Bespoke Herbals @ Backyard Botanics

Cabbage – regarded in modern kitchens as humble – has reached the requisite 71-ish days (the seed packet says that’s how long) in my garden and is ready to harvest. On going out do that – exciting! This is my first time growing cabbage! – I found I was not the first to the patch.

I’ve known about the rabbit for weeks. Whether I’m too lazy, don’t have the time, or just plain old don’t feel the imperative to somehow keep him out I can’t say – but he ate the tops off of my carrots, shared in the tomato harvest, and there he was when I arrived in the cabbage patch.

He’s not the only one:

I don’t use any insecticide, I didn’t bury my fence into the ground, and the truth is I don’t mind sharing (much). I figure it’s the cost of doing business and sharing the land with the creatures that live here and give this place it’s character, who are part of the ecosystem; it’s all right with me.

I wish he hadn’t eaten all of the tops of the carrots, though.

Back to the cabbage: the rabbit doesn’t seem to have eaten much. It looks like there were some caterpillars having their way with it – I’d noticed them chewing holes in the outer leaves over the weeks the plants grew but I decided to keep taking care of the plants and watch what happens. So I picked the cabbage yesterday:

and cut it open to see what the story was:

Beautiful. Sweet, firm, cabbage once I peeled off the outside worm eaten leaves.

I’m not psyched about losing the decorative pumpkin photographed at top to whatever ate it – a woodchuck? But I am harvesting others that were left untouched, which feels like a kind of fair sharing deal.

So there it is – bugs, critters, and all.

Two days of cutting and measuring thanks to (shocking) custom woodwork behind the cabinets and stove — and the microwave is mounted! Jon did the lion’s share of the work with Tristan helping raise the oven, bolt it in, and correct for a small drilling miscalculation.

My contributions: to point out the vent wasn’t quite lined up and needed a nail in order to line the exit duct up with the microwave fan flap, some help with measuring, and two botanical cocktails when we were done!

A mint julep using garden mint and a gin cooler using st Germaine, basil and cucumbers from the garden. Yum!!

Our microwave has been on a slow decline for months. It runs but doesn’t actually heat the food some percent of the time with that percent increasing week to week. Until it started running continuously when we closed the door. So it is time to replace it; we shut the electricity off and ordered a new one, which didn’t go well, but that’s another story requiring wine or some other pain-reducing libation.

The previous owners installed an updated kitchen years ago – in its day it was beautiful and it has held up well.

Last year the dishwasher went and Jon spent many hours of his life trying to repair the one we had with my handy, fix-it-if-you-can brother. They got it going for a time but when it pooped out again we called a plumber to come and install a new one. The microwave – we are on round one. Jon is trying to install it.

I am tempted to put a time capsule in the enclosed cabinet ends – the bits that aren’t accessible until you pull out the microwave. I wonder how long it will be before someone opens it up. 10 years? 5?

We’ll go to round 2 tomorrow evening after Jon returns from his shift at the hospital or the following morning if he can’t find the will to face it. The new microwave has different installation specs (of course it does) from the last one. But even with that understood, everything here is so custom that no project goes easily. Every electrician and plumber that’s come in here has been challenged by some boomerang the house throws, spending hours over budget to figure out how to make something work – and even with that added investment and effort sometimes things don’t work out as planned.

Welcome to Miller Hill Farm.

When the sun is at it’s zenith the shade is an inviting place to rest. Looking up at our benefactor is worth a moment’s attention. Inevitably the shade of a tree is so much more pleasant than the shade of a building. The sun through the leaves is alive, moving with the breeze and reflecting sunlight in patterns on the ground around you. Conifers are the most cooling shadow makers but at mid day their branches don’t offer the shelter we can expect from deciduous trees.

Our own shadow’s aren’t as magnanimous. We “throw shade” to cast doubt, protect ourselves, or even to harm another. Fear, insecurity, whatever the impetus, it’s a rare human that doesn’t “throw shade” once in a while.

At midsummer it’s hard to spot your shadow. It’s almost like it doesn’t exist. Invisible or tiny as it is on inspection, our shadow is still active, though. Still informing our feelings and thoughts, driving some small or large part of what we say and how we see the world. I think sometimes our shadows envelop us – shading the world around us. Other times, like mid-summer, it’s the ground we are standing on.

The next time you feel bad, whether frustrated, angry, hurt, or irritated, stop to look for your shadow. It will tell you what’s bothering you if you ask it. Armed with that information you probably won’t throw any shade.

Imagine an ant in your shadow, how cool it must be for the little creature to enjoy a bit of cool. Even ants can make good use of a shadow.

I’ve never felt more alive than when I was in graduate school studying religion and it’s sisters religious philosophy, theology, and history. I would sit up in the middle of the night, sometimes, with a thought I needed to jot down about something I’d read of Frederik Nietzshe’s. Or about one of the gnostic gospels – a realization or question.

Life marched on, I left religious studies behind because I had children I needed to support. I worked in an office and nursed, diapered, cooked.

Years later, now, my children are growing up, becoming more independent. We are looking at colleges for my oldest, and his little sister is not far behind. She starts high school in September. She still needs plenty of support and parenting but gone are the days of constant supervision. She has her friends, now. So I find myself increasingly free to fill my time outside of work.

I don’t believe in coincidences. This year I stumbled over two people who studied religion at Harvard in graduate school, as I did. Both of them have taken their passion forward – one as a career, another as a writer (part-time outside of her regular work, I think?). They are both amazing, powerful, compelling people with so much to teach the world, so much to share. And they aren’t afraid to do, that, either. To open their beliefs and selves up to a world of people seeking meaning and comfort.

None of the three of us are Christian. Dustin Diperna is a follower of Tibetan Meditation. A spiritual guru of Integral Spirituality, and of meditative practice. Meggan Watterson is a fierce voice for the divine feminine, telling the stories of women who’ve lived lives of devotion and left legends, texts, and preached love, healing, and a connection to the divine. Her books and monthly sermons are a ministry of love; she also teaches meditation, but of a different sort than Dustin’s.

So I’m starting to feel an old spark, which has been for many years more of a pilot light, reigniting into the bonfire it once was in my heart. Humanity can never leave God behind. You know why? Because God(dess) is what animates us; we become our most actualized, happy, even joyful selves when we live and experience love, which comes from our souls. Love is our soul’s nature. And that’s expressed in our stories and practices of the divine.

George Lucas called it The Force. Marvel calls it superpowers. Christianity has Christ, the miracle working embodiment of love, Islam has Muhammad, the prophet of the divine, and Buddhism has the Buddha, transcended of this world with his deep understanding of the nature of reality. Hinduism has a host of gods and goddesses that embody power, compassion, and wisdom, including Kali and the local goddesses that protect and support ordinary people throughout India. Spirit is everywhere. It’s the urge to help other people, to show compassion, to care for ourselves, to live a life that transcends the lowest rungs of Maslowe’s hierarchy.

Yeah. Be alive to what matters to your heart. Be alive to what brings you joy. Plug in to your passions, your body, to love for yourself and for this great big world full of crazy people. Because for this part of the journey – this is where it’s at. For all of us.