halloween

Ella had her friends over for a Halloween birthday party last night. I'm still reeling at the thought of having a twelve year old. She has been wanting to have a Halloween party for a few years now, and the time seemed right. They ate pizza, played on the slackline, told stories by the fire, and then brought a keyboard out on the porch and sang together. Then the boys chased the girls around in the dark until all the parents picked them up at eight. Perfect.

fermenting

This is a gallon sized jar, and my huge cabbage had this much liquid in it. The recipe has a whole cabbage, a beet, one and a half tablespoons of sea salt, a few inches of grated ginger, and a quarter teaspoon of ground cardamom. Ruby said her mouth was all puckered up ready to taste it, but I told her it has to sit for a few weeks to get sour.

thrift store chest of drawers chicken coop

I have three six week old chickens in my utility room, and it is time for them to head outside. My big chickens are molting and grumpy and would give them a hard time, so I made them a little coop of their own. I have two fenced runs right next to each other so they can get to know each other for a while.

I saw one of these coops on Pinterest and got an old dresser at Goodwill. The ladder and the roosts are made out of the wood from the drawers. I shingled the top and painted it red. The bottom drawer is left intact for easy pull out cleaning.

dirty little shakori

We went down to the Shakori Hills Festival of Music and Dance for a long weekend of camping. For me it was probably the hardest festival I've ever been to. I had a cold, it rained, and our neighbors never went to bed or stopped saying the f-word. The kids, however, had a great time. Ruby especially. She made herself a powerful magic wand and cast happy spells on everyone in her path.
She sang. She danced. She slept like a stone.

bristol

I broke my ankle last Wednesday  yet still made it to the Bristol Rhythm and Roots Reunion this past weekend. My mother kept the kids. I would have never attempted it with them, but John carried my chair and fetched beer and was altogether gallant about the whole big black immobilizer boot thing. I'm in the boot for a few weeks.

My favorite thing about Bristol is seeing a flat out country band and then walking down to check out some thrashing cello with a percussive dancer. I'm going to be checking out Dave Eggar and DEORO again.

house on a hill

It is yellowing and spidery and weedy. I love the yellows of the goldenrod on my rural commute to school while the kids watch for their favorite horses and donkies along the way. It has been in the forties at night and every morning the kids think we need heat or a fire, and I laugh and tell them to close the open windows.

september

chickenhead

last day of August

  

The Walk

Glamoured the road, the day, and him and her

And everywhere they took me. When we stepped out

Cobbles were riverbed, the Sunday air

A high stream-roof that moved in silence over

Rhododendrons in full bloom, foxgloves

And hemlock, robin-run-the-hedge, the hedge

With its deckled ivy and thick shadows –

Until the riverbed itself appeared,

Gravelly, shallowly, summery with pools,

And made a world rim that was not for crossing.

Love brought me that far by the hand, without

The slightest doubt or irony, dry-eyed

And knowledgeable, contrary as be damned;

Then just kept standing there, not letting go.

                                          *

So here is another longshot. Black and white.

A negative this time, in dazzle-dark,

Smudge and pallor where we make out you and me,

The selves we struggled with and struggled out of,

Two shades who have consumed each other’s fire,

Two flames in sunlight that can sear and singe,

But seem like wisps of enervated air,

After-wavers, feathery ether-shifts …

Yet apt still to rekindle suddenly

If we find along the way charred grass and sticks

And an old fire-fragrance lingering on,

Erotic woodsmoke, witchery, intrigue,

Leaving us none the wiser, just better primed

To speed the plough again and feed the flame.

Seamus Heaney

6

I got a cold right at the very moment that I would have felt liberated by having three kids in school all day, but this time of year really is the mama's new year. I've attended (and led) a whole lot of meetings. The children have indoor shoes and outdoor shoes and have coordinated when and where to change those shoes. Various color coded notebooks are coming home and returning to school with a certain amount of accuracy, and Miss Middle School has learned how to apply mascara and has requested a ringlet curling iron. This morning she abandoned those thoughts and went on a bike ride before school. John is starting violin lessons and Ella is taking guitar. It all continues to settle in.

 I'm taking a yoga and photography class online, and last week I went to a yoga class taught by a friend. I'm going back tomorrow.

There are new chicks in the utility room.


The house is blissfully quiet, at least for one more hour.

day three

The first week of school is done, and they are all happy. Ella even wanted to have the weekend cancelled because Middle School is so good. These two are rolling in clover. There are fourteen in their class, and Ruby is loving meeting all the new friends.

almost a school girl

This is one is very excited to start kindergarten on Wednesday. She is happy to see a few friends that she knows and even more excited to meet the ones that she doesn't know. She has requested a new journal and started drawing/writing a story called "Cat Queen".

from the garden

the lane

Now that John can ride the two wheeler he generally goes up and down the lane a few times right when he wakes up.

 

I love that the kids have this beautiful safe space to ride. It is a public road, but it is a dead end with three driveways past ours, and all of our neighbors are grandparents.

 

 

the phone number

Many hours ago I took a shower and washed my hair, but I just realized that it is fairly obvious that I used conditioner and did not rinse it off. Luckily, my wildest outing today is going to be the dump.

So, last night we went to school for a board meeting, and Ruby looked up and said, "I haven't been here for so long that I forgot our school's phone number. 2-5-0-0. See, there it is". She pointed to the address on the front of the building.

I'm about to make blueberry oatmeal muffins with four children.

birdland

nearly 8

 

That little one on the right is about to turn eight on Saturday. This summer he learned to swim and ride a two wheeler.

unicorn highway of the streets

She has been writing a book called Unicorn Highway of the Streets. The unicorn highway is the one that goes straight through the doorway of the rainbow.

garden notes

I have the garden that never really got started, so I move forward and keep planting. It has been so wet that the tomatoes are splitting and rotting, but we have lots of cherry tomatoes. Ruby rearranged all the labels on my little plants in the spring, so I have to guess at what is what. I do love Garden Peach, and the little tart stripey green ones. I'm going to save the seeds for the first time this year.

My spring kale is going on and on. I'm still cutting it to make that incredible salad---kale, one avocado, juice of one lime, and sea salt. Put it all in a bowl and squeeze until the avocado coats all the leaves. Throw anything that thrills you on top. Sliced tomatoes, toasted pumpkin seeds, or some chilled sesame broccoli. Put some brown rice under it and that is dinner.

We have little watermelons growing, and the moonflower vines have reached the top of the fence. I have a few kinds of hot peppers, and a bumper crop of sunflowers.

summer {fleeting}

We've entered a countdown of sorts. Three weeks until school starts. Yesterday burst out clear and blue, and I took the two littlest to the lake for the day. The big girl is in her one camp of the summer. She is so thrilled because she got assigned an ipad for the week. It is a "maker" camp at the university center for creative technology, so she will be designing and building a musical instrument.

Today I need to wrap up the fall co-op schedule for my children's school and schedule the training sessions. While I don't want summer to go, I'm pretty excited about days in which all three of my kids go to school for the whole day. No, it isn't bittersweet for Ruby to go to Kindergarten. It is perfect. In fact, I'm chomping at the bit a little.

We need to fit in some camping between rainstorms in the next few weeks, have another swimming day and finish our math packets. We are thinking about camping at Natural Tunnel State Park.  With these delicious nights in the fifties I've been thinking about fall. I slept in a flannel shirt last night and opened the windows wide. Even on the cusp of August I see the fall.

two wheeling

travels

The children and I went home for the funeral of an old family friend. The littles are very lucky in that this was the first funeral the older two had ever been to. Ruby proudly explained that she had been to Nancy Hadden's mother's "singing funeral". The older two knew that Nena was in the little box up front, but Ruby had no idea. I asked her if she knew what dying was. At first she said yes and then no, and then we compared it to butterflies and got lost in metamorphosis and egg laying and wanted to know where Nena left her eggs. Then we ate devilled eggs and played handbells.

Ella and I ran to Ellwood Thompson in Richmond looking for the elusive Kim Kim Sauce, a locally made Korean hot sauce. Back when I lived in the neighborhood the store was small and a little musty. Now, it is bright and big smells like incense and fruit and vegan chicken. There is a beautiful café in the back with a Whole Foods style salad bar, hot food bar, and even a living raw food bar. They have Kombucha and Cider in kegs with big displays of mason jars for taking it home. Apparently that day they had more than 700 local items for sale. Then we ran in to Penzeys for Za'atar and Vietnamese Cinnamon and headed back to my mother's house.

We got married right there in front of that bench in the picture. Life in fast forward.

blueberry

sorting the world

Ruby and John went to math camp last week. It might not sound too exciting, but it was. John was a little disappointed that there weren't any math worksheets, but he  doesn't even realize how much he learned. He especially loved spending the week with two good friends. Ruby, on the other hand, is very excited about numbers and has  learned to write the numbers from one to ten. She is pretty adept at adding and subtracting onions and apples.. On the first night of camp she was counting all the tiles on the bathroom floor exclaiming, "Math is everywhere. Look at it". Tonight she was telling me all about money and how it is either "minted" or "printed".

She did lots of math games and did a sorting chart with tally marks. She recreated the project on the porch at home with mason jars of flowers, a pile of rocks, and some other things she found around the yard. I asked her what she was doing, and she said, "I am sorting the world into what it is".

I think we should all spend a little more time sorting the world into what it is. And then realize that all our piles are different. Do what you can with your piles, and don't criticize other people's piles. Walk a mile in someone else's piles.

tomatoes

a blueberry day

at home

Have you heard that weeding is the new yoga?

 The Parisian Cucumbers are about to climb their willow trellis, and I think we are about to have our first tomatoes. I have seen a jalapeno, and the children have been loving fresh dill on potatoes.

The moonflowers and hyacinth beans are about to climb the fence, and I'm planting more sunflowers and zinnias. The arugula is coming out and more lettuce is being planted.

John, Michael, and Milko cut up most of the dead tree , and last years woodpile has been neatly stacked and added to. Blackberries are almost ready to be picked, and we'll fit in a trip to the berry farm this week for blueberries.

I think the littles will love these homemade hot dog buns.

Pretty soon I'm going to have to drive to Richmond for some KimKim Sauce.

backyard

We are turning our focus west of the back door these days.

summer

emerald isle

 

dolphins

orlando

We are home from the great pleasure houses of Orlando, Florida. The children are having a hard time coming down from the constant stimulation and entertainment. We stayed at a gorgeous resort in Universal Studios, and the kids enjoyed nighttime movies in the lagoon pool. We spent a day at SeaWorld and a day at Universal. Ella was fully immersed in the Wizarding World of Harry Potter {she has perhaps officially joined the house of Ravensclaw}, and John was all about rides. Ruby loved it all, riding every ride in Dr. Seuss with her new friend Camille. I took her on  roller coasters and rides, and she loved every one. I think her favorite was the Pteradon Flyers in Jurassic Park. It is a hanging seat beneath pteradon wings and swings high above palm trees and flowering tropical plants. When the ride came to a stop she looked at the person helping her out of her seat and said, "That was beautiful". She loved all the animals at SeaWorld, especially dolphins, whales, and stingrays.

The two littlest had never been on an airplane. Ella flew several times when we were living in Portland, but she doesn't remember it. When Ruby realized that the plane had left the ground she shouted, "We are flying"!


Thanks Joe, Ren, Jen, and Manu for the wonderful whirlwind weekend.

birthday girl

When school got out we headed down to Emerald Isle, North Carolina with two other families for a week on the beach. I'd go back there in a second.

Ruby turned five while we were there, and we spent her birthday at Hammocks Beach State Park. We took a ferry to Bear Island to swim in the beautiful green water. John and John hiked to the point to collect seashells, and Ruby flew a kite by herself for the first time.

5

our house for a week

boogie

castles

june

One quarter of the garden is weeded and mulched. Since only tomatoes are planted in here, I let the ladies in in hopes that they might nibble a few of the weeds. They thoroughly enjoyed kicking the hay around.