"Spring is Here," said the bumblebees.

Right now I hear weed-eaters and lawn mowers and edgers beating up my over-grownnasty lush lawn. It's going to be BEE-YOU-TEE-FULL. I'm already so pleased. Next step, repairing lawn mower (it's already in the van to be dropped off at the shop) and renting a rototiller. 

Next Saturday would be the day I'd love to do the garden bed prep, but Ali will be flying home from California that day (job training), and that's a job I'd want help with. But we'll see. Maybe I'll get a bug up my butt and do it all by myself. If the lawn mower would fit in the back of my van, wouldn't a rototiller?

My friend Tamara is coming over Friday morning to do some garden plot planning. She wants to grow some corn here, so we'll have to find a good spot for that.

I need compost brought in to amend the soil, and a bit of wood chips (and maybe some landscape cloth) to border it. Then I'll get some metal T-bars and some chicken wire, and fence off the garden space from rambunctious doggies.

Chickens last.

Finally! Seeds.

I got a surprise day off from work yesterday. Which is great for house projects, but sucky for the bank accounts. Nevertheless, I went to BiMart for new pants for my son ('cuz he keeps growing) and found their seedling annuals section in the freaking parking lot where you can't avoid buying them. Thank goodness some of them were only 69 cents, or $2.88.

I bought about a dozen small flowering plants and planted them in my front yard's window planter box, a big terra cotta pot, and a giant stainless steel kitchen bowl that I used to use for popcorn. I am hoping that my front porch area now looks nice enough to make up for the grossly under-mown lawn. (My lawn mower's broken and my landlord took pity on me and ordered a lawn service to come out on Monday to start cleaning up. It's a multi-day job, folks!)

ALSO, I'm happy to announce that I've finally planted my tomato, peppers, and basil seeds.

We'll see if these actually grow now. It's more experiment than anything. Because, well, they are ancient, after all.

Book Giveaway! Made From Scratch by Jenna Woginrich

Because this book is so awesome, I accidentally bought two.

I felt inspired by some of the 8th graders' mentorship project speeches from last night's school function (at Aubrey's school), and went to find my books on painting.

While there, I found Made From Scratch.

I thought, "What is this doing in the animals-sustainable living-art section of the bookcase?" (A totally great spot for it, by the way.) "It should be in memoir." (Because it's also that. Sort-of. And it actually says so on the front of the cover.) I went to transfer it to the "right" shelf, and lo and behold! Another copy. HA!

This is a boon for you, of course, because someone's getting a free book. Leave a comment on this blog, and I'll do a random drawing. If you're name is drawn, I'll contact you to get your address, and I'll ship it to you. Pronto-like.

It's a super awesome book. I've apparently read it three times now. And every time I read it, I retain something more. It really is so inspiring.

Here's a quick review:

5 out of 5 stars

Summary:
A young single woman finds the bliss of self-sufficiency and urban farming while working in an office 9 to 5. She quickly gets the bug and moves to the country. It's part memoir, part how-to, and is chock full of life lessons, practical tips, and down-home humor and humility.

Review:
The really cool thing about this book -- besides the author's voice, and the fascinating content -- is the structure. I really dig the lay-out. First, the sections fall under standard themes like, Chickens: the most exciting accessory since lawn darts, and Growing Your Own Meals: I get cocky with my hoes. But also some less mainstream ones: Packing Dogs, Homemade Mountain Music, Angora Rabbits as Livestock, and Old Stuff.

Then, within those thematic sections, Jenna starts with a personal chapter -- an essay on the most private thing she learned about her process in this area, or why she made a certain decision, or just some quirky little story about her friends -- and then follows it up with a practical how-to for those of us that want to try it out ourselves.

This is pure brilliancy. How many times have I read a memoir that inspired me, but then didn't have a clue how to set myself up to start? Or the reverse is true, too. Sometimes I'll pick up a permaculture book, say, because it's an subject that interests me, but I don't end up reading it because it's all text-booky. And I want more character. More humanity.

Made From Scratch: Discovering the Pleasures of a handmade Life is that book. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

This is my homesite!

How to Make Fresh Guava Juice

1. First, you go to a tropical location and pick them. But not from this tree. It's not a guava tree.

2. After you collect your fruta, spread them all out on the table and smile at how blessed you are. (The guavas are the small round yellow fruits at the top left of the photo.)

3. Then, peel them. I used a potato peeler because they were super-dee-duper ripe. A paring knife would've just smooshed them.

 4. Plop them all in a blender, add some water, and blend. (My juice ended up being more like nectar, or smoothie. A little on the thick side. Next time I'll add more water to make it thinner.)

(please forgive the blurriness)

5. Pour the juice through a strainer to get all the seeds out.

6. You can compost the seeds, or feed 'em to the pigs or chickens.

 7. You can drink it this way -- a refreshing tartness -- or you can add sweetener to it. In Costa Rica, you can find this sugar cane juice. Honey would work great, too. Just a little bit ...

8. Then a squeeze of lime.

Slurp!

If you want to make a breakfast smoothie out of it, dump the juice back in the blender (after rinsing out the seeds) and add a banana (and maybe an avocado!); mix.

Day Four -- Sustainable Eco-Tour

Warning: This post is long, but only because of the pictures. Enjoy!

(Ali in the restaurant/community center having an after breakfast cup of coffee.)

After yoga, Ali and I showered and ate breakfast. It's amazing how many times a day we change our clothes and shower here. What's even more astounding is that despite sweating through entire shirts, if we hang them on the porch, they dry and aren't stinky. We can re-wear them the next day. Miraculous.

We wandered down to Lisa's place, as she was going to guide us on the eco-tour and waterfall hike (pictures from the hike will be in a different posting). She's been incubating eggs for the farm in her living room. Two had hatched the day before, and were already out of the incubator. The chicks need to stay in the incubator after hatching for twenty-four hours, or at least until there feathers are all dry.

Before I take you on our eco-tour, let me explain briefly about the food production here at Osa Mountain Village. Their goal is 100% food security for all the residents. There are thousands of fruit trees, several tilapia ponds, and multiple gardens. The residents leave a basket with their name on it in the community center, and on Tuesdays and Thursdays, the baskets are filled with all the harvest the Tico workers have collected from the farm and gardens. Any leftovers are just left on the table for anyone to pick up. While I was there, I saw a big bucket of chicken eggs just for the taking.

Another thing that Osa Mountain Village does is embrace edible landscaping -- whether it's mint planted in a container at the bar, or chard planted underneath the shade of papaya trees. 

On to the eco-tour:

 You must always carry a walking stick, and a machete. Residents here can harvest anything they want, whenever they want. Here Lisa is cutting up a cuadrado. They are kind of like a mealy banana. But bigger. Yummy in smoothies and on your morning yogurt.

Banana plants grow way tall -- and are often confused with trees. They grow one (not sure on that) bunch of bananas, and when it's harvested, the plant dies and falls over. A new one grows among the mulch of the old one, and the cycle begins again. If, however, you want to plant one in a different place, you cut up the stalk of the banana plant that died, and plant that where you want a new one to grow. The new plant grows out of the old base. (I will check with Lisa to see if I remembered this correctly.)

(Ali picking a limon dulce -- sweet lemon.)

Chickens! 

(Flaka means skinny in Spanish. She's taking the lead here.)

(Beans amend the soil and make great ground cover. They are also a main staple for this region.)

(Even though harvesting amaranth seeds and processing them by hand into flour is uber labor intensive, and frankly no one does that here at OMV, they sure make pretty purple plants.)

(Some of the gardens here at OMV.)

(Lots of people think pineapples -- pina in Spanish -- grow on trees, but they don't.)

(Lisa and the medicinal herbal garden.)

(Jim, his dad, and Christian netting fish out of one of the tilapia ponds.)

(This is the freezer/fridge for the chickens and the goat milk collected for the residents.)

(Ali with the sugar cane press.)

(These are the laying hens.)

(Residents voted to raise rabbits for meat.)

(More gardens!)

(This is Charlotte. She was slaughtered the day after this picture was taken, and we are eating her tomorrow.)

The next post will be a combination of photos from two separate days of waterfall hiking.

Pura Vida.

Day Three - Arrival

I've been blogging in my personal blog during my vacation, but since it takes place in Costa Rica, I think I'll switch over here. You can read about our journey to our destination here and here.

**

Lisa and Mark picked us up in Palmar Norte, which is the closest town to Osa Mountain Village. We stopped at the BM, a brand new grocery store, to pick up a few things to snack on in the villa, and then trekked up in 4WDLow to the eco-resort.

We stopped on the way at Mitch and Charlene's place to deliver some groceries to them. and got a spontaneous tour of their amazing home. Ali and I want to use containers in our place, too.

(Dave, Mitch, Mark -- in the reflection, Lisa and Flaka The Dog, Charlene, and Ali)

The lot I have for sale at Osa Mountain Village is the one right above Mitch and Charlene's, so the view is the same. Breathtaking.

After checking in to our villa, and unpacking, we met a handful more people that lived there (or owned and were visiting, like us), and went down for a community dinner.

Two days a week, the restaurant in the community center serves a community dinner where everyone sits down and has a family style dinner; two days a week it's ordering off the menu; and two days a week it's closed.

The bar is open every day. Of course.

After dinner we went "home" and watched a downloaded episode of Downton Abbey. I bought it from iTunes for $2.99. Netflix doesn't work here. First bummer.

Bedtime comes fairly early here (mostly because the sun sets at 5:30 pm every night), and once it's dark, it sort of feels like you should be in bed.

Plus, the next day (which happened to be my birthday) was slated for: yoga in the community center, a eco tour of the gardens, a waterfall hike, and dinner with Lisa and Mark. Very full. So I didn't mind hitting the sack.