Accepting Donkey Donations

I am now accepting donations to help me buy a donkey! It all started a few years ago when I began having seizures and could no longer drive a car, or even ride as a passenger without causing serious medical discomfort. Soon after realizing my new isolating plight I met an old man on Reems Creek Rd in Weaverville NC who was raising midget ponies, he loved his midget ponies so much he teared up talking about them & he said they were his only joy... after hearing him talk a flash of brilliance popped into my travel weary mind that I needed something to ride on that was just my size! Over the years I kept my wish alive, letting it evolve with my changing life- but as my situation became more 'small pony' friendly the economy became a monster. A monster that gobbled up all my money and left me rather poor.
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Donkeys are a hella expensive ya'll! Ranging around $500-$800 for one that will have been socialized correctly (with other animals) and will be friendly (with humans). You might be wondering why I don't want a horse or small pony but rather a donkey which will Hee-Haw all through the day and night!?! Donkey's are awesome creatures...they are just my size to ride on, they have minds more like dogs then horses, they do not need to eat any gluten grains as other livestock because it will make them get a fat neck and get sick (yay, i can feed my donkey safely with grass and hay!), they are very loving and loyal if you care for them right, they protect other animals from dangers like coyotes, they've got great personality and I am a donkey magnet! Donkeys are also magical fury cuteness... did I mention we can look eye to eye?!
Having a donkey to ride on would liberate my inability to get around very easily (I can only ride my bike so far in the rural mountains before I am exhausted completely). This would be a long term dream come true - some girls want fancy cars & a nice house, but I just want a donkey to be friends with.
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BTW- I already have a name picked out, and it's going to be Ju Ju Bean...oh and this is going to be our theme song together.
Go HERE and read about what neato animals donkeys really are! Then if ya want to donate to my Operation Liberation By Way Of Donkey, shoot me an email (or paypal it) at lesrichard {at} aol [dot] com or leave a comment about it here. :)

XOXO

Primitive Sanding With A Stone and Sand

My Neighbor was getting rid of an old scratched up cutting board, made of thick beautiful wood. The upcycler in me immediately swooped up the prize and decided I'd sand it down back to new- but I didn't want to use regular sand paper on it since it's where I'll be cutting food and the chemical glues in crappy sand paper have never been declared food safe or gluten free (the stuff people with Celiac Sprue have to think of!). Not to mention sandpaper is one of those things that kinda rips us all off- you rub it around just a few times and the paper it's already shot, the sand is all gone, and your fingers are raw from pushing too hard.
So here's what ya need to sand it the old OLD school way (primitive, chem free, cheap, & EASY): A stone which has a flat side, sand, and your object of sanding desire.
Step One: Pour a handful of sand on the wood. Place the stone on top the sand.
Step Two: Start grinding ...not like on MTV The Grind- but by placing your hands over the stone and working the sand into circles. I found that you don't need alot of pressure if your stone has a good weight to it already. The stone itself will actually grind down the sand too, and make it very fine - so through the process it makes the surface of the wood smooth. The sound it makes is pretty awesome- it sounds like some sort of meditation didgeridoo monk chanting OM music.
NOTE: Stick something under the sanding project to catch the sand falling off the sides, so you can reuse that sand over and over.
LAST STEP: Once you are done with sanding buff the wood with just the stone and no sand, then wash the board off and check to make sure it's the consistency you like. Then heat up a little oil with salt and rub the board down to keep it protected. :) No more scratches, it's like brand new!!!!
XoXo

Cave Spider In Funnel Web

Everytime I go off my usual trail/hike I discover something awesome like this small neato rock shelter...which leads to more awesome stuff, like creepy long legged cave dwelling spiders! In the pic above that is me putting my hands on the top of the rock ceiling suddenly discovering I had put my hands into a massive colony of spider webs. These well camouflaged spiders are huge, I mean they make the daddy long legs look short and would probably make an arachnophobic faint.

The ghostly cylindrical white stuff in the image below are the funnel webs they build. Each spider up there had it's own personal style of "funnel" including some that were tornado or bell shaped. Surrounding the funnel webs were these intricate and nearly invisible cross hatched webs that seem to have no shape or pattern, but were simply a death trap for anything that may crawl on the rock.
The webs spanned outward, covering a large area not only on the ceiling of the rock, but all the way out the 'door'.

The only thing that gives them away is their web - because otherwise they look just like the rock! And that's if ya see the web before you stick your fingers or head into it first. :)
XoXo

Peek Inside A Modern Dairy Farm

Yesterday I went for a long walk down the road and happened upon one of the many dairy farms in this area. Many don't appear to really be organic, yet I learned some things that helped me understand the way we get our food (particularly our milk) that gave me an entirely new perspective (organic or not). The workers were really super nice and let me and Bort right on in to the milking house when he asked permission to watch. I first walked through a room with a giant silver holding tank where the milk ends up being stored, and that room smelled just like a sweet bakery (sugary and creamy)- there was a slight chemical odor too that I could not quite put my finger on. After stepping through that room, this is what I walked into...
Wildly noisy and like an alternate universe, cows were lined up on platforms and the worker was disinfecting the utters of each cow before milking. Absolutely fascinating, I never in my life thought about how they must use chems on the utters before milking to kill germs (this is cause the cows are very dirty, literally) - the room had a container of iodine, and smelled strongly of bleach (to clean up pee and poop I am sure). As someone with food allergies and chem sensitivities this greatly interested me, cause I began to wonder if some food allergies are more about the process in which we get our food, rather then the food source itself.
The cows were not being mistreated in any way, there wasn't anything terrible happening - but for me there was just something uneasy about mass scale farming in this way, because of the extra lengths a farmer must go to obey the laws, get germs off the turf, and get a huge amount of product out there. I don't think I expected to see the workers hand milking, but I never had taken the time to think about what the milking machines are like- they are loud, kinda like a strong as hell hoover vacuum that suctions onto each utter.
All the milk was being sucked out (surprisingly fast) going through all the crazy tubes and contraptions ya see here, and then eventually would end up in the sugary smelling room. Bort (who's brother used to milk cows at this farm) told me that once it's in the big holding tank the milk companies come to pick it up from there. These companies test a glass of the milk every time before selling the product to make sure no antibiotics are in it. If they find antibiotics in the milk on these farms (even though they are not organic) they will be penalized, the product not being bought and then companies won't buy from that farmer for a few months after (by regulation).
Did you ever think about your milk being here before it hits your lips? In a little tube right next to a muddy cow leg! Ha.
XoXo

Sometimes Ya Feel Like A Nut (Tree)

I like to try and start trees from seed - especially nut trees! In the bag here are some pine nuts...mmmm...that are getting too outdated to eat but might have some life in them to plant some pine trees from seed. The best way to do this is to get a a handful of (preferably organic) nuts still in their shell from a local grower at the grocery or farmers market, since that will make the chances of your tree lovin' your climate alot better (remember to double check that they are locally grown). Experimentation is cool too though- these pines nuts were grown in New Mexico, but I have still had them sprout little pine trees in flower pots where I dropped shells I was cracking to eat.
Just to make sure I have a goooooood chance of something coming up I took a big ole' handful of the pine nuts and put them all at different levels in the soil. Some are just patted down, some buried deep, some buried shallow- which is my attempt to imitate nature's way of dropping the seeds and then all kinds of junk happens to them after that. Growing up in New Orleans I use to watch the squirrels bury the pecans for the (not all that cold) winter - pretty deep in the ground, and that is when the strongest trees would grow up out the soil. Go Pine Nuts Go!
XoXo

I Like...

these things...Bugs and tree sap.
Thistle, rocks and butterflies.
My cat Toots climbing a tree.
Frogs! Of all sizes.
Useful plants in the woods ( especially one's that make natural dye and paint.)
My own creepy reflection in the basement window.
XoXo

Animal Evidence

There's bunches of reasons to observe the evidence animals leave behind - in the woods or even around your suburban home. The main reason is just for the sheer joy of seeing how awesome and intelligent nature really is, which cultivates a great respect for the earth we live on (observing is my most favorite thing to do), but then there are things like half your flock of chickens is wiped out in a night and you need to know what animal you are dealing with in order to secure your hens properly (raccoon, fox, owl, hawk, coyote...). An even more basic reason to follow the behavior of animals is for survivalist reasons, and I don't mean being a survivalist just for fun or in fear of apocalyptic doom but I mean the economy being so bad that it becomes more apparent you are so poor you will need to feed yourself off the land. In the end, growing and trapping your own food is the most ecological way to live anyway.
Animal tracks (like the deer tracks above) will reveal the paths the animals use on a regular basis. While I don't want to eat a deer (even in a bad economy) I do love to see them doing their thing - it makes me forget about any worry I could have in life. In the picture below are some wild rose bush briers, which have a little cave type arch and shelter quality. Since I walk this path regularly, I know that this sprucing up of the bush is something that just happened. It takes a lot of patience to wait for animals to come by, but if you really want to observe them, you have to find a hiding spot close to some evidence and wait for the magic to happen.
These giant holes below are made by one of the biggest woodpeckers in existence! I have seen them only twice in my life (cause they are too crafty) , it's like spotting an eagle though cause they are so HUGE. They have a giant red head and hammer so hard on the wood it will rock your house. (I found one hammering away on my house siding once). They do this in order to find ants living inside dead trees. Pretty neat!
Where a dead tree falls down, a new path is created. This tree below created a deer super highway - when I say there were too many tracks to even decifer I don't exaggerate! It looked like NYC 5th avenue traffic...nature style.
Lastly is poop, or better known to tracking enthusiasts as "scat". Poop seems pretty easy to identify, but I am not quite sure about this one pictured below. I looked up the categories for dog, cat, deer, rabbit and rodent and it didn't quite fit in any of them. It was out in a open field near a tomato garden and apple trees, which attracts alot of critters all shapes and sizes. There were a few other scat bits near this one too, smaller in size.
Hey Tom Brown Jr., what kinda poop is this?
XoXo

Organic Winter Squash(es)

I Have a question about winter squash... when there is more then one squash, do you say "squashes" or just plain ole' "squash"? I have been vastly poked fun of for adding the "es" at the end of the word squash- but have heard other people say the same thing. I am not sure if I care whether it's correct or not, but more so that I can find others like me...then we can start an organic hippie commune together called "Squashes Eagle Cloud". Just kidding. ;)
So here are some of the neat-o winter squashes I have growing in my organic garden (these are not quite ripe yet, but getting there)...
I think that first one might turn out to be a Kubucha Squash (or some fancy name like that, that spell check doesnt recognize) - this is one of many that I collected the seeds myself from store bought organic squash, dried them and then replanted. :) I got some serious variety going this way.
In the pic above, that's my squash joy! It's siamese! And a Buttercup! I have some regula' buttercups too, but for some reason throughout my garden I have experienced occassional siamese genetics.
Mmmmmm, BUTTERNUTS! I've got bunches of these guys, and some that are even crook necked! There's another type of winter squash just sitting on top of those that I am not sure what variety it is. The big ole' honker below is a Spagetti squash, which are one of my most favorite kinds! If you've never had them, try one- they flavor really well, are mild (not too sweet, not too squashy) and the best part is you pull out the squash with a fork and it peels out in strips kinda like pasta.
Then last is my shy little pie pumpkins! I didn't grow any big guys this year, because I mainly wanted the sweet kind that are edible (as in taste good). These are really cute- they just started turning orange after a long period of being super dark green.
Rock on my sweet squashes!
XoXo

Into The (somewhat) Wild

Nature is at it's summer peak, where everything is almost as big and tall as it's gonna get - animals have been pretty well fed, and things are relatively peaceful and quiet. The first thing I saw at the beginning of this trail was an Eastern Box Turtle closed up in it's shell! Cool! This particular spot is usually an active nook near some large rocks, where there's been a bobcat track, possible bobcat sighting, chipmunks, animals trails and dead animal smells. The turtle has the best armor and could tell all was pretty calm for it's afternoon stroll.
Walking along there are patches that make be feel downright tarzan, it gets wild with giant grape vines, hardy jewel weed, and poison ivy climbing high up into the tops of trees. (I have lucked out, cause of all the stupid things I am allergic to, poison ivy is not one of them! yippee!)
The overgrowth of tiny micro mushrooms here is so magical, it's straight out of a fairytale. They spread out all over the ground, on the trail, and then climb up the dead tree stump. Mushrooms love dead trees. :)
There's a barbed wire fence along part of the trail that separates the property from a cow field. I have to admit I have jumped this fence a few times just to look at the flowers and trees on the other side - hoping there was no bull in the area. Everytime was totally worth it.On my way back home I saw this new animal hole dug under a huge rock - seems like a good place to live. Makes me wish I was (more of) an animal.
XoXo

Littlest Woolly Worm (I Eva' Saw)

Ya'll, check out this crazy tiny woolly worm! When I first moved to Western North Carolina I was amazed by all these big fuzzy caterpillars with red and black stripes marching around - and was informed right away (by locals) that the coloration of the woolly worm predicted how cold a winter was going to be. Kinda like how people say the squirrels are extra fury if it's going to be mega cold- the woolly worms tell you how winter is going to be based on the black (being the cold parts) and then the red (being the warmer parts of the winter) starting from the head to it's woolly rear end.
These pictures are of the tiniest one I have eva' seen, normally they are quite big and forthright, hauling ass to some unknown location - giving you only a glance of your near future. According to this baby here it's going to start out pretty freaking cold, have a spell of warmth, blast back into cold for the second half of winter, and then pull in the spring with warm months. That micro dot of black on it's butt, hope that doesn't mean a "dogwood winter" where it snows one last time late in april! :) Smooches to this cutie!

XoXOooo

Wrestling In Big Sandy Mush (Part 2)

Oh lordy, I can't believe they moved wrestling to a sunday afternoon in this culturally bible belt area...it certainly set an entirely new mood, a smaller crowd and maybe even a few new wrestling rules since only the most die hard & friends were present. But it had it's advantages too. I walked in a little fashionably late just as the first match was getting started, sat down, and this picture below is the first thang that happened!!!! Holy Shiznit- dudes were flying like they were comic book heroes wearing olympic gold medals! That's some seriously ninja style moves going on. In all the matches the usual form was bad guy VS good guy again and many of the wrestlers were the same as last time (except for the flying bad boy, he was new to me)... what was totally unusual this time though was the mood. The crowd was slightly more lazy and quiet because it was 2 o'clock on a sunday afterall ( Jesus says to yell a little less on this day), and this made the wrestlers act like it was a private show where they could ham it up twice as fancy and laugh their asses off at their own acrobatics!

There seems to always be a moment where the drama peeks so high wrestlers step in for their partners and threaten the other team with large objects. In the ECW (Extreme Championship Wrestling) they use big terrible stuff like pipes, toilets, sinks, and chairs - oh but no, not here in Big Sandy Mush though, sunday wrestling brought on an ECW style threat with a freaking BANJO!!! ha! The bad guys totally feared the banjo too (who wouldn't), the hottie wrestler pretended to rock out on it (even though from where i sat it looked like it had no strings) - possibly they even feared his grace with the banjo cause he is probably the wrestler with the most martial art/gymnast style strategy.Now there were a few moments where I was appalled into laughter - one was when a kid started chanting "dough boy" to the wrestler with a belly, somehow getting the whole crowd in on it!!! OMG! And threatened said wrestler with his folding chair, till his family calmed him down. Then when a wrestler would pout, act like a baby and yell shit like "he pulled my hair, did you see that, he pulled my hair!"... the wrestler proceeded to point out some farmish looking young adults and said "you saw it, didn't he pull my hair?", to which the boys shook their head "NO", and he yelled "Don't Listen to those HIPPIES!" ... ha, the only hippies in the place got called out (assuming I'm not a hippie).

Then this awesome thing happened...

I bet you are wondering what is going on in that picture above, cause no one is being pulverized?! That is cause a tag team match was about to start, and low and behold they was playing ROCK, PAPER, SCISSORS to decide who would go first ! oh yeah baby. They DID!The good guys actually WON! And at this time I want to point something else totally phenomenal about this wrestling match, and that was for half the rounds there was a FEMALE referee!!!
Pictured here below is me with one of my FAVORITE wrestlers from the Hillbilly Team! Thumbs up is the standard pose for a winner, I suspect cause you can flex muscles while giving it ;)

Next Wrestling Match In Big Sandy Mush on AUGUST 15th 2009!

Ps- did you miss reading PART 1? Go Here!

XoXOooo

Happy Sunday

I am too tired to tell you all about how local championship wrestling was canceled for July 25th and moved unexpectedly to today...
a sunday afternoon. So look forward to some amazing acrobatic, dramatic, death defying action photos tomorrow when I post about the joys of watching wrestling here in Big Sandy Mush.

PS- This pic was taken under a bridge along the road I live off of. :)

XoXo

Jimson Weed

Little Shop Of Horrors anyone? Jimson weed (also known as Thorn-Apple) is the kind of plant that has so many nuances it becomes legend in your garden or field. Let's start with this...it's a nightshade- a smelly, stinky weed so bad when you pick it, it leaves your hand smelling like poisoned meat nutty hell fire. It's nasty funk scent isn't just confined to it's stem and leaves, according to old farmers here if you plant your squash next to it the poor squash comes out tasting like Jimson Weed! Woo gross. But it gets even more curious then that...

Jimson Weed is considered a "virulent narcotic poison". Dat's some big words that mean this plant is a toxin that can be easily overdosed. The reason people overdose on this smelly ass plant is because it can also make a person hallucinate, with a little vertigo & nausea & delirium & possible death thrown in the mix for good measure. The Navajo Indians described ingesting Jimson like this "Eat a little, and go to sleep. Eat some more, and have a dream. Eat some more, and don't wake up" - creepy, the not waking up part is usually right after the seizures and coma. And best check it before ya wreck it, cause Jimson Weed is also an illegal drug in the USA- on that note there is all kinds of wacky info on the internet about taking it as a herbal medicine for various health probs such as asthma. Hmmm.

So here's a little word of mouth (oral tradition) about the J Weed that interests me the most- I was told there were studies done where people were administered the seeds of the plant in order to calculate reactions, hallucination, functions etc... this was done in a clinical setting. The people who participated in the study noticed something strange AFTER the whole tripping out narcotic thing was over, and that was they begin having reactions to all kinds of stuff, like prescription drugs and chemicals. Basically being poisoned by the plant caused chemical sensitivities in the participants. Wowsers. Kudos & Love to anyone who can find me some online info on these studies...

XoXo

Turn Your Old Jeans Into A Pencil Skirt!

Check out my new DIY video on how to take your old jeans and transform them into a saucy & hip pencil skirt! Did I mention sexy too? Rrrrrrr. ;)

Watch it here, or check it out alot larger on YOUTUBE!
xoxo

Brown Speckled Grasshopper

That's the kinda face that makes me smile. :) This grasshopper was just riding the wave of turnip green, occasionally taking a bite or two, and sometimes glancing at me like I was a big huge weirdo who may become annoying. And I did, after a while I started checking out all angles and mischievously tried to get him to spread his beautiful wings & fly by putting my hand all up in his face. When he finally did fly it startled me so much I jumped back...so sorry, no pic of his wings.
xoxo

'Hummingbird Bee' (Name This Insect)

I have no idea if this is really a bee, and it's not a hummingbird either - but it behaves and looks just like a tiny micro hummingbird - feeding off the same flowers, beating it's wings in a blur, zipping from flower to flower. Plus it's shiny, fuzzy and has a little faux bird tail. The wings and patterns though are more like a dragonfly or bumble bee, looking transparent with a more opaque border on wing, striped on the body. And even though the body looks like a moth, it's wings are not like a moth at all. This neato little thing is like the duckbill platypus of the insect world!
There are two of them in these pics, one more beat up then the other...
xoxooo

Baby Chipping Sparrows

A very naughty bad BAD cat (that is not mine and is really just being itself) brought two baby chipping sparrows into the house last night. Miraculously both the babies were unharmed except for some post traumatic stress and missing their mommy desperately. They actually were friendly right off- there was no pecking or screaming, just the constant tiny chirp sound and the insatiable urge to perch on my finger.

One was bigger then the other and alot more brave and noisy - it drank water and milk from a dropper easier, but neither wanted the smooshed up worm I tried feeding them.

I thought a box full of nesting materials would contain them but they are actually right on the verge of being able to fly - so they'd pop out the box, sit on the side and chirp. That's when Bort brought a bird cage up from the abyss of garbage around the house...We placed the cage outside and within about 10 minutes the mama bird showed up! Yipppeeee! Only prob was that the cage was too vulnerable to the elements (*ehem* cats) and couldn't just sit there open in the hot sun. You can see in the picture below there's a pink arrow pointing to the mom bird that showed up.We successfully moved the entire cage into the house to a high up isolated window, where the door could be shut and the mama bird could fly in and feed them. As wild as it sounds, it took about 5 minutes before the mama again located her babies and started bringing in caterpillars and stuff for them to eat, right inside the house. :)
They are 2 cute 2 be true! That's the first time I ever held a baby bird like that! We'll see what happens next...

XoXo

Thistle, Crawfish & Pollution

My cousin sent me some pictures from back in the day when I was much MUCH younger. Sometimes I wonder how I got to where I am and if this is what I wished all along... I think about what I loved the most as a child, as a teen, as a 20 something year old -and if you inspect closely you can see that you are probably doing tons of the very thing you always did (maybe generations before you too)... I know I sure as hell am.This first picture made me laugh and so excited. That is me (age 19) on the far right looking like I am about to go to a gothic garden party, maybe even a jazz funeral- I am holding thistle in my hand (my cousin Vanessa Russel is next to me, and my at the time skater boyfriend Reed Elliott is at the other end looking all Nirvana.) Vanessa wrote under the picture "Down on the farm - 1997, I think we looked a little out of our element. Leslie, remember... Paw Paw said to 'get out of them pickens!' You were going to make a thistle salad! LOL Some things never change." We are at my grandfather's crawfish farm in Raceland Louisiana, all big smacking 200 something acres of it. As a child I had two places I loved to go and that was his ginormous farm and the woods in Mandeville Louisiana where my extended family lived.
This old pic above is of my totally 100% cajun crawfish farming grandpaw (paw paw ted) and to the left of him was my ozzy & ac/dc loving bookworm sister Melissa. Once Paw Paw got into his 80's he actually started telling us all about his life & how he ran his farm - even though the man went with the flow of modern society and bought shitty Bunny Bread and lemon pies from the store, he was a unreal good cajun cook who raised his crawfish in a totally ecological environment, before there was "organic farming" or "eco farmed" terms to speak of. While all the other crawfish farmers in Louisiana were throwing their crawfish nasty man made pellets into their ponds for feed, Ted Grabert learned how to make his pond a natural environment by speaking to a man in the LSU agricultural department, then spending a year planting the correct grasses for crawfish to eat and making the swampy eco system a place where they would thrive naturally and not over populate. That's why people all over the world sought out his crawfish & why crawfish boils at his house rocked - he had the biggest, reddest, healthiest tasting crawfish of anyone around!
This is the Pontchartrain Lake. Remember how the big hurricane came & busted the levee that destroyed New Orleans... this is the lake water that poured into the city, and this is the lake where the contaminated (lead, chemicals, gasoline, dead animals, bodies etc...) water was poured back in when they pumped it off the houses. When my mom was growing up they could actually swim in this lake & called it a "beach", by the time I was a born and 12 years old in this picture swimming was not recommended since city sewage and other chems had been dumped into the lake to the point of total destruction. At that age I was told they would clean the lake up and in 10 years they promised we'd be able to swim in it again. ha! In the front of the pic is me in a neon colored Ocean Pacific bikini, my sister Melissa behind me, and my cousin Jessica Quinn behind her. We were fishing in that polluted lake, catching catfish and then throwing them back- while watching the filth, garbage, bottles, cans, litter float all around the dock. The water was dark with a un-natural looking green tint to it and smelled like hell sauce on rotten fish head. It didn't help that it was 98 degrees with 100% humidity - we were sweating our asses off at that fishing camp, at night I slipped in sweat on the pleather sleep sofa like I was on a soapy bathroom floor. Other kids were actually jumping in the lake with inner tubes, but my evolving eco mind was thinking WTF!?! I just said there was no way I was jumping in a lake full of visible garbage and felt sad at what I was seeing, but believed they would really clean it up like they said. Instead people just drove around with bumper stickers on the backs of their cars that said "save the lake", while chucking litter out their car window.

XoXo

Leafy Grasshopper

These are the kind of grasshoppers that have such awesome camo (looking exactly like a leaf and all) that I rarely get the chance to see one. This one was very confident in his ability to blend in and was convinced for quite a while that there was no possible way I had spotted him - allowing me to really get close up and observe. He stayed perfectly still and when he was ready to eat again only the tiniest parts of his mouth moved, I mean tiny!

He was eating on my organic mustard greens (growing in my garden) which are now going to seed - so I don't really mind if he helps himself a little, it will probably only make the plant more anxious and hardy in making it's seeds. In the sunlight you could see almost straight through his body, making it totally look like a leaf lit up by daylight... biomimicry rocks!

XoXo

Mini Skirts, Bones and Bugs!

Guess what!? I actually listed some things on my new etsy store - which so far are various bones of a cow and some upcycled stone wash mini's I made (how trashy rock star are they!?!) I also stayed up real late last night putting together a little video of my insect pictures, which unfortunately youtube ganked the audio off of it and it's a silent film now. If you prefer looking at bugs while listening to Stevie Nicks (like i do) then go HERE to watch it instead. :)
Xoxoooo

Organic Moon And Stars Watermelon

Moon and Star Watermelon is one of my favorite food plants to grow. Not because I have ever been successful with it, cause I haven't - watermelon can be fussy fruits to grow in the smokey mountain climate. According to some old mountain natives though, every 7 years or so growing melons works out awesome and I have a feeling this summer is it! We started out with tons of rain, I planted it in loose fertile soil, and the days have been scalding hot when the sun is up. This plant never seems to droop either, while the other squash leaves will wilt like a lotionless white girl on the beach - the moon and stars watermelon seem to get hardier with the intense heat.

This pic above is the beautiful little lemon yellow flower it makes. The bees come pollinate it and magically you get a watermelon from that (see very top pic with tiny watermelon forming)!The leaves are a beautiful elongated fig shape with lots of spots and dots on them - those are the "moon and stars" and the watermelon themselves acquire the same pattern on them when mature. Their stems differ from squash vines (even though grow in a similar shape and style) because they are soft and hairy instead of spiky and kinda painful. The hairs are smooth like the fuzz on milkweed seeds.
XoXo

Copperhead Snake Stalking A Corn Snake

This muted and darkly colored copperhead was in the bamboo grove stalking a little baby corn snake. In the shade of the bamboo it was hard to tell what types of snake they were, what the hec was going on, and if the corn snake was a baby copperhead or not... what I was waiting for was the actual moment of strike- when the copperhead was going to eat the corn snake. There was also consideration about whether I would join the stalk party, turn the whole moment upside down and kill the copperhead to eat it.

I chose to observe, since I am not the best (mentally) at killing (although I bet I'd be good at cooking a snake, being from Louisiana and all). If you click on the actual pictures here you can view a larger version which is much more intense and frightening (especially that one right above) because then you can look a copperhead right in the eye!Both snakes moved so slow you could barely detect actual movement, unless you turned and looked the other way and then looked back again to see the position had changed. They were frozen - so long, the shadows in the dark bamboo would play tricks on ya' eyes, making everything look like it slithered. The copperhead snake was approximately 2 1/2 feet long (maybe a little longer) and pretty well fed judging by it's girthy radius.
The wild thing is... I walked off for a few minutes and came back and the little corn snake had disappeared. Swallowed? Could it have actually gotten away? Does the copperhead even have to make effort to swallow something that small? Spooky and beautiful!

XoXo

HimalaSalt Rocks (Pun Intended)

Here's the reason I love this salt - I can not use any brand of food, organic or not, without first checking with a company whether it is completely beyond a shadow of a doubt gluten free. I mean gluten free in the most hardcore, no cross contamination or I get brain damage and digestive horror kind of autoimmune hell fire way. I frequently get the cold shoulder or no answer from companies when I inquire about whether products are free of cheap wheat fillers & dusting... here is what I wrote to Himalasalt:
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"Hey Ya'll !
I have celiac sprue and am on a gluten free diet. I have to make sure all my food is free of gluten, even of contamination with other gluten foods or the dusting of food belts by vendors.
Can someone let me know if your salt is safe for me to eat- by explaining how your facility works, and if there is gluten in the facility?
THANKS! leslie "
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This is the standard friendly inquiry I usually (hate to have to) send out, but I did not get the usual letter back - instead I got what every person with Celiac Sprue, food allergies of every kind, and those with chem sensitivities wants to hear!...
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"Dear Leslie,
We are a completely gluten free facility. We have our own certified organic/kosher for passover facility, where we do all of our own packing. We don't copack for anyone else, nor do we store any gluten, wheat, corn, nuts, shellfish, or any other allergenic substances in our facility. From what I've heard from many
other people like yourself, as well as grocery buyers across the country trying to find a clean product for their customers, we are the only ones that I'm aware of that maintains a facility of this type for packing salt.
Also, we do not iodize our products. Any salt that has been iodized has corn/dextrose included, as that is the base in which the iodine is delivered.
You can feel confident in the cleanliness and purity of HimalaSalt, and I wish you the best health ever!

My best, Melissa "
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Go Melissa! That letter was the unicorn at the end of the rainbow for those with food allergies! Thanks for making a product that is an example of what all consumerism should look like. I made some bad ass pickles with the Himalasalt using cucumbers, herbs and onions from my organic garden! :)
XoXOooo

An Organic Garden Is A Happy Garden!

The proof tis' here.

xoxo

Off The Beaten Path: Wild Ginseng & Bergamot

You can walk the same trail 100 times and always find something new, but every once in a while it's a good idea to get off your regular path and go into the unknown (in life, in your 'hood and when hiking around the woods.) Yesterday me and my nature BFF Bort found an animal path we never saw before and decided to follow it- part way through it was obvious a small critter had made the new trail (not a deer) since a few things needed to be crawled over, under and gently pushed back to get through (plus it had left a feline/weasel/small animal track in the wet mud).While following a 'smell trail' of a dead animal towards some big rocks, the first amazing plant we found was wild white flowered Bee Balm also known as Bergamot. It has a smell similar to the herb lemon balm, except it's a lighter less astringent scent. We picked a few leaves to make some tea!

The flowers of the wild bergamot seem more delicate then the cultivated types, but no less beautiful - these things have a strong striking presence amongst the sea of green in the forest. There are several other colors this flower grows in - pink, red and magenta also grow in the woods.Once we got closer to the rocks we had moved away from the mysterious dead animal smell and found another awesome plant - wild ginseng! Apparently people hunted and stole tons of it off this property a while back, but the plant is now re-establishing itself. (If you come try to hunt it ova' here I will most likely be hiding in the woods with my big knife and will scare you so bad you'll have nightmares for all your life & I will call the Po Po's on you.... so don't do it...!!)

We didn't harvest anything from these plants since it needs a chance to spread - but we do plan to go back to both the ginseng and bergamot to collect a few seeds to cultivate.

After all that exploring, I took a big rest on some rocks and relaxed. You can see I don't have special hiking gear, shoes, clothes, or anything else for that matter. NOTE: Expensive outdoors equipment not required for major fun. XoXOooo

Name This (Big & Imposing) Beetle

This is the kind of insect that inspires artists like Jim Henson to create amazing creatures for their movies, like The Dark Crystal. This beetle sort of appeared in my bedroom with a sudden thud on the floor... it was so HUGE laying there on it's back, I didn't hesitate to pick it up and place him on wooden clothes pin to get a better look. And Holy Toodles, this beetle not only is amazing to look at (stripes, armour, built like a tank) but it's packed with personality too! If the county would allow him to do so, he would totally apply for his own library card.

Welcome to Beetle Theatre, where tonight's topic is: Why Does this Human Not Leave Me Alone? ;)

.... I promise that he's not on a broadway stage, it's just my bath towel, a clothespin and lamp.

What a fantastic, outrageous, expressive face it has - in this very last picture he was feeling timid and afraid because my cat was being her instinctual poohead self and gave him a little slap. He recoiled in a way I have never seen an insect quite do, it was very animal and awesome.

XoXoooo

Hummingbird & Bee Balm

See the little pink arrow (in the pic below) pointing into what seems like the abyss of a pine tree? Right on the edge of that branch sits the hummingbird I was waiting for (see it now?), it was checking me out in my hiding spot, sizing up whether I really posed a threat to it reaching it's goal - the big burst of bee balm flowers it comes to feed on a few times a day. I don't know exactly how animals decide whether you are bad or good but I know if you stay extremely still & think nice thoughts it helps gain trust. The hummingbird made it's choice that me and my camera weren't going to do much of anything worthwhile and swooped down into the flowers for a feast! These are not the best pics in the world, but it was so exciting and exhilarating and fun to watch close up I could have exploded...
XoXo

Aromatic Birch Tree (Wintergreen & Root Beer Flavored)

I have been looking for a flavored birch tree to smell again for 6 years now. I took a wacky native plants class back then in Waynesville, NC that taught me about how the Native Americans used this type of birch tree (pictured here) to brush their teeth with (now is this really true?) -and during that time I lived at a house in Bethel, NC which had an abundance of aromatic birch saplings for me to sniff on, mmmmm. I hadn't found one since, till today. These trees have the most amazing scent of all time, they smell like wintergreen and root beer - a scent so strong yet totally non offensive it can make your mouth water and there's a natural instinct to just chew on a branch. Or make a drink out of it.

The bark has alot of nuances going on, from smooth to peeling and cracked - but across the whole trunk is a basic pattern of patchy lighter and darker greys. I have nothing but love for these birch trees. :)

XoXo

Small Tree Bark Moth (Grey with Maroon Dots)

I think I walked upon this moth during some intense pre-mating or egg laying ritual. It's tail end was curled out and it was vibrating ever so slightly. The thing that's so cool about this moth is that it looks like a piece of peeling birch tree bark close up, and had it been on the side of most any grey-ish tree it would be near impossible to spot it. Even it's fuzzy legs look like pollen or a seed casing, and are tinted brown on the inside creating a pretty good disguise.

In the pic below I have a pink arrow pointing to where I found it! Not the worst hiding spot, but I think there's better. ;)

XoXo

100% Organic Farmed Breakfast

Everything on my breakfast plate was organically grown right here on the property I live. The free range chickens layed the eggs and I grew & harvested the green beans, yellow squash, dill and garlic chives. It totally rocks to finally see the fruits of ya' labor (labor of love) -and oh dang it was sooooooooo good. Melt in your mouth, every bite.
YAY!
xoxo

DIY: Non Toxic Litmus (Magic Ink) Painting

Here is where science meets art meets non toxic - three things that don't always go in unison these days. Because I have serious chemical sensitivities I am always looking for new ways to paint & dye without using a single toxic thing, in fact the more edible the better! 7 years of art training in college never once taught me how to make my own supplies, paints and materials and I think it's a tragedy of our modern school system to be taught only to rely solely on consumerism for expression & education. OK, so before I go into an Alice Cooper style "school's out forever" bit... here is a fun experiment with making litmus paper from a purple cabbage and then painting on it with acids and alkalines!!!
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STEP ONE: Chop up a purple cabbage into small pieces and place into a pot for boiling.
STEP TWO: Boil the cabbage in about 2 cups of water or less.
* Note: I boiled mine in too much water because I was experimenting with how much liquid my paper was going to absorb later. In the case of making paintings, the more cabbage and the less water , the more concentrated the solution will be and the more opaque colors you'll be able to create.


STEP THREE: Strain the cabbage, letting the liquid go into a container where you'll be dipping your paper. Save the cabbage for your stir fry later, cause you can eat that stuff ;)

STEP FOUR: Stick your chlorine free paper into the cabbage liquid. We used whatever paper we had around and so each kind took on a different color depending on the chems that may have been applied in the original paper making process - some turned green, some blue, some purple. They all still reacted to the acids and alkalines however - like magic ink! I would recommend using an absorbent chlorine free water color paper for the best results and for longer soaking time. I found that they don't need to be soak for more then 5-10 minutes to really make any difference. Possibly they only need be dipped 30 seconds with a good paper.This is my friend Nikki experimenting with the lemon juice on her painting (her paper was green and the lemon juice turned bright pink!). We made our own paint brushes by using horse hair, a rubber band, and a stick. We also did alot of test sheets and here's what we learned...

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TIP #1 : Let the paper dry before you paint. We were so excited we kept painting on wet paper just to watch it change colors. If you wait for it to dry then your painting won't become a blob by morning.

TIP#2 : Don' let it get wet after. The morning dew distorted some of the lines drawn in - just like a regular watercolor painting, water will reactivate the colors and move them around, usually destroying the image you painted.

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These are some test pieces below to show how it changes colors! Pretty freaking rad! These examples are with all the mistakes made (too much water in the cabbage, painting wet on wet, leaving in the dew, etc...) and still colors were achieved by simply taking a brush and dipping it in different liquids like lemon juice, lime juice, vinegar, & baking soda. The acids created more pink/red colors, while the alkaline creates more yellow/green/blue shades. (As I said above, if the cabbage is boiled in less water creating a stronger liquid, the paint colors will be brighter and more opaque then these examples).

PS- Thanks to reader Liberty for her tip on making litmus paper from cabbages!XOXooooo

Owl Eye Moth

One of my favorite features in nature is bio mimicry for self preservation and survival. I absolutely am amazed by the moths and butterflies that have the fake "eyes" on them to scare off predators, it creates a presence as strong as the creatures they imitate and their shape shifting illusionary skillz rock.

I mean, holy cow, look at that fury little bear of a face with the tiniest 'nose' and biggest black eyes - if it hadn't been bad for it I would have kissed it. Just like the Lunar Moth, this type of moth vibrated really hard for a little while before actually taking flight. (Anyone who knows the scientific name for this moth, it would be much appreciated- I would love to find out more about it's habitat and lifestyle!)

BONUS PIC: Lookin' like a brown hairy turd...what a fuzz muffin!

XOXooooo