Work around the House and Garden

Phew. This weekend we finally got our asses in gear (that’s the expression, right?) and started to clear more of the to-be-vegetable patch to the side of the house.  Yesterday we cut down whatever overgrown chrismas trees needed removing, mostly using a bowsaw (I really enjoy using a bowsaw; a friend lent us an electric …

The Leaf and the Cloud by Mary Oliver

Driftwood Every year, once a year, I need to return to that long poem by Mary Oliver, The Leaf and the Cloud (published in 2000). It is a poem like life, with everything in it, only magnified and condensed. I can’t say much about it, only that it reverberates deeply with me, and comforts me, …

Chile’s Quit Now Challenge

I discovered Chile’s Quit Now Challenge (see the logo to the sidebar: it’s the clearest, most uncluttered, Peak Oil logo I’ve come across). I devoted some deep thinking about what I would give up… Cigarettes? Diet Coke? McDonalds? Never did that / haven’t done that in half a decade. Paper towels? TV? Airco? Plastic bags? …

Dinosaurs are Extinct: Death, Mourning and Our Children

I’m reading an interesting book called Talking with Children about loss, written by “Good Grief” counselor Maria Trozzi and co-authored by Kathy Massimini. I’m always picking up books like those. I read Hope Edelman’s Motherless Daughters, for instance, when I was pregnant, and got many comments, mostly in the vein of “how can you read …

My 2004 Zine The Puffin (part 1)

Years ago, in 2004, I put together a (literally) small “zine” called The Puffin. It was a zine for family and friends, inspired by Dan Price’s awesome Moonlight Chronicles and Danny Gregory’s Everyday Matters blog (before he became so insanely popular). I just happened upon the original .jpg version of The Puffin – I no …

Letting Her Pour Her Own Tea

DH is a Montessori preschool alumnus and I have always liked the Montessori approach, not knowing very much about it. When it was time to sign Amie up for a preschool, I started reading up on it, because we wanted her to go a Montessori preschool (She didn’t get in because of a stupid breakdown …