Growing...

A garden is a grand teacher. It teaches patience and careful watchfulness; it teaches industry and thrift; above all it teaches entire trust.

Gertrude Jekyll

We are in transition at our house. Not only is our family growing and learning our new places and roles, not only is our baby girl growing bigger by the second, but my fiance and I have both been seized by an insane desire to live with and on the land a little more each day.

It's really quite yogic in concept and will be old news to those of you who've been cooking perfect quinoa for years.

This just in: we feel better when we eat healthier!

We've been going gluten freeish. There's nothing militant about it. We ate brown rice noodles and organic free-range meatballs the other night. We're neither vegans nor entirely gluten free.

...we even...eat sugar...

Cue the theme from Psycho!!!

My dear friend, P calls herself, "Wheat Free, Meat Free, but not Sweet Free". We try to abide rather loosely by her model.

And, damn! It feels really good.

You know what else feels good?! Connecting with our food. On an emotional and psychological level, we're getting to know the food we eat a little more intimately. We grow a bit. We make a little more by from scratch.

Mom (last Sunday via text):  u might be becoming a hippie.

Me: Becoming? I'm a yoga teacher...

Mom: Yes, but now u make ur own granola too.

It's true. We eat salad grown in our backyard and have had no less than five conversations this week about wheat grass. A juicer is the only item on our wedding gift wish list.

Mom (Monday via text): What do u you want for ur birthday?

Me: How do you get your question mark to go upside down?

Me: I want a lemon tree. Or a juicer. Or a stand-up mixer.

Mom (after several minutes): A lemon tree??

Mom: Seriously:

Me: Yes. A Meyer lemon tree. They're sweeter.

Mom: where does one buy a lemon tree?

Me: On the internet.

Mom: hippie.

My love and I were swinging on our porch swing recently, discussing all the things we want for and from our home and yard. Lattice to shelter us from the illegal trailer park which has cropped up in the half lot next door. Enough wood to last at least three winters (so it can dry properly and heat efficiently). Oh. And a wood stove to burn said wood.

And then, we stopped for a moment to appreciate the fact that our yard will never be 100% complete but it's been the perfect place to grow our family in.

The yard isn't finished. We have a lot of lettuce and a bit of spinach in the garden (aaand...not much else). But nothing was even there a year ago so it's producing beautifully by comparison.

Besides which, fun things happen back there...

Yes, we're happy little hippies who come home from yoga class and head inside for a mostly gluten-free meal when it gets too cold out to sit on the porch swing and dream.

And then we pound through a bag of Swedish Berries while watching Game of Thrones.

Are you in transition?

What are you doing to get a little closer to that pie-in-the-sky lifestyle?

Keep on Growin',

Er