Lisa Ray Instagram – Things we made, harvested, ate. I grew up with a backyard garden that provided a bounty of fruits and vegetables that my mother would boil, pickle and bottle for the winter. I climbed our crab apple trees behind the garden shed and spent long, dreamy afternoons suspended between earth and sky. One of the greatest gifts of our time in Beirut was offering some of the same experiences to my girls. They climbed, they wandered the vast vegetable patch to pick cucumbers and tomatoes and helped their theta (grandmother) bake and dry various leaves, fresh almonds and sour grapes that were ground into a flavouring mix. And they learned the secret language of leaves. I talk trees since I was very small and now Sufi and Soleil have been initiated. You learn- you learn as you age- that our connection with the land and simple ancestral rituals often sooth and heal in ways where language – and formal therapy- fails.