My practice of writing a blog entry every day was asking for a brief pause – after three months, taking off one week became another kind of practice :)       Like standing on one leg, knee bent, allowing body to find soft and deeply rooted balance, drinking in earth's answer to gravity.... breathing into the unknown, into the wonder where my steps will take me.... freedom.... unfixed....

Meanwhile the APPLES on my trees have become the stars in my life, so utterly abundant that even the squirrels cannot finish them, and plenty are still waiting to be picked and handed to friends, students, neighbors. They are just so good, so full of life and deliciousness. Working in the garden in the morning and biting into a freshly plucked yellow-skinned fruit with its red cheek, is an adventure that unleashes a sun of sensations radiating through my body. 

Each day I wake to wonder and immense gratitude for the Geborgenheit* in my tiny bedroom cottage under the oaks, for a roof over my head, clothes and food. Not a war zone, not a hungry stomach. We never deserve our good luck, we can only do our best to live up to the responsibilities it brings. The apples turn my mornings into a literal feast of thanksgiving. Dankbarkeit. 

Come and get some apples – my young dwarf tree at the very top carries three kinds: golden and red delicious and a few fuji, loaded branches bent low to the ground. The old and gnarled grandfather tree near the house carries a mega abundance. Last fall I named it the "Alex Tree": two small chimes are hanging in the still green dense foliage, each to commemorate the life of a young man called Alex. Both very dear to me. Both gone from earth. More on this later. But for now, I am serious – come by and get some APPLES. For your pie, or cobbler. Once a week I cook a big pot of compote/applesauce with spices, and maybe a bit of liquor :) and you can taste some when you drop by.

*one of my favorite German words, not quite translatable: safety, security, don't come quite close. It is a much more poetic expression full of inner feelings, a subtle coziness. Geborgenheit invokes the grand archetype of being in the embrace of mother, the Big Mother, a sense of utter basic safety.