A New Season, A New Cycle 'Round the Year

Welcome Back! I am grateful to be ready for another year of blogging! This will be my first full growing season, so there will be lots to learn. I will pass on some lessons to help me track my learning and hopefully offer some inspiration and information to anyone who is interested in home gardening and practices of self-sustainability...and anyone who wants to know about my life here at the Homestead :) Just a quick reminder since it's been a while: this blog is *usually* categorized into sections according to different kinds of bees that help keep a colony alive. As Melissa ~ Honey Bee, these categories feel very relevant to some of the elements that compose my world. Thanks for stopping by!

* Gatherer Bees * 

For savorers of the sweet stuff - the sticky, juicy nectar of inspiration 

I care for you and you care for me

Cry Out in Your Weakness 

A dragon was pulling a bear into its terrible mouth.

A courageous man went and rescued the bear.

There are such helpers in the world, who rush to save

anyone who cries out. Like Mercy itself,

they run toward the screaming.

And they can’t be bought off.

If you were to ask one of those, “Why did you come

so quickly?” He or she would say, “Because I heard

your helplessness.”

Where lowland is,

that’s where water goes. All medicine wants

is pain to cure.

And don’t just ask for one mercy.

Let them flood in. Let the sky open under your feet.

Take the cotton out of your ears, the cotton

of consolations, so you can hear the sphere-music. . . .

Give your weakness

to One Who Helps.

Crying out loud and weeping are great resources.

A nursing mother, all she does

is wait to hear her child.

Just a little beginning-whimper,

and she’s there.

God created the child, that is, your wanting,

so that it might cry out, so that milk might come.

Cry out! Don’t be stolid and silent

with your pain. Lament! And let the milk

of Loving flow into you.

The hard rain and wind

are ways the cloud has

to take care of us.

Be patient.

Respond to every call

that excites your spirit.

Ignore those that make you fearful

and sad, that degrade you

back toward disease and death.
~ Rumi

* Drones * 

For lovers -  reflections on subjects of life sustenance and creation 

Many members of our household and friend community have begun reading Charles Eisenstein's new book, The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible. It is something I recommend so deeply that it barely occurs to me to try to describe what it is about. So I'll just jump into my reflections. The piece that is standing out to me right now is about inhabiting your life from the inside of it, as opposed to being driven by outside ideals of what you should be. "The transition we are entering is a transition to a story in which contempt and smugness no longer have a home. It is a story in which we cannot se ourselves as better than any other human being. It is a story in which we no longer use fear or self-contempt to drive our ethics. And we will inhabit this story not in aspiration to an ideal of virtuous nonjudgement, forgiveness, etc., but in sober recognition of the truth of non-separation." I will paraphrase some of the ideas that have previously given context to this story. This new story is one that recognizes all beings that seem separate and individually working for self-benefit, as deeply connected nodes in a much larger Interbeing. Therefore, to help ourselves, we do not need to dominate and war against other parts of ourselves. Non-war is a new way of acting as whole group of people, as creatures who interact with plants, insects, land and animals from whom we receive our needs, and as microcosms of this universe within our own "selves." This perspective stands out a lot to me because I have been quite driven in the work of self-improvement for many years. Sometimes I truly benefit from the practices that I implement in my schedule or my daily routine. I have been noticing recently, though, a sense of fracture between myself and the ideals of what I expect from myself. Because of that split, no matter how "good" I do, I have a very hard time really enjoying the fruit of my work as myself; as long as there is a separation between the "task driver" and "me," creating a situation where some "part of me" is doing work on the rest of me, the two me-s are not combined, and one of them always feels alienated, whether in work or rest. I want to cease the war against myself, in which I am trying to dominate, domesticate, and train the soil and the native peoples of my natural self to become what the higher, more educated invaders *think* they know is best. Does that story sound familiar? It echoes and perpetuates on many other wild and beautiful frontiers than merely the colonized continents of our planet. What possibilities does the new story provide? That the chooser of my actions and the receiver of their consequences could be one, could be me, and that I, in my wholeness, may be present throughout the phases of my experience.

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." John 1|1 

* Worker Bees * 

For do-ers and make-ers - tips and tidbits from handy skills I've learned

Because of our great indoor lamp system, and our need to get a soon start on things for the first season of our very own Homestead Community Supported Agriculture Farm, we have started the first seedlings of the season!

  Starting with some members of the Brasica family: Kale, broccoli, and cabbage. For good garden-keeping notes, keep track of what varieties you are planting, how many, and when. 

 Moisten the soil that you are starting with so that it is damp to begin with. Preferably, it should be light and airy, so that the seedlings can poke their way through  as they germinate.

 Fill plastic starter trays, packing the soil so it is even across the top, to prevent water from pooling.

 If possible, use a mister to water the seedlings, so as not to disrupt the soil. When you begin to see water pooling on the surface of the square you are working on, move on; this allows the water a chance to seep into the whole capsule.

 Our lighting beds are on a timer from 6am -6pm 

 After just four days these little guys are ready to stick out their faces and see the world! 

More to come...much more! 

* Queen Bee *

All About Me - news from the goings on in my life

I am now a newly-hatched twenty-two year old! I feel like my 11 or 13 year old self, or even my 16 year old self, who looked up to people such as 22-year-olds with such longing and admiration, would be proud and amazed to be me right now. Indeed, I have the makings of quite a beautiful creation right now, a beautiful creation of my life. All the pieces are present, and anyone looking in may say it is already fully in order! For me, I am ready for my soul to flow through these pieces, breathing life and giving strength to my circulation, uniting the fragments and believing in my wholeness. The external blessings in my life are larger expressions of the beauty that I know is present inside of me. However, I have known it like something I discussed in school once - I want it to hold that beauty close, to ingest the light of my me-ness and let it permeate all of me; I want to inhabit myself and believe in my aliveness, and the worthiness of each moment in which I am here, being. Whatever journeys I have been on to get me to this moment, I thank them. I imagine my soul right now as the staff of Moses, the one that is so animately alive that it may become a snake! I reach for that staff and feel the smooth, soft, solid wood in my hand. It is a perfect hight for me; it comes to my shoulder and maybe a little more. It has markings on it that are so intricate and so mysteriously enthralling that if you were to begin to run your fingers over their indentations, following the spirals in and in as they rivet like streams through the canyons of the wooded grains, into the heart of her Tree-Essence, you would surely find yourself on a journey of the kind you once dreamed about, staring out screen mesh windows of your childhood bedrooms, kept awake by moonlight and your unbearably urgent longings for adventure. This is my traveling staff, this is my soul. And when this Tree turns to Snake, she is alive, and she follows ancient knowings, and I do not know where she leads, but I always end up where I belong.