This diluted juice, made with carrots, ginger, yam, and tahini, makes a delicious drink that's more filling than regular juice. The yam and tahini bring exotic flavors to the mix. We often enjoy it in the afternoon because it staves off hunger until it's time for dinner. Serve at room temperature, or chill with ice for a cooling drink.

The juice can also be used for a base in raw Thai soup, which we'll be featuring next week. We love how one recipe can build upon another, with flavors that take us to new places of discovery through the springboard effect of our intuition. The results are almost always delightful and nutritious.

Ingredients (Serves 2):
1 and 1/2 cups pure water
1 cup carrots, sliced 1/8 to 1/4 inch thick (about 2 carrots)
1/2 cup yam, chopped
1 tablespoon tahini
1 inch ginger root

Directions
Rinse and scrub carrots, yam, and ginger. Remove any bad spots from the skins.
Chop and place in Vitamix or blender.
Blend on highest speed until as smooth as possible.
Strain. For a super smooth drink, we like to use a nut milk straining bag.

There's a small area to the side of our house where the vegetation has been intentionally left wild, and it always feels like a habitat for nature spirits and even fairies. The photos shown here can't really convey the energy that is felt.

It's a simple spot comprised of one large cedar tree, and salal, ferns, and wild grasses growing around its base. The land also forms a bowl, just like a little well. That's why I call it a faerie well, although it really isn't a well in the traditional sense. It has a perpetual shimmer and glow, and it feels good to be near it. I've put a chair next to the well so that I can sit beneath the cedar boughs, and breathe the sweetly scented air.

Cedar trees have long been known for their healing energy, and the native tribes from this region in the Pacific Northwest used cedar for almost everything—canoes, cooking boxes, even clothing and diapers!

We once sat spellbound as we watched a demonstration of how cedar "cotton" was made. The presenter took a small narrow strip of the bark and pounded it for about one minute. The bark was transformed before our eyes into soft fibers just like cotton, which could then be woven into clothing, or baskets.

We read years ago in one of the Findhorn garden books, that nature spirits love to have a wild place in a yard that is untouched by humans. In our garden, we try to provide several areas that accomplish this.

In the back yard we leave the outer edge of the lawn alone so that it can revert to wild grasses and weeds. It's never mowed, and the resulting vegetation forms a small habitat for animals, birds, and insects. Just this week we watched two yearling deer munching on false dandelions (also known around here as fuzzy cat's ears), shown by the water dish that we put out for the wildlife.

The deer love fuzzy cat's ears. Many times we've seen them come through the yard, nibbling on those little delectables, leaving our two small raised bed veggie gardens alone, which is wonderful. And they know how to forage in a sustainable way because they don't eat all their favorite plants. They save some for another time.

Deer, birds, fox, eagles, ravens, and more, are an integral part of this island—one whose wildness is shrinking due to the building of homes, including the house that we rent. A forest used to be here, and all that's left on our property is the faerie well, blackberry vines, and a small easement of trees flanking the back and another side of the house.

Because our very lives depend on nature (food, air, water, resources) for our survival, we want to help protect it: so in our neighborhood we foster the environment in small ways, helping to give something back to the creatures of the wild who have lost so much.