City Mouse, Country Mouse

The truth is that I want to live in “the country.” I fantasize about it all the time. I believe in fantasizing; I think it is a powerful and positive tool for all kinds of things... But sometimes it’s also a little bit of a distraction from the fact that the Fox has taken to hollering “help me!” and then whispering “please!” over and over while I am trying to fix, for example, his rice and beans with cheddar and salsa and avocados. (Sounds good, right? I’m eating it too. All praise brown rice and black beans.) Anyway, it’s a little like trying to cook with a schizophrenic car alarm going off five feet away. So I picture us in a little cabin, way out in the woods and I fantasize:

How my dogs would be perfectly behaved because exhausted from running through endless waves of grain.

How time with the wild animals would make me peaceful crunchy earth mama, imparting to the Fox wisdom and empowerment each and every day.

How we would find all this for about $1,000 less a month than our current mortgage, allowing us to continue this one income family experiment while eating out from time to time. And eat rice and beans anyway, but only because we actually do love it.

And really, don’t it look pretty?

Thing is, there are no restaurants way out in the woods.

Also, M points out that you can’t just walk up to the pub or coffee shop in the country. So where the fuck will I go when my peaceful mama self hits the cabin fever wall and I need to just go be a woman in a bar?

You see what the problem is. So, we stay.

And, there is something to be said for staying. One of the wisest people I know, an amazing climate warrior priest named KC Golden told me once that so much of the climate problem comes from all of us moving around all the time. “Trees teach us to stay,” KC said.

But, if I am going to stay, I want animals around. I want trees and flowers. I want frogs.

Enter: Gardening for wildlife.

Look, I realize that I can’t solve all the environ-mental problems my little old self. But having the Fox has made it so important to know that I do something, every day, which makes things better. Something that, if everyone did it, would make things a lot better. Cities are part of the solution. And I say, what if cities were truly beautiful for us and for the beasts? What if that were possible?

And, actually, it’s happening already. I mean, I’ve been working on my own experiment here, including this nice little pond. I’ve got about 300 square feet of front yard that I’ve been cultivating for only a few years, and it is a wildlife condominium. If the hummingbirds and ground beetles (and even tanagers!) get any thicker on the ground, they are going to need a condo association agreement and next thing you know, it’s monthly meetings and consensus process and it’s all downhill from there.

But I mean, it’s happening on a bigger scale. Yesterday, I found out that the National Wildlife Federation (NWF) certified Alki beach, a neighborhood northwest of me, as a “Community Wildlife Habitat” just last fall. Here’s a quote from an NWF article:

"For animals that roam, contiguous yards and common areas that provide habitat help them survive and ultimately reproduce to maintain their numbers," says Roxanne Paul, who coordinates the Federation's habitat programs. For the humans who create those oases, the benefit is a close, everyday connection to animals they would otherwise have to seek out.

Hot damn. They did it. The Alki neighborhood made hundreds of yards and several public spaces wildlife welcome.

This gives me hope that I can be a country mouse and a city mouse.

Okay, I’d still have to exercise my own dogs. Okay, I still have to tell the Fox: “You can wait for your rice and beans in the kitchen quietly, or you can cool your heels in the living room” and deal with the ensuing tantrum. But let me tell you something: his favorite books these days? My field guides. I kid you not. We are spending bunches of time, looking at photos of dragonflies and dark-eyed juncos. And, we are looking out the window at our front yard, seeing the wild. And it’s just one yard. What if, instead of having to choose between all the perks of density – from pubs to transit – and the deep, soul fulfillment of living among the birds and the bees, what if we could have both? And what if it didn’t have to start with an election or a new policy? What if we could transform our cities into a place where the wild was welcome, one backyard at a time? Isn’t that a dream worth dreaming?

And isn’t that dream worth a toast? Say, at the local, walkable pub?

Resources:

Number one most and best resource: "Landscaping for Wildlife in the Pacific Northwest" by Russell Link. I love this book: it's got the wildlife photos that the Fox loves, plus plans for everything from which native plants attract birds and which common garden flowers attract butterflies to detailed plans for a wildlife pond. This book is the bomb, so much so, that you can click right through and get it your hot little self. Everyone should own it, in my opinion. 

Another great resource for us out here in WA: the Washington Native Plant Society.  Their site has lots of plant porn. But more importantly, it has the data on their upcoming sales: the central Puget Sound one is on May 8 in Bellevue and it is an AWESOME event and a great way to get hard to find native plants, cheap!

National Wildlife Federation Backyard Habitat Program gives you more on the four basics: Providing wildlife with food, water, shelter and a place to raise their young. As a mom, when you read that, doesn't it sound so reasonable? Hint: a wildlife pond, even a few inches deep, does all four.  But if that is not your idea of fun, don't despair. A native bush like mock orange provides seed and cover, plus an amazing perfume in oh, about three weeks from now. Throw in a bird bath and a thicket of beautiful roses and you are good. Refer back to resource one. Russell Link is your man, really.

Also, big fun for kids: Nest boxes. The Seattle Audubon Nature Center in Maple Leaf sells good ones. Russell Link (have I mentioned him, yet?) tells you where to put them to create the appropriate romantic conditions for each species. If you are so DIY, Link's book also has plans for building your own nest boxes. And Wild Birds Unlimited sells them on the Web.

And tell me what you think!

Three Reasons I Feel Hopeful

1. Health care reform has passed.

2. The Fox is now saying both “broken” and “sorry.”

3. I saw what looked like great sex in my front yard.

As I write this, a pair of crows is engaged in foreplay in my neighbor’s evergreen. And, this weekend, I saw a pair of ground beetles in the aforementioned act, (wasn't that what you were hoping for?) which was amazing for two reasons. One, the top beetle – I think it was the lady– had a huge scalloped wafer protruding from her shell. Glistening, if you will pardon the word.

If that was her clit, I want to be a lady ground beetle.

Second, ground beetles are a really good sign. See, I’ve got this little front yard experiment going. How much of the wild can I get into my city yard? I’m not talking blackberry brambles and mosquitoes, here. I’m talking tanagers and dragonflies – which eat a mother lode of mosquitoes, by the way. And ground beetles mean that I’m doing something right, that the invisible loom of life is threaded, that the weavers are at work, that we’re getting started on a really sexy-looking tapestry. Ground beetles mean that life is good here for the wild.

After all, it’s spring. It is time for foreplay and flowers. We’re on the light side now. As of Saturday, light is longer than dark, my friends, and I am hopeful. I am hopeful because today in the playground sand pit, my little 22-month-old future world peace leader bumped another boy and said “sorry” without being asked. I am hopeful because the richest country in the world has finally taken a step toward giving health care to the poor. I am hopeful because after ground beetles, who knows what kind of wild could be on it’s way, right now, into my front yard, my life?

Maybe this is a weird weaving of the personal and the political. But I believe in Gandhi’s “being the change, ” and I’m searching for a way to live that could work for me and the wild and the world. Really work, even though I am a worn-out mom. A way to live that breaks through the plastic isolation that life in the city can sometimes be.

A way to live that makes me feel like a post-coital lady ground beetle, full of the seeds of hope, building the web of life by my acts of pleasure.

So I offer this salute, to hope and the return of the light. Happy Equinox.

Just Say "No" to Oatmeal Air Hockey

I remember the first time M turned to me with the sweet phrase, “Someday, when we are parents…”

We were spending Thanksgiving weekend at a hippy, heaven-on-earth hot springs resort in the mountains of Oregon. But our non-parent asses had landed square in the midst of a “family weekend.” The kids outnumbered the adults about two to one, which was mostly okay. Except for the rat family. Since I used the word hippy in a positive light already, I feel free to invoke its dark twin now: this family was everything wrong with hippiness. Dirty, smelly and oblivious. Six kids under the age of ten who swarmed into the mess hall to create more noise and chaos than the other 150 people combined. A totally overwhelmed mom who made more threats than she had the bandwidth to carry out, a totally checked out father who was under the impression that being a dude was being a dad.

The aforementioned sweet phrase dropped from M’s lips after we watched Dude Dad finally notice that while breast-feeding, Mom couldn’t prevent the twins from playing air hockey with their oatmeal, her screaming from across the room notwithstanding. Did Dude Dad rise and intervene? Of course not. But he did call out to the oldest, who was, like dad, chilling across the room with his peeps. “Hey little dude, could you help out your mom?” To which little dude replied, “Sorry Dad. I’m not really feeling that vibe right now? So I think I’ll just mellow here.”

Un. Believable.

And M said, “When we are parents, there are going to be some Yeses and some No’s. And the No’s will mean No.”

Which is easier said than done. But, yes Virginia, aka Jocelyn, whose LOL rant/comment on my last post inspired this one, yes, it has to be done.

(btw: We both came home from that weekend with pink eye. Plus, our luggage got sprayed by a civet cat… I don’t know why M won’t go back there with me.)

Anyway. Back to the question at hand: which is how to not be that mom. That mom who never says no, or worse, never means it. I’m there, girl. But I don’t believe it's black and white. I think you push your kids to do the best they can and hopefully you’ve got enough sense not to take a toddler who can’t sit still (like mine) out to dinner, lock him in a high chair for half an hour and then put him in a timeout for throwing his french fries. I’ve seen that one too. Saying “No” is sometimes too easy.

What’s hard is knowing what “the best” is, and setting the bar high enough. What’s hard is setting it too high, and then punishing them for failing. What’s hard is motherhood, which is threading the needle all the time.

Look, I don’t mean to get wishy-washy here. I’ve been to the wedding with the baby who screamed through the whole thing. But I think it comes down to two things:

1. When you say “No,” mean it.
2. If you can’t say “No,” and your kid is being a pain in the ass, go home.

The rest is the poetry of setting expectations, and encouraging and teaching, and loving your kids into being their best.

The rest is your business.

Unless you blog about it.

There's Gold in Them There Dry Heaves

Okay, the “low-low spring sale” mentioned at the start of my last post Hot Cougar Love? That was the stomach flu. I was discounting old material because of epic vomiting. I know that as a writer mama I am supposed to spin this hay into gold, but the hay smelled like vomit and anyway, a girl’s gotta sleep.

I’m back, though. And I have to tell you: there was a hidden treasure in the whole affair. We are in the midst – no, that’s probably too optimistic – we are at the beginning of the oppositional phase. Mother Culture calls it the terrible two’s, and already, I understand why. My friend, L. Carol Scott, who has a PhD and a masters in various developmental disciplines , has a nicer frame for it. She calls it independence, the second “Childhood Treasure.” She says that the Fox is learning that, not only is he separate from me, that he is capable of wanting something different than I want. This, says wise friend Dr. Scott, is akin to waking up one morning and finding fairies in your corn flakes. Okay. She doesn’t say that, that’s my spin. His mind is unshackled: It’s a brave new world, Aldous. There’s Technicolor in those slippers, Dorothy.

There’s gold in them there dry heaves.

You see, we go in for positive discipline, because the science seems to support it and my heart says yes to it. But I am a full-time stay-at-home and though before the Fox I had never dreamed that I could love someone this much, I also long for what friend Michele calls “a competence jones.” The old feeling of knowing that I am rocking the house. Sometimes when the food is flinging and the meltdown is nigh and I am trying to find one more positive alternative, I just feel like saying “Well, what the f#$! do you want? Sweetie?”

Sometimes, on a very bad day, it feels like I am a butler for a chimpanzee with a personality disorder.

It’s the choices. Offering them to him, making them myself. They come at me hard and fast all day. He is climbing the chair. This is developmentally appropriate. Should I stop him now? He is pushing the chair. This too. He is pushing the chair over to the drawer where the knives and matches are. Just kidding. But every new learning frontier discovers some new item that we have to negotiate. It would be easiest to just say no. Not to look for the “yes.” And while, there are no yeses with the knives ( Not until after circus camp, wherein maybe he learns to be the knife thrower, please, all gods and goddesses, not the pretty one in the bullseye..) While there are no yeses with knives, they can be found in most cases. Like yesterday, when the Fox figured out how to open the middle drawer in my Chinese cabinet and got out my eyeglasses. And wanted to turn them into silly putty. And we got through that one. We were both well rested, and no puking for days, so he was able to go there. “We need to put those back,” I said. As soon as I reached for them, the tears. The warm-up whine, which precedes the scream. “Let mama show you,” I said. And wonder of wonders, he went for it. I showed him how to fold the arms, then gave them to him. And he did it! I said, “Let’s put them back in the case in mama’s drawer.” And he did that too! It felt like I had just won the fifty-first senate vote in my old campaign days. He just wanted to succeed at his job.

I know how he feels.

Hence the gold: can you spot it? Friday night, the Fox finally went to bed at 9:30. Then woke up at 9:50 with the dry heaves. Then 10:17, 10:48, 11:12. Each time, I was on my feet and in there before the second heave hit. There was the Fox in the dark, standing at the crib rail, another heave and him crying, waving both hands, “All done! All done!” Make it stop, Mama! Me gathering him up, careful not to squish his middle. “I know, honey. I wish you were all done, too.” I wiped his mouth and held him until it was over and then he passed out, just went limp. (I tended bar for many years; I know how to handle puking and passing out.) And I would lay him back down in his crib and go lay down in my bed, and listen to the monitor for 20 or 30 minutes until it started again. So it went until about 2:30 am.

The thing is: I knew what to do. That’s the gold, reader. I knew that I was “doing the right thing.” Why does “doing the right thing” have such terrible power? It is the hardest thing about parenting. It is a job, and I want to do it “right.” It is a labyrinth and I will never leave it. It is a mission and I want only, sometimes, dear divine mama, sometimes, to know I am giving the Fox what he needs to become him. And the thing about this job-labyrinth-mission is that you hardly ever do. You hardly ever know.

But not Friday. Through the sleeplessness, the laundry and the sad feelings I had for him, wishing I could make it “All done!” there were no choices, there was no uncertainty. One night where I had no rest for my body, but perfect respite for my mind: I had only to offer my love. My wet washcloth and my warm arms.

Hot Cougar Love

(This post from a piece I wrote in September, now offered in our low, low spring sale!)

There are two definitions of “Cougar.” One is the definition I was looking for today: “The Cougar (Puma concolor), also known as puma, mountain lion, catamount, or panther, is a mammal of the Felidae family, native to the Americas.” I was looking up that kind of cougar on the internet and on the left side of the screen I got the headlines I was looking for: “Cougar spotted in Seattle.” “Discovery Park closed for Labor Day weekend.” Those headlines on the left. And on the right, marching down the sponsored links column: Cougardate.com. Hotcougarlove.com. Married Cougars looking for love!
Here is the other definition of Cougar: “A woman over 40 who is sexually interested in younger men.” From this, I learn that I am only old enough to be a “puma,” a cougar in training – or I would be if I were on the prowl for a younger man. I am thinking about this kind of cougar because it is my birthday. Today, I am a year away from that threshold. I am 39. I am thinking about the other kind of cougar because in my birthday card from my parents, a check to take my fifteen-month-old son, Forest, to Itty Bitty Camp in Seattle’s Discovery Park, which has been closed until Monday… or until they’ve caught the cougar. They have set out traps baited with fish and elk liver (not 25-year-old men.) And I’ve decided, I’m going to spend the money on spring-blooming bulbs and wildflower seeds. Being almost a cougar myself, I know what my son looks like to that other kind.

He looks like a potato chip.

I know what it is like to be stalked by a cougar, at night. Years ago, in the dry mountains of Northern California, I heard the sound of catpaw in the dry leaves circling our ritual fire. A long pause between every step. I know what it’s like to feel the glow of green eyes raise the hairs on the back of my neck and I wonder if he felt it…that little five year-old boy. Because there was another cougar in the news this week, not in Seattle, but in the wilds of northeastern Washington. She attacked the five year old boy when he was hiking with his family. She gripped him in her jaws by the head and neck. That is how they do it. They stalk their prey from behind. Cougars have incisors sized to slip between the neck vertebrae of their particular prey, as all cats do.

My son’s incisors are coming in now, long nights a couple of times in the past few weeks, but a secret gift, to get up in the middle of the night, walk in the dark to him, to feel him fall asleep against me again, as he once did. These days, when he is ready, he turns toward his crib. But last week, his head warm under my chin, his body heavy on mine, I rocked, caring not one bit for loss of sleep. I hold him and I think about the boy in the hospital, with head and neck wounds. He is going to be okay, they say. Maybe this is making me take our cougar more seriously. They say she came down the railroad tracks, down a wooded corridor. We design for this, for wildlife migration. By “we” I mean my tribe. The people who love nature, who strive to live inside it. I bet that other mother loved wildlife, to be hiking in the backcountry. She saved her son’s life by beating the cougar off with a water bottle. I wonder if she loves wildlife still.

I heard a man on the radio talking about the new cougar, the one who came down the railroad to Seattle. He said we should leave it there, learn to live with wildlife and isn’t this my church? I believe in predation. I believe in a food chain that is taller than I. I believe in God in those green eyes.

But this park, our huge park, is in a neighborhood. So is Ravenna Park, where the black bear ambled down into the city last year. The local media called him “Leaf Bearikson.” I am cultivating the wild in my small way, with my local eating, my gardening for wildlife. And they come. I’ve been amazed. I’ve seen tanagers and lacewings, hummingbirds and dragonflies. But look here. The large predators come and say, “I am wild, too.”

“I know this,” I say. I feel my son in my arms. I imagine the house I hope we someday have, in the woods, surrounded by old trees that make green dappled light but also, underneath them, dark places. High wide limbs for dropping down, sudden as a coat you can never take off. A coat with teeth and claws who, if she thrives, will have children of her own next year. I imagine the yard I wanted him to play in. A patch of grass close for when he is tiny. A wave as he disappears into the bramble when he is older, but still small. Still a potato chip. Even at 11, 12, 16, a running boy is a flare of the nostrils, a flex of the claws. But I still love her, our Seattle cougar. And I think this: I would not hide that cage in the sword fern, I would not bait it with salmon and elk. I would build fences, I think, around our yard. I don’t want to childproof the wild. I want to childproof a small place inside it, and call it HotCougarLove! Call it “home.”

Green Witch Column: The Sweet and Dark Power of the Veggie Bin

I’ve recently gone in for seasonal food. Just some. Just a big, beautiful bin of veggies and fruits, delivered every Thursday, to our side door. It started with planning for a new baby and ended with me, elbow deep in apples, finding the Goddess in my kitchen. Let me explain.

I was eight months pregnant and the idea of how busy we were going to be suddenly became real. Friends signed up to bring us meals in the first new baby weeks because we were going too busy to cook, they said. Let alone go grocery shopping.

So, I ordered a CSA bin. That is, a Community Supported Agriculture bin. I found New Roots Organics on the Web. They deliver a big old Rubbermaid tub full of produce every Thursday. It’s all organic. I kind of have a thing for frogs, so I love that. I love the whole thing. Thursdays are a little like the Christmases of my childhood. I open the bin and the gleaming vegetables and fruits lie there, greens and oranges and reds, dewy and fresh. Like exotic fish, but without the stink. Sometimes there are things I don’t know how to cook, but, like most CSA’s, my bin contains a sheet with recipes for the contents every week. Plus, I discovered splendid table.com, where I can put in an ingredient and get a list of recipes.

Now, not everything in my bin is local. There is a company that has an all-organic and all local bin. That would be purer, more “environmental.” The average fruit or vegetable on an American plate travels 1,500 miles from the farm, and I know that’s not ideal. But the all-local one doesn’t deliver. I’d have to pick it up and with a new baby, that would be the end of that. So let me make a plug here and now for compassion with ourselves! I’ve worked as an environmental advocate for twelve years and I’ve learned to be a little gentler than I used to be. I’m looking for ways to be closer to the magic by eating food that embodies the season. I’ve also learned that "the best is the enemy of the good." (Voltaire) I’ve learned that healing the planet and ourselves is going to be a long, deep ritual and it has to do what good rituals do: build us up, not tear us down. And opening that bin of beautiful, organic, seasonal food every week builds me, inside and out.

The problem comes in October. It’s the apples. Bajillions of them, it seems. Okay, only four a week. Plus four pears. If I were uber-healthy, I’d eat all that fruit. But the weeks go by. Leaves falling, beautiful blue days, bright cold nights. The season of gold. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday take on a different meaning. Not the start of the week, but the end of the week. The Vegetable Week. It’s a mad race to finish eating the veggies before the next load comes. I manage to use up the squash and the mushrooms, which I have heard are full of moon energy. The greens start getting washed, ribboned and tossed into anything hot. The carrots are grated, chopped and sprinkled cold on everything else. I learn how to make roasted pears. I mash them for the Fox (this is our baby’s middle name) and he gobbles them up.

But the apples. One or two a week don’t get eaten. I store them in a basket of woven willow. With plenty of cool circulation, they keep. Okay, that’s not true. I mean, I do keep them in a woven willow basket but it’s on the counter in the sun so it’s more like hot circulation. I had to compost a few… well, let’s say a half dozen. I hate rotten fruit; I hate the smell, the flies. So, I tossed the apples in the worm bin. Better them than me and the flies, I say.

Anyway, pretty soon it’s Mabon; I smell the crisp air, look for the rise of the harvest moon, and feel the balance. We are at the pivot point between light and dark, between the abundance of now and the scarcity of the long months ahead. I’ve got a pile of apples and four more coming in this week’s bin. That’s the sweet and dark power of the veggie bin. Makes you eat the season. Makes you eat fall, eat the harvest, the sum of a year’s work. So, I give in. Time to count my blessings, time to sort my harvest. Time to make apple bread.

I start the ritual by assembling my ingredients. Add to that list a jar of apple cider and a pot to heat it, a candle, a bowl of rainwater, some beautiful fall leaves. I set up a simple altar on the kitchen table. I put the cider on the top of the stove and turn the heat on medium-low. Light the candle. I pick up the bowl of rainwater and carry it as I walk clockwise around the kitchen to cast my circle of intention. I sprinkle the water as I walk, saying, “Thank you, Mother for the sweetness of your harvest.” I think of all the good things that happened this year. I think of my new son. “Thank you for the Fox.” I sprinkle some more water. The candle flickers. “Thank you for this warm house when winter comes.” I name all the blessings of summer. I have to go around and around; our kitchen is not that big and I speak until my heart is empty. Finally, I say, “bless this house in winter, Mother. Protect us and keep us close to you. Bless this bread that will feed my family.” By now, the apple cider is starting to scent the room, so I turn the heat down to low and pour a cup. And I start to cook.

The recipe is from a book called “Celebrating the Great Mother,” by Cait Johnson and Maura D Shaw. But the practice is older. The feast of the harvest goes back before the pilgrims, probably back before the written word. And the apple does, too. It belonged to Aphrodite, as well as Eve. Was cut open horizontally, to show the five-pointed star that is the Goddess’ symbol. I count my apples as I did my blessings. Eight apples to be peeled and cored and diced. My son is in the high chair behind the yellow kitchen table and the windows show a purple-grey sky. I turn on the oven, which for this feast will be south’s fire.
The apples are earth, as are the flour, the raisins, the baking soda, and the salt. Water is here, and the aroma of spices. Clove air, cinnamon wind. The Fox is satisfied with a toy I have suction cupped to his tray. My kitchen is not the grove, not the gathering of witches and drummers I usually worship with, but the Fox’s coos and his hand on the toy are a rhythm. My hands swim in a sticky perfume of apple juice and I feel the presence of the Star Goddess as surely as I did when Raven called Her out of the night sky. I feel the Green God as surely as I did when Canyon threw up both arms and shouted for the trees in the sycamore wood. This, my friends, this sugar in my hands, this is union. This is ripeness.

I am a witch because of this. The way life is made of elements fit together like puzzle pieces, the way the seasons tell the story of life and death and because I like to feel it, the roaring out of the top of my head when we get together and sing and dance and chant in a circle until the ravens come and roost around our heads in a circle of black-winged celebration caws saying “Yes!” back to us. I am a witch because I want to worship with my life.

“Eating represents our most powerful engagement with the natural world,” says author and local food proponent Michael Pollan. “It transforms the landscape more than any other human activity and it transforms and defines us.”
Yes. Let me be transformed by food, then. Let my worship be an act of love and also an act of chewing. Not obedience, not guilt. Not interested in that. This worship struts. This worship is naked in the leaves. This worship bakes.

This worship is hungry.

The apple bread is ready. I cut a thick piece and put some really good butter on it. Tasting it is like breathing the sweet air of an orchard at dusk. It is good. It feels right and I start looking forward to a year of these seasonal tastes. Tasting that fall is rich, that winter is filling, that spring is fresh and summer is sweet.

I think of English essayist William Randolph Inge, who said, “All of nature is a conjugation of the verb to eat.” My gods are nature gods; the closer my food is to the life source, the stronger my magic. So I come to you, my witchy friends, in this harvest time of the year. The table is set, the magic shimmers on this local, or organic, or seasonal food. Food that carries all Her magic, all Her life force. The apple bread smells awesome. And I say to you: Let us eat.

Ritual Resources
The easiest way to eat seasonally is to go to a farmer’s market and look at what is being harvested in your place in this time. The farmer’s market is also the closest thing to the community commons that I have found in this day and age. To meet the people who grow my food, to see my neighbors, to wear a fabulous new seasonal hat. All of these things make the farmer’s market a good time for me.
There is an amazing rebirth of farmer’s markets around the country and you can find one near you at www.localharvest.org by entering your zip code. That web site will also help you find CSA’s in your zip code. The weekly bin is more of a commitment, but also more of a convenience if, like me, you have a hard time making it to the farmer’s market every week. www.eatwellguide.com will help you find restaurants, bakers, co-ops and more, as well as farmer’s markets and CSA’s.
If the farmer’s market or CSA don’t work for you, don’t despair. You can tap into the root of the season by following some simple principles and by feeling the energy of the season. Look around. In fall, listen to the desire for warmer, heartier foods. Start going down to roots like carrots, sweet potatoes and onions. Spice things with ginger, peppercorns, mustard seeds. In winter’s icy embrace, the warmest foods of all are meats. You can find grass-fed meats of all kinds at http://www.eatwild.com/. Don’t underestimate the importance of grass-fed. That is the ancient cycle. That is the way earth makes meat. If you are vegetarian or vegan, you know the winter lure of brown foods in grains and beans, in spicy sauces and in dense breads. When spring finally arrives, the new green that is everywhere should be on your plate too. Lettuces, parsley, swiss chard. Greens, baby. Greens. The spring bird-song that I hope you are enjoying may also appeal to the predator in you. Spring means new life, and our bodies remember that means eggs. Summer is the explosion of fruits and vegetables: strawberries and summer squash, corn and broccoli and plums. Go crazy. Eat the season. Blessed be.

This piece appeared in my "Green Witch" column in Sagewoman Magazine, Issue 77. If you are looking for ways to bring more ritual, more sacred, more goddess into your life, please check out Sagewoman! I have since switched to Full Circle Farm CSA, which delivers, has pick up points close all over,  and allows substitutions!)

Me and Mabel: Good Thieves, Bad Influences

I am trying to surround my child with “good influ- ences.” Mostly to make up for the bad influence that I sometimes consider myself to be. And this has me thinking about two things: One is choosing a new day care. I am looking for a new place to take the Fox, since I had to fire the last place for letting him play in traffic. One day a week, which is what I think I can cover on my starting freelancer moola. Basically, I’d like a place that’s too far from home to hear the screaming, too close for me to miss the sirens. I’d like a gal about my age who is good with frogs and will teach Forest not to push his peers and bite the dogs. I want this time so that I can write and I want this time so that I can get a little perspective. You see, I’ve found that, when I spend WAY too much time mothering, I start to fall into a little mind trap that I call: Perfect love equals perfect kids.

I know this is horseshit. But influence is a two way street, and when I run out of ideas for ending the hurling of the hummus, when I am not writing and no one is sleeping through the night, I am susceptible to negative influences. I know there is no such thing as perfect, except in fairy tales. And except this morning, when the Fox ran up to me with the book “Saints Alive! A Cattle Drive” about two cows named Mabel and Molly stealing their farmer’s truck. He carries this book to me, saying “Moo!” and settles his butt into the cup of my inner thighs, tucks his hair under my chin. No such thing as perfect except this.

But, I read these books to him and I wonder, which brings us to thing number two on the list of influences: We have the cows stealing the truck. We have “Goodnight, Owl” wherein the squirrels and sparrows and sundry other animals keep owl awake all day. Owls waits until everyone is asleep and screeches them all awake. We have a book about how dinosaurs clean their rooms, but the vastest bit is on the order of “Does a dinosaur stuff all his teddy bears under his bed? Does he put dirty pjs behind the door and throw wet towels onto the floor?” Okay, the answer is no, obviously. “A dinosaur doesn’t, he does all his chores.” But these books are right up there with the toilet training manual that shows the potty as a hat. If his nerves are wiring up right now like Lance Armstrong on the final leg of the Tour, if his little synapses are springing like steroid-laced-sunflowers, (no offense, Lance) does he need these ideas? I ask you. I mean, of the three, he’s got the wet-towel-dinosaur and the midnight-screeching-owl down. And, as a woman who taught herself to drive at fourteen by stealing the truck and taking it out on the highway, I don’t doubt he’s got a cattle drive in him. But he also picks flowers, holds them out to me. He turns the taps on the gas stove when I am not looking so that I come home a house that is one matchshy of an inferno. But he helps me unload the dishwasher. I am a writer. I am a writer. I need to play these words like Yo-Yo Ma need to play the cello, even if I am closer to the third seat in the high school band. I am a writer. But look here. Look at this child who says “Snuggle” and “No!” with equal fervor. He is becoming. All around him, the visible world leaves an invisible impression.

This is how it is to be a mother. There is no capital “M.” I am a mother like I am a writer, like I am, every night between 7:30 and 8, a dishwasher. I carry all of me into it. I try harder with Forest than I do with the dishes. But I am still me. Impatient, creative, laughing, sarcastic, restless, friendly, alone. I try to leave sarcastic at the door. The truth is, I wouldn’t give care of Forest over to almost anyone I know. Including me. And I need time. He is, in my mind, a native tree frog in a city pond, sensitive and changeable. Or he was. Until he started biting the dogs.

Speaking of negative influences.

He does this thing when he is mad. He takes his Mr. Jekyl potion and gives me this look. This hairy eyeball. His eyelids sort of flatten out and he bares his teeth, he puts prune pits into his pupils. He says, “I hate you” with a look. And I, if I am not too sleepless and have written lately, I sing “the wheels on the bus go round and round.” And they do. And, mostly, whether I am perfect or not, he gets on board.

Reason 1. My friend Max asked to post my writing to his blog, to which friend Eve said, "That's cool, but get your own already."
Reason 2. Dream writing job that I would be perfect for required blog.
Reason 3. Made mamablog-related vow two months ago. And just because I've never kept a new year's resolution before... well, see reasons 1 and 2.

So here we are. And, since we are here, let's talk about YouTube and the Fox, which is what we will call my almost two-year-old son. We have so far avoided what the pediatricians call "screen time" and what so many mom's who are just as desperate (and way more mentally healthy than I am) call: The Babysitter. I am talking about TV. I am talking about Owls sinking their talons into fuzzy little mice, eviscerating said mice and eating them whole. I am talking about video wildlife, pixelated red in tooth and claw.

You may have guessed from the moniker that I am trying to raise a little boy who loves and understands the wild even more than I do... in fact – and I've never said this out loud before – I sometimes fantasize that if I take him outside often enough while his little nerves and nodules are wiring up, he may learn to be multilingual. After all, they say that languages are easy to pick up at this age. They say sign him up for Spanish or Chinese. And, forgive me for being just a little bit wind-in-the-willows here, but couldn't he learn, for example, what crows are saying? What trees mean?

And, really, couldn't he do some of this through YouTube?

Because, when I said that we've avoided screen time, I wasn't counting YouTube wildlife videos. Just a couple. A couple a day, sometimes. But then we act them out. As in this theatrical review of an amazing Australian “ water holding frog,” which, according to National Geographic, buries itself in the mud for two years or more. So. Picture us laying on the bed with a plush frog stuffed animal. "The frog buries himself in the mud" (inching frog under the blanket) "And he goes to sleep" (Holding down blanket while the Fox impatiently tries to move this show along) "And then it rains and he," (favorite part coming up here) leaps out. He LEAPS out." And much leaping ensues.

Cute, right? The first fifty times. So then I show another, different video, ‘cause mama needs a change of pace. And thus it begins. He loves it so much it’s scary. Points at the laptop and shouts “Hog! Hog!” Or whatever.

On the one paw, I want him to learn about and love animals and frankly between the Seattle rain and the general lack of close encounters with the wild in the city, this is pretty awesome. Also, it solves the problem posed by lack of the concept of “gentle.” Even when we handle the worms in the garden, the casualty rate is high (see my piece on friend Max's blog. He also writes great short stories) and I can’t help it, I wince.

And on the other paw, we are walking on the wild side on YouTube. What's a wild mama to do?