August Gifts

The threshold where the two world meet, Winter turns to Spring. The temperatures are rising, butterflies are crawling out of their cocoons, and flowers are saluting the sun with their open petals.

We are also celebrating the wonderful power of the sun.  Our solar cooker is providing us with gorgeous meals and treats. 

 Mmmm, perfectly moist and exquisitely delicious sun-cooked cake. (Yes, we're bragging.)

 We use the sun-cooker everyday (that it doesn't rain), and everything just tastes better! Even our chicken's golden gifts are more flavorful sun-fried.

Not to lose balance of important driving forces, there is also the power of Water, which has been very present this rainy winter.  Here is Taca modeling his/her new stick-perch by our house, passing the overnight rainstorm huddled under a banana leaf, meditating no doubt.

 Pre-soaked seeds on their way to the gardens.

 The humidity in the air also gives rise to such pleasures as fungi:

 They are just so pretty!

 By the rivers, the flowers dance and burst.

But... the evil elephant grass is also celebrating the rain.  We are clearing it out of the field, and we have high hopes that this will be the year of eradicating it completely, so that our crops can thrive without being choked out by its dark selfish forces.

We are also steadily working on several other projects. Here, we've broken ground on the new cabin planned to built with mud and love with our incoming interns:

Other happenings: the calendulas are stretching open in the medicine gardens:

 And some final photos of what's around:

 We love Plantain!

The Gifts of Gratitude

Sweet delight in finishing up projects and programs, and moving forward into the next cycle of renewal.

Thank you to all our interns for these last couple of months of good learning and growing!

 We put the final plasters on the new kitchen entension...

 We fancied up the sculptures and are getting ready to lay the floor.

The banana mulched double-dug garden beds, soon to be filled with cabbage, kale, parsley, mustard, and more!

Still having fun with forest fungal finds...

The lower gardens getting a boost of compost (and love) for the winter...

 The bath hut for the yoga shala is in use! 

 Mirror mosaics, lime paint, and rock entrance ready!

 Laying the entryway with river stones:

 Detail work cleaning off the bottles and mosaics:

 And viola! The yoga retreat happening with a finished bath hut nearby!

 Sweet child's pose in our Santosha Yoga Retreat-- a great success!

 Thanks yoga friends!

Moving right along into the Temazcal (sweat lodge) and Ceremony to wind up this cycle's learning journey.  Here's our fire to heat the rocks, and the mud turtle altar to point us in the right direction.

All clean?  Great! Now let's have cake!

Bonus Photo: Butterfly and perfectly poised yoga toes!

Fungus Among Us and Bathroom Huts

After the recent rains, the forest is alive with fungi.  Life on the forest floor is particularly fascinating these days... 

 We just found our biggest mushroom yet-- it stands open up to our knees!

 Big enough to be a plate...

 ...or a house for a little Turkish gnome?

 Another fungus, maybe just about to open?

 Looking around, we spot fungi everywhere.  The minis... pink and perfectly stacked on a stick.

 The extraterrestrials...

 The fallic and stinky...

 The popcorn puff balls...

 Pushing through the grasses...

 Hiding around the cabins...

 Even in the pine needles next door...

This one used to be attached to a tree.  This is the underside...

 But we don't just go around looking at fungi all day.  We do actually work sometimes.  Here's us mud-plastering the kitchen extention...

 And the bath hut's back wall, woven around a window space, to be filled with an old car window...

 The cob mix covers the weaving...

 Cute and useful, a bath hut for the yoga shala...

Using bottles in between our adobe bricks, good for letting light in, and recycling our extra glass.

 Structure complete!  Now we need to plaster...

Garden work, planting seed flats and getting some veggies growing for the winter...

 Workshop in lemoncello making...

 Mixing the lime floor plaster for the House on the Hill's back bedroom...

 Air potatoes flying over the garden!

 Bananart.

 Bonus photo: "My fruit!"