On a limb with Claudia

This week it’s actually supposed to be over 50 degrees. We are planning an entire day in the bee yard getting the our 5 hives ready for spring. We will medicate the bees for disease and pest and get them ready for new queens. We have a hive that is, of all things, aggressive when smoked, so we need to split the hive and also re-queen. Working with bees is truly the first sign of spring.

Connecting with bees and nature is one easy way to decompress. Nature is always waiting for you to notice it’s beauty. One easy way to bring nature into your life is to learn to compost. Composting is the art of taking your kitchen cuttings, some dried material and dirt (think green, brown and black) and creating rich material that will enhance any garden this year. Check out this site for more information. Why make the effort? Composting decreases the pressure on our landfills and is literally a way of creating beauty out of refuse.

This is also a time of year to start looking at how you can enrich your life for spring. Where do you need support? Why not spend the next month or so looking creating a kind of “life compost” – a way of enhancing your own deep riches? Where do you need to enhance your resources? When spring comes around, you’ll be ready to grasp the rapid growth and opportunity of spring.

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Lindsey Williams recommended this recipe so highly, that we had to share! His favorite reformulated soul food recipe is Oven-Fried Chicken.

Oven Fried Chicken

2 tsp dried thyme
2 tsp dried oregano
2 tsp dried basil
2 tsp garlic powder
2 tsp kosher sale
2 tsp fresh black pepper
6 skinless, boneless chicken breasts
2 cups plain yogurt
2 cups Special K Cerial, crushed with a rolling pin or in a food processor or coffee grinder
Nonstick cooking spray

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
2. In a large plastic bag, combine the thyme, oregano, basil, garlic powder, salt and pepper. Shake well. Add two breasts at a time to the bag and shake to coat the chicken. Continue until all the breasts are coated.
3. Place the yogurt in a larg bowl, and the cereal on a large plate. Dip each breast in the yogurt and then in the cereal. Place the chicken breasts on a baking sheet sprayed wiht nonstick cooking spray.
4. Bake for 35 to 45 minutes, until the chicken is brown and cooked through. Do not cover or tunr the chicken during the baking process.
5. When the chicken is completely cooked, remove the baking sheet from the oven and let cool 10 minutes before serving.

Serves 6.
Nutritional Information:
227 Calories – 32 g protein – 4g fat – 194 mg Sodium

From Neo Soul by Lindsey Williams. Reprinted with permission from Avery

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It’s Friday. And for most of the country, it’s been wicked cold. Here’s a website to help warm and inspire you. Pancho Doll is an expert on swimming holes in the United States. His website has pictures and maps of some of his favorite swimming holes. If you are longing for a taste of summer, it’s worth checking out!

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It’s human nature to spend much of your time focusing on trying to improve things, make things better. Yet sometimes, now matter how hard you try, things don’t turn out they way you would like them to. Business 2.0 runs a fabulous feature every February that highlights 100 of the dumbest mistakes in business. What I love about this feature is that it’s fairly easy to see what someone was trying to do – even though they didn’t hit the mark. Some are outright funny, while others are just plain sad.

My favorite one is the 101st dumbest mistake. It’s a programming error on a football game that left one of the players 7 inches tall. Again, an easy enough mistake that lead to interesting consequences.

No matter what you try today, no matter what risks you take in your personal or professional life, just know that other people have risked more, spent more money, and done much worse. What’s the worst that could happen? You might end up on this list next year!

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Have you seen this article? Scientific American: “Hit” Songs Unpredictable, Thanks to Peer Pressure? I had a chance to catch up with the one of the authors – Dr. Peter Dobbs – for our Relating audio magazine. This is an amazing study with a fascinating outcome. People who were able to see what other people rated or downloaded actually tended to vote for the group instead of going with something completely different. Interestingly, there were songs that were rated the highest in one group, and the absolute lowest in another. Dr. Dobbs did say, however, that the awful songs were rated as awful, so something that’s awful doesn’t get to be fabulous. He felt that the key was to make interesting, quality products and ideas and keep putting them out there for people to listen, read and participate. He felt that over time, they would eventually hit. He mentioned that Harry Potter was turned down by 8 publishers before it was published. Interesting eh?

(The Relating Audio Magazine should be out mid-week next week!)

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Today is my birthday.

And what a weird thing that is. 364 days of the year, I breathe, plan, consume, sleep, perseverate (that’s a favorite), and well live. But today is the day that I took my first breath on this planet.

Oddly enough, at the exact time of my birth, my dog bit me finger. However ironic, it was an accident. She didn’t break the skin or even leave a bruise. Maybe it was a kind of cosmic reminder that with every birth comes a little pain. Or maybe it was a mistake.

If I was a Hollywood producer, I would probably use it in a movie as some deep message from the divine. Critics would decipher this meaning – “what does the dog bite mean for the upcoming year?” But I am not and it was just an early morning mistake.

When I was a child, I would ask for “World Peace” as a birthday present because my father was a firm supporter of the Vietnam war. That never went over well. Now I ask for music or simply a visit. I think my 7 year old niece wrote me a story.

Tonight I’ll get together with my friends at a local taco joint. That is if I remember to tell them. Uh, hey guys, we going for drinks! Tonight!

Happy freakin’ birthday to me!

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Every grove has some detritus. Rotting trees create fertile ground where new life emerges. Leaves fall. Animals live, breed and die on the forest floor. Detritus accumulates then, sometimes, in a flash is consumed by rushing flames leaving clear open space for detritus to accumulate again.

It’s harder to look to the detritus in our lives. Yet in order to grow, we each must stop for a moment and look at the detritus in our life. Sometimes, we can put it off until the detritus blocks our path or chokes out the sun and we begin to wither.

I found myself confronted by my own detritus when I took a sabbatical from my psychotherapy practice. In the silence, I realized that my life had become filled with relationships that did not work. In some, I took too much responsibility for everything. In other relationships, I under functioned. I hid from the obvious fact that these relationships weren’t working. And of course, there’s more. Detritus in my financial life. Detritus in my personal inventory. Detritus in my physical condition. Detritus in my mental state. Detritus filled every corner of my life. Whether I want to admit it or not, the detritus of my life has all but blocked the sunlight and oxygen creating a composting mess.

Every single thing in my life requires some fine tuning. Most relationships have blossomed in the light while some have withered and died. I have had to cut off broken and dead limbs from my life and the Open Grove. Slowly but surely, the detritus is clearing. Granted some days, like today, I feel knee deep in disintegrating, smelly garbage trying to shovel my way out.

As we focus on awakening in the Open Grove this year, it’s important to acknowledge our own detritus. Whether it’s unsaid apologies, boundariless relationships, financial debt and destruction, foolish conquests, or even just our own exhausted inability to keep our head above water, detritus happens. It’s time to clear out our lives so that we can awaken to the sunshine, rain and growth.

Just a Friday thought… Wanna borrow my shovel?

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