In Albany there is a weekly gathering called “Spin Jam” where the local (and sometimes not) fire spinners collect, practice, and share skills. It takes place down by the Hudson riverfront where there is also a large homeless population. One evening a drunken homeless man rode his bike into what the spinners refer to as “the Eye” (an eye-shaped section of pavement outlined by bricks of a different color where fire spinning takes place and spectators are not allowed for safety reasons), parked it in the center, and began to look around confused as if lost. Two of the male spinners approached him aggressively; cursing and yelling and demanding that…

I live on a small, quarter acre of land that is town-locked in a community of perfectly manicured lawn wastelands. There’s a bike path with a small creek that my son and I enjoyed spending time with. He would throw stones as I cleaned up broken glass and litter and talked to the plants. Beside that creek I met Peppergrass and Wild Basil for the first time, both very tasty! I was excited for them to go to seed, to gather those seeds, and to attempt to plant them on my homestead and add their delicious flavor to my lawn pesto next Spring.  One day my partner and I brought…

One of my favorite “live action” lessons I had the awareness to recognize happened while I was going tubing with friends a few summers ago. We got to some rapids and one of my friends yelled, “Hold on tight!” and everyone gripped their tubes and jostled around the rocks and a few fell into the water. Not me. I decided to sit criss-cross-applesauce in the middle of my tube and put my total trust and faith in the river to guide me safely through. As I prayed to the river I seemed as if cradled by it, floating through the rapids without being jostled at all. When I got to…

The year is 2011 or 2012… Ayla Rose attended her very first (out of a total of 2) music festival. Growing up somewhat isolated on a horse ranch surrounded by woods, the second day of festivities overwhelmed her and she retreated into the surrounding woods. She found a little spring with a tree bowed down over it. It was just like the spring and the tree from Parlama, a small piece of the woods behind the barn, passed the pond, and through the prickers, that Ayla named, played in, and wrote stories about when she was a child. And so, she laid across the bowed tree and looked into the…

Those that know my history know that my longest battle has been for the health of my lungs. I had to have my lungs collapsed within the first few moments of my life and as a kid there was a limit of how far I could run before my lungs hurt. Ancestrally, my paternal grandmother died from lung cancer long before I was born. I smoked cigarettes for many years, vaped for many as well, before finally quitting in 2021. As a teenager, I smoked cannabis out of tinfoil bowls and scraped resin and plastic out of 2 liter bottle gravity bongs to smoke. I’ve had a chronic cough for…

We have a lot to be thankful for on the Hearth & Heart homestead. This year has been so full! I’m thankful for my health, of course, and how much the plants have come to support it this year! Breastfeeding has taken a lot out of me and I feel like I was sick at least once a month until I started taking the Mushroom Trinity daily. When I was sick, so many plants nurtured me back to health. My lungs needed the most support, and I am so thankful that the plants helped me heal from pneumonia without antibiotics. I am thankful for my partner, Adam’s, health. About a…