pretty pretty posies.

having fresh flowers around the house always brightens my day, even on days like today when my poor darling baby girl is suffering from a nasty cold and i myself have gotten little sleep.

what brightens your day?

a beautiful day:

a couple of weeks ago
M and i went for a walk
around FSC's campus.
the sunshine was beautiful and golden,
the air cool and crisp--
it was a perfect day.

these folks:

my grandparents, all gussied up and ready to walk to church.
what made me think of them on Valentine's Day, you might ask? well. i suppose it's because when i think of love, i always think of them. they met in the post-depression years in dothan, alabama. my grandmother was a preacher's daughter and my grandad a rascally sharecropper. in those days a big old school bus came around to pick up the folks for church on sunday morning. on this particular morning my grandad spotted my grandmother sitting toward the back of the bus with her sisters and promptly announced to the everyone on the bus that he was going to marry her. and several years later, he did. they lived together, loving each-other for 69 beautiful years.

back to the blog-o-sphere:

Hello everyone,

It's been quite some time since I last posted (six weeks, to be exact). Our little girl, Margaret Eden Plating, was born June 5. And so began our great adventure...

I was thrilled to be able to deliver her naturally! I was scheduled to be induced on Friday the 4th. Jack and I had been praying that we could avoid that, if at all possible, and labor without assistance. When we walked into the hospital, I started having contractions! I was ecstatic.

After 12 1/2 hours of the hardest work I've ever done in my life, little Mags was born! As exciting as it was, it was also scary, because she came out blue, with the cord wrapped around her neck and fluid in her lungs. I had been stuck at 9 1/2 cm for several hours before we could begin pushing, and that seems to be when the complication started for her, poor little darling.

Needless to say, all my reservations about delivering at the hospital went right out the window. I was incredibly thankful that care for my daughter could begin right away. She had to be on oxygen for the first 2 days, so we couldn't have her in our room, so that was hard. I wasn't in the best shape, myself, having lost a little too much blood due to a nasty tear. Here's a pic of Maggie in the NICU:


Thankfully, she bounced back in 2 short days, and we were able to go home together. The last six weeks have been spent as you might imagine--feeding baby, changing baby, playing with baby, etc etc, everyone knows about all that. The thing you can't imagine is the important stuff--the way being a parent really does change you at the most fundamental level.
And it is WONDERFUL.

Here is another pic, taken just this morning:

they really do change so fast!

xoxo--Rachel

a few things before i'm off--

Hello dears,

I realize I haven't posted much this week. Its mainly because I was afraid that, had I tried to write anything, it would have come up as discontented and impatient--it would have been the anxious ramblings of a crazed 40 weeks pregnant woman. And no one wants to read that. I am to be induced tonight, if I don't go into labor before, and I thought I'd leave you with a few little things to look at/explore while I am out of commission.

I have long been fascinated by the connection between art and craft--a connection that seems to be growing more and more in the art scene these days. Here are a few artists that have wowed me lately:

ann carrington is a mixed media artist based in the uk. her work has been featured recently on bravo's 9 By Design . One of my favorite pieces by her is called "Pearly Queen of Bow"
it is pearl buttons on canvas--and it's big. about 4'x5' all told. beautiful!











Another artist I'd like to share with you is Mark Giglio. He's from southern california and also works in several mediums. My favorite thing he does are these wonderful little forests, made odds and ends of salvaged wood. I'm hoping I can talk my father in law into doing something similar for me--as I surely cannot afford the originals!









more paper: I love collage. I think I may have said that before. Here is a lady whose collages are serious business: Lena Wolff. Midnight Branch--
graphite, acrylic, collage on pinpricks on paper.

so so so good.







On to the next. I LOVE this room. I tend to be drawn to these light filled, scandinavian retreats every time I see one in a magazine. The thing is, those white floors really scare me. All I can think about is dirt and dog hair everywhere--and being chained to the mop as a result. They sure do look pretty though, don't they? Maybe in another life:


So... I am off for a few days at least, to give birth and spend some time getting to know my new daughter! I hope you enjoy checking out these artists and I'm sure I'll be posting again before long. When I come back I plan to share our bedroom remodel, some more yummy recipes, and baby pictures, of course!

love to all, and keep me in your prayers.

--Rachel (the home made girl)

The below article is a re-posting from the most recent local harvest newsletter. It's a good read, and one I can definitely relate to! I'd love to hear your thoughts. --Rachel

Local or Organic?

Photo by: Z & D Frago FAMILY Farm

At our house, this is the hardest season to find anything good to eat. The freezer, stuffed to barely closing last October, is almost empty now, as are the canning shelves and the makeshift root cellar. Thankfully, it was a warm and early spring here, so we are eating garden salad greens to our heart's content. To be honest, though, my heart is content with just a few salads a week, which leaves a lot of other meals to plan and not a lot of food in the house around which to plan them. Consequently, I have been giving a lot of thought to the question of what to eat.

This is a subject I avoid, even though I love to cook. It's the deciding what to cook that I don't like. Give me a week's worth of menus and I'm happy, but send me to the grocery store without a plan and I could wander around for hours, made miserable by too many choices, too many dilemmas.

I suspect that this is a problem shared by many. Sorting out the most decent and honest options amongst everything at the grocery store is time consuming and difficult. Worse, the ultimate unknowability of which choice is "better" can make it an unsatisfying endeavor. Is the fresh organic broccoli trucked in from 1200 miles away better than the conventional broccoli grown and frozen 200 miles from home? How about the big-ag organic dairy's cheddar versus the small, local rBGH-free but not organic version?

We want to do the right thing. We want to feed ourselves and our family well. We want to do right by our farmers, farm workers, the environment, and the local economy. If we choose to eat meat or dairy products, we want those animals to be treated well. Yet we don't want to be confused or duped, and we don't want to spend our entire paycheck on a week's worth of food. Hence the dilemma.

On the local versus organic question, the ideal of course is to select foods that are both organically and locally grown. But as we know, it doesn't always go that way, and too often we have to make a choice. Many people maintain that we are better off choosing local over organic, the better to influence and strengthen the local food system, and to save the fossil fuel that would otherwise be involved in transportation. Where 'local' also means 'small scale,' many people argue for the value of getting to know the farmer and supporting a network of family farms. Others say that organic is preferable over local, pointing out that while keeping pesticides out of our water and off our food, organic production practices also prompt the soil to sequester significant amounts of carbon, an activity that is key to addressing the climate crisis.

In some ways, there is no reason to belabor such decisions. Small scale local and any sized organic are both good choices. As Samuel Fromartz has rightly pointed out, both are vastly better than anything offered by the conventional food system, which is still responsible for over 95% of the food eaten by our nation.

Still and all, some of us are wont to dwell on the small choices that one after another fill our grocery carts and kitchens and bellies. What about you: how do you choose what kinds of food to buy? Do you make different choices based on the type of food? How much time do you spend sorting out your food choices, and what most influences your decisions?

--by Erin Barnett

www.localharvest.org

Collaging:

Yesterday afternoon Karis and I sat down at the kitchen table with a bunch of catalogs and magazines and made collages, while Jack made dinner. We sang. We were silly. We used our imaginations to make these funny little worlds you see pictured. How long has it been since you used your imagination? I can speak for myself here, and say it had been entirely too long for me! Why have we lost the desire to make? We do so much consuming, and so little creating. I, for one, am going to strive to "make" more often. What is something you'd like to do on a free afternoon? Does anyone else have a favorite craft they'd like to dust off and explore all over again?