Digging it Up and Soaking it In

We spent one whole glorious day outside today in celebration of the first day of spring.  Our faces have been really kissed by the sun for the first time this season and, somehow, I feel stronger for it.  

Hello Spring

I am coming up from air, from homeschooling, from mothering, from living.  Oh the air is sweet up here.  I am hoping to stay for a while. 

 How are you?

Happy 2012!

From all of us!

{this moment}

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

Amanda Soule

A Little Making

When we first decided to homeschool, I was so excited be the prospect and couldn't wait to make for our classroom.  I was going to make a felt calender, a wall pocket organizer, a reusable schedule with velcro, not to mention a first day of school skirt and other lovelies.  But then I got bogged down and stumped by the lesson planning part and lost my steam.

I did get a chance to make a little pencil holder for my school girl though.  I used the pattern from The Creative Family and substituted fabric and batting for felt.  I also purchased a brand spanking new set of colored pencils (a set for her and one for me).  And it just feels so sweet and special.  This little girl, her colored pencils, and me.

Yarn Along: 14 September

Joining Ginny again this week...

Oh just how many pictures can one take of just one knitting project?  I really wish I had something else to offer on the knitting front, but.. well.. I don't.  It's not that I am not knitting.  I am.  It is the slow and methodical click clacking of needles, though, rather than a fast, more purposeful knitting.  This cowl will make its way off of my needles, maybe even by next week.  If it doesn't, I may just bow my head in [no-posting] shame and reappear when it is done.

Unlike my knitting, the reading has been quick, varied, and fun.  I Am Cute Dresses arrived at my doorstep a couple of days ago and it. has. the cutest.dresspatterns.EVER.  I am actually scared to make any of them for fear that the book will fall from grace.  They look so simple and so easy to put together, but I feel quite confident that I can find a way to complicate them.  I have nearly finished A Charlotte Mason Companion and I have found it tremendously helpful in developing a plan for our first year of homeschooling.

I missed all of you last week and can not wait to see how you and your knitting and reading are!

First Day of {Homeschool} Kindergarten

We have a big day ahead of us tomorrow, me and my little girl.  It is a start of a little (or long) journey together, one little step at a time (for me and for her).  Off to sleep now...

Nature Study Monday: Amanita

That was a completely unintended week-long blog vacation that proved to be much needed.  I am so happy to be back though!

Are you a forager?  With all of our walks in the woods, I have recently become very interested in the many different mushrooms that peek through or pop their heads out of the fallen leaves or that stand at attention on decaying logs in the forest.  Today on a walk in the Delaware Water Gap, we came across a couple foraging and learned a little about what they found.  I learned, for instance, that a toadstool is not a specific kind of mushroom, but a generic name for one.

I have much much more to learn about these forest creatures before I venture to eat one.  A friend walking with us pointed to this mushroom as Amania bisporigera (or the Eastern North American Destroying Angel--yikes!), a fungus so toxic that it accounts many or most of the mushroom fatalities worldwide.  Upon further investigation, I am no so sure that we classified it correctly.  Most of this classification evidently are found growing on the forest floor (this one is on a log) and are found in the spring. 

 Nevertheless, I will surely not be eating anything looking like it in the near future.

{this moment}

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

Amanda Soule

Yarn Along: 31 August

Joining Ginny again this week...

Do you take Yarn Along pictures of the same project for weeks on end just like me?  I really hope others are knitting as slow as I am.  This truly is the Summer 2011 Cowl because it is nearly the one and only thing I have knit through the summer.  Here's hoping that it will be done by summer's end.

My reading has varied a bit though.  I finished Rhythm of Family by Amanda and Stephen Soule this week and thoroughly enjoyed it.  Like others have said, there was not a lot that was new to me in the book, but the photography was beautiful and I appreciated the reminders I took from each of the authors.  


Now I am working my way through the bundles of peaches that we picked last week, trying to find just the right way to preserve them for the year.  Any ideas?

Blight!

Oh our tomatoes!  I think the gardener's heart in me might just be breaking. 

This year we built a large, very large by our standards, bed for these babies of ours and in the late spring, I faithfully transplanted all (or most) of our volunteers to their permanent {summer} home.  Because I have never grown tomatoes from seed before, I knew that this year would be experimental for me {and that there might be some casualties) but I never dreamed of this!

Nearly all of our tomato plants are dead!  Ack!  AND to add insult to injury, the hens are pecking away at the few that are indeed ripening!  It feels like such a sad climax to what has been an only mediocre season in our garden.

The late coming of spring, the extraordinary amount of rain, the hens, and my relative inexperience have ensured a pretty poor showing from the garden this year.  I suppose I have learned a few things (note the grumbling and arms crossed) and have made some mistakes that I won't make again (keep the hens out of the beds, for one).  Most importantly, though, it is another lesson in relinquishing control (for me).  Some years will be good; others won't.

Nature Study Monday: Coneflower

Do you have any of these growing around your home?

I planted Coneflowers early this spring and anxiously awaited their arrival throughout the summer.  Butterflies supposedly love the flower as much as we do, but I have not noticed many surrounding ours.  They, instead, flock to the nearby butterfly bush (which I only learned later is not a native plant and therefor not a host to many of our native butterflies).

Coneflowers (Echinacea) are native to eastern and central North America and do not mind some drought.  They like full sun but can handle some shade, and once they are established they live a long while and attract all kinds of good native species to your garden.

{this moment}

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

Amanda Soule

Yarn Along: 24 August

Joining Ginny again this week...

Is the weather cooling where you are?  It is here.  I have actually opened the knitting bag containing my hub's sweater to peek in.  No knitting yet, but it is coming...  The cowl though is filling out quite well and I just might meet that end of August deadline.  Still just a couple of rows a night, but they are adding up.

In reading news, The Egg and I has been retired for the moment in favor of some homeschooling reading.  The new school year is upon us and I don't really know what we are going to do with it.  Karen Andreola's words are giving me some comfort though.  And my copy of Amanda Soule's new book arrived last week.  The photographs are lovely as is the writing.

Making for a Birthday

Our littlest one recently turned two.  We had a small family celebration for him with a peach crumble pie and two little handmade gifts.

This third child of ours is so naturally balanced, so sure, and yet so open.  It was a wonder to watch him on this special day of his.  I imagine he feels himself a part of and inextricable from our larger whole and is comfortable with his place in the family.  I pray that the balance remains with him as he gets older.

Our eldest daughter made her littlest sibling a books about his very favorite thing in the whole wide world--TRUCKS.  And his Mama sewed up a little birthday crown that he absolutely refuses to wear so it had to be modeled by his older brother!

Nature Study Monday: Carpenter Bees

I am very interested in all the sorts of bees that we have humming about our yard over the past three months.  Documentaries like this one have me especially interested in the fate of our dear honeybees.  To fight the anxiety drummed up knowing just how dependent we are on our yellow and black friends I study those that are flying about my yard and dream of the hives that we will get next year.  And I am finding out so much more each day (thanks Julie for pointing out that this is actually a yellow jacket).

Carpenter bees, or at least the species that we have in our own backyard, are a great deal larger than honeybees.  As you may have guessed (or already know), they make their homes in wooden structures or decaying trees by boring holes and creating tunnels.  The bees, however, do not eat the wood, although they might use it to create divisions within their nest.  They are primarily solitary nesters although in some species some females and their daughters nest together.

They are good pollinators of open-faced flowers, like our bee balm, pictured above.

{this moment}

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

Amanda Soule

Quilted

I put Harvey's garden-inspired quilt across his bed to stay a few days ago and, I have to say, I am pretty proud of myself.  The quilt is far from perfect (quilting in the ditch is something that takes practice evidently), but this four year old's little eyes don't notice any of the imperfections.  He lit up so when I gave it to him that I felt truly awed and, at the same time, anxious in anticipation for the time when he won't want these handmades any more.

I started the quilt in May when the weather here in Northern New Jersey began to warm and all I could think about was what was growing then, what would be growing soon, and what might be growing after that.  So the garden was on my mind when I dipped into the greens, browns, and yellows in the fabric stash.

I used a very simple pattern found here and paced myself throughout the summer.  Like knitting, quilting takes time, patience, and the ability to undo and redo (not a strength of mine).  In the end, and despite its flaws, it is a little piece of our summer and of our garden that is keeping our son snuggley at night.

Yarn Along: 17 August

Joining Ginny again this week for her yarn along...

I almost used the same picture for the third week in a row as the knitting (especially the knitting) and reading have not changed that much.  I still have hopes of finishing my mom's cowl by the end of the month which means that the project is going to start coming with me (that is if I ever leave the house!).

The Egg and I is providing some closing hours entertainment--I do actually laugh out loud with this one which is just so refreshing.  I have slowed a bit though as my homeschooling reading is picking up.  I am going to start teaching our 5 year old in the fall using a loose interpretation of the Charlotte Mason approach and I am getting the jitters about it.  For those of who who have homeschooled using this method, do you have any experience with Living Books Curriculum?  Last minute, I am considering a curriculum purchase.

The Summer Rains

On this very rainy Monday, we~

~biked around the block to move our muscles and our minds

~played a whole lot together

~puzzled, painted and drew

How about your Monday?  What it rainy too?