Category Archives: Season

Fall, Winter, Spring, Summer

February Winner Announcement and Welcoming of Spring

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The Winter is almost at her end…
and the Goddess of Spring has just about sprung…
We welcome spring with open arms and open hearts.
Balance comes from the heart.
 Our February 15th Draw Prize  Winner
of $50 Healing Muse™ Gift Certificate is:
Stefania Priolo
Congratulations!

Happy St. Paddy’s Day!

Spring Specials for the month of March:

Blending for Spring

Come in for 1hr custom blending instruction with me. Learn the basics of blending essential oils, aromatherapy tools of the trade & go home with 3 unique blends to use at home:
1 body lotion
1 massage oil
1 perfume

offer good for March:
*bring a friend and save an additional $10 each

$65

$45

Body Reading Spring Special

Would you like to try an intuitive healing session but don’t know if it’s right for you?  Try the intro session designed for feet or hands only. Includes a gentle massage for either your hands or feet.

25 minute sample session

$30

Red Wigglers – my 201 children of the earth

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worms out and about

This past weekend I taught a workshop on composting and the importance of soil, nutrients, minerals, organic matter.

It was quite an undertaking (ha ha).

The Pièce de résistance was my newly created Red Wriggler Worm Farm Condominium complex. Red Wigglers are the master chompers of the earth. They eat their weight in food scraps every single day. Can you imagine doing that?

It was so much fun creating this awesome, indoor composting project I wanted to share our visual progress.

materials

Materials required were tupperware (3-4 containers), Red Wiggler worms (which you can get at a Reptile store or online at Compost websites), newspapers or leaf detritus, some dirt, food scraps, drill, and paper.

Template to measure holes
Drilling ‘elevator’ holes
I had started my worms in a few cups of garden dirt and a single container. Then I added some kitchen scraps (mostly vegetables, some cereal -they love cereal, and fruit). I purchased about 200 worms so I could start out small. (That’s about 3.5 ounces or 100 grams)

The worms take a few weeks to get settled. Yes, they get stressed with a move just like we do!

So for the first few weeks, you want to give them only small amounts of food to get started. They are actually eating the microbes growing on the food scraps, not necessarily the decaying food itself.

Once they have had time to enjoy their 1 level bungalow, we planned out the makings of our condo complex. I decided on a 3 level so it would cause to much uproar in the cat community of our greater ‘neighbourhood’.
We purchased some tupperware containers (which caused us some trouble – more on that later) and set out drilling holes in the lids and bottoms for only 2 of the 3 containers. The top lid and bottom container have to be fully sealed, right.

The sanding of rough edges.

Using a simple paper template we drilled holes in the lid and base of 2 containers so that they would be lined up and the worms would be free to travel via our ‘elevator’ to the various levels. Since this was pure child’s play, I made sure I had a child on hand to help me figure it all out!

Testing of our ‘elevator’ holes.

When testing the location of the drilled holes, we noticed that these particular containers had ‘feet’ (plasting nobs sticky outs) that allowed for too much space between the lid and the bottom of the top container. This would be an easy escape route for our fellow worm composters. We had to implement a secondary step to seal this leak.

See the picture below.

Tubes made of yoghurt container plastic. Taped on.

Note to self: get flat bottomed containers and lids next time!

After we made the improvised yoghurt tube elevator shafts, we could assemble the worm condo with confidence. The escape routes were plugged.

test assembly of condo complex
note: each level has air holes – they need air!
The bonus feature of using tupperware containers is that the lids are interchangeable. Thus, as the worm composting ground level unit fills up, and the worms migrate upward to better food supply in the levels above, you simply remove the bottom lid, empty out the compost contents into the garden or containers and continue the process!

Finally, we added some more dirt, bedding, and food scraps into the upper level of their condo complex and the worm condo was complete.

Worm resources:
http://www.redwormcomposting.com/quick-facts-about-worm-composting/
http://www.magicwiggler.com/Buy.html
http://www.unclejimswormfarm.com/

Toronto:
http://www.cathyscomposters.com/worms.html

Ode to spring time smells (no, not the perfume stink you find in stores)

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This the season for flowers emerging from their earthly cocoons and growing gingerly through the rain soaked grasses into a world full of birds, bugs, and animals. Tis also a season for smells: some divine like the green, freshly mowed grass; some exciting like the subtle, rich, heavy smell of impending rainstorms; some soothing like the lily of the valley aroma cascading and floating like a cloud across the landscape until it wafts up to your nose.
For those of us unlucky enough to not have the space or time to wallow in mother nature and enjoy these spring time smells, we get to enjoy the plethora of synthetic, imitation, wannabees of perfume. Whether in the department store, restaurant, or confined in an elevator, we all have had the ‘fortune’ of smelling one perfume or another.  So how does it really work?
What is perfume trying to be? What is it trying to accomplish? Ever wonder how that gorgeous aroma you smelled on a stick in the store smells so horrid by the time you get home? Don’t like it – there goes $75.
Maybe we just need to learn a bit about perfumes, the beauty of combining aromatic molecules, no? Maybe we don’t really give a shit and just wish to pretend that we are trying to smell good. Either way, one of my favorite passages about perfume is from Luca Turin (check out his remaining blog posts here)  and his book The Secret of Scent. He has an incredible way of making aromatic compounds accessible to the lay person, and while doing so, is funny and interesting. His take on perfume: “smell becomes perfume: chemical poems”

excerpt:

“A perfume, once it has become familiar, works like an accurate clock. The procession of odorants, precipitous at first, stately later, tells us where we are in the story. Spray it on after work. The top notes, the first ones to fly out, say it is still early in an evening that feels full of promise. Next come the heart notes, where the perfumer’s art really shows itself, where fragrance tries (like us) to be as distinctive, beautiful and intelligent as possible. Lastly, by three a.m. the perfume has literally boiled down to its darkest, heaviest molecules at a time when our basest instincts, whether for sleep or other hobbies, manifest themselves.”
 Perhaps not every aromatherapy blend, perfume, or household smell has to be a poetic masterpiece. Or, maybe it ought to be. Maybe we should at least demand clarity, pure tone, accurate pitch for what it’s worth.  In Luca Turin’s other book on perfume aptly named, Perfumes, The Guide, he discusses the world of perfumes.
(A good perfume is a complex thing that cannot be thrown together
watch this video on a sample perfume)

There are too many launches in too short a time. They are hastened to be completed before another perfume house gets a whiff (pun intended) of the latest formula. Luca Turin writes that “fine fragrance is getting dangerously close to a ringtone: inventive, often distinctive, catchy even, but with lousy sound quality” p. 17 So that is what our aromatic lives have been reduced to: fun, quick, easy, pop-music smells. Where everyone smells like something, but no one stands out; what is the point?
That’s like everyone riding the subway playing their music outloud – no earphones.
It may be one reason why the natural movement keeps gaining ground. There are a multitude of beautiful perfumes to be had with a few essential oils, or even herbs from the garden. A combination of 3-4 plants easily contains at least several hundred aromatic molecules creating an odorous bouquet. Collect some fine pine needles, with a rind of lemon and steep on the stove. Let the aroma spread through the home without a synthetic residue. Forget the synthetic scents. Try some freshly squeezed orange peels next time you need a fresh fix in the bathroom.
The spring time is one of abundance, when it comes to aromas.
You can pick up lily of the valley, lilacs, growing herbs of feverfew, sage, marjoram, even the sharp ping of chives. Enjoy the freshness that mother nature has to offer and be healthier, happier for it.

Spring sprouting for fun or just basic survival

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Last night we watched Food, Inc. My hubby said he no longer wants to eat anything at all.
With our food controlled by a handful of companies it is easy to freak out and panic about what we are eating, really.
GMO soybeans are in majority of our foods and we don’t even get to know about it?
Cattle, pigs, and chickens are abused physically, frozen in the trucks in our winters, sick and healthy mashed together because of automated Processes. If you truly are what you eat, why are we surprised that there is so much unrest in this world?
Why are we surprised that there are so many angry, mean, hurtful and hurting people in this world?
We create foods that are destroyed and devoid of life before they even hit the store shelves.

Where is the humanity? It is long gone.

Why do we need to buy 1.99 chicken meat?

Why do we need to buy it at all?

When we purchase pop on sale made with high fructose corn syrup, we have already paid for it with joint pain, future diabetes, premature aging of our cells and higher taxes to cover everyone else’s rising health needs.

Last week I attended a container gardening workshop – timely for the season ahead but also for the viewing of that food documentary. I have no fewer than 5 separate pots of seeds sprouting as I type. Sprouting peas, broccoli florets, alfalfa, clover bathed in water twice a day.