite. We travelled to our sister island Hornby, to the vineyard home of Suzie and Steve. A beautiful fresh snow was falling as we made our way up the bamboo lined path to the door. You know that special feeling of standing on a doorstep in the dark, smelling fresh snow, and then suddenly being drawn in to the warmth, light, conviviality, hugs, and delicious smells of a friend's festive home? Ahhh. Timber rafters, earth coloured walls adorned with beautiful land and oceanscapes by  local painters, smells of something roasting, woodsmoke, hints of perfume. Soon there is a glass of very good red wine in my hands, and I'm drawn in to circles of conversation. A long table, beautifully dressed, and the food! Wild mushroom crostini, with chantarelles picked that day in the woods. Beef carpaccio, tuna tartare. Then the main course, the best lambchops (I was craving more for a week afterwards) gorgeously plated. Excellent wines. Creme brulee. The perfect dinner party.

bare branches

I've put a couple of vases with bare winter branches around the house. They are beautiful in the winter sunlight, also in the evening candlelight. I'm feeling a bit stripped bare myself lately, as if I am being asked to really look at the underlying structure of my life, asked to decide what is beautful and graceful and a strong support, and also to decide what is weak and inelegant. Time for some pruning so the new growth will be more lush and healthy.

Here's a good reminder, from Desiderata, which we've all read and loved:
(I was reminded of it by this week's post by my favourite astrologer.)

Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe,
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. 

what are you grateful for?

Today is Thanksgiving in the United States, so Happy Thanksgiving to all of you who are there... you may not know that here in Canada we celebrate Thanksgiving in mid-October. Above are a few highlights from our celebration last month. In our house, we usually have an unconventional day, but one that always includes feasting and family. This year, my sweetie and I were on our own for the first time in our empty nest, and we decided to have a simple and romantic Thanksgiving. We had a long walk on the beach and watched the blustery, changing October sky. We gathered oysters as the tide came in, took them home in a bucket, and prepared them simply with garlic, butter, fresh herbs (from my garden), and breadcrumbs, just a few minutes under the broiler. We popped a bottle of champagne and gave thanks for love and simplicity, for our beautiful island and for the bounty of the sea.

Wishing you a day of love, gratitude, and abundance, whatever shape that takes for you. Remember, it's not always a big family and a turkey. There are so many ways to celebrate the bounty and beauty of life, and so much to be grateful for. I would love to hear about your day of gratitude. What and how do you celebrate? What are you grateful for this year?

Hello Again, Beautiful

Here are a few glimpses of the magical snow world I've been living in for the last few days. The pipes have been frozen. Things are closed and cancelled. The woodstove is going 24/7 and I've been cooking exotic hot curries with ingredients like rosewater and coconut. It's getting dark around 4:30 pm, we snuggle by the fire and drink hot chocolate with Sambuca. I spend the days in my study wearing sweaters and slippers and trying not to panic as I tackle mountains of work.

I've been away.

This blog has been a touchstone for me for almost three years now, a place to share and reflect on what is most beautiful in my life, and also a wonderful gathering place of kindred spirits. But I've been away from this space a lot over the last six months or so. This year has been one of profound shifts and deep transformations in my life, and lots and lots of letting go. Some of it has been difficult. There's been lots of sorting and sifting. Several new adventures have begun. And I've been working out new ways to engage with the old activities and patterns of my life, to foster contentment and growth. How to  engage more authentically with this space is part of what I've been mulling over. I'm not sure what will evolve, but I do know that I love being here with the little community that has developed around this space, and I love sharing beauty and creativity and juicy life with you.
So I'm jumping back in, excited to keep transforming and sharing what I see on the path.