What Have I Been Doing?

I looked at the calendar recently and thought, “What have I been doing?” I can tell you what I haven’t been doing pretty easily. I haven’t been sitting around reading a lot and I haven’t been writing. I can honestly say that I missed the writing bit pretty much every day. One sentence in a diary doesn’t scratch the itch at all. I sat around just enough so that I wouldn’t miss it too severly. Haha.

We had days and days and days of rain in late September. It was cold and the dog stank and there was mud in our classroom every day. I started burning candles and plugged in air fresheners.

During the long wet I sewed dresses for the little girls so that we could coordinate somewhat for a family photo shoot. Then I spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to figure out what I would wear to coordinate with everybody else. Shall I just admit that I got three sweaters at Boscov’s so that Gabe could help me figure out which one to wear because I really just don’t have a good sense for that sort of thing? And that, of course, I wore the simplest, most unassuming one and took the other two back? At the last minute I decided not to wear the charcoal skirt after all, but the grey dress. Why was that decision so hard to make in the store? I did not consult Pinterest, which is what other people do when they can’t figure out what to wear, because I don’t get along well on Pinterest. ‘Nough said.

We had an anniversary, our 14th, and it was the first sunny day after all that drear. I dug out our love letters and we read a bunch of them, laughing a bit at ourselves, reminiscing and agreeing that 14 years has taught us a few things about loving each other, even though sometimes we lose track and forget to appreciate the one we love. Which is why we took a day off and went biking Rails to Trails without the children. No eavesdroppers in the vehicle! And just for a day it was nice not to have to settle any fights or wait for the slow ones. We ended the day with dressing up for a fancy meal out, then descended gratefully back into normal life. After all, back in the day when we had dates every weekend, we yearned to live normal life together, more than anything. And here we are, doing it!

Gabe has lived with me long enough to know the kinds of books I love. For our anniversary he got me blink (you have no idea how hard it is for me to write a book title with a lower case letter) by Malcolm Gladwell, subtitled “The Power of Thinking Without Thinking”. It is packed with insights into what makes people decide things: those split second impressions that affect our choices. For the first week or so after he gave me the book I only had time to stroke the cover, but by now I have read enough to know it is just as interesting as The Tipping Point, which I discovered a few years ago.

Once the weather turned clement (is that right? the opposite of inclement?) our friend Michelle Fisher took the photos. I knew she had lots of experience in posing children because she has nine of them and they always end up with really sweet family pictures. Want to see a few? I think you will agree that she did a good job on them. When these were taken, the children were 12, 10, 8, 6, and 4. This only lasted for one month, but it was kind of fun to say. 🙂 The 10 turned 11 yesterday.

My friend Caroline and I spent a forenoon together, picking up a large meat order about an hour’s drive away. Either one of us could have gone alone, but it just so worked out that we could team up. I was supposed to be the navigator, since we didn’t have GPS. Even with a Google Maps printout, I stink at navigating. Let’s just say we saw a lot of beautiful countryside and enjoyed our extra time to visit. It was nice to be with someone who didn’t get uptight about the unmarked roads and was game to try routes that appeared to go in the right direction. Not to mention someone who didn’t run out of interesting topics of conversation, especially with no eavesdroppers in the van. 😀

The next day I texted her that I had just been running some errands in a nearby town and had to turn around three times, so I think I do need a GPS because of all the stuff in my head that isn’t down on the earth. She replied, “Well, I just read, ‘Set your affections on things above, not on things on the earth.’ With that mindset you might lose your way driving every now and then.” She is witty like that. The thing is, I am pretty sure I was thinking about that meat we hauled home and how it needed to be canned, as well as these apples I am picking up and how they also need to be canned.

I have 2 1/2 bushels of apples still sitting on the front porch and some frozen tomatoes that I have to process and after that I put my foot down. No more! Today I tilled the gardens one final time and sowed a cover crop of rye. I love summer so much, but at this point it is only sensible to move on, wouldn’t you say? For the first time we put in a bed of garlic. Some bulbs in and some bulbs, like the dahlias, out. Gardening is endlessly fascinating. And time consuming. I hope to have more time to write now that the outside stuff is getting wrapped up.

Last, but not least, I have been industriously starting a small book selling business. I signed up to become an Usborne consultant and am still learning the ropes. So far the most rewarding thing has been to be able to send really nice books to refugee children in Iraq. I also was thrilled to get our church school a lot of free merchandise through a book show. I genuinely like connecting anybody to a source of educational books like these. Someday I will do a whole post on this topic. I have been having a blast with this, especially when the boxes of books come and I can sort out orders and stroke the covers (I know. I have a problem. But it isn’t a bad problem.) But there. The final and biggest reason why I have not been writing. I am still figuring out how to fit this business, not into every crack of spare time, but into reasonable hours. My children don’t mind. They drool over the catalog and revel in all the new books! I am systematically turning them all into bibliophiles (That’s not a bad thing either. After the dishes are done.).

Gabe is back on an evening schedule, which means he will be home around midnight. It has been a pleasure chatting with you kind folks while I wait up for him.

Pumpkin Pots and Paint

We are walking in fresh sunlight these days. I do not take it for granted. I marvel at it and try to store it up. An art book we are reading describes warm colors as orange and red, and cold colors as blue and green. I have been working on a game plan for winter, because I know it is coming and I dread the chill and dark already. Our basement rooms have been the same color for 11 years. We drywalled and painted it grey just before Gregory was born. It’s a nice neutral color, but back then I couldn’t even imagine doing school down there with 5 children and a dog who thinks she is a child. I didn’t dream how much time I would spend in my laundry room.

I decided to liven things up a little, and I am glad I did it every time I walk into the laundry/bath room. Less than $20 dollars worth of paint (because I got one on the mistints shelf…I am cheap like that.) really made a difference. This room was off-white for 14 years. May I present to you Sunbaked Orange with the light off and with the light on. Hey, I saw you blinking. Isn’t it cheerful? This was not the mistint. I deliberately chose it while in my right mind. And yes, that space between the washer and the laundry sink is really small. When I was pregnant, it was uncomfortable. But I like my large sink for scrubbing things and rinsing bits of our property off small children, so I put up with the crack.

(I did this painting while Gabe and the boys spent a week up north helping his dad dismantle a huge old barn. When they first talked about doing this, I weighed my options. I could sit and drink tea and read and write in a space of small appetites and little noise and bazillion paper snibbles, or I could tackle some projects on my list that I had despaired of ever getting done. I chose the latter and worked like a crazy woman. When Gabe got home, I had just finished showering off the last of the projects.)

The other room I painted Tavistock Green. I know. It’s not really a warm color, but it is a different color, and that is what I needed.

I don’t have a clear photo, so this will have to do. Maybe you think this is still grey, but you should see the difference beside the grey wall. It just occurred to me that, being a mistint, this color swatch is not entirely accurate. I think the paint mixer person dribbled a little extra bright green into my gallon, because mine seems to be fresher on the walls.

This is one of my favorite colors in the world, and I picked it up when I saw it on clearance because you never know when you will want to paint something Tavistock Green. That was five years ago. See, I was right!

I did not go yard saling, even though it was Labor Day weekend and the roadsides were just littered with signs. I did not go shopping in Altoona, like I had hoped to do. But I did go up to Rome for 2 days to help out with cooking and whatever I could while the guys were so busily tearing down the barn. That was 8 hours of driving. And Olivia and I did our fall trek to Pittsburgh to see her specialist, so that was another 5 hours of driving after I counted in the detours and the missed exit and the bridge out at a very crucial point. One day I went to a party an hour away and back again for another 2 hours driving total. And I went to pick grapes 1/2 hour up the mountain, so I figure I put in at least 16 hours on the road in my “week off”. I also got pulled over by an officer for the first time in my life. Not that I never deserved it before, but this time seemed mild. I was just at the edge of a small town, speeding up now that I was through it, only I wasn’t through it. I was already past the “End 35” sign when I got pulled over for going 52. Bummer. There went that record. I got off with a warning because I ~~looked harmless~~ wasn’t local.

The girls and I picked all our pumpkins. I wanted pie pumpkins when I bought the plants, planning to sell the extras out beside the road. This usually works out as a nice little cash crop for the boys. But this was the year for funny mistakes. Remember how the tomatoes turned out to be cherry-sized? Well, the pumpkins turned out to be Jack Be Littles. Ever so cute and decorative and… little. I roasted a bunch of them for pies and lattes, scooping out the minuscule bits of soft flesh and blending it. Then I made this one night:

It was the prettiest dinner I made in a long time and I spent a good part of it coaxing the children to eat. What is with that?

I think I will spray paint a few of them for decor and give the rest away.

You haven’t heard the end of our mistaken identities in the garden. This was entirely my own fault. I wanted mini bell peppers because I heard that they turn colors quicker than the big ones and it always seems to take so long to grow a beautiful sweet red pepper and then it frosts on them. I bought plants labelled Cherry Bomb because the picture looked exactly like Mini Bells. When we cut into the first brilliant red baby pepper, it nearly blew us away with its heat. My mom said, “What were you thinking? Bombs? That should have been a clue!” And she was right. But they sure are pretty. My yellow Bells are ticked off about something, but the red ones have finally started turning sweet. Those are the bombs at the bottom of the photo.

I turned a whole bunch of them into pepper poppers and they were fine, indeed. Then I called my sister-in-law Ruby for her hot sauce recipe. One bottle of Tabasco typically lasts us about 8 years, but last year Ruby gave us a pint of her homemade hot sauce, something I had never even thought of making. We are down to the last of it, in one year. It is that good. I used the Cherry Bombs for hot sauce, and in my humble opinion, I think it is even better than the stuff made with Habaneros. Still, we will need to convince the kids to join in if we want to consume 8 jars of it.

The garden is down to a straggle of late tomatoes and green beans, a total failure of a broccoli crop, some really slow pole limas, and lots and lots of sweet red peppers. And weeds. Unbelievable trees of weeds that helped themselves when we got all that rain in August and we couldn’t keep up with them. But in September we do not pull weeds. We mow them off. It is really fun.

Are you getting bored yet? Just one more quick story about this cabbage that Alex kept until it started to split. It was 18 pounds with three babies attached around the bottom. We sliced it up and packed it with salt where it is happily fermenting into sauerkraut, amassing healthful probiotics by the millions. The children don’t like kraut either, but Gabe and I don’t really care. That’s more for us. Hopefully if they see how much we enjoy the stuff, they can get past the stink. 😀

That is about all the creativity I could handle the last few weeks. We are hitting the books with renewed vigor, finishing out 25 days this week. Ahh. It’s a long road is a school term. Rita misses her carefree outdoor existence. “Do you mean I have to do this for twelve years?” she wept one morning when the flashcards overwhelmed her. Because she just turned six this summer, I am letting her off with half days, taking it slowly, letting her go pet her bunnies and look for caterpillars. She can read, and surely she will know her facts by the time those twelve years are over.

Addy, on the other hand, feels left out because she is the only one without real school books. I bought her some wipe-clean preschool materials and that helps, but still is hardly official enough for her. Yesterday she sighed gustily, “I am so tired of this ‘yong, yong’ week! Because I am still not five!” The child talks in italics. Really. Talk about drama. It is just hard being the smallest, especially when you are dead serious about something and the other people at the table smirk. And especially if you still can’t say your l’s.

Well, look at that. I have managed to stay up until my husband gets off work. Thanks for listening!

Tomato Peights

Tomatoes. All kinds of tomatoes. Big ones, little ones, red ones, pink ones, yellow ones. If it’s true that, “you are what you eat,” the Peights are by and large tomatoes. The Peights have a predilection for tomatoes— a predilection that some would say borders an obsession.

As I was growing up on the farm at home in rural Pennsylvania, there were always tomatoes in one form or another about the house. Since our cravings were not seasonal, tomatoes claimed a dominant place in our garden and on the shelves in our cool, damp cellar. We canned tomato soup, spicy tomato juice, and tomato sauce in prodigious quantities. Other tomatoes we cut into large chunks and canned. With all these resources, we were able to regularly incorporate tomatoes into our diet throughout the year. Whenever we had fresh tomatoes, we ate them on our toast for breakfast and on fresh, homemade bread for lunch. Tomato slices with a layer of creamy Hellman’s mayonnaise and diced hard-boiled egg on top was a favorite salad dish for dinner. For a snack at bedtime or after church on Wednesday nights, we ate canned tomato chunks poured over a piece of bread and drank tall glasses of iced tomato juice.

This universal passion for tomatoes in my family was actually not original with us. My dad’s family was perhaps even more obsessed with tomatoes than we were. Dad came from a family of thirteen boys and two girls. To help feed a family of this size, they raised over a hundred tomato plants each year. The first ripening tomatoes of the season never made it to maturity. With so many tomato-lovers about it was entirely too risky to let them on the plant until they were completely ripe—they had to be grabbed while the grabbing was good!

Grandmother canned four hundred quarts of tomato juice and five hundred quarts of tomato chunks in “family size” two-quart Mason jars. In the wintertime, my uncles’ school lunches consisted of canned tomato chunks over homemade bread topped with sweet onion and course pepper. To drink, there was tomato juice. The story goes that on one occasion they had the normal— tomato chunks, and tomato juice—and, for a special treat, fresh tomatoes. In the summertime it was not unusual to have a single-course dinner of tomato sandwiches. One enormous stainless steel bowl of tomato slices was set at each end of the kitchen table along with a few loaves of fresh white bread. The highlight of the meal was the fight over the juice in the bottoms of the bowls. Again, every man was on his own. The timid got none.

Dad made a wise choice when he married Mom because she was able to support Dad’s well-established tomato habit in a very special way. Her family raised a pink, non-acid tomato that was handed down from her grandmother. Seeds from the best tomatoes were preserved every year to be planted the following year. These heirloom tomatoes became know as “Mother’s” tomatoes. Today, the “Mother’s” tomato crop defines the success of the summer.

For me a tomato is more than just a vegetable that adds color to a tossed salad. Tomatoes add color to my identity as a Peight. Every year as I now nurture my own tomato plants with my children, I am flooded with happy memories of my childhood as a tomato Peight.

-guest post, essay written by my husband Gabriel

And a photo of one small Peight enjoying her heritage

Living it Up In the Garden

Our family had a weekend with the in-laws in Rome, unplugged by necessity, but actually it is a relief to be unreachable. Well, they do have land lines, but you have to take a walk up the hill for cell service and while you are doing that you feel the ridiculousness of constantly glancing at the bars on your phone when there is a panorama of rare beauty in the Endless Mountains.

I got up this morning with one thing on my mind: laundry. We had some full hampers when we left, so there was plenty of it! Then I opened the washer lid to see the load of towels and washcloths I had put in so they wouldn’t get stinky while we were gone. Alas, they had not gotten transferred to the dryer and were just plain… searching for a word here…. putrid. Wow, I thought to myself. What a great start!

Then I took a walk outside, checking on the gardens. I noticed that the weeds grew about 18 inches while we were away. Seriously, if you take your eyes off those things… As I strolled further, I saw that the tomatoes are in full bloom. And the row of Amish Pastes that I planted for sauces, they appear to be cherry tomatoes. Wow, I thought to myself, that little green house lady just messed with my summer. We can never keep up with just one cherry tomato plant. How about a whole row of them??? Gabe said hopefully they will get bigger, like develop into Amish Pastes after all. I am not holding my breath. Oh, the drama that can attend gardening.

We have whopping big broccoli heads ready to harvest, and the constant flow of green beans. But the best of all are the raspberries right now. We eat all we want, enough to make us sick, and still there are more. It is lovely. Wanna see the new variety Gabe planted?

Aren’t they amazing? Five berries filled the palm of my hand. I am so grateful that Gabe takes care of the pruning and staking. Picking is more fun.

I also brought in our first cucumbers and sliced them up to eat with our breakfast eggs. They are so delightfully fresh that I think I will just throw out the store bought ones in the crisper drawer of the fridge.

On my way back into the house I noticed that the portulaca planted in the window boxes is nearly bursting itself with effort these days. My grandma liked these flowers, so in her memory I planted some this year. I had forgotten how sprightly and durable it is. I forget to water the window boxes too many days, yet it thrives. And every time I look at these flowers, I think of my grandma’s cement walkway scuffed by manurey chore boots going to the back door, yet bordered the whole length with a cheerful row of portulacas. That’s how my grandma was, and it makes me happy to think of her.

I just read recently that the purslane that is the bane of my garden is a relative of portulaca and it is edible. I bet my grandma knew that too. I remember when she showed me a cheese plant with its diminutive seed pod that looks like a tiny wheel of Swiss. She urged me to eat it, and after that the play with the cousins included some foraging for snacks in the weeds. If you like edible wild plants, check this out. Here is how it looks.

Now that the lettuce in the garden has bolted, I am considering a salad of purslane and mallow (cheese plant) with a generous side of freshly sliced cucumber. We could kill two birds with one stone, pull weeds and harvest lunch in one fell swoop. Sorry. It’s late and the idioms do tend to get out of the bag.

I LOVE this season even more than reading and writing. Maybe you noticed? I think heaven will be like May and June weather with the harvests of July and there won’t be weeds. I think heaven will be walking with my grandma through gardens that have no Japanese beetles endlessly chewing and making out in the raspberries. I think heaven will have plenty of zucchini for everyone but not too much.

What is your favorite thing about summer?

A Moment of Silence

for my flowers. My beautiful, brave petunias. They called them tidal waves at the greenhouse. This is one plant. One amazing tidal wave of pink that made me happy all summer as it clamored over the barberry and way out of its assigned spot.

Gabe made these terraced steps a few years ago. They still amaze me, especially with trails of blooms on them. But tonight I pulled most of the flowers out. I can’t bear to see the petals blackened and ugly after frost, so I pulled them and disposed of them.

The boys chopped off the tough stems of our zinnia row in the garden, now that the butterflies are gone. I dug my calla lily bulbs and uprooted the blue salvia. All the herbs are spent and scrawny. There is only one doughty dahlia and a couple of confused lavendars still putting out fresh blooms.

I don’t like the bottom end of fall. It is so melancholy. I want to go to sleep too, or at least live with minimal effort, just kind of sipping tea and being quiet. Instead, the approaching winter requires me to dig down deep and put out fresh shoots of creativity to keep my little household happy. It requires more than usual patience and diligence in weed pulling or nasty habits and attitudes choke us altogether.

Maybe if I think of the challenges of a [mostly] housebound winter as another sort of gardening, it will be easier. Through faith and patience we inherit the promises! (But I still feel sad about my flowers.)

How Little Boys Pull Weeds

We just got back from a 9 day trip to the mountains of North Carolina and then up the coast. The outdoor chores around here have staked a claim on us all, so I don’t have time to write about our travels, but I thought you might enjoy seeing this sequence from yesterday’s garden work. (Also, I may add that a favorite shirt is a favorite shirt, even long-sleeved in 80 degrees. 🙄 )

Failings and Flapdoodles on a Monday

For starters, those of you who wonder how I ever find time to read should have seen me this morning when I was trying to quickly finish my book before facing the laundry and the 250 feet of peas in the garden. That is how it happens, my dear Rhonda, that an 800 page book eventually gets read.

Anyhow, I was feeling guilty as I scurried into the laundry room to sort out the hampers that Alex had carried down for me. As I turned the corner, I stubbed my toe horribly and yelped with irritation. A close inspection revealed a neatly constructed trip wire running from the edge of the dryer into the boys’ bedroom. Booby traps of all varieties are my little boy’s faulty idea of fun practical jokes lately. Maybe it was the sight of my bleeding, torn toenail, or just maybe it had something to do with the look on my face, but Gregory was instantly penitent. “I didn’t mean to hurt you, Mama.” Of course not, but if you ever do that again, son, you will face some very loud music. I stewed and simmered a bit while I was sorting laundry. Maybe I should start a new chapter of M.A.D.D. I thought. You know, Mothers Against Dumb Deeds or something like that.

We have been spending quite a bit of time weeding the various plots around here. There was more than a little grumbling going on, so we pretended that we would starve this coming winter if we didn’t raise a successful garden. It was a fun game for the children and perked them up as they discussed survival strategies. I thought how it is that we cannot really imagine such a plight. Mainly we garden because we enjoy fresh food. By the time we buy all our supplies and the endless array of mulches and sprays and stakes and fences to keep out the deer, I am doubtful that our food is cheaper. If our corn fails because of the wetness of the soil, we are confident that we can buy some. We are daily loaded with benefits and how quickly we forget!

All that to say that we put in our daily weeding hour this forenoon before I picked the peas. I dislike picking them when they are wet and clammy, but then it was hot and I got a horrendous crick in my back. I resolve every year that I will not do this again. There is no more labor intensive vegetable and the yields are discouraging for all that work. And then the next year I go and plant them again because I absolutely love homegrown peas. You don’t need to pity me. I know what I am asking for when I order the seeds. It is a yearly lapse into irrationality. 🙄

About half way through the picking, I noticed that my littlest girl was missing and decided I should check on her. It is always better if she stays very close to Mama, and normally she does this on her own, chattering and breathing my air in her desire to be right where I am. I stepped into the living room and yelped for the second time in the day. There was a quart of bright red cherries scattered across the carpet with very deliberate footprints stomping through them and out the door. …Deep breath. Stay calm and deal with this M.A.D.D.ness in a constructive way… We had a little session where she admitted freely that she knew she was being naughty. Then we picked up the cherries and cleaned the carpet and that was that. All in a day’s work.

I do wonder though, what I ever did that my children think up these crazy ways to “be creative and explore their world” as the child development books say. What weird impulse made my child paint an enormous black smiley on the outside basement wall? I mean, it wasn’t like he thought he could hide it. I have a cousin who sweetly says that her children never seemed to do these sorts of things and I wonder what is wrong with mine in those times. I think it must be the mixture of trace amounts of Indian blood with quite a lot of old Adam. If you never have M.A.D.D. moments with your children, just please don’t tell me so that I will still like you.

I do need to say that the day ended well with us sitting on the deck shelling peas and brainstorming scenarios in which Gregory invented labor saving pea shellers and weed pickers, etc. etc. I laughed so hard I had tears rolling down my cheeks and all was just fine. I like living in my own personal comic strip.

Wildflower Bouquets and Mint Tea

I don’t seem to post very much these days because I haven’t written anything other than grocery lists and the odd quick bits on Facebook. Some of this is due to the fact that we have bitten off an enormous project on our property, fencing a plot and preparing it for productivity. This included hosting a work night with a bunch of ambitious young friends who persevered with setting posts and stretching wire in drenching rain. It also entailed hauling a dump truck load of compost from the barnyard of our friend, the horse farmer, and spreading it all by hand. Gabriel has started four rows, each 25 feet long, of raspberries and blackberries. Next was a large plot of asparagus, which you may know, is quite a production. Asparagus has to be planted in rich soil, 18 inches deep, so we dug these massive trenches and made the rootlets comfy. They are coming up thin little pencils, very happy with their bed. Just last week we managed to get the rest of the garden planted, corn and squash and melons. It is nice to have all the space to plant stuff that we never had room for in my kitchen garden which is close to the house.

In this process, I hauled straw for mulching and a load of 5 scoops of mushroom mulch, which I personally unloaded by scoop shovel, thank-you-very-much. Since we replaced our mini van and our truck with the Suburban and a trailer, there was nothing for it but to learn to back a trailer if I don’t want to wait helplessly until Gabe has a day off work to do all the hauling that needs to be done. When I went for the straw, I chickened out and let the farm girl back the trailer into the barn. Then I came home and practiced for a while, down around the curves, backing into and out of the fenced garden. I didn’t hit anything, but I am not telling how many times I had to pull forward to straighten out a potential jackknife. Still, I am getting better! It is an empowering feeling, not unlike the time I finally pulled off a perfect parallel park for the first time. 🙂

We took two days to camp at the local State Park. With the weather so perfect, who can resist? I packed up the stuff and the kids while Gabe was at work… bikes and gear on the trailer once more. It was a little like trying to keep a clear head and not forget anything while surrounded by five very excited, very vocal crickets. We decided not to go the tent route this time. The cabin rentals were on a first-come-first-served basis and I was a bit nervous. What would I do with my happy load of people and stuff if we got there and there were no cabins available anymore? We got to the campground at lunchtime, fortunately found a nice secluded area where I had no observers while I backed that trailer into the trees. After I tucked the littlest crickets into bunks for their naps, I sat in a chair by the fire that the boys had built by using an inordinate amount of charcoal starter because we forgot paper. I just sat. And I thought about how last winter we fantasized about all the camping we want to do this summer. I looked up through the lacy caps of the trees and swatted mosquitoes and was happy. Gabe couldn’t get off work until nearly seven that night, but the cabin made it really easy to set up camp.

We had friends from church join us for the second day. Swimming, boating, fishing, biking, just wearing ourselves out in general, doing the cooking the hard way and all that. 🙂 Is it even fun? I ask myself that when I am clearing away the aftermath, washing smoky clothes endlessly, and dealing with all the over-tired grouchiness. All I have to do is ask the children, and yes, it is fun!

There was a 5K on our last day at the park, racing around the lake on the trail. One of Gabe’s friends from work lost a baby to SIDS and the run was to benefit SIDS research. The boys and I registered to walk, although we ran some of the way. Alex came in 2nd of all the walkers. Greg and I dragged along a bit more, coming in 21st and 22nd. There was a lot more competition among the runners. I can’t remember exactly what Gabe’s spot was, but it wasn’t too shabby considering that he hadn’t practiced much and there were a lot of thirty-somethings runners.

The next day was a picnic for the EMS personnel in the area and the day after that was our Rita-girlie’s 5th birthday. It crept up on me when I was otherwise occupied and I had not gotten a present or made the traditional special dress. I knew I would not have time to go shopping after our camping jaunt, but I did take a few hours to walk through a community yard sale. I found a lovely dress and new shoes for her and I prayed for something special yet, not having any idea what I was looking for. I am more prone to shop for birthday gifts on Amazon than at yard sales. Then I saw the vast collection of Boyd’s bears, all new and just the sort of thing that would delight Rita. I got her a lady bear with a velvet dress and a hooded cloak. She has named her Mrs. Teaberry and thanks us repeatedly for her beautiful present. 🙂 She wanted a flower cake and insisted on blue petals with a yellow middle. We didn’t eat it for over a day, so it darkened to a shocking blue and she just giggled with glee. Here she is with her special dress.

This was followed by three days with out-of-state cousins amidst picnics and cookouts and fishing and Old Bedford Village. Gabe had 40 hours of work in those three days… I have been just trying to keep breathing and doing laundry here, but the kids would say we have been really living!

Teacher’s Left the Monkeys Out…

I have been scrambling to find creative channels for all the energy running around here now that the books are done for the term. The new books came before we were quite finished, but we hustled them off to storage. This year instead of allowing myself to sink lethargically for a week after those last lessons were done, I decided to be super productive and repaint our bedroom. It was a good time to do it, since Gabe had a five day stretch off work. It is feast or famine in this line of work. :O

I spent my birthday painting trim in our room. It was fun, although careful painting always leaves me muttering after a few too many hours of strained concentration. But that day I didn’t cook because my friend Ellen paid for our pizza supper. Wasn’t that the kindest thing anyone could have done? We ate on the dock down by the pond… Meat lover’s with stuffed crust for the small people and roasted veggie with parmesan for Gabe and me. The boys had gone out earlier and picked huge bunches of wildflowers and forsythias to put in jars down there so that it would be festive. They even stripped a bunch of blossoms to float on the water. 🙂

Gabe and I took off the entire next day, with my blessed parents doing babysitter duty. It was a spectacular May day. We loaded our bikes on the back of the Suburban, but the first business was picking out a carpet piece for our room. Then we went to a tea room and had teeny cookies and tall glasses of iced tea. The vehicle needed a top-up at the lube place and then we thought we should have some protein before biking, so it was convenient to grab some roast beef sandwiches.

We rode 16 miles of Rails to Trails. It is hard to describe the joy for this Quality Time/Outdoors Lover. There were violets blooming so thickly along the trail that you could actually smell them as you breezed past. The redbuds were in their heyday and all the birds were happy. Let’s just say Gabe hit on the perfect birthday gift, the two of us tooling along, stopping occasionally to look at the river, to eat Toblerone, to pick flowers, and maybe to rest our legs. 😉 Even with the stops, we got to the end in two hours. The end of the trail was quite close to Gabe’s sister’s house, so they picked us up, sparing us a 16 mile return trip. Chipper as we may think we are, those bike seats can come to feel a bit “gnarly” as Gabe so aptly described it.

We had supper with my sister-in-law Ruby and her husband, lingering long over dessert before we headed home. It was just a delightful day all round, and my mom and dad were exhausted instead of us. 🙂

The next day we finished painting the bedroom and replaced the carpet. Thirteen years ago we painted our bedroom a pale grey. It needed freshened, but I wanted to keep it grey since that lends itself to any other accent color. When I went to pick out paint, I bought Reflection for three walls and- wait for it- Earl Grey for the accent wall. 🙂 🙂 I suppose it could just as well be called Iron Filings, in which case I would not have bought it. (Please don’t tell me I am the only one who is swayed by the names on the paint sample chips.) I love the end result! We have teal and orange throw pillows and a glittery new curtain, but all the rest is same old, rearranged. (Oh, and I am in the process of gluing hundreds of muslin “flowers” on the lamp shade, but I ran out of glue.) That night as I cleaned up the brushes and paints, my friend Michelle stopped in with two gorgeous boxes of cupcakes. Or that could be two boxes of gorgeous cupcakes. Either way, it was so sweet. You can see why I cannot ever be really cynical. I know too many nice people.

As for the children’s activities those painting days… I think they pretty much ran loose in the outdoors and hung around wherever Gabe was working. One project we started them on is blazing a switch back trail up to the top of the ridge. Every time we want to go on a walk in the woods, I end up hauling a chunky child or two straight up the side of the ridge and carrying them back down when we come home because the grade is so precipitous that they just slide. We don’t go on as many expeditions as we would like because of this fact. So now they have a trail up half way and the little tots can climb up easily on their own. Until the trail stops, of course. One of these days they will manage to get it all the way to the top. I think they are starting to catch on that this is busywork. Gregory said today, “This could become sort of a chore.” And Alex thought that the trail could require a lot of maintenance. Tee-hee.

Oh, and it is So Hot already. Please, please, please, may we go swimming? The first time I finally caved and let them go into the water it was still April. They lasted about 20 seconds. I thought, good, now they won’t beg for a long time. But it really has been warm lately, so they have been puddling around in life jackets around the dock. I just sit and watch. It is a little muddy yet for my taste.

Alex has graduated to driving our little tractor slowly along in our garden/orchard plot, stopping every now and then to pick up the piles of rocks the children gather. Some days they do that in the space left vacant by math. 🙂 We are building a fence around it before we do planting, hopefully rabbit-groundhog-deer-proof fence.

This morning we zoned little garden plots for the three middles. Alex has plans for popcorn and gourds later in the season and Addy is sharing my garden. 🙂 It was so funny how different they felt about what they wanted to grow. Rita was all enthused about veggies: broccoli, peas, beans, lettuce. Olivia wanted lots of flowers. Gregory has a mixture of flowers, ornamental corn and one melon plant that we hope doesn’t get frost bitten. In the end he deigned to plant some lettuce for my sake.

The boys started a little cottage industry of making cross bows out of craft sticks, hot glue and rubber bands. They ended up with about 10 orders from friends and just like that a thousand craft sticks and the new pack of glue sticks was gone. Also most of my bamboo skewers became arrows. They are learning things, like paying for supplies and being kind to nonpaying customers. And I found out exactly how far one can get on a lampshade project with one glue stick.

We are about to enter a period of feast-time, with Gabe finishing up a seven day stretch of work tonight with an entire long weekend off. Oh, glory! And a church picnic to boot!

Tell me, how are you occupying the busy little people who are done with school?

Snow Day, 1

You saw this coming, didn’t you? The not-very-prefessional photos of sticky snow on everything… the only kind of snow pictures I take. I love our back yard. My husband has worked long and extremely hard on the slope of gravel and weeds we got when we bought the place. When snow clings to everything, it feels like I got transported to the enchantment of a gingerbread village. That’s why I went outside yesterday, early, with my bright-eyed, chirpy little girl who always gets up first.

We did a little backyard tour, then we topped it off with saucer rides down the playhouse hill, short, but very steep and speedy. When we got back into the house, the rest of the crew was just groggily starting to stir, but we had already seen this: