things i've eaten recently

coffee and Polarican cookies

 sweet potato biscuits with guava jelly

strawberry summer cake

lemon raspberry marmalade jammers.

After six months of so of strict paleo eating and several months of non-Paleo and non-sugar eating, I am fully back in the baking way. I happily spend several days a week baking items for Kenneth and I to eat through our days. Sometimes it's scones for breakfast or a loaf of cheddar chive bread to dip in our soup (that was good). Recently it's been biscuits and jammers, both items you get to use a cup to punch out perfect round shapes!

 We also eat a lot of "real" food: chicken, pork, beef, roasted veggies, and plenty of salads. I do enjoy discovering a new recipe to make for lunch or dinner. But there is something so magical about baking. I love breaking out the flour and sprinkling it over the kitchen counter. I love the measuring cups and spoons and experimenting with ingredients. I love how great it feels when one thing comes out of the oven just as the next is ready for its turn. So, while I miss how skinny and how energized I was on Paleo, I am firmly Team Flour and born-again believer in homemade baked goods. 

an essay on a weekend

This weekend was one of those magic moments of genuine connection and wholehearted joy that happen only rarely in life. This year we seemed to hit on a perfect recipe in the people who came to the cabin and the way we spent our weekend hours. It was a balance of relaxation, adventure, cooking, drinking, game playing, conversation and reflection. It is a blessing to witness the blending of these ten people, some of whom only know each other from these weekend retreats, coming together annually.

Four years ago, this weekend began as a celebration of a lovely ladies birth. It was so wonderful that it took on a life of its own and now we come together once a year just because it is what we do. It feels so right to retreat into the quiet of the woods and to catch up on each others lives. It is a break from the constant upkeep of reality; a chance to restore and to exist in a more natural, primal way. In the cabin you eat when you're hungry, sleep when you're tired, and wake when you're rested.

We turn off our alarms in the cabin and everything takes on a hazy, lazy quality as time flows onward unnoticed and the days drift by without appointments or checklists. It is a way of living that feels so right and yet proves to be so hard everywhere but this hidden cabin in the woods. Which is why, I think, we begin the countdown to next year the moment our bags are packed and our cars are pulling away to return us to our city lives. 

Leaving the cabin was hard this year as the weekend was so perfect. My eyes welled as we drove down the mountain. I remember the ends of summer camps as a child, saying good bye to new friends who at the end of a week were old friends. Knowing, then and now, that no matter how many times you go back to that place (the camp or the cabin) there will never again be a time exactly like the one you just left. We will never be able to recreate the moments that made this weekend so perfect. I left so grateful to have been a part of it and so sad that it has passed. I will cling to the photos and cherish the memories as we count down to next year. 

heaven is a place on earth

Tomorrow I pack my bags and head into the mountains for the fourth annual Hot Tub Heaven Cabinganza. I don't know how to properly describe the weekend. It is a relaxing time in the woods coupled with the best college party you've ever been to. It is a time of soulful conversations with long distance friends and raucous games of pong and flip cup. We count down the months until the next trip the day after we leave and even through the group has morphed each year it still feels like the same wonderful group every time. 

growing things up

 For the last month I have worked very hard at convincing Kenneth to take my parents up on their kind offer to let us/him plant a vegetable garden in their back yard. I have elaborated on the joys of homegrown veggies, explained how he could study all summer in the backyard with the pups. I have wheedled and talked his ear off about how GOOD FOR HIM it would be if only he would agree to garden. 

 And now that he's agreed I realize that the good for him is really a good for me. I am the one who needs afternoons in the sun surrounded by green and growth. I am the one who desperately needs to prove to herself that she is/I am capable of growing food. Of keeping things alive. We have dreams of land, of produce--farm dreams. Kenneth doesn't doubt them. I don't either. The dreams are good and wholesome and wonderful. 

 What I doubt is me. Do I have a green enough thumb to keep a garden growing? Will I be able to maintain rows of veggies and an orchard and a food forest and chickens and bunnies and goats and geese? Can I keep all this alive and in doing so feed our family? Do I have what it takes to be a family farmer? 

 I have filled this apartment with little potted plants and time and time again forgotten to water, or move, or feed them only to come home and find them withered and brown. How much of this is my hectic, all consuming work schedule and how much of it is just me? 

 I have this crystal clear image of who I want to be and the life I want to lead when we're in our forever home. Some of this I can begin to practice now in our city apartment. So much more of it I won't know if I will be able to do until we get were we're heading. There is no way to prove I'm capable of living the life I want to lead except by one day jumping straight in. 

And that is terrifying. 

This summer we are moving from balcony gardeners to backyard gardeners. I hope we do well and I hope one day, when we move from backyard gardeners to homesteaders we jump right in and live life well. I pray my fears are unfounded and that the life we are heading for is the life for us. 

But I know, as long as I have Kenneth walking this path with me, that everything will turn out all right. 

layered

Last week I pulled out Zeus, my trusty Olympus Trip 35, and blew off about three years of dust. I was surprised to open it and find, what I thought was, a fresh roll of film inside. So I started shooting. I took pictures around the little, lovely apartment I've called home for years: pictures of the dining room, the living room, the husband studying in the work room. I took the camera with me to meet dear Katie and Cordelia for our third annual celebration of the equinox; this year we met at the Botanical Gardens. I shot through the roll and dropped it off to be developed. Ever impatient when film is involved, I had Kenneth pick it up later that evening. I was surprised again to discover that the roll of film was not fresh, rather it held scenes from a trip to Monterey, VA from Spring 2010 now overlapped with pictures from Spring 2014.

I was lucky in my photos both now and four years ago because the layers of images seem to compliment rather than ruin each other. I have been flipping through the photos since I received them and comparing. Look where we were four years ago. Look at the trips, the hair, the car you were driving. Remember that jacket? Remember that day? It has been a gift to have rediscovered these photos and the memories they hold. It is fun to have the then and now as a visual, layered and easy to compare. 

We were twenty then, young and in love. Together only a year or so and traveling with his family. Kenneth was much the same as he is now; maybe a little more stubborn and definitely a lot more carefree and wild. I was much different, most obviously on the outside: ombre unwashed hair, hipster glasses and track jacket. We were both so young looking with our baby fat cheeks. Only four years separate the then and now and oh boy, it feels like forever. How will I feel when I show these photos to our children in ten or twenty years? Will it seem like another lifetime? 

Now we are half a decade into our forever together. Older and in love. Married and not yet settled, still dreaming and planning for the life we want to live. In the original photos we are just starting out on our path together, in the new ones we are a little further down the path. While it is fun to look back and see where we started, it is even better to celebrate where we are and to look forward to where we are headed. This is the journey of a lifetime and oh boy, it is a good one.