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Ben and Rita had a ridiculously fun party last night.

The theme was terrible costumes and great homemade pizza. Ben used his amazing sourdough to create the pizza crust and we all brought a multitude of yummy toppings.

Sam and I had a blast dressing up hideously for the event, as you can see. We fit in smashingly with the rest of the fashion atrocities.

When we weren’t sucking Ben(spiffy turquoise slacks and all) into the puppy puddle on the couch, Sam persuaded Rita to spend much of the evening boinging on the giant trampoline behind the house, extravagantly topped pizzas kept popping out of the oven, a crazy cacophonous jam session developed in the music room and we held a nun chucking tower demolition in the living room.

A most excellent party. More pics…

Sam and I made this mandala of stones to celebrate earth day tonight in the beautiful little rock and glass sculpture park that graces our humble ‘burb.

Then we ate lots of yummy desserts.

And threw some tasty bits in the blackberry brambles behind the park, as an offering to Momma Earth. I’m sure the rats and squirrels will be happy to serve as her priestly mouthpieces and accept the sacred morsels of baklava, macaroon and lemon bar.

Thank you, Earth. I love you so, your strong roots and beautiful rocks, your swift streams and luscious waterfalls, for your soft green moss and rich dark soil. For sand and clay and snow to play with, to frolic in, to sculpt. For plants and gardens, fruit trees and wild beasts. My eternal gratitude for sustaining and nourishing us foolish humans, even as we proliferate and perpetrate past all sense or justice or even sanity.

Thank you for being there every time I fall, exhausted, heart-broken, depleted and lost, into your leafy lap and every time I leap, excited and coursing with energy and life, bouncing with joy, dancing and sparkling with creativity, renewal and purpose.

May I serve you as you have me. May these hands, this heart, mind, body and soul nurture, protect, encourage, delight, celebrate and sustain you.

So mote it be.

I love nettle season.

Took my good friend Rachael out to Discovery park for her first nettle harvesting experience eveh. Discovery’s excellent nettling. You barely even have to get out of the car-the abundant masses of stingy green-bronze nettlesome goodness are everywhere! Yum.

She got the hang of scissoring off the tips pretty quickly, with a minimum of stinging(I did warn you, did I not?). A fabulous excursion, all around. We clipped our bags full rapidly, tossed ‘em in the car and then hiked down to my favorite beach to clamber about on the wonderful driftwood snags and fill each other in on our various and sundry current doings. Even the weather gods favoured us with lovely warm sunshine until a few choice drops warned us to scramble back through the driftwood and briar maze as the beach was disappearing with the rising tide. The rain sweetly waited ’til we arrived at Fisherman’s terminal, then when we were safely inside perusing smoked trout, scallops and oysters, the downpour began in earnest, dumping buckets like it was determined to flood all the fish back into the sea!

Then, inevitably, the gourmet she devil tempted me back to her place with her delectable food porn. She smoked, sauteed and creped us up magnificent marvels of culinary delight(smoked chicken and mushroom crepes topped with truffle sauce and nettles a la Rachael) while her bf Travis delighted mine ears with a heavenly selection of music from his excellent, vast collection of cds as we daintily(well, as dainty as you can get with a food so made for greedy slurpage) sucked down the fresh oyster appetizer.

I shouldn’t even mention dessert(no fair to get y’all drooling uncontrollably for naught), but I can’t help it. Guinness brownies! Yeah, I couldn’t believe my ears either, but you read me right. Guinness.

Nothing like what you might think though. Not with Rachael’s exquisite epicurean artistry at work. These were wonders of dark chocolatey goodness, tipped with an ever-so-slight pinch of sea salt(though I wasn’t quite sure if this was for the perfection of the dish, or just to mess with the non-salt lickin’ tastes of her Travis), standing tip toe(the brownies, not Travis) in a creamy peanutty sauce, accompanied by succulent banana slices-fried to crunchy gooey sweet lusciousness.. Aaaaah. Mmmmmm…

Such scrumptious, artistic perfection.

I asked her what she’s planning on doing with the rest of her nettles and she says, all nonchalant-like: ‘oh, maybe ravioli.’ Woooooot! Nettle Ravioli!? Yum. Double yum.

I’m waiting, Rach.

Sharon’s site is up!

(nice job Ellen, on the webbery and illustration!)

Go, flock to her! Bring her your aches, pains, ailments and most especially, your unhappy tummies… You’ll be glad you did. Her sweet, gentle, delicious combination of acupuncture, massage and nutrition is just the thing for bellies(and whole bodies) in need.

Aaaaah, balance, love, healing.

Hurray Sharon!

Happy Holydays, everyone!

Mo’ pics.

In which I invite friends over and we build a city full of strange creatures for dinner. Click on the pictures to enlarge.

Oddly, the kids weren’t much into the creating. I guess they’ve reached the ages when the lure of the laptop is paramount. Though I noticed they were happy enough to participate when it came to the destruction of our fair city with a bombardment of carrot missiles.

But we, the silly adults, raised an awesome city of ham, jicama, mashed ‘taters, radishes, beets, cookies, cheese wheels, chocolates, malt balls, etc. My mom provided mortar in the form of marshmallow fluff and easy cheese(edibility=debatable, stickiness=excellent).

Ben’s car, motoring through town.

Mom’s fabulous Cookie Tower.

Rita’s centipede bug and my lizard.

Delayne’s majestic Rooster Tower, just before it surrendered to gravity.

More dinner sculpture(and the bombing) here.

In which I am thankful for-

my pretty momma and…

Birds.

This Turkeyday I ate duck for lunch and stuffed a chicken with quinoa, cranberries, chesnuts and fennel for my momma Blackbird and me. We had a marvelous momma day at Magnusson Park.

Hurray for all the beautiful birds of the world, edible or not.

my momma started something with her eggplant o’lantern the other day…

She came by with a load of odd and bumpy vegetables tonight and M’kehla, Sam and I joined in to create an interesting edible menagerie.

more critters here.

No, I didn’t grow it. I just have a pepper fetish.

I came home today, laden with boxes of freshly-picked blueberries, to an unexpected disaster zone in my bedroom! My altar crushed beneath a small mountain of books, crystals and trinkets. The bookshelf nailed to the wall above had finally succumbed to the weighty wisdom of my collection of dharma books. Must’ve been some humonguous CRASH when that came down! Come to think of it though, if thirty-two dharma books fall on a shrine and no one is there to hear it…

I’d just been thinking recently that my shrine was looking dusty… I guess the dakinis thought so too! I must have had some merit amongst all that laziness though, ‘cuz they had mercy and only broke one small piece off of one of the many pretty glass, ceramic and crystal objects strewn helter skelter all over the floor.

So, today is all about blueberry delight and rearranging my room to make space for the sacred.

The blueberrification was entirely unexpected-this morning I took my car in to see Lope, my awesome new mechanic, a very friendly, articulate, expansive fellow. Sam was with me and we soon found ourselves gifted with a bag of blueberries and fresh blueberry watermelon smoothies as he told us all about this amazing U Pic blueberry farm he’d discovered out in Shohomish. Then it turned out, his wife wanted to go out there and load up again, so we joined forces and off we went!

It was so luscious-the plants were loaded with gorgeous, freshly rain-washed, immense berries and we bought a three dollar honey bear(from the hives overlooking the blueberry meadow) to go with. On the way home, I couldn’t resist popping by our local Javasti(crepe an’ coffee cafe) and having them crepe up some of our berries for lunch.

Mmmmmm…….

The nicely chatty farmer couple also gave us a stack o’ recipes for our eighteen pounds of fatties.

Blueberry crumble bar time!