March is Green and Misty

The early misty Marchy morning and me.

Oh March!  The past few days have found me feeling very sensitive and heart-achey for no apparent reason, other than the early spring... when I think of how my heart feels, I have the image of dark, damp earth being pushed aside for a fresh bright green shoot reaching for the yellow warmth of the sun.

Early as it seems this year, I welcome Spring. I welcome the open and raw feeling in my heart, as if someone has removed an armor breastplate after a long and exhausting battle.  My ally has been motherwort so far this year.  I need her loving support since just the beauty of the wind on my face can make me tear up with the sheer beauty and enormity of the experience.

I had some spare hours on Saturday morning before the 10am opening of the Woodfin YMCA Winter Market.  Being on the sleepy side of town, the shops were still closed and the roads nearly empty, barring the threads of misty clouds weaving around the trees, snaking up from the creekbeds.

A living rock, soft and green.

My car went past the road for the market and past the town limits just a moment later.  I kept going, until I noticed a fork in the road, pointing out the Blue Ridge Parkway entrance a few miles down the way...so I pointed myself in that direction and onward I went.

The sun was not quite above the mountain range, and so the diffused light through the clouds was pale and wan.  The mist was backlit as it curled around the top branches of the pines and oaks, or spun itself into circles in the little valleys and nooks.  I made my eyes stay to the road until I finally reached the Parkway entrance road and found a small pull-off.

I am a cautious person, and do not often go off on adventures alone.  I fret and worry and fill my time with stress instead of the sought-after peace...but not today.  The pull of the forest was so strong that I could not resist and with cameras in hand, went down the trail that began at the end of the pull off.

Wild Violets and
Mouse-Ear Chickweed

Beauty greeted me..then the symphony of the woods.  There were crackling leaves, dew dripping from the trees, and as the sun began to climb ever higher, a growing chorus of birds.

Everywhere I looked was gray and green.  Grey rocks covered in green mosses and lichens.  Dark earth giving rise to tender, baby leaves of many, many plants.  Grey bark with mossy stripes, and the grey branches tipped with a green haze. the promise of future leaves.

I found a verdant patch of violets breaking the soil around the base of an oak.  Just a few days ago, I ate my first violet of the year...ah...so sweet and fresh!  Perfect heart-shaped leaves for a heart-achey me.  What a delight, and a gift...

I found mouse ear chickweed (growing between the violet leaves) and some other familiar spring friends like wild onions, henbit and uncurling ferns.  While exploring, I came across a mystery plant...the leaves were beautifully spotted with white.  When I touched the leaves I found that they had a slight thickness to them, and they were soft and peach-fuzzy.

With the help of a Plant Identification group on Flickr, I now know it to be Hydrophyllum macrophyllum, large leaf waterleaf.  It will grow lovely, long stemmed flowers in the warmer days to come, and the leaves will be more solidly green.

Hydrophyllum macrophyllum, large leaf waterleaf,
Early Spring Growth (March 2012)

I finished these pictures just as the batteries in my camera died, so made my way back to the car and wound down the curly mountain road.  With the sun rising over my left shoulder, warming my face and head, my heart felt lighter in my chest as the mist lifted from the treetops into the sky.

I am addicted to sugar, and so are you.

Sugars by DeathByBokeh via Flickr

Occasionally I have to just cut out the crap.

The crap being sugar.

My body just doesn't appreciate copious amount of it, which is a really funny joke for someone who slings honey, isn't it?

Sugar is in EVERYTHING in the standard American diet.  Soda, coffee, juice, beer, wine, ketchup, salad dressing, bread, fast food and processed food.

Sugar is called by many names: Corn syrup, molasses, fructose, lactose, honey, sucrose, barley malt, cane, sorghum, caramel, maltose, dextrose, sorbitol...

Sugar is an addictive substance. Our bodies crave it with a fervor similar to that of nicotine...in fact, cigarettes were easier for me to quit than sugar has been.

You see, I've been living with chronic candida for many years now.  Candida are happy little microorganisms that live in our body and do their job.  But candida are like gremlins...you can't overfeed them or they'll ruin everything and scare small children!  Or at least make you itchy and exhausted.

Candida feeds on sugar.  And when it has an overabundance of it's favorite food, it grows. And grows. And grows...and spreads throughout your body.  Candida overgrowth can cause a myriad of symptoms from headaches to yeast infections in any moist, warm body areas, to systemic exhaustion, stomach discomfort, and more.

I'm never one for strictly following doctor's orders, as I'm not fond of prescription drugs.  The last time I saw a doctor for candida overgrowth I was given a medicine that made me break out in hives.
So I keep the miserable moments at bay by being aware of my nutrition.

I support my health and candida balance by eating live culture yogurt daily, and also by taking acidophilis supplements. But when I get too alcohol-happy, or have to can a bushel of apples (which involves a lot of tasting!), or gorge on cupcakes, I tend to suffer for it afterwards for days with exhaustion, itchy, dry skin, and worse.  Then it becomes time to watch the sugars in my diet.

I'm not crazy about fasting, so I try to be reasonable about it.  I don't follow the exact candida diet guidelines set forth by traditional western medicine, as I disagree with some of the standard assumptions about healthy sugars and live cultures.

Raw Sugar Bowl by Ayelie via Flickr

I do my best to eliminate from my diet:

Breads and pasta
Fruits and juices
Wine, Beer, Liquor (so hard for a pixie to do!)
Sugar (duh)
Honey (whimper)
Soda (not that hard, kicked that crap long ago)
Boxed Foods (seriously, even Mac n Cheese is full of sugars. I had NO idea until I started reading boxes)
Fast Food (sugar in every sauce; ketchup, mustard, ranch, in the bread and rolls, and sometimes even in the meat product itself)

Sigh.

And I consume:

Salads:  protein-rich, chickpeas, beans, boiled egg, avocado, crab, deli meat, tomatoes, cucumbers, mushrooms, and NO CROUTONS.  Also, cheese, but only a bit (lactose is a sugar).  I use herbal vinegars and oils to flavor the salads instead of bottled dressing.

Proteins:  Meat, beans, potatoes (sparingly), chickpeas, eggs, kale, broccoli, lots of heavy foods.  I love sushi fish at this point in my diet, but I avoid the wonderful sushi rice with it's sugared vinegar and keep it straight to sashimi.

Rice noodles/Rice:  Brown is better than white, but it is still a sugar food. Can't quit 'em all, and this is more easily processed by my system, I've noticed.

Live Foods:  vinegar with the "mother" - like Braggs, and if I do consume bread, it is sourdough!  The live enzymes help to balance the microcosm in my body. The same goes for homebrew drinks and fermented foods like kim-chi, kombucha, and especially wild-fermented food.

When I do this diet shift, I tend to feel that tomatoes and other "sweet" veggies are okay in moderation, because I am not trying to completely deny my body of it's needs, just eliminating the overwhelming sugars in the average American diet.

Coffee with My Sugar by sbluerock on Flickr

On day four of my most recent fast, I broke a mid-morning hunger with a salad topped with a handful of raisins.  The sugared, dried fruit was too much, and awoke my physical dependence on the sweet stuff.  That was a terrible mistake, as I spent the rest of the afternoon in a grumpy, antsy, anxious and snappy state that was unpleasant for myself and everyone else around me.

"MORE," my body cried, "MORE!"

In a couple of days, I will integrate more sugars slowly and gently into my diet, using honey vs. sugar whenever possible.  And I will do my best to remember moderation, so that I don't have to fast again anytime soon, but can find my balance and walk the line in health and well being.

How many sodas do you drink a day?  If you have chronic health problems with your stomach and gut, or fatigue and rotten moods, try scaling back the soda before you add a pill or diet onto your life to try to fix the bumpy patches.  I know it sounds crazy, and it'll get worse before it gets better, as with any withdrawal symptoms, but you might come out of the fire renewed and healthier with that one simple change.

How strong of an influence does sugar have on you?

I got a choice.

Mama loved me so much that she told me what was up, straight and clean.

I was just a baby girl child, only three years old when she and my Daddy decided that they couldn't live together anymore, that they fought too much and were just not right for each other. I remember them fighting, but somehow knew it wasn't about me, and let it happen without getting too scared or upset, as I recall, anyways.

So when we moved out of the apartment and me and my mama had a sleepover with Nana, which happened occasionally, it didn't seem too strange.  After a couple of days, though, I noticed things were different right around the same time Mama crouched down and looked me straight in the eyes.  She said that she lived with Nana and Pop now, and that Daddy lived with Memaw and Grandad, and that I was welcome to stay anywhere I wanted to.

This is pretty heavy shit for anyone, but I was three. I took it like a champ. I remember thinking about it for a minute, realizing the gravity but not really comprehending the situation. Little Amber looked her Mama back in the eye and said "I want to live with Daddy and Memaw now, since I've stayed with you and Nana for a couple of days."

My mama never wept, didn't freak out, and just nodded and said, "Ok."  I don't remember feeling her being upset or sad, although I'm sure now she was, somewhat. We went to my Memaw's house and that was that for a couple of years (visiting regularly of course) until Mama got her own place nearby, a block or so away.  I always had my Daddy and Mama nearby me, allowing me to bounce from one to the other on a whim...them and the loving grandparents made me a big safety net of loved ones who I knew cared for me, even though I knew by then that they were humans, with fears, and emotions, just like I was.

My folks were never BIG PARENT people to me, but REAL people.  For that, I value them. For that, and for the choice given to someone who couldn't even tie their own shoes yet, I thank them.  And for never letting me see the true anger they bore each other, I thank them as well.

If you hate your mate, then do so. If you love your child, then do so. And for the love of god/goddess/plants or whatever you pray to and believe is watching you, please do not use them as a pawn in your emotional outbursts. Don't tug them. Remember Solomon, and don't cut them in half. Remember patience, and let them know they are loved by both and don't tear them apart with your anger.

The only times I got really angry at my Daddy is when he said something nasty about my Mama.  I knew well his anger towards her, but that wasn't his place to share it with me.

The only times I mistrusted my family is when they spoke against my Daddy...again, it wasn't their place to tell me "adult" problems...when he was just my Daddy.

I was given a choice that most children are not given. I was given respect, and love, and kept apart from their mutual emotional displays (except that one time, where they nearly broke the fish tank, and I told them off for almost hurting Pierre, ze amazink and also swimmink feesh).

For the love of your children, THINK first, and FEEL on your own. If you can't seperate it, then seperate yourself and seek counseling, or meditate, or whatever makes you calm and rational. REALLY rational, not just pretending to be so.

Your child thinks, more than you think they do.  They know way more than you assume they are aware of.  They realize that you are a person, and they are closer to the source. They know it better than you do, the fact that you are a falliable human, and that one day they will have to grow up to be one, too.  And they will learn their responses from you.

If you fear, so will they.  If you scream, so will they.  If you treat them with disrespect, don't expect them to be around longer than they have to.

It takes two people to make a child, until we learn that cool trick that certain reptiles and amphibians have.  And what is the first big lesson we teach our children?  SHARING.  And if you can't live it, they can't learn it. RESPECT. If they can't see it in the two people they know best, how can they know what it means?

Some of the worst lessons we teach our children are BLAME and FAULT.  Now, these are different than their cousin RESPONSIBILITY...who is a valuable friend.  Blame and fault cause only pain. Responsibility causes awareness of one's ability to affect change on a situation and know that you must assume the consequences of that change.

I made a choice that was the fairest choice a toddler could come up with.  Sharing. Balance. Fairness, Peace, and LOVE.

You are a mirror. What does your child see when they look into you?

That is what they will be.

Copyright Amber Shehan, May 29, 2011 - You may distribute for non-commercial use. For any other inquiries, please contact anchasta@yahoo.com

Circle and Circle and Circles again...

Candler in Spring, by Modern Scribe Photography

What a month it has been...camping, festivals, dear friends visiting my home and looking to put down roots in these sweet mountains.  There's been patterns woven, and circles coming 'round to completion. It makes me feel grounded, centered, and in tune with the world around me.

A part of being in tune with your world means walking in a balance between life and death.  There is never one without the other; life feeds on life feeds on life, and all life feeds on death to continue...you cannot have one without the other, and it is not something to be feared, in my book.

Life is beautiful:  I will be putting seeds into the earth tomorrow.  Peas and carrots, an onion that sprouted in my cabinets, some potatoes that decided to grow in my pantry.  I will watch these sprout, but will bring a difficult part for me...

Death is certain:  Of those seedlings that grow, some will die by my own hands as I thin the eventual green haze of fresh sprouts. I will be squashing bugs whose crime is only that they live, and want to consume the same leafy goodness that I wish to consume, and my only right is that I am larger. 

Life is astounding: My yard is bringing up it's own bounty: Yarrow, Violets, Dandelions, Sorrels, Heal-all, Clover, Plantain...last year's green friends are coming back: Chamomile, Comfrey, Marigolds, Lavender, and my Shehan Family Iris!

Death is sustaining: Our neighbor's yard is full of chickens, and a trio of goats who love to visit us at the fence to beg for scratch corn or tender honeysuckle vines.  The chickens there will soon have a coop, but until then, are relatively at the mercy of local foxes, and we often find a mostly fox-consumed chicken carcass being pecked at by the other chickens. Never forget, these egg-givers are tiny, feathered dinosaurs! 

Life is sweet:  And so is a yard full of clover and sweet green grass for our own two chickens to nibble on.  As of late, we've been letting them out of the pen to wander the yard for a bit while we clean out the coop and tend to our plants on the lower lot.  They have been having delicious dust baths and scratching through our compost, turning it and eating bugs and clucking merrily!

Death is merciful:  But the other day, as I stumbled down the hill to feed the chickens, feverish and barely awake, I noticed only one chicken freaking out as usual over her pending dinner.  I let her out, and peered into the coop to find the other biddie standing, puffed up and panting.  She wouldn't come out, but let me lift her out.  I could tell she wasn't in a good way, but wasn't sure what was wrong until I looked at her behind...without going into details, I can say that I knew quickly that the only cure I could give my poor egg-providing friend was a quick death.

Now, I've fished, and I've hunted squirrel. I've insisted upon knowing what it is to kill in order to consume - again, that balance of life and death.  But never before had I caused a creature to die by my own hands that I did not intend to consume, or for the sake of mercy.  It is far more difficult than one might imagine. 

Angel the Goat by MSP

Life is Changing:  More and more people are turning to the earth to provide for them, tilling their yards for garden space, picketing their city to allow urban chickens, and lacking that, supporting local farm markets.  I applaud the effort, and want to remind people about rain barrels, and compost bins, and container gardening, and encourage folks to jump in and TRY new things...it's the only way to learn.

Death is Change:  Next time you throw something into your compost bin, think about HOW it breaks down...your useless, discarded food bits and lawn clippings feed the happy little bacteria that consume, defecate, and thereby create fertilizer for the food that you will eat.  I will watch the plot of earth that covers the buried body of my chicken friend and see how bright the grass grows, and watch her death feed the earth.  I will throw squished bugs to the other chicken as I tend my plants, and watch her grow strong from their death.

We are all part of life, and all part of death. 

The greater circle encompasses us all, man, woman, fish, fowl, hooved, winged, whatever...

find your place and your center and grow from there. 

The Birth of "Mother Love Honey"

The moon gave me a gift last night.

We'd gotten home last night just before dark, the snow blowing and wind howling. We just barely got up the hill that leads to the sharp turn onto our road. Trudging through the yard and up the slope winding up to the warm little house, the large snowflakes clung to our warmth. The sky was starting to turn blue; and so was the snow, and the air itself then became a cornflower blue around us as we made it inside the toasty house.

Later that night I found myself feeling anxious and jittery - it wasn't the now steady-falling snow that was bothering me, nor the movie I couldn't focus on, nor any one specific reason I could conjure. So I just made myself a cup of coffee and wandered aimlessly until I found myself in my quiet little bedroom.

We'd lit "just in case" candles earlier in the evening, having lost power during the last snow, and so my room was bathed in a warm and bronzey glow. The window curtain had been tied back to allow the recumbent cat's baleful glare to bounce off of the swirling white that she so despised. I pulled over a pillow to rest on next to her, gazed outside, and found myself lost in the light.

I couldn't see the moon for all the clouds, but I could feel the moon, full and bright.  The entire world was blue and white and silver, soft and rounded. Beams of glistening light reflected in every crystal prism drifting towards the ground.
 
I lay there for quite some time, staring and breathing silently and deeply. I drowsed, eyes open and blurred, waking to blink and yawn and disturb the warm cat curled at my stomach.

Shapes and spirals filled my mind's eye, sigils and runes written on the white of my vision. Symbols of ice and water and winter, symbols of mother and snow. I felt a steady heat despite the cold eeping through the glass - held in arms bigger than I could ever see and cradled in warmth, I fell asleep at the window.

I woke after an hour or so, dazed from the nap and from waking in the darkness. My thoughts  immediately began to run through the symbols I had drawn in my mind's eye, marking them for a future mosaiced in glass.  While looking for my sketchpad to document these designs, I discovered my favorite books of herblore and a notebook full of potential honey recipes and herbal remedies that I had misplaced months ago.

I poured a glass of wine and sat down to investigate. Wine always helps with divination, you know.  Bibliomancy. I started flipping through the books and my own written words. Page after page, scanning the words, I realized that three herbs were indeed grabbing my attention time and time again:  Motherwort, Lavender, and Oatstraw.

So I thought about what I knew of them, one by one:

Motherwort: sweet mother, loving intentions, good for nerves, calming palpitations, mild sedative, balances severe emotional swings due to stress, shock, and sorrow, directly invigorates uterine tissue, good for trauma recovery, good for pregnancy and post-partum depression

Lavender: good for relaxation, indigestion, nervous stress, antiseptic, good for insomnia, panic, helps with some migraines, helps control muscle spasms

Oatstraw:  tonic for the heart and circulation, highly nutritious, fights panic attacks, soothes nerves, esp. good for illness/trauma recovery, mild sedative


These three create a potent combination of nurturing herbs! This is what you give someone after they've been in shock and the emergency has passed. This is what you feed someone too steeped in grief to open the dams of repressed emotion and allow it to be purged. This is what an anxious stress-ball like me, a chronic fretter, needs to add to a cup of warm milk and water before bed on a cold and snowy night when it seems there is no Spring to be had! 

So armed with that knowledge, inspired with a sort of meandering moon gift, I made my first ever jar of Mother Love Honey today.

Mother Love Honey Photograph by Modern Scribe Photography, Sarah Thomas

Swamp Pixie is now a Mountain Mama!

Hello, my friends, one and all...

I hope you don't mind my absence. I do tend to come and go like the crazy clouds pooling over the mountains outside. Yes, mountains! The Swamp Pixie has pulled her roots up and climbed a couple thousand feet in elevation over the past month. Whoo! What a change this has been...a welcome one, but one full of so many possibilities that my head is still spinning!

The first big thing I noticed was that I couldn't find a single violet leaf in my new yard, nor a single clump of chickweed! That set me reeling...but then again, there is that spot on the corner of the house where the water is pooling and eroding the clay hillside in a rivulet. I bet with just a little terraforming, that place could be a mini-swamp for some of my moisture-loving sweet girls to set their toes in.

And while my familiar and favorite herbal allies are nowhere to be seen, there are so many new allies to be made! I am situated on a Carolina clay mountain hillside, right off the Pisgah National Forest. I have identified a whole bunch of the new plants to learn to love...

Pokeweed: A familiar one from home, but not like this! The whole slope of the hill out of the window at my side is covered in big, fat, luscious purple-black berries! The bushes reach taller than I can (which isn't very hard to do) and hide all of the little finches my dear Akasha cat has been chirping at since we got here.

Thistle: Giant, amazingly intimidating, magnificent thistle! The purple flowers tower over the tall grasses and sway in the breeze...I can almost hear bagpipes and rolling drums when I see them dancing. Oh, and a note to you...do NOT chase giant thistledown and attempt to catch it gleefully, no matter HOW much it makes your yard look magical. It bites back, and in fact, large clumps of it will kill a cow that ingests it. Thistle is even illegal in many states for that very reason. Ouch.

English Plantain: I can't believe I had to come to the mountains to learn about this "weed."I've been shooting 'grass rockets' at my friends since I had the dexterity enough to twist the stem around itself.Nor does it have a small, red, banana-like fruit attached to it. Plantain, eh? No wonder I was so confused.It seems though, that plantain is a good healer for wounds and burns when used fresh. Let's see what else it can do.

Red Clover: Oh, this makes me dance a happy dance! Just about the time we left Virginia, I ran out of the last bit of my red clover. Now I arrive here in Carolina and the happy, bee-laden purple flower heads are everywhere I turn! Every time I walk the yard, I grab one or two to take inside to dry. We'll have to talk about her all on her own here soon.

I know there are more allies, so many more, for me to learn about and build relationships with here in the Pisgah. And I am becoming more and more astounded by the amount of healers and wise folks around me. I will be learning a lot, and sharing my knowledge with others. Be ready to read, my friends!

Invocation

Well, here we are.

Let me put my basket down - mind the dirt I've left trailing after me everywhere.

Just sit down and I'll get things started. Don't worry - I'm not big on the drama and hand-waving around parts. I keep things simple.

So. Without further ado, I hereby declare this space open, and ready to encourage abundance in all forms. So I say:

May the Best Manifest!