Canning season officially began for me today. I woke up to a kitchen full of fresh tomatoes, vidalia onions, basil, dried herbs from last year, and apples freshly picked from my tree. The thing I love most about canning is that I start with all of these wonderful ingredients, jars, lids, rings, numerous large pots, & various canning paraphernalia and I end with a clean kitchen and precisely packed jars full of beautiful produce that I can enjoy all winter. This is the ultimate experience of summer for me. Today I ended up with 12 half pints of pizza/spaghetti sauce (thanks to my uncle Marvin for the tomatoes & to Kate for the recipe) as well as 5 half pints & 3 pints of applesauce (thanks to my beautiful tree for providing bountiful apples this year).  I already made some strawberry-rhubarb preserves in June, but this is my official kickoff!

When I woke up this morning, I had a frozen sternocleidomastoid muscle in my neck and the thought of canning seemed very overwhelming. After using heat, ice, arnica gel, and heat again, I decided it was probably going to hurt all day. So I got started canning in the afternoon, thinking that maybe I wouldn’t do much canning this year. By the end of the 4 hours, I was thoroughly enjoying myself & hardly noticing my neck as I juggled pots of boiling water & bounced to the music. I even cooked up some Crispy Mung Beans and dried the sage out of my garden so I can use it for the Thanksgiving stuffing. I’ve been smiling all day thinking about how much my family will love their delicious organic treats at Christmas and dreaming about the new canning recipes I’m going to try this year to surprise them. Maybe being the only person in my immediate family who can carry on the family tradition of canning isn’t so bad!

Everyone has been so excited about Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and learning more about their own individual patterns of diagnosis that we’ve now started giving our patients a detailed report at their second visit called the Report of Findings.  In this customized report, we outline your TCM pattern diagnosis, explain what your diagnosis means, give you a treatment plan so you can see what to expect from your treatments, and outline foods and lifestyle recommendations specifically for your pattern diagnosis that you can do at home.  If you’ve come in before and would like us to do a free Report of Findings for you, schedule a treatment and let us know you want a Report of Findings so we can have it ready when you come in!

With chapters 1 and 2 finished on our food therapy book, we’re stepping up to make the writing go faster.  Our timeline is to have the first draft completed by next summer, so we can get final revisions done by the end of next year!  The first chapter discusses the basic principles of Traditional Chinese Medicine food therapy and our weight loss and digestion patients love it.  We also finished the second chapter on Dampness and Phlegm.  Next week we’re looking forward to starting the chapter on foods that calm the mind (to help with stress, irritability, and anxiety) and foods to uplift the mind (to help with depression and melancholy).  This is one of our most exciting chapters because mental health is what we’re super passionate about here at Beautiful Ama.  We do sell the chapters of our book to our patients as pamphlets, so make an appointment if you’re interested in learning more!

I have been working all summer on mulching my yard so that I won’t have to use a gas mower anymore.  I am keeping the grass in my backyard because I can use my eco-friendly push mower back there, so the extensive boulevards on my corner lot have been my focus.  Yesterday I was planning to mulch 1 of the 2 side boulevards with my mom.  I figured that in an effort to practice a little moderation in my life, doing half of the job was more realistic than a marathon session of mulching.  When my mom arrived, she asked why we didn’t just do the whole thing in one day and be done with it, so after a little convincing me, we decided to do the entire thing.

Since my usual compost site where I get free mulch is closed on Thursdays, I found another place in Minneapolis where we could get enough free mulch to get the job done.  Between the two of us, we could haul about 400 gallons (2 cubic yards) of mulch in our cars.  So we drove out to the site and found the cleanest, most beautiful pile of mulch I have ever seen.  Then again, my appreciative eyes have had lots of experience with identifying good mulch and it is one of those things that quickens my heartbeat a little as I imagine the beauty I can create with such a simple recycled product.

I had a hard time not feeling overwhelmed at the beginning from the scope of our project, but then I realized that I wasn’t practicing mindfulness.  So I committed myself to not being irritable despite the hot weather and being loving towards my willing and patient mother.  That is exactly when I started enjoying myself.  Despite working in 80-90 degree weather with high humidity, we worked all day in the direct sun.  My neighbor Sally joined us right in the middle of the project when we started losing motivation and one of my patients stopped by to deliver some flowers from her garden for me.  Sally was telling me that long before meditation became popular, she went into her own little world while gardening and it has always been her meditation.  This is what I love about gardening!

We saw many neighbors throughout the day and enjoyed a lot of cameraderie.  We took many breaks to drink cool water and sit in the shade, but by the end of the day, we were both overheated and dehydrated.  It took us a total of 11 hours to haul the 1200 gallons (6 cubic yards) of mulch and lay it down on top of newspapers.  A special thank you to all my neighbors who donated their newspapers and encouragement on this project.  I’m so thankful to live in such a supportive neighborhood and to have a really energetic and loving mother.  I’m looking forward to this additional way in which I can make the world a more beautiful place.

You Know You’re Obsessed with Gardening When…

• You know the difference between mulch, compost, composted manure, fertilizer, peat, and dirt.
• Your neighbors recognize you in your pajamas and clogs from doing early morning watering.
• You take every single person who enters your house on a “garden tour”.
• You had to buy a special brush to clean under your fingernails at the beginning of the work week.
• People describe you as granola, earthy, and bohemian.
• You’ll spend a whole day canning in a 100 degree kitchen.
• People call you to see if they can come over to get some green onions instead of going to the store.
• You can fill an 18 gallon bin with mulch in under a minute.
• You bribe people to help you with tasks by promising them vegetables.
• Neighbors stop by to ask you questions, even when you’ve never met them before.
• You plan on buying a fuel-efficient SUV for your next vehicle so you can haul more mulch.
• You’ll drive 4 hours just to pick up composted manure.
• Your sisters come to you for plants instead of going to the store.
• You find yourself feeling leaves, flowers and trunks of trees wherever you go.
• When considering your budget, plants are more important than groceries.
• You always carry a pitchfork or shovel, gardening gloves, and bags in the trunk as emergency tools.
• You have a typed map of your gardens, including a desire list.
• You know what it feels like when your fingernails hurt from digging too much with your hands.
• You don’t understand why people have to lay around to get a tan.
• You’ll get up early to water the garden, but not to meet your friends for breakfast.
• You spend more time chopping your kitchen greens for the compost pile than for cooking.
• You know when official planting day is for your area & you know how to decide when it can be earlier.
• You can identify plants by their leaves or sprouts and quiz yourself on each plant when going for walks.
• You own a pitchfork, even though you live in the city.
• You rejoice in rain… even after 10 straight days of it.
• You take pride in how bad your hands look.
• You do laundry only when you need fresh gardening clothes.
• You have your relatives bring plants when they come to visit.
• You have a decorative compost container on your kitchen counter.
• You can give away plants easily, but compost is another thing.
• You drive around on recycling day to gather discarded newspapers for placing under mulch.
• When you go to the farmer’s market, you stay an extra hour to answer strangers’ questions by the seedlings.
• You’d rather go to a plant nursery than a clothes store.
• Your neighbor kids know how to put their food remnants in your compost bin.
• You ask for gardening tools for Christmas, your birthday and any other occasion you can think of.
• You can’t bear to thin seedlings and throw them away. You say they just want to live!
• You’re trying to revive the canning movement.
• You know how many gallons of mulch your car will hold.
• You can get to the compost site from memory, but still get lost on your way to your sister’s house.
• Your take pictures of your garden every week so in the winter you can plan which plants to add at what times.
• You know what zone you live in.
• You exclaim out loud when you find a new plant left on your deck for you by a neighbor.
• Your non-gardening sisters start rolling their eyes as soon as you start talking about your day.
• You start a blog because facebook’s status updates don’t allow enough words to explain your excitement!

I woke up today feeling very optimistic about the mulching project I had planned.  My goal this summer is to put mulch down on all of my boulevards, so I don’t have to mow anymore.  This is a huge job because I live on a corner lot, but I’m up for the challenge.  So I spent 6 hours putting down 400 gallons of mulch, which is 2 cubic yards.  I put down 5 to 6 layers of newspaper and quickly run to get the hose to spray it down so the wind doesn’t take it away (no easy feat with today’s weather).  Then I put mulch on it and lay some more newspapers.  The thing I love about this project is that I automatically practice mindfulness and forget about all my worries.  Thoughts on food, money, business, relationships… it all just goes away and it’s me and my hands working to make the world a more beautiful place.

I did end up running out of mulch when I was 3/4 of the way done, so I decided to get another load from the compost site.  Before leaving, I dug out my hacksaw and cut a 20 foot branch that had fallen in Thursday’s storm into 2 pieces so I could fit it in my little Civic.  Then I pruned my apple tree – I know this isn’t the right season for pruning, but the branches are so close to the ground it’s very difficult to mow the backyard.  I shoved all those branches into my car and went to get another load of mulch.  While I was there, I was commending myself for lifting the 18 gallon buckets of mulch like an old pro.  I’ve gotten really strong doing these projects and I’m really proud of myself, since I wasn’t sure I had the endurance when I first started.  Now I can lift the heavy buckets with little effort.

After finishing the mulching, I swept my driveway and sidewalk to make it more friendly for my neighbors to walk by with their dogs.  Then I decided to move a few of the tulips that are done blooming.  I have two bunches of tulips on the north side of my garden, but they don’t get quite enough light there, so I wanted to give them the treat of a new location.  As I was digging them up, I realized I was excitedly exclaiming every time I found a clump of new bulbs.  There were something like 20 or 30 of them and it was like digging for gold.  So I gently pulled them up and then planted them in their new locations around my garden.  I’m really looking forward to spring next year because I have 50 tulips planted all around the perimeters of my gardens.  It’s going to be so fun to see them bloom!

After all this, I was ridiculously dirty and thirsty, so I took a shower and had lunch.  Then I found myself walking to see all my neighbors’ gardens.  My next plan is to get some red-orange bee balm and yellow primrose to add to my garden, because I fell in love with them today.  I also fell in love with the beautiful flowers on my carrots that are blooming.  I have a special fondness for these carrots because I planted them last fall and they came up this spring.  I haven’t eaten them yet, but they sure are pretty.

Oh, and I just remembered that the first sugar snap peas are out on in my vegetable garden, so I need to go pick those and give them a taste.  I’m getting excited for the produce I’m growing, but I haven’t quite figured out how to keep the birds from eating my strawberries.  I already made strawberry-rhubarb preserves that I canned last week using rhubarb that was a gift from my patient, but I had to buy organic strawberries because mine are struggling from all the bird scavenging.  So I’m still researching natural remedies to discourage the birds.  So if you know anything that works, let me know!

Vegetable Garden

Recycling and reusing is very important to me, so I try to live by the advice of my favorite tee-shirts:

• Hug a tree
• A little change can make a difference
• Recycle

I have a friend who was thinning her flowers this week, so I went to her house to reuse the extra plants by planting them in my garden.  My mother always tells me that “They just want to live!”, so I took home a carload full of day lilies, irises, bleeding hearts, lily-of-the-valley, ferns, and hostas.  I spent most of yesterday planting, but I didn’t finish it all, so I wished for a light rain today to keep me cool while I finished putting all my beautiful plants in the ground.  As soon as I walked outside this morning, it started sprinkling a refreshing mist that continued throughout my planting.  I finished in 2 hours, then drove a bunch of weeds to the compost site and picked up more mulch while I was there.  As I was driving home, it started raining heavily which I totally appreciated because it will help my new plants be comfortable in their new homes.

I can’t stop smiling at the good luck of it all.  Actually, I think it’s more than luck; I manifested what I needed for today and it became a reality.  Within the first 10 minutes of planting, I realized I had a huge smile on my face and I stopped for a moment to acknowledge that I’m really happy.  It’s not just that I’m in a good mood, but am happy all the way into the deepest core of my being.  My life as an acupuncturist on my little piece of land in St. Paul, surrounded by organic vegetables and flowers is exactly what I wanted and needed.  Life is so beautiful here that I hope there are people everywhere who find the kind of joy in their life that I have created.

Sometimes I like to wander around my gardens at night in the dark before going to bed.  Tonight I felt I needed the soothing hush of my flowers to help me fall asleep, so I practiced mindfulness while wandering around my flower beds and appreciating each and every bloom.  This is one of my favorite quieting practices before going to sleep.

I just got in from planting the wildflowers that my Uncle Dicky brought me from Oulu, Wisconsin today.  Yes, I know it’s 10 pm and yes, I know I’m covered in dirt and mosquito bites.  That goes with the territory when you’re planting in the dark.  The story goes like this…

I went to bed last night at 11 feeling quite exhausted from a joyful memorial day weekend and a lot of mulch hauling and didn’t wake up until noon.  Around 4 pm, I went to Somerset to meet Uncle Dicky and pick up the wild lupines and sedum he brought me.  The wildflowers needed to be put in the ground today since they traveled quite a journey in the trunk of his car, but after getting the flowers I didn’t have to come home before going to Brasa to celebrate mother’s day and my mom’s birthday with my family.  So when I got home from dinner at 8:30 pm, I started planting and was really enjoying the quiet summer night while practicing mindfulness.  Until the mosquitos came out a little after 9.  Then I was just digging up the rock hard ground as fast as I could in between swatting at my arms and legs with mud-covered hands.  So this is how I came to be covered in mud and dirt, yet smiling the hugest smile of summer so far.  I believe life is made for the great stories and usually those come from a little bit of joy mixed with a little bit of suffering.  May your summer be filled with as many great stories as mine will be.

I’ve spent a few days hauling 500 gallons (2.5 cubic yards) of free mulch from the compost site.  My goal is to get rid of all the grass in my front yard because it is so full of dandelions that I have to use a gas mower.  My backyard has beautiful grass that I can mow with my push mower that relies on my own qi to operate, so I don’t mind it.  Along with being eco-friendly, the push mower is great because it is quiet and I can practice mindfulness while methodically pushing it around the yard.

I’ve been putting down newspaper in the front yard and then covering it with mulch.  I designate the walkways using stones, but someday I hope to put down pavers.  I’m still gathering flowers for the new flower beds, and actually I’m getting some lupines from wisconsin today, which my uncle Dicky is bringing for me in a cooler.  I can’t wait!

The next time you come to the clinic, take a moment to appreciate the beauty of the wildflowers in the front yard and know that all the work done here was done with my own power and love.