“Autumn is the season to find contentment at home by paying attention to what we already have.” Melissa Michaels, The Inspired Room With so much strife and uncertainty in the world, it is easy to become focused on what is wrong, what we lack, or what we wish were different. Yet within our own homes and daily lives, there is often much to be thankful for. A warm place to rest, food in the pantry, something harvested from the garden, or simply the comfort of that familiar evening chair. These everyday blessings can become so ordinary that we hardly notice them. Yet when life becomes difficult, they can remind us how much we still have to be grateful for. Gratitude does not make our troubles disappear, nor does it mean overlooking the hardships others face. It simply helps us recognize the good that remains part of our lives. When we appreciate what we have, we may also become better stewards. We care for our belongings, make use of what is available, waste less, and find satisfaction in simple things. This month, I'd like us to spend a little time considering gratitude and how it shapes our everyday lives. One place where gratitude often comes to life is around the family table. Food brings together what we have grown, gathered, prepared, and learned from those before us. A familiar meal can carry memories of family, home, and traditions that have been passed from one generation to another. If we can, I would like to begin a monthly exchange of our favorite recipes. As time permits, let's share a favorite recipe that we enjoy preparing during each month. With members from many different places and backgrounds, I think it would be wonderful to learn each others traditions and possibly bring a few new traditions into our own kitchens. November brings the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States, while other countries have their own harvest celebrations and seasonal traditions. And let's not forget that our friends in the Southern Hemisphere are enjoying spring rather than autumn. Although our seasons and celebrations may differ, gathering with family and friends around food gives us an opportunity to set aside our worries for a while and enjoy one another's company.

When we moved to S.E. Ohio from Oregon, we saw all these gorgeous pictures of the Wayne National Forest and thought we were moving to paradise. We were used to living with old growth forests around us (Oregon) and things staying green. After traveling about 3,000 miles to get here (in February) we were shocked when we pulled into the place we bought and it was just sticks everywhere. 🤣 We learned that it doesn't get really beautiful here until about April, then it really does turn into paradise... Now that we've been here for almost 5 years, if people come to visit, we always tell them to between April and October! Eventually, we'll plant more evergreens here...

What would happen in your household if the electricity went out, the water stopped running, or a storm forced you to leave home unexpectedly? Most of us have experienced some interruption to our normal routines. Sometimes it lasts a few hours, and sometimes several days. Being prepared doesn't mean expecting the worst. It means understanding what our household depends on and having a reasonable plan when those things aren't available. I'm working on an Oasis Builders 72-Hour Emergency Preparedness Program and Checklist, and I'd like to involve our community in developing it. The idea is to help households become reasonably self-sufficient for the first three days of an interruption, whether staying home or temporarily evacuating. Here is our starting checklist: Water and Food: At least one gallon of drinking and sanitation water per person per day for three days, with additional water for pets and individual needs. Include familiar, shelf-stable foods that don't require cooking. Light and Communication: Flashlights, extra batteries, a battery-powered radio, charged phone power banks, and a written emergency contact list. Health and Sanitation: First aid supplies, essential medications and a plan for obtaining or safely storing them, personal hygiene supplies, toilet paper, and a way to manage sanitation if water services stop. Clothing and Shelter: Weather-appropriate clothing, sturdy shoes, blankets, and supplies for staying warm or cool safely. Important Documents: Copies of identification, insurance information, emergency contacts, some cash, and spare keys. Individual Needs: Supplies for children, older adults, people with medical or mobility needs, and household pets. We also need to distinguish between supplies kept at home and a smaller, portable bag that we can take if evacuation becomes necessary. But having supplies is only part of preparedness. Do we know where everything is, can we use it, and can every household member who needs access find it?

If we gathered onions, garlic, leeks, and parsley from our gardens today, we would be bringing together foods named in Mayster Jon Gardener’s instructions preserved from around 1440. The spelling looks different, but several names are recognizable. His opening lines include “leke,” “ownyns,” “garleke,” and “percely.” Across nearly six centuries, these are still familiar garden crops and kitchen ingredients. What interests me is how easily we can picture using them. Onions and garlic might begin a meal in the cooking pot. Leeks could become part of a soup, and parsley could supply leaves for a sauce. Medieval English cooking records also connect these plants with soups, sauces, and other preparations. Mayster Jon gives parsley particular attention. He describes cutting it repeatedly during the season, while leaving plants intended for seed uncut. This was a crop to manage for continued use, with some plants serving the kitchen and others providing seed. That does not mean his parsley or onions were identical to the varieties we buy today. The familiar crop name does not establish the same size, appearance, flavor, or growing behavior. Nor does one gardening text tell us what every household grew or ate. Still, these recognizable foods give us a practical connection with the past. We can begin with something we know, then ask how people grew it, prepared it, and carried it into another season. For our next look at Mayster Jon’s garden, I would like to follow these familiar foods a little further, from the growing bed toward the household table. Which of these four do you grow, and which earns its place most often in your cooking?

We have been learning to recognize qualities such as warmth, coldness, dryness, and moisture in ourselves. These same qualities are also used in traditional herbalism to describe how herbs may influence the body. Consider ginger and peppermint. Ginger is traditionally considered warming. Its pungent character and warming sensation make it a familiar choice when someone feels chilled or experiences sluggish digestion. Peppermint on the other hand is generally considered cooling. Its menthol content produces a cooling sensation, and it has a long history of use for digestive discomfort, particularly when cramping or tension is involved. Traditional herbal energetics helps us understand these qualities and how they may influence the body. Warming and cooling are not precise measurements of body temperature, but they are traditional descriptions that help guide herbal selection alongside our understanding of an herb's actions and safety. This brings us to an important relationship between the person and the plant. If someone already experiences excessive warmth, a strongly warming herb may not be the best fit. If someone tends toward coldness, a cooling herb may not provide the balance they are seeking. But we cannot make that decision from one quality alone. A person who generally feels cold may still benefit from peppermint when experiencing digestive cramping because peppermint has actions beyond its cooling quality. Likewise, someone who generally feels warm may find ginger helpful for occasional digestive sluggishness. We look at the particular discomfort, the herb's actions, the person's usual tendencies, and how they respond. An herb is not automatically a poor choice simply because one of its qualities seems opposite to the person's constitution. As we continue learning, we will also encounter drying, moistening, relaxing, and toning qualities in herbs. Together, these descriptions help us understand why an herb might be a good fit for one situation and a poorer fit for another. The goal is not simply to memorize what each herb does, it is to understand why its qualities might fit the person and the conditions we observe.