hope Archives ⋆ Twisted Dreams

The Burning of Righteous Passion

The collection this spring is an artistic exploration of the facets of Hope. The first of these I wanted to tackle is the burning of righteous passion.

Righteous Passion causes movement and change. with enough heat to start fires. Although there is sometimes a destructive element in the burning it is often necessary to convert the rot of the status quo to something productive and growing.

People who embody Burning Passion are not just armchair commentators- they are community organizers, educators, and folks who can’t imagine not rolling up their sleeves and getting their hands dirty.

These are the people who face the news not with moaning, but with a counter action plan.

These are the people who know where the pain points and gaps in the community are and work to burn away any blockages that keep people from the things that they need.

This piece of hope means that we are NOT stagnant, not frozen in time and even bad things can get rebooted to start over fresh, although it sometimes takes a bonfire to get us there.

I chose the stones for this face of hope because Iolite, in shifting shades of violet-blue carries the spirit of journey, of dreams and intuition, of exploration and illumination. It is a stone for “new beginnings”. It is the hope of a restart, of change for the better. Moonstone is a stone of inner growth and strength. It soothes emotional instability and stress, and stabilizes the emotions, providing calmness. Change is not effective if it is just rampant chaos, the focus on inner growth and stress reminds us that change should have a vision and the calm and stability of moonstone help with the stress that even good change can bring. Lapis is the universal symbol of wisdom and truth- reflecting the righteous nature of this burning passion.

Hope Springs

Hope burns with righteous passion. 
Springing from rot like a fiddlehead
ever-expanding, full of strength. 
Curious, Creative, persistent
she nurtures our dreams
with contagious laughter
and bountiful grace. 

Traveling the world to gather souls, 
she wraps her arms around us and
gathers us in her garden
Where we can root, 
heal, 
transform, 

and spring forth again with righteous passion. 

--nan braun 1/27/2020

The new spring collection, “Hope Springs” will release on March 28.

Stay tuned here as I explore the facets of hope and share sneak peeks as the collection continues to take shape.

Puddles of Hope

It’s that rainy time of year that makes gardeners nervous and hopeful all at once. After a few days of rain, this is not what you want to see in your potato trenches.

And yet, we push forward. I have to admit, today I mostly planted flowers and not the asparagus and horseradish waiting in the wings. In the muck, it seemed the perfect time to plant toad lilies and wood poppies at Cthulhu’s feet.

The Toad Lilies love the wetness and hopefully will soon be sprouting gorgeous spotted bursts of color. Until then, I planted a new Lilac bush where the TikiMan used to be, and filled in strawberries where we lost a few over the winter.

There is something intrinsically hopeful in the act of gardening, We put scraggly little seedlings, dormant rhizomes, or tiny little seeds into the dirt with unwavering faith that even in the absence of visible life, soon enough growth is certain.

And even in the midst of puddles that seem like they must drown everything in hopelessness, we look closely and there we find the green sprouts of hope.

New potato sprout

Food Prices Rise, thus my garden grows

Pea Plants Sprouting- Aptil 15, 2011

Gardening is good for the soul. It is meditative, relaxes and helps restore us to balance.

It also feeds my family. In the summer, we have a minimum of 6 mouths to feed (I am always glad to have friends and family over at meal time, so our table size often grows beyond immediate family).

Ours are no longer little tots who barely count as a mouth. The youngest is 11, the eldest is 19 and almost all of them now out-eat me on a regular basis.

Putting fresh vegetables and fruits on the table in the needed quantities could quickly become daunting- and not just in the summer. We often have the majority of the family here on weekends, holidays and other school breaks during the rest of the year. We always have at least a few of us here. And now, food prices are on the rise. It really doesn’t matter if it is energy, weather and unrest; rising fuel prices, or just people playing the futures and gambling some people’s starvation against their profits- it is hitting all of us. Food prices in February had the highest jump in 36 years, and there is no end in sight. It is not just processed foods or finished, packaged goods that are rising- even staples are going up in cost. The continued rises are expected to push more and more people into poverty and into starvation or malnutrition. I was even interviewed by the Christian Science Montior about rising food costs earlier this winter.

What bothers me the most about all of these articles is that they document the rise of costs and the increases in problems, but I do not see any recommendations to people on how to cope. All they do is raise fear and hopelessness. It is time that we in the US return to our roots, so to speak, and tackle this the old fashioned way- start planting and growing some of your own food. Give me an excuse why you can not, and I can counter it. Plants are expensive? Seeds are cheap. And for many plants- like these sprouting tomatoes, the packet holds many more seeds than any one family needs- share with friends and family. A packet of tomato seeds holds on average 30 seeds. If you want 5 plants just to supplement in the summer and fall months, that is 6 families worth of tomato plants for about $2. When you go to the grocery and tomatoes are 3-5$/lb, the savings seems obvious. Don’t have time to start seedlings? You buy the seeds and let someone else start them in exchange for some of the plants. Have the time and money? Sprout extra plants and give away the extras to someone who has neither.

Container Grown Lettuce Sprouting

Space is always cited as an issues- but there are a myriad of vegetables and herbs you can grown in containers, on balconies and rooftops. And many cities and towns have community gardens that you probably already have access to. Now is the time to claim your spot. This early lettuce will never leave the container, it will provide a first crop of lettuce before the ground is warm enough to sustain.

There are a million reasons to grow food- even if you pick just one thing to grow. Besides taking the pressure off of food demands, you know where the food has been and what it was exposed to. You will taste flavors and textures you can never get in a grocery store. Given the opportunity to pull dinner from the ground and help prepare it, you will be surprised the foods your kids will eat. At a minimum, if you are not physically able to grow your own food, stop by your local Farmer’s Market this weekend- almost all of them are now open – a simple google search will turn up local opportunities you might not have known existed.

Early Sprouts of Spinach

It is time to combat the fear of food prices with a few simple tools- some seeds, some dirt, some water and some sun.

Garden Starts

Finally… it dried out enough to till and start working the garden. I am exceptionally lucky to have a man in my life who likes to till. There is nothing other than a newborn that has as much lurking potential as a freshly tilled garden.

Today I cut and ashed the sprouting potatoes I managed to save back. The only time that did not get sprouted are red, so I will need to grab some red seed potatoes tomorrow. For the rest ( purple, yellow and Kennebec) I have over 100 potential plant starts. I am a little low on the Kennebecs, and we fell in love with those last year, so I may grab a few more of those when I get the reds. I only have a dozen of the purples, but they produced badly and were very insect prone, so we are mostly keeping those as novelties and to eat as they grow in the summer. they need to sit in brown bags on the gardening work bench for about 48 hours before planting.

I was planning on planting first round of peas, snow peas and spinach early this am, but late last night realized that they were calling for a couple of days of rain… which meant not only missing the raining days, but also the following days it took the garden to dry out again… so I bolted outside last night at 9:30pm and planted a row of each ahead of the rain. That will allow me to put a second round in the garden in about 10 days to stagger harvests, rather than just getting the first round in then.

Knock wood, the tomato seedlings are still growing, but the peppers have not sprouted much at all. I rearranged them under the grow lights and put some under a plastic “greenhouse” lid on the porch to see if additional light helps.

I love the feeling of dirt between my toes and soil on my hands. This is the time of year that awakens my hibernating soul and makes me smile for no apparent reason.