The Way Life Changes

How was I to know that nine years after the fact I would be writing about how I met my soulmate in a novel?
I've gone and done it! I've joined NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, here:

http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user/533792

and, so far I have a few words up there. My first half-day and I have 2,173 words all counted.
It's fun, it's scary, but most of all, it's SO creatively satisfying!

I've written many poems in my life, a short story or two, and many personal essays along the way, but never an actual novel.

Well, I am now.

In a dream last night I swam in a shallow, shining sea, a comfortable experience equal to that of being in a spa, being cared for and cherished. Water to me is the emotional composite of my psyche, so maybe that means that my writing, my diving-in experience of writing this novel, is the cherished mode that I have so long desired to embrace. Is this what the watery light in my dreams is trying to tell me?

I am trusting my writing instinct that this story will write itself.
Here's to novels and stories!

Stella, the Wildwood_Planet_Lady

Want to grow your own Organic Strawberries?

I'm a published author! :)

Here is one of five articles I've written for GrowingRaw.com, a great website for gardening hints and help. Trina is a fine lady and I've enjoyed working for her... really, "work" is not what I consider my writing times; I think of them as my zone times - I'm writing, I'm happy, I'm in the zone, what could be better? Hope you enjoy it:

http://www.growingraw.com/growing-strawberries.html

Autumn colours are here, and I'm happily snapping away at the first "Fall Flowers" that I've experienced in four years. I was away from Canada since January 2006 and just returned this past March, so I didn't get to see Fall for all that time. I'm busy making up for it now. With my Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ28, with 10 mega pixels, and 18X Optical Zoom, I get to close in on the subject and the sharpness is incomparable. I love my new camera, our new home, the new season... and, might I add, my new job.

I'll post another entry in a while, but for now, enjoy the strawberries!
Stella Raymonde

Fall In Abundance

A Wildwood View

I think it was Henry David Thoreau who said, "In wildness is the preservation of the world." All I know is... MY preservation is dependent on the wildness that surrounds me. My physical, mental and emotional states depend on the herbs that grow wild (and cultivated too), and on the solace and rejuvenation I collect from it every day.

My forest is one that has been ravaged by a ruthless woodsman a few years ago. Slowly, it is trying to heal itself, hiding the scars with green growth and grasses. I look upon the result and I am so thankful for Gaia's powers. Her regenerative powers elevate my consciousness, inspire me to re-new myself as she does. To start over, to re-commence a long-ago journey that is still very fertile and alive in my heart.

Here, then, is a meditation I wrote yesterday, looking upon the spot of green outside my window, the view from my new writing-craft room.

Fall in Abundance

The dance of the leaves:
joyful reminders
Possibilities
Nature creates multiples of itself
A million times over
Year after year
Never any want, any need - no scarcity mentality there
Abundance throughout Her web of Life

Why is it that I “want”
It’s all there - already
Just reach out and do, take, feel, write, be, create

Fall into the freedom and let go
Sway as the branch and dance as the leaf
I will be blessed
As I fall into the abundant forest
Right outside my door
All I need to do
Is go out and
Embrace the dance

Copyright 2009 Stella Raymonde Savoie Johnson

The Balsam Poplar ~ the plant for which this blog was named ~ Populus balsamifera, has come through again for me, great healer that it is. I had a raw sore inside my upper lip and suffered for three days with the pain every bite or sip of drink caused. I went to Balsam because it contains sooo many wonderful little healing phytochemicals: antibiotic, antiseptic, antibacterial, antifungal, and topical healing, among others. Isn't it just a WONDER-drug, this lovely tree?

The Mi'kmaq of this region used it for so many healing practices and I can see why. It's not just the unopened leaf buds that contain healing magic, also the bark and the leaves themselves. My sore was gone after just two applications! I also used it on Colin's foot after he developped a deep open wound from walking in wet mud that seeped into his boots when he was helping Val to make our Spring connection to the house. It was evident after only one application that the Balsam Poplar tincture was working its miracle magic on his skin, and I was so happy. Up until that time, I had only used it for earaches and sore throats, but this proved to me that it can heal anything!

How did I acquire this magic for myself? We were coming home from St. Maurice after our visit to the folks who now live in the house where I grew up, and I remembered what my father had told me. I was relating this to Colin as we were driving along the St. Maurice road. He had told me long ago that the tree that used to grow in our front yard { A HUGE Balsam Poplar} when I was a little girl, swinging on the swing attached to one of its big branches, that tree came from ... this place that we were just at that very moment passing by, so I asked Colin to STOP! And he did. I got out of the car and oh, my, I inhaled the most blessed scent of balsam ever to whiff past my nostrils! It was here and yes, there they were: a stand of Balsam Poplars, some growing right on the edge of the road, shading the shoulder with their coppery leaves. I was thrilled!!!

I saluted and thanked this stand of trees for being there as I was growing up, providing me with so many hours of pleasure and shelter. I asked it for some healing power and I cut off several branches to take home with me. Each one had big fat buds - next year's leaves - on them and that is just what I was looking for. Arriving home, I put them in a huge jar with water in it, to keep them fresh and alive for as long as I could. That night, I made the tincture that healed my darling and myself. Since then, I've used them so many times! Oh, and the branches? They brought me so much joy by growing ROOTS on their tips!

I've planted all of them in their individual pots and intend on saving them over winter. The forest will protect them, I'm sure. I'm planning a great Wildwood day, just writing my articles and living a juicy day. Thank you, SARK, for "Juicy Pens, Thirsty Paper."

This is my FALL IN ABUNDANCE.

This is my Garden... a Wild, Healing Place

I have many blogs, but yet... I do not write in them on days when I do not have anything to offer my readers. I wish to make this blog a place of healing... a place where I can go to just write.
Write what's on my mind, in my heart, and what's happening in and around my self.

A Wild blog, a Wild Garden where many things can and do happen.

Firstly. We are..
moved back to New Brunswick, Canada.

That in itself is a tonne of news dropped down from a far distance. We are living in one room at my sister's and we are quite comfortable. Yesterday, Colin helped Bobby move our new home here, and it is in the yard, parked in their driveway. It's a big driveway. It's a big home!

Our own home. I want to grow myself as a writer in that big, long trailer. And I will have --- a Room Of My Own! Yes! What a blessing!

How long have I been putting off my writing? A very, very long time.
I've embraced digital scrapbooking, and I really enjoy it tremendously, but... my heart knows itself in the flurry of words that sprout from my fingertips, direct from its core. That's really, deeply who I am. A writer.

Here I will write my stories and grow my garden of prose or poetry. Here I will be on the outside what I am on the inside.

Wait for the stories. They will come.

}{Le Petit Ecureuil}{

A Wildwood Update to Friends & Family

Dear Friends & Family ~

This is a combination personal letter and Stella’s SoulZine that I am sending to all my friends and subscribers. It’s an update of what’s been happening in our neck of the woods… Wildwood, to be more precise.

Many of you are familiar with my poem “Daydreams” which brought Colin and me together eight years ago. It’s a little musing on wanting to live from the right side of the brain, living artistically and whimsically. When I applied to come to Australia, the Immigration department wanted a detailed Statement of our Relationship, so we both wrote our side of the story, including this poem, how we got together and have been so ever since. In December of last year, I submitted our story to a popular magazine here in Oz, called “Notebook:” Of course it was too long ~ the original manuscript of our story is over 50 pages and contains multiple photos ~ so I shortened it a bit. Well, it was accepted and since then, I’ve worked with their story editor (from Canada, no less!), tweaking and fussing over it until we got it right. She is a real talented editor! Then, last week we had the photo shoot.

The photographer was accompanied by a stylist and makeup artist who were all professional, yet friendly and efficient. Despite the wind and too-sunny skies, they managed to get some pics of us that they were all satisfied with, and it only took half a day. We were so glad to have that behind us! It’s not like we do this everyday, you know. :)

We will be getting a copy of those photos, so we’ll share some with you at that time. Our story will appear in the August issue, which comes out in mid-July. Just in time for my birthday! We are to get a copy along with the photos, but I think we will also buy ‘a few’ to send over to Canada.

So that’s our news for now.

I’m in the process of reading the book “A New Earth” by Eckhart Tolle, with whom Oprah produced her Skype videos, a must-see as ‘school’ classes of a different kind.

It’s not an easy book to read, and not everyone who picks it up will like it or what it asks of her/him. If, on the other hand, you are looking for a book to help you change your life for the better, well, this is it. In simple-to-read format, Tolle makes profound statements that will rock you to your core.

Speaking of writing, here’s a little poem I wrote lately, thought you might like it.

Calm

As the day is made of light
from the sky
The soul
Lets herself go
Fetching star shine to brighten
Her projects ~

Her prospects
Are unending
Never failing
To impress
Upon us how very much
We need to remain
Calm
And let her come in
To see
To visit
To whisper
To in-spire
Our very need
To create
Calm

© 2008 – Stella Raye S. Johnson

Quotes for you:

"Could we change our attitude, we should not only see life differently, but life itself would come to be different."
Katherine Mansfield

"A moment's insight is sometimes worth a lifetime's experience."
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Cheers and Wishing you all a great weekend and month of June,

Stella & Colin Johnson

Welcome to my Wildwoods!

When you enter a "wild" place, you get the sense that anything is possible here, anything could happen. Something magical, perhaps, or at least out of the ordinary. We live such ordinary lives, don't we at least need a little adventure, perhaps a "wild" adventure once in awhile to spice up our maybe humdrum days?
In making this adventure into the land of my dreams, of my whimsical fancy and imagination, I will keep a no-holds-barred attitude. Have fun, keep it clean, but reach into the beyond, or maybe reach down into the depths? ... wherever I will reach, I want it to be as a way to expand, grow, become, open and evolve.

I started reading "A New Earth" by Eckhart Tolle. Wise man, and wise Oprah for hosting the show that is bringing him to so many people. As I read, I will be posting my comments/insights that come to bring meaning for me. I have been living too long with only designing as my focus. I need to go inwards, to dive...

Let's start with "things"... Chapter 2, Ego, the Current State of Humanity
"Ego-identification with things creates attachment to things, obsession with things, which in turn creates our consumer society and economic structures where the only measure of progress is always more... A large part of many people's lives is consumed by an obsessive preoccupation with things... When you can no longer feel the life that you are, you are likely to try to fill up your life with things."

Deep questions to ask in my spiritual practice:
1) Is my "sense of self-worth bound up with things I possess?"
2) Do I "feel resentful or angry and somehow diminished in my sense of self when someone else has more than you or when you lose a prized possession?"

After reading the above last night before bed, I had a dream that might be saying that yes, I am holding on to something that is so unimportant ...

But more of that later...
have a nice moment, or two...
Stella