Em, Tea, Jay
Since my visit to Rowena on Tuesday, I've been unrolling the great big thought-ball that was downloaded into my head.
Scrub jays woke me up with their screeching this morning. I went back to sleep. Later, I was having a short walk around the neighborhood, and more raucous scrub jays vied for my attention. But I was on the phone.
Finally, around 4:00, I plunked down on my couch. Hadn't even opened the computer yet when Whump! A scrub jay landed on the planter box outside my living room window; pecked at the glass, and beat its wings against it, looking right at me.
Okay, okay, I get it, already! A little googling informs me that jays as totems teach about resourcefulness, talents still to be developed, fearlessness, adaptability and least-effort survival. And they bring warnings about dilletantism, a great failing of mine (see my tag cloud to get a visual).
Strangely, jays in real life are known to gang up on owls and hawks--both totems of mine. Directional shift, perhaps?
Western scrub jay in the wasteland of my side yard:
So while all that ferments, I'm making my own kombucha (a weirdly addictive and wonderful drink made by fermenting sweet black tea into a sort of vinegar).
Kombucha in the making:
That's a SCOBY on top: a Symbiotic Colony Of Bacteria and Yeast, a.k.a. a kombucha mushroom. You get one from someone who has one, and when you make kombucha, the SCOBY sort of...parthenogenesizes and makes a baby. See? It has tiny alien arms. It's alive!
It's all very strange.
Anyway, my kombucha is fermenting happily away and should be ready to drink in a week or two.
I'm still trying to figure out the message from the scrub jays.
Scrub jays woke me up with their screeching this morning. I went back to sleep. Later, I was having a short walk around the neighborhood, and more raucous scrub jays vied for my attention. But I was on the phone.
Finally, around 4:00, I plunked down on my couch. Hadn't even opened the computer yet when Whump! A scrub jay landed on the planter box outside my living room window; pecked at the glass, and beat its wings against it, looking right at me.
Okay, okay, I get it, already! A little googling informs me that jays as totems teach about resourcefulness, talents still to be developed, fearlessness, adaptability and least-effort survival. And they bring warnings about dilletantism, a great failing of mine (see my tag cloud to get a visual).
Strangely, jays in real life are known to gang up on owls and hawks--both totems of mine. Directional shift, perhaps?
Western scrub jay in the wasteland of my side yard:
So while all that ferments, I'm making my own kombucha (a weirdly addictive and wonderful drink made by fermenting sweet black tea into a sort of vinegar).
Kombucha in the making:
That's a SCOBY on top: a Symbiotic Colony Of Bacteria and Yeast, a.k.a. a kombucha mushroom. You get one from someone who has one, and when you make kombucha, the SCOBY sort of...parthenogenesizes and makes a baby. See? It has tiny alien arms. It's alive!
It's all very strange.
Anyway, my kombucha is fermenting happily away and should be ready to drink in a week or two.
I'm still trying to figure out the message from the scrub jays.