Healing Treasure

Ok, i borrowed the title from the post from one of the websites i frequent, Heavy Petal. Find out about one of their covert greeny garden ideas here.

We finally got around to doing an unplugged kid project! The theme from a little bit ago was Petal...

i came across a brilliant use of the petal-ly persuasion at Resurrection Fern. I ADORE the beautiful treasures created and observed on this blog. It is deeply inspiring. So, for our petal project the lion cub and i deconstructed and reconstructed some flowers...it was perfect for a rainy overcast afternoon.

the materials have been gathered

now for some fuel!


yes, we made sure to use some recycled paper

The lion cub leads a pretty unplugged life, as is...


When i came upon UnplugYourKid.com i thought what they do is fantastic. Here is the basic idea: Every week a theme is selected and you have full freedom to explore that idea creatively with your child. You take pictures of the process, progress, results, etc. and post them then link to the main website so others can see and enjoy. Here are some more details...


This week's theme is Dark. We are going to have a go next week with Petal.


There has been much jubilation since the iris and peonies started blooming so it should make for some really fun petal-ly projects.

Okay, it wasn't me spying it...it was our dear family friend, Anand, visiting from DC. *Full disclosure* He wasn't really spying the fruit cake, this was part of the outdoor playing fun...but i thought it would be a cute and clever-ish intro to showing the raw goods...there you have it...honesty, the best policy! Albeit, not necessarily the smoothest policy...but he and his family did love these! They thought i should market them!

Yum! (modified recipe from The Complete Book of Raw Foods - will share later)

i have been off-line for a spell due to powers beyond me...

first the lion cub was under the weather (more on what helped with that later)...

and then my ovaries decided they wanted to have a party...the right one in-cyst-ed on inviting two friends...fun for the whole family!

just been resting and restoring energy. and eating some iron-filled green smoothies!

doing a lot of cleaning these days - both inside and out. a lot is being unearthed and excavated.


i suppose this is a rite of the season.


now i come back rearranged, and yet the same, to share again and again.

from here

I really love the blog Green and Crunchy. I find Sheri and her Kale-Popsicle toting crew with their raw recipes and adventures deeply inspiring. They are probably really fun neighbors.

A couple of days ago she put up a post on making Raw Vegan Parmesan "Cheese". We had all the ingredients in hand so...viola! a few food-processing moments later we were sprinkling the stuff on everything!

Not only is it delicious, but you get tons of B-vitamins, protein, and Omega fatty acids from the delightful combination of Nutritional Yeast and Walnuts. (i am not totally sure that Nutritional Yeast is Raw, btw. i have heard its not.)

here is the recipe according to her daughter, "Annaya's Parmesan Method: She placed 1 cup of raw walnuts in the food processor and ground them until they were in small chunks. Then she added 1 cup of nutritional yeast and ground it some more. Lastly she added a pinch of sea salt and ground to a nice powder. Done!"

And here is a little person i know eating it sprinkled on organic multi-colored heirloom popcorn.

I received this from a dear friend. Please share with others.

Please tell everyone who wants organic foods.....

US House and Senate are about (in a week and a half) to vote on bill that will OUTLAW ORGANIC FARMING (bill HR 875).

There is an enormous rush to get this into law within the next 2 weeks before people realize what is happening.

Main backer and lobbyist is Monsanto - chemical and genetic engineering giant corporation (and Cargill, ADM, and about 35 other related agri-giants). This bill will require organic farms to use specific fertilizers and poisonous insect sprays dictated by the newly formed agency to "make sure there is no danger to the public food supply".

This will include backyard gardens that grow food only for a family and not for sales.

If this passes then NO more heirloom clean seeds but only Monsanto genetically altered seeds that are now showing up with unexpected diseases in humans.

There is a video on the subject here.
And another one here

The name on this outrageous food plan is: The Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009 (bill HR 875).

THIS IS REAL, FOLKS! PASS THIS ALONG TO ALL CONCERNED ON YOUR MAILING LISTS & CALL YOUR SENATE REPRESENTETIVES TODAY!

Get on that phone and burn up the wires. Get anyone else you can to do the same thing. The House and Senate WILL pass this if they are not massively threatened with loss of their position.... They only fear your voice and your vote.

The best thing to do is go to www.house.gov/writerep all you have to do is put in your zip and it will give you your congressperson and how to get in touch with them. When you call their office someone will answer the phone, just tell them (politely) that you are calling to express your views on HR 875. Tell them your views, they'll take your name and address and pass your comments along to the congressperson.

The following link is a list of the U.S. senators and their contact info: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

from here

Check out a come-hither daucus carota on my alterna-blog!

Trust me...you won't be able to resist!

For Zamu Tour info, check out my website...HealingTreasure.com

Round about Christmas time (ok, it was actually on Christmas, there was no round-abouting about it) i gave my mom a present. Actually, it was a picture of a present that i intended to give her.

Just found out about a very cool artist/naturalist who muses with Momma Nature to create his works. His name is Andy Goldsworthy. Check out this interview with him for Time Magazine.

Here is more of his words, "I enjoy the freedom of just using my hands and "found" tools--a sharp stone, the quill of a feather, thorns. I take the opportunities each day offers: if it is snowing, I work with snow, at leaf-fall it will be with leaves; a blown-over tree becomes a source of twigs and branches. I stop at a place or pick up a material because I feel that there is something to be discovered. Here is where I can learn.

"Looking, touching, material, place and form are all inseparable from the resulting work. It is difficult to say where one stops and another begins. The energy and space around a material are as important as the energy and space within. The weather--rain, sun, snow, hail, mist, calm--is that external space made visible. When I touch a rock, I am touching and working the space around it. It is not independent of its surroundings, and the way it sits tells how it came to be there.

"I want to get under the surface. When I work with a leaf, rock, stick, it is not just that material in itself, it is an opening into the processes of life within and around it. When I leave it, these processes continue.

"Movement, change, light, growth and decay are the lifeblood of nature, the energies that I try to tap through my work. I need the shock of touch, the resistance of place, materials and weather, the earth as my source. Nature is in a state of change and that change is the key to understanding. I want my art to be sensitive and alert to changes in material, season and weather. Each work grows, stays, decays. Process and decay are implicit. Transience in my work reflects what I find in nature.""The underlying tension of a lot of my art is to try and look through the surface appearance of things. Inevitably, one way of getting beneath the surface is to introduce a hole, a window into what lies below." from here

There is a documentary on him called, "Rivers and Tides". Part of it can be seen on YouTube.

And now just a small sampling of his work. All the sculpture and photography is by Andy Goldsworthy.