Dirt don’t hurt

Plants need water, sun, soil, and space to survive and thrive. Water and sun can be fairly easy to manage, but soil isn’t always that way. Garden soil needs to have a certain amount of vitamins and minerals, like nitrogen, potassium, and phosphate in order to support healthy plants. Though I have hit the aisles of Home Depot for the packaged mixtures, my soil improvement operation is mainly two fold: composting and vermicomposting.

Compost Happens

My family first began to compost with two goals:

• to reduce the amount of ‘trash’ we sent to the landfill
• to create fertile soil to add to our garden.

At our first house, we dumped our kitchen scraps in a tomato wire cage. We watched the food disintegrate and the rats multiply. (We lived close to several restaurants on a city block.) No success on creating the soil!

In this current house, we live in a neighborhood with a larger yard. No rats, but plenty of squirrels. With this in mind but no researched compost bin philosophy, my husband constructed a wooden bin lined with chicken wire high enough to protect it from kids and animals. (There was no need for this precaution.) Over the past three years, we have dumped our kitchen scraps, grass clippings, and dry leaves into this bin. It is important to have a combination of both green and brown waste. Every day or so, I give it a good toss to aerate and make sure the pile is damp enough. My heap hasn’t started to stink, but when it seems ripe, I just add more browns. No problems with animals or flies! Finally, I have harvested some black beautiful fertile soil. It may have been ready earlier; I can be a bit lazy.

Looking back, I would have made it wider and lower and had fewer wooden boards so air could pass through. Despite the amateur construction, this compost bin is surpassing one of our goals: reducing our landfill contribution and somewhat fulfilling the other: providing soil for our garden. Recently, I have experimented with adding shredded paper to the pile. So far so good.

Our Pet Worms

I asked for a wheelbarrow one Christmas and got a worm factory instead.

This is how it works: You layer the first tray with kitchen scraps, brown yard waste,  shredded paper, and then a top of wet newspaper. Various suppliers sell worms on the internet; you send away for them, red wigglers to be exact, and dump them in. Every day or every other day, you feed them a handful or so of your kitchen scraps. They LOVE the mix leftover from juicing. No meat or dairy or oils. Citrus is also not recommended. My three- year- old son loves to feed and watch our pet worms move through the food.

After three months or so, the worms have turned the food, leaves, and paper into beautiful black rich soil. One tray creates a small but potent amount of worm casings which you can mix into the soil, add when you transplant seedlings, or put some into potted plants. Keeping the factory inside ensures that the worms do not get too cold (or too hot.) A garage or shed may work just as well.

However, only feeding the worms a handful of veggie leftovers a day still leaves a bunch of kitchen scraps, that I am currently dumping in the compost pile. I also would like to get more worm casings quicker. I have a couple of ideas for my next step and will keep you updated.

Here is an image of plastic scraps from shredded business envelopes that the worms did NOT like. Imagine what landfills look like!!

Furthermore, I am completely inspired by many new companies that are collecting kitchen scraps from folks (for a fee) and in some months time returning bags of worm casings or compost dirt to those people. Once I figure out how to vermicompost all my kitchen scraps, I am going to supersize my system, collect my neighbor’s scraps and keep their black gold for myself! Waste = food!

Other ways that I have fed my soil:

• Garden dirt purchased from Home Depot or a nursery
• Chicken manure
• Decomposed leaves
• Grass clippings during garden growth also helps prevent weed proliferation
• Bone meal, blood meal, and various package mixtures intended to boost floral growth

Fertilizing My Soul

When I first started gardening, I was focused more on the plant, its growth, and ultimately its fruit. The quality of the soil in which it was growing was never my intention. With more seasons as a gardener, I am recognizing that I cannot be and am not completely invested in just the fruit but rather in the whole cycle. I cannot be attached to fruit as the end product! Many other factors, like squirrels and disease, often play a role in the ultimate result of my gardening. As I was sharing with a friend my ‘compost and worm’ operation, I realized that the steps that I take to help create beautiful fertile soil to feed my plants is as joyful to me as the steps that I take to help facilitate the growth of my vegetables.

Remember: waste = food!

More women should have doulas.

Are you expecting a baby? Perhaps you have heard friends mention having a doula. Let’s discuss….

What is a doula?

A birth doula is an assistant who provides continuous physical, emotional or mental support to a woman during labor, delivery, and after. Doulas can also help a woman during the postpartum period with recovery, breastfeeding, and the challenges of a new baby in the family.

Isn’t that what the nurse or my partner is supposed to do?

Yes and no. A doula is there to advocate for your desires and requests, whether that is for holding off from pain medication or establishing skin-to-skin contact post birth. The labor and delivery nurse is part of the hospital institution and does not answer first to the patient. In addition, nurses may have other patients to attend to and cannot direct their full attention to you. Many nurses are thrilled to have doulas in the room because they help create calm atmospheres and confident mothers. During my first birth, my labor had stopped progressing as soon as I got into the hospital bed. Both my doula and my nurse told me, “If you want to have this baby naturally, go home!” Knowing that I would have a informed and experienced birth companion at home gave me the piece of mind to make that choice. When I returned to the hospital the second time, several hours later, I was ready to deliver.*

As for my husband, I knew I needed a doula’s help for him too. I needed someone to keep him grounded and focused on supporting me. He was able to make lunch while my doula helped with counterpressure on my hips during contractions. Giving physical support during labor can be exhausting; they were able to trade off. During my second birth, while my husband had to take my daughter to a friend’s house, my doula was at home with me monitoring contractions and echoing my breathing. Initially, I had been concerned that a doula might detract from or overpower my husband’s experience. On the contrary, her presence magnified and reinforced his positive words, his physical assistance, and his participation in the process.

Giving birth is the most profound feeling I have ever experienced. At times, I was overjoyed and bowled over. The physical sensations connected to my mental stamina as well as the emotional intensity enlightened and empowered me. The knowledge and presence of a doula at the births of my children bolstered my confidence, fostered my one pointedness, and contributed to my strong, safe, beautiful, natural childbirths.

Enough of what happened to you. Show me some evidence!

Research shows that women who have a doula present at birth:

• may experience shorter labors
• have decreased their chances for medical interventions (pitocin, vacuum, forceps, and cesarean)
• have increased their chances for a spontaneous vaginal birth
• have healthier babies

Even if you plan to use pain medication or require a cesarean section for medical reasons, a doula can help inform, calm, and guide you through what may be a very difficult process.

Where can I find a doula?

• Doula locator on DONA
• Ask your care provider, your local La Leche Leagues, your prenatal exercise classes.
• Even check with new moms’ groups to see if any women used doulas.

Whether you are considering birthing at home or a hospital, I highly recommend hiring a doula to assist you. In honor of World Doula Week, I am grateful for all the labor assistants who stand, hold, support, laugh, and cry with all birthing women and their families.

*Laboring and birthing at home is a topic for another post!

The Anatomy of a Tree

Roots. Trunk. Branches.

In Vrksasana- tree pose, these elements are generally the first that a yoga instructor brings forth. Occasionally, you may even be encouraged to imagine a specific type of tree: weeping willow, magnificent magnolia, or fruitful pear. However, taking a longer look at what else a tree is may provide you with a deeper experience in this common balance.

A tree’s core is made up of wood: specifically, sapwood and heartwood. Sapwood is the younger and outermost wood which conducts the water up from the roots to the branches and leaves, and other vital energy down again. Sapwood eventually changes into heartwood through a naturally occurring chemical transformation. Heartwood is therefore older and at the interior of the tree. It is dryer and more solid. We, too, have our sapwood that carries emotional, physical, and mental nourishment throughout our bodies, that allows us to bound to the sky and to explode beyond our limits. At some point, we too become more sure in our space and in our essence. Some trees have a thin layer of sapwood which quickly converts to heartwood, while others have a thicker layer of sapwood maybe never forming heartwood. The ratio of these woods in our beings shift just as well, sometimes feeling flexible, soaring on the learning curve and wondering if we’ll ever land. Other times, we are cool and confident in our decisions. But, all of this occurs while balancing in a moment in life.

A tree’s life is measured in layers, in its rings. When you examine a core sample, both tragedy and growth can be read by the characteristics on the interior of the trunk. We, as humans, carry our experiences in our own rings. A lightning strike of a divorce; the drought of unfulfilling jobs; the sunshine of creativity. Even more so, far away external incidents still influence us, like distant groundwater seeps into the roots, either providing vital nutrients of a healthy society or the dangerous poisons of war. Most trees survive and can continue to grow, perhaps thrive no matter the external forces upon them. Like us, they bear the marks, the scars, and the information at their core.

The next time you breathe in tree pose, listen to yourself.

Explore your sapwood and heartwood experiences.

Examine your layers, your rings.

Discover the internal movements of a tree.

Inspired by taprootmag: Issue #4: Wood

Om

The sound of everything.

Many yoga classes begin and end with this vibration. Voices joining as one, so you become connected. You can feel the sound resonate deep within your chest.

Spelled AUM:

A- represents the god Brahma who creates
U- represents the lord Vishnu who sustains
M- represents the lord Shiva who destroys or transforms

This is the cycle of nature. A seed is created, then sustained as a plant. Like all life, it is destroyed and returns back to the soil, only to begin again. I observe this transformation daily in my garden. I also try to absorb and acknowledge these shifts as I rest in savasana.

This is the cycle of a day, a moment, a pregnancy, a breath.

A sound used for blessings, for strength, for prayer, to calm children, to welcome, and to salute. And today, in this garden, to begin the blogging adventure.

Om.