Join Me – Who’s Your Mama Podcast!

Obviously, this blog has been silent for a little while…I’ve been enjoying being a mama to my wild-thing son, made a BIG move with wild-thing and hubs (and the pets!) back to Maine for an awesome job working for the Farmers’ Almanac, and to be closer to family…and in the last handful of months have FINALLY felt like I’m finding my groove – in parenthood, but also in life!

And I wanted to make a big announcement here, for all my Green(ish) Life followers – please follow me with my newest creative venture: My podcast – Who’s Your Mama – just released it’s third episode on iTunes (with many more episodes waiting in the wings, to be released on a biweekly schedule, on Mondays)!

Who’s Your Mama is an interview format show where I “gather pearls of wisdom from ladies who are conquering the challenge of maintaining a creative identity while raising a family.” Besides being a labor of love, the podcast is 100% inspired by how I have been struggling since my son was born with maintaining my creative/autonomous identity and through connecting with others, have realized that I’m NOT the only mama feeling this, that I’m actually NOT a selfish asshole. So, I’m hoping that these pearls of wisdom will be a light in the dark for other mamas feeling the same way – you ARE still an awesome individual – rock on, mamas!

I also wanted to announce here as a “call for entries” of sorts – if you know (or, if you ARE) a mama who is making time for what makes her soul sing, I would be honored to have you on the show: yourmamapodcast [at] gmail [dot] com

Links –
The website: http://whosyourmamapodcast.com/
iTunes link: https://itunes.apple.com/…/whos-your-mama-podc…/id1073137912 (Please subscribe and leave a glowing review – I’m sure the trolls are a’comin’!)

And please also like/follow me on fb and twitter so that I look cool:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/whosyourmamapodcast/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/wympodcast

Thanksgiving Break

I’m taking a break from blogging for the holiday. Wishing everyone an enjoyable Thanksgiving!
Vintage postcard from The Spooky Vegan

Green(ish) Guest Post: Ditzy Druid Learns Homesteading

 

Not technically a guest post for F that S, but the Ditzy Druid went to the local Homesteading Fair a couple of weekends ago and did a recap on her blog. Here is a snippet of what she experienced:

A Great Time at the Homesteading Fair in Lowville, NY

September 9, 2012 by greycatsidhe

Yesterday I went to a Mother Earth News Homesteading Fair in Lowville, NY.  It was located at the Maple Ridge Center, kind of a hybrid farm, winter recreation retreat, and Christian education facility.    Thankfully, the event was secular in nature and thus very accessible.  The cost was only $10 for a whole day ($15 for the weekend) consisting of vendors, food, children’s activities, live demonstrations, and workshops.  The workshops and demonstrations were lead by experts such as educators in the Jefferson County Cornell Cooperative Extension, farm vets, the New York State DEC, maple syrup orchards, the Tug Hill Tomorrow Land Trust, alternative energy experts, and the Sustainable Living Project.

The Falsity of Memory vs. the Reality of Feelings

At the suggestion of Miss Angela, I’ve started reading Gretchen Rubin‘s The Happiness Project. This wonderful suggestion was the result of me sharing a recent incident where someone I’ve known a very long time essentially unloaded about 15 years worth of built-up issues onto me in grand mud-slinging style (aka Ad hominem). To say it was upsetting would be an understatement. To say it was extremely hurtful and completely unexpected would sum it up better. And per usual, being placed in this situation, I was so astonished that I became unable to properly defend myself or counterattack – mostly because I’m horrible with confrontation. If I feel legitimately offended by someone’s treatment of me, my preferred style is to roll things around in my head a while (aka, over-analyze) before I address it. If I feel that the relationship is worth salvaging, I then send a well-thought-out email to plainly express my thoughts on the situation in hopes of starting a non-confrontational conversation about what happened. Unfortunately, the blunt style of this email doesn’t go over well with types who can’t handle being put in their place. The last thing they want to acknowledge is that 1. They may have been wrong in the way they acted and 2. They may have to actually face the reality of another person’s feelings.

That last part, acknowledging the reality of another person’s feelings, was a small snippet in the parenting section of Rubin’s book. That, along with her mentioning the old adage that “everyone’s life is much more complicated than you know” really hit home for me. And not in a way that justified MY position in the current situation, but instead forced me to examine it from the other side.

Adventures in Natureland: Exploring with Grim-Cat

 

After a stressful weekend away, I felt I needed a little “forest bathing” down the seasonal road near the Five Birch Perch. It didn’t take long before I realized I had a tail….with a tail! Grim-cat decided to join me on my journey, turning what would normally have been a quiet meditative walk into a playful photo session! See how many photos you can spot the “wild panther” in:

 

Bounty in the Land of No Rain

 

While I’ve been taking random photos throughout the summer (and I’ll get them up eventually), I haven’t been very good at sharing much of the newly created flower beds and newly expanded garden. I can’t express how thankful I am to the various friends who’ve given me perennials from their gardens/stores – my little flower beds look like they’ve been there forever, not like they were just built this year! And Butchy has put in SO MUCH WORK in expanding Fort Knox (including having to build raised beds in parts that were too rocky) and adding in all sorts of new veggies. We now have root veggies, rainbow swiss chard, flashy trout-back lettuce and have even started an asparagus patch! We still seem to be having issues with coaxing forth any green peppers, and unfortunately by the time we realized our brussel sprouts were not flourishing there were no plants left to buy….But the beauty of the North Country is that you always have a friend, a community garden, a co-op or a farm stand that you can buy veggies from cheap and fresh!

We also started a few different berry patches and a variety of fruit trees – I’ll post photos of those soon. And as usual, there was no shortage of butterflies, bees and birds nesting in our birdhouses….or building nests wherever they felt! Even Smash-cat, perpetual homebody, decided that she was now a wild-thing and wants to be outside all the time, stalking the wild potato beetle.

2011 saw torrential rains that stalled the creation of the original part of the garden, and this year we were sidetracked by a neighbors broken tiller…but at least we seem to be right on the same production schedule we were last year. Maybe next year we can get an earlier start, but I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished so far, all by ourselves! We’re in talks with a neighbor on buying a quarter-share of a cow and on the horizon for next year at the Five Birch Perch? CHICKENS!

 

Communal Spirit: Your Vote Can Help Create a Nature Trail!

Dear Friends of F that S,

I’ve entered TILT in an online contest to win a $5,000 grant to help create a nature trail in our Otter Creek Preserve in Alexandria Bay, NY. The contest is sponsored by GOOD magazine and the voting period runs until August 3rd. So please vote here and then forward to anyone you think might be interested supporting land conservation and family nature outings!

Create a Nature Trail in the Otter Creek Preserve

Spotlight On: The Homeless Photo Booth Project by Photographer Amelia Burns

Attn anonymous hater: Please see this post here and then please, grow up and go away.

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My friend, photographer Amelia Burns, is preparing to undertake an important journey of bringing hope, growth, recovery, recognition and cheer to homeless people across the country. The result will be The Homeless Photo Booth Project and it deserves everyone’s support! She is one of the most genuine, special people I know and I love that this project was inspired by her (now passed) father, who worked very closely with the homeless himself when he was alive. Please get behind this wonderful project…I know I’m on the lookout for a Winnebago (or suitable substitute…).

WHAT IS THE HOMELESS PHOTO BOOTH PROJECT?

My name is Amelia Burns, and I am an artist living in Ithaca, New York! I have been taking pictures since I was twelve years old. I have a BFA in Photography from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, and I specialize in intimate street portraits.

My campaign is a combination of my personal dream to travel the country photographing people in a photo booth, and my late father’s dream to SPREAD THE CHEER with photos conveying these priciples:

HOPE, GROWTH, RECOVERY, RECOGNITION, AND CHEER!

I want to illuminate the unseen, and challenge my viewers to see beyond their set ideas about humanity. I have a passion for capturing people’s spirit with my camera, and I am inspired to help people live better lives and to transform into the people they would like to be. I want to combine my love for photography and my enchantment with people! I want my photos to show the world what I feel and see about humanity, and SPREAD THE CHEER.

My hope is that this project will illuminate a group of people that encompass all facets of our society. “The Homeless”, includes many different groups, ranging from the drug addicted, the mentally ill, people who have simply lost there jobs, the homeless by choice, etc. I want to explore and celebrate who the homeless of our country are and give them a face and a place to shine.

At the projects end, I intend to Publish a book of all the portraits, and have an art opening!

Nobody Panic! We’re All Just Growing Up

I am now of a certain age where various friends/ex-boyfriends are not only getting married but having babies at an alarming rate. While I did experience a couple of friends getting pregnant back in my later years of high school, at 18 I was propelled into the “never-never-land” of NYC, where for 10 years top priorities lay in job promotions and open bars, rather than settling down and reproducing. Now that Butch and I live a much quieter life (where an evening out on the town involves driving down the street to the local biker bar for wing-night), I’ve finally started to read the writing on the wall that 5 years ago could have been written in Sanskrit for all I cared. Yes, I am currently thinking about the possibility of maybe kinda sorta planning to have a baby.

Don’t get me wrong – the indecision in my tone has nothing to do with not wanting to pass on my impeccable genes…it’s more a matter of logistics. Butch and I are recently married, and recent home buyers, which means we have recently acquired a level of debt that neither of us feels comfortable with. But the overall opinion seems to be that one should not wait until they can “afford” a baby, because that day will never come. Which means that I need to accept the fact that although our 1,200 sq ft house may be small by super-sized American standards, building an addition actually isn’t necessary to accommodate up to 3 children, provided they don’t move around too much. The same goes for that luxurious sun deck I wanted, or the trip to Ireland – neither of which is going to happen anytime soon, kids or not. So money is actually not an obstacle, and neither is Butch’s age, my new job (and old ego), or our dedication to a green(ish) lifestyle.

Letting In and Letting Go

It was an interesting week – starting with an incredibly insensitive “joke” and a smattering of (I assume, heat-induced) snippy-ness, which resulted in me escaping to Ithaca for most of the weekend to visit my extremely positive college friend Amelia (who is also a very talented photographer). Upon returning I felt refreshed, had a long conversation with an old friend about old baggage and said goodbye to a new friend at a rained-out BBQ. Oh, and then I saw a newspaper article about “letting things go” ironically written by a person who has yet to acknowledge that they recently hurt me deeply. Below are my thoughts on all of the above.

Building an Outdoor Classroom in Qatar

My brother-in-law is a science teacher in Qatar, and he recently led completion of an incredible outdoor classroom for his elementary school kids to enjoy (I mean, it includes a koi pond and waterfall, tortoise habitat, human sundial and a “weather tree”!). Can I play?

This article, and all photos, were originally published on his blog, The Scientific Teacher.

Building an Outdoor Classroom

June 5, 2012 by Nick Mitchell

When I first arrived at my school 4 years ago, outside the new elementary science lab was a large sandpit surrounded by a fence. In the middle of that sandpit was an empty swimming pool.

My initial reaction was WTF? Then it was explained to me that when the school recently expanded the intent was to build an outdoor pond area. Unfortunately this desire wasn’t communicated clearly to the construction company, who interpreted “pond” to mean “pool” (such is life in Qatar). So we ended up with a swimming pool in a sand pit…. grrrrreat.

Thus began my 4-year quest to transform this wasteland into something of educational value. Since our school is located in the often-sweltering desert city of Doha, students don’t have much of an opportunity to explore the outdoors. They don’t have the same connection with nature that I was fortunate to have growing up in the woods of Connecticut- which is a problem if we expect our students to care about the environment or life sciences in general. (For a great read on this subject of “nature-deficient” kids, check out Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv) So my vision was to create an outdoor classroom, or as a wrote in the grant proposal:

To create a naturalistic outdoor learning space where students can be inspired to learn about the natural world even in the confines of our urban surroundings.  Upon entering the outdoor classroom through a vine-covered gate, students will be immersed in a lush, active ecosystem, surrounded by a diversity of plants and animals: butterflies pollinating flowering bushes, birds nesting in trees, and fish thriving in the pond. Opportunities for learning in this natural setting will be diverse as well, from learning about life cycles by growing vegetables in the planter beds, to collecting weather data using meteorological tools at the weather station, to understanding the relationship between sun and shadows on the sundial patio. 

It’s taken 4 years with several setbacks along the way (unsuccessful applications for funding, multiple contractors with conflicting visions, and many different designs and revisions), but I’m happy to report that it has been well worth the effort. This year our outdoor classroom has finally taken shape, and  it is a swimming pool sandpit no more!

Inspiration Station: Unstructured Summer Days

With summer vacation just around the corner, local kids (as well as those visiting for the summer) will be running wild throughout the Thousand Islands – and I hope that they do! When I was a kid, summer vacation meant days spent at Range Pond eating cheese curls on the white blanket, camping/canoeing/hiking with my family, summer camp (first Girl Scout Camp Pondicherry and in later years, Camp Yavneh) and also a whole lot of doing nothing except pedaling my hot-pink-paint-splattered Huffy down Elm St. and running free in the woods out back. To say it was glorious would be an understatement.

While my new job with TILT means a much more hectic summer, I do get weekends back for the most part, and part of my responsibilities include the fun KidsTreks I’ve been planning  – the purpose of which is to encourage kids to live and learn about conservation in the Thousand Islands. While I’m pretty pleased with the themes of the four KidsTreks I scheduled (2 of which are already filled to the max, with the other 2 close behind), I’m also a big believer in unstructured play.

Stumped for things to do? The blog 52 Brand New highlights 10 simple things every child should experience in the summer:

Five Birch Perch: Opening Weekend 2012

Memorial Day weekend was gorgeous up here in the North Country (altho’ a tad bit “August”), and Butchy and I both had the full weekend off together. There was a lot to do – with Butch planting trees and bushes and expanding the veggie garden (photos of that coming soon), and me putting the finishing touches on the flower beds/pots, picking up the slack around the house and running errands I don’t usually run (ie. grocery shopping!).

So without further ado (and do please ignore the weeds and woodworking projects-in-progress), enjoy the 2012 opening weekend of the Five Birch Perch, including new flower beds along the house full of donated perennials, our brand new fruit trees (apples, peach and fig) and berry bushes (blueberry, strawberry and both red & black raspberry)…and, of course, Grim-cat helping out with the gardening:

Birthday Wish: A Year Full of Positivity

Happy birthday to me! Turning 30 should make for an interesting time, during this serendipitous, magical year of Aquarius. I welcome in all that is positive and hope for many productive changes to happen to me this year (including a big announcement that I will, hopefully, be making public next month). And I hope for good things to happen to all of you – you all deserve to be truly happy!

Image from fellow Aquarius, Cosmic Wolfgirl

Inspiration Station: Photos by Samantha West

I’ve mentioned before what an amazing photographer mon amis Samantha West is, and if it was up to me, I would name this recent series of hers “Earth Mothers:”

The Great Helium Shortage: 2012 Edition

Being that I worked in the party balloon industry, I overheard startling talk late last year that we (as a country/planet) were experiencing a shortage of helium. I personally had no idea that helium was a non-renewable resource, so this news resulted in a flurry of research.

According to a 2010 article from The Independent, the trouble began with a U.S. law that was passed in 1996, “which has effectively made helium too cheap to recycle.”

The law stipulates that the US National Helium Reserve, which is kept in a disused underground gas field near Amarillo, Texas – by far the biggest store of helium in the world – must all be sold off by 2015, irrespective of the market price.

“In 1996, the US Congress decided to sell off the strategic reserve and the consequence was that the market was swelled with cheap helium because its price was not determined by the market. The motivation was to sell it all by 2015,” Professor Richardson [Nobel laureate and  professor of physics at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York] said.

New Year Happiness: Starting Where I Am

As the current year draws to a close, I’ve found myself reflecting on how far I’ve come, and where I hope to be in the coming year. In the spirit of change, I recently read a couple Pema Chodron books, but the one that stuck with me the most was Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living. Now I’ve always considered myself fairly compassionate of others, but Start Where You Are means starting with YOU – with not only complete accountability for your actions, but complete compassion for yourself as well. Now that was something I had never considered before.

The past couple of years have been full of changes, and many that happened at the start of this calendar year were not so good. March was a particularly bad month, full of family health issues, increasing stress around the wedding and the recognition, and subsequent severing, of toxic areas of my life. But I stayed strong and good things started to fill the new-found space I had created – since then I have made some great friends, involved myself in worthy organizations and have become (mostly) content with life in general.

I’ve never been one to follow any one religion or practice, but Buddhism has interested me* ever since a junior highschool project unearthed the angst-friendly gem that “life is full of suffering.” Anyone who leads a normal, uncharmed life knows this is the truth, but Buddhists use this suffering/adversity to learn a thing or two about themselves. And so learn I did, and what I found was not always pretty. But it wasn’t particularly ugly either – just very human.

Winter Solstice Tutorial From the Ditzy Druid: White Pine Tea

Grey Catsidhe over at the Ditzy Druid posted a great Winter Solstice tutorial on white pine tea:

Tonight, a recipe perfect for wintery nights! It uses an ingredient native to my home in Upstate NY –  pinus strobus – The Eastern White Pine.  If you live around the North Eastern part of America, you’re probably very familiar with these trees.  They should be especially recognizable to anyone who has ever spent time in the Adirondack Mountains.  They’re very common there!  In fact, the word “Adirondack” is Iroquois for “bark eater” – a reference by the Mohawks of the Algonquins.  They would eat the nutritious inner bark during difficult winters.  The White Pine is also culturally important to the Iroquois as the Tree of Peace.

No Dogmas Allowed: Fred Sees the Light on Dog Mountain

On the way back home from Maine, and on the suggestion of a good friend, we stopped at the Stephen Huneck Gallery and Dog Chapel on Dog Mountain in St. Johnsbury, VT. Freddy-dog was beside himself with excitement (although a little confused about the carved wooden dogs), and Butch and I enjoyed the art and furniture in the gallery. In the chapel itself, I left an “in memory” note to my childhood dog, George, and then took a million photos, as usual:

A beautiful legacy to a wonderful artist and all that he held dear. And apparently it was an enlightening moment for Fred, who has been extremely well-behaved since we got back – obviously he saw the light on Dog Mountain!

Green(ish) Tip: Buy Handmade!

Finding the perfect present for someone has always been one of life’s thrills for me, and making that present is even better. I’ve always been a big believer in encouraging others to buy handmade, and as a current member of an amazing local “crafty sisterhood” (the above photo being a good likeness of our monthly get-togethers), I’m going to take the opportunity to shamelessly plug local creative businesses, starting with mine:

• FiveBirchPerch: My newest crafty venture. Handmade jewelry & decor created from natural materials, man-made trimmings, and some vintage thrown in for good measure. Custom work available.