A few of my favorite things

These are a few of my favorite spring flowers.  If you can id the first and last, let me know.  I have been unable to figure them out for 2 years now.

In order after the first one,
Field Pussytoe
Bleeding Hearts
Painted Trillium
Blue Bead Lily
Foam Flower & Jack-in-the-Pulpit
Foam Flower
Canada Mayflower
Blueberry
Field Horsetail

peace

Another one bites the dust....

And another one's gone, another one's gone, another one bites the dust, yeah!

peace

Harder than I thought...

Seeing as I view myself as someone who doesn't wear shoes a whole awful lot, going barefoot for a day was way harder than I thought it would be.  I realized a few things:  I wear my slippers a lot.  Our house has all tiled and hardwood flooring.  We only have 1 or 2 area rugs because, well, we are messy.  In the winter we are constantly dragging in snow, the spring and fall, mud and in the summer, dirt.  So I have seen rugs as just one more thing to get dirty.  Because of this, our floors are cold almost all year long plus they are, well honestly, dirty quite frequently during the day.  I never noticed until I chose not to wear my shoes, how often I put my slippers on.  It is uncomfortable to walk on a dirty cold floor.  Not to mention the mud and rocks on the way to and from the van.  I was honestly, disturbingly uncomfortable by the end of the day wearing no shoes for most but not even all of the day.  Irritable, almost.  I was surprised at my own reaction and humbled.  I spent a good portion of the day inside working, a little outside in the driveway and nothing even touching the miles that most folks without shoes walk everyday just to get water.

I know all the well-intentioned but sometimes cliche phrases after doing something like this.  The expressions of gratitude for what you have, the compassion for those that don't, the passion for wanting to do something about it all.  And I feel and experience those things but something else as well.  Something of a hole in my heart/soul that these kinds of divides (those with and without, etc.) even exist at all.  Something of an ache, of a longing for this world to be put in such a state where those who have don't even consider keeping more than what is sufficient for themselves (myself) but give as freely as if nothing they had belonged to them alone.  And I know that this is the deep desire/longing for God.  This is feeling of separation from the Creator Himself.  This is the groaning for a reconciliation of this world that none of us can bring about with our own power.  And I am grateful.  For shoes?  Yes of course, but more so for a God who gives me (this world) a hope beyond this mess, a glimpse of life as we all see it could be from time to time.  For Love that does not change no matter how broken I (we) may be.

peace

Going barefoot...

Thursday is TOMS shoes 3rd annual "One Day Without Shoes" event.  If you don't already know, TOMS shoes is a shoes company that is more than a shoe company.  I mean how many shoe companies do you know whose founding principle is "With every pair you purchase, TOMS will give a pair of new shoes to a child in need. One for One."  Yes, you read that right.  They give away a pair of shoes for free to someone in need for every pair purchased.  As of April 2010, they have given away over 600,000 pairs!  Not like most business models taught in MBA programs today, I am sure.  A creative opportunity for those with buying power to help those without.

Anyway, Thursday April 8th is their annual campaign, not to advertise their company (although it does do that too), but to raise awareness to folks like you and me who have never known an involuntary day without shoes and who have more shoes than most people of the world have personal property, what it is like to live without shoes.  They are asking people to go barefoot for day (or an hour or ten minutes, whatever your life allows).  Ever walk on a gravel or dirt road in your bare feet?  Not so comfortable.  Go grocery shopping?  Take out the trash?  Go to school? 

Some shoe facts to consider:
Fact #1: In some developing nations, many children must walk for miles to school, clean water, and to seek medical help
Fact #2: Cuts and sores on feet can lead to infection
Fact #3: Often, children cannot attend school barefoot
Fact #4: In Ethiopia, approximately one million people are suffering from Podoconiosis, a debilitating and disfiguring disease caused by walking barefoot in volcanic soil
Fact #5: Podoconiosis is 100% preventable with basic foot hygiene and wearing shoes

Thursday, I will be going virtually barefoot as well as actually for parts of the day.  What about you?  Most of the world do not have the luxuries we take for granted everyday.  Might be good for the soul to walk a mile an another man's...well, feet I guess.

Check out their website.  Take off your shoes.  Feel the earth.  Connect to the life of someone you do not know.  Buy a pair of shoes and give a hand up.

A new shade of blue

By mid February winter blues of a slow-and-steady-few-inches-here-and-there kind of winter had set in around here.  So when we saw a big winter storm coming our way, we were actually looking forward to the change of pace and the beauty of lots of fresh clean snow.

That is until the storm got here and dumped 24" of wet, heavy snow in 36 hours on top of the 2 1/2 feet we already had plus another half a foot a few days later with more inches in between...we lost count.  It snowed every day for 6 days.  We went out into the yard a few times without our snowshoes on and Matt and I were both up past our thighs with more snow underneath!  Now I know that plenty of other parts of the country were hit with snow, lots of it and in unexpected places, this winter so I am not really complaining, just explaining why the additional 6 inches of snow-cone like snow this past Saturday just about threw me over the edge.

Since Monday, however, I am seeing a new shade of blue.  It has been amazingly beautiful the past few days and the sky has literally been a shade of blue I have either never seen before or never noticed before.  Electric blue, to be precise.  So despite the 2 feet of snow still on the ground, I KNOW that spring is here.  First the purple finches came back to the feeders, then we heard robins in the woods and two barred owls calling to one another, and today a hairy woodpecker was chasing a downy woodpecker away from the suet feeder.  Pretty soon we will see bear tracks, hear the peepers in the pond and see the ferns begin their alien-like emergence. 

And sandals, oh sweet sandals!  Nothing like a good late winter snow storm to give you spring fever.  What are you anticipating this spring?

peace

Foodie thoughts...

Shhh, don't tell anyone but the kids are in their room right now playing so nicely that I can even post.  Let's not bring it to their attention, though, or they may have to resume their normal behavior to save face.  I guess this abnormal interaction may be the result of a house full of grumpy, sickies suddenly feeling better on this Monday morning with a week full of no school ahead.  Bliss...for the moment.

So, just in case anyone is interested, I have found an amazing new ingredient that I now need to buy stock in...

smoked paprika!

I use this wonderful flavoring in everything.  Not hot like hungarian paprika or bland like regular paprika but really wonderful smokey flavor.  Awesome on pork, chicken, great in curries, and takes scrambled eggs to a whole new level. 

Unless you are a vegetarian or vegan, you know how bacon makes everything taste amazing?  And I mean everything.  For example, my kids love quiche with asparagus in it, why?  Because I add bacon.  They love wilted spinach salad.  Yep, bacon again.  Now I am not saying that my husband kids only eat vegetables with bacon on it.  They are actually pretty good about eating vegetables.  They just eat so much more of them if they have bacon on them.  My point?  Smoked paprika has a similar effect without all the fat and clogged artery consequences.  Now, you can't really substitute one for the other.  Smoked paprika in broccoli salad instead of bacon?  Don't that would do the trick but it does add such a nice smokey flavor that I think you will find all kinds of reasons to use it.

Tonight, in fact, I am using it in a recipe I found on allrecpies.com for slow cooked sweet n sour pork. 

Kids love it, Matt loves it, I love it and it goes in the crock pot!  Hard for me to find all those things in one dish.  In case you want to try it, here are my modifications:

 I use smoked paprika instead of regular (obviously!). 
No green peppers.  I think they would be a great addition but they do not like me.
2 Tbls of cider vinegar - 1/4 cup is just a little too much
No sugar at all.  The pineapples are really sweet enough on their own.

If you try the recipe or smoked paprika in anything, let me know.  I would love to have more reasons to use it.  :-)

peace

Face-to-face

Friends of ours share a beautiful farm with thier parents and will eventually take it over themselves one day.  They have recently acquired around25 chickens and started selling the eggs by word of mouth.  I just love the various sizes that come in one carton, the bright yellow/orange of the yolks, the way the whites just zoom out of the shell...so fresh! 
For the past several weeks our friends have been delivering their eggs to interested people in our church.  I have just loved watching these exchanges: people bringing back their cartons from the previous weeks to be reused, trading their hard earned dollars for farm fresh, hand gathered, lovingly raised free range eggs, seeing all the eggs cartons carefully labeled by name and date in the church frig.  I love when agriculture & community take on this interconnected relationship: farmer and eater exchanging goods in person, talking about the chickens, how the weather is affecting production, what future plans of the farm are, and chatting about life, community, work, etc.  Person to person, instead of farm to truck to store to consumer to table.  It is amazing how much more valuable an investment becomes when it has a face & a name, when it is your neighbor.  This is how all of us do more than merely eke out an existence or make ends meet, this is how we live a life: face-to-face.

peace