Because until recently I worked on Thursdays the delicious joy of unpacking the goodies was Himself’s.

But now it is mine again.  Is it sad that I geek out so much about fresh fruit and veggies? Is it tragic that two heads of corn this week made me smile?  Well I don’t care.  I love it anyway!

*  Readers, I know I blog about my cats too much.  I’m aware that as well as being a sad vegetable lady I am also a mad cat lady but again, I don’t care.  Here is Aurora’s new “thing”.  It makes me smile.

The light is the reflection of the sun from Himself’s camera lens.  What Aurora doesn’t understand is there is only a ten minute window each day when the sun is in the right place and there is an awful lot of angry mewing when the light is no longer there.

*  It is no secret that I am slightly addicted to Home and Away (hell, I’m really setting myself up as a tragic loser here aren’t I? ).  Every August Home and Away has a month long break in the UK (I think so we don’t catch up with Australia).  But now it’s September.  And it’s back.  Woo-hoo!!!  (Obviously it is still the same storylines repeated ad infinitum just with different charcters and it has been thus in the 20 years or so I’ve been watching it, but still…)

*  Finally after six months of “meaning to do it” I’ve reorganised my pantry.  The feeling of accomplishment is so much more satisfying than anything I’ve ever achieved in a desk job.

How many tins?  Clearly I am expecting nuclear war.

*  New term, new yoga students, new life – learning to redefine myself one day at a time.  More on this at a later date I think.

Over the course of my first twelve months in business my clients all seemed to be falling pregnant*.  I was a fertility goddess.  It was exciting to witness these miraculous changes in my students’ lives.  And also, if I’m honest, it was kind of disruptive.  You see there are so many postures and practices that need to be modified for pregnancy and sometimes I felt that I spent half my class running about giving alternatives to the expectant mums in the room. Nobody seemed to be getting my full attention.  This wasn’t fair on the rest of the class and it certainly wasn’t fair on the expectant mums – especially those ones who hadn’t gone “public” with their pregnancies for whatever reason.

So I bit the bullet and did this Yoga for Pregnancy teacher training.  It was expensive and I procrastinated for weeks trying to decide whether to spend the money or not but in the end I just did it.  And it was awesome.  It was the best £500+ I ever spent and it changed everything.

Within a month I started a new Saturday morning Pregnancy Yoga class.  A month after that I was fully booked.  A month after that I had a waiting list and then a second class.  Everyone was pregnant and everyone wanted to do yoga.  And I loved it.  It didn’t take me very long to realise that I loved teaching these classes more than any others.

Now, don’t get me wrong.  I love teaching any kind of yoga.  Whoever you are, whatever you do I will teach you yoga and I will love it, even if you don’t!  But this was something special.

You see readers, I’ve never been particularly secretive of the fact that I’m not very bendy.  No really, I’m not.  Some yoga teachers aren’t.  And that’s OK.  But there is an expectation sometimes that I “should” be able to get my leg behind my head and stand on my hands.  And I can’t.  With Pregnancy Yoga there is no expectation.  There is an openness and and honesty in a room full of expectant mums that I’ve never come across anywhere else.  As I said, I love it.

I haven’t taught Pregnancy Yoga for a year, not since I upped sticks and moved to Cambridge.  Last night I opened new doors to a new term and a new wonderful group of expectant mums.  I was nervous and excited in equal measures.  And I loved it just as much as ever.

You may ask yourself why somebody who has made the decision not to have children has taken to this role as a Pregnancy Yoga teacher.  I asked myself this question a lot as well.  And I decided that it is my way of taking on the “mother” role in life.  The feminine cycle of life is divided into three parts – maiden, mother and wise woman (I refuse to use the word “crone”, it’s horrible).  To fulfil the “mother” aspect of our divine feminine doesn’t mean we have to have children of our own.  For me it means having the opportunity to share this gift of yoga with a roomful of expectant mums, hopefully helping them with their pregnancies and giving them a safe place to let go of their fear and worry.  To me that is enough, and I hope this is what I give.

* The female ones, obviously. I’d be a pretty awesome fertility goddess if the men were getting pregnant.

~~~~

I teach Pregnancy Yoga at St Andrew’s Hall, Cambridge, UK on Tuesday evenings.  For more information go to http://exploringyoga.co.uk

Anyway, what to do with all these apples?  Well you can make applesauce, apple pie, apple porridge pancakes (which you can veganise with a flax-egg), or you can make these yummy muffins.  They are so easy you can whip up a batch in ten minutes.

Ingredients
6oz/175g self raising flour
1.5oz/40g caster sugar
2oz/50g vegan margarine
3fl oz/74ml vanilla soya milk
8oz/225g grated apple
2oz/50g raisins
1 large rounded tablespoon of golden syrup

Method
Mix the grated apple, sugar, flour and raisins together in a bowl. Meanwhile in a pan over a medium heat melt together the syrup and margarine. Then simply add the soy milk and the melted margarine and syrup to the flour mixture and mix until you have a cake batter.

Yup, it’s that simple!

Spoon the batter into mini muffin cases and bake on 180*C/350*F/Gas Mark 4 for 30 minutes. Allow to cool for ten minutes then take out of the muffin tin and finish cooling on a rack.

Delicious anytime of day with green tea!

…a beautiful early autumn afternoon…

…the perfect start to the new term of yoga classes.

I have lots of new (both to me and to yoga in general) students this term.  Lucky them!

Are you learning anything new this autumn?

Yikes! Do you know your ayurveda fellow yoga teachers? Do you know your dosha? Do you have absolutely no idea what I’m talking about?

Ayurveda is Yoga’s “sister science” and, like ancient yoga practice,s is rooted in the Vedic traditions of India. Ayurveda finds its linguistic roots in the Sanskrit words āyus, meaning “longevity”, and veda, meaning “related to knowledge” or “science”.  It is is an ancient Indian holistic medical system involving diet, yoga, massage and herbal remedies to keep you at optimum health depending on your dosha, or physical type.

Throughout history Yoga and Ayurveda have influenced each other and different types and styles of asana practice have different effects on the doshas.  This in itself goes a long way to explain why there is no right or wrong way of practising yoga, there is just a right way for you and sometimes you have to go looking for it.  For example I am Vata dosha, this is the type rooted in the element air.  I’ll go into each of the separate doshas in more detail in subsequent weeks but Vatas need a slow grounded practice.  Yet for years I practised Astanga Vinyasa which, if I’m honest, always left me feeling high strung and exhausted.

I don’t know about you, but we barely touched on Ayurveda in our Yoga Teacher Training – there is an In Service Training module that can be studied once you’ve graduated but nothing during the course of the initial training.  In many ways I think this is a shame because I see Ayurveda as fundamental to the type of yoga a person might want to practice.  As yoga teachers we can never please all the people all the time but we can bring postures and practices into all the classes we teach that can benefit the different doshas.  We can also use a quick dosha assessment to help develop suitable personal practices both for ourselves and our private students.  I often think that whole “finding the right yoga teacher for you” has as much to do with the practices appeal to your dosha as it does with you and the teacher’s chemistry.

How much do you know about Ayurveda?  Has it helped your yoga practice and/or teaching?

~~~~

Over the next three weeks I’ll look at each of the individual doshas in turn and discuss what food, practices and lifestyle adjustments can help to balance them.  Until then you might want to research into what your dosha is if you don’t already know.  There are many online resources and quizzes to find out what your dosha is so why not try one of these.

http://www.whatsyourdosha.com/

http://www.internethealthlibrary.com/sq/ayurvedic-assess.htm

(Remember that these quizzes do tend to be rather general and more than one answer may be appropriate to you.  Try to answer according to what has been true for the majority of your life).

Recommended Reading

Yoga and Ayurveda – David Frawley
Yoga for Your Type – David Frawley
Ayurveda – Life Health and Longevity – Robert E Svoboda
The Book of Ayurveda – Judith Morrison

Disclaimer: I am not an Ayurvedic doctor and these posts are merely an overview for anybody who is interested in reading more about Ayurveda.  If you have a pre-existing medical condition please consult a trained Ayurvedic doctor.

One red tomato.  Yes.  Still only the one.  So today we picked it and Himself fried it up with mushrooms for sandwiches.

It’s been a bad year for tomatoes, Ma Yogini’s garden has only produced two red ones and many miles and an ocean away in Oregon Yancy isn’t having much luck either.

However, one red tomato is better than none.  Many green tomatoes is better than dead plants.  This is our first year of tomato growing after all.  Next year apparently we’re growing them upside down.  I’ll keep you posted.

The growing of vegetables fits well in my year of mindfulness.  Slowly, slowly during the course of this year I am learning to slow down, to observe the world around me, to stop rushing on to the next thing and the next thing and to appreciate where I am right now.  Learning to let go, not to grasp onto things and allow life to take me where it takes me.

As I watch my garden grow from tiny seedlings to plants bearing fruit I realise that season by season, year by year the cycles of life continue and this happens whether I am rushing about like a headless chicken, or sitting back and enjoying what happens around me.  Nature doesn’t much care what I do as long as I don’t interfere in her workings. And there is a lesson in that.

~~~~

To end today on a gardening related theme why not enjoy Emma’s post from a while back – a yoga sequence for gardeners.

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But there is another garden in Cambridge that I love to spend time in and that is Ma Yogini’s beautiful walled garden.  Ma and Pa are more urban than suburban, living as they do right in the centre of Cambridge.  You’d think that in itself was lucky, but the cherry on top is this beautiful suntrap of a garden that they have as well.

Over the summer I’ve posted several pictures of Ma and Pa’s garden all of which have been met by rapturous comments from you lot.  So I asked Ma if she would like to do a monthly guest post on having a garden in a city, using walls and balconies to your advantage, that kind of thing.

So here it is post number one.  September!

~~~~

A garden is essentially a private space, the creation of those who work in it, and we mark off this space by erecting boundaries. Trees, fences, hedges, walls indicate the areas where gardeners set out , with often limited success, to control nature. The word garden derives from the ancient Indo-European ghordus which means enclosure and whose roots can be found in both yard and orchard. Most suburban gardens are fenced or hedged but for a garden in the centre of a town, surrounded by roads, shops and even a car park, a wall is an essential element and without which this particular garden could scarcely exist.  Not only do the walls protect the space from urban rush and noise but they are wonderful for growing things UP!

In the past the gardens of the rich and influential always contained a walled area for growing exotic plants particularly fruit and vegetables, producing peaches and apricots against warm, south facing brick walls and early vegetables in a sheltered environment. Such ambitions do not run here but these walls are precious, excluding noise, providing privacy and supporting ivy, wild pea, clematis and a passion flower – which dismally failed to flower this year, but no matter. There is always another time.

There has also been some limited success with runner beans but these are the beginnings of a project for next year – an experiment in growing vegetables among flowers in a limited space thus fulfilling the original concept of a walled garden as a verdant mixture of all things that grow.

Plants of the moment
So what is happening here at the moment? Early September sees the end of the rich flowering of summer but there are still some nice things to be found. Impatiens or Busy Lizzies are still providing colour along with their big sister from New Guinea and the fuschias will last until well into autumn but spectacular at the moment is this fern

Shuttlecock Fern

The fronds will turn golden brown quite soon but will remain in place until they are cut off in the spring to allow new growth. Ferns grow quite happily in pots if you want to grow on a balcony or patio but they do need water and a certain amount of shade. They were very popular in Victorian times when everyone with pretensions to a garden of any size had a fernery in a cool and shady spot and they do well where sometimes other plants are unhappy. They also make a cool background for more colourful plants.

Hosta ‘Halcyon’

There is also this lovely Hosta, a plant grown mainly for its beautiful leaves but which has in autumn spikes of lavender-grey flowers that particularly compliment these silvery blue-green leaves. These too can be grown in pots in a small space but choose the variety carefully since some can grow rather large!

Jobs of the moment
Oh yes, there are always plenty of jobs! There is plenty of dead-heading to be done and generally clearing of dead matter and composting if you have the space, but not here since space does not permit and the council have their own composting scheme which makes life easier for the small gardener. In both senses of the word small – composting can be hard work!

If you want to do something more positive you can plant some parsley for winter soups and stews. Be quick as it is getting rather late. Parsley seeds are slow to germinate and need to be soaked for 24 hours before planting and ideally would go in a cold frame or under cloches. However if you want a pot by the kitchen door or on the balcony plant them now and invert a large jar or glass bowl over them and remember to water.

Until next time!

MY

(photos courtesy of Himself – it’s like I barely need to do anything! – Rachel)

* I started blogging waaaay back in 2005 (that was several blogs ago).  I was blogging long before I read other blogs.  I guess I like the sound of my own voice.

* I started this blog on Blogger in early 2008 to put my thoughts about giving up law and teaching yoga full time into words.  It used to be called “The Highs and Lows of a Suburban Yogini” but that was a bit of a mouthful.

* I carried on blogging because I started getting comments!  EcoYogini and Green Spell were my first regular readers and for that I am eternally grateful.  Have you seen that scene in “Julie and Julia” where she gets her first comment?  Yeah, that was me!

* In June 2008 Nadine emailed me and interviewed me on her blog.  Through her I “met” Christine and Mary, through them I “met” Phil and Svasti, through Phil (I think?) I “met” Catherine and Stella and on and on like dominoes all in a line.  And every day I get new readers, new comments, new blogs to read (I also have less and less time to read them all but I try, I really do )

* Sometimes I actually get to meet bloggers in real life.

* There is a code of karma in the yoga blogging world.  We agree to disagree.  We don’t get into flame wars.

* There is a blogging synchronicity.  I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve written about a subject only to find somebody else writing about it moments afterwards.  Or moments before.  There is something special in these here internetz.

* Being a British yoga blogger does mean I’m never going to get the gajillion hits that some US  blogs do, but at I kind of like that.  It makes me feel special (go with me here!) and decreases the likelihood of trolls, spammers and the sorts of comments that would make me cry.

* Some of my favourite bloggers have appeared in my dreams.  Seriously.  Is that weird?  This may be a reason why I shouldn’t blog as often to be honest.

* But most of all I blog because if I didn’t I think my head might explode.

(I have used the word blog way too many times in this post.  It’s not even a word.  It should, really, have an apostrophe before it anyway.)

Why do you blog?

~~~~

In honour of all this here blogging, I thought I’d pose the questions that Ivy Black (and I cannot for the life of me remember where or how I found her blog) posted answers to yesterday.  I’d love to hear your answers dear readers.  If you partake, post me a link in the comments.

1) What is your favourite time of day?

Sunset.  I’m not a morning person at all (although on the rare occasions I am out and about in the very early morning I can appreciate why people love it so, I just love my bed more), and I’m not really a nightowl either (the joys of CFS!!), but I do like that in between moment as the sun slips down below the horizon and another day begins to end.

2) Where and when did you meet the love of your life?

Well that depends.  You can either read my story, or his story!

3) What three words would your friends outside the blogging world use to describe you?

Emotional, Imaginative, Loud

4) What country would you like to visit and why?

Finland.  I want to see the Northern Lights.  I want to have a sauna and roll in the snow.  But most of all I want to visit the Moomin museum!

5) What is your favourite dish to cook?

Pudding.  Any sort of pudding really.  But especially cake.  Cake is my speciality.

6) Salt or sweet?

Sweet.  Especially in its proper form of cake.

7) What are your must have make-up or beauty items?

Hair straighteners (without them I look like some sort of bog creature), mascara, Rouge Noir nail polish, lip gloss, Lush’s Karma cream and Karma solid perfume and almond oil for hair and cuticles.  Yeah, I’m pretty high maintenance.

8 ) What are your favourite flowers?

I love roses.  I love the fact that our garden is full of rose trees.  I love flowers in general really but only when they are growing in the ground.  Cut flowers make me sad.  Don’t buy them for me please.

9) What do you think are your worst vices, honestly?

Now that would be telling.  I have no vices, clearly.  I am a yoga teacher after all!  I do swear like a trooper but only in the privacy of my own home!

10) At what time of your life were you happiest and why?

Now, obviously.  It’s all we’ve got after all.

It’s been a crazy few weeks and honestly right now I’m suffering from complete overwhelm and exhaustion.  This coming weekend is my last weekend off until Christmas, forgive me if I sleep for most of it!  Rather than fixate on that big picture, let’s look at some of the happy little things.

* One red tomato.  For some reason (maybe the hot June and July and wet August) everyone’s tomatoes are huge but green.  I feel a small sense of achievement that one of our has gone red.  I don’t hold out a lot of hope for the other tomatoes and see vats of green tomato chutney and salsa verdi in my future.

* This card, bought for me by Himself to celebrate you know what.  Seriously this sums me up perfectly.  The little person even kind of looks like me.

* Hot air balloons.  On these late summer evenings there have been a lot of balloons above the fields at the back of our house.  They look so majestic just hanging there defying gravity.  Himself wants to go on a trip in one.  I’m not so sure.  To me they seem to be one of those things that only looks good from a distance.  Quite a big distance.  Anyone who has read the first few pages of Ian McEwan’s “Enduring Love” will know what I mean.

*  Green tea.  I really used to hate this stuff but either my taste buds have changed or green tea making has come on in leaps and bounds as I love it now.  Problem is I didn’t realise it has caffeine in it until it was too late.

*  Cake.  If in doubt eat cake!

Tell me what little things you love today!