Sorana Tarmu Art & Design

Ten Proven Ways to Beat the Winter Solstice Blues (and My Secret Weapon)

The days around the winter solstice - the shortest days of the year - can bring about feelings of gloom and lethargy. But with a few mindful practices, you can turn this season into a time of joy and rejuvenation. Here are ten ways to beat the winter solstice blues that made my own seasonal affective disorder a thing of the past.

1. Consider taking a Vitamin D supplement
   With shorter days and less sunlight, it's common to experience a drop in vitamin D levels during winter. Consider taking a vitamin D supplement to support your immune system, brain function, and maintain your energy levels. Always consult with a healthcare provider before starting any new supplement.
2. Expose yourself to natural light every day by taking a walk
   Vitamin D will not bring all the benefits that natural light has to offer. Especially on sunny days, natural light is a powerful mood booster. Even on cloudy days, getting outside for a walk can help regulate your circadian rhythm and improve your overall well-being. Aim for at least 30 minutes of daylight exposure each day to keep the winter blues at bay.
3. Try Yoga
   And speaking of movement: yoga is an excellent way to stay active and centered during the winter months. The combination of physical movement, deep breathing, and mindfulness can help reduce stress and improve your mood. Try incorporating a daily yoga practice into your routine, even if it's just for 15 minutes. You don't need an expensive subscription. A good place to start are the free gentle yoga routines of Yoga with Adriene.
   
4. Eat hearty soups
   There's nothing quite like a warm bowl of soup to comfort you on a cold winter day, especially if it is home-made. Experiment with different recipes and ingredients to find your favorites. Soups are not only nourishing but also a great way to incorporate more vegetables and much needed hydration into your diet.
5. Drink comforting beverages
   And speaking of good nutrition: warm beverages like herbal tea, mulled cider, or hot chocolate can provide comfort and warmth. Take time to savor these drinks, perhaps while wrapped in a cozy blanket or sitting by the fire. It's a simple pleasure that can make a big difference in your mood. Try varying your source of caffeine by rotating between coffee, green tea, yerba mate, and black tea. Lately, I've been experimenting with delightful Mexican atole (corn-based) drinks like champurrado. Also - don't forget to hydrate properly and limit your sugar intake.
6. Get together with family friends regularly
   Social connections are vital for mental health. Make an effort to spend time with friends and loved ones, whether it's through in-person gatherings or virtual meetups. Sharing laughter and stories can significantly lift your spirits.
7. Make time for your hobbies
   Engaging in creative activities like knitting, crocheting, or crafting can be incredibly therapeutic. These hobbies not only keep your hands busy but also allow you to create something beautiful, useful, and tangible. Plus, handmade gifts are always appreciated during the holiday season. Which brings me to
8. Work on a project with a Christmas deadline
   Engaging in a challenging project can provide a sense of purpose and accomplishment. Through this perspective, the dark days of winter will suddenly seem too few! Set a goal to complete a project by Christmas, whether it's a craft (see above), a piece of writing, or a home improvement task. The focus and creativity involved can help distract from the winter blues and help bring even more enjoyment to the winter holidays. My personal project is knitting luxurious cashmere socks as gifts for my loved ones.
9. Watch comedies or catch up on your reading list
   Laughter is a great antidote to the winter blues. Watch your favorite comedies or read a book that makes you smile. Escaping into a good story can provide a much-needed mental break and help you feel more relaxed and happy. When it comes to nonfiction, I prefer the summaries offered by Blinkist. At night, I read fiction. Reading paper books after sundown can improve your sleep by limiting exposure to blue light. 
10. Meditate and journal
    Spending more time indoors gives us more time for introspection. Engaging in a meditation and journaling practice can help you process your thoughts and emotions in a methodical way. Meditation can reduce stress and increase mindfulness, while journaling allows you to reflect on your day and express your feelings. Both practices can contribute to a greater sense of peace and well-being. I personally love Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way method of journaling, which helps with creativity (see points 7 and 8!). For meditation, a most helpful tool has been for me the biofeedback headband from Muse. Lately, they introduced a new measurement: Alpha Peak, which helps track your mental acuity.

As a data scientist with a background in biology, I love tracking all kind of vitals, to check if my lifestyle changes have the desired effects. I have been using and loving an app called Welltory, which tracks various health metrics, including heart rate variability (HRV), blood pressure, and sleep patterns. This comprehensive approach helps you understand how different aspects of your lifestyle impact your overall health. Since I have been integrating the practices I mentioned above in my daily routines, my HRV has improved considerably. Use this code to get a free trial of Welltory Plus, which will unlock all the health insights it has to offer.

Don't forget: winter time is hygge time! Bust out your wool blankets and furry decor, your fairy lights and soy candles. Let me know in the comments your favorite way of overcoming the winter blues!

 

August's Bounty

It's here! A veggie-centric foodie in August is a kid in a candy store.  For me, it's ratatouille season. There is a Romanian version called by a word meaning "melting pot", but that recipe adds potatoes and meat/mushrooms. I make my ratatouille using Julia Child's method - yes, I saute every type of veggie separately. I use a limited-edition recycled Dutch oven, purchased from MoMa Design Store. Of course, you can use any dutch oven... I recommend trying her recipe at least once, as opposed to stewing everything to mush. You will get a superior dish in both texture and flavor.

Also - cold soup season! I first came across the "Kalte Suppe" concept in a German monthly magazine I was reading in my twenties, very similar in concept to Marie Claire. Since then, I became a fan of what I consider the ideal summer dinner: gazpacho.

These are the first tomatoes from my garden. Their flavor is out-of-this-world. They are an heirloom variety. The bowl

comes from the latest Causebox, along with other earth-friendly goodies.

I have recently started a daily sketching practice inspired by one of my favorite illustrators: Ohn Mar Win. Her Skillshare courses are an absolute delight. She is a very gifted art educator. Use my link for a two months Skillshare free trial. You will find much more than art classes. There are some marketing, career coaching, and personal branding classes very much worth trying. And there are only categories that I have looked for.

I plan to post my sketches on my Tumblr.

I wrote more extensively about how I use August's bounty on my Patreon blog.

New Gardening Projects and my Patreon Account

Emboldened by my love for organic gardening and sustainable living, I started a journal on Patreon, which at some point will include videos. A few blog posts, while publicly available, will appear only there, on a monthly basis. I have been an independent contractor since the beginning of the year, and, long before that, I have been entertaining the idea of forming an inner circle of supporters and friends with whom to share my finds and the results of my experience. Patreon is the ideal platform for this purpose. So head over there and follow me. Consider my public posts a monthly newsletter.

In other news, as suggested by my latest tweet, I am planning a spa herb garden in my backyard, in parallel with some upgrades to the kitchen garden. I relish the process of researching it. In celebration of the launch of my Patreon page, here are the resources that I have been using and I recommend:

• Free: subscribe to your local library. Use their interlibrary exchange service. Make use of their ebook loan app.
• Affordable and with added benefits: subscribe to Scribd - by using this link you will get it free for 60 days. Words cannot describe how much I enjoy my Scribd subscription. And not just for the unexpected free downloads that I collect in my e-book reader. It has amazing perks, such as a free Mubi subscription for you fellow art movie buffs, or a free brain training app subscription, among many other free goodies, such as Curiosity Stream. Do check it out.
• Charitable and affordable: buy used books. I am in the process of reducing my hard-copy book purchases as much as possible, however, whenever I cannot find my books in digital (or their digital price is less convenient) I turn to Better World Books and AbeBooks.

A detailed list of my research sources for the herb garden, along with the entire process of designing and growing it will be fully available on my Patreon account.

Wishing you all a safe and rewarding gardening season.

 

Ecological Design Retreat in East Hampton

I have been taking classes at NYBG for a few years now, mostly Landscape Graphics. which have taken my graphic skills in directions I have never expected. Also, I had the incredible luck and privilege to take a Landscape Design History course with the delightful Marta MacDowell - one of my favorite educators ever. So when I discovered this off-site course offering (a retreat, no less) at Edwina von Gal's own Marsh House, I was over the moon with excitement. Hoping for favorable weather, although very few adversities would prevent me from attending...

Veggie Pack from Willow Wisp Organic Farm

For the past months, I have been shopping at Farmigo for local organic produce. It’s more convenient for me time-wise than going to farmers’ markets. I opted for the Farmer’s Choice bag – I love being surprised by what is in season. This week, Willow Wisp Organic Farms surprised me with burdock! I never cooked or ate burdock roots. I never even knew they were edible in other form than tea. I remember preparing a very concentrated decoction, quite a few years ago, for detox purposes. One of my friends who was living on the outskirts of my hometown brought me fresh burdock picked by himself. The root decoction is supposed to be drunk mixed in equal parts with milk, at least that is what the old herbal medicine and landscape design book that I happily scored in an antique bookstore was recommending. Burdock root is said to also tone the smooth muscles in our body, hence its use in post-partum recovery.

On this occasion I found out from one of my favorite Romanian blogs that the leaves are edible too, being used sometimes instead of cabbage in the popular Romanian rolls – sarmale (a version of dolma, usually filled with a mix of meat and rice and boiled in thin tomato sauce with herbs).

I started looking for fast and healthy burdock recipes and things got even better: I discovered that it is a staple of Japanese cuisine. I decided to roast them in the toaster oven, splash them with soy sauce and sesame oil and sprinkle them with sesame seeds.

In what concerns the fate of the other veggies, the choice was simple: stir-fried baby bok choi and baby carrots with ginger, leafy green salad made with mustard greens and red oakleaf lettuce, pickled Japanese turnips, and a huge batch of pesto made out of carrot greens, turnip leaves, the petioles of mustard greens and green garlic with walnuts.

A Happy Holiday Season

I must admit, as you might easily guess: I am not a fussy gardener. I do not grow orchids and other high-maintenance plants. (Not that I don’t utterly adore orchids, and I would grow them if any of my rooms had enough natural light.) The whole principle of sustainability entails as little human interference with natural systems as possible. So I must adapt. If you didn’t get it already, here’s the gist: sustainability is about life hacking, not about revivalism or tree hugging.

The day after Thanksgiving, to shake off the effects of overeating the typical yummy foods of the feast, I went into my dormant backyard garden and opened the bags of organic garden soil that I left on my three garden patches a few days ago. I spread them all over the leaf-covered plots and sowed my shade-friendly wildflower seed mix (I usually purchase it from American Meadows). I realized the plants need to be shade friendly after my white mulberry tree that I got from Arbor Day Foundation grew amazingly large almost overnight. I had another bag of scented wild flower seeds, which I sowed in the patio containers, by the street. Although I reserved most of my containers for growing veggies, the ones near the street are too prone to be infested by traffic pollutants.

It is amazing how running my hands through the bare soil, raking it, and the simple act of sowing seeds brings so much peace and a funny sense of fulfillment. Must be the archaic regions of the brain – so many generations of agricultural people must have left their imprint on the rewards systems of the brain. Maybe my seasonal tendency to start knitting and working with yarn come fall is related to the same mechanism.

And speaking of seasonal: affective disorder is on the table again, no surprise for a sun worshipper like myself. Nothing tea and dinner parties with friends cannot handle…

P.S. Due to the changing climate, my garden is not entirely dormant. I still have some mustard greens and nasturtium leaves growing in containers – so delicious in sandwiches!

A Love for Dandelions

This year’s moody spring delayed the blooming of the lovely dandelions. My Conservation Biology professor at MSU mentioned them fondly last week, and in the recent days, a few bunches bloomed in my yard.

Their gifts and uses are manifold, being that they are an important natural remedy. For instance, dandelion jelly is one of the healthiest sweet spreads you could eat. Since I try to avoid added sugar in my diet, I am considering making a dandelion flower preserve with concentrated fruit juice and chia seeds. However, the whole aerial parts of the dandelion are edible and can be added in salads (the leaves only when they're young, preferably before the plant blooms) and dry the roots for a great detoxifying tea. Here's a remedy for balancing your liver function: eat six dandelion stalks a day (you can cut them and add them to your sandwich if you want) for a few weeks. Be careful where you pick them, though. Avoid those that grow close to a high traffic area, and always wash them thoroughly.

Dandelion’s “flower” is actually an inflorescence. The true flowers are the “petals” that can be pulled off the inflorescence, and which are in fact a long, flat, merged corolla.

Dandelion is a melliferous species, being one of the first foods for pollinators, especially bees.

Their white “seed globes” are whimsical, and kids of all ages love puffing them away.

Speaking of their change from yellow to white, when I was a little girl, I read an enchanting Native-American dandelion legend, in a book that both my brother and I loved dearly: The Story of Hiawatha.

“How the wild rose and the shy arbutus and the lily, sweet and languid, loved the idle Shawondasee! How the frost-weary and withered earth would melt and mellow at his sunny touch! Happy Shawondasee! In all his life he had a single sorrow—just one sleepy little sting of pain. He had seen a maiden clad in purest green, with hair asyellow as the bright breast of the oriole, and she stood and nodded at him from the prairie toward the north. But Shawondasee, although he loved the bright-haired maiden and longed for her until he filled the air with sighs of tenderness, was so lazy and listless that he never sought to win her love. Never did he rouse himself and tell her of his passion, but he stayed far to the southward, and murmured half asleep among the palm-trees as he dreamed of the bright maiden.

One morning, when he awoke and gazed as usual toward the north, he saw that the beautiful golden hair of the maiden had become as white as snow, and Shawondasee cried out in his sorrow: "Ah, my brother of the North-wind, you have robbed me of my treasure! You have stolen the bright-haired maiden, and have wooed her with your stories of the Northland!" and Shawondasee wandered through the air, sighing with passion until, lo and behold! the maiden disappeared.

Foolish Shawondasee! It was no maiden that you longed for. It was the prairie dandelion, and you puffed her away forever with your useless sighing.”

So what’s not to love?

Introspection

If I were a month I'd be April

If I were a day I'd be Monday

If I were a time of day I'd be the noon

If I were a font I'd be Georgia

If I were a sea animal I'd be an octopus

If I were a direction I'd be South-West

If I were a piece of furniture I'd be a Biedermeyer writing desk

If I were a liquid I'd be Argentinian mate

If I were a gemstone I'd be an amethyst

If I were a tree I’d be a rowan

If I were a tool I’d be an old wooden mending mushroom

If I were a flower I’d be a violet

If I were an element of weather I’d be a lightning

If I were a musical instrument I’d be a flute

If I were a color I'd be burgundy

If I were an emotion I'd be exhilaration

If I were a fruit I'd be an apricot

If I were a sound I'd be the song of a whale

If I were an element I'd be phosphorus

If I were a car I'd be an ARO IMS (a Romanian civil off-road vehicle)

If I were a food I'd be a cucumber sandwich with goat cheese, fresh dill and tea.

If I were a place I'd be a tall grass meadow with oak trees here and there

If I were material I'd be silk

If I were a taste I'd be bitter

If I were a scent I'd be an oriental spice sukh

If I were a body part I'd be the nape of the neck

If I were a song I'd be Witch’s Promise by Jethro Tull

If I were a bird I'd be a crane

If I were a gift I'd be a cloth and fiber wrapped Japanese paper notebook

If I were a city I'd be Sevilla

If I were a door I'd be a hand-carved wooden door

If I were a pair of shoes I'd be Louis XIV shoes with buckles

If I were a poem I'd be Unto the Star by Mihai Eminescu.

Inspired by Lisa Jordan and Julie.

Kitchen Art

 

Sustainable JC joins forces with Rising Tide Capital for their ARTfest! - this coming Thursday!

Sustainable JC's outdoor patio parties are back this Thursday. For July we're also hosting Rising Tide Capital's ARTfest 2013 - two events in one. SUSTAINABLE JC continues their SJC Green Drinks + ART series with the usual great music, food and drink, Info-sharing, artists sharing their process work. There is a suggested donation of $10 /$5 for students and seniors, which includes a raffle ticket with entry for drawing. The winners receive complimentary lunch for two at the Culinary Cafe. The bands are TBA - Rising Tide Capital surprise. Chef Rick and his fabulous staff will prepare their usual locally sourced food and drinks. There will be the regular artists talk, with
presentations and exhibitions.

ARTfest! is about celebrating the entrepreneur in every artist; many tables will feature RTC's Business Academy Graduates.

Among SJC's visual artists of this edition are Beverly Harris, multimedia artist, who will demonstrate Suminagashi, the Japanese style of marbling; Ibou Ndoye, artist and music-maker, who will demonstrate how to make music with everyday objects; Jazz Amos, master mask maker will exhibit along with Jordan de Liso, SJC's Eco-Artist in residence, who will exhibit his sculptures made from found and upcycled materials.

The spoken word section will feature Hope Guirantes, SJC's poet in residence.

There will be tabling by community groups, vendors and SJC's education partners.

Sustainable JC thanks their past and present sponsors.