We’ve all been on this spiritual path looking for answers, and the joke is that answers are not the point at all; the point is to have a blast with the questions. The point is not to hold back from the Mystery just because there is no final understanding. Along the way, incredible understandings come out of the Mystery, but the Mystery, itself, will remain a mystery.
~ Nirmala
(Nothing Personal: Seeing Beyond the Illusion of a Separate Self)
Up and away for life! be fleet!-
The frost-king ties my fumbling feet,
Sings in my ears, my hands are stones,
Curdles the blood to the marble bones,
Tugs at the heart-strings, numbs the sense,
And hems in life with narrowing fence.
Well, in this broad bed lie and sleep,-
The punctual stars will vigil keep,-
Embalmed by purifying cold;
The winds shall sing their dead-march old,
The snow is no ignoble shroud,
The moon thy mourner, and the cloud.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
(The Titmouse)
Last year at this time Tim & I discovered Buttonwood Farm, and since our niece Bonnie and her two children were in town we decided to take them with us to this amazing place. Waiting in a very long line (above) for farm fresh ice cream – made from the milk of grass-fed cows – was well worth it!
This shagbark hickory tree (above) caught my eye as we were waiting in another very long line for a hayride through the cow pasture and the sunflower field. The ride was bumpy but the tractor stopped every once in a while so we could feed the cows hay and Khari could take pictures of cows (below) to his heart’s content.
At Buttonwood Farm, 14 acres of sunflowers are grown to benefit the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Connecticut, a non-profit organization devoted to making wishes possible for children with life-threatening medical conditions. 100% of the $5 donation made when one buys a bouquet of these sunflowers goes directly to the foundation, a worthy cause. In spite of a cool wet spring which has delayed the blooms in the cutting fields, the farm went on with its 11th Annual Sunflowers for Wishes campaign.
Camera back in my hands, above and below are two of my sunflower-with-bee shots! It was fun getting these pictures at eye-level with the blooms. The wagon we were in was high off the ground and the tractor pulled us along into the middle of the field. The driver turned off the engine and let us take pictures and marvel at the sea of sunflowers in every direction. It was interesting to see the many unopened blooms mixed in with the ones all ready for picking.
The photo below was taken by Kia, when she finally got her turn with the camera. The late afternoon ride back to home in our car was very quiet. When Tim looked in the rear-view mirror he found all three of our guests sound asleep. A wonderful day!
Cows are amongst the gentlest of breathing creatures; none show more passionate tenderness to their young, when deprived of them; and, in short, I am not ashamed to profess a deep love for these quiet creatures.
~ Thomas de Quincey
(Confessions of an English Opium-Eater)
At Buttonwood Farm, 14 acres of sunflowers are grown to benefit the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Connecticut, a non-profit organization devoted to making wishes possible for children with life-threatening medical conditions. 100% of the $5 donation made when one buys a bouquet of these sunflowers goes directly to the foundation, a worthy cause.
Tim & I spent a pleasant afternoon there, even if it was hot and humid, meeting cows and taking a tractor ride through the sunflower field! We enjoyed our cheerful bouquet on our dining room table for the week following.
I have the sunflower, in a way.
~ Vincent van Gogh
(Letter to Theo van Gogh, January 22, 1889)
Has anyone ever heard of osteomalacia before? Turns out I have it, although before discovering this term, all I was aware of was the severe Vitamin D deficiency my doctor said my blood-work revealed last year. This whole experience reminds me of when I learned that I had menorrhagia for most of my adult life without knowing the medical term for it.
For the past year or so my doctor has been trying to get my Vitamin D deficiency and high blood pressure under control. Thursday evening I happened to hear Dr. Michael F. Holick on the radio discussing his book, The Vitamin D Solution. When he mentioned musculoskeletal pain and muscle weakness, and even hypertension and a few other problems, being due to a lack of Vitamin D, I picked up my new best friend, my Kindle, and had the book in my hands electronically within moments. I spent the better part of yesterday reading the eye-opening information and finished it up this morning.
I think I now know how this happened!
In 2004 I had a basal cell carcinoma surgically removed from my forehead and on the advice of my dermatologist became totally paranoid about receiving any exposure to the sun from then on. Turns out this was ill-advised as I am now depleted of Vitamin D, in spite of supplements.
Just as we need a little fat and salt in our diet, we also need a little sun.
~ Michael F. Holick
(The Vitamin D Solution)
Did you know that Vitamin D is not really a vitamin? It’s a hormone!!! And every cell in our bodies has a Vitamin D receptor? Hormones are “regulatory substances produced in an organism and transported in tissue fluids such as blood or sap to stimulate specific cells or tissues into action.” The skin is the organ that uses sunlight to produce the Vitamin D hormone that performs wonders throughout our bodies. Cats and lizards don’t need scientists to tell them they need the sun!
For my skin type, fifteen minutes of direct sunlight a day on half my body around noon from May to October should be sufficient to turn things around for me, and also to store enough Vitamin D to carry me through most of the winter. Will be taking additional supplements, year-round, too, and eating wild-caught salmon (farm-raised salmon have almost no Vitamin D because they are fed pellets of grain instead of their natural diet from the ocean food chain) and plenty of sardines, too, which I happen to love, thank goodness. And mushrooms, the only source of natural Vitamin D in the produce aisles of the grocery store.
Fifteen minutes! Sunlight! A wonder “drug” for free! Of course today it is pouring rain, so I’m chafing at the bit, but I’m getting out there first chance I get…
According to Wikipedia: “In Norse mythology, Iðunn is a goddess associated with apples and youth.” Iðunn is “a keeper of apples and granter of eternal youthfulness.” (Idun, Iduna, Idunn, Ithun, Idunna)
A few words following about October and apples, which we are enjoying daily since we went apple-picking last weekend. Nothing like crunching into a juicy McIntosh fresh from the tree! An old saying keeps popping into my head: an apple a day keeps the doctor away.
Now’s the time when children’s noses
All become as red as roses
And the colour of their faces
Makes me think of orchard places
Where the juicy apples grow…
~ Katherine Mansfield
(Autumn Song)
There is no season when such pleasant and sunny spots may be lighted on, and produce so pleasant an effect on the feelings, as now in October. The sunshine is peculiarly genial; and in sheltered places, as on the side of a bank, or of a barn or house, one becomes acquainted and friendly with the sunshine. It seems to be of a kindly and homely nature.
~ Nathaniel Hawthorne
(The American Note-books)
When my father was a boy growing up on a New England farm during the Great Depression, his family picked as many apples as they could and stored some of them in a barrel in the root cellar. Of course he ate as many as he could while picking them, but his parents had a rule about the ones in the barrel he found exasperating. If anyone wanted an apple later in the fall or winter, he was required to take one that was the least fresh. By the time they got to the fresher ones they had also become much less fresh! So all winter he was having to make do with eating not-so-great apples. If only he had known he might have called on Iduna to keep the apples fresher longer!
To appreciate the wild and sharp flavors of these October fruits, it is necessary that you be breathing the sharp October or November air. The outdoor air and exercise which the walker gets give a different tone to his palate, and he craves a fruit which the sedentary would call harsh and crabbed. They must be eaten in the fields, when your system is all aglow with exercise, when the frosty weather nips your fingers, the wind rattles the bare boughs or rustles the few remaining leaves, and the jay is heard screaming around. What is sour in the house a bracing walk makes sweet. Some of these apples might be labeled, “To be eaten in the wind.”
~ Henry David Thoreau
(Wild Fruits: Thoreau’s Rediscovered Last Manuscript)
