All posts tagged: natural

new magazine Mother Earth Living gets 5 stars

How did I not know?  I’ve been a Mother Earth News reader for years, but I let my subscription lag this past year (baby+garden = neglected garden) and therefore I missed the big news.  Mother Earth News is geared to the homesteader.  I don’t really fit that demographic with my little postage stamp sized lot, but I learned some really important things like how to compost, prevent blight, choose humanely-raised eggs, and bake bread.  More than anything, it let me indulge in my dream of starting a farm with fields of vegetables as far as the eye can see.  My magazines are all disposable, but my Mother Earth News issues will never get thrown away. The same group that puts out this magazine that I love  (Ogden Publications) launched a whole new magazine in October that is, for lack of a better way of saying it, meant for me.  I still love Mother and Plan to resubscribe again this year, but…hello Mother Earth Living. I stumbled upon it by accident.  A friend of mine passed …

finding beauty in nature and imperfection: wabi-sabi

Mother Earth News arrived the other day and I was drawn to an article called “Wabi-Sabi: Finding the Beauty and Peace in Ordinary Things” on page 50.  It was an unusual article for Mother, which usually has a focus on things like growing potatoes or installing eco-friendly heating systems.  This then led me to pick up a four month old copy of Whole Living that I’ve been meaning to finish for too long.  To my surprise, there was an article on page 102 called “Wabi Sabi Your Life: Simple Strategies for Embracing Imperfection.” I rarely read an article more than once and I found myself reading these two articles over and over because I felt so connected to this philosophy. What is wabi-sabi you ask?  It sounds like it should be a side to sushi.  It is really hard to find a proper Webster’s definition, but it is a Buddhist and Japanese idea that we should find beauty in flaws and connect with the natural world.  It is open to interpretation, but it seems to have …