lovers and dreamers

I love the lap desk from Goodwill ($1.99) -- it's my best find in a very long time. The possibilities for using it seem endless but for now it houses the pathways moon cloth, my moon sewing ritual for this year. Pathways are to be stitched for each of 13 moons along the length of the linen runner -- teal-threaded spirals begin the current moon cycle. I'm liking this cloth more and more.

Just harvested a big bouquet of kale from the garden to make kale chips. Now that I've tasted an assortment of kale chips from various places, I think the simpler the ingredients, the better they taste. Looking for that perfect simple recipe so if you have one.....

Juniper berries are more beautiful in real life than any photo, plus their fragrance is heavenly. Juniper reminds me that all things are possible, even self-love.

Journal52 Week24 was silly animals. I went along with the animal part but not the silly -- the simpler the better worked well here, too.

The Pink Quill, Tillandsia cyarea, frond has sprung a flower. It's a complete surprise because I thought the pink quill was the bloom. I check on it all day long to see if anything else has happened and am purposely not researching it -- because surprises like this are so rare and so sweet.

Have you heard of the giant stinky corpse flower, Amorphophallus titanum, which takes 8-20 years for its first bloom, requires another 7-10 years for its second, and smells like its name? One was in bloom at The Denver Botanic Gardens last week for about 48 hours. I live nearby and popped in to see it but there was a four-hour wait so I didn't see it after all. The newspaper reported that some people were disappointed because the odor wasn't strong enough.

Today is a waxing moonday in Capricorn. Capricorn energy is ambitious, structured and disciplined making these next days suitable for planning and taking care of details that require patience. Something that correlates with Capricorn work is the "power hour" concept -- as presented on Gretchen Rubin's podcast series, Happier. The power hour is a time to deal with lingering business, those items on our to-do lists that don't really have deadlines so we just keep putting them off -- like making appointments, balancing the checkbook or packing away stuff from last Yule. Things like that.

I wish all the lovers and dreamers a beautiful week. xo