It's our first summer living on the river...
In October of 2021, I started getting serious about looking for a house in the country. With my passion for gardening and growing our own food, our modest .16 acre lot in town gave us no room to expand. Thinking I was just going to get a loan pre-approval, I had no idea that we would be in escrow in less than two weeks! While I was opening up a loan app, this house was being listed on the market. It is not what I had intended. My vision was a couple of months in the future - you know, after the holiday craziness. But despite the house being on less than a full acre (okay, I can make that work) it was on the river.
One of our first visits to the house in October 2021
It was hard to even pay attention to details of the actual house, the closeness to the river was so powerful. The were fresh rains, mushrooms popping out of the lawn, beaver swimming in the slough out back, and rainbows over the little citrus orchard. I just wanted to see the place at its ugliest so that I didn't fall too hard. "Show me the worst!". We crossed our fingers, put in a noble effort to make it ours, and lo and behold, we closed on it mid-November.
A few months earlier I had a vision at the Sacramento River. When our regular creek swimming holes were drying up in triple digit weather, we went to the river for our "Sunday Church" and driving away one Sunday I thought, "I'd like to live by the river". It felt far-fetched, but life can surprise you.
We moved in officially around winter solstice, and now I find myself, half a year later, making a collection of River Spells leading up to, during, and following the summer solstice.
This body of work invokes long summer days, mullein in bloom, moongazing datura, hot sandy river bars, the cool breeze coming off the water, and the simple magic of sprinkler rainbows. This collection has so much happy river energy; I hope you can feel it. I've been uplifted by my experiences on and near the water here, and I want to share that magic with you. Here are a couple of mullein and moonflower friends I met while kayaking the river near our house:
Verbascum Thapsus (Wooly Mullein) & Datura Stramonium (Moonflower, also known as Jimson Weed)
A nearby river bar teeming with life! The water table is running just below the rocks here and there are a wide variety of plants growing from mullein and nettle to wild mints and vervain.
I hope to share many more adventures with you from the river and the garden, as well as recipes from time to time. Is there anything you would be interested in having me share?
Heart, Sienna