I. Love. My. Life.

I really do. And since it is Friday and I think I might be getting sick despite only being on day 3 of my 19 day Baha'i fast, and am home on a Friday night, in bed, I think it is time for a list. I suggest you join me and make a list too, just for the hell of it. Random reasons why your world rocks. I will go first. But I would love to read your reasons if you feel like posting them here. Here goes. Random reasons my (currently delirious) world rocks:

1. I spent my entire day on Thursday on a farm in the sunshine harvesting vegetables, weeding an herb garden, and canvasing a local neighbourhood with some very cool high school students. We were trying to find out if people with fruit trees in their gardens wanted us to harvest their fruit through a program called Harvest Sacramento. The owner can keep as much of the harvested fruit as they want, and the rest is donated to the food bank.

The Youth Garden at Soil Born Farms

Waiting for the youth to arrive at Soil Born Farms

Youth cooking healthy meal at Soil Born Farms

One of my favourite activities is planting seeds in springtime, like these fancy mamas (a.k.a. Bachelor's Buttons):

and these beans, that are going to be mighty tasty in soup:

 

And not only do I get to plant seeds, but sometimes something miraculous happens from one Thursday to the next. Something that looks like this:

And if you knew me as my friends back in Canada do, you would know that when I see these little fellas pressing up through the earth, I am imagining something like this:

I am told that the seeds above in the foreground are Lupins. I have yet to see whether they grow quite as tall at the PEI variety! 

Oh. I almost forgot. If that was not enough to make me the happiest woman on the planet, I also got to see this yesterday above the farm:

I hope you can make them out here. There were huge flocks of Sandhill Cranes migrating north. They were beautiful!

2. I have amazing friends all over the world who make me laugh; who go running with me; pray with me, and are always there when I need to talk:

California friends

Three Canadian women whose friendship has changed my life

 

3. I am having my first tea descriptions printed on Lady Baker's Tea Trolley tea packages this week. Will post photos when I see the labels on the bags!

4. The round the world journal that I am working on with eleven of my amazing friends made it safely to New Zealand despite the earthquake and the fact that the house it was addressed to was so damaged by the earthquake that my dear friend Pascale had to abandon it. You can keep updated on the whereabouts of our journal, and see a few peeks of the beautiful and inspiring content at unconventionallyinspired12.wordpress.com

5. Tomorrow I am driving to the Bay Area to pick up a soulmate from BC, who will be spending the weekend with me. A fellow writer, we are going to take long walks, drink tea, and write together. I cannot wait to see her radiant face tomorrow!

Ahava, looking radiant on the organic farm she lives on in British Columbia, Canada

 6. I received a package in the mail today from Green & Black's organic chocolate containing a gift certificate for REI so that I can go and start purchasing the gear I need for my expedition at the end of the month. The days are passing so incredibly quickly! I cannot believe that I head to the Dominican Republic in only a few weeks! You can see the monthly updates from the five of us from the US that will be headed down to the organic cocoa farms at the end of the month here.

7. I got my Master's degree in island studies. And although people always look at me funny when I say that, the reality is that it means that I get to go to places like this, and call it work:

8. Spending so much of my time on islands means that I get to experience truly spectacular natural landscapes and wildlife on a regular basis. The natural world, and my relationship to it, is an integral part of what I value most about the world. I will finish up this entry with a video clip from one of my favourite places in the world -- a cape that I used to drive to often after long summer and fall days working on a farm on PEI, in Canada. I would lie in the tall grass and listen to and watch the cormorants. There are hundreds of them nesting in these cliffs on PEI. The ocean crashes up on the rocks. It is wild and spectacularly beautiful.

And with that, I wish you a wonderful Friday night, an excellent weekend, and an enjoyable list-making session! (I would love to read your lists here, if you would like to share). I will be out exploring the world with Ahava this weekend, but I will write a full post on Monday to share some of our adventures with you.