No food crisis here

We've got more greens than we can eat. See: Tidy rows of little Swiss chard, broccoli and Brussels sprouts plants, just a few weeks ago (top pic). And now (middle pic), we're eating (and giving away) lots of Swiss chard. No broccoli or Brussels sprouts yet.

And there's Saro...guarding the garden.

(click photos to enlarge)

57 Sunflowers

No flowers yet, but compare this to the photo from June 3. Can't wait till this starts to bloom!

Well, hello there.

June has been a busy month around here. It began with a week-long yoga teacher training. Then I had a wonderful trip to Mexico for the wedding of mi hermano. (Pictures will be posted soon. Maybe.) And in between all of that, I've had a full work schedule. I'm finishing up a really great project this week. And with a few other things here and there, I've been working more or less full time. I'm so happy for the work. Now, need to get more!

Practice this morning was great. Effortless and fluid. I did Primary up to Kurmasana and everything felt just right. I remember when all those vinyasas used to kill me. Now they are a welcome break between poses. I actually enjoy them. I'm doing Chaturanga consistently, but sometimes the knees come down before Up-dog. Still, that's a lot of progress and my shoulders are injury-free. Binds were solid (fingers, not wrists). I felt the hips getting a nice stretch throughout the practice. This was followed by a pretty good lotus pose at the end of practice. Chin to the floor in Kurmasana. I heard little, barely audible cracks in my thoracic spine during backbends. This is very good.

I read recently that Utthita Hasta Padangusthasana is to be done with the free arm straight (not with hand on hip). I tried it this way today and it's kind of neat. In a way, it feels less supported. I never realized how much stability I get from pressing the hand into the hip. But finding the stability from the inside of the pose makes it ultimately much stronger.

It's cool today, but I generated quite a bit of heat and felt nicely sticky. So sticky, in fact, that I couldn't move my legs from Bhujapidasana into Bakasana. I was stuck! My practice has been very steady lately. I even survived the travel test and kept up my daily practice while in Mexico. Ashtanga is the perfect travel practice. No fuss, no wondering what pose to do next. Just get to the mat and begin. It is thanks to Ashtanga that I have a daily practice at all.

Since the teacher training, I've been alternating between Ashtanga and Tantric Hatha practices. Ashtanga has become pretty comfortable for me, so learning a new system is both fun and strange. I feel like I'm starting over again. There is a lot to learn and I'm just working with the practice sequences we did during the training. Hopefully, over time and with repetition, things will start to sink in. I will also be getting a CD soon with all the meditations we did during the training. Can't wait for that to arrive. The meditations were one of my favorite parts of the training.

It's a little confusing working with two different systems, but I think they fit well together. And since I don't teach Ashtanga, what I'm learning with Tantra will be a huge help with my teaching. Plus, the insights from Tantra carry over to Ashtanga. For example, we began studying the energetic effects of different types of practice. A forward bend practice affects the digestive and reproductive systems, pacifies Pitta and Vata, influences Samana (centeredness/balance) and Apana (downward movement/elimination). The Primary Series is basically a forward bend practice. This explains why it has been so helpful with my digestion and in regulating my menstruation.

Updates coming!

It's been a busy couple of weeks. I've had a lot of new projects coming in and the past couple of days I've been at a yoga teacher training. More about all of this later. Just wanted to post some quick updates on the garden!

The flower garden

Here's an overhead shot of the flower garden. This has been a construction zone for over a year. We dug it all out by hand. With a pick axe and a shovel. The soil here is pretty bad. There used to be a building on this site, so the ground is full of bricks and foundation blocks and the gravel that covers the entire lot. We've had to replace most of the soil. But we're finally starting to make some progress. Last weekend John built the white horse fence (to keep Saro from trampling the flowers) and it has really helped to define the space and separate this area from the weedy overgrowth around it.

The big yellow flower sculpture on the right side of the picture is our seating area. The area closer to the street from here is the shady garden (mostly vinca vine and some coleus). The thing in the middle is a fountain, and it's hard to see in this picture, but the stick figure is watering the big funky enoki sculpture with a red watering can. We planted the garden around the fountain last year and you can see the plants that came back (sedum, yarrow, rudbeckia, delphinium, lambs ear and a few others).

The big curvy shape to the left (looks like half of the state of Michigan) is the sunflower patch. This will hopefully be overflowing with red and yellow sunflowers soon! We're working on filling in the areas around this with random flowers (cosmos, zinnias). It will be more chaotic and not at all planned out. We just want something growing there! We'll keep the gravel path in the middle so you can walk in between the flowers.

There's a lot of work still to be done. But it's finally starting to take shape.

First Harvest!

Mixed Greens with Arugula...picked from the garden! Crispy and peppery. Delicious!

Other garden news: The carrots finally came up. (I had given up on them.) The swiss chard is getting huge and will have to be thinned soon. Broccoli seedlings seem to have handled the transplant well and are getting established. The Brussels sprouts are doing okay. Not great. Still alive, but small. I put the cucumber and zucchini seeds in the ground yesterday. The tomato seedlings are not doing well and I think we're going to buy a couple of small tomato plants instead of trying to work with these. Same with the red peppers.