
they said because of our thickness, we would never measure up to the standard of beauty





i am enough
i am love
i am a spark of the divine

i ain’t smiling and that makes me smile from the inside out.
there are tasks i want to {BE} and do and there are tasks i do not want to {BE} and do.
leaning into those take that bring me joy is what i {Be} and do today and the next day. and the next.
that’s all a bear can ask for. that’s all i want. and {Be} and do.
i ain’t smiling. but i’m wide arse, teeth shining, smiling for me – on the inside.

Aged garlic, deep coloured. Dark brown to black cloves. An ancient East Asian practice of placing garlic in a warm, moist environment to allow the cloves to turn black over time. Something new that crossed my path while visiting a garlic farm on the Isle of Wight last week. Something I got the opportunity to taste within a black garlic, chocolate and cherry cake. Yummy.
Visiting the garlic farm has fostered a new appreciation for garlic and all its properties, culinary and medicinal. It’s a remarkable herb which has been showing up in most of what I’ve been eating since.
The next step is to attempt to grow garlic as I start to create a winter salad garden as part of my applied permaculture design portfolio.
Still doing it even if it’s a slow process and I haven’t updated my permaculture blog in a while. But I’m getting back on it as I complete another Permaculture Design Certificate course with Liz Postlethwaite again called The Gathering. And as I start to complete the permaculture teacher training course as well this autumn so I can become qualified to design and teach my own permaculture design certificate course.

A fellow creative called out for submissions for a collaborative, community zine while she took compassionate leave after a death in her family.
Sarah Shott @ The Compost Heap made the call and I answered with a poem. The theme was hope.
You can read the full version over on Sarah’s website.
My contribution is above along with artwork from Nicole Madonna (Pennsylvania, USA)
Enjoy.