Butterflies, Yoga, and Cycles of Renewal

 

So many fluttering friends as we transition through yet another season at Mama Roja.  The internship has just finished, the Yoga Retreat and Ceremony were beautiful experiences, and we are wrapping up the year with deep gratitude and prayers for all that is to come.  

Abundance in wing flutters:

 

Artichokes at the Chacra Suiza, our bi-annual tour to a well-established sustainable farm.

Chicha and her mini saying goodbye-- all the kittens have homes!

 The kitchen extension has a roof:

 Plastering the adobe walls:

 Plastering bliss in pantry spaciousness:

 Working on the arching doorway:

 Trees inside and out!

 Always room for more butterfly pictures.

 ...and flowers, starting to creep up and through the garden:

 Do butterflies do yoga?

 After a great class... ah, sweet shavasana.

Thank you Buena Onda and all the yoga participants!  Gorgeous time of sharing and learning!

Jewels in the Jungle

Heaven in the jungle... butterflies floating through the frangrant spring air... adobe bricks stacking into a kitchen wall... old wine bottles repurposed into window-jewels...

 The dream of the community kitchen is mudding its way into reality:

 Window lintel installation.

 View of the kitchen expansion:

 The walk-in pantry!

 Peep hole... or future shelf hole support?

 From wine vessels to windows... the pleasure of bottling up the walls:

 Preparing for the arching doorway:

Pause in the blog post for ridiculously cute kitten photos:

Okay, now with that out of our system, we can proceed onto the other things we've been doing:  Nettle beer!!  We've also been fermenting our mulberries into wine, and our ginger into ginger ale! 

 Soap experiments:

 Always new friends popping in for a visit.

And why not?  A halloween pizza party, jungle-style, complete with costumes, dancing, live music, and even a little fire-juggling and -spitting! 

To Scare, to Plant, and to Build

 The internship is underway, and the gardens are really growing!

We had to get a handle on the misbehaving birds, who are enjoying our gardens a little too much.  We spent an afternoon making bird scare devices out of recycled and repurposed things.  We had some very creative and truly scary inventions:  an old potato wearing chicken feathers, a headless scare crow with extra large boobs, tinkering tin cans, a pirate plastic ghost, and lots of old cds to flash in the eys of would-be seed stealers! 

 Tumeric planting!

 Purple carrot harvesting!

Poor interns, suffering from so much work after making a Hugelculture squash bed. 

 Mandala gardens resurrected and replanted!

A happy haven for our redworms in the works, with recycled tires and a liquid compost catchment system! 

 Peanuts coming up in the fields!

 The kitchen extention is rising up!

 Lots of mud and bottles--over 200 so far!

 Cob'n'bottles. A good excuse to drink more red wine!

 Always time for siesta time crafting and spanish lessons.

 Of love and mud.

 Up, up it goes.

More building photos to come soon!

Bonus photo: El Arbol de la Vida - The Tree of Life, mud sculpture in the house on the hill.

The blues and greens of spring

 Spring is finally here.  Pollinators abound...

 And the jungle is breathing sweetly.

 The trees are budding nips of life-vibrant green.

And we've added some trees to the forest too.  We planted fruiting and flowering trees inbetween the adolescent native trees.  Food forest on it's way!

Kim and Marcelo's bedroom is finally plastered, planted and sealed! This picture is of the closet wall freshly clay-and-starch painted, and the wood sticking out is for the built-in shelves. (Better photos to come, with us installed.)

 The internship has started, and the soil is brewing.  New pallet-walled compost to complete the circle, feeding our relationship to the land.

 And speaking of earth, we're back at the mud-stomping.

Laying adobes for the kitchen expansion and walk-in pantry!

The gardens: full of blooms...

 ...and worms!

 Bonus photos: Curious friends.

 Copulation on crystals.