Quinn McDonald's Blog, page 98

Eggshell Fragile

This is the story the wise woman told me:

Different eggshell, still fragile.

“I was walking early in the morning, like I do every day. In the road ahead of me, I saw an eggshell, or rather a piece of one. It was about half the shell, in a beautiful blue with brown spatter-dots. It was like finding a gift in the barely dawn, so I picked it up.

Afraid that I’d crush it in my hand, I pulled out a mint container from my pocket. As luck would have it, the box was empty, and I put the egg shell in the box. It was so delicate, with such painterly colors. I wasn’t sure how I would keep or display it, but it was love at first sight.

So many questions are created by a hatched shell. What kind of bird? Where is the other part of the shell? Is the bird fluffed up and being fed? We don’t know. Finding a shell fragment is like finding half a story.

I didn’t want to chance dropping the box, so I walked back to the car and put the box with the shell on the console of my car, then returned to my walk. I thought about birds and nests and migrating, and the hard work that birds undertake just by waking up to another day. My walk seemed shorter that morning, probably because I had the shell to keep me company.

At the end of my walk, I returned to my car and looked at the egg shell. Except it wasn’t a shell anymore. It was hundreds of tiny shards in the box. I didn’t understand. No one had touched the egg shell, no one had disturbed it. I looked at the egg shell for a long time before I understood what had happened.

The shell is lined with a tough, but thin membrane. If the egg is whole and contains a yolk, the membrane helps keep the egg strong and intact. Eggs are fragile, but they must withstand being rolled by the parents feet and beaks to keep the chick forming correctly. The inner membrane helps make that happen.

But once the chick is out, there is no more use for the shell. As the membrane dries and shrinks, it pulls at the shell, allowing it to break to pieces. No evidence left that points to a nest and helpless chicks. A tiny bit of calcium blown away by a breeze, or worn into the ground by a single foot.

I kept the pieces anyway. It’s a lesson in the joy of loving something that changes, that will vanish. It was still worth the love and I’m still happy I picked it up.”

–Quinn McDonald never ceases to be amazed at the lessons nature offers. But they crumble quickly, so you have to be awake early to see them. Quinn is the author of Raw Art Journaling, Making Meaning, Making Art published by North Light.

Filed under: Nature, Inside and Out Tagged: bird eggshell, impermanence of life, lessons from nature

Unrealistic Healing

The new yoga teacher looked dangerous. Compact and lithe, she marched to the front of the class, got on her mat with her back to us and began barking poses. It was my first yoga class in a long time. All around me, younger, more flexible people twisted, stretched, and grabbed their ankles behind their backs. I sweated and creaked. Felt like I was hiking a long hard climb up a dark, washed-out path.

A xeriscaped yard has no grass and no ground cover. It has desert-adapted plants and crushed granite.

Coming home, I noticed a flicker of something in the front yard. Tired and stiff, I got out of the car to find my front yard flooded. A xeriscaped yard should not flood. We have drip irrigation so flooding shouldn’t happen. Yet, there, in the light of the full moon, my front yard shimmered with water. Something was very wrong, and had been wrong since morning. Since the yard guy had come to change the watering pattern for the summer.  He’d forgotten to turn it back to automatic. Twelve hours my water had been running. The back yard was floating. Water pressed against the foundation. Cacti standing in two feet of water. Water lapping out of  plant beds and edging toward the pool.

I found the end of my rope really quickly. It was fuzzy and wet and fueled my anger and exhaustion. It took me another half hour to figure out where the shut- off valves were and turn them in the right direction.

After all that work on compassion and forgiveness, I still had wanted to dismember the yard guy. After all the conscious choosing to see the better side of life, I did not live it.

Moon reflected in standing water from http://www.ghostinthemachine.net

And then I had another realization:  we distrust improving ourselves because we are afraid we can’t keep it up. Not forever. And we can’t. We will slide back. We will do that thing we hate about ourselves.  That’s why I love the Buddhist saying, “Before enlightenment–chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment–chop wood, carry water.”

There is no final goal to self-improvement. We don’t recognize a shortcoming and then cure it. We don’t admit to a flaw and then have it surgically removed. We don’t pull out our bad characteristics and never have to deal with them again.

Even the enlightened get angry, feel despair, make mistakes. None of that goes away with awareness. It doesn’t vanish because we admit to weakness.

No, we have to keep working on it. For years. That’s the strength in change. It requires upkeep. It’s the lie most self-help books tell—take this quiz, work these steps and then you will be perfect. Glowing. Complete.

It’s not true. We have to keep working at our lives. Every day. We do not undergo a transformation and then spend the rest of our lives resting and comfortable. Nope. Transformation is a step, not the goal. The real goal is to become self-aware. We see the shortcomings, the flaws, the mistakes and love ourselves anyway. Then we look at where we ran off the rails, fix the break, load the train (and our life) back on the track and move on. Chop wood, carry water.

—Quinn McDonald is finally ready to go to bed. In the moonlight, the standing water still shimmers, but it’s not rising.

Filed under: In My Life, The Writing Life Tagged: perfection, self-help, transformation

The Creative Chew

Micahel Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, wrote Food Rules, an Eater’s Manual in 2009. It is a light, funny, serious, simple, wise book on how to eat well. “Eating has gotten complicated,” Pollan writes, “needlessly so.”

Reading the book on feeding yourself  to give yourself a healthy body and agile mind made me wonder if we could take what Pollan writes and make it work for nurturing our creativity.  What Pollan says about eating—being careful what we put in our bodies—was also true about creativity. The more I read, the more fascinating it was to see that what is true about food is true about creative work.

Pollan’s rule # 44: Pay more, eat less. Quinn’s creative corollary: Pay more for good art supplies if you use them often. Don’t buy the junk food of art supplies just to have them. And if you did pile up a lot of art supplies you won’t ever use, give it away. Your local public high school will be grateful and you won’t fret over trying to use what you will never need.

Pollan’s rule #27: Eat animals that have themselves eaten well. Quinn’s creative corollary: Take classes from people who are good at what they do and who have the additional talent of knowing how to teach. It’s hard to learn from someone who is impatient, speaks too fast, or has favorites in class that get most of the attention.

Pollan’s rule #34: Sweeten and salt your food yourself. Quinn’s creative corollary: Do your own work. Don’t try to outdo what someone else is doing; don’t spend a lot of time looking over your shoulder to see who is doing what you are doing. Experiment with ideas until you know they won’t work or until they shine with the gloss of your own effort.

Pollan’s rule #1: Eat food. Quinn’s creative corollary: Create what helps your creativity grow. Take time to peel away your tough outer layer. Get to the tender heart and work there. Ignore what is fast to assemble–you’ll be yearning to be creative half an hour later.

Pollan’s rule #43: Have a glass of wine with dinner. Quinn’s creative corollary: Have a glass of wine with dinner.

–-Quinn McDonald is a reader and creativity coach who keeps a journal and works on her creativity.

Filed under: Book Reviews, Creativity, Links, resources, idea boosts Tagged: creative work, eating well, rules for creativity

It’s Not Creative if it’s Disruptive

The guy strode into my office  like Grizzly Adams without the smile. In those days, everyone wore suits and ties, but not this guy.  He stood in front of my desk dressed in a flannel shirt, jeans, and suspenders.

The original Grizzly Adams, smiling.

His hair was wild and swept over his large, mostly bald head. The shoulder-length strands were unkempt. His beard was thick and tangled. I was the director of the writing department of an investment company that was very conservative in dress and conduct, he was the VP’s favorite “free spirit” writer, hired for his “wild man creativity.”  He played the wild man role to the hilt–booming voice, wild antics, outrageous conversations.

Getting to the point, I hated him. He delivered nothing on time and scolded me for sticking to schedules. He was a bully to my face and cruel behind my back. He told huge tales (none of them verifiable) of amazing deeds in the service of his country,  implying shadowy connections to black helicopters and secret missions. He had scars to show, both physical and psychological. The hand scar looked like a Sunday morning bage-cutting accident. He insisted it was from hand-to-hand combat is a dangerous country where even the air was deadly. And, of course, he was paid far more than I was.

Wild Creative got a lot of attention for being “creative.” His bad behavior and poor social skills didn’t matter because he created diversion for my boss. Confusion and havoc rained on every project the Wild Creative touched. My boss was ecstatic because he was not responsible for managing the mayhem. I was.

My boss got bragging rights as he told gape-mouthed employees the story of how the Wild Creative slept (he claimed) on the floor with a knife under his pillow, one eye open, ready to kill. War scars, you know.

Occasionally, I’d plead “Please let me hire someone who is not quite as ‘creative,’ not quite as brilliant, but a lot more reliable.” It never happened. No doubt the disruptive character was smart, but he was also devious, mean, and impossible to work with. He gave creativity a bad name. He’s long out of my life, but the incident was briefly revived recently, when a corporate client of mine defined “creativity” as “disruptive thinking.” In the way corporations have of diluting words (think of what has been done to awesome and passionate), maybe disruptive means, simply, different. But that distinction is huge.

Labeling creativity as disruptive because it doesn’t fit the corporate mold isn’t fair to the word “creativity” and mis-defines “disruptive.” Real creativity is not disruptive. It may create change, demand new solutions, invent new paths to a smarter answer. It may be uncomfortable, innovative, not easy, and from a totally different perspective.

But disruptive? No. Creativity is never vicious, uncontrollable, obstreperous, undisciplined, or truculent. All of those define disruptive. Creative deviates from the status quo, may shake up the existing corporate culture, demand a new perspective, but disruptive? No.

Using disruptive to describe creativity allows the creative to become the “other,” the “them” to the rest of the department’s “us.” Saying creativity is disruptive allows the belief that labels the creative as an outcast.

No doubt, creativity often looks stubborn, different and demanding of change. Creativity has deep roots in unhappiness with the status quo. With willingness to go against the grain. With certainty of purpose.   It’s hard for a corporation to admit that change is needed. Corporate vision and creative vision may have different horizons.

Creativity has roots in “other-ness,” not disruptiveness. There’s a lot of responsibility attached to it. While risking reputation for an uncertain result, the creative has to explain how the result is useful and why the risk is worthwhile. And, of course, sometimes the creative is wrong, and their are consequences. Still, none of that is disruptive. It’s growth, it’s exploration, it’s discovery.

Creativity is absolutely how change comes into the world, but it not driven by disruptive, vicious, irresponsible behavior. That’s personality, not creativity.

—Quinn McDonald is a journal-keeper and a creativity coach. She encourages creativity without disruptive behavior.

Image: Light bulb from http://navycaptain-therealnavy.blogsp...  Grizzly Adams from sitcomsonline.com

Filed under: Creativity, The Writing Life Tagged: creative thinking, Creativity, disruptive thinking

Living the Screen Life

No doubt, I’m getting older. Most of the time, I’m OK with it. You can say things you could not say at 25 and 35 and get away with it. If you make a double-entendre, everyone assumes it was an accident.

While out of town this past week, I got to be in situations involving a lot of people, and it made me aware of the behavior in different demographics. It also made me aware I am no longer in the major demographic, defined as the one marketers prefer, and gear their marketing to.

Together and alone, living the screen life. Source: flickr, Susan, NYC

When you are young, you want to identify with a group’s behavior because it is easy, it’s acceptable, it’s expedient, and, well, it’s what everyone in your demographic does.

As you get older, you want to do all those things, too–but the demographic shifts. You no longer find the dominant demographic right, useful, or expedient. Here’s a sampling of examples:

—Riding in a van with strangers seemed to me to be the perfect opportunity to get to know people, to talk to people about their experiences and conclusions about life. The van ride was completely silent as everyone concentrated on their small screen lives. Hunched over phones, reading emails, texting, watching videos of somewhere else, not here, not now. Life is not out the window for those folks, life is on the screen, in the Not-here.

— Waitstaff, hotel porters, store clerks are all human. I look them in the eye when I’m speaking to them. The good ones are trained to look back; the majority are looking around for someone more like them. Someone who doesn’t make eye contact.

— I say “thank you” and “I appreciate your help” way too often. Brought up on “please” and “thank you,” I use it generously, and often. As one person in my vicinity said, “Do you always suck up like that? It’s not like they saved your life.” The idea of restricting thanks to people who save lives is not appealing. The idea that someone who has known me for 10 minutes needs to fix me to find me acceptable is not appealing, either.

— The constant reminders that we are not paying attention to someone else, right now. I no longer ask for people to turn off their cell phones when I teach. It doesn’t work, and it annoys the class. The constant beeping, buzzing, tootling, and chirping of phones is now part of class. Two people had their cell phones in plastic baggies, so they could use them with ink-stained fingers. We now can’t leave our kids, our friends, our spouses out of our lives for even an hour. There was a constant cycling in and out of class as people took calls or made them, of checking texts that cried for attention, and answering them. This ran strongly along age lines.

Reading and answering texts slows down classes so much, that I now give less information because I have to repeat more.

—The need to shop. I understand the need to be entertained by unique shopping experiences. I do not understand the thrill of visiting the same chain shops available in your home town. Does an Old Navy in Dallas really carry totally different items than an Old Navy in Phoenix? Or is the thrill the comfort of the familiar?

Every demographic thinks theirs is right, best, easiest, and most modern. It has to be that way, or change would never happen and progress would never be achieved.  I love my high-tech gear, I use electronic boarding passes on all my flights. But I also love the high-touch, low-tech feeling of real life. Of being totally focused on the people I am with now, here, in Face-Time.

—Quinn McDonald is a journaler and a creativity coach.

Filed under: Creativity, In My Life Tagged: demographics, teaching art, texting

Pimp my Moleskine

Note: Quinn McDonald is teaching at the GASC Convention in Arlington, TX. This is a blog post from 2010. A new blog post will appear on Saturday.

Moleskine makes a variety of journals and notebooks: different sizes, uses, colors, and page designs–lined, plain, grid. They have a soft notebook sold in a double pack–two coordinated colors–that I use as a to-do list and to take notes

To-do list Moleskine in acid green and melon orange.

on when I’m on the phone or online. The 5″ x 8″cover is coated cardboard in a variety of bright colors, the inside paper is cream-colored and there is no ribbon marker or inside back pocket.

I use them because they are clever and useful for remembering what you did when. Sure, I could check my electronic calendar, but my notebook had additional information—as a to-do list with a date on each page it shows activities, phone numbers, shortcuts or alternative routes. There are interesting quotes from blogs and books and floor plans of grocery stores so I know where favorite products are. You get the idea.

In four to five months, I fill up the 60-page notebook and store it. Great for tax-time and memory jogs. If I’m ever asked “Where were you on the night of October 19, 2007?” I can pull out the to-do list notebook and  give the correct answer.

But the problem with the soft cover Moleskine is it doesn’t have a back pocket.

Index card, taped into place, on inside back cover of the Moleskine.

Where to put the receipts, business cards and gift cards?

The pimp is incredibly easy. Take a 4 x 6-inch index cards (I’ve loved index cards since the second grade and keep finding more uses for them), turn it the long way and and cut it diagonally. (See the image).

Tape it to the inside back cover, so the shorter side of the cut faces toward the inside of the book. If anything should slip out, it will be held in place by the rest of the pages.

Tape is more useful than glue because you get the full use of the index card size and the tape allows the card to bend slightly, giving you more flexibility.

That’s all there is to it. You now have a pocket in the back of your moleskine. Total time: under three minutes. That includes finding the 4 x 6 inch index cards.

–Quinn McDonald is a writer and ultimate practical person who helps other people adjust to change through creativity coaching.

Filed under: Creativity, Links, resources, idea boosts, The Writing Life Tagged: index cards, moleksine, personalized moleskine, Postaday2011, to-do lists

The “Slash” Career

Maybe you have a “Slash” career. I’ve had one for 10 years. A “slash” career is a life that is made up of more than one job, or related careers. For example, I am a writer/creativity coach/training designer/workshop leader/speaker. That’s a lot of slashes, but it makes sense to me.

From e-how.com in an article titled, “Is it Legal to Work Two Full-Time Jobs?”

Having a slash-career means that one skill doesn’t get used every day and exhaust you. It also means that if you have a part of your career that needs nurturing and building, you can do that, because the other parts are floating your boat, not sinking your ship.

Ten years ago, having a slash-career was suspect. Now, it’s common. What’s interesting is the way people explain it. I find myself not saying I do more than one thing, because people want to know what it is I do, not listen for a long list to choose from. So to people who are in the corporate world, I would say I’m a training developer. To another writer, of course, I’m a writer, too. That need for connection is strong.

The slash life is interesting and varied. When I was in the corporate world it was called “wearing different hats,” or “multitasking,” and was valued, but only up to a certain point. The point was the paycheck. It seems you got paid according to the lowest-valued of the jobs you did. The administrative assistants who did part of the job of their supervisors, did not get supervisor pay, they got admin pay.

According to the Department of Labor, 7.8 million people work more than one job, and about 300,000 people work full time at two different jobs. Severn percent of all Americans work more than 60 hours a week. We are turning into a slash-job nation. In more than one way.

–Quinn McDonald is a writer, creativity coach who is in Dallas teaching One-Sentence Journaling.

Filed under: In My Life, The Writing Life Tagged: careers, consultants, more than one job

What Else Do I Write in My Journal?

You’ve gotten a prompt a day email for the last two years. You write about that every day. You are getting a little bored. You’ve written morning pages. You’ve written lists. Now what?

We fall in love with journals because they are filled with hope and potential. With how they look, with heavy leather bindings and wraps.  We bring them home, write on the first page, and then store them on the shelf. We become scared of our journals because they are empty, and to fill them means writing every day.

You do not have to write in your journal every day. You may want to, and then you may not. If you want to make a habit of writing, you should push yourself (gently) to write every day. Writing every day makes you better at writing every day. When you have written every day for a month, you can decide how often you want to write. It takes a month to break in a new habit.

But what should you write about? Journal pages are a way of thinking out loud–and often not in words. Journals help you create your outlook on life, they are the GPS system of your soul. Write what is important today. The price of a gallon of milk. About your car and what it feels like to drive it. Tomorrow it may be something different–which do you prefer, cotton shirts or those “high performance” ones?

When I was in graduate school, I read the journals of hundreds of women who had come to this country. These women came with very little in the way of possessions but carried a lot of traditions and new ideas. Many of the women were poor and overworked. But they wrote. Writing was their way out of their physical reality into a better world. And once they wrote about that better world, they created it.

Journal page by Patty Van Dorine

In those journals lived the culture and the history of their day. They were not famous writers, they were women who worked or stayed at home with children. They took in washing. They wrote at night. In those journals I found the cost of a pair of children’s shoes in 1895, and a dozen eggs in 1897,  and a pencil.

In those journals I found out what women thought about politics, and religion, and their bodies and the clothes they wore. I read as they changed their minds and the way they celebrated events that were important to them.

I read the journals of the women pioneers who walked behind covered wagons in the 1850s and 60s. They did not think of themselves as brave or changers of history. They were scared and tired. They wrote about the sounds they heard at night, and about the joy they would feel when they slept in a real bed.

What each of these journals had in common was a reality described in great detail. The pages contained the smells and tastes of a dinner, the sight of a field of waving grass, the sound of a tired sigh, the touch of hair and skin. The pages were full of history and culture.

The only thing you need to write in a journal is curiosity. What is happening? What do you feel about it? Discover yourself in your journal. Date the pages, so you will know how you and your world changed as you wrote it down.

–Quinn McDonald is a journaler and a certified creativity coach.

Filed under: The Writing Life Tagged: journaling, what to write in a journal

Knowing When It’s Enough

When are you done? When is the art complete? When do you quit? All good questions, and all with similar answers.

This weekend, I was working with ink on watercolor paper. It’s a new technique I’m puzzling out, and the most critical element is knowing when to stop working. It’s incredibly easy to overwork the ink, and once it’s overworked the piece simply looks like a clean-up towel.

Here’s the first step:

Which actually can be left alone. But I wanted to add another layer. The next step promptly overworked it.

So why didn’t I know that? Because I was willing to see what would happen if I tried another layer of ink. So the first reason you don’t quit is curiosity–seeing what will happen if you continue. When the urge to continue is  more interesting or compelling than the need to quit, you push on. If I had been perfectly satisfied with the results, I could have quit.

Another way to know you are finished is when the elements of design you had in mind are all in place. On this paper, I worked  in three stages. When working with ink pieces, it’s important to let one layer dry completely before the next one is started, or the ink will blur. Waiting allows time to make the decision to continue or decide the design is fine the way it is.

In the case of this piece, the black and gray sections were complete, but there was not enough contrast in the overall page. I added the yellow, which was interesting, but still not enough of a contrast. So I added the orange-red over the yellow, allowing both colors to show.

I knew I wasn’t done when the yellow didn’t achieve the purpose of contrast. I knew I was done when the branching edges completed a pleasing design. In other cases, you would continue when you cannot explain how your work is complete.

Ink on watercolor is a fairly tricky medium. You have to balance not being in control as well as controlling color choice and water amount. The medium doesn’t allow erasing, covering with gesso or not clicking “accept” and starting over, as you can with digital work in steps.

It was a mistake to add gold to this page. Not only was the choice in the yellow-green-gold color range, of which there was already too much,  but the eye can’t find a resting place, a catch with everything in one tone. The ink on the upper left looks like a three-legged blowfish sticking out its tongue. The lesson: knowing what you are doing and why. Here I knew why, but the what was a bad choice. Had I given the choice of shimmering ink more thought, I would have realized that I should have stopped after the background was still wet when I applied the second layer.

In this case, the shimmer worked far better.

It was right to choose the shimmer because there was a large, dark center that needed more definition. I left the lower right hand corner (which I love) alone, but did not expect it to carry the entire piece. Adding the shimmer ink gave the middle section texture and made both colors–the blue/gray and the violet, more visible. Knowing how strong (and how much space) the strongest part of a visual piece can carry is a way of knowing when the piece is complete.

These same decision-making questions work for other “should I quit?” questions, too. If one small and excellent part of a relationship can’t carry the rest of it, it may be time to add something to the relationship. But you have to know what and why.

Discovering that art answers are a bigger part of life is one of the reasons I do creative work. Because (you already know what’s coming) it makes meaning out of part of my life.

–-Quinn McDonald is a creativity coach who is exploring the relationship between ink, water and paper, along with the rest of her life.

Filed under: Journal Pages, Raw Art Journaling, Recovering Perfectionists, The Writing Life, Wabi-Sabi Tagged: creativity coach, ink as watercolor, ink on paper, inks, mixed media, postaday2012

Extracting Honey from the Wax Comb

Honey is a complicated thing. I don’t much want to think about how it’s made, because it will destroy my fantasy of happy bees making liquid sunshine while clover and wildflowers wave nearby in a fragrant breeze.

Honey comb in plastic clamshell containers. I brought it home from Wisconsin. Security did not tell me it was a liquid and confiscate it. I am grateful.

I purchased two squares of honeycomb from a beekeeper. The honey that’s taken from a honeycomb tastes better (to me) than honey that’s been strained, boiled, and pasteurized. When we were both younger, my brother concocted a taste test, and both of us could easily detect the comb honey taste. I remember saying it tastes like wax candles.

Use a sharp, clean knife and do not press, but slice, the honey comb.

Honey may taste better fresh from the comb, but you have to get it out of the comb first. Eating the comb along with the honey is not a joy for me. But how to get the honey out? First, cut the comb in half so you have two flat squares. That opens all the compartments.

Pieces of comb in strainer, in pot.

Next, place the compartments, face down, in a strainer and put the strainer in a deep enough cooking pot to allow the honey to drip through the strainer. The room should be about 80 degrees to let the honey flow freely. Do not put the honey outside in the summer to warm it up faster. The phrase “you can catch more flies with honey than vinegar” was invented by someone who tried that.

You can turn the oven on “warm” for 10 minutes and then slide the pot and strainer in. Do not leave the kitchen while the honey is in the oven. Your spouse will come along and turn the oven on 350 degrees. This will melt the wax into the honey where it was before, and also the plastic handle of the strainer onto the pizza stone you keep in the oven.

Burned strainer handle melted onto pizza stone.

If this does happen, leave the strainer in the pot and place the pot on a trivet until the whole mess cools down, about two hours. Once the pot is no longer hot to the touch, put in the the fridge, complete with strainer, for an hour.

Do not roll your eyes or say, “I told you the pot was in the oven,” because this will not un-ruin the pizza stone. One of the secrets to a long marriage is not saying everything you think.

Removing what’s left of the strainer will leave a bottom-of-the-strainer size hole in the wax.

When the wax is cool, but before the honey hardens in the fridge, pull the strainer containing the was impurities out of the pot, skim the wax off the honey (if the honey is stiff, this won’t work) and rinse off the wax to make a candle.

Decant the honey into a small container and enjoy it on hot toast, cold yogurt, or in tea.

–-Quinn McDonald is a creativity coach and still married to KentCooks, whose pizza stone got ruined in the process of extracting the honey from the wax. The link to his website will take you to a yummy recipe for salmon with fruit salsa.

Filed under: Creativity, Food & Recipes, In My Life Tagged: comb honey, getting honey our of comb, postaday2012