Out in the Rogue-Siskiyou National Forest last weekend, I found an abundance of wildflowers blooming everywhere I looked. Here are just a few that caught my fancy. This delicate, fiery Red Columbine (Aquilegia formosa) by the Coquille river was an exceptional beauty. I'm used to seeing the deep purple Iris tenax in the coast range on my excursions, but these were a lovely pale yellow ...
Seasons
A Merry May Faire
This past weekend, our Waldorf School held the annual May Faire on a sunny Saturday afternoon. Everyone gathered around the maypole in the lower field, creating a bustling circle of community fun. With Spring in full swing, it seemed as though everyone was emerging from social hibernation and coming out of the woodwork to co-create this beautiful, ancient festival together. This year, my ...
Blog Giveaway at Wooly Moss Roots!
It's Springtime, and the birds are busy building nests in trees, shrubs, barn eaves and marsh grasses all around us. I, too, have been busy building nests in my craft room. I am giving one away over at the Wooly Moss Roots blog this week, so head on over there and put in your entry: http://woolymossroots.blogspot.com/2012/04/giveaway-from-sponsor-mountain-hearth.html Entries are open ...
Shades of Green
I saw so many vibrant green leaves popping out in the coastal forest on my backpacking trip last week, I couldn't help but catch a few of them in photographs. The thing I love most about leaf buds when they first unfurl towards the sun is the diversity of color and texture they display. When you think about the cycles that they go through every year, and how they regenerate the same leaves ...
Spring Blossoms
Living in the middle of an orchard in the Springtime, there is always something to see in bloom. Here are just a few of the flowering beauties that caught my eye this week. ...
Spring Equinox Snow
Yesterday morning, much to our surprise, we woke up to a Spring Equinox snow. The ground was covered in a good four inches, and it just kept coming down. School was cancelled, so I decided it was a good morning to hunker down and make a waffle breakfast. Upon looking out the front door, the kids discovered gifts from the Spring faeries in a basket, including lettuce seeds, hardboiled quail eggs ...
Imbolc Light Garden
As the wheel of the year turns once again, we mark the shift in the seasons by celebrating Imbolc, an ancient holiday honoring the first stirrings of the seeds beneath the rich, dark earth and the slow but sure return of longer days. This year, my children and I had a very simple celebration with a delicious dinner of shepherd's pie, earthy carob cake with cocoa nib "seeds", and our ...
First Snow
We finally woke up to some white winter mornings this week that were so silent and still you could hear a crow's call clear as a bell from across the fields. As soon as the sun would peek up over the hills it all began to sparkle like thousands of little diamonds. This is one of my favorite parts of Winter that we only seem to get a little taste of around here. It's important to appreciate it ...
Buche de Noel
For our Winter Solstice celebration this year, we went all out and made a Buche de Noel (Yule log cake) complete with homemade marzipan elves, fig "acorns", meringue mushrooms, pistachio marzipan leaves and chocolate bark. I had been dreaming of making this cake for years, so it was quite the exciting endeavor. The meringue mushrooms were decorated with homemade white and dark chocolate gills, ...
On a Cold and Frosty Morning
There have been some cold, white mornings this past week. With snow being such a rare occurrence in these parts, hard frosts are responsible for many of our memorable Winter landscapes. I found some amazing ice crystal formations I couldn't resist capturing some photos of before they melted away. Frost covered spider's lace. Jack Frost's barbed wire. A frosty fence post. A magical, ...