English lavender is a beautiful flowering herb that is perfect for northern latitude gardeners. Here in the Wasatch Front, any plant you grow in the garden will need to be hardy down to well below freezing, as our winters can be cold and long, which makes English Lavender a great choice for gardeners who want a perennial lavender plant. Plus, it handles our hot dry summers with ease, and will do well in water-wise gardens. I have a large plant in my garden that I love to run my hands through whenever I walk by. The smell is heavenly, and the bees absolutely love it. It's usually covered in bees throughout the day. 

Spaghetti squash is one of my favorite squashes to eat. We love to bake it or cook it in the Instant Pot (see recipe for this below!), and top them with a chunky marinara, parmesan cheese and ground beef. You get all of the deliciousness of a big bowl of spaghetti, without the overstuffed feeling, or massive carb load, bloating and need to take a nap afterward. Growing them in the garden can be an easy way to get a lot. Check out how to grow them below, and scroll down a little farther to see a quick Instant Pot recipe for cooking the squash to a perfect al dente pasta texture.

If you've ever wanted a plant that grows like a champion in a hot dry spot, I highly recommend picking up a yarrow plant. They are beautiful, low-maintenance, some varieties get decently large, and bees love them. When I was a kid, my mom had a whole row of them along the back of her large vegetable garden. I thought they were cool, but had no idea they were such a magnet for the bees, and I now understand why she planted them. I have mine growing next to the west wall of my house, and even though it bakes in the heat bouncing off the house wall, it still thrives. I babied it the first couple of years, but now I've hardly watered it and it seems to be doing just fine, in fact, it's bigger than it's ever been. 

I didn't remember it yesterday, last night, or even this morning. I got up, used the bathroom, washed my face, and did my morning workout. I got my old cat some food and helped him up on the counter for a drink from the tap. He can't jump up anymore, so we always lift him and make airplane sounds. He seems to like it. Then, I helped him back down and we went to the couch for some morning cuddles.

I scrolled through my phone, and looked at pet drinking fountains on Amazon. I scrolled through my emails, and cleared out all the junk. I've had that email address for 20 years now, and it is just 99.999% junk, at this point. I discovered the Foo Fighters are putting out a new album, the first since their drummer died, so I went to their site and pre-ordered the white vinyl version. Colored vinyl is better than black vinyl. It's fact. I looked up their concert tickets, to see if I'd missed my opportunity to buy them for this summer. Too bad for me, I had.

I researched new non-stick pans since ours are old and losing their surface. I'm still undecided. Then, I opened Instagram. The first Instagram story it was recommending to me was from your foreign exchange daughter that stayed with you the last year you were healthy. You guys hit it off, and you were quickly very attached to each other. I clicked to watch her stories, and it was her memories of you.

Then I remembered.

Last night, after ditching out on the date night Justin and I had planned, I got in bed at 9pm. I messed around on my computer, aimlessly online shopping, and working on a few small writing projects. I was all sorts of distracted and couldn't focus, but I felt fine. I didn't remember yet.

Justin climbed into bed around 10:30 and we talked about our lives together. Nothing came up about you or your death. Neither of us remembered.

Perhaps this is what our brains do after 9 years apart from the ones we've lost. Maybe our brains do the subconscious work of not reminding us anymore, since we seem to be doing decently. They preserve us, in a way.

I laid there in the dim light of the morning, stretched out on one side of our L-shaped couch. My cat was curled up next to my head, on his favorite flannel blanket. I stuck my hand under his head, a favorite form of touch for him, and felt the small vibrations of his sleeping purr. I listened to his tiny snores that have gotten much louder in his old age. Through our living room window, I watched the sky turn from gray to periwinkle and then to blue, behind the trees across the street. When I lay on the couch in that direction, I can't see the houses, just the beautiful tree tops. Sometimes, I imagine that we live in the forest, surrounded by nature, instead of the middle of the city.

Tears started to stream from the outside corners of my eyes, across my temples, and into my ears and hair, as I remembered all the years I had with you, and the last day I saw you alive.

I hate that I can't call you. I hate that everything changed after you left. I hate that you haven't seen any of my thirties, and how I overcame massive mountains I never thought I would. I hate that you didn't get to go on wildflower hikes with me, or play guitar duets with me (or even piano duets, even though I never wanted to before). I hate that you didn't get to hear me sing a solo on a video posted to my Instagram page. You know how big of a deal that was for me to do. I hate that you aren't here to talk about my small patch of gray hairs, or the fact that you were a grandma at my age, and I'm not a mom, and how different our lives are. I hate what cancer did to you. I hate that it took your beautiful vibrant personality and locked it into a dying shell. I hate that I only speak of you in past tense, and there are no new photos of us together. I hate that the last photos of us together are the ones of you on your way out of this world. I hate that the last time I touched you, I was kissing your cold forehead, and telling you goodbye.

I hate that it's been 9 years. But, I'm also happy it has. Those first few were some of the most painful of my life to date. I still miss you always, but this year, as well as the last few, it seems like I'm forgetting about the bad parts of it all. I seem to be that way more and more, living without all of the sadness. I guess that's what moving on with life looks like. I guess that's what healing looks like. One of our last real conversations before cancer took your conversational abilities from you, you told me that you weren't worried about me and you were proud of me.

Your actual last words to me, a couple days before you were gone, were:

"Am I ok?"

"Yes." I said. I lied, sort of.

"Are you ok?" You said.

"I will be," I said, but not certain of the truth of it.

I am ok, now, Mom.

And... I miss and love you.


Love always,

Your Daughter

Magical thinking is defined as the belief that one’s thoughts or actions can influence the course of events in the material world.

When my mom got sick, I tested this very theory. For my entire life, I had been told that prayer moves mountains. This is exactly what magical thinking is. It is the belief that if I pray fervently enough, if I am dedicated enough to my cause, if I stay true to the practice of faith, if I appeal to god enough, god will change the course of the future.

I tested this with every fiber of my being. I was the literal definition of magical thinking. If I accepted any part of reality -- the fact that she had a terminal diagnosis -- I was failing at my task. I was laser-focused on somehow convincing the god of the universe to save her life. In essence, I was trying to save her life. As a result, I felt excruciating pain and anxiety over her impending death, believing that any setback meant I just had to have more faith and try harder. This self-assumed responsibility meant that I wasn't as present as I could have been during the last year of her life.

Without me saying anything else, you can be certain what came next. But, I'll proceed anyway.

Mom died 13 months after diagnosis. It was the Saturday of Easter weekend. Everyone said it was a perfect symbiosis of her devout life and the Savior's. God was calling her home, her work was finished. People found peace in that coincidence.

I didn't see it like that.

God had disregarded the most faith I had ever given him. God took my magical thinking, my whole-body faith, my incessant pleas to save my mother from this fate and ignored it. God even ignored my nights of sheer agony when I parked my car in an empty temple parking lot, looked up at the brilliantly lit building that was his literal house on earth, and screamed with everything I had just for him to hear me. My tears filled up canyons of my grief and fear.

Her death showed me this: God either can't do it for any number of reasons - one being that he's not all powerful, another being that he doesn't exist in the way I was taught, or at all; or he is there, but he won't do it. In this life, I will never truly know the answer to that.

I heard a quote by Walt Whitman years later, after I'd grieved myself into full blown major depression and panic disorder, that said, "These are the days that must happen to you." It spoke the whole truth in just 9 words. This is life. All of it. The love, the joy, the trial, the error, the life, the death, the heart ache, the loss of faith. This is what it means to love. This is what it means to be alive.

I had taken to gardening instead of going to church, and in the process I had witnessed similar things to Walt Whitman. There are rules of nature. There are births, deaths, seasons, years that nothing works, years that are abundant, sometimes because of me, sometimes in spite of me. Everything had a time, and then it ended. There was so much beauty and healing in that realization.

I lost myself and my religion the day I kissed my mother goodbye for the final time. I fell apart in the aftermath not understanding anything because what had happened was not what I was told would. I lost my footing, and had to ultimately climb out of the deepest hole I've ever been in. For a time, I thought I would never be ok again. In the process, I had to completely rebuild myself, but what I found in the breakdown?

A different sort of magic. 

It's been a decade since I walked the cobblestone streets of Florence, Italy and heard the bells of the Duomo ringing out under the heavy winter rain clouds above. The cool air blew against my cheeks, and I buttoned up my new black wool coat and wrapped my flowing wool scarf around my neck, both I'd picked up while shopping in Italy. I'd laughed as I picked them out, because, not only were they cute, but they'd both said 100% Lana on the tags. It was kismet. Despite the fact that Lana is Wool in Italian, I jokingly played along with the stars aligning. I'd never felt more free in my entire life. 

In keeping with the bee theme of my designs, I came up with this chunky knit hat that looks like a giant honey dipper. It's made with soft, squishy Lion Brand Wool-Ease Thick & Quick, and true to the yarn's name, the beanie knits up very fast. Despite the fact that it's the dog days of summer here, and it's way too hot for a beanie, it was fun to photograph the hat in my garden with my bees' favorite flowers, and the fruits of their pollination. 

As a child, I was terrified of bees. I had a tendency to get stung whenever they came around, because of how I reacted to them. Since taking up gardening, I've learned a lot about them, and how to coexist with them easily. It is fun to watch them work, and I love seeing them in my garden.

When I began to practice color work with knitting, I decided to design my own little pattern for a hat with bees on it. This little hat came out of my process, and knits up very quick in the super bulky yarn! I have not had this pattern tested as I'm still new to this whole process, so, if you decide to try it, I would really love to know how it works for you. It turned out great for me, so I'm hopeful it will be an easy project for you. Any feedback would be very appreciated! I am so excited to share my very first knitting pattern with you!



1 ball Lion Brand Wool-Ease Thick & Quick yarn (106 yds) - Black

The Chunky Bee Knit Hat is an adult-sized chunky, slouchy knit hat with a color pattern around part of the hat body. It is a quick knit on super bulky yarn, only taking a few hours! It is knit in the round from the bottom up, starting with 1x1 ribbed band, and then transitions to the stockinette hat body with color pattern. There are also a few purl stitches forming the middle of the bee bodies.

The ribbed band is about 3" tall, but can be modified by adding or subtracting rounds for however much ribbing you'd like. To make the hat more or less slouchy, add or subtract rounds from the body.

The color pattern for the hat body is worked on a 10 stitch repeat over 12 rows using the fair isle yarn carrying technique. When working the color pattern, make sure not to pull the strands too tight, as the hat won't stretch, and the fit will be off. An easy way to avoid this is to make sure the stitches are spaced apart on the right hand needle as you work through the pattern.

The hat is finished with a large yarn pom pom. Finished dimensions: 17 inches in circumference, 10.5 inches in height

This is a great tutorial, to learn fair isle technique.
This is a great tutorial for making a pom pom. I wrapped the yarn around four fingers to make mine. You'll want to go fairly thick in order to get a nice big pom pom. You an also use a pom pom maker.

Definitions:
K - Knit
P - Purl
K2tog - Knit 2 stitches together
Sts - Stitches


Using 9 mm needles, cast on 40 stitches with the color Black. 1x1 Rib cast on recommended, but Long Tail works well, too. Join in the round, and place marker for beginning of round.

If you have been following my Instagram, it won't be news that I have picked up the hobby of knitting. It all started with the urge to make my own scarf last February. So, I bought some yarn, and some needles, and searched some basic how-to's on Youtube, and got to work. It took a few tries, but then suddenly it clicked.


And, if we're being honest, it REALLY clicked. In the last year alone, I have made 26 projects including: scarves, beanies of all kinds, a wrap, a sweater, throw pillow covers, afghan squares, and am working on several other projects as we speak. I am also learning to crochet, and am working on my first crochet project.

I've had a few people have me custom make things for them, and am debating starting to sell hats or patterns or both since several people have asked me why I don't have a store set up.

Who knew that the call to knit would be so strong in me? Stay tuned as there just may be a shop of sorts in the works. (Scary!)

                 

++ Do you knit? If not, what hobbies keep you busy?

Happy 2020! I can't believe it's the 20's, you guys. I also can't believe how old that makes me feel. How about some gorgeous wallpapers to ring in the new year? These images feel a little magical to me whether it be their colors, or their overall vibe. Download them to your desktop, and enjoy the magic all month long!

To download wallpaper to your desktop:

+ Click the image to open a larger version (depending on your browser, you may need to click again to make it go full-sized)
+ Save the image to your desktop
+ Select 'System Preferences' and then Desktop/Screensaver.
+ Or right click image and set as wallpaper

Happy Downloading!

I'm sitting here at the end of the decade, thinking about the whole of it. All the ups and downs, and lessons learned.

By far, this was my hardest decade yet. The 2000's were essentially me failing to learn the same lessons over and over until things hit critical mass, and I wound up in therapy at the beginning of 2010. Stepping into my therapist's office turned out to be the single most pivotal moment of my entire life. Life fell into place in a way it hadn't before, and quickly.