Pickle Lady Farm Journal

Someday, I'll make something of this...

2012-01-16T06:30:00.000-08:00

I'd like to make this blog nice, and post on it more often. I just don't seem to find the time. I know it's there, I've just misplaced it somehow...

I thought I'd at least give a little update on what's going on with the shop. The Etsy shop is doing well, lots of custom orders. I've collaborated with a fellow snarky gal and now make patterns for her shop, HitchedStitcher, and I'm making a pattern for Wend's Hell Devils shop, too. I'm also giving away 100 copies of the new "Regretsy(TM) made me do it" pattern to all the FJLs at the L.A. meetup next week. Hopefully this will help me continue to make sales through these slowest months of the year.

At Contempo Artisan Boutique, Staci has readied the upstairs of the shop for classes and supplies. I'll be selling cross stitch kits there, and teaching a series of handsewing classes. First one is February 2. I'm looking forward to doing this, as it will help me further share my love of needle and thread.

In designing for myself/the shop, I'm working on finishing a series of eyeglasses that I'm really happy with. I'm also stitching on more wooden boxes and vintage artwork. I'll post pictures when I have them framed.

Click on those pictures above for more information about the classes, or visit www.contempoartisanboutique.com.

Samuel L. Jackson reads "Go the F*** to Sleep"

2011-06-15T07:55:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjgV0aACAMc

NSFW, of course, but still hilarious.

April's Army

2011-05-16T20:28:00.000-07:00

I made this for the April's Army Charity shop on Etsy. Gonna start up some more charity snark.

33: a retrospective

2011-05-04T19:18:00.000-07:00

In just a few hours I'll not be 33 anymore. So what did I do this past year?

I finished another 30 credits of college
I nursed my Pappy back to health (he's running 5 days a week again!). Well, I helped.
Aubrey had her accident, and I became the mother of a burn survivor.
I started an Etsy shop for my needlework stuff, and some reselling of vintage.
I opened an Alibris shop and sold a bunch of books
I created over 120 cross stitch patterns
I stitched about 12 of them
Both my kids went to elementary school
I completely cleaned and organized my craft room/office, then trashed it again
I saw my best friend get married
I said goodbye to my therapist, who died
I said hello again (online) to some old friends whom I had missed

And some goals for 34:

get my office organized again and keep it that way
graduate from college
get a job/ get into grad school
Remember to be in the now, not in the then or the later
fall in love with me again.

It's been a while...

2011-04-14T20:05:00.000-07:00

... but nobody reads this anyway...

I'm in a creative slump. An intellectual slump, too. Doing schoolwork is difficult because I can't concentrate. Doing embroidery is impossible for the same reason.

In happier news, the kids have been delightful and semi-helpful and have been getting along very well. Also, Tony came home. Small things, but the most important ones.

Easter Freebie!

2011-03-31T20:01:00.000-07:00

I'm posting my first ever, hopefully not the last, series of freebie patterns here on the blog. Of course, I'd rather you give me money and buy patterns from my shop.....

here's freebie pattern #1: a marshmallow peep. Yellow. Chick. Marshmallow. Yummy. It's Easter personified from a secular viewpoint. Personally, I like them best stale. They're also good roasted over an open fire.

Click here for full PDF

Making the Jump to Blog world...

2011-03-28T05:19:00.000-07:00

I (well, one of my patterns, anyway) was featured in Tracey Knits' blog. This is the first time (to my knowledge) that one of my patterns has made the jump from etsy/facebook to a stranger's blog. That's right, I don't know her and didn't pay her or anything! Hooray!

Check it out. She's feminist, sporty, geeky, and crafty. My kind of woman.

http://www.traceyknits.com

Single Ladies - John Barrowman (HQ Original)

2011-03-14T06:09:00.000-07:00

half a year

2011-03-04T13:06:00.000-08:00

Six months ago today, my darling 6 year old baby (now 7) ran through the campground chasing her sister, tripped, and fell into the fire pit. While there were no flames, there were plenty of hot coals left over from breakfast.

I was about 10-15 yards away, trying to figure out a good place to hang a new decoration I had found. I heard the 5 year-old first. "Aubrey fell in the fire!". I'm not sure what exactly happened next, as aderenaline took over my brain, but I got to her, got ice from the cooler, put it in a lunch cooler, and put her hands in it. They were... grey, wrinkled, loose... not really hands anymore. I ran back and forth between my husband and my best friend, trying desperately to think of the best thing to do. Leave Jo at camp while we went to the hospital, or bring her? How long would we be gone? How far away was the car, anyway?

Finally, the whole family squished into Scorch's mini cooper, and he drove us to our car. We loaded the girls in the van, and I set the GPS for Hospital. Scorch had broken an ankle somewhat recently, and warned us that the "H" signs were right, not the GPS, once we got close. And off we drove. Aubrey was still screaming at the top of her lungs-- the poor thing was in so much pain, even the fast-melting ice couldn't stop it. Tony drove, and we both panicked and worried the whole way there. 40 minutes later, we pulled up to the hospital ER. Tony took Aubrey into his arms and took her in.

I parked the van and went in with JoAnn. I gave the nice man at the desk her name, insurance card, and date of birth. He knew the urgency, and told me to just go back and we'd find her. Now it's not like the ER was empty, but yet we found her directly ahead of us. Nurses were pouring sterile water over her burns into a pail, and the doctor was giving her morphine and cutting off her clothes. ...

Cut to 20 minutes later, and she's quiet now, as the morphine has kicked in. Nancy has arrived and told the staff she's my sister (and she is, genetics notwithstanding). I am given paperwork by the ER staff, and the doctor says that because he doesn't have experience with pediatric burns, and he can't be sure how severe they are with all that dead skin attached, he recommends a lifeflight to the nearest burn unit. We opt for Allentown over Baltimore, and the chopper is on its way.

There is a 200 lb maximum for riding along in the helicopter. I weigh 217. I am too fat to help my baby. Tony rides with her, and Jo and I climb into the van for a 4 hour drive to Allentown. The helicopter ride lasts 45 minutes. I call my Mom and Dad, who are at a party in Harrisburg, and tell them to get to Allentown. Now. I can't and don't elaborate except to tell them that Aubrey has fallen into the fire and got burned, and it's bad.

The next hours are blurred in driving and trying to stay calm. By the time I arrive at Lehigh Valley Hospital, she is in a room on the Pediatric ward, and is scheduled for surgery in the morning. My parents (Gods bless them, so very much) take Jo to a hotel, and Tony and I spend a sleepless night in the hospital. The next room was home to an infant (don't know what was the ailment) who cried ALL NIGHT. Poor thing. Poor us!

The surgeon rode up just before surgery, on his motorcycle, wearing his Ed Hardy tshirt, and told us not to worry. It was like a scene from ER. An hour later, after surgery, and she wakes up. The doctor has removed all the skin from her hands and forearms and has sewn onto her this still verrrrry new material called biobrane. Her hands are then coated in sheets of silver leaf, which is anti-microbial. What a relief, after hearing so much about the horrors of antibiotics, and hearing about what the treatment for burns was just 10 years ago.

We were in the hospital for 8 very long days and 7 interminable nights. By the time we left, she was able to change her own dressings, and her wounds were a mass of scabs.

Cut to 6 months later, now:

She was stronger than I could have ever imagined, stronger than anyone can expect a 6 year-old to be. She has no scars on her left hand. You'd never know that anything happened to it, except for slight discoloration if you look really close. Her right hand, her dominant hand, with which she stopped her fall, is not so lucky.

She has scars on all her fingers (but not on her thumb) that cause her fingers to bend in. She can't spread her fingers out like a fan. The skin doesn't look very much different, but one touch will tell you that those fingers aren't normal. The skin is thick and rough and looks like an old man's. It is soft to the touch except for on the edges of her fingers where the scar tissue is very thick. This is also where the seam was in her biobrane bandaging, and I'm pretty sure that's not a coincidence.

Her handwriting has been affected, as has her self-esteem. Although that's hard to judge entirely, as girls her age are normally very concerned with what their friends think.

She amazes me everyday with how fast she grows, how smart she is, how like me she can be, and yet how foreign. She is beautiful and strong and brave and clever and mine. She is mine. My girl. My Aubrey.

I love you, baby. You are my little phoenix, always rising from the ashes stronger and more magnificent than before.

Dr Seuss

2011-03-02T19:48:00.001-08:00

Happy Birthday, Dr Seuss!
available in the etsy shop.

followthrough FAIL

2011-03-01T11:37:00.000-08:00

I didn't even make it a week of consecutive blog posts! So, what have I been up to the past couple of days?

Yesterday I had an exam and a quiz and wrote a paper. The rest of the week includes another paper, a homework assignment, and another exam. Hooray for the week before Spring break!

I've also been working on patterns, and stitching up (slowly) a new design for a business card. and I FINALLY digitized some of the Douglas Adams patterns, so I can offer them as professional-looking pdf files instead of scanned hand-drawn patterns.

Ok, off to work on outlining notes for Thursday's exam.

2011-02-26T20:10:00.001-08:00

I seem to have missed posting yesterday. That's just not right: I wrote a post, and apparently just forgot to publish it.

Anyhoo, tonight Aubrey and I tried making a hoop rug out of tee shirt material. it worked at first, but then as it got bigger, the weft was too far apart to make a decent rug. I looked it up on them internets, and it seems I should have added weft threads. So next time, I will.

The "not so good" rug we made tonight is nonetheless loved by Aubrey, and she has made it into a lovely babydoll carrier.

So all's well that ends well.

Dr Who?

2011-02-24T19:18:00.000-08:00

I'm still not convinced that Matt Smith is a good doctor. And his hair always reminds me of a not-ginger Conan. Having said that, I finished season 5 tonight. There's some really great stuff in there, including the technicolor daleks, the return of the weeping angels, and the vampires of Venice.

Here is a Dalek pattern I'm still perfecting...

New Designs

2011-02-23T18:36:00.000-08:00

So I saw one pattern on etsy (came up in my activity feed) for a retro-looking woman, and I got all inspired and made a bunch (8) of retro ladies saying snarky things. I'm digging them.

You know, I pictured my shop as much more nature-inspired, but now that I'm actually designing every day, I'm much more into geeky/retro/snarky/macabre stuff. Who would have guessed?

Here's a pic of a recent pattern not yet on Etsy (still perfecting it).

Working on it...

2011-02-22T06:10:00.001-08:00

I've been posting new patterns to Etsy lately, and joined some teams. I'm spending time on the forums there, looking for help in getting more traffic to the site.

One way I know is to blog regularly, and get some followers and suchlike, but I'm REALLY bad about that. Somehow I don't mind sharing my etsy links on facebook, but I'm blocked when it comes to writing actual posts about my work.

This is my goal: for the next month, post every day. Even if it's just a sentence, or just a picture of something I like. Hopefully, once I get in the habit of posting regularly, I'll be more comfortable with it, and will get better at it. Maybe I'll even learn how to personalize the look of the blog, and make it somewhere people will WANT to visit!

worst. mom. ever.

2011-01-15T17:30:00.000-08:00

I totally just convinced the kids that if they weren't good at being their age, I can hold them back a year. Aubrey was sure she was going to have to stay six for another year till she got it right.

Then Tony came in and ruined my little game...

Blah Blah Blah

2010-12-11T11:27:00.000-08:00

Kiwi!

2010-12-11T07:16:00.000-08:00

Morgan's Kidney Fundraiser Ornaments

2010-11-21T19:17:00.000-08:00

they're up in my etsy shop. Already sold one! And I am willing to list more, if I think they'll sell.

I'm so glad I'm able to do something, however small, to help Morgan and Dawn.

Christmas Dreaming...

2010-11-11T13:07:00.001-08:00

I can't believe it's this late and I've just started thinking of Christmas! I'll never become an Etsy seller with organization skills like these!

So last year I made a ton of gifts for everyone, and had a great time doing it. This year I will scale that back a bit and concentrate my efforts to one particular charity... Morgan's Kidney. See, I have this friend named Dawn whom I've known for about 10 years. She needs a new kidney, as her old donor kidney is failing. So my friend Morgan, whom I've also known for about 10 years, is giving Dawn one of hers. This makes me tear up every time I think about it.... ahem, it's getting dusty in here...

So Dawn lives in PA, and Morgan lives in WA. That means that in addition to missing weeks of work to undergo major surgery and lose an organ, Morgan has to pay for flights and hotels. This is expensive, needless to say. Morgan's Kidney has a facebook page (be a fan!) and is collecting donations to help defray the costs of saving Dawn's life. I've got a plan up my sleeve to help them do this. More details to come!

Helicopter Ride

2010-09-11T20:17:00.000-07:00

I didn’t really want to ride in a helicopter, in fact I was terrified. But I had to. And I remember thinking, while we were taking off, that if it should crash and we died, my wife Kate and my daughter JoAnn would be watching. But there really wasn’t any reason to think it would crash, I told myself, in spite of the high winds and predicted turbulence caused by the passing hurricane. I believed in physics and engineering. Of course we can fly. The pilot asked if I was okay. I was, and I nodded. And then through the glass bubble on the floor of the helicopter, the ground separated from us and we rose above the hospital. We banked and turned East. He told me it would be a 45 minute flight.

The thing I remember most about the flight was that lake on the top of a mountain. The pilot pointed it out, though not to me, to the tech in back. But as we were all on the same channel in our headphones I heard everything they said to each other, and everything the various control towers said to our pilot. If I wanted to speak I had to press a button on the floor with my foot. I never ended up using it.

A few miles above Needmore and McConnellsburg is Pennsylvania State Game Land number 53, Meadow Grounds Lake. From the sky it looks impossible. You don’t need to know a lot about the world to understand that water flows down. But in this particular instance it appeared the water flowed up. It made no sense for a lake to be along the top of a long and high mountain. The grades on the two ridges on the sides didn’t seem significant enough to collect enough rain for a creek. But instead here was this big beautiful lake, high along the flat top of a mountain. The highest mountain in the whole area. I couldn’t take my eyes off of it. My terror began to transform into awe.

The tech kept reporting that she was asleep and her vitals were stable. Before we left he told me that kids always fell asleep, like infants in a car seat. The pilot was passed from tower to tower. We had emergency status, and except for the short period we flew near Camp David, we got first priority and an unencumbered flight path. We headed mostly East at about 130 knots, as best I could tell from the gages in front of us. We were told when we were near another aircraft and the high-tech way that collisions were prevented entailed the tower notifying the helicopter of the other aircraft, proceeded by the tech and the pilot looking for said aircraft, and then pointing it out to each other.

We flew directly over the capital of Pennsylvania, Harrisburg. The pilot turned to me and said, “There’s the Potomac, running through the Capital, Harrisburg.” I knew it was the Susquehanna, but didn’t really want to correct him. “That’s the Mighty Susquehanna, Dork.” The tech corrected and laughed at the pilot. “Crap, you’re right,” laughed the pilot. “After a while they all look alike…Is that Three Mile Island over there?”

And we did make it in about 45 minutes. When we approached the hospital, we circled a couple of times before landing. The pilot did this deliberately to look for potential obstacles and anything unusual. He identified all nearby wires and towers. He noted into the mic that there wasn’t a helicopter already on the pad, a procedure that struck me as probably the result of a previous accident.

After landing, we had to wait for what felt like an eternity while the blades of the helicopter stopped. And then we went in.

Etsy makings

2010-08-30T19:24:00.000-07:00

I've been working on a new color for organza flowers (ivory), from a fabric I got from a dress at Goodwill. I saved the corset to re-size for my boobaliciousness. The organza overlay will become dozens of flowers. The 2 layers of polyester lining will become... hopefully peony flowers, but I haven't tried them yet.

August's Bounty

2010-08-18T19:18:00.000-07:00

Up late, as usual for this time of year. Tonight I canned 1/2 gallon of green beans and 1 1/2 gallons of stewed tomato.

The beauty of August is that the work in the garden starts paying off big time, and we have more than we can eat. That means, however, that I have to put by the surplus so that it does not go to waste and stays freshest and best-tasting for winter.

This week I've also put by another gallon of pickles (bread and butter, since the dill has gone to seed), and Tony harvested the potatoes.

Oddly enough, I harvested the pumpkins and most of the winter squash over a week ago. We were set upon by squash beetles in the main patch, and so I pulled them to save them. I am trying to harden them further in the yard so that I can keep them whole through the winter, but if necessary I can cook them up and can or freeze them, too. It was a lovely harvest of sugar pumpkins, and a few butternut squash. The acorn squash has (so far) escaped the bugs, so those are still growing.

Good Advice

2010-08-11T19:53:00.000-07:00

As I contemplate making this blog a bigger part of my life, and a bigger part of my creative process, I find the following article helpful.

http://www.my3boybarians.com/2009/06/10-blogging-mistakes/

the Douglas Adams Series, continued

2010-08-02T18:38:00.000-07:00

Etsy Shop is now open

2010-08-02T18:34:00.001-07:00

I've listed my first item for sale on Etsy. It's a series of patterns to stitch, based on the books of Douglas Adams. Here are some pics of the finished samples. Once I get them cleaned up and framed, I'll sell them as well. I'm hard at work on the next 2 series of stitchery, too!

today's guilty pleasure:

2010-07-30T18:54:00.001-07:00

Degrassi. Did you know you can watch for free on teennick? Yes, you have to go to a site with "teen" in the name, but the show is still as drama-licious as ever. This is bad, I may have to stay up late.

We Got the Beets

2010-07-16T19:18:00.001-07:00

You know what I like about the beet harvest? Even if you've picked them, you can store them for a good couple of weeks in the fridge before putting them by. Of course they're best fresh from the ground, but on a hot day like today, I decided to wait until sundown to can them. Then by the time it cooled off outside, I decided I would rather have a couple of beers, stitch up one of my new patterns (I've been designing like mad lately), and hang.

The Beets can wait till tomorrow.... a

searching for a porpoise...

2010-06-21T19:21:00.000-07:00

I own about a million (ok, really a hundred or so) craft books. So why can't I find a pattern for a dolphin????

Why do I need a dolphin? Stay tuned for a pic after I finish the project....

Selling the Stash

2010-06-15T17:44:00.000-07:00

Pappy and I are preparing to sell off some books this summer. Although I LOVE my vintage craft cache, in reality there are many that I will not miss. I'll be selling craft books on pickleladyfarm@etsy, and other books (from the HUGE library we have no room for) on Amazon and other book sites.

to dye for

2010-05-31T20:24:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Kate and Nancy, my partners in a fun tie-dye weekend. It felt great to be all creative and stuff! I'll try to get some pics to post from Nancy.

Erin Go Braugh

2010-03-17T20:07:00.000-07:00

Happy St. Patrick's Day! When a bunch of Americans celebrate the myth of a British man saving the Irish people, sanctified by the Catholics, by drinking to excess.

Made Irish Soda Bread with green butter, apples and cheddar with the Coop kids today. Makes me want to make homemade butter always. I wonder if it would be cheaper? Prolly not, because we'd just eat more butter.

Thinking of you, Krissy. It would be your birthday today.

Thinking of you, Pap Pap. Gonna finish off the night with a toast and a shot just for you. We miss you.

Finding my Voice

2010-03-16T19:22:00.000-07:00

I've been making stuff. Lots of Christmas embroidery and plush foods and crosstitch, a needle-felted anatomically correct heart for my Valentine, Death Kitty (Ask not for whom the kitty meows, he meows for THEE!), a pear and a table centerpiece, and some others that have not been given yet, so I can't say what they are...

I want to get Picklelady Farm going on Etsy, but I am looking for something that will truly consume me, that I will love even though it is terribly hard work.

Hurry, inspiration, and don't leave me once you're here!

What I underlined: Berry, The Unsettling of America, Ch 5 edition:

2010-02-04T11:29:00.000-08:00

Chapter 5: Living in the future: The "Modern" Agricultural Ideal

When people do not live where they work, they do not feel the effects of what they do. The people who make wars do not fight them. ... The people responsible for the various depredations of "agribusiness" do not live on farms. They-- like many others of less wealth and power-- live in ghettos of their own kind in homes full of "conveniences" which signify that all is well.

The most characteristically modern behavior, or misbehavior, was made possible by a redefinition of humanity which allowed it to claim, not the sovereignty of its place, neither godly nor beastly, in the order of things, but rather an absolute sovereignty, placing the human will in charge of itself and of the universe.

Politicians understand very well the power of the promise to build a better or more prosperous or more secure future. Parents characteristically strive and sacrifice to make a better or more secure future for their children. Workers work toward a secure future in which they will retire and enjoy themselves. Our obsession with security is a measure of the power we have granted the future to hold over us.

The future, so full of material blessings, is nevertheless threatened with dire shortages of food, energy, and security unless we exploit the earth even more "freely," with greater speed and less caution. The obvious paradoxes involved in this-- that we are using up future necessities in order to make a more abundant future; that final loss has been made a calculated strategy of annual gain-- have so far been understood to no great effect.

farming has been harder to industrialize than manufacturing, and when industrialization has come, it has not brought shorter hours or greater ease or less worry. ... In the practical circumstances of the modern farm, the popular yearning for the future is directly felt as a yearning for relief from weariness and worry.

In addition to the ethical questions involved, the use of animals as machines-- penning them in feed lots and cages-- creates an enormous pollution problem. ... Mr Billard forgot, or he never knew, that once plants and animals were raised together on the same farms-- which therefore neither produced unmanageable surpluses of manure, to be wasted and to pollute the water supply, nor depended on such quantities of commercial fertilizer.

This is the favorite law of the exploiter. It holds that for every loss there is a gain that is opposite and at least equal. This law is good fortune itself, for it means that you can do no wrong.

Recycling human, animal and crop wastes will be a key to the operation of the farm.

Confronted with the living substance of farming-- the complexity, even mysteriously interrelated lives on which it depends, from the microorganisms in the soil to the human consumers-- the agriculture specialist can think only of subjecting it to total control, of turning it into a machine.

In the modern city unprecedented organization and unprecedented disorder exist side by side; one could argue that they have a symbiotic relationship, that they feed and thrive upon each other.

The specialist puts himself in charge of one possibility. By leaving out all other possibilities, he enfranchises his little fiction of total control. Leaving out all the "non-functional" or otherwise undesirable possibilities, he makes a rigid, exclusive boundary within the absolute control becomes, if not possible, at least conceivable.

having chosen the possibility of total control within a small and highly simplified enclosure, he simply abandons the rest, leaves it totally out of control; that is, he forsakes or even repudiates the complex partly mysterious patterns of interdependence and cooperation, controllable only within limits, by which human culture joins itself to its sources in the natural world.

The control by which a tomato plant lives through January is much more problematic than the natural order by which an oak tree or a titmouse lives through January. The patterns of cooperation are safer than the mechanisms of exclusion, even thought they lack the illusory safety of "control."

Therefore, if one is going to make a "model farm," one must give it a boundary, if possible a roof, that will keep out whatever does not "work." Weeds, insects, diseases do not work; leave them out. The weather works only sometimes, or on the average; leave the weather out. The work can be done by machines; leave the people out. But chemicals and drugs, no matter how dangerous; do work; they are part of the boundary, so they can be let in.

People are not going to be free or dignified or even well fed just because some specialist says that they will be. Or says that whey will be allowed to be, in certain areas-- for that is what these "agribusiness" visionaries are in fact saying. People will be allowed to be free to do certain things in certain places prescribed by other people. They will be free to work in the places set aside for work, free to play or relax in places set aside for recreation, free to live (whatever that may mean) in places set aside for living.

They will not live where they work or work where they live. They will not work where they play. And they will not, above all, play where they work.

They will have nothing to say about how the land is used or the kind or quality of its produce. ... The people will eat what the corporations decide for them to eat. They will be detached and remote from the sources of their life, joined to them only by corporate tolerance.

as a society we have abandoned any interest in the survival of anything small.

The crucial concept here is that of "limitless" or "infinite" quantity. ... Mr. Esfandiary's unlimited, if theoretical, gluttony is licensed and given an illusory respectability because of its claim to be "scientific" -- godly appetite may be within the competence of a computer-- and because, as a "long-range planner," he does his theorizing in the future, where it cannot very handily be called into account.
It is nevertheless clear that Mr. Esfandiary's "future" calls for unprecedented violence. It would require the secrifice of every value that is not quantitative. ... The machine would become an anti-god-- if not infinite, at least absolute.

To propose to blend such a farm with human values is simply to acknowledge that it has no human values, that human values have been removed from it.

If we do not live where we work, and when we work, we are wasting our lives, and our work too.

What I underlined: Berry, The Unsettling of America, chapter 7 edition

2010-02-03T17:08:00.000-08:00

I don't care if I bore others with this stuff, it makes me happy. Now then:

It is hardly surprising, then, that there should be some profound resemblances between our treatment of our bodies and our treatment of the earth.

And yet these works that so magnify us also dwarf us, reduce s to insignificance. They magnify us because we are capable of them. The diminish us because, say what we will, once we build beyond a human scale, once we conceive ourselves as Titans or as gods, we are lost in magnitude; we cannot control or limit what we do.

[Berry quoting a letter he received] "Healing, it seems to me, is a necessary and useful word when we talk about agriculture. ... The theme of suicide belongs in a book about agriculture ..."

By health, in other words, we mean merely the absence of disease. ... But the concept of health is rooted in the concept of wholeness. ... But how can it be whole and yet be dependent, as it obviously is, upon other bodies and upon the earth, upon all the rest of Creation, in fact?... Our bodies are also not distinct from the bodies of other people, on which they depend in a complexity of ways from biological to spiritual. They are not distinct from the bodies of plants and animals, with which we are involved in the cycles of feeding and in the intricate companionships of ecological systems and of the spirit. They are not distinct from the earth, the sun and moon, the the other heavenly bodies.

Persons cannot be whole alone. ... Intelectually, we know that these patterns of interdependence exist; we understand them better now perhaps than we wver have before; yet modern social and cultural patterns contradict them and make it difficult or impossible to honor them in practice.

Healing is impossible in loneliness ... To be healed we must come with all the other creatures to the feast of Creation. ... They cut off access to the wilderness of Ceration where we must go to be reborn-- to receive the awareness, at once humbling and exhilarating, grievous and joyful, that we are a part of Creation, one with all that we live from and all that, in turn, lives from us. They destroy the communal rites of passage that turn us toward the wilderness and bring us home again.

At some point we began to assume that the life of the body would be the business of grocers and medical doctors, who need take no interest in the spirit, whereas the life of the spirit would be the business of churches, which would have at best only a negative interest in the body.

The isolation of the body sets it into direct conflict with everything else in Creation. It gives it a value that is destructive of every other value. That this has happened is paradoxical, for the body was set apart from the soul in order that the soul should triumph over the body.

You cannot devalue the body and value the soul-- or value anything else. ... Relationships with all other creatures become competitive and exploitive rather than collaborative and convivial.

By dividing body and soul, we divide both from all else. We thus condemn ourselves to a loneliness for which the only compensation is violence-- against other creatures, against the earth, against ourselves.

After the games and idle flourishes of modern youth, we use them only as shipping cartons to transport our brains and our few employable muscles back and forth to work.
As for our spirits, they seem more and more to comfort themselves by buying things.

what is the burden of the Bible if not a sense of the mutuality of influence, rising out of an essential unity, among soul and body and community and world? These are all the works of God, and it is therefore the work of virtue to make or restore harmony among them. ... The Bible's aim, as I read it, is not the freeing of the spirit from the world. It is the handbook of their interaction. It says that they cannot be divided; that their mutuality, their unity, is inescapable; that they are not reconciled in division, but in harmony. What else can be meant by the resurrection of the body? The body should be "filled with light," perfected in understanding. ... We are to treat others as we would want to be treated; thought is thus barred from any easy escape into aspiration or ideal, is turned around and forced into action. The following verses from Proverbs are not very likely the original work of a philosopher-king; the are overheard from generations of agrarian grandparents whose experience taught them that spiritual qualities become earthly events

this is a network, a spiritual network, by which each part is connected to every other part.

Healing, on the other hand, complicates the system by opening and restoring connections among the various parts-- in this way restoring the ultimate simplicity of their union.

fragmentation is a disease

One's "identity" is apparently the immaterial part of one's being ... Treatment, it might be thought, would logically consisit in the restoration of these connections: the lost identity would find itself by recognizing physical landmarks, by connecting itself responsibly to practical circumstances; it would learn to stay put in the body to which it belongs and in the place to which preference or history or accident has brought it; it would, in short, find itself in finding its work.

There is, in practice, no such thing as autonomy.

The result is another absurd pseudo-ritual, "accepting one's body," which may take years or may be the distraction of a lifetime. ... she will see her own beauty only by a difficult rebellion.

The concerns of the body-- all that is comprehended in the term nurture-- are thus degraded, denied any respected place among the "higher things" and even among the more exigent practicalities.
The first sexual division comes about when nurture is made the exclusive concern of women.

Thinkers do not act. ... Workers are simplified or specialized into machine parts to do the wage-work of the body, which they were initially permitted to think of as "manly" because for the most part women did not do it.

In the urban-industrial situation the confinement of these traditional tasks divided women more and more from the "important" activities of the new economy. ... This determination that nurturing should become exclusively a concern of women served to signify to both sexed that neither nurture nor womanhood was very important.

As the persons exclusively in charge of the tasks of nurture, women often came into sole charge of the household budget; they became family purchasing agents. ... Women had become customers ... The modern housewife was isolated from her husband, from her school-age children, and from other women. She was saddled with work from which much of the skill, hence much of the dignity, had been withdrawn, and which she herself was less and less able to consider important. ... Such a woman must be told-- or subtly made to understand-- that she must not be a drudge; that she must not let her work affect her looks, that she must not become "unattractive," that she must always be fresh, cheerful, young, shapely, and pretty. All her sexual and mortal fears would thus be given voice, and she would be made to reach for money.

Motivated no longer by practical needs, but by loneliness and fear, women began to identify themselves by what they bought rather than by what they did. ... All these "improvements" involved a radical simplification of mind that was bound to have complicated, and ironic, results.

The division of sexual energy from the functions of household and community that it ought both to empower and to grace is analogous to that other modern division between hunger and the earth.

The sacrament of sexual union, which in the time of the household was a communion of workmates, and afterward tried to be a lovers' paradise, has now become a kind of marketplace in which husband and wife represent each other as sexual property.

The model of economic competition proved as false to marriage as to farming. ... Sexual romance cannot bear to acknowledge the generality of instinct, whereas sexual capitalism cannot acknowledge its particularity. But sexuality appears to be both general and particular. One cannot love a particular woman, for instance, unless one loves womankind-- if not all women, at least other women. The capsule of sexual romance leaves out this generality, this generosity of instinct; it excludes Aphrodite and Dionysus. And it fails for that reason. Though sexual love can endure between the same two people for a long time, it cannot do so on the basis of this pretense of the exclusiveness of affection.

Husbands and wives become competitors necessarily, for their only freedom is to exploit each other or to escape.

The idea of fidelity is perverted beyond redemption by understanding it as a grim, literal duty enforced only by willpower. This is the "religious" insanity of making a victim of the body as a victory of the soul.

Virtue, like harmony, cannot exist alone; a virtue must lead to harmony between one creature and another. ... We heard the words "forsaking all others" repeated over and over again for so long that we lost the sense of their practical justification. They assumed the force of superstition: people came to be faithful in marriage not out of any understanding of the meaning of faith or of marriage, but out of the same fear of obscure retribution that made one careful not to break a mirror or spill the salt.

It is possible to open this issue of the practicality of fidelity by considering that the modern age was made possible by the freeing, and concurrently by the cheapening, of energy. ... In modern times we have never been able to subject our use of energy to a sense of responsibility anywhere near complex enough to be equal to its effects.
It may be that the principle of sexual fidelity, once it is again fully understood, will provide us with as good an example as we can find of the responsible use of energy.

At the root of culture must be the realization that uncontrolled energy is disorderly-- that in nature all energies move in forms; that, therefore, in a human order energies must be given forms. ... The forsaking of all others is a keeping of faith, not just with the chosen one, but with the ones forsaken.

Another use of fidelity is to preserve the possibility of devotion against the distractions of novelty. ... But fidelity prepares us for the return of these moments, which give us the highest joy we can know: that of union, communion, atonement

To forsake all others does not mean-- because it cannot mean-- to ignore or neglect all others, to hide or be hidden from all others, or to desire or love no others. ... One cannot enact or fulfill one's love for womankind or mankind, or even for all the women or men to whom one is attracted. If one is to have the power and delight of one's sexuality, then the generality of instinct must be resolved in a responsible relationship to a particular person. ... No matter how much one may love the world as a whole, one can live fully in it only by living responsibly in some small part of it. ... the paradox that one can become whole only by the responsible acceptance of one's partiality.

One lives in marriage and in sexuality; at home and in the world. It is impossible, for instance, to conceive tha ta man could despise women and yet love his wife, or love his own place in the world and yet deal destructively with other places.

more to come...

What I underlined: Berry, The Unsettling of America, Ch 6 edition:

2010-02-01T19:07:00.000-08:00

Chapter 6: The Use of Energy
(just assume these are all quotes, unless otherwise noted)

In speaking of the use of energy, then, we are speaking of an issue of religion, whether we like it or not.

Religion, in the root sense of the word, is what binds us back to the source of life. ... The lives that feed us have to be killed before they enter our mouths; we can only use the fossil fuels by burning them up.

The human pattern of cyclic use is exemplified in the small Oriental peasant farms described in F. H. King's Farmers of Forty Centuries, in which all organic residues, plant and animal and human, are returned to the soil, thus keeping intact the natural cycle of "birth, growth, maturity, death, and decay" that Sir Albert Howard identified as the "Wheel of Life."

Technology joins us to energy, to life.

Lives, skills, and tools were culturally indivisible.

The question at issue, then, is not of distinction but of balance.

The energy that comes from living things is produced by combining the four elements of medieval science: earth, air, fire (sunlight), and water. This is current energy. ... It is not available in long-term supplies; in any form in which it can be preserved, as in humus, in the flesh of living animals, in cans or freezers or grain elevators, it still perishes fairly quickly in comparison, say , to coal or plutonium. It lasts over long term only in the living cycle of birth, growth, maturity, death, and decay. The technology appropriate to the use of this energy, therefore, preserves its cycles. It is a technology that never escapes into its own logic but remains bound in analogy to natural law.
The energy that is made available, and consumed, by machines is typically energy that can be accumulated in stockpiles or reservoirs. Energy from wind and water obviously does not fit this category, but it suggests the possibility of bigger and better storage batteries, which one must assume will sooner or later be produced. ... This mechanically derived energy is supposed to have set people free from work and other difficulties once considered native to the human condition. whether or not it has done so in any meaningful sense is questionable ... We now have a purely mechanical technology that is very nearly a law unto itself.

Mechanical technology is based on quantities of materials and fuels that are finite. If the prophets of science foresee "limitless abundance" and "infinite resources," one must assume that they are speaking figuratively, meaning simply that they cannot comprehend how much there may be. In that sense, they are right; there are sources of energy that, given the necessary machinery, are inexhaustible as far as we can see.

we are trustworthy only so far as we can see. The length of our vision is our moral boundary. ... It is already certain that our planet alone-- not to mention potential sources in space-- can provide us with more energy and materials than we can use safely or well.

It is typical of the mentality of our age that we cannot conceive of infinity except as an enormous quantity. We cannot conceive of it as orderly process, as pattern or cycle, as shapeliness. We conceive of it as inconceivable quantity-- that is, as the immeasurable. ... If we think, for instance, of infinite energy as immeasurable fuel. We are committed in the same thought to its destruction, for fuel must be destroyed to be used.

But who will control the use of that energy? How and for what purposes will it be used? How much can be used without overthrowing ecological or social or political balance? Nobody knows.
The energy that is made available to us by living things, on the other hand, is made available not as an inconceivable quantity, but as a conceivable pattern And for the mastery of this pattern-- that is, the ability to see its absolute importance and to preserve it in use-- one does not need a PH.D. or a laboratory or a computer. One can master it in this sense, in fact, without having any analytic or scientific understanding of it at all. It was mastered, better than our scientific experts have mastered it, by "primitive" peasants and tribesmen thousands of years before modern science.

The moral order by which we use machine-derived energy is comparatively simple. Whatever uses this sort of energy works simply as a conduit that carries it beyond use: the energy goes in as "fuel" and comes out as "waste".

The moral order appropriate to the use of biological energy, on the other hand, requires the addition of a third term: production, consumption, and return. It is the principle of return that complicates matters, for it requires responsibility, care, of a different and higher order than that required by production and consumption alone, and it calls for methods and economies of a different kind. In an energy economy appropriate to the use of biological energy, all bodies, plant and animal and human, are joined in a kind of energy community. ... They die into each other's life, live into each other's death. They do not consume in the sense of using up. They do not produce waste. What they take in they change, but they change it always into a form necessary for its use by a living body of another kind. And this exchange goes on and on, round and round, the Wheel of Life rising out of the soil, descending into it, through the bodies of creatures.

The soil is the great connector of lives, the source and destination of all. It is the healer and restorer and resurrector, by which disease passes into health, age into youth, death into life. Without proper care for it we can have no community, because without proper care for it we can have no life.

It is alive itself. It is a grave, too, of course. ... Within this powerful economy, it seems that death occurs only for the good of life. And having followed the cycle around, we see that we have not only a description of the fundamental biological process, but also a metaphor of great beauty and power.

Because soil is alive, various, intricate, and because its processes yield more readily to imitation than to analysis, more readily to care than to coercion, agriculture can never be an exact science. There is an inescapable kinship between farming and are, for farming depends as much on character, devotion, imagination, and the sense of structure, as on knowledge. It is a practical art.
But it is also a practical religion, a practice of religion, a rite. By farming we enact our fundamental connection with energy and matter, light and darkness. In the cycles of farming, which carry the elemental energy again and again through the seasons and the bodies of living things, we recognize the only infinitude within reach of the imagination.

Cultivation is at the root of the sense both of culture and of cult. The ideas of tillage and worship are thus joined in culture. And these words all come from an Indo-European root meaning both "to revolve" and "to dwell". To live, survive on the earth, to care for the soil, and to worship, all are bound at the root to the idea of a cycle.

food is therefore a cultural product

agriculture is not only not a concern of culture, but not even a concern of science, for they have abandoned interest in teh health of the farming communities on the one and in the health of the land on the other. They appear to have concluded that agriculture is purely a commercial concern; its purpose is to provide as much feel as quickly and cheaply and with as few man-hours as possible and to be a market for machines and chemicals.

it seems to me that the way was prepared when the specialized shapers or makers of agricultural thought simplified their understanding of energy and began to treat current, living, biological energy as if it were a store of energy extractable by machinery. At that point the living part of the technology began to be overpowered by the mechanical. ... growth apart from life... Let loose from any moral standard or limit, the machine was also let loose in another way: it replaced the Wheel of Life as the governing cultural metaphor. Life came to be seen as a road, to be traveled as fast as possible, never to return. Or, to put it another way, the Wheel of Life became an industrial metaphor; rather than turning in place, revolving in order to dwell, it began to roll in the "highway or progress" toward an ever-receding horizon.

February Resolutions

2010-01-31T09:16:00.000-08:00

1. get the furnace fixed. Again. Brrrr!
2. keep up with assignments/meetings/etc. Keep my calendar current, and USE IT.
3. create a clear shared vision for the next year of Local Bounty's growth.
4. stay creative, eat less, move around more. Dance!

Monsanto: NOT the company of the year in my life!

2010-01-29T05:24:00.001-08:00

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN2713638120100127?type=marketsNews

Just Like Riding a bike.. NOT

2010-01-16T19:05:00.000-08:00

We went ice skating today for Tony's 46th birthday. Yes, he's incredibly old. That's not what this post is about.

Anyway, lots of things come right back to me after long periods of not doing them... bike riding, horseback riding, sex, tetherball, tennis.... but with ice skating, not so much.

It was fun, but I was holding all my tension in my (already stressed) ankles, so that sucked. It was really fun once I got the re-hang of it.

Growing up, we hardly ever went roller skating, but because of my brother's obsession with ice hockey we went ice skating regularly. I never got great or anything, but I could skate for an hour without touching the side and without falling.

Today, my best was about 30 seconds, and I thought that was pretty darn good.

To do: lose weight, dance more, thus skate better.

Resolved:

2010-01-11T20:18:00.000-08:00

usually I don't make new year's resolutions, since they're always broken. But last year I made a late one in mid-January: to be vegetarian on Tuesdays, and eat fish on Thursdays. You know, just as a nod to a healthier lifestyle.

Well, we kept our resolution all year (thanksgiving week and one week on vacation were the exceptions).

So, this year, I'm resolving to keep up with this, my blog. I'm resolving to keep in touch with my loved ones in this way.

Today was the first day of classes for the Spring Semester. I had Phil10, Critical Thinking. It's pretty much "the philosophy behind our rhetoric and how we market". It looks totally doable work-wise, although the prof. is a really nervous talker. He definitely seems to know his stuff though and seems aware of his weak lecturing ability. Hopefully next class we'll be able to get discussions going since we'll all have the text by then.

PS: why don't people buy their books before classes start???? Oh yeah, because profs list books you don't really need to buy...

PPS: to my prof friends: why u do that? Stop it.

Bye Cable

2010-01-06T16:17:00.000-08:00

So we decided for our New Year resolution to give up the cable. So far so good. We've been watching Netflix and playing Wii a bit more but all in all I think it was a good decision. Right now the kids are up and dancing to Who Let the Dogs Out on the the Wii.

------------------

As Tony's got the "Eye of the Tiger" right now, I'm taking over the post. I must say, Just Dance is a fun game, even though it's missing some functionality that I'd like. Needless to say, at the next wedding I attend, the family and I will have some killer dance routines planned.

Morning in Times Square

2009-10-29T05:13:00.001-07:00

Morning in Times Square
Originally uploaded by toekneesan

Jo conte

2009-10-18T08:54:00.001-07:00

Jo conte
Originally uploaded by toekneesan

Horses

2009-09-05T05:38:00.001-07:00

Horses
Originally uploaded by toekneesan

On my run

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Food pictures

2009-09-01T17:56:00.000-07:00

I went through my Flicker account and grouped all the food pictures.This is the resulting collection.

I plan on adding more information about many of the pictures but quite a few have sufficient explanation already.

Food

2009-08-31T18:42:00.000-07:00

This is sort of, de facto, a food blog. So in the spirit of that, I thought I'd post this little film I just got from one of Kate's folks. It's actually that person's relative-by-marriage's nephew. Where ever it came from, it seems to be fresh.

It's called sannakji in Korea, and it seems like it's the equivalent of eating oysters. It's popular among some martial artists and like oysters, it seems those who eat it believe it imbues some potency upon consumption. It's also apparently a struggle trying to eat a live octopus. Some reading I've done on it noted that it was sometimes a serious problem with folks who've had to much to drink. The beast is of course trying to survive, so they fight on the way down. They need to be thoroughly chewed else they could gab a hold on the way down and choke their diner. That's one of the reasons it served on chopped seaweed and with sesame oil. The seaweed helps to prevent its suction cups from attaching to the plate. And the oil helps hinder its ability to attach inside your mouth. Here's a National Geographic flick on the dish.

Saw seven deer on my run this morning. This is one. Her two fawns are in the bush to the left.

2009-08-25T04:49:00.001-07:00

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Originally uploaded by toekneesan

Thanks, Yard!!

2009-08-16T21:46:00.000-07:00

You know how when your cat likes you, (s)he will leave you mice, bunnies, birds, etc. as "gifts"?

Well, I think our yard likes us. Unbidden, it keeps leaving gifts of food for the family.

First there were the morels last year. Then this year we found Truffles while harvesting potatoes. This week it was a bunch of oyster mushrooms growing on a dead elm tree in the yard. And a large amount of sulfur shelf mushrooms down the street, this time sans poison ivy!

-the pickle lady

p.s.: still have beets, broccoli, cauliflower, corn to put by...

Foggy morning

2009-08-14T04:31:00.001-07:00

0814090730.jpg
Originally uploaded by toekneesan

Dead Turtle

2009-08-14T04:12:00.001-07:00

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Originally uploaded by toekneesan

A new record in "putting by"

2009-08-13T19:08:00.000-07:00

The picklelady is tired from making 5# of sauerkraut, 1/2 gallon pickled blueberry, 1/2 gallon pickled tomato, 1/2 gallon mixed turkish pickle, 1 gallon sweet pickle with dill, 2# dried fruits (blueberry, cherry, banana, plum), 10 quarts of frozen blueberries, 6 pints of spiced blueberry jam. Also started the 10-day process of making Glad's Pickles, an old-fashioned fermented sweet (1 1/2 gallons).

This marks a new record in the amount of food I've put by in a single day, I think. I'll update with recipes and reviews later. For now, a movie and a beer, then bed!

Dewey Web

2009-08-13T04:21:00.001-07:00

downsized_0813090719.jpg
Originally uploaded by toekneesan

The pain and the Ecstasy...

2009-08-12T21:09:00.000-07:00

It's not a secret-- I love to pickle things, cook them, freeze them, can them, eat them.

My "friend" Vicki gave me her harvest of pickling cukes that had grown to enormous size (like 3"x8") while she was on vacation. Not one to look a gift food in the mouth, I happily accepted her offer. What I got was approximately 50 lbs of cucumbers, picked 4 days ago and kept in the fridge.

I added those to the 10 or so I had from my garden and the 3 from my CSA box today, and ended up with too much work to do in too little time.

Then I went blueberry picking tonight and got about 1 1/2 gallons of berries to put by. Plus beets, broccoli, corn, cauliflower, green peppers, potatoes, onions, carrots, and cabbage in the fridge waiting to be put by.

Although I dearly love a challenge, ACK!

Julie and Julia

2009-08-07T18:48:00.001-07:00

What a wonderful movie. We laughed, we cried, we got hungry! This movie should be rated X for being food porn!

Short-brined dills-- by Picklelady

2009-08-05T14:08:00.001-07:00

Much experimentation this season with lacto-fermentation. How long, what container, whole vs. sliced, what spices added to the brine..........

So this brings me to posting my recipe for short-brined dills.

Brining the cukes overnight in saltwater gives them a slight fermented taste, but nothing like true fermentation. I think the subtle difference the brining makes really makes these pickles stand out.

Ok, here it is.

cukes, sliced or speared. Cukes should be FRESH, picked that day, preferably. European varieties should have their spines rubbed off, but no need to do so with the weak spines of most traditional cukes. the blossom ends can harbor bacteria, so I slice them off (just the skin). I usually slice off the skin of the vine ends too, just because that part is a bit tough. Use any pickling cukes, and in a pinch eating cukes can be pickled, they're just not as good.
Layer the cukes with pickling salt and ice cubes in a bowl. place a weight on the top (I use a dinner plate), and let them marinate overnight, 12-24 hours is best.
Here's where your personal tastes come in: I don't rinse mine, but lots of people do. Anyway, whether you rinse or not, drain the cukes well.
now stuff them in a jar, or jars. Fill the jars about halfway with cukes.
add a wild grape leaf, or a couple of sour cherry leaves, or an oak leaf. The tannins in the leaves help keep the pickle crisp.
add a handful of fresh dill per quart. (heads are ok)
add some garlic (I use about a head of garlic for a half gallon jar of pickles)
add other spices to taste. I use peppercorns, cumin seeds, mustard seed. You can use pickling spice, onion juice, cloves, bay leaves.... the list is endless. experiment to see what suits you best.
Fill the rest of the jar with brined cukes. Leave an inch at the top, minimum 1/2 inch.
bring to a boil in a nonreactive saucepan: 1 part vinegar to 1 part water, add pickling salt if you like (I use 1 pinch of pickling salt for every 2 cups of water). Fill the jars with the vinegar brine, close with 2-part lids.
Put your pickles-to-be in the fridge for a week, then eat them. They'll keep a couple of months, but they won't last that long!! This year I tried sealing some of the jars in a pressure canner (10#, 25 minute for quarts), but I haven't tried those yet.

Happy Pickles!

Bees

2009-07-30T15:50:00.001-07:00

downsized_0730091849.jpg
Originally uploaded by toekneesan

Cow

2009-07-30T15:43:00.001-07:00

downsized_0730091841a.jpg
Originally uploaded by toekneesan

Local Indie Bookstore Saves Planet!

2009-07-16T10:04:00.000-07:00

A wonderful little film about some of the ecological advantages of buying from your local independent bookstore. Hats off to the folks at The Regulator Bookshop who put this together. Nicely done!

Jo and Aubrey's squid

2009-07-05T09:58:00.003-07:00

Jo and Aubrey's squid
Originally uploaded by toekneesan

Jo and Aubrey's squid

2009-07-05T09:58:00.001-07:00

Jo and Aubrey's squid
Originally uploaded by toekneesan

FWD:Our neighbor's out building burned last night.

2009-06-26T10:42:00.005-07:00

FWD:Our neighbor's out building burned last night.
Originally uploaded by toekneesan

FWD:Our neighbor's out building burned last night.

2009-06-26T10:42:00.003-07:00

FWD:Our neighbor's out building burned last night.
Originally uploaded by toekneesan

FWD:Our neighbor's out building burned last night.

2009-06-26T10:42:00.001-07:00

FWD:Our neighbor's out building burned last night.
Originally uploaded by toekneesan

Garden & Art

2009-06-23T17:01:00.011-07:00

Garden & Art
Originally uploaded by toekneesan

Garden & Art

2009-06-23T17:01:00.009-07:00

Garden & Art
Originally uploaded by toekneesan

Garden & Art

2009-06-23T17:01:00.007-07:00

Garden & Art
Originally uploaded by toekneesan

Garden & Art

2009-06-23T17:01:00.005-07:00

Garden & Art
Originally uploaded by toekneesan

Garden & Art

2009-06-23T17:01:00.003-07:00

Garden & Art
Originally uploaded by toekneesan

Garden & Art

2009-06-23T17:01:00.001-07:00

Garden & Art
Originally uploaded by toekneesan

downsized_0621091549.jpg

2009-06-21T12:50:00.007-07:00

downsized_0621091549.jpg
Originally uploaded by toekneesan

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2009-06-21T12:50:00.005-07:00

downsized_0621091548.jpg
Originally uploaded by toekneesan

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2009-06-14T08:06:00.001-07:00

downsized_0614091105.jpg
Originally uploaded by toekneesan

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2009-06-12T15:28:00.001-07:00

downsized_0612091827.jpg
Originally uploaded by toekneesan

greens

2009-05-17T13:02:00.005-07:00

greens
Originally uploaded by toekneesan

Play

greens

2009-05-17T13:02:00.003-07:00

greens
Originally uploaded by toekneesan

Play

greens

2009-05-17T13:02:00.001-07:00

greens
Originally uploaded by toekneesan

Play

Tilled

2009-05-17T12:55:00.001-07:00

Tilled
Originally uploaded by toekneesan

Garden

0511091615a.jpg

2009-05-11T14:17:00.001-07:00

0511091615a.jpg
Originally uploaded by toekneesan

Hatch Show Print

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2009-05-10T10:22:00.001-07:00

downsized_0510091320.jpg
Originally uploaded by toekneesan

Morels

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2009-05-10T09:31:00.001-07:00

downsized_0510091230.jpg
Originally uploaded by toekneesan

0510091114.jpg

2009-05-10T09:23:00.001-07:00

0510091114.jpg
Originally uploaded by toekneesan

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2009-04-23T16:26:00.001-07:00

downsized_0423091925.jpg
Originally uploaded by toekneesan

downsized_0423091915b.jpg

2009-04-23T16:20:00.007-07:00

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Originally uploaded by toekneesan

At the park.

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2009-04-23T16:20:00.003-07:00

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Originally uploaded by toekneesan

At the park.

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2009-04-23T16:20:00.001-07:00

downsized_0423091916b.jpg
Originally uploaded by toekneesan

At the park.

Aubrey and Hugo Cabret

2009-04-21T18:40:00.000-07:00

Aubrey asked about my mom today. I told her I was worried about her. She asked if she'd be okay. I told her I didn't know.

Then, before bed, we read the last chapter of the wonderful book, The Invention of Hugo Cabret. Here are the first two sentences of that chapter:

Time can play all sorts of tricks on you.

In the blink of an eye, babies appear in carriages, coffins disappear into the ground, wars are won, and children transform, like butterflies, into adults.

Yes, time is a jerk that way.

Cutting our bangs

2009-04-18T10:34:00.001-07:00

Cutting our bangs
Originally uploaded by toekneesan

Cutting our bangs

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2009-03-28T09:46:00.001-07:00

0328091244.3g2
Originally uploaded by toekneesan

Swing

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2009-03-21T13:50:00.001-07:00

downsized_0321091649.jpg
Originally uploaded by toekneesan

Swamp cabbage

2009-03-21T13:39:00.001-07:00

Swamp cabbage
Originally uploaded by toekneesan

Swamp

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2009-03-21T13:24:00.001-07:00

downsized_0321091623.jpg
Originally uploaded by toekneesan

Pink

2009-03-21T11:34:00.001-07:00

Pink
Originally uploaded by toekneesan

Tulips

Church and State

2009-03-13T15:32:00.001-07:00

Church and State
Originally uploaded by toekneesan

Church and State

Ivy absorbed into the tree

2009-03-13T15:01:00.001-07:00

Ivy absorbed into the tree
Originally uploaded by toekneesan

Subsume

A night with Barbara

2009-03-11T13:54:00.001-07:00

A night with Barbara
Originally uploaded by toekneesan

Jeremy jr.

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2009-03-10T05:11:00.001-07:00

0310090809.jpg
Originally uploaded by toekneesan

Morning Jo

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2009-03-08T10:27:00.001-07:00

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Originally uploaded by toekneesan

Smells yum

2009-03-01T14:42:00.003-08:00

Smells yum
Originally uploaded by toekneesan

Loaves

Smells yum

2009-03-01T14:42:00.001-08:00

Smells yum
Originally uploaded by toekneesan

Loaves

Mangi'are

2009-02-28T15:45:00.001-08:00

Mangi'are
Originally uploaded by toekneesan

Done.