Guide my feet to walk the path you lay down before me
Teach my hands to offer love and healing to whatever I touch
Teach my eyes to see you in all of creation
Guide my ears to hear the songs of nature and the words, and what is behind the words, of my sisters and brothers
Teach my heart to feel love and not take offense to the words or actions of others, but to feel the pain underlying such actions
Help my voice to sing my song
Thank you for all the beauty you have placed in my life
Thank you for this day

No matter what age you are, what your current level of health or what kind of lifestyle you lead, the building blocks for health are the same. The only question is how you apply them and how committed you are to gaining health.

Having just spent the last couple of weeks with the flu, I am reminded of the importance of reviewing these once in a while and looking at where I may have been limiting my own health. There's always room for improvement and I am always learning new things. But, here's a start...

I put together an elderberry elixir today, inspired by Kiva's Elder Mother Immune Elixir.

In a quart jar I placed:
1/4 ounce dried ginger root
1/4 ounce sweet cinnamon chips
1/4 ounce dried orange peel
1/4 ounce elder flowers
3 ounces elder berries
7 ounces honey

Then I filled the rest of the jar with brandy. It took just under a fifth to fill it after mixing well.

Certainty, absolute certainty
Yet the timing isn't right
Ripeness comes in its own time
Hints of the fruit
Yet one must wait
Knowing with certaintiy
Of the fruit that is to come.

Over the last several months we have been making a number of changes in how we use water in our home. We just received our bi-monthly water bill and for the last period compared to last year at the same time, we reduced our water usage by 47%! I was amazed. So what did we do?

I've spent the last four days watching the many birds who fly through our suburban backyard. Two years ago two of the neighbors behind us cut down their large trees and another neighbor followed suit this past summer. I was afraid that was the end of the birds in our yard.

How long has humankind spent trying to control and manipulate nature? I like to think I am learning to live more in tune with nature but I'm discovering how far I have to go.

I sit this morning watching a hummingbird in the bed just off the patio. Last year at this time, I was working madly to create a food forest. I started by spacing out fruit and nut trees in our suburban backyard and then creating lasagna layered beds around the trees to put in berries, herbs and flowers to attract beneficial and native species.

I've worked hard over the past couple of weeks to pull weeds, tie up sprawling plants and create some sense of order in the garden. There seems to be this fine line I'm walking. On the one hand, the goal is to create a food forest that is also welcoming to wildlife. On the other hand, I have a lot of years of garden perfection to overcome. I've seldom gotten the yard perfect but it's always been the goal. Now, my goals have changed and I'm challenged to let go of the perfection.

Think about feeding the soil. Some techniques such as lasagna gardening and sheet composting work on the idea of feeding the soil microbes. Rather than building a compost pile on the side of the garden, the items are composted in place.