Every November, the lantern walk was a tradition I looked forward to with my children at our Waldorf school. They would make beautiful lanterns in class, sometimes out of colorful paper or tin cans, sometimes out of jars and leaves, and we would all bundle up and meet on Martinmas to walk through the dark night singing cheery lantern songs. We did a couple of our own lantern walks at home when ...
Seasons
Spring Equinox
Spring Equinox is a time of balance. Darkness and daylight get their equal time, the seasons shift from winter into spring, and things reach an equilibrium between extremes. Just when you're surveying the landscape and thinking things look rough, a bud starts to pop out here, or a flower is suddenly blooming over there, and you notice birds singing in the trees where all had been quiet and still. ...
An Oregon Homegrown Holiday Tree
In the pouring November rain, we suited up in our rain gear like real Oregonians, and went out to find a homegrown holiday tree in the clearing at the top of our property. It's getting to be a little more of a stretch every year as the crowded grove of Grand fir and Douglas fir keep getting taller and taller, and we're topping some mighty tall trees to fit below our 8 foot tall living room ...
These Leaves
"Read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem." ~Walt Whitman ...
Golden October
October is a golden month. The hard work of the summer is finished on the homestead, food is harvested, canning is done, and root cellar is full. It's a time to stop and catch your breath, and take a moment to look around and appreciate everything. That burst of activity in the late summer and fall is well rewarded with the leaves changing color and the crisp, cool nights and mornings. After our ...
Harvest Moon in the Pumpkin Patch
That big harvest moon the other night had me dreaming of giant pumpkins, and I was inspired to needle felt this wool wall hanging of a pumpkin patch on a full harvest moon night. I made one similar to this that I traded with a crafty friend a couple of years ago for a beautiful sweater she knit for my newborn niece. When I was working on this piece, the wild, witchy woman out in the filed ...
Harvest Moon
There was a beautiful, full harvest moon last week, and I had the good fortune of viewing it early in the morning when I was out feeding the chickens. It made for a much brighter early fall morning than I've gotten used to these last few weeks, and I could see how farmers were able to use the light of this moon to stay out harvesting crops into the evening. I came across this link to the Old ...
Spring on the Quinault River
There is a vitality in rivers that becomes more visible with the emergence of spring. The willows budding out on the banks, birds singing in the brush, and water rushing down from the snow melt all convey a sense of waking up from a state of rest. Right about this time of year, I'm feeling it too, as I start spending more time outdoors, digging in to preparations for a new growing season. Right ...
Emergence
When you think about it, the shift from winter to spring is a pretty incredible one. No mater how much you know about plants and what's going on within them, how all their processes work, and their chemistry, it feels miraculous to watch them unfold from snowy ground and bare twigs. There are so many lessons here that we can take away from observing this shift in the seasons, but one of the most ...
After Hibernation
This really resonated with my feelings about the new year. The secret life of bears… I am in the process of migrating A Mountain Hearth from Blogger to WordPress, so if you have run into any technical difficulties, now you know why. We’re almost there, and I’m learning some new things along the way. Just working on reacclimating to the wild over here. ...