Latest projects and other stuff

It's been a week since my last post basically because I've been getting settled in and getting into some good books. Currently I'm reading three books: Food Not Lawns (awesome and easy to read), The Revolution Will Not be Microwaved (full of great and sometimes disheartening food history/facts; written by the guy that wrote Wild Fermentation), The Tao of Abundance (Really cool--I'm learning more about Taoism and it's groovy).

Today Alex and I (mostly her, though) decided to make cauliflower pasta and homemade Italian bread...yum!
We also made a deliciously colorful salad with lots of edible flowers from the kitchen garden (I was only able to identify these lovely delicacy after I did the plant identification assignment that Sherry gave us yesterday).

Salad contains: spring mix, pansies, nasturtiums, rose petals, arugula blossoms, and calendula petals

So far we have identified 60 plants (not sure if they're all correct yet) and that's only about 1/3 of the plants that are on this property! I took some pictures of the ones that I just learned to identify today...yay! We also had to identify whether they were edible and/or medicinal.

German Chamomile (Medicinal)

Nasturtium (Edible)

Calendula flower (Edible/Medicinal)--there was an orange and yellow variety.

Then there were those that we couldn't identify--one which Sherry later identified for me--but are beautiful nonetheless and I had to take a picture of them.

All I know about this one is it's not edible.

Dahlia, also not edible
(enlarge and notice the white spider near the center of the flower and the dew drop on the bud to the left)

Alright, I'll stop inundating you with flower pictures but I could continue. Though, they do give you a sense of the beauty that we are surrounded by when we're working in the garden. Everything here is planted with permaculture principles in mind which is also very groovy. Permaculture has been something I've been interested in learning about for a while and it seems we've come to the right place for that. I promise that I'll post more pictures of the overall garden and meditation spaces next time; I just want you to soak up the pictures I've already posted first.

I'll leave you with an adorable picture of one of the cats, Amber, being held by
Alex: