Amor Milagre 7 Simple Ways to Show You Love Someone
Ask “What have you been thinking about lately?” Listen, smile, and open all of your senses.
Sit quietly together whilst doing something like reading, mulling over puzzle pieces, or listening to nature or an audiobook.
Walk and talk. Let your lives flow out and intertwine in the fresh air.
Share your stories and compare moments or times in your lives. Find similarities, differences, and silver linings.
Daydream and list goals and outtings to try out for the year. Book tickets, save stubs, scrapbook your observations, and repeat and expand things you have enjoyed.
Laugh over silly cartoons or old movies. Set a time every week, even for half an hour, to unwind and be young.
Be fearlessly and happily yourself, allowing the ones you love to know and truly adore you.
Bonus: Leaving love notes in pockets & books reminds your Dear Ones that they are special to you. You can also leave audio messages for them to save. Keep a kiss in your wallet. This is most helpful for them to refer to these sacred tokens of love on challenging days. Keepsakes can be free to warm hearts.
Amor Milagre Organic Gardening, Evergreens: Green Velvet Japanese Boxwood
Beautiful plants, tucked into earth with love, is our family’s favourite pleasure for spring weekends. Bring out the toys to help, too! This week, we are taking advantage of the pre-bug moment and doing up the gardens here at Rose Cottage. The snow melts a little more each day, with rain and snow flurrying over everything each night. Spring always feels soft and patient to me, and then it lends this gift to us. Doing what you love feels good, so we do it often. I wake up writing stories, and tuck in bed after painting the illustrations. Many many many…..new books are on their way, dear world. What do you love today?
Amor Milagre Organic Gardening, Spring Hats
Cloudy days are our favourite time to explore neighbouring towns in search of green treasures and fun new spots to revisit. We have been renovating and building houses for the past decade, so it’s refreshing to have a day off. Today, we found a lovely family-run nursery and farm where a very affordable juniper greeted us at the door of one of several massive greenhouses. We found a cute craft shop where people can learn how to felt and embroider. There were some ‘out to lunch’ signs so we’ll have to return to roam the bookshop. Some lovely women told us about fun annual holiday events…and we’re marking them down in our family calendar. Maine is not an easy place to find town things we like to do, so we really appreciate their time and sharing.
We support family/small businesses as we have one and know how much depends on every sale. Support your local talent and efforts whenever available. Today, I remembered the days of watering plants at a farm when I was a teenager. I baked pies and hauled in corn. The owners took everything seriously, as do I with my Amor Milagre. You have to. You want to. It just makes sense. Support creative ideas that help the world bloom, laugh, and heal.
Amor Milagre Organic Gardening, Evergreens
The front view is not the only one to consider. This line of evergreens is beautiful to gaze upon as we do laundry from the side of the house. Explore every windowscape and make the most of them. We love waking up to flowers, leaves, doves, and robins. I do space these low plants away from the windows so birds don’t become too exuberant at nap/bed times. We removed huge overgrown dead shrubs and trees from every side of our Rose Cottage years ago, and now we add in green structures each year to build it up. Remember, right plant right place to grow well.
Amor Milagre Organic Gardening, Evergreens
Planting in layers, repeating patterns of odd numbers, and varying the greens creates a lush effect over time. They even look so sweet now. Leave proper spacing for your purpose and plant type. Bulbs look even more elegant when surrounded by green friends. Leave leaves alone. Allow the wind to stir and blow your leaves about quietly. They become soil and nutrients that block unwanted plants.
Amor Milagre Organic Gardening, Evergreens
By slightly layering the evergreens, the result is a spaced out line with room to grow. This gives the plant its own air to thrive in while providing a privacy screen from the road and house. This used to be just a lawn. We planted hundreds of plants to replace most of our grass, added pathways, reduced the need for mowing, increased our pollinator count massively, and provided homes for wildlife. We use a push or electric mower for the bit of lawn left, only necessary once or twice a year. Thyme beds are low and self-sufficient. Neighbourhoods can be quiet enough to enjoy bird songs. Choices matter and can make a huge positive difference for everyone’s peace and health. Plant for pollinators. Shall we all have a beautiful year?
Amor Milagre Organic Gardening, Evergreens
Periwinkle alba and creeping thyme is our garden floor. It took a few years to grow the carpet, but the bees love it! This replaces lawn and prevents other plants from taking over. The flowers are gorgeous! We only plant perennials as we’re into building up our natural investments. Save your seeds and spread them!
We hope to find some healthy, affordable Italian cypress and green giant thujas to layer in as a privacy screen near our fence. More garden updates soon!
Ah, yes…thank you rain for watering in our baby plants…
This snowy, rainy, hailing week of spring, we added some structure to our newly hand-renovated organic garden. A line of five baby Dwarf Mugo Pines was spaced out into the front border. They will grow up with three Japanese boxwoods, daffodils, tulips, and a spreading carpet of bee-loving thyme and alba periwinkle flowers. More lavender will dot in here later. These candle cone cuties are slow growing and can be annually shaped or left wild to sprawl. We’re excited for these pretty pines to be a layered part of our cosy winter garden. They will bolster up summer blooms as well. After the snow melts down, enhancing the soil, we’ll be doing our big spring garden tidy up, editing, pruning, and more planting. I’ll add some archival garden-themed fine art photography prints to my shop this year, too!
A plan for more drought-tolerant evergreens is on our list of homey to do’s for our sustainably re-designed Rose Cottage. I will post about all the changes we’ve made to the gardens. It was a massively overgrown mess before we enacted the ‘right plant right place’ practice here, taking it all down first. Always do your research before planting. What is your zone? What is the expected size the plant could grow to? Colours? Textures? Number? Layers? Pollinators & wildlife? There are many things to consider. How far from the house is a good distance? You want to be able to age gracefully with your garden, making it as effortless as possible to care for, while enjoying the biggest amount of relaxation from your patch of healing earth.
Amor Milagre Organic Gardening, Evergreens
These are mad expensive times, so it will take more time to build up privacy screening with taller plants, such as junipers, Italian cypress, thujas, and more spruce trees. These more deer-resistant types reduce the gamble of plant care. There is so much less green in the world for wildlife to roam through now. We love animals to visit us, but we also care for our plants and don’t wish for branches to be nibbled right up come springtime. We have been covering our new shrubs in burlap, which helps to protect them as they grow. The long drive home from the nearest nursery is odd when one is seeing so many trees, just there…and our pockets feel skint. We understand the care and cost involved with growing, but still…it’s mad times for buying plants, or anything really. We recently divided up our house plants and more than doubled the potted plant amounts. We plan to take lots of cuttings to get started on growing more green air for our property, especially with our Mediterranean plants. Lavender and pollinators everywhere, please!
Happy Spring Gardening whether on your windowsill, balcony, yard, or field. Love, ~ Amor Milagre
Amor Milagre Organic Gardening, Evergreens. This row will layer up soon with more boxwood, thyme, and lavender.
Pollution Awareness:
We added three of the Dwarf Mugo Pines to this little front stone bed, recently designed to be a mini potager, a kitchen herb garden, as we have just finished our new kitchen in this area of the house. The new terribly smokey/loud unrelenting pollutive neighbours have poisoned this possibility. We’ll soon have to move the herbs, such as a thriving rocky row of sage, into the less sunny back garden soon. It is most upsetting not to be able to fully finish, work on, sit with, study in, paint, muse over, and enjoy the massive scale garden renovation we began five years ago when we moved in (whilst also renovating our entire Rose Cottage interior).
*Give everyone peace, especially on their own property. This easily preventable pollution needs to be illegal. If you smoke and listen to music, do it inside your own house. Our food in the front garden is polluted and now inedible. Organic gardening, and farming, only works if what is neighbouring you is not polluting your plants, soil, air, and water. We cannot go out, open windows, breathe, run, be…or even have peace inside. How…is this allowed? We need exercise and air. Their pollution has directly caused devastating health issues for our family. Change laws to save lives. Make sense. Care. Be kind. Keep your own life in your own house. Dreaming and working towards a home and garden of one’s own needs to be allowed to be enjoyed. It’s hard work and expensive, every year. I’ll post our garden before and after photos soon. The changes have been great indeed. We fight for our right to live every day, just as our neglectful world must. Protest pollution on every scale. Our earth needs protection and freedom to be.
We’re trying to grow healing peace for us…and for the bees here. When in the garden, one desires to think of nothing, no one, but only nature. That is healing, instantly. Let go of what controls and pollutes you and everyone. Live peace. Preserve & grow goodness for all…this is true equality.
This March, we are once again reviewing our pantry and foods, writing out more weekly staple recipes, and replacing anything that is not homemade with fresh cooks and bakes like our breads, pasta, and savoury crackers. We eat mostly fresh vegetables, but these other grain-based foods are not only healthier when handmade, but they taste amazing. This also means there is less to buy and less to recycle. We used to make mostly everything, but during renovations, and when we were building our new kitchen, we had to buy a few things. Now, we’re back to adoring our aprons and stirring up some weekly delights. My upcoming cookbook (vegan, organic, sugar-free) is growing, with a few new recipes being added in this spring. It feels good to grow and make our own food, to know what we’re consuming, and to teach our family how to be sustainable and healthy. We also lessen the concern about germs coming home from the store this way. Cooking is a way of life, and I’ve always connected to it. You don’t have to take a class. Just try things. You’ll get it. And then…enjoy!
Tonight’s little dinner is a sumptuous pasta of fennel, peas, garlic, beans, lemon, and fresh noodles. The dough is like tender dumplings, and it hardly takes a moment to do. The process is fun and soothing, especially after a long day of testing various types of artwork on the new printer… I am very particular about colour matching. Why paint something with beautiful colours just to have it be so very far from the original? My eyes/brain sense colours well. I only wish printers did, too. I’ll make sure the prints are accurate before releasing my newest collections.
New Spring Nursery Baby Animal Art Prints are coming up! The book illustrations are featured in my upcoming Green Witch Children’s Book. They’re very sweet and come in neutral natural colours to suit any nursery design.
Little cooks love to name their very own noodle styles, reminiscent of how each region and family in l’Italia name their pasta. This one is like a shorter twisted pappardelle, which we did cut the dough with that special rolling pin. It’s fun to collect all the different pasta tools. I’ll show a pasta here soon, made with a pasta machine. We also like to make ravioli.
Amor Milagre Baking Fresh Bread, Vegan Organic
Every week, I make bread and biscuits. It is a meditation. The house is scented in love. Fresh bread and soup are simple earth-connecting sense memories. We love to keep our food tasting how it was grown. Carrots taste carrots. Soon, we’ll be in our gardens, growing up fresh herbs, veg, fruit, and flowers. I very much look forward to sensing the pollinators again. Those sweet bees…
Amor Milagre Baking Fresh Bread, Vegan Organic
I may do part of my film-plan to share cooking lessons again. I’ll post about that growing project later on when I have more time. This month is all about editing books and releasing very patient collections…ones that have been waiting on my desk for me to catch up with them. My unique wax seal stickers release this week! Wishing you a peaceful day, ~Love, Amor Milagre
Music of the Moment: I’ll be on the Water, Akron Family
My husband found my old ipod in a box and I’ve been enjoying my old mixes, though my poor ears and scalp aren’t used to wearing headphones anymore…ow. We’ve been very quiet this past decade as baby cries, house building/renovations, and neighbour pollution are painfully overwhelming to the senses, especially with hyperacusis, high sensitivity, PTSD, and blinding/deafening migraines. It is a violent harmful act to inflict inescapable sound and vibration pollution on others. Listen to music so that only you can hear it, inside or with headphones. I moved away from unkind loud houses and cities in search of quiet nature, only to have our neighbours smoke endless poisonous fogs and blast a wall of unending sound/vibration pollution of their music most of the year. No, this crazy town won’t help to prevent this. Why? I don’t know, as all of this inconsiderate maliciousness was illegal only a few years ago. Prevent suffering and illness with empathy. Our family has directly developed serious health conditions from these terrible neighbours’ actions. It’s most upsetting. It is not easy to deal with and puts us in danger. We don’t need more illness. This was supposed to be our healing time. So, in your life, be aware of how you affect others. How do your choices even affect your own Self? We are all connected.
Now, we’re making a few small ‘peeps’ here and there, even listening to music on low, out loud in the house, and singing along. I’ve missed listening to music whenever I want. I suppose I’ve been listening to it in my head all these years and it comes out in humming lullabies. Our homeschool music lessons and exercise routines have always been fun times to learn new songs, but it’s a fraction of what my past musical life used to occupy. We are hoping to find a family piano soon. I had to sell my instruments years ago for rent. We do have little harps and drums for school here, but I miss the bigger stringed echoes on my heart. I used to write songs and play, privately. I grew up in a place where music was taken too seriously, but simultaneously in a non-serious ridiculous way. It wasn’t a free space for expression, only for criticism. My little family now is naturally musical, and I encourage all the sweet notes to be enjoyed each day. I remember every note and lyric to every song I’ve ever heard. I’d like music to be mine again, a joy. Singing helps me to breathe. It’s a connection with the soul. The memory is astounding. I teared up at some nostalgic bus ride playlists…music was always my best friend. You can always count on music to suit any mood. It’s fun to revisit. A lot of the songs were so very 90’s, like Fountains of Wayne, I looked down expecting to see a striped shirt under overalls, a mood ring, and to look up to see an old TV playing Pete & Pete. It’s amazing how music is a time travelling portal. I skipped over a lot of the albums on purpose. It’s also a bit difficult when music can hold so much emotion.
Which songs do you light up from when those first familiar notes strum in your brain? I hope they’re good memories for you, Darlings. You choose everything! Listen to what you like now. I wish I had explored even more types of music when younger, and didn’t just absorb what was around me. The genres I love now would have definitely been more uplifting than what was playing then. My favourite blast from the past today was an old bluesy jazz song…one that went on and on in the best way…so full of life…and I had recorded it off of a staticy myspace speaker, yes… and now I’ll get to listen to all sorts of wonderful songs to find who made it.
Amor Milagre Journalling Self Care Daily/Weekly Practice
Once I reserve time to sit down and write in my journal, more than one page is filled in no time. The soul, body, and entire Self desires to be heard, to feel appreciated, and to suggest plans for future days.
Amor Milagre Journalling Self Care Daily/Weekly Practice
I love adding seasonal stickers to the blank page, lending a bit of fun and magic to tomorrow’s expressions.
Amor Milagre Journalling Self Care Daily/Weekly Practice
Knowing your inner world makes all the difference in your outer world.
Amor Milagre Journalling Self Care Daily/Weekly Practice
Snuggling up with tea and my journal helps me to feel safe, cosy, loved, and adored. All ideas are welcome. All complaints are allowed, and they are considered clues. I listen. I reread. I learn. I change. I plan positive ideas to try out tomorrow, next week, month, and year. Journalling, I find, is key for positive parenting. I also leave breadcrumbs in these books for older babies to follow and understand younger days. Sharing your feelings matters, not only to you, but to those who are trying to support and love you. Answering all of those questions you have is a valuable use of time. There is time in the day, if reserved. Unplug. Write life down. I love being surprised by what falls out onto the page.
Amor Milagre Journalling Self Care Daily/Weekly Practice
In future seasons, I will release a collection of guided journals. I find this practice simply helpful and want to share it with you. Taking time to get to know your days and inner self makes all the positive difference for a lifetime of peace, healing, and self-love.
We teach little ones to journal, too. And, of course, they love the stickers! What fun it is to play journal-ist of the self… (Sorry, I made a Papa joke.)
Make sure to set aside time to rest, heal, and recharge. Love, ~ Amor Milagre
