Friday, August 31, 2012

Women of Water

The Goddard train dropped off another passenger.  Gailanne left a note in our guest bed for Shameka reading, "Where you lay your head, last night was my bed.  When you wake at 3, you better think of me."  Shameka came in wearily from lots of East Coast travelling.  She got some rest before I introduced her to two dear friends, Erica & Josslyn.

Shameka is an actress & writer who is creating content this semester about water in the African American experience.  She, Erica, & Josslyn are all beautiful artists of color.  They began swapping stories about being discouraged from swimming in the ocean because "Black folks don't do that."  As Shameka engaged in this research she found evidence of slaves being discouraged from water as it was a potential means of escape.  So many of these early experiences in the US were absorbed into cultural identity. Her work is understanding water as an archetype for movement & transformation, as well as a physical connector between brown people around the world.

Lovely, exuberant Erica immediately began sharing her own history as a surfer girl in LA.  Later, she moved to Bahia, Brazil where she was engaged in truly challenging organizing among the homeless in favelas.  Elders told her she needed to live by the water where Yemaya could nourish her spirit each day and sustain this work.  The following day, she found her sea-side home.

Watching swimmers in Bahia she was struck by beautiful brown bodies rushing the waters.  Jamaica & elsewhere in the world hadn't made the same impression because Brazil, like the US, is filled with citizens whose skin tone runs the gamut.  However, even though color is so widely varied among Brazilians brown people are still the highest percentage in the water.  Something in Erika was reaffirmed as she swam amongst them.

Some of Erica's greatest teachers were the Sisters of the Good Death.  These elder women waited at the river for slaves liberating themselves.  If the emancipating slaves didn't survive the journey these women told their families they would provide a "good death" with all attendant ceremony.

The conversation wandered amongst us.  Shameka is headed to Atlanta & we all encouraged her to go further east to Savannah, land of pirates, Gullah culture, Tybee Island, & water.

Thursday, August 30, 2012

Kin

Philly's Magic Gardens
Goddard residency concluded last week.  As students drifted back to their four corners of the globe to begin their studies & create a few passed through Casa Cooper (what Kevin & I dubbed our home).  Gailanne flew from New Hampshire into Philly last Saturday.  We happily scooped her up, ate yummy food at Sabrina's, wandered the Italian Market, & then headed north to the Magic Gardens.

Gailanne is a beautiful person but she's also an extraordinary musician.  She & her brothers formed the band, Jubal's Kin, which has received a ton of acclaim, including being short-listed for a Grammy.  Over dinner Kevin pulled out his guitar & Gailanne hers.  They flipped through dog-eared song books refinding lyrics, tunes, half-written, & whole.  One of my favorites was a song reworked from Romans 7:

"For we know the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh sold to slavery under sin.  For I do what I do not want & what I want don't do.  Flesh of man I do not understand.  So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what's right & stand that Lucifer is waiting in sin to drag me in.  Evil lies close at hand.  So my mind is bound in chains under Him with my flesh still under sin.  What a wretched man I am."

The tension of knowing there lies within a highest Self, but we're constantly turned towards sin or bound within it.  This is part of what I love of Old Time music.  It's completely rooted in Americana culture.  It's of this soil, this earth, traditions that have shaped it for the last few hundred years.  It's equally wrought with the complexity of this place over that course of time.  I love the history & study of it all-- Gailanne is becoming a song catcher in the tradition of Alan Lomax.  She traces songs, where they've appeared, how they've changed, who has performed & shared them.

We three sat around the table, catching songs & snippets, eating cookies.  Flesh of man I do not understand.

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Space

Yesterday I was able to spend a bunch of quality time with a friend.  She recently finished residency at Goddard, where Kevin graduated.  As a Black woman, she was a part of a group of students of color who created some space to share thoughts, ideas, & concerns about life & academia at Goddard.  It was a big hulabaloo.  White students felt excluded & couldn't understand why students of color wanted an opportunity to share amongst themselves.  My friend had lunch with a white student who was particularly distraught over this event.  The white student couldn't understand why it was important to students of color to have space where they didn't have to explain themselves & their experience.

Most of us who have worked towards safe space & recognition on campuses or in communities have been a part of similar conversations.  Trying to help broaden a sense of understanding & also respect for experiences we can't understand.  There is always something outside of the realm of my knowledge, so maybe part of the work of being a conscious being is being humble to that fact.

Manuel Antonio, Costa Rica
My friend and I began remembering various moments of carving out space.  We compared stories of Costa Rica, where we'd both spent time.  I remember arriving at national parks to find them closed.  My first reaction was, "Seriously!  I'm here for a limited time.  I rented a bike."  Hands were probably on hips. Thankfully, patient people explained to me that there's a national policy to close parks one day out of every week so that the animals and plant life have a breather from humans.  That shut me up.  What a shift in perspective too-- only one day out of every week to live without interference, gawkers, cameras, heavy footed hikers.  & what about all the swathes of earth without relent from human presence?

Earlier, when I was 20, I studied abroad for a semester in Cuba.  I had a beautiful conversation one afternoon in Havana with a woman who had played a large role in the Revolution.  I had come to her because I was struggling to understand gender dynamics in Cuba.  I was exhausted from constant cat calls, "sss sss, oya nena!  Oya!"  I could never be anonymous, never walk down the street uninterrupted nor unaccompanied.  Accustomed to the privacy of the northeast of the US, I often hid in my dorm room.

20 year old me eating cotton candy on a merry go round in Parque Lenin, Cuba
This woman had been a wealthy college student when Fidel & Che swept through Havana.  She was a part of the student movement making molotov cocktails & helping former prostitutes resettle for housing and job training in the fancy, exclusive downtown hotels after Batista was ousted.  She recalled to me when she had visited Chicago.  "I felt invisible," she said.

She helped organize women into the Women's Federation, a body representing 80% of Cuban women.  They met regularly and annually presented to Fidel, Raul, and the top cadre for five days on issues impacting Cuban women.  That floored me.  At the time, Bush was president of the US.  First, I tried to imagine a body that represented 80% of US women.  Then I tried to imagine Bush listening for FIVE DAYS to this presentation.  And then I thought what a small percentage of a year-- 5 days out of 365!

Gathering space for growth.  I feel this internally as I practice yoga.  Learning to lengthen spine and allow for there to be more-- more communication, more presence.  Maybe becoming slightly more adept at allowing the same for others-- animals to have uninterrupted space, those I love whose experiences are distinct to have space to share & explore-- allowing each of us to be a bit more unimpeded.

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Play


This past weekend I felt exhausted from combined travelling, lots of (fulfilling) work, tons of (wonderful) social connections, and little sleep. I debated but ultimately decided to join some friends at the beach. As I arrived I was immediately gladdened to have community, access to beach, and felt more alert and silly. I felt playful.

The day before my husband, Kevin, had met some of these same friends to play a whole slew of team sports. I'm told there was some type of home-run derby, capture the flag, ultimate frisbee... stuff involving grass stains. He was so excited! That morning he woke early, baked cookies, and wouldn't stop to breathe as he expressed exuberance about the day ahead. We later joked that he and many of the other participants were like wonderful puppies-- you throw a ball and they fetch, you offer food and they gobble, you rub their bellies...

Kevin and I reflected later that adults used to play sports more commonly together. Not serious competitive stuff but neighborhood leagues or leagues associated with their work. Certainly that exists to some degree but feels a little less common. The movement towards and away from play seems to ebb and flow-- recently I came across an article about adult playgrounds cropping up in major cities. Then there are statistics about adults today working more hours than medieval serfs.

I heard an interview on NPR with an author speaking on community. He felt that communities became more commonly a place to sleep when porches were enclosed in the 1950s and 1960s. As people spent less time relaxing on their porches they knew one another less well. TV's presence coincided with this trend supplanting other popular past-times. I'm not trying to be romantic nor nostalgic, but then again I am. I know it's hard to be in community. It's hard to be accountable to people, to lose anonymity when it feels preferable; but I also know the perils of alienation. Building community should be a primary practice. We need one another and we need to know one another. More than that, we need to be known.



Cause, as folks get to know me, they know I like to play.

Monday, August 27, 2012

Friday, August 24, 2012

Your very flesh shall be a great poem

This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to  others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, 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 and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.

Walt Whitman



Thursday, August 23, 2012

For the love of soil

Today's yield: spaghetti squash, zucchini (that planted itself), cucumbers, ancho peppers, jalapeno peppers, one lone tomato (the rest are taking awhile to turn red), a handful of mint.

It's enough.  Tonight I'm preparing vegan chile rellenos with a recipe I'd clipped from Organic Gardening awhile back.  Mint iced tea.  I might even bake the spaghetti squash & serve that on the side.  Potentially incongruous, but if it's from the same garden, also potentially compatible.

I feel a part of a surge of growth.  The garden is abundant.  I feel my own creative energy stirring in a way it hasn't for some time.  My body feels pliant when I lengthen into yoga asana, my mind nimble & ready to generate ideas, the soil dark & rich.

At Goddard I had a conversation with some awesome farmer-scholars (I love them).  A New Hampshire farmer joked that he was growing rocks & grey hairs.  Kevin suggested he pull out the rocks by the taproot next time so they stop regrowing so quickly.  We started talking about our collective love for soil, which is so diverse given our various homes.  I remember my grandfather taking me for a walk in his Atlanta neighborhood.  He had a HUGE (at least an acre) backyard garden in Atlanta.  He & my grandmother canned & stored tons of food.

We walked down a hill & he began describing rich, red Georgia clay.  He told me about what it grows well: peanuts, string beans, green tomatoes (that my grandmother fried), peach trees, and so much more.  He stooped down & collected a handful of the clay; putting it in a jar for me.  That jar stayed by my bed for at least a year.  Each night I watched it; it's ruddy color, the obvious life to it as it shifted, settled, dried.  I thought of it's potential, it's journey to mud and dust.

Our South Jersey soil is sandy and loose.  We put blueberry bushes directly in the ground but most of the rest of our plants are in raised beds of composted soil.  We're still learning how best to respect what it has to offer and grow that.  We'd love to support & buy from other area farms what we grow less successfully here.

Hands in dirt.  Rich, heathen scent.  Fed & full.

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Soul Fire Farm, Yurt, Grafton Peace Pagoda

After Kevin graduated Goddard (see last post) we headed southwest to Grafton, NY, where our friends had erected a yurt on The Soul Fire Farm.  We were so captivated by the land, growing food, wild sheep dog named Ro, chickens, beautiful people, & the yurt, that we took no photos!  We shared a delicious meal with our friends, their friends, interns who became friends... all grown on the land.  Afterwards Kevin & I followed Taina, Gaetano, & their kids to the yurt.  We fell asleep talking & playing music.  Taina, Gaetano, & Kevin collaborated on songs.  I drifted to sleep dreaming of pirate love.

We woke in the morning & wandered back to Soul Fire Farm to share breakfast, witness Leah & Jonah dance, & Leah demonstrate her mad aerial silk skills.  Unfortunately, we had to be back in South Jersey so we moved on.  We drove a little ways, maybe less than a mile, & arrived here:

 The Grafton Peace Pagoda.  This beautiful, sacred structure emerges suddenly from the forest.  Moments before we'd been watching wild turkeys & now this.  We moved through the grounds watching what Jun-sun, the care-taker, had built through faith & patience.

 Our buddy, Yabisi!  Wise soul.  When Taina was pregnant with him I used to drive her to the birth center for appointments with her midwife.  We later realized her midwife was Eva, the professor who just graduated Kevin!  (See last post)

 Taina & Gaetano's miracle daughter, Caona.

 Taina helped me understand the scope & depth of Jun-san's life.  Jun-san has always been a spiritual activist.  She's fought for political prisoners her whole life.  Her journey is walking & fasting to draw attention towards social justice.  She gave me two cranes & a note from her last walk around Lake Ontario to stop nuclear activity in Fukushima, Japan.  It twirls on my rear-view mirror & reminds me of her, her work, & legacy.
 Unfortunately Gaetano was at work, so we didn't get to include him in the photos.

The Great Green Mountain Adventure aka Kevin Graduates Goddard

 From Albany, NY (see last post) Kevin & I ventured north-east to Montpelier, VT.  It should have taken 2 1/2 hours.  It took 6.  We missed a turn & were then subject to New England directions;  "go down the valley, and turn at the lake."  "Does this road have a name?" I ask.  "Ah... there will be a hardware store there."  "Ok," I follow, "What direction do we turn?"  Repeatedly.

But!  We saw beautiful farms.  & beautiful country.  Kevin's parents had an equally trying journey north from Virginia.  This weekend also marked their 40th Wedding Anniversary!  Saturday night we ate at The New England Culinary Institute's Restaurant.  Delicious!
Earlier that day, Kevin presented his senior thesis at Goddard College

 On Sunday, the graduates assembled for Commencement.
Kevin, Lily, & Erin 

One incarnation of the Goddard No Name Band, playing one of Kevin's original songs.  Shown from left to right: Dan, Kevin, Ollie, & Gailanne

 Eva, Kevin's primary advisor, introduced his work to the community.  It was really beautiful to understand what each graduate had achieved.

Otto

It's legit, he got a diploma

 Kevin, & each graduate, had a chance to share what this graduation culminated for them.  He didn't cry!  I was thanked for "vicious editing."

Eva, Kevin, Karen, & Frances.  These were some of the faculty present who most informed Kevin's studies

Shaiya in Kevin's chin

Kevin & Ro

Kevin & Olli

Olli, Autumn, Kevin, & Shameeka

Kevin, Hannah, Dan, & Shameeka


Friday, August 17, 2012

Distill. Enlarge

Where did this begin?  One beginning was the garden.  I wandered there alone, which was a rarity, because there were only minutes before Sharon Gannon would offer a Jivamukti class in her home in Woodstock.  This is her & David Life's garden, entered through a wound wood spiral, drenched in sun, with a path that leads to a screened in garden bedroom.  Sleep, plants, crickets.

We are golden.  Another beginning.  Within the class Sharon invited us to sit for meditation by playing Joni Mitchell's "Woodstock."  Lured in, we stayed.

It kept beginning.  In the studio there was a round window to the meadow behind.  It was so clear.  When meditation felt dense I opened my eyes & could see small insects marching in light, leaves moving.  I saw what I heard: crickets, winds, leaves.  The window offered me a new vision each time my gaze reached up.

It began far earlier.  Kevin & I have an adventure this weekend.  He graduates from Goddard College, a place that has been so dear to him, & for which he already grieves the loss.  My hope is that it's not a loss, just punctuation.  

We knew we were journeying north to Vermont to witness his graduation.  We'd always wanted to join Sharon Gannon & David Life in their Woodstock home for an August Jivamukti vinyasa intensive.  We decided to leave for graduation a day early, take a Woodstock class, & stay the night in Albany with our dear friends Taina, Gaetano, Yabisi, & Caona.

As our eyes hazily opened after meditation we began again.  Began moving.  Sharon kept intoning that words have meaning.  Mean what we say, say what we mean.  She encouraged us to articulate our bodies as precisely.  She loosened instruction: "you know the suryas.  Do them."  Over the stereo came "Here comes the sun."  We all sang (loud!) while lifting to surya.  A gong rang.  A woman in front of me grabbed a book of poetry that Sharon had previously scattered throughout the room.  Clearly, strongly, with the same presence of pinca mayurasana, she shared the poem.  Sharon moved us to standing asana poses.  We sweat, breathed, the gong rang.  Kevin stood up tall & clearly recited Nazim Hikmet's poem, "It is this way."  Sharon looked at him quizzically-- it wasn't from a book.  She nodded as she understood it was memorized-- this is how dearly he (& I) hold this poem.

(We each encountered it in the introduction of David Gilbert's book, "No Surrender," the title taken from Hikmet's poem.  Hikmet, like Gilbert, was a political prisoner.)

We felt seen.  Our voices heard.  We submerged ourselves again in movement.  More readers offered voice when the gong rang.  Our voices quieted as our bodies moved.  Another song we all recognized came over the stereo & we sang.

I felt trembly with energy, sweat, breath, the garden, meditation, the communion in the room.  I reached for a book of poetry.  I remembered seeing a book of Patti Smith that interested me.  It had wandered away.  This was poetry by Julia Butterfly Hill.

Of course.  She sat in "Luna," the giant redwood, to prevent it's destruction.

I opened to a poem on political prisoners.  Sharon rang the gong & I rose.  I used to read poetry all the time.  It's probably been years since I've been vulnerable in this way.  I read Julia's words & they felt like my own. Julia shared her conviction that all political prisoners would come home from jail.  Jails would burn to ashes.  Ashes move to earth.  Over it all we will rise & move.  I felt myself shaking from the energy of my beliefs & the energy in my muscles, my breath, somewhere else.  

Afterwards Sharon opened herself to a Q & A.  I think we were all a little too dazed by the shared experience to be sufficiently forthcoming with questions.  David Life congratulated Sharon on such an artful class.  He asked her to speak more about the connections between yoga & poetry.  Paraphrasing, she responded that yoga asks us to distill our movement & be precise.  We edit our bodies to fill asana.  Poetry asks us to move to that point of clarity-- mean what we say, say what we mean.  Each medium must be intentional, with purpose.  

It began in all those places.  It continued to creep, anew, as Kevin & I wandered down the hill into the tall firs shading our car.  Our cheeks glowed as we both admitted to one another, "I love Sharon Gannon."  "No, me too.  No, I really love her."  We sat down across from one another over lentil soup & iced coffee & found the various pieces assembled so precisely.  Our limbs coordinating.  Our bodies in reference to those around us.  A piece of our spirit enlarged, inflamed.



Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Pray

"Praying is a very effective way to talking to yourself, of talking yourself into things, of focusing your attention on whatever it is you want to do.  It can give you a feeling of control & help you stretch yourself beyond what you thought were your limits."

Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower


I recognize the Divine in the waters of Atitlan.  I recognize divinity in the soil that bears my food.  If I recognize Divine within, than perhaps prayer is simply coaxing it forward.

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

The "C"s have it!

I tallied up the blog votes, Facebook votes, personal messages, & emails.  Thank you for your feedback! Photo "C" made the cut.  It's now on the site:

http://maigamilbourne.com/officiating/

& I just ordered promotional material using this image.

Mutual support is where it's at!

Monday, August 13, 2012

Make Dirt

Our compost has a new home!  Last night Kevin chainsawed some of these logs from the felled trees on our property.  I helped clear away other debris & pitch-fork compost & leaves into wheel barrows.  We're still transitioning the compost into these two bins, but the structure is in place!

I can't tell you how excited I am to have this new space.  We'll probably need a few more compost areas in various parts of our yard.

I freaking love compost.  I completely understand that's strange-- here's the deal-- there's nothing wrong with it.  When I recycle, I still am not thrilled about pollution from recycling plants.  When I do many acts, they're still not totally good.  I can't necessarily see a down-side in composting.  The compost thrills my plants, it creates & enriches soil (soil needs love too), it encourages me to eat biodegradable food, it reminds me that everything has a purpose.

Saturday, August 11, 2012

A little help from my friends

Option A (final version would be cropped at the waist)

I act as Officiant for families wanting to create ceremony that best reflects their own beliefs.  It's a privilege to create this space & something I really cherish.  For that reason, I have never used a photo from a service I Officiated for my own promotional materials.  I need to share that I offer these services, but want to do so as respectfully as possible.  I was trying to figure how I could add an Officiating image when it occurred to me that my friends, Robin & Mike, have a lovely baby daughter, Aaliyah, & we could create space together specifically for the purpose of this photo.

They were game.

We spent a great day laughing in the sun.  Kevin took so many beautiful photos that I'm now having a hard time deciding.  I would love help!  Please pick your favorite shot.  I'm very, very grateful.


Option B
Option C
Option D
Option E

Friday, August 10, 2012

Learn Love

Yesterday I bought groceries, ran a few more errands, came home, & FORGOT ABOUT THE GROCERIES.  No lie.  I can be spacey at times but this is a first.  To make matters worse, at lunchtime I picked up a pizza, met Kevin on his job, & had lunch with him.  So I was in the car again!

*Palm to forehead*

Later that night Kevin & I got in the car & both exclaimed, "What is that smell?!"  I looked in the rearview & saw spinach peeking out of full grocery bags.  We were running late so we quickly put them in the house & agreed to assess the damage later.  The spinach was lost, the bananas need to be banana bread quick, the feta is a goner, the tortillas may make it... the kale?  It was maybe 100 in that car all day!

I started picking fights with Kevin.  Not nice behavior.  I needed sleep but also some time to get a handle on what I was feeling.  Here's the conclusion I came to: I'm learning how to love.

Lake Crescent, Olympic Peninsula, Washington
Why this photo here?  Matches mood.  No other reason
My intention is not for that to sound like an excuse.  I apologized to Kevin & I need to work on not venting frustration on him just because he's close to me.  That's exactly why I should be more protective of behaving well towards him.  It was simply a helpful explanation to myself.

Here's the thing: I am so grateful to love & be loved in partnership, friendship, & family.  I'm not necessarily good at it.  I was taught some really good ways of caring for others: listening, being present, sticking it out when it's hard.  I was also taught some really bad behaviors-- we all were, right?

The problem is, sometimes I don't have to offer what others need.  I'm realizing more & more how this goes both ways.  I don't always love in the ways others want to receive.  I don't always receive love in the way I hope for it.

Expectations.  I get exactly what I need.  If I didn't, I wouldn't be healthy.  Sometimes I need a kick in my tail.  Sometimes I need people to hold me accountable.  Sometimes I need people just to hold me.  I don't always know what I need, that's why I'm not in control (if I only received what I wanted my life would be a wreck).  I'm imperfect in loving as are those I love.

Kevin & I are getting some better language around all of this.  We are starting to see when we respond to one another based on our own personal preference.  We're both trying to compromise.  He lets me rant & whine every now & then & I let him ignore stuff & talk about podcasts (every now & then).

Here it comes again-- love is a freaking practice.  Most urgently, I need to learn to love myself.  I do OK with that.  I feed myself well, keep my body in working order, the bills are paid, work is meaningful, there's community.  But, the real stuff.  Respect myself.  Even when I'm facing the pieces & parts of myself that I generally try to hide or avoid.  Years ago I was tutoring a friend's home-schooled children.  They were walking all over me!  I didn't know how to handle it so I would go from syrup-y sweet to mean, with no in-between.  She explained that the problem was I didn't respect myself.  I didn't thoroughly trust my own judgment to hold that space & respect myself enough to inspire those kids to respect me.  When they responded to my own waffley-ness, I snapped & was mean.

No quick fix to that.  However, over time I am learning to respect myself more mainly through practicing respectable behaviors.  Speaking up & assertively.  Working towards humility.  Being less protective of my nonsense & issues-- trying to let it all be a bit more transparent.  Surrounding myself with people I respect & allowing our relationships to be mutually uplifting.

As I'm learning to love myself better, I'm learning to recognize that capacity in others.  I'm able to offer more love to those around me, which makes me more likely to receive it.

I'm looking back over these words & realizing that I don't know how to talk about this without sounding kind of crunchy granola.  Here's the thing-- when I say love, in no way am I referring to romance nor Hallmark.  When I'm talking about loving myself, it's not Stuart Smalley.  I think love is a radical act.  My political activism has been trying to facilitate the healthiest environments literally & on personal, local, & international levels.  In activism we talk all the time about creating parallel structures, like Free Schools that serve our children in ways some other schools don't, or community gardens that feed us better than grocery chains.  Rather than replicating relationships or even our involvement with our selves that does not serve, establishing something else that is sound.

& credit where credit is due.  I am so grateful to be surrounded by people who teach me through word & example how to be love.  I love you Ria, Mona, Pix, & the rest of my fam!

Thursday, August 9, 2012

A day in my yard. With a barrow-boy. & slutty cucumbers


A boy in his barrow
My lunch date.  He's a gentleman.  Though I declined, I was offered the wheel barrow first.

The stinker who ate all my brocolli & kale.  
Tonight we meet my parents for dinner.  Usually I'd be running 10 miles, practicing the Astanga primary series, eating all raw for a few days so my eyes & skin clear.  Instead I ate pizza with barrow-boy.  & haven't exercised apart from yoga assists & cleaning.
Limelight.  Keeping it classy.

I think this is progress.

Slutty cucumbers.  Trailing over the raised bed & re-seeding all over the place

Pennsauken's finest-- spaghetti squash in my backyard

Late summer strawberries
Ancho peppers, jalapenos, & red peppers.  I'm thinking chile rellenos