i have been gathering energies to make it happen for a few months. finally! the summer is almost over, full swing, with herbs, wanted or not growing wildly over our garden, right along with all the beautiful veggies, flowers and fruits abounding. we have two giants squashes, lots of salads, pole beans, bush beans, chard, and calendula, giant sunflowers, yummy potatoes, 7-10 eggs per day(when the chickens don’t get to them first :0) unfortunately we let the tomatoes get overrun with squash and responded much too late- all the plants are dead, or dying with a brown mold/sickness. another of our learning by doing experiences. today I harvested the salad seed with vivienne, and would love to share with anyone interested in also trying it next year. it’s a crisp, mild flavor, with green and red coloring, a “pick salad, where you take the outer leaves off and it continues to grow new leaves on the inside. let me know if you want to try some, even if you don’t have any seeds to trade just yet!

Vivienne is growing growing oh my! not so much in height or outwardly, but her mind is processing everything, she is speaking(she looooves to talk on the cell phone if we are) and she understands most everything. she is doing some really super cute stuff now-like crawling on the floor like a cat, saying meowh and playing with the cats outside, picking veggies and seeds, cutting food, eating, breastfeeding, pooping in the potty, or outside, whereever she can then point to and say poo poo! pretty much amazingg! we are both so enjoying this time with her! there are also the times when she just wants to cry, and we have also become more understanding of hearing her-letting her cry, but never pushing her away to cry in a corner, holding her if she wants or just being with her, letting her also express how she feels (when there is not something else we can find to help releave her pain or frustration. she is very sure of what she wants and doesn’t want, and says in her own way-hey exactly that! its sometimes challenging, but it is also a period of growth for the two of us, to not freak out with that-which is sometime easy to do!

well, come and see her, us before she is smoking! jk!

another year has passed, and with it I am 24. I have been living in germany now for almost 2 years-starting september, and with the time, i am building an open, attachment positive and aware family. I have grown a lot, and I mean a lot a lot. in many different ways, but the biggest I feel is being much more confident in the way and direction I want to parent with my partner, and daughter.

moving away from winning/losing,best/worst; and toward expressing feelings of all sorts-happy, sad, angry and all in between together and with each other. not pushing feelings away but making them building stones for our life together. and it feels really good. I have remembered so many childhood memories over the last two years, mostly being brought up through situations and experiences related to parenting and releasing the fears and problems from my own childhood, and have done a lot of work to feel, feel the pain that still lingers.

the month of august marks our meeting back in france, 3 years ago, ralfs birthday (on the 21^st) and his month off of work. it has been so far really busy, with moving, and building, cleaning the chickens house as they had fleas and other bugs, garden work, and….

this weekend we finally bought a bus! a 40 year old mercedes benz 407D, that was first a mail truck. I will put some pictures up soon, as it is really awesome, and after working all day to fix different broken things ralf looks pretty hardcore too, black and greasy. her name is spicy rucula. she is multi color green, and she is more or less a vacation home, but maybe in the future she will become our permanent traveling home, depending how work goes here. we want to build the inside again with a natural wood and make it alittle less 80’s.

i love reading stuff like this. it makes me miss my roots, my home county, my people. very often i have the feeling of being weighed down, of not being able to accomplish what i would like, or at least to the extent i would like because i have chosen to have a child, and want to have more. Its a constant issue for me. a struggle between family herstory and present goals and desires accruing in my heart, mind and soul. of wanting to give and be for a small person, and at the same time realizing that to be able to meet another's needs i need to have certain things met for myself. I feel I could go much deeper into this topic, contact me if you wish to too.

a while back-last month or so- i left a pot of beef bones on the heat (wanting to make stock) and (planning to come right back) forgot about it, a friend came to visit and we got excited about making rose cuttings and picking veggies...so i came back to an apartment that ralf was just coming out of...stinky and sticky. the smell of burnt fat was literally over every single thing in our apartment. and its taken a while to make that mostly go away…Now we are fully moved, as of the 3 of Aug. we live about 5 min. walking distance from where we did before-now right next to our chickens with a big ass garden!

the reason we have moved- living on the 2nd floor in one of the five houses here gives ralf often the feeling he is never off work, and we think this is mostly the reason why very few of the coworkers of handicapped people also decide to live on site. giving your all during the week and not really being able to relax isnt so great. there are also handicapped people living where we are now, but it feels better. the biggest thing for both of us is that we will have a garden to use right out side the door! maybe if we stay here longer-we have a six month contract ending in Feb. '12- we could build an outdoor kitchen and bread oven, to take more of the house life activities outdoors as well. the apartment was left pretty trashed, we must also create a kitchen from our own resources.

i would love to hear from all of you!

lovelove

jessica

oh! and our cell number is: 01779193397

this is the only way we can be reached right now, as we have no land line(until the 24th or so)

some photos are posted to facebook: see them under this link!

ode to a rejoicing world.

how spring pulses through my being! how green leaves and white flowers rush head long with their waves of fresh, new energy all over me. a white, long winter behind, the heights of summer yet to come, yea for being alive!
a daily wild salad of a variety of leaves, flowers, wild greens, nettle soup/spinach and homemade sourdough bread with wild garlic butter, meets excited baby with 6 full teeth, two large molars breaking through in the back, and creates a colorful table chair and floor as all of this swirls(more or less) towards a tiny happy mouth. we walk outside(yes she is walking, but for now with the help of a pair of hands) or run or fall and try again, to pick more flowers and wonder at the natural world around us. we play in our garden, which is being continually in a state of growth, change and flow, flowers planted there, picked and deposited over there, and gleeful squeals as bees land all around.
starting kundalini yoga with another mama, gardening, cooking, laughing, massaging, forest walking, talking, learning, kombucha making, backing, building, crafting, maybe learning to felt?. ya know the daily rhythm. singing dancing, in general making peace in myself and with all around me. it is love!

i will be loading more pictures up on facebook, but here is a start:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2099308&id=42901852&l=69d36eac7e

this weekend our first overnight visitors all arive at the same time-my cousin Kyla, andRalfs mother Dini and his sister Suzi. then we are taking a week vacation to look for work around Berlin, and see the beautiful city! i am super excited, and at the same time preparing myself for the drastic change from country life to city life.
maybe i will write more about this, but probably not so....
over the winter i finally started reading a book series called Anastasia that i had heard about first while at camphill from a crazy lady, then from clay in Wa, then online from another mama. so i bought the first one...and after reading through all nine books am so thankful for such a beautiful image, life, woman, so full of a different hope for the world. it has brought my interest to study permaculture to a whole new level and i hope to travel to the eastern part of europe/russia sometime over the next few years, learning permaculture and more about community living. if you read the books, it would be fun to talk about them together sometime!
over the winter we had alot of problems with getting sick and it made me rethink alot of the diet choices i have been making over the last few years. a huge one is turning away from a high meat based diet, another away from a dairy dependence. aka not following so strictly to nourishing traditions, more towards an herbal diet-one filled with lots of what is growing around me. a local diet, not buying many things from outside of germany(specifically with fresh foods) and ever further trying to buy just from the farmers around me, organic, demeter certified (biodynamic) and small.
i feel really good. and so does viv. ralf is still in another place though....i have stopped my sugar free lifestyle and adopted more a- i choose what sugar i eat and am very picky about what i want that has sugar. and i like it. i made tirimasu for the first time since....and maybe basil ice cream soon.
food has always interested me and i think it always will. now i want to live more outside in nature rather than feeling caught, trapped to cook in a space that is comparatively dark and feel free to eat when i feel hungry, not just at a specifically predisposed time-not really possible for anyone with official boss and co.
thats a snapshot of a welcome to spring. i send lots of love from this beautiful forest and hope it finds you well! may all the elves help you find your way today!
love
jessica