I’m catching up from last weekend. Last Saturday we celebrated Delphinia, a tradition that we have held for about 20 years. Friends come from far and wide to play on the beach at Point Reyes National Seashore and to declare that springtime has come! The time for breathing out, adventuring, travel, enterprise, and busyness has returned and we can throw off our quiet introspection of the winter months. This year, the weather was absolutely perfect! We sometimes have a chilly beach experience, but not this year.

Champagne? Why, yes, thank you!

We picnicked. The daring children splashed in the cold waves.

We played and flew kites. Sweet X has a nifty dragon kite. We had a community fire; we shared our intention and our gratitude. Two mamas are expecting. We’ll soon have two new baby friends in the world! How amazing is that?

So many of us have dogs now and we brought them along. Five dogs makes things extra exciting. This was Solstice’s first trip to the beach—as far as we know. He’s new to our family.

The guys found a giant log up the beach. They decided it was in the wrong place.

And in the wrong orientation.

Then they hatched an even greater plan. (Everyone in this photo is at least 6 feet tall.)

And brave J climbed to the tipy-top, amply proving her courage, . I watched the whole thing and I still don’t know how she did it.

Point Reyes is so lovely. This is one of my favorite places on earth. Perhaps it’s because we have been coming here to celebrate and adventure my entire adult life. It’s pretty far from home—more than three hours in the car—but it’s definitely worth the trip. As is our family tradition, we picked up garbage on the beach before we left and hiked it out. Earth Day was the next day, after all, so we worked extra hard.

We didn’t leave the beach until 7:30 in the evening!

We were tired and soggy, but very happy. And our adventure didn’t end there! Our friends, T and E invited us to camp with them in their trailer at Samuel P. Taylor campground in the redwoods of Marin county. Staying overnight there with them meant that the fun didn’t have to end, we didn’t have to drive 3 hours home at night, and we got to play and hike a bit in the forest in the morning. It was sooooo great waking up on Earth Day to all that green!

It was beautiful. Suki dog patiently tolerated all of our noise and business. We had a yummy breakfast together.

I got to play with E’s iPhone and took this funky Hipstamatic shot of her and T.

And we got silly. Nothing pleases little boys more than allowing them time to be goofballs.

Thanks for the family photo, E! (And for all the photos!)

Naturally, I’d like to show you all the wildflowers and beautiful emerald trees but this post is getting waaaaaaaaaay too long …

Oops. They sneaked in here anyway. Ahem! So, I’ll skip our stop at the Mission San Rafael on the way home. Perhaps I’ll write about that another time.

For now, I need to clean my house and get ready to have family over for a birthday party this evening. Lucas turns 10 on Tuesday!

“We must protect the forests for our children, grandchildren and children yet to be born. We must protect the forests for those who can’t speak for themselves such as the birds, animals, fish and trees.”

~ Qwatsinas (Hereditary Chief Edward Moody), Nuxalk Nation

Mother Earth, Mother Earth.

Take our seed and give it birth.

Father Sun, Gleam and glow,

Until the root begins to grow.

Sister Rain, Sister Rain.

Shed thy tear to swell the grain.

Brother Wind, breathe and blow,

Then the blade all green will grow.

Earth and Sun and Wind and Rain,

Turn to gold the living grain.

—Eileen Hutchins

Happy Earth Day everyone!

I hope this little list will inspire you to do something good for Mother Earth and all her children. Start small, start anywhere, just start.

1. Release ladybugs in your garden.

2. Start an herb garden and maintain it organically.

3. Go for a bike ride and picnic in a green space.

4. Write a poem. What does the earth mean to you? Show it to teachers, at church, or send it in to the local newspaper.

5. Make a birdbath so our feathered friends have a source of clean water.

6. Participate in a community cleanup; or just walk through your neighborhood with a trash bag and pick up (safe) trash you see along the walk.

7. Make natural soap or shampoo without chemicals. It’s good for your body and good for our waters.

8. Buy something you need at a garage sale or a thrift store, instead of buying a new item at a department store.

9. Symbolically adopt an animal at your local zoo or favorite wildlife conservation organization.

10. Teach your children well. Teach them about stewardship and never be afraid to express your love of nature. Let them see your love of the earth in action.

Blessed be.

Here is a simple way to celebrate the earth, and bring a little of it inside your home. This moss garden terrarium is easy and inexpensive to make. Children of any age can help with this project and may especially enjoy finding such treasures of the earth. Noticing the small things in nature can be so rewarding, and it feels good to sink our hands in the soil.

Materials

• a wide-mouthed glass container (goldfish bowl, candle holder, or jar; you may find something appropriate a thrift store)
• gathered moss (gently lift from soil or rock, bringing the soil on which it grows with you)
• about ½ to 1 cup small gravel or pebbles (look for pretty pebbles in your yard)
• about 1 cup loamy garden soil (or more if your glass container is large)
• interesting rocks, bark, twigs, or gemstones
• spray bottle with water

Optional Materials

• a small plant that requires little water (perhaps a jade plant or other succulent)
• beeswax for modeling or a small figurine
• crystals, glass gems, small twigs

Tutorial

Begin by gathering your materials. You may be able to gather most of the materials you’ll need from your yard or nature walk. (Be sure not to remove items from protected nature areas.) Take a soup spoon or small shovel and a gathering basket along on your walk. Look along creeks and in shady, moist areas.

When you find mosses, stop and consider them a moment. Moss is a delightful, soft plant. It gets it’s nutrients from the air, rather than the soil, and requires shade and only a little water. It makes a perfect plant for a terrarium that gets only indirect sunlight in your home.

Feathery soft, your green so bright,

preferring deep shade to the light,

quietly sitting, waiting, spreading,

it’s hard to tell which way you’re heading.

I will touch your velvet softness.

Moss, I love your gentle mossness.

You make a lovely velvet bed

for a Fairy Queen to rest her head,

who sleeps in afternoons for rest

and dreams of forests nightly blessed.

We creatures great and creatures small

find you the tenderest plant of all.

Thank the earth for growing such lovely mosses and gently dig up some patches. Don’t take more than you need to fill your terrarium container, and you’ll likely need to take only an inch of soil or less.

Now place your gravel or pebbles into your glass terrarium. These are at the bottom for drainage of water away from the soil. Add your garden soil to the container. It will probably cover your pebbles completely. You may wish to grade your soil so that some areas are higher than others. This will add interest to your finished terrarium.

Arrange your mosses (in patches) in your terrarium. Try to keep your clumps of moss mostly intact to make a contiguous, soft carpet. Alternatively, you could place moss in only part of your terrarium, and decorate the other areas with a plant, pretty pebbles, or glass gems.

Add your decorative rocks, bark, or crystals. I happened to find a small chuck of old concrete that had more moss growing on it, so I added it to my terrarium. What will you add? Crystals? Twigs? Polished stones? A ceramic figurine of a deer or a rabbit? A butterfly? A gnome or a Fairy Queen in repose? Perhaps you’ll change your terrarium decorations with the holidays.

Spray your moss garden with some water. Your mosses may need spraying once or twice a day to stay green and living. Avoid exposing them to direct sunlight.

I turned to our modeling beeswax to fashion a tiny gnome. I think he’ll make an excellent caregiver for my moss garden terrarium. Gnomes are kind custodians of the earth.

Be a good caregiver of your moss garden terrarium, spray it gently every day, and be careful not to saturate it with too much water. (Once again, the direct sunlight you see in this photo is too hot and bright for your moss. Be sure not to keep your terrarium in such a sunny location.)

Now add your terrarium to your nature table, your dinner table for an Earth Day celebration, or anywhere in your home that needs a small reminder of the earth’s beauty.

Back in September — gosh, yes, really that long ago — Ian and I took a wonderful weekend jaunt to San Francisco. We visited friends and the MOMA and saw some yummy city sights. Our friends know how much I love nurseries, so we paid a visit to Flora Grubb Gardens. I have been thinking about this glorious place off and on for months. Now, I don’t whether it is the springtime weather that’s got me thinking about this place so much or the fact that I really, really need another weekend away with my husband.

You know it’s a magical place when everything you see—natural or man-made—looks like art.

Oncidium orchids in red pots. Fiery and gorgeous.

Purple wandering jew.

Little regiments of succulents. I need some of these hens and chicks.

Passion fruit vines with flowers that look like they were designed by my 9-year-old to transform into laser turrets.

Yumminess at every turn.

Lots of modern, hipster stuff too.

Junk becomes art with the right application of air plants.

This giant wall of succulents is dreamy. I want one sooooooo bad.

Fair bromeliad, let down your hair!

And this, my dears, is the Flora Grubb piece de resistance!

A beautiful, beat-up car (Chevy? no idea!) completely planted out.  It was so big, I couldn’t fit the whole thing in my frame.

Now I know this is not for everybody’s yard, but—really— how cool is this? It’s wonderfully creative, whimsical, green upcycling at its best.

Honestly, I loved this place, so if you’re ever in San Francisco, check it out. Oh, and it appears that they do wedding flowers.

This year I decided to try a product called Eco-Eggs. I bought it from A Toy Garden, which is my favorite place to buy Waldorf and sustainably made, fair trade gifts and art supplies. Eco-Eggs is a egg dye kit made from natural pigments. The dyes are made using natural plant, fruit, and vegetable extracts from annatto seed, curcumin, purple sweet potato and red cabbage.  This kit includes three natural dyes (orange, blue, and purple).

We simply followed the instructions. It was that easy.

Pour the dye powder into a half cup of water and mix thoroughly until it is all dissolved.

Gently add your eggs so they don’t crack on the bottom of your glass. This time we used all white eggs. But I’ve saved our dye baths and plan to try them on our brown eggs as well.

The kit comes with three colors of natural dye and this handy chart tells you how to get other colors, including how long to leave your eggs in the dye to achieve your desired result. Some colors are made by just dipping the egg in for a second and then removing it, as in the case of yellow. Others are achieved by leaving the egg in as long as 15 minutes.

My kids rarely have the patience to leave one egg in a dye bath for 15 minutes, as is recommended on some of the color formulas. But we’re really happy with our colors. Lucas enjoyed dipping eggs into two colors to make three-toned eggs. Asher really liked using his rainbow crayons on the eggs before dyeing them.

It always seems like 18 eggs is plenty to dye before we get started. But dyeing Easter eggs is so fun that it seems like we run out of eggs way too quickly. If you’re short on time this year, this Eco-Eggs product will work well for you, without using a lot of commercial chemicals in the process.

Aren’t they pretty? We get to hunt for these beauties tomorrow, as we’re celebrating Easter with one side of the family a week early. xo

Easter is a holiday that fills me with hope and appreciation for the new life being born and blooming all around me. It is the premier Christian holiday, which recalls the suffering and dying of Jesus Christ on the cross, and his resurrection. It is celebrated the world over by Christians everywhere.

Easter is also a springtime celebration in nature religions, and is considered by scholars to be about three thousand years old. Closely associated with the spring equinox, the goddess Ostara (or Eostar or Eostre) was worshipped by Germanic peoples long before the religion of Jesus swept Europe. The symbols in Christian Easter celebrations are very similar to those symbols of the fertile spring goddesses, who can be found in many ancient cultures. For me, this synchronicity of symbolism among multiple faiths resonates. To me, it highlights the similarities among people everywhere and our universal admiration for the earth and its cycles.

Whatever your religious (or nonreligious) take on this springtime festival, you can create a nature table that calls to mind the bounty of the earth and celebrates abundance, new beginnings, and growth.

My spring maiden graces this spring nature table. Her companions are rabbits and lambs, both symbols of spring’s bounty in the birth of new animals. Rabbits are prolific breeders, so they have long served as a symbol of fertility and abundance, as well as the bringers of colored eggs at Easter. A beautiful meadow, painted by my son in second grade, serves as a backdrop. A green crystal frog at the far end holds a tea light for a nighttime glow. A needle-felted bird sits on a nest in a branch (not pictured).

I love blooming branches, but as I don’t wish to cut any off my trees, I crafted these blooms by hot-gluing white tissue paper blossoms onto bare branches we gathered from the ground. The card showing dancing children is a drawing by my god-daughter. It reminds me of how happy we are to be outdoors again in spring.

Here is a nature table created on our fireplace mantle. We displayed our many needle-felted eggs on upside-down cups and the tops of candle sticks. I framed a print of Persephone, the Greek goddess of the spring and added it. A plant of bleeding hearts provides a living symbol of life, flowers, and freshness. From a long, finger-knitted yarn rope (made by Lucas) and felt egg decorations we made, we created a simple garland. The felt eggs aren’t fancy: They are two-dimensional and made with “craft” acrylic felt and white glue.

Simple and charming. I use these year after year.

A friend of mine found a gnarled piece of wood one day and picked it up. It has the shape of a pregnant woman, with bulbous belly and breasts. My friend gave it to me when I was pregnant and I have kept it as a special object of love and fertility ever since. Perhaps you have some totem that represents the time when you were carrying your babies inside your body, or the time you were waiting eagerly for their arrival in your family. The spring nature table is a perfect place to put such honored objects.

We added some small wooden toys, too: frolicking rabbits and stately geese. These are for curious little hands to touch and enjoy.

For your own nature table, decorate and display Easter eggs of any kind. Blow eggs and hang them from branches to make an Easter tree. Or gather them together in an attractive bowl. Balance colored eggs atop tall candle holders so they may be seen from a distance.

Materials

You most likely won’t have to buy much to create your Easter nature table. Here are some items you probably already have:

• pretty cloth in a spring color
• flowers or grasses from your garden
• fruits or seeds
• decorated eggs (blown eggs will last longer)
• candles or figurines
• watercolor paintings (used as backgrounds or cut into Easter shapes: bunnies, eggs, birds, chicks, flowers)
• any items that symbolize for you fertility, renewal, awakening, abundance, birth, and beauty
• religious items that speak to your family’s traditions or faith
• boxes or bowls

Tutorial

First, clean your nature table. Give the wood a nice polish, if appropriate.  Enlist the aid of your children. Be sure to listen to their suggestions about what to add. Now is a great time to sing springtime songs and recite a poem or two. Lay down your cloth on the table and set up any background cloth, picture, or painting you wish to include. This works well for a table that is backed by a wall, but it’s not necessary. I find it’s nice to have several levels if I have space. This can be achieved by using boxes or upside-down bowls underneath your cloth to make hills. Items place on high spots will draw people’s focus. Now arrange your special items however you like. Candlestick holders without candles are a great way to display beautifully decorated Easter eggs. Leave space for additions such as picked flowers that your little ones might contribute throughout the season.

If you have included fresh flowers or fruits or real eggs on your nature table, be sure to check them often and remove and replace them when they wilt or get too old. Your nature table will inspire you if it looks fresh—which is the whole nature of springtime. When it starts to feel old or boring to you, either rearrange it or choose new symbols to display. Keeping your nature table neat and seasonal is a fun, rhythmic way of helping children celebrate festivals and mark the passage of time.

Finally, I wanted to share our family’s Easter tradition. We create an altar outside the night before Easter on a large rock in our backyard. We leave out carrots for the Easter bunny, who personifies for us an Earth spirit, Ostara, or goddess of the spring. In the morning, early on Easter Sunday, we return to our outdoor altar to find the carrots nibbled and fruits and flowers left in their place for us. A basket of small gifts is found there for each of our sons and colored eggs are hidden throughout our yard. As the sun rises over the trees, we greet the new day, hunt for eggs in the dewy grass, and give thanks for the bounty of spring.

* Portions of this article were originally published in the Little Acorn Learning April Enrichment Guide.

No words are needed, I think.

It’s done now, this spectacular display that happens in view of my front door every March. I look forward to this performance every year.

The petals have mostly succumbed to time and the rains. They’ve fallen to the ground.

But while they were here, they were admired.

Now the magnolia leaves are coming out, fresh and green, promising.

Yet lovely as they are, they do not hold a candle to these flowers

with this sky.

This last is the subject of my next painting. Wish me luck!

It is spring, and this makes me very, very happy. (This post was started yesterday and not finished in time. And that’s OK.)

This is my first lilac flower of the season. My lilac bush doesn’t have many flowers on it this spring. I don’t know why.

Sing, World, Sing!

Now in chilly places
Where the snow had been,
Wood and field and hollow,
Easter flowers begin.

Now a bud is opened,
Now a leaf uncurled;
Spring is in the sweet wind
Walking down the world.

Snowdrops in the garden,
Violets on the hills,
Cowslips in the meadow,
Dancing daffodils

Seem to lift their faces,
Softly whispering,
“Easter’s nearly here, now—
Sing, world, sing!”

These are our 12-day-old chicks. We have yet to decide on names for them. Ian, Lucas, and Asher all insist that they have the right set of names. (I happen to like Asher’s names best.) They just insist on using their own names for the girls.

New leaves are unfurling all around us. This is my beautiful Chinese Elm tree. Right now its leaves are the most gorgeous new green.

Here is the neighbor’s yellow wood sorrel (Oxalis europaea). This stuff glows! The kids eat it and call it sour grass.

This is my own sorrel (Oxalis articulata), AKA shamrock, sleeping beauty, sour trefoil. The shamrock I bought at the nursery for St. Patrick’s Day is also an Oxalis with white flowers. So all these years that I’ve been refering to this plant as our “shamrocks,” I was right!

My irises have increased!

This lovely azalea won’t be pretty for long. So I make sure to admire it every day that it blooms.

In honor of the equinox, I refreshed our nature table. With Easter just a couple of weeks away, I pulled out our bunnies and eggs.

I hung our blown eggs and egg ornaments on a huge branch that fell in a windstorm. This huge branch is frequently in Ian’s way. I feel he would like you to know that, and that he is patient with my weird hanging artworks all over our home.

Lucas dyed this handkerchief—at school? at camp? I don’t remember. I didn’t realize how lovely it was until yesterday. The spring maiden was a gift made by my friend Parnassus.

This is a mosaic Ian made: perfect balance between night and day, dark and light. I love it.

To me, our nature table conjures plenty, delight, joy, and light. It reminds me of carefree days and celebration. The spirit of the season of Ostara is enormous potential, growth, striving, peace, and fullness. I’m ready for it all.

I heard Asher singing a song: “It’s almost Easter. It’s almost Easter.” So I guess the nature table has done the trick. I think it’s lacking some spring tulips, though. I’d better get some.

Late Winter, Early Spring

Busy gnomes chip away
At the winter’s hard ground,
So that bulbs may burst forth
And spring’s beauty abound.
In the woods, damp and dark,
They must labor below
Crooked roots and cold stones,
Pushing stalks through the snow.
Undines melt snow until
Water can flow again,
Filling the leaves growing
Green with spring rain.
Sylphs, they are dreaming
Of winds softly streaming
Through petals all yellow
And purple and blue.

—Eugene Schwartz