"Espresso Bean" Misnomer Rant

You know those little, chocolate-covered "espresso beans"?... Well, they're not actually espresso beans. There is no such thing as an espresso bean. Espresso is not derived from a special bean. Nor is espresso a particular roast. Espresso is just concentrated coffee. Making espresso is just a form of preparing coffee. When making espresso, ANY type of coffee bean is ground finely, and my favorite, percolated with boiling water in a stove-top Bialetti espresso maker. What an "espresso bean" really is, is just the previously mentioned finely ground coffee covered in chocolate, shaped into a small ball. It's not even a bean. Ugh!... A complete misnomer.

Spicy Korean Pickle!

Sandor Ellix Katz style.



I have a summer farmshare with Riverland Farm in Sunderland, MA, and over the course of a few weeks, I've acquired quite the stash of cabbage. Two honking napas, one that I made just a regular sauerkraut from and the other, along with two purple cabbage heads, KIMCHI! I turned to our dear friend who wrote Wild Fermentation for help.


I made a brine of salt water for the chopped cabbage and diced carrots and a daikon radish to soak in overnight. I then chopped up onions and garlic, one Hot Wax pepper and one Jalapeno pepper, cayenne powder, and grated ginger. Pouring off the brine, I mixed the vegetables and spice melody. Packed into sterilized jars, using the brine to help raise the water level. Fermentation will take about 1 week. According to the Korean Food Research Institute, the average Korean eats about a quarter pound of kimchi every day. I don't imagine I'll be consuming it that readily, so hopefully it'll last for about half a year or more. Kudos for food preservation.

Womb Connection Haiku

Daucus Carota.
A Woman's Aid When In Need,
Sacred Power Plant.

Anahata Calling

I was recently told by a wise elder during a Tarot reading that I needed to hold my heart center more openly and highly. He told me of my goddess nature. Within the following week, I came across this captivating semi-precious emerald stone, shaped somewhat like a heart. It was perfect for me in what I was interested in reflecting, as the heart chakra is green. I've since created it into a beautiful necklace piece. It is artfully caged in by coiling and spiraling gold wire, hanging by gorgeous beads over my heart.








I don't know how I did this.








This is a reminder for me to radiate compassion and love through my bursting Anahata to all of creation.

Sustainability

Sustainability is the capacity to withstand prosperity and sustenance through any of the opposing forces that may interfere with the ability of a particular state or condition to persist. It is the prolonged nourishment of any resource as to not cause permanent depletion of that resource. In popular context, sustainability is usually spoken of in reference to biological, human, and ecological systems. It governs the success of any notion, practice, or constant and is not only a way of life, but truly the only way to be, because without sustainability, nothing would be an absolute truth and nothing would continue to be.

The Bane of My Existence

Rainbow Fish

"Twelve fish swim happily around the border of this mandala, a reference to the yearly turning of the cycle of time - slowed for a moment during Crystallization."


I acquired this beautiful design from a mandala coloring book. Flipping through, I knew this one was mine, as I thought instantly, "Oh!... I'm an Aquarius!... This is perfect." It took a while for me to finish (the unfinished art sitting on my desk for months, 1/8 completed). I did it by adding light color blending pastel chalk. My inspiration for it is from a well-know children's story, "The Rainbow Fish", a precious favorite of mine.

Treasure Trip

Earlier this year, I scored this book at the Leverett Dump. A pocket-sized golden guide, written in 1976 by the famous Richard Evans Schultes (!!!) himself (the father of Ethnobotany), of hallucinogenic plants! In perfect condition, too. And now, this book is out of print. You could never find something like this nowadays... I snagged it with new-found glory. And I knew that it would be worth a lot of money. I checked a while back on Amazon, and the first going price for it was above $200!...

Psychedelic Mushrooms:


Cannabis:


Peyote:


Ayahuasca:




Amazing.

Luna Love

I went outside for a cigarette of tobacco with sage and knelt down against the backdoor of my house on the side steps. I looked out to the dark, cloudy sky and saw this bright beam of white light breaching right out of the clouds, following its way down to the treetops underneath it. There appeared to be a white dot through the trees, it started growing and I swear, I thought the end of the world was nearing. I was truly waiting for the famous white horse, and I was getting ready to go. I saw that the white dot was multiplying, into a ring, and it looked as though there was a fire circle beginning to emerge. The hills were dancing. At first I thought this was a forest fire, but my imagination led me to believe there was some sort of ceremony of the gods going on. Then, the ring arose, becoming clear that it was actually the moon, miss lady luna - solid, strong, and pearly white. She was illuminous, rising quickly, and was she ever so powerful. She took the sky and the clouds with her. Birthing out of fire, eastward, over the sun. I sent my prayers to her as she traveled onward high.

Warren Wrath

He's a source of indistinguishable fury. Choose open or closed flame, you just never know. A spark is always there, ready to bellow.

Unleashing the extreme is like standing under icicles. They hang over my head, ready to strike at any moment. You just never know. Ready to leave their puncturing wounds. I can't talk to them. Make sense of them. They are frozen, stiff, festering his core of anger, resentment, and self-hatred.

Too bad his raging fire won't melt the icicles.

Spending all of these years trying to become immune to it, and eventually, all he'll be hurting is himself.

Dark, despairing energy. The kind that sticks to the walls of this house.

Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854

"There is some of the same fitness in a man's building of his own house that there is in a bird's building of its own nest. Who knows but if men constructed their dwelling, with their own hands, and provided food for themselves and families simply and honestly enough, the poetic faculty would be universally developed, as birds universally sing when they are so engaged? But alas! We do like cowbirds and cuckoos, which lay their eggs in nests which others birds have built."

Maa

Shakti! I call to the shakti FORCE, ENERGY, STRENGTH, and child-bearing hips! Ah!!!... blessed oh me oh my, we are but made of steel, us women. Like the Hindu goddess Durga, capable of enduring the greatest of all hardships and pain! We are graceful! We are natural, raw beauty! We are divine power! We are nurturers, lovers, peaceful warriors, and mothers - grandmothers! We kindle and we give. We are healers. And herbalists.

Mmm, mama...

We are Earth. The moon. The ladybug. Wise. We are each all the foam-arisen Aphrodite. Swans. We are Rosie the Riveter saying, "We are doing it!" or, "We did do it!" instead of, "We can do it!".

A Beautiful Morning

The winding path of life leads me to gifts blessed by the universe. Experiences taken, lessons learned; embrace it all. Run with the wind, the ever-changing current. I can handle it all. Bring on the laughs, the joys, the tears... the sorrow. I am stronger than pain and suffering.


Ah, Astarte Farm, tomato haven. It was my last stop of the farm-hopping train. Cool mornings and scorching days. An August of a beat-up straw hat on its way out, a more-than-ever sun-kissed face, dirt-encrusted pores (permanent summer stamp)... oh an August so simply wonderful. A September, October, and November of crisp, autumn air and cloudy skies. My work for now has ceased, but the love I bred will cycle through the fertility of the soil for seasons to come.

What a breathtaking view that morning. A horizon so concentrated with blissful peace and stillness. Bond with the light, and keep chins up. Always look up and ahead. Time has precious keepings. Love.

Guitars, Hairy Armpits, and Snakes

My grandmother's emblem. Thank you, Nanny.

A natural.

Women with body hair are sexy, and body hair on women is sexy.

"Expanding... experimenting... growing... confident... beauty."

How To Make Raspberry Jam

It was my Sunday harvest at the garden, and I was:
less than a farmer,
more than a passer-by,
...
mingling amongst vibrant, red berries, gathering in glass, avoiding the sting.

Ethically self-harvest local & organic berries, leaving some for others. Take of which that is right, with thankfulness and gratitude for the Earth, as she so willingly shares her bounty. If it is cold, wear a coat, if it is too sunny, wear a hat.

Gather twice as much in berry form that you would like to make, as the mass of the berries divides in half when they're mashed. 1 quart = 4 cups; gather 8 cups of berries if you'd like to make 1 quart of jam.

Keep fresh.

Mash the berries, and warm the same amount of granulated sugar in the oven at 250 degrees fahrenheit for about 15 minutes.

Boil hard the mashed berries for 1 minute, mix in sugar, and return to a full boil. Stir until gel - 5+ minutes without added pectin.

Smile when you eat or prepare. The homecraft warms your heart.

Epiphysis Cerebri

She is the vision of metaphysical communication. Indigo energy field, with blasts of rainbow light inside those eyes. Flowing from her base, prevalent up and through her throat, forehead, crown. Seat of the soul, the pineal gland knows. The eye watches all and sees... vibrations. It is her identity. With many to choose. Mandala as offering. What will she project? Give. What will forthcome, now that she holds sight?

In Ruins

I am ridden. This happens, why, time after time again? Because I trust and love, which are worthwhile things in exchange for pain in the end. Crippling heartbreak. Helplessness. Death. Our essences joining as overlapping circles, creating a pointed oval of our togetherness, of which that is rigid in shape now, to be faded into dark as it dies a slow one.

A real man, may I ever meet one? Please? Just spare me. A real man to hear my stories. To embrace my flaws as stepping stones to our shared journey of understanding, compassion, partnership, and trust. I'm growing for you, so that we may grow together. I just want to be a good woman. I am a good woman.

I've been raped. A ragdoll, strewn across the ground with the blood spattered on my face of getting my heart thrown back at me. Thanks, hope you had fun with it. It's not even in my reach.

I rise above, stronger than this lifeless, ragdoll body. I am strength. I am power. I am wisdom. I am love. Love to go around, projected to all corners and infinite spaces of the universe. The mother, constantly reproducing. Breeding light. Breeding peace.

In ruins, this love. In ruins, I fall, even in the highest. Death potion, freezing ponds, cutting, self-destruction. Oh, but I'm beyond all that. I'm better than this all, but what must one succumb to if not reconciliation? To be in control, to hurt the other?... oh, what a perpetual cycle.

Drained, of all energy. Of all tears. Drained, it leaks into my waking life. End it, all. When will I be over this one?

"to you i wish the sun, infinite even when obscured,
the moon, cooling on the warmest of nights,
the heavens, rooted in today,
earth, the manifest transcends the imminent"
-from one who once loved me

Mountain Laurel Summer

It was a June of Mountain Laurel; white bushes sprouted everywhere. Camouflaged as ghosts, waiting with their deer and fairies, to spook the crescendoing dust. Amherst hill towns, Shutesbury dirt hill roads - Market Hill, Sand Hill, Baker, and Schoolhouse. Hippie-ville.

The July Mountain Laurel brown, crusted over, dead. Juniper Hill Farm died with it.

that's C-R-I-S-T-I-E

... not "Christie",
"Christi",
"Christy",
"Cristi",
"Cristy",
"Khristie",
"Khristi",
"Khristy",
"Kristie",
"Kristi",
OR
"Kristy".