Making Bread

I have been really inspired in the breadmaking department lately. It helps me feel that I am connected to women and ancestors all over the world, and that no matter what the economy does that I can feed my family. I wish that we had enough land that I could take all this urban farming to the next level, but I am able to grow some of the herbs for the bread and harvest the eggs from our yard, that is a great start, but what I wouldn't give for a little land, some fresh honey and a garden overflowing with food and flowers to frolic and learn in. In the meantime, I am still experimenting with the bread. Here are the pictures of my last batch of abundant loaves for the family.

New Life, New Struggles, New Growth

It is definitely still Springtime, and I am thrilled that some little bit of sunshine has finally returned to Portland. If you don't live in the Pacific Northwest or perhaps a tropical rainforest then you may not know what it is like to feel like your feet are starting to mold, and that perhaps that myth about Oregonians growing duck feet is not that far off. I am not really designed for that, and my husband, being a native of Kenya in East Africa is definitely not designed for all that rain. To top that off the little that we managed to preserve from our first year garden last year has all been depleted. I am so tired of grocery store food, I am aching for sun and food directly from our backyard. The recession has also hit our house, neighborhood church, just life in general. We have a friend, another Kenyan immigrant staying with us because he has not been able to find a job for months, our neighbors next door have an in-law staying with them for the same reason and another part of community village has lost her job as well. So I have been thinking more and more about the adage that "real revolutionaries grow their own food."

It seems like despite our best efforts at nonviolent communication, or general togetherness this house has been full of very loud processing while all of the struggles that we face come up. Honestly, it is all here we are very diverse household. Two of us are immigrants, one of us is a child, one of us is queer, most of us are Black, and let just say that income is enough at the moment, but you never know, it can still be tenuous. So Easter fell in the midst of all this, and brought with it the message of new life and I started processing that. Then I had an issue with my tooth that brought unbearable pain, but one of my coworkers at school put me on to squirting Echinacea directly on the area. The earth is miraculous! This was amazing, and then this same week we got our baby chicks.

Here are some pictures of our garden starting to come alive, and the new baby chicks. I still have at least three posts worth of topics to cover today, but I will try to break them into sections so that you can all read the parts that are most interesting to you.

My favorite moments

These days my favorite moments are when Geoffrey and Malcolm are sleeping and I am lying on the bed listening to them. It so sweet and so peaceful.

The other thing that I love is gazing at our garden, the chicken, our vegetable starts growing and the circle of tulips around the plum tree which is now in bloom. I can gaze out the window endlessly at it on rainy days and just sit and play the rest of the days. I am also noticing that the native Currant and Salmonberry bushes that I planted are thriving.

Garden hikes in the city

Today Malcolm and I finally made it to the Honeybee Hike in Leach Botanical Gardens. I had read about it in the Metro Parent which is my guide to events kid-related in the city. It was a lot of fun and I felt like I had discovered a whole new world in Portland that I had not known about. I would not have expected this beautiful forested area to be off of 122nd. I am posting pictures here of Malcolm looking at the little pond. He was trying to see if he could see the frog eggs. I promised him that we can go back when the tadpoles hatch, and he also loved looking at the mallard duck couple. The theme of the walk was shapes so we went through the garden trying to find different shapes in the flowers and the leaves.
Malcolm trying to see the frog eggs in the pond-"When are the baby frogs coming mama? When will the eggs open?

Two Mallard ducks graced us with their presence.

My Little Lion

Malcolm has really been into being a lion lately. It was this game that started at Mountain Valley a long time ago, and then never really stopped. Malcolm rushes to get into the lion costume as soon as we get to school, and will only take it off long enough to use the potty, and only if I reassure him that I will save the lion costume until he is done peeing which I faithfully do lest disaster occur.

He did have a week of biting at school which was hard on all of us as a community, but it seems that a week off for spring break was just what he needed. He says that he wants to be a happy lion now that gives hugs, although mostly he only wants to do it to his favorite people.

He is growing in so many ways, but in other ways he is really a mystery to me at this point. He can express so many things and tells elaborate stories, but there is a way that he is separating himself from me too. These days he really wants Daddy or Uncle much of the time and does not want mama.

I know that this is a part of growing up, although this is making my I want another baby hormone go wild too, but of a part of me is injured. I am sort of indiginant " Hey remember you came out of my body? Quite painfully I might add, and I have rearranged my world for you and to spend time with you and home and community school you and teach you about art and music, and how to make things and go on endless train rides with you? Remember me?"

Also, for the past two days he has refused to nap for me. He is obviously exhausted but he just won't sleep and then he spends the rest of the afternoon bursting into tears, and I try to use all my nonviolent communication to empathize our way through. The problem is you are supposed to give yourself empathy first, and I always skip that part. I know I am not supposed to forget that part, but I don't really know how to do it. Is anyone willing to shout "Stop self-empathy first" at me the next time he is screaming?

Signs of Spring

Spring has finally begun to spring in Portland. There is talk of chickens everywhere! We went to a tuplip festival, and our garden has been completely transformed into an urban homestead. I will post pictures of that soon, but am still plagued with a few technical difficulties. There do still seem to be a lot of uncertainities in the air, the recession is definitely impacting Portland, but when the sun comes out after all those months of "liquid sunshine" and we all get our much needed doses of vitamin D, everyone's mood changes.

I am also uplifted by other things. I am taking a class with Geoffrey and Nathaniel in Nonviolent Communication with Children. I love this class! I can not really get enough of it. I can't say that I have perfected it, epsecially in some of those more heated moments, but it does give me another perspective and way of looking at things, and a different way of approaching other family members in the house. In fact, it has given me a whole new set of tools for communicating with many people at Mountain Valley as well as at home. It is continuing to shift my thinking in terms of how I want to raise Malcolm, and educate him.

I am really open to a lot of possible futures for Mountain Valley, but it would be great if it became a charter school and then it would really be a special place for kidsof multiple ages where we could really venture out into the city and other parts of the wide wide world to learn about all sorts of things.

I am also learning a lot more about permaculture, simple living, and many other things. I am just dying to dive into all of these inter-connected areas and recreate myself and create the world with Malcolm and my family. I have been saying lately that what I really want to do is to make stuff, grow stuff, and create stuff. Malcolm is done baking pumpkin bread with his Uncle. I got to go-bathtime.