Sorry I have not been posting as regularly as usual. That’s because I’m STILL slogging through the 70 to 90 zone and it’s taking all my brain power. Also, we’ve been enjoying lovely weather so I’ve been working in the garden a lot! And doing a lot of reiki. And just generally being busy. But I wanted to show you something that I think is cool. Probably because it was my idea.
One of the drawbacks to having raised vegetable beds is that you can’t just pull the chicken tractor over them and let the chickens scratch out the old roots, eat the pests, and drop their poo on the soil. So I asked the hubster to build this little topper. The four corner posts sink in to the soil on the insides of the bed, to hold the cage in place. The plastic keeps the rain off the girls.
Of course we have to put them back in the regular chicken tractor at night, so the raccoons don’t get to enjoy a chicken dinner. Bu they do a nice job of cleaning up the beds, so we can add some compost and a little fresh soil and be all ready for spring. I love the raised beds. Also, I think the topper is kind of cute. Almost like a little covered wagon. We just take poles and run them under the frame to lift the whole contraption up and put it on another bed. It was simple and cheap, too–the hubster used scrap lumber and an end of a roll of plastic we bought to cover our fire wood. The chickens seem to enjoy it too–abundant worms and grubs and heaven only knows what else.
Eventually we hope to make a proper one with a nest box so we can leave the chickens in over night and just do a lock down like we do with the other chicken tractors. But that, as writing buddy Laura says, “Is future Jeff and Michelle’s problem.”
It was a beautiful day yesterday.
Little Feathery Yarrow Leaves
Warm and partly sunny!
A Violet--A Bit Chewed on by Slugs but Still Sweet and Pretty
It really feels like spring–I hope it stays above freezing, even though I know there’s a lot more cold and rain coming.
Rose Leaves Unfurling--Pretty Colors
More Rose Leaves--Look at that Gorgeous Shade of Wine Red
I wanted to stay home and work in the garden, but I’d made plans, so off I went, and I was glad I did.
The Light Coming Through the Thinning Clouds Was Unreal
Even driving was enjoyable, it was so pretty out.
The Hillsides All Veiled With Clouds
(I did not take this photo from a moving vehicle. I pulled off the road.)
This is What I See When I Drive Away from My House Toward Town
But now–now you all want to know who won the drawing for the free Faeries’ Oracle reading!
This One WAS Taken Through The Windshield of My Moving Vehicle
See how tricky I am, making you look at all my pictures first. The winner of the drawing is Tiffaney Jewel! Send me an e-mail, Tiffaney, and I’ll get your reading to you some time in the coming week.
I don’t remember where I read about Rebecca Stead’s When You Reach Me–I’m pretty sure it was reviewed on someone’s blog, but I don’t remember who. Which is too bad, because I’d like to thank whoever it was that turned me on to this novel. Middle grade fiction isn’t often my thing. Not because I think it is inferior or less important than YA or adult fiction. It’s just that I’m too fond of mooning and sexual tension. But this! This book was beautiful.
The Synopsis:
Four mysterious letters change Miranda’s world forever.
By sixth grade, Miranda and her best friend, Sal, know how to navigate their New York City neighborhood. They know where it’s safe to go, like the local grocery store, and they know whom to avoid, like the crazy guy on the corner.But things start to unravel. Sal gets punched by a new kid for what seems like no reason, and he shuts Miranda out of his life. The apartment key that Miranda’s mom keeps hidden for emergencies is stolen. And then Miranda finds a mysterious note scrawled on a tiny slip of paper:
I am coming to save your friend’s life, and my own.
I must ask two favors. First, you must write me a letter.The notes keep coming, and Miranda slowly realizes that whoever is leaving them knows all about her, including things that have not even happened yet. Each message brings her closer to believing that only she can prevent a tragic death. Until the final note makes her think she’s too late.
I can’t even explain how this story affected me. The first person POV narrative resonates with layers of emotion throughout the entire book. It’s beautiful, sad, and sweet, and it’s one of those books that you finish and feel sort of changed, somehow, though you’d never be able to say how. The narrator herself not only learns a lot about relationships and life, but also comes out on the other side of the story’s events a better person–kinder, more self-aware, more emotionally balanced.
I also LOVED the way Miranda re-reads A Wrinkle in Time
AND! It won the 2010 Newbury Medal. It totally deserves it.
I’ve not spent a lot of time on this blog discussing my spirituality. I guess In my opinion, each person’s spirituality is a very personal, intimate choice, and no one out there is looking for me to tell him or her what to believe. But some events that I recently became aware of have me thinking a lot about my spiritual path, about the state of public discourse regarding religion in the U.S., and about my right to practice my chosen faith in this country. I’m not very good at summing up legal fights, etc., and I am TERRIBLE at arguing a point rationally or backing myself up with facts. Sad, but true–amazing that I passed my logic course in college. So I don’t know that I would be able to participate effectively in the conversation about Patrick McCollum and California’s “five faiths” policy. Please go read the article I linked to above, and this follow up. Then come back.
My Brigid Figure
I feel like . . . there’s so much anger and fear about religion out there right now. I don’t quite understand. Faith/religion/spirituality, isn’t it supposed to make our lives better? Isn’t it supposed to help us become better people–kinder, more loving, more at peace? Why, instead, does it seem to drive us, again and again, to wage war on each other in one way or another? I know, I know, I’m not asking any new questions–this problem is as old as society, it seems. Fighting over the “right way”, as if there’s only one color to paint your house, one way to wear your hair, one food to make you healthy, one way to approach the divine. It makes me tired. It makes me so, so, so sad.
The truth is, I don’t need to convert anyone to my spiritual path. I don’t need to educate anyone about my particular eclectic path to god. I don’t care what faith you practice–I only care how it affects you as a person. Worship bunnies. Worship pigs. Worship your girlfriend’s tattoo, I don’t freaking care, just . . . be nice. To yourself, to me, to everyone. And let me be follow my own path, as long as I’m nice too.
But then I wonder . . . is that some kind of cop out? If more of us pagan types–and that is a big umbrella term, people, it covers a lot of diverse ground–were willing to talk with people, answer questions, really engage in a conversation, would things be different? Could we help people understand that there really is nothing to fear? Or is meanness and small mindedness so ingrained in religious dialogue at this point, there’s no fixing it? I don’t believe that. I don’t believe in “incurable”. I think everything can be healed. The problem is finding the way. And I just don’t know what that might be.
A Brigid's Cross
From sundown February 1 to sundown today, we celebrate Imbolc–a time of honoring the goddess Brigid. No coincidence that the Feast of Saint Brigid of Kildare falls on February 1 as well. Both figures share patronage of blacksmiths, poets, and healers. Both are associated with perpetual flames. There is a theory–which I think seems true–that they are, in fact, one and the same, the Saint evolved from the Goddess during Ireland’s conversion to Christianity. A day that celebrates a figure so wound up in the struggle between religious paradigms seems an appropriate day to muse on that struggle–and an appropriate day to ask how we can bridge the gaps between us. I have honored Brigid as one of my patrons for several years now. Having been raised in a fundamentalist Christian household, and eventually found my way to a pagan path, I’ve found a lot of comfort in Brigid’s survival of the war between faiths. She adapted. She made the leap, and she still brings comfort and joy to her people. In Brigid, Christianity and Irish paganism intermingle. She gives me hope.
And Imbolc is also a celebration of hope. We’re halfway between the darkest day of the year and the equinox. Spring is coming. Soon we will have a lot of work to do–good work, planting seeds, tending our gardens. So at Imbolc we engage in purification that prepares us for the work ahead. We burn old, tired herbs in the fire, and the greens that we brought in to celebrate the winter holidays. We practice letting go, and giving away, to make room for better and brighter things.
Somehow I feel like there has to be a way for us to use the energy of this time to infuse something new into the conversation about religion. Can we let go of our need to be right? Of the idea that there IS only one “right”? Can we let go of our fear of each other? Can we let go of our anger, and make room for better things? I’m trying to let go, to make room for better listening. For more happiness, more love, more kindness. And if I can’t do that, then I hope I can at least let go of worrying about what other people are doing, that I can at least really roll with the whole “live and let live” idea. I’m not perfect here–I tend to be kind of a control freak, I tend to think I’m right about everything (sometimes in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary), I tend to want people to listen to me dammit! But I’m trying. Every day, I’m trying.
Happy Imbolc, everyone. If you can, if you wish, I’d love it if you’d join me in focusing on letting go of the ideas and habits that cause separation. Maybe light a candle and ask Brigid–or any other entity with whom you feel a rapport–to help us find a way across the chasms that divide us.
And to my friends who find the idea of paganism, or any other religion, threatening or frightening or just weird–how can I help? What can I share with you, to help you understand my path? I promise, if you ask me a question from a genuine desire to understand, I will do whatever I can to give you an answer–even if I have to ask someone else.
Let’s talk.
A few weeks ago I started working on some short pieces of fiction as writing exercises. This piece was inspired by a card in The Faeries’ Oracle
The Bright Mother
You’ve wished on the first star of evening, on the full moon and the new, on clouds shaped like cherubs and on rainbows over drenched fields. You’ve lain on your back, your side, gotten on your knees, in the dark, in the moonlight by the river, in the bright afternoon sunlight of your garden. Swallowed the potions, done the procedures, paid the price.
But every month instead of swelling your womb releases its rich store of life, and your heart aches a little harder, and you ask why.
This is what you must do.
Tie a pink ribbon in your hair. Go to the woods. Go when the moon is a clear, bright sickle in the night sky, to where the tiny wild roses float on stinging prickled canes, exhaling their fragrance on the leaf-dimmed air. Find the place where the faces in the shadows withdraw when you peer at them, where the red poison mushrooms huddle beneath the thorns. Leave your offering: A clear crystal, a garland of flowers, a vessel of pure water. Make it precious, something you love. Show the Bright Mother the generosity of your spirit.
Carefully, carefully, lest the thorns make you bleed, ease a single pink petal from a five-part blossom. And with that petal’s astringent perfume on your tongue, whisper your prayer to the Lady, the mother of all mothers. Let the night’s beauty overwhelm you.
Go home with gratitude, and wait for your answer.
©Michelle Simkins, 2010
So, first of all, I have been awarded The Sunshine Award by Beadwright. Let us all now appreciate the bright shiny prettiness of the award:
Apparently, The Sunshine Award is awarded to bloggers whose positivity and creativity inspires others in the blog world.
That’s high praise, which I can only hope I live up to. So now, here’s how it works:
Beadwright changed the rules a bit from 12 bloggers to 6, and I’m sticking with her change!
The rules for accepting the Sunshine Award are:
- Put the logo on your blog or within your post.
- Pass the award onto 6 bloggers.
- Link the nominees within your post.
- Let the nominees know they have received this award by commenting on their blog.
- Share the love and link to the person from whom you received this award.
So here are the 6 people I would like to pass this along to:
- Cat Woods, who is always kind and encouraging and is also very creative and talented.
- Writing Buddy Laura, who never fails to make me laugh.
- Alexa at Not Enough Bookshelves, whose blog I recently discovered, who has good taste in books, and who laughs at the lame jokes I make in her comments.
- Kathleen over at A Bag of Olives, who has a great sense of humor and one of the prettiest dogs I’ve ever seen (Hi Celeste!).
Unfortunately, I fail at listing six. Because everyone else I want to give this award to has either received it already, or has asked people to please not tag them for things, and I like to respect that. So you only get four–treasure them all the more, because they are so special.
Sample Photo of a Reading. Yours Will Look Different.
NOW! The full moon is tonight! So I thought it would be fun to launch a little contest.
As some of you know, I have an Etsy shop. And in this Etsy shop I sell, among other things, Faeries’ Oracle Readings. And I thought it would be nice to give away a 3 to 5 card Faeries’ Oracle Reading on the new moon. Here is an explanation of what the winner will receive.
To enter, you MUST do at least ONE the following in the comments of this post:
- Tell me about something kind someone has done for you recently. Say, within the past month. Something that really made your day, turned around a bad situation, or gave you a moment of unexpected happiness. (1 entry)
- Send me a link to something that makes you feel joyful. It doesn’t have to be funny, just something that makes your heart fill up with good feelings. (1 entry)
For extra entries, you MAY ALSO do one or more of the following:
- Blog about the giveaway, with a link to this post: leave the link to your post in the comments. (2 extra entries)
- Tweet about it this giveaway on Twitter, and leave a link to your Twitter profile in the comments. (1 extra entry)
- Subscribe to my blog (1 extra entry)
Also, you must EITHER link to your blog OR leave me a valid e-mail address with each entry so that I can contact you if you win. If you don’t provide me with a way to contact you, then I can’t give you your prize and I will choose a different name. And that would be sad!
Contest is open until Midnight P.S.T. next Friday (February 5, 2010). (That’s 9 p.m. E.S.T.).
The winner will receive his or her reading by the New Moon on Saturday, February 13. Good luck!
As I mentioned to some friends, my usually 15 minute walk took 45 minutes yesterday . . . because I brought my camera. And I brought my camera because my little road is a quarter mile of awesome . . . if, you know, you ignore that one house with the “elk” chainsaw-carved in to a tree stump.
Did I Mention We Have a Bit of Moss Around Here?
The tree above is just a few feet from my driveway. Don’t let all the moss and lichens fool you–it is very much alive.
Almost Looks Like An Under Water Scene
The Moss and Lichens in these two pictures were growing on a different tree. They are very bizarre alien life forms aren’t they?
Or Maybe They Look Like Something From a Warped Fairy Tale?
The colors are fascinating too, no? Pink! Pale sea green! It’s like the 80’s all over again.
Holly
Also, there is Holly growing wild in the woods. It’s particularly stunning this time of year.
Snowdrops
And–girlie squeal!–snowdrops. Aren’t they sweet?
Spiderweb
I like spiderwebs . . . as long s they’re not hitting me in the face . . .
Rosehips. And a Very Blue Sky
And y’all know how I feel about roses. Look at the color on these rosehips.
And that concludes our tour. Thanks for joining me.
So . . . I am about 70% of the way through the first edit of my novel. And I am noticing that the next several chapters? Dudes, they suck. Not like a straw, or even a vacuum cleaner, but like a vast vortex of doom which annihilates all with its irresistible powers of sucktitude (that is totally a word).
Don’t get me wrong, I still love my novel. It’s just clear to me that I lost my grip during the last week of NaNoWriMo. It’s okay; I’m dealing with it. Rewriting is happening. I am determined to get through it, so I can start on the next editing pass.
Looking ahead, I can see that the final 10% of the novel is all right–that is, it’s exactly what a first draft should be, and will need much work, but not, perhaps, to be completely rewritten. I hope.
Writing Buddy Laura is experiencing the same thing. She says she experienced it when editing her first novel too–the 70 to 90% section was the worst.
I’m calling it the 70 to 90 zone. I’m wondering if other writers experience this? Or if Writing Buddy Laura and I are just our own little writing borg? (We still haven’t settled which of us is 1 of 2, and which of us is 2 of 2. It’s quite the conundrum.)
So, my friends who have written and edited multiple works: is the 70 to 90 zone always a place of dread? Or is it just me and Laura?
I love moss.
Lichens too! Wait–are these lichens? I’m not sure . . .
Anyway, how about both together:
That is all.
Daffodils!
Me: I found a violet blossom today! And the daffodils are coming up. It’s totally spring.
The Hubster: It’s January.
Me: Harumph. Somebody forgot to tell the plants.
Writer, knitter, gardener, partner, stepmother, living in the sticks in Western Oregon.
by Ruth and David Ellwand: nice 
by Rebecca Stead: delicious
