potluck pictures

the drink of love

sadie, theres and i discovered the redstone meadery on our bike ride the other day. we stopped in, did some free tasting, and discovered that we REALLY enjoy mead! (so, yep, we took some home too!)

we learned from dave, the owner of redstone meadery, that mead is a wine, fermented from honey. We also learned that fermented honey may be the oldest form of alcohol known to man.

interestingly, legend has it that the word honeymoon is derived from an ancient tradition of sending a newly married couple off to seclusion for a month with much mead, to ensure their best chance to start a family quickly. Mead has been, and still is, considered the drink of love.

and it's made locally, right along the boulder bike path! all the better!!

my backyard

today at the farmer's market

Today I spent the morning at the Farmer's Market...people watching and taking pictures. It's my favorite thing to do on Saturday mornings!

Baby Beluga is in TROUBLE!...

SAVE THE WHALES!...

The magnificent white beluga whales of Alaska's Cook Inlet are headed toward extinction. Today, there are some 300 belugas left in these increasingly industrialized waters -- a 77 percent decline from the 1,300 whales that lived in the inlet in the early 1980's. Their situation is so desperate that the World Conservation Union added them to its "Red List" of threatened species as "critically endangered" in April 2006. The next category is "Extinct in the Wild."

The National Marine Fisheries Service is finally proposing that the Cook Inlet belugas be protected as an endangered species.
But in the face of industry opposition, that proposal will not become reality without an outpouring of public support.

It's truly zero hour for this special population of belugas. With only three weeks until the public comment period ends on June 19, we must act immediately to save these 300 surviving whales -- one of the smallest populations of marine mammals left on the planet!

Even the slow-to-act National Marine Fisheries Service admits that "no similar beluga habitat exists in Alaska or elsewhere in the United States." Yet industry and business groups -- backed by all three members of Alaska's congressional delegation -- are opposed to the whale's endangered species designation.

Please seize the moment to save the belugas while there is still time. Send in your Official Citizen Comment now and help give belugas a fighting chance. Here is the link to take action and tell the Bush Administration to Protect the Last 300 Beluga Whales in Alaska's Cook Inlet...

http://www.nrdconline.org/campaign/actionfund_beluga_0507

The Baby Belugas THANK YOU!

Bolder Boulder!!

Yesterday, The Boulder College of Massage Therapy sent 67 student therapists to the finish line of the All-famous Annual Bolder Boulder 10k Memorial Day Race. There were over 50,000 runners registered for the race, and BCMT massaged just over 1,300 racers!!! Whew! I personally massaged over 30 people! (I lost count.) It was pretty exhausting, but a lot of fun!! Very high energy and I got to do a lot of networking. Here are some pictures...

first BBQ of the summer at sadie's

sadie and hansen threw a BBQ in their courtyard the other night. i made fresh squeezed lemonade/pineapple/strawberry juice, which we mixed with some local meade brew...it was a hit! we broke the guitars out too, which was a blast! great weather gets me excited for more BBQs to come!

early morning around the market...

i got up extra early this morning so that i could make it down to the farmer's market to get my week's worth of fresh veggies before my herbology workshop, but i learned that the market doesn't open until 8:00am...not 6:00am like i had hoped. i guess i'm used to the market schedule in madison, wisconsin. by 6:00am the market was going strong, and that was when you could get first pick at the best of the crops...oh well! i took the opportunity to take a few pictures of spring flowers bathed in early morning light. beautiful!

a sign of spring

look at these precious little racoon babies we found in sadie's carport!!

today i met a shaman

i attended a workshop today, put on by a shamanic healer. it was moving and inspirational to be in the presence of this man and to hear his stories, and i am driven to share a few things i learned from him today...

1. always consider your intentions. one can never do wrong if acting with intentions of the greatest and highest good.

2. be an intuitive detective. be present. be open to what is. be willing to trust and explore what you feel. and be willing to put it all on the line, afterall, there are only two things that influence our choices in life: compassion and fear of failure.

3. if you are going to give a gift, give what is most precious to you, because anything less is trash you don't want. if you do this, and you do this to someone who truly understands, don't be surprized if the next time you see this person, they no longer have what you gave them, as they've most likely passed it on :) this made me wonder what is most precious to me?...i think it is my time...among other things of course.

and finally...

4. peace and understanding go together and can never be found apart from one another. if you make inner peace your goal instead of ego advantage, you will never get lost or confused on your journey to enlightenment.

einstein said...

the bumble bees are dying. scientists say that radiation from cell phones is interfering with the bees' ability to navigate and find their way back to their hives. this phenomenon is wiping out bee populations in the US, and now it's sweeping europe and parts of india. it reminds me of the stories you read about the whales that wash up on the shores of beaches so far from where they belong. i also read recently about a penquin from southern chile that ended up on a beach in peru...thousands of miles from home.

this makes me think about the way mankind is living on this earth...it obviously has adverse affects on our fellow animals that inhabit this planet with us. what is it that is making our friends so confused? why are they loosing our way? perhaps it is because we have lost our way.

i am most concerned that the bees--the polinators of the plants that sustain us as a human race--are disappearing.

einstein once said that if the bees disappeared, "man would have only four years of life left."

west coast road trip

sarah and i road tripped from portland to san francisco via the redwoods and the napa valley...