Nammah is back with her splendor

I choose to risk my significance, to live so that which came to me as seed goes to the next as blossom, and that which came to me as blossom, goes on as fruit. 

From I Will Not Die an Unlived Life by Dawn Markova

Ah...after our year of fallow, Nammah and I are back with an insatiable desire. This first week of summer for me, the plants were carefully transitioned from the grow lights in the studio - to the newly put together but not quite finished greenhouse - to their permanent homes in the womb of Nammah's earthen soil. It feels SO good!

4 beds of tomatoes (around 40 plants of over 16 different varieties) - 2 beds of peppers - 19 winter squash plants plus summer squash - brussel sprouts, broccoli, celery, 4 varieties of carrots, 2 varieties of beets, parsnips, turnips, rutabaga, 2 kinds of kale, collard greens, spinach, 2 kinds of chard, multiple varieties of lettuce, beans of all sorts, edamame, melons, cilantro, basil, onions AND don't forget the garlic planted last fall!

The perennials are doing well. Honey berries will produce fruit this our third year, asparagus plants provide a few spears a day, and the blueberries and strawberries are full of blossoms.

What a contrast from last year. I couldn't even get inspired to post - though I made an attempt. I started a blog post last fall but never finished it. I wrote: It is fall already. I know it happens every year but this year was different. It is almost as if the seasons didn't happen. Something was missing. I didn't plant seeds. I didn't run my hands through and around the soil. No harvest to create with. No abundance. Paradoxically no scarcity either!

There is an interesting paradox in open space. It tends to fill! Our intentions for this year of open time and space were to be able to do more of other things. Namely, to finish the multitude of projects left undone; fill the empty space with something else. What happened was that the time was filled by the perception of abundance - leading to scarcity. The summer filled with all that rushes in when one says; "Sure, I can do that. We don't have garden to tend this year." We did have a lot of fun - kayaking Pictured Rocks, Canoe trip to the BWCAW, backpacking at Point Reyes, singing tour and family visits in Colorado, singing for the International Holocaust and Genocide conference in the UK. We went places! In the meantime, weeds filled the empty space in the garden. 

The final decision for this experiment came after a conversation with Rabbi Amy, who articulated the mandate of the 7 year fallow - Shmita - in such a convincing manner, it felt like it could potentially be a sacred summer! A literal translation of "release" - I felt released from the obligation of the typical summer. I was released to see what else emerged. The paradox, for me, is now the need to create meaning out of the fallow - when my "work" in the garden has always been that which has provided my grounding and connecting to the sacred at the same time. The garden - her rhythms and metaphors are so central to who I am-to the rhythms of my being - I find myself feeling literally OFF this fall.

Maybe that's the lesson in the fallow. To feel the OFF, the empty, the paradox - to create new meanings of what WAS and to become re-enchanted with was made more sacred in its absence.

Re-enchanted IS what I am. And grateful for the lessons from the past year. There is real beauty in this picture from last summer - the chickens had free range of the garden. The sunflowers came up wherever they felt like it. We even harvested a LOT of volunteer cilantro! I'm sure I'll find moments of being overwhelmed this summer. I always do. More than once I will ask; "Why do I do this? It's so much work!" Even expressing understanding of fast food - "so I can be free to travel and play!" I am SO predictable. I am what I am.

But THIS summer - I walk around looking at each blossom and a Peter Mayer lyric plays in my mind; "For they needed someone to see them - you my child are awake."  I feel awakened by summer - even more so by the process of digging my hands into the dirt again - planting seeds to blossom - tending blossoms to fruit.

Hannah is awakened by nature as well!

Cheers to Summer 2017 - officially declared the year of Nammah! 

Canticle of the Feathered Ones

Earth moves in a mysterious way, her wonders to unfold. 

The wonders of it all are more poignant this year, as my time with the Center for Courage and Renewal (CCR) increases.

It’s difficult to explain to people “what happens” in a Circle of Trust. The idea of reading poems and reflecting on them sounds more like a college literature course where the poems are “workshopped” with a critical and intellectual lens. It’s different with Courage work, where the poem “works” YOU! And it’s not an intellectual working, rather a spiritual one.

I am the academician and farmer. Growing up on the farm, reading was leisure and there was little time for that. Poetry, I don’t really remember any. The same went for flowers. The land was for producing crops to eat and sell. Mom had a few geraniums in front of the house. But the garden was for vegetables. Row upon row of food for the body.

My first Courage to Teach retreat was a year long seasonal offering with 12 other teachers, K-16.  My research was on Teaching and Learning. I loved pedagogy. This was my sabbatical year and I was anxious to learn some new techniques. I remember asking the facilitator on that second weekend (I had missed the first so I felt behind) what I was supposed to DO during the 2 hours of reflective/free time.  I don’t remember how many times and different ways she answered my question – I couldn’t hear it.  It was a concept as foreign to me as reading fiction for pleasure – or a fertile field of flowers simply for the sake of beauty. She finally put her hand on my shoulder, gave a supportive and knowing chuckle and said; “Paula, that’s why this is called a retreat and not a workshop.” I was far from home!

I confess I spent the first 2 retreats in the series of 5, a skeptic.  That was almost 3 years, and several Courage retreats, ago.  

I am not a different person. I still grow lots of vegetables, read mostly things that will inform my work, and am driven with “to do” lists that spin in my head much of the time. BUT, now I plant flowers, I read poetry, I understand retreat – and I can feel when my soul needs to be fed.

An August Courage to Teach retreat in Duluth with my UMD colleagues and others, allowed a visit to Nammah by my mentor, Debbie Stanley. I am now a full fledged facilitator - ready to fly!

In September, a collaboration with another Courage colleague, Winton Boyd, at Wisdom Ways, featured Sara and her music. The integration of music, live and engaged music, into my work with Courage has been a dream an intention all along. The theme of Leaf Falling, Bud Forming inspired an original piece for the retreat. We sang, we moved, we reflected on what we were letting go of and what new was forming, ready to winter over.

In the meantime, Nammah is preparing her wintering over. The melancholy that putting her to bed brings is softened when I remember the requisite

Hidden Seed deep in the dark soil of the earth. Fertile Ground, Womb of the Night, bring us new birth (lyrics from Sara's song Darkness Cover Me). 

Along with the melancholy, there is a sense of hope and releif that in this time of darkness and rest, her wonders will again unfold come spring. What lies in waiting!

It WAS another summer of abundance for Nammah and her homestead. While the focus was on the feathered ones, Nammah herself was full of splendor.

The feathered ones, aka (Icelandic Chickens) have multiplied from 8 to 15 in our first year. Each new hatch seemed to stimulate more construction in what is now known as the Hen Hilton!

The summer of chicks also drew a variety of young visitors - from L.A. and San Francisco, CA; Austin, TX; Seattle, WA and Duluth, MN

As well as some not so young visitors from South Dakota.

My recent retreats, as participant, with CCR included themes of the feathered ones, along with the notion of sanctuary. Nammah IS a sanctuary, for us, her visitors as well as the many feathered and non-feathered ones she hosts. A Canticle of the Feathered Ones. 

As I enter into this season of decline, pondering the already formed buds that will be wintering over, I also think about the seeds that are scattered by the feathered ones. This year, we had random sunflowers in unintended paces. As well as those planted with great intention.

What strikes me is the unknown of where, or even what, will emerge - Seeds that the birds have planted. Sometimes it is the unintended seeds that grow into the most magnificent flowers!

Winter is on her way. What lies in waiting?

She fashions beauty out of clay, like straw spun into gold.

Summer 2015

I want to plant a little garden with you now
Take care of a piece of the earth somehow
And tend it when we're old and gray and
Try to straighten up and say, well,
I'm so glad to see you today
Hey baby hey baby hey baby hey 

(Greg Brown lyrics to Hey Baby Hey)

The chickens are reproducing like bunnies! This time we only gave the broody hen 2 eggs to sit on (since all 4 hatched last time). Sure enough - both eggs turned into little chicks on June 24. We now have 3 different ages of chickens - and the initial batch isn't even a year old yet!

So of course a bigger coop was needed. Fortunately Sara is a handy gal.  Our pal Trish came helped too. They decided to call themselves Close Enough Construction.

Frey loves his new digs and feels like a real king!

But this is Nammah's blog and SHE is certainly in reproduction mode as a well! Everything was planted by June 13.  It felt late given the nice weather earlier. But frost visited twice the first week of June. 

A new red bistro set allows us to have our morning coffee while we watch her grow

Now we water, weed and wait! It's a good thing we have a sweet place to hang out! We are blessed with abundance!!

As Sara and I celebrate our 5th wedding anniversary on the very day the US Supreme Court declared same sex marriage legal in all 50 states-

Even Frey is celebrating!

You get to me like old time religion did

In my heart when I was a kid

You're sweet gospel music to my ears

You know how to ease all my fears

And from my heart to yours all I can say is

Hey baby hey baby hey baby hey