In April, we celebrated one year in our new home. While they say time flies, I have felt more like I am living in slow motion than at warp speed. This is partly due I’m sure to the slow and serene surroundings we now find ourselves in but I also think, at least in...
"Simple living is skillful living" - Satish Kumar For many years, I have strived to live a more simplified life. What does that mean you ask? For me it means having more of what I need and use, and less of what I don’t. It means having space around me, and this...
“Thousands have lived without love, not one without water” – W.H. Auden It may have been a simple and well researched decision, but it was also expensive, time consuming, and challenging. Still, we are confident we made the right one – to install compost toilets. As a...
“Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in,where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.” – John Muir I was born in a city. I have spent the past six decades in cities and towns and many of my vacations in places like...
Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair —Khalil Gibran It’s been almost eight weeks since we moved into the woods. I am surrounded by dirt, pipes, trenches, building supplies, and tools, but mostly I am...
“I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.” Henry David Thoreau Building our new house has always been about the numbers; square footage, the budget, the orientation to the sun, the property lines, the size of the...
“Progress is not in enhancing what is, but in advancing toward what will be.” Khalil Gibran It’s been a while since I wrote a blog post to update you on the build. What had appeared for ages to be a slow grind, has suddenly gained momentum and we are well...
I have always had the ability to envision, to form a mental picture including size, texture, and colour. It’s been helpful as an event planner to be able to view an empty space and see what’s happening there; the band on stage, fully dressed dining tables, the flow of...
“The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.” Alan Watts For more than two decades, I have been a...
In 1992, having recently had twin boys, we started a conversation around change; how could we raise our children with one parent at home? What might life look like if I gave up my career? And so, after much soul searching and a brief chat with our bank manager, we...