This is what i picked from our garden today..

I am still in awe that I can just walk outside and "pick" my dinner and I will never grow tired of basil and whatever else is blended with it.

Speaking of Basil

Besides how much I love to blend it with pasta ,it has such magical lore that I love to plant it all year for the Luck and Love it brings.

In India, Hindus believed that if a leaf of basil was buried with them, it would get them into heaven.
In Italy, basil was used as a signal for love; a pot of basil placed on the balcony meant that a woman was ready for her suitor to arrive.

According to Helen Noyes Webster's 1936 Herbarist article, the first mention of basil was by Chrysippus : "Ocimum exists only to drive men insane" . In his seventeenth-century herbal, Parkinson claimed basil could be used "to procure a cheereful and merry heart" .

Basil's folklore is as complex as its flavor and aromas. In terms of its legend and symbolism, basil has been both loved and feared. Its associations include such polar opposites as love and hate, danger and protection, and life and death.

Whatever you believe ..to me basil has brought a feeling of Luck and Love and it is what I look forward to the most as soon as the summer solstice is upon us.
I do grow basil in the house all year but I feel that the time when it is the most magical is when it is grown outside and exposed to sunshine and rain.

I am a bit sad to see my garden dwindle but it brings the harvest of autumn and a freezer full of summers bounty.

Happy End of Summer,almost time to pick some apples !!!

How Butterflies came to be..

Its August but it feels like autumn and I am welcoming the breeze,the freshness in the air and glimmer of sunshine that promises a sky filled with diamond like stars..tonight we are graced with a full moon,pure magic !

Ever since my grandma reached that twinkling sky,I have seen butterflies,Monarch butterflies to be more specific,at least thats what I think they are based on research..you know the orange and black almost mysterious ones that seem to be the largest and most elegant..

Here is what I learned in my quest of the Butterfly,some I have heard before,some of it is new to me and all of it gives me hope that "death is not the end"....



The Maori believe that a person's soul returns to earth after death in the form of a butterfly. The Finno-Gric people believe the soul leaves the body as a butterfly while a person is dreaming. To the Greeks, the soul was a tiny person with butterfly wings. In southern Germany it was believed that the dead are reborn as children who fly about as butterflies. Many medieval angels are portrayed with butterfly wings rather than birds.

In Mexico the butterfly is a symbol of the fertility of the earth.
and ..
In Burma, rice is said to have a butterfly soul. A trail of husks and unthreshed rice is laid from the field to the granary so the soul may find the grain or none will grow the next year.


A Papagno Indain story goes like this ...


How butterflies came to be, a Papago Indian story


Soon after the Earth-Maker created the earth, Iitoi, Elder Brother, was walking in the sunshine and heard children's voices as they played happily. He put the colors from flowers and fallen leaves, yellow pollen, white cornmeal, green pine needles, and a bit of golden sunshine into his magic bag. Then he called the children together and told them to open the bag. When they did, the first butterflies flew out and the children's hearts were glad.



Today many ecologists regard butterflies as a keystone species, and they will count butterflies per acre in an attempt to determine the health of an ecosystem, perhaps in a manner not altogether different from that of diviners in the ancient world.