whoa…..

I love acupuncture, but this guy REALLY LOVES it!  By the way, this does not remotely indicate what an acupuncture treatment is like.  Otherwise, I think we have a hard time getting any patients:)

More than 800 acupuncture needles were pierced on the head of Wei Sheng, a Chinese medicine doctor from Guang Xi, Southwestern China. He once won a Guinness World Record for piercing 1790 needles on his body in 2004. He said that his main purpose of self-piercing is to promote China’s traditional acupuncture. He plans to pierce 2oo8 needles in his body as a special gift to Beijing Olympics in 2008, for which he has already reserved a hotel room in Beijing.

Horses in the barn

I put these horses in the header picture because they are so cute. T. saw them on a country road and took the picture for me because he knows how I adore horses. Someday, I will be able to have some of these fine animals on my property along with all the rest of my critters. Chickens, ducks, goats, horses. I would love to be surrounded by these furry friends. *Dreaming*…..

Celebrate!

I found out that I passed my comprehensive exam, so I am officially an intern!  yay!

Breitenbush Hot Springs

This past weekend I went to Breitenbush Hot Springs for the first time. 07/07/07 was my friend’s 28th birthday (very lucky gal) and we ended up getting day passes for saturday and sunday through her BF’s work. What a great way to celebrate a birthday. We even had a cabin to camp out at down the road from Breitenbush. The cabin was right on a beautiful creek, so we just pitched our tents down by the water and it lulled us to sleep. So peaceful. The creek also served as our cooler for the beer we brought:) very handy.

So at Breitenbush, we ate beautiful, gourmet,organically grown vegetarian meals cooked for us. They were soooo good. I wish I had a chef to cook for me all the time (and one that did the dishes too). We spent most of our time down by the river because it was so hot out there. There were some great swimming holes that you could jump in and cool off. The water was breathtakingly COLD! It was a nice way to refresh, but there was no swimming around. Just in and out. We hit the hot springs a couple of times and it felt so good. The pools that we went to were made of rocks and were nestled in the side of a hill, so there was a great view and you felt very connected to nature. Very relaxing. I would love to return in the fall or winter when it would feel good to sit in really hot water all day:)

I will post pictures soon:)

The Farm in Pratum

Here is a picture of the Pratum farm this year. We aren’t going there very often, but it is set up on a drip timer, so all is well. T’s dad keeps most of the garden up, but we have some sections. This is where we grew our garlic. Yum! In the picture you can see the wind row of sunflowers that we planted to have a border with the farm next door.

Last Weekend

We went to the coast last weekend and the weather was beautiful. We got sunburned! On saturday, low tide was at 7am and we were there for it. Saw lots of sea veggies, starfish, and lots of little fish. The dogs had fun running the beach for a couple of hours while we checked out the tide pools. I will post more pictures of the tide pools after I download them.

On Sunday we went to a friends property in the coastal foothills. We toured the farm with chickens, ducks, goats, lots of berries, and hiked through old growth cedar, doug fir, and sitka spruce. We hiked up to some meadows that were lined with beautiful alder trees.

The can go right outside their house and pick chanterelles in the fall/winter….mmmmm… This place was my dream! And on top of it all, she has beautiful acupuncture office on the property with a full stocked herbal dispensary! Really, this is my dream. I love farming, the woods, and acupuncture. Ahhh. I just hope that I can realize this dream sooner rather than later.

The rest of the weekend was spent making and drinking mojitos with freshly harvested mint from the yard, making lavender wands, and hanging in the back yard (on the future deck site).

I love relaxing at the coast. ahh.

Garlic Harvest

Ok, so I have one more thing to post for the day. Apparently once I get going on this blog I can’t stop:)

We harvested about one quarter of our garlic crop for the year (softnecks mature sooner than hardnecks). Anyway, we are drying and curing the garlic right now in our garage so that I can make garlic braids!! The next step is to clean them and braid them. I am so excited as I have never done it before. I will post some pictures after I get going on the project. I want to incorporate herbs and flowers in the braids as well. I plan to spend alot of my free time in the next few weeks doing all sorts of crafts. yay!

Another meal documented

Since T usually cooks for me (up until recently) I find it necessary to document the times when I do cook. So here is a meal from a couple of weeks ago. Stuffed peppers full of ricotta, herbs, veggies, chicken and mozzarella. It was tasty indeed (and south beach friendly)!

Dinner with friends

This last weekend we had a goodbye dinner with friends who have gone south for the summer. Now the men were cooking while we hung out and talked. We (the ladies) said we were not very hungry, so this is what the guys served us for dinner. They are such jokesters. Hahahaha.

After the photo was taken we served ourselves up a real portion. I guess that serving would have sufficed in a 5 star restaurant, but not for me:) Note the large bottle of tequila sitting unopened by the food. mmmmm

Hot days and the garden

Our garden has been growing like crazy the past few weeks. The heat of the sun has allowed our veggies to grow nice and tall. We are growing tomatoes (lots), potatoes, peas, onions, peppers, cucumbers, broccoli, cauliflower, and bok choy. All of these except tomatoes, peppers and the cukes are in our little garden bed (as seen in the picture). We just took over part of our lawn and now we have food. yummy! The rest are in pots and they are doing great! This is my first real experiment with container gardening and the plants are doing awesome!

One of my favorite plants is stevia. It is used as a sugar substitute. It is a tender perrenial and has come back the past two years. We harvest the leaves, dry them and they can be ground and substituted for sugar in may things. I often add a little to my sun tea and it is delicious. Happy gardening!