Perro

This is the short eared dog found in the Amazon, Orinoco and Parana Basins, Venezuela, Peru, Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia.   It lives in the tropical rainforests and moves very lightly on its feet.  It is a very elusive, shy dog that avoids people.  It has half webbed feet and eats fish, and berries and is carnivorous.   The males are smaller than the females and the males are loners who are quickly excluded from the all female pack once they have mated.  This dog is only about a foot high!

Manifestation of a Vision!

The two photos below show unlabeled and labeled ariel photos of the Ceremonial Grounds!  The photos will enlarge when you click on them for a better view.  The view shows about a 4 acre space and the field used to be a hayfield that suffered from years of compaction and previous to that years of fruit farming, it was a field that was all peaches at one point, approximately 15-20 years ago.  When we arrived it was all forest entangled with vines and prickly shrubs that one could not walk through.  The vines were entrapping and damaging the trees.  The field was poor soil and the hay produced poor in quality.  Over a period of about 5-6 years it has transformed, step by step to the Ceremonial Grounds that you see below.

In the photos you see the various Bateys, Gardens and Conucos.  The Ceremonial Grounds produce all kinds of fruits and vegetables and flowers for our sustenance.  The long raspberry patch produces many raspberries, strawberries, blackberries, grapes, and also pollen for the near by Bees who live in the fruit orchard.  We have found that the peaches here flourish.  The Bees pollenate the fruit trees allowing a greater fruit harvest, and simultaneously produce wax and honey.  We have apples, pears, peaches, cherries, walnuts, plums.  The gardens also produce an array of medicinal herbs that we also use for spiritual baths and for the purification lodge.  The purification lodge itself and fire pit (which together looks like a key) are surrounded by a circular garden of medicinal herbs, many of which are native to this area.  

The Conucos are Taino style mounds of soil for planting crops.  We tend to plant the squash plants in them.  Right next to them is a fenced in garden that this year have produced many potatoes.  We apply the practices of crop diversity and crop rotation to eliminate the need for applying chemical pesticides.  The diversity of crops attracts beneficial insects and ensures that even if the insects eat one species, many more are available.  

The Moon Batey or Moon Circle has a large Circular Garden around the actual Circle and Circular Pathway, and supports a wide diversity of flowers and herbs, as well as many flowering shrubs, including an array of butterfly bushes which attract the butterflies.  Many birds find places to make their nests in the Moon Garden.  The Moon Batey is surrounded by many trees, including flowering cherries, ginko, birch, magnolia, flowering pear.  We have planted many trees which are slowly bringing diversity and shade to the Ceremonial Grounds.  We released the vine-entrapped trees from the vines and this allowed them to undergo a strong growth over the last 5 years.  

This has been a constantly shifting and changing process. And the Story of this process is vital to remember.  We recall how the first thing we did in this "field" was put the horses enclosed in a one strand electric fence in the center.  Their manure was the first fertility this field had seen in years.  The area where they gathered to eat their hay and leave their manure became the center Garden, which began as a corn garden and transformed over the years many times in terms of design, to the form it is in now.  

The central batey started as a roughly outlined circle with some River Stones.  It was then filled in and then three gardens developed on its circumference, and finally last year trees planted all around it.  The locust trees that have been planted directly in the garden beds help to "fix" nitrogen in the soil, increasing soil fertility.  We have continued to use the animal manures and leaves to increase soil fertility.  

The space where the purification Lodge is now, has gone through many changes.  It began as a spiral garden planted with corn, then became a series of concentric circles planted with quinoa and amaranth (the amaranth self seeded and is still in that space today, coming back each year), finally it became the space for the Purification Lodge which had previously been higher on the hill where some herb beds now are.  

The Moon Batey also began as a rough outline with River Stones.  We then brought our work horse with his plow in to plow up the soil for the moon garden that surrounds the batey.  As the years went by the Moon Batey took shape and now is a sanctuary for many birds and insects.  In the forest to the left is the Women's Batey which cannot be seen because of the leaves on the trees.  Further up from the Central Batey is the Bohio and two more Bateys in the Forest.  

Down by where the Tobacco and Sage Garden now is there used to be a house many years ago.  It was one of the homes of the African Nazarite Community.  There is nothing left of the house, other than the stones that the neighbor took many years ago (before we arrived) to put on their home.  That is another story.  

Up in the top right corner are some of the animal fields and if you look closely in the nearest field, top right corner you can see the white alpaca and the dark brown llama hanging out.  

This Ceremonial Grounds began taking shape at the same time as Anani was conceived and she has carried an active role in this whole manifestation.  The Ceremony prior to her birth took place right within these Ceremonial Grounds, near by where the purification lodge used to be, and close to where her chickens now live.  She has been hands on in all the gardens from time she was an infant who would always want to be right in the middle of the action.  The only tradition and culture that she knows is this, which is a Living Spiritual Entity inside of her.  She knows all about the various plants, what can be eaten, what can't.  It is her "classroom" and it is her "library", her science "lab" and her gymnasium!  

A Pair of Guaraguao (Hawks)

Red Tail Hawk is a majestic predator who also will scavenge when convenient.  We often find him hanging out around a carcass with the Vultures who defer to him and only swoop in once he is finished eating.  We also find him flying with the Eagles from time to time. His red tail is easily seen and his size singles him out from the smaller falcons and the very small sparrow hawks.  We see him frequently flying in to chase away the falcons who attack our pigeons.  It is only very rarely when Red Tail will eat a pigeon, only if he has no other options, whereas the falcons seem to become obsessed with pigeon!

Red Tail transforms in color from summer to winter, he darkens in the winter.  Driving down the road we came upon a road killed deer carcass and two hawks who were scavenging.   Red Tail Hawk pairs will mate for life and raise their young together every year, they also tend to stay in the same territory and will guard it fiercely! 

We noticed that one of the hawks has a tag (a leg band) indicating that this hawk was either released after injured or was part of some kind of research project.  They are a protected species and they can be seen all over this area in abundance.  

The Red Tails are able to ride the currents and flows within the air and their flight is spectacular to watch.  Of course as a predator their eyesight is supreme.  When we stopped to watch them they left the carcass and flew up to this tree, however they stare down at us intensely, not giving up their territory or withdrawing their energy from the carcass.  Clearly embodying the spirit of leadership!

At this time of year the deer are on the move.  Earlier in the summer they are in small groupings of mother and fawns and sometimes in slightly larger groups grazing.  They tend to stay in the forests and fields.  From time to time we see their beautiful white flecked fawns.  By this time the fawns have lost their spots.  They habitually follow trails (deer trails) and will often cross the road at the same location day after day.  At this time of year the bucks are also very very active and also are often killed on the road.  At this time of year the deers are either running away from the hunters or chasing the scent of mating.  This causes a lot of carcasses to show up near the road.  

Although from time to time someone will pick up one of the carcasses, generally it stays and the various animals take advantage of the death of the deer.  We recently saw a buck on the side of the road and decided to pick it up, the local police stopped by and we asked if it was okay to take the buck, the policeman said sure and gave us a "permit" to transport the deer.  It was a surprise to us to discover that one needs a "permit" to transport a dead deer, even a deer that was killed on the road, and for sure most deers do not get permits to move them from one place to another.  In this area there are those who we know who are in the practice of eating road kill, especially in the winter when the carcass does not decompose quickly, some folks have survived difficult times in this way.  Probably the least honorable and least sensible way is for the county to pick up the carcass and throw it in a dump.  When either people, or the animals eat the deer then the death of the deer is utilized to sustain life.

The most common scavengers that we see during the day here are the hawks, the turkey vulture, the buzzards and of course the most adept scavengers of all, the crows!  The Red Tail Hawk has its preference for food: rabbits, rodents and snakes, but ever adaptable the hawk adapts to other conditions and to the winter season when snakes are underground, rabbits and rodents less visible, and will quickly take advantage of a road kill!  We pass by each day and observe the different birds eating the carcass.  From the perspective of Palo and Taino this is a fascinating story of death and life and a opportunity to observe first hand the behaviors of the various birds that are also significant within Palo and Taino traditions!

Garlic Planting

This fall we created a new garden for the garlic, a raised bed garden made from stones and filled with the rich forest soil that had been further enhanced by contributions from a series of goats, horses, donkeys and a bull!  In this particular place on the Land the bedrock of Mother Earth literally is right at the surface and it would be very challenging to attempt to grow plants directly upon the rocky soil here.  By creating a raised bed we give the plants a foot of rich fluffy soil that creates ideal growing conditions.  The soil will be able to retain more water because of its high humus content and will be able to drain off any excess water because it is raised which will help the garlic from getting mold conditions while growing if we happen to have a year of an abundance of rain.  There are many places upon the Earth where either due to natural conditions (such as our bedrock area of the Land) or due to the abuse of the land through conventional agricultural practices which compact the soil, the soil is very hard and depleted.  Raised beds can transform these conditions immediately and allow us to grow a greater abundance of vegetables in a smaller space, which saves water and is easier to keep tended!

We have an assortment of garlic (hardneck, softneck and elephant) and some shallots ready to plant.

Above one clove of elephant garlic is as big as Anani's palm!  These are huge cloves, and there are only four cloves per garlic plant and they tend to have a milder flavor than regular garlic.  Garlic is planted in the fall, it begins its growth and then overwinters through ice, snow, frozen ground, to then emerge in the spring, grow throughout the Spring and is ready for harvest in the summer.  Garlic is a powerful medicinal plant, excellent for boosting the immune system.  The mere fact that it not only survives but flourishes through the cold conditions of winter is reflected in its medicinal power!  We utilize it crushed with honey or olive oil and taken by the teaspoon, or made into a garlic tea for colds and flus during the winter.  It is a natural antibiotic.  It is of course also a awesome addition to every meal!  We love to roast it directly on the grill in the summer!

We plant the garlic deep enough for about 2 inches of soil to cover its growing tip, then as the weather gets cooler we add a thick layer of mulch (leaves or straw) on top of the soil to further protect and feed the garlic.  The sticks are to label the different varieties for the purposes of discovering which garlics prefer our soil and weather conditions.  As we continue to select the best of our garlic crop for future plantings we naturally guide the garlic to flourish in our unique conditions.  This is the benefit of saving your own seed or in this case saving your own clove.  It is the very best of the garlic harvest that gets planted for the next year because we want to continue to improve the crop and if we would only plant the mediocre garlic we would be guiding the garlic in a mediocre direction.  There is a spiritual tool or truth to this simple process of choosing the garlic for the next year's harvest!

Anani loves to be involved  in planting all things, but the garlic is especially easy for children because the cloves are big and are easy to handle.  She also discovers that when planting garlic you do not take off the husk like you do when you cook, and that garlic requires patience, in fact almost a whole year of patience!  Whereas arugula and other greens will emerge within days and be harvestable within weeks!  This is a way for her to learn the natural rhythm of the foods she eats, and the rhythm of life and death and the seemingly contradictory elements of being able to plant garlic at at time when everything else is being harvested.  She is seeing that even within a cycle of "death" meaning winter, some things thrive and begin their process of life during this very season of "death".  

Anani is seeing that the Garlic that is harvested is "reincarnating" as we place its clove within the Earth, and that it then sends up a shoot, fills out its root bulb and becomes a full garlic plant once again.  She also sees this with the seeds from the tobacco, the vegetable seeds, and she sees this occurring naturally and through our action to collect and plant seeds.  She sees how every year tomatoes, borage flowers, calendula flowers, holy basil, and other unexpected plants come up because of the seeds they threw down the year before which have re-incarnated once again in the most unexpected of places as the wind or a bird or bee or even an animal that ingests the seed such as a fox takes a seed and drops it in a more distant place.  She sees that tobacco grows by the Sacred Fire from the seeds of the Tobacco that was offered ceremonially to the fire the year before.  This occurs more and more frequently as we enhance the fertility of the soil and bring in a diversity of crops and herbs to the Land.  We have naturalized plants upon the land that simply were not there when we first arrived.  Sweet Annie grows all over the field now, Amaranth grows everywhere, cilantro throws its seeds everywhere and tomatoes come up in every place where we have ever planted them.  This year in our tree nursery tomatoes came up from two years ago!   Holy basil (Tulsi) also came up and it turns out that holy basil is very very medicinal and makes a tea that is slightly spicy and delicious!  All the medicinal herbs can and are utilized for bilongos, cargas, and other Medicinal purposes.  

Plants are vital to us as spiritual-physical warriors!  At a time when the diversity of plants upon the earth are being attacked, at a time when the use of plants medicinally is also being attacked, at a time when the health of the people of the planet is also under severe attack, the plants are our life line!  We love and honor the plants upon the land, we are always bringing more plants to the land and reaching out to our Mother Earth in the spirit of Reconciliation through placing our hands, our sweat and our love upon her to grow an abundance of vegetables, herbs, fruits, nuts, flowers!  We don't bother to roll up our sleeves anymore, we cut the sleeves right off!  Not only is this process healing for our Spirits, our Souls and our Relationship with out Mother Earth, with the Ancestors, with the Spirits of the Earth, but it is also deeply satisfying!

Sage Harvest

Our Sage and Tobacco Garden have reached a fullness that only occurs just before the Frosts arrive. We harvest both before the arrival of the first "killing" frost that comes and in one night kills all the delicate foliage of all the plants that cannot endure the freezing of the water within them.  Overnight the tomatoes, annual flowers, pepper plants and our tobacco become limp and discolored as they collapse and return to Mother Earth.  We harvest the tobacco and sage before this happens, and timing is of the essence!

Sage is a Sacred Plant, a healing plant that is widely used across many traditions.  Its leaves leave a sticky and aromatic resin on the hand when touched.  Sage comes in multiple varieties from the decorative purples, reds, blues and blacks, to the culinary garden sages, and to the sages used for smudging and smoking- the Desert Sage and White Sage.  We use sage in abundance in our Spiritual Practices, and we offer it to the Ancestors and Misterios on a regular basis.

Sage is also a Medicinal Plant and we make teas from it to drink during Ceremony and as a healing tea.  The Sage grows in abundance here, loving the bright sun it receives in the Ceremonial Field and loving the soil, handling droughts with seeming ease.  These plants are a mixture of ones that we grew from seed and ones that we bought from an organic grower at a local herb festival.  

In the process of burning the sage, we are involved in a process of life and death, as physical form of the dried sage burns we see a transformation of that physical form to other forms which are also physical yet are also spiritual.  The aroma that comes from the Smoke feeds the Spirit, both the internal Spirit within us that receives that aroma but also the Ancestral Spirits within us and within our surroundings who also are receiving that aroma, which is a manifestation of the Spirit of the Sage itself.  Water is also released in this process of burning sage, and ashes are the residue that can then also be used for Spiritual Purposes.  Burning sage is a transformation of it but also a transferring of it from the physical to the Spiritual.  We enrich our Ancestors and Misterios every time we make an offering to them, whether it be a sage and tobacco offering, or offerings of Roots, Fruits and other Materials.  These offerings strengthen the Spirit and increase the Spirit's abundance and thriving.

There is a prevalent behavior of always asking the Spirit for abundance, thriving, prosperity, opportunities and so on, however if there is a stinginess in one's approach to the Spirit in terms of the offerings that one brings to the Spirit, then there is an energy of lack or stinginess that gets created and then perpetuated.  (Note the energy of stinginess has nothing to do with quantity, it is an approach and an energy that gets attached to an offering). When we grow the sage and tobacco ourselves or if we would have the opportunity to gather those sacred plants from the wild, we bring even more abundance and vitality to the Ancestors because we are exerting our love and effort in the growing and gathering of those plants.  We increase the "volume" of the offering (for those that understand the concept of "volume").  Our energy and our sweat become an aspect of the offering itself.  This is very different from purchasing a bundle of sage or tobacco from a shop where one does not know how it was grown, if it was grown from a spiritual perspective or whether it was grown purely for purpose of chasing the dollar bill.  

Not only does the homegrown sage itself embody an energy that our Ancestors will appreciate more but we also are able to harvest the roots of the sage which will then be used spiritually.  There are many aspects of the plant that are simply unavailable commercially.  We use the whole plant and the plant itself carries the vibration of the Land that we live upon!

We are very appreciative and grateful to the Ancestors and Spirits that have enabled us to progress to this point inside our experience, we are blessed to have the Land upon which to grow the plants, to have the fertility from the animals to enhance the soil, and blessed to have the Sacred Rays of the Sun and Sacred Waters of the Rain. (Note the first photo and the Rays of the Sun within it).   All these Sacred Mysteries enable us to grow the sage and it is truly a working together for us with the Mysteries to bring about this abundant harvest which will give us abundant sage to offer to the Spirits in gratitude and love.

For Anani this is especially important.  When we make an offering of sage, she knows the whole process from the planting of the seed, the ongoing water of the seedling, the transplanting of the seedling to the garden, the weeding of the garden, the observations of the growing plants, the smelling of their leaves all through the summer, the concerns about the lack of rain, the invocations to the Mysteries for Rain to come, the preparations and discussion about the harvest, the harvesting, the bundling, the drying, the observations of the various bees, and bugs that show up on the growing plant, and finally the offering of the sage to the Sacred Fire, the smudging, and the use within Ceremony!  She is blessed to see how the sage plant looks as a seed, a seedling and fully grown plant and then see how it transforms as we transfer the energy and spirit of the plant to the World of the Ancestors!

On our last count we had 87 bundles as you can see in the photos plus we also keep the woody aspects of the plant that are too rough to bundle easily that we use to put directly on the Sacred Fire or to smudge the space, and we save the roots.

For Tobacco Harvest:  "Nsunga,Tabaco"

http://caribbeanspiritualityandunderstanding.blogspot.com/2010/11/nsunga-tabaco.html

The Eagle Appears!

On the Day of the Dead we were harvesting our Sage from the Tobacco and Sage Garden, when the Crows got our attention as a whole clan of them flew high over our heads.  At that point Vultures appeared and then the Eagle.   

The Eagle came from the North, eventually disappearing into the Rays of the Sun in the South.  At first the Eagle was flying high, and only distinguishable by his size and the way he flies.  As he circled lower, we were able to clearly see his bald head!

We took special note of our conversation when he appeared, and watched him until he disappeared.

We were able to take these photos of him, although it was challenging and eventually the brightness of the Sun blinded our ability to take more photos.

(If you click on photo you will be able to see the eagle a little better)

In this photo below the Eagle is looking down.  The Eagle is a great blessing, and since we have moved to the Land we have seen Eagles more and more, earlier in the year one even landed on the Ceremonial Grounds.  This Eagle looks like a young adult (the "Eaglets" don't develop their bald heads until about 3 years old).  Since it was the Day of the Dead, seeing the Eagle over the Ceremonial Grounds was especially significant for us and uplifting!