Some friends and I went to Sauvie Island on Friday morning and picked a whopping 70 pounds of gorgeous raspberries…and then went home and made pints and pints of freezer jam.  There is nothing sweeter than spending the day in the kitchen with good friends and processing berries.  Every time I open a jar of jam, I will be hit with a wave of memories…the sun poking through the clouds, the peace of the early morning (before everyone else gets there…) and the stories, wonderful stories to pass the time.

Tricia's Geranium

She’s alive and well, Tricia, and very, very happy about the sun today.  As am I.  Planning to get some seeds started this weekend, indoors and out!  Can’t wait!

Easy Lace Scarf, from "Sock Yarn One Skein Wonders"

I’m discovering the joys and frustrations of knitting with sock yarn…I love how light it is and how clean the knitting looks.  But it does take longer to finish a project on those small needles!  I love knitting lace patterns, though–all those holes make the project feel like it’s going faster, which for impatient people like me, is a good thing.

odds and ends

Yeah, it’s one of those “this is my desk” photos that no one really cares about…but I think it’s a pretty good representation of my life right now.  Lots of random bits here and here, pieces of work needing to be done:

• print the cards for the Heroscape figurines (those would be B’s, not mine, although I admit I did enjoy the one game I’ve played so far…)
• mail in my cheek swab test for the marrow donor registry
• read up on infant massage in preparation for my training in March
• expect the beautiful, and the unexpected, as Nikki McClure so beautifully reminds us

This year I find myself already “behind” in garden planning…I’ve been pretty busy with doula-related work, but the catalogs have been arriving, and I’m earmarking pages and figuring out what I have left in my seed stash.  This year’s garden may not be as well-planned as last year’s, especially since I’m traveling a lot this spring and summer…but despite the rain, I’m starting to feel the itch to get back in the dirt!

One thing at a time, though.  Today, I need to finish a freelance writing project I took on for a local Montessori school.  Tomorrow I can get back to the garden catalogs.  And those Heroscape cards.

What’s on your desk?

When I first started this blog, I envisioned it as a space to share personal reflections, daily photos, and the progress of my garden, which was really an apt metaphor for the new seeds I was planting in my professional life.  While I still hope to share such updates every now and then, my new vision for this blog is a space to just share the quiet moments, the little things that we normally wouldn’t bother to write down or photograph, but that highlight the beauty and joy of ordinary, everyday life.  The things that make us smile, laugh, pause, and appreciate what we have in our lives.

Soo…for the foreseeable future, there will probably not be a lot of words on this blog.  There will probably be more pictures, short reflections–a sentence, or two.  It won’t be every day (the sabbatical was nice, but gosh, I don’t have that kind of time right now), but just often enough…a way to remind me to slow down every now and then even as my life moves forward in a new direction.  I want to maintain that awareness and openness to new possibilities…and I look forward to sharing them!

The weather is finally feeling like summer around here, and it is marvelous. I’ve been super busy these past few weeks with non-gardening endeavors…but I have lofty plans of digging up more grass and making space for….flowers!

The nasturtiums I planted earlier this spring are now abloom in full glory, and really, although I say this of almost every flower, I just adore nasturtiums. They are beautiful flowers, with lovely leaf shape, and best of all, they’re edible! Yup, pick a few and add to salads for an eye-popping, slightly sweet garnish.

In other news, I’ve finished my labor doula training, as well as a training with Backline, a pregnancy options counseling phone line, and I’m knee-deep in developing some great collaborative projects surrounding doula care for birthparents and adoptive families. The website’s coming along…my back-up doula Corinne and I had a really fun photo shoot with a fellow doula training classmate last week, and in a few weeks, we’ll be at the Outer SE Sunday Parkways with Amanda Englund, of Placenta Power!

Pretty soon I’ll have a separate blog for my doula practice, Cascadia Birth Services, but in the meantime, check out our Facebook page, which has links to lots of interesting articles, books, and other fun events happening in Portland.

I love the flourish of the French flutists…calling scales and fingering exercises “les grands exercises journaliers” makes it sound like something special…certainly more exciting than they really are…

Regardless of their allure (or lack thereof), it feels right to be sinking back into some nitty gritty detail these days…pushing myself to become familiar again with the rigors of listening deeply, calculating the placement of each breath, each lift of the finger, each movement of the embouchure, playing with the phrasing and dynamics…analyzing how each element contributes to the other, and how they all create the structure from which a completely new interpretation, all my own, can arise.

It’s marvelous to come back to this instrument as an adult, without all the adolescent insecurities, the need to be recognized.  My body remembers so much: the bad habits along with the sweet purity of sound, of feeling connected with the inner voice of expression.  For the first time in my life, I can just marvel in the joy of creating beautiful music, rather than worrying whether I’m doing it right or if it will be impressive to other people.  It’s as if I’ve slipped on a dress that I haven’t worn in a really long time.  And instead of worrying about how it looks on me or whether it still fits, I can just revel in the movement and feeling that it allows, and delight in the pure freedom and joy of expression.

Well, just the peas, anyway. They are officially full grown, toppling over with the weight of full juicy pea pods, sweet and crunch and oh-so-satisfying in the salad, stir-fry…or just as a snack, fresh from the vine.

Driving to the movies on Sunday afternoon…