All the Feels

“Life experience is not distracting you from your appointed task of writing. It is, rather, the roundabout blessing of giving you something to say.” So says Douglas Wilson in his book Wordsmithy.

Well. The one thing I know is that I am getting life experience every day. Weird as it may be, I turn airy phrases while I am frying sausage, or while I am pulling weeds in my perennial border. I can’t help myself. But the thing I can help… that thing called pulling out the laptop or the paper, that is the where I weakly procrastinate.

I have a whole range of feelings to explore just now. Get ready!

Things That Make Me HAPPY

May, which is to say lilacs, grape hyacinths, creamy tulips with purple fringes, crabapple blooms outside my window, and all of these also in my house, in vases I made for them when the blooms were apparently dead and frozen.
Bubble tea, which I tried for the first time in a Thai restaurant with my sister, only we ordered bubble coffee. I googled it and found it is essentially pearl tapioca suspended in liquid. Yesterday I made my own and served it in iced cream tea. The family was less enthusiastic, so I get to have it all to myself. I love that slurp of fat tapioca flying up the straw. And I love not paying four dollars for a drink that only costs twenty cents.
The end of school, which is upon us. I look back at the beginning of the year and of the obstacles we have overcome by daily doing the next thing, the next lesson, the next big concept. My first grader can read all the knock-knock jokes in her book now, and I wish I had left it at the book sale. All the others groan and reject her hopeful “Knock-knock.” It is up to me to shore up her sense of hilarity and provide “Who’s there?” dialog. Rita has mastered long division with its accompanying checking, that milestone of third grade. Olivia has learned to diagram compound sentences and do spelling without tears. I now have a newly-hatched high schooler who loves history and remembers everything he ever read. The other high schooler won a hundred dollar prize in an essay contest. Sometimes I live my triumphs vicariously through theirs. I will not claim to be undaunted by the challenges of home schooling. It’s ridiculously hard some days, but here we are and we have grown and learned. Here’s our final exams day, and we couldn’t sit at desks one more day.
My children playing with ducks and chickens and bunnies. Outside. Or pitching a tent to sleep in the backyard, or hanging Rita’s hammock in the tree for a reading spot. In fact, there were so many “differences of opinion” with the hammock usage that I just ordered the second one. One easily fits two people, but not three, so that there was always an odd girly out.

Things That Make Me Sad or Mad

Accidentally freezing my tote full of dahlia tubers that were supposed to be planted the entire length of my garden. There was a stack of egg cartons in the basement closet where I usually over-winter the dahlias, and I had no other place to put them, so I took the tubers to the attic. Obviously, it got much too cold. I have a friend who has some that I gave her a few years ago, and she is returning the favor by giving me some back. I am so happy about that, because I have never seen this particular color of dahlia anywhere else.
Dropping a heavy casserole dish out of an upper cupboard onto a stack of soup bowls on the counter. You can imagine the carnage. But now I can make more.
Innumerable ants invading my house. One crumb in the middle of the living room carpet appeared to be moving one day, and sure enough, there they were. They especially love the smorgasbord of my kitchen floor.
Pigs eating poultry that is doing nothing more offensive than pecking at grains the pigs would rather keep for themselves. It’s just piggish. But we sold Brutus and Petunia now and their offspring are still too young to indulge in such habits.
Listening to a beautiful, well-educated person trot out all the reasons immigrants should go back where they came from. I just have one thing to say about that: America is ruining America. Not the immigrants.

Things That Give Me Hope

A change from ER to ICU for my husband. We hope for less stress for a season, much as he loves trauma nursing.
A strong son with a steady job, learning the manly art of getting up early, putting in hours of hard work. I sometimes glimpse the man the boy will become. It’s a strange feeling. I gave birth to this tall person with the deep voice and all the opinions about trucks and other things I never even think about? Wow.
Looking back at mercies. Recently the girls and I talked about near-misses, those almost-accidents that convince us of angels and we know that we are surrounded, else how would any of us still be alive?
A future not on this earth. I read Leif Enger’s Peace Like a River this past weekend when Gabriel was working. I cannot shake that story. I cried my way through the beautiful chapter that described the moments after the narrator’s death and I cried that he had to come back. Sorry for the spoiler, but it was the most profound chapter for me. Hope. It’s a beautiful thing.

Things That Make Me Laugh

Addy, “I have a question, Mama. When you die, can I have that book you are reading aloud right now? Only, I’m afraid the others will take it first.”
The book I am reading aloud, The Family Nobody Wanted , makes me laugh every time and I am venturing a guess that I have read it at least a dozen times. It pleases me when I share a book I have loved for years with my children and then they love it so much that I will need to put it into my will to avoid squabbles.
Six fat porkers racing out of their puddle to the edge of their pen whenever they see me coming because they think maybe there will be kitchen scraps. Even though I may only be walking past, they come. It’s the very definition of cupboard love.
Addy’s latest pet chicken was named Pole Tree, and she tried hard to teach it to fly off its perch on her shoulder. She claims she can pick out her chicken from the whole flock of reddish hens, all of which look exactly the same.
Gregory, being sent into the store for a gallon of milk at the end of the “dumbest day ever” for both of us in which everything broke/went wrong, came out grinning sheepishly. “What did you buy that wasn’t milk?” I asked, and he produced a very expensive bar of Swiss chocolate. “I thought it might help make the day better,” he said. He was right. We ate it all right there before we even got on the road again.

Well, there, in no particular order, you get the feels that I have been feeling. How is the spring going for you?

The Goings On

I sense that in the sphere of lame titles, I have just hit the jackpot, but it does give you an idea as to the intent of this post. I have written many articles in my head this spring, but I never had a computer accessible to type it out. One daughter uses my laptop to stream her arithmetic instruction and the other daughter uses the desktop computer for her schoolwork. I also turned my beloved reading/writing room into an extra bedroom. The girls were having daily drama with 3 in the bunk beds and just simply too much stuff in one little room. I moved my desk and chair out and set up a single bed and dresser for Olivia. She is ecstatic to have a place where no one throws nighties on the floor willy-nilly every morning. Her orderly soul delights in fixing the bed every day, arranging the teddies just so, and having a place to read early in the morning.

I miss having a place where I can go to shut the door and think or read or write, and yes, extroverts have needs like this too. This winter I spent a lot of quiet time just making stuff in the pottery shed. Some of my experiments turned out hilariously funny (teapots), some are mildly disturbing (pedestal bowls that sagged just a little), and some were great triumphs (new glazes). It really did help me to be so absorbed in making stuff and doing glaze tests during the long dark of winter.

The biggest project so far this spring was a massive clean-up on our property, trash bags in hand. Living with so much road frontage and in a valley where the wind sweeps through, we end up with a lot of junk from the un-classy motorists who chuck beer cans and go-cups out the windows, as well as our own blown-away bits and pieces. We have also cleared out the playhouse, and I confess to burning a few things when the girls weren’t looking. (Have you ever watched a massive, ratty teddy bear burn? One that was given generously at a yard sale after you told your child “no”…)

I have been washing and stowing snow clothes in the attic, one load at a time. My huge capacity HE washer started struggling with bulky loads again, so I was limited to smaller, normal clothing loads, no rugs or blankets or even heavy coats. Gabriel decided he was done fixing it. We did some research and found an appliance store with the Speed Queen of our dreams (simple dials, no computerized nonsense), but then we experienced sticker shock and went on Craigslist. To our delight, there was a listing for an even more advanced Speed Queen for almost half price of new and it was only a few minutes’ drive from a conference Gabriel was attending. Funny… the single lady who was selling due to a move just happened to work for the same employer Gabriel does. She hasn’t told her boss about the move yet, and didn’t want us to leak it, so don’t tell anybody! The poor appliance salesman went from licking his chops over a customer almost in the bag to admitting that we found a tremendous deal.

That nudged me into painting the laundry room white: ceiling, trim, and walls all the same. People Who Know are doing this. It makes for simple painting and makes my eyes feel a little skinned by the stark cleanliness every time I do a load of laundry. I do enjoy it. I’m sure it won’t stay so pristine for long. It took Alex and me an entire Saturday forenoon to do the painting. I trimmed, he rolled, and we listened to 99 Percent Invisible podcasts. Then he hooked up my new washer and I just want to say how handy it is to have a capable young adult hanging about with all sorts of muscle and skill. I look at him sometimes and think, “How?”

I ran 6 loads of laundry through that blessed machine in the time it used to take my very intelligent load-sensing washer to do two, (and even then it might have found an issue in its heart). I am not into low-water use situations in this season of many children covered in great dirt. And seriously, folks, this is the washer for the people with children. Yes, it is. How do I know? A lady with 12 of them told me so. She knows what she is talking about. Then my mother-in-law, who is the cleanest person I know, also said so. Now I have been using it for half a week, and I am sold. It is heavy, American-made, quality. I feel so blessed! I might even start washing everything in the house, now that spring is here.

I planted just a few starter garden things last week. Since we couldn’t start the tiller to prep for peas, (yes, peas! What can I say? I love them so much I am willing to do the work.) we spaded a corner for red potatoes. I also sowed some lettuces and radishes, and got basil going on my kitchen windowsills. The asparagus bed had an astonishing amount of hearty dandelions in it. When I saw the size of the roots, I decided that this is the year we try for dandelion coffee. It turned out to be delicious, in a non-coffee sort of way. Especially when we added cream and sugar. We have been drinking a lot of Dandy Blend, an herbal drink with no caffeine that is a great “iced coffee” for children. Also it is expensive. So now we know why it costs a lot. It took a good bit of time, scrubbing enough roots to cover a cookie sheet, chopping them up into half inch pieces,

roasting them in the oven for an hour, running them through the coffee grinder, doing one final roast, and the all-important taste test. We got about 1 cup of dandelion grounds/ersatz coffee for our trouble, but it only takes a teaspoon to make a cup. And it is good! Now we know we can do it, which was the whole point.

The general consensus: this is a drink that all of us enjoyed. We brewed it like coffee, with water. When we make Dandy Blend, we mix it in sweetened milk and drink it cold, sort of like a chocolate milk substitute. I did a taste test plain, beside black coffee. It tasted more earthy (surprise!) with hints of mushrooms. If we ever hit a time when we cannot buy coffee, you can expect to see me out in the yard with a weed digger for my substitute.

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Here we are a day later. I found me a block of quiet space and brewed a cup of Earl Grey. Looking out of the kitchen windows this morning, I see two bright yellow kayaks on the pond bank, a fleet of paper airplanes on the lawn, some ropes, and a goat cart that the girls rigged with better success pulling it themselves than hitching up Betsy or Horny. (Oh, yes, that is her name.) I also see bike ramps, a sagging teepee, a bunch of play dishes, an incongruous snow shovel, and some abandoned flip-flops . It does not look pretty, but it is a beautiful sight to me!

I haven’t told the children yet, but we’re taking the day off school. We are actually ahead of schedule, a rare feeling indeed! It’s a big week at Keystone Vinyl, my dad’s deck and fence business. The annual open house is coming up this weekend, so my job is to get things looking pretty outside. A local nursery has agreed to let us borrow plants and shrubs for curb appeal in exchange for free advertising. Alex and I will be hauling them in our Suburban, as many as we can cram in.

I live the high life with a student-driver chauffeur willing to take me anywhere I want. It’s pretty nice to sit back and read or check out the scenery while we go places.

Okay, the Peightlets are up, and I am off. Have a lovely day!

Tuesday in the Life

I was awakened quite early by a plaintive voice in my ear, “My belly hurts, Mama.” Oh, lovely words to pull one out of slumber. After I queried the little girl on whether she felt like throwing up and was relieved to hear it was just an ache, I gave her some chewable Tummy Tuneups and sent her back to bed. An hour later she was back, “My belly still hurts.” Allrighty then. We’re hoping to go see Grandpas tomorrow, but that could all be a little shaky. At breakfast another peaked face appeared and got even longer at the sight of pearly smooth Ultra Immune pills on every plate. Some of my children can swallow pills, no sweat, and others make it a scene of drama and despair every time. The two whose bellies were hurting were unfortunately the ones who can’t swallow pills. Not even when bribed, cajoled, coaxed, coached, or threatened.

Gabe did a noble thing when he decided to fix the dripping faucet in the kitchen sink before he went to work. It meant a run to the hardware store for some replacement parts and no water in the kitchen for a few hours, a situation I was happy to endure. Yesterday I set a large water bottle under the drip and tried hard to keep up with drinking the water as it filled up. I thought it would be a fun challenge and a good indication of just how much was being wasted. Let me tell you, one drip at a time adds up astonishingly! I was glad not to do that today.

I checked on my store of dried elderberries so I could brew up a huge batch of immune boosting syrup. My bottle in the fridge was down to about 3 tablespoons. I lacked fresh ginger to complete the recipe, and that was what we needed for the upset stomachs, so I gave the girls what was left in the fridge and got them settled on couches.

When Gregory went to do his chores in the barn, the girls ran along despite feeling under the weather. We had a huge surprise yesterday when Petunia, the Guinea hog with the wandering tendencies, finally piggled. We have had so many false alarms in the eighteen months since we own her that we were thinking of butchering her. But there she was with 6 squirming piglets in the straw! Farming has its moments, and baby animals are among the brightest of them. This picture does not do justice to the charm of the babies, because 1. Petunia is very protective and I had to zoom in on them and 2. Even if Petunia were not protective, I wouldn’t go into the pigpen. I wish you could hear the sort of lullabies she gurgles to them. I have never heard such a sound before.

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Addy came back in, reporting that all was well with the piggy milk bar. Then she drooped, rushed to the bathroom and threw up all the water she had drunk while trying to swallow her pill. Okay then…

After an hour of downtime, I brought a bit of schoolwork up to the stricken ladies on the couches. They did enough to call it a school day, rather milking their situation. Neither was as pathetic as they let on, but just “felt funny”. There were no more puke episodes.

I might mention that it spit snow and ice and then rain all day long. There was not a lot of accumulation, but it was sloppy and slippery. I noticed a lot of big trucks driving past our place and found out later that there was a commercial travel ban on I99 that runs parallel to our road. I guess there must have been a number of truckers who thought they would brave the two lane roads.

Just before noon a friend stopped in for some mugs. We had a nice chat and I took a bit of time to trim bottoms and attach handles to mugs I threw yesterday. There were only 7 because I kept messing them up. When the clay is cold, it acts funny or else I was just off my game.

I gave the girls saltine crackers for lunch. They had no desire for anything else, but I decided it was time to go on a quest for ginger. Gregory cleared the snow off the car for me, then I took him along to push me out of the ditch if need arose. Besides, he was deep into an audiobook on my phone. We went to the post office first, then to our local bulk food store. I found dried ginger there, coated in sugar so that it is more like candy but still fiery spiky in its normal gingery way. There were no fresh roots in the produce section, but there were jars of minced ginger in the THM section. Sounded fine to me. I also picked up tea and ginger ale. We should be set for the hurting bellies, yes? Of course, the girls only wanted the ginger ale.

I ran laundry through my machines all day and thanked God for labor saving devices such as dryers. Once everything was folded we packed our clothes in faith that we will feel well enough to go to Grandpas tomorrow. As usual, some felt that socks were an unnecessary item and others wanted to take all the favorite ratty clothes and some projects to boot. Wintertime travel is special. There is an entire tote just for snow clothes for the girls. The boys have their ski packs because they hope to go to the mountain with their uncles. I think I’ll just take a book and the most basic outerwear for myself. In case I have to go outside. It’s hibernation season, people.

Alex tried to tempt the saggy appetites with some chicken flavored Ramen for supper. It seemed to taste fine to them, so I started hoping we are on the mend. When I called Gregory for supper, he said, “I’m not very hungry.” Oh dear. More pills. And thankfully he is so good at swallowing them that he is the patient coach for the others.

I took a quick duck out to my shed to finish the mugs. They just needed to have some hedgehog carvings on them and a bit of a cleanup with a damp sponge. I have done so many of these, you would think they just jump right onto the clay, but for some reason I had uncooperative hedgehogs tonight and had to keep rubbing out and retrying. Maybe it was because I had the bright idea to do a live Instagram chat while I carved and it broke my concentration. They have to have pert noses and cutely rounded bellies, but not paunchy. Their hair has to be messy but not awful. And their feet cannot be too large or they look silly. So there you go… a recipe for acceptable hedgehogs.

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We cleaned up the house, did our final doses of vitamin C and some soothing lavender oil rubs and that is that. Even if it might not help anything, it makes us all feel better. I have no problem with placebos, especially in children.

So there you have it. One day in the life.

Slow and Steady

We have emerged from what was called a Polar Vortex into what felt like a spring chinook today, with more sunshine and warmth called for tomorrow. Those who do not know could assume that it isn’t necessary to go South this year, that maybe we are through with winter now. The groundhog said an early spring, whatever that may be worth. Some remnant of my ancient nomadic DNA kicks up at this and says, “No, no, you will freeze, starve, shrivel, die, if you do not follow the sun. You should have gone long ago! The seeds in the larder are running low!” Of course, my sensible Swiss ancestry cranks up the thermostat, brews more tea, settles in for the long haul and knows we’ll be just fine, thank the Lord. (P.S. I don’t know whether I have nomadic DNA, but I assume we all share it at some distance.)

I think I know why people quilt in the wintertime. It only requires tiny movements, small efforts that string together to make bedcoverings, where we all want to be on dark days of cold. It’s almost as good as hibernation. (Actually, I can’t stand quilting, for starters because it makes me antsy to hunch over and take small stitches, but also because you can’t do it with a mug in one hand. )

Writing is my version of small movements of creativity which is why I have a goal to do a lot of it this February again. Not every day, but more than I have been. I can set my mug beside me and take reviving sips when I need to think out a phrase. I am a little embarrassed at my coffee consumption these days. Since I trained myself, one painful day at a time, to drink it black, I no longer feel like the calories matter. I am even drinking my tea unsweetened and uncreamed. Early Grey is still better with embellishments, but the discipline has been good for me. I make exceptions for bitter coffee. If the first sip reveals an inferior pedigree, I happily cream it up. And please, I buy Aldi’s coffee beans, so it’s not like I am snobbish. Still, I thought this year I should maybe give up coffee for Lent. I am glad that Jesus has not asked that of me yet.

Like I mentioned, we tend to conserve our motions and lose a lot of our motivation these short days. Occasionally (like yesterday) we rally and do a great big thing like join in on a 4 hog butchering spree. There were five of us families working together, lots of children, babies, toddlers, camaraderie. Cutting the meat off the bones is always the speedy part, as well as grinding and seasoning sausage. About the time everybody is wishing to be done already, there are the more tedious aspects of rendering the lard, cooking the bones to make broth and picking off the cooked bone meat for scrapple. Just when everybody really really wants to call it quits, there are the greasy dishes to be washed and the tired children to round up for the ride home in a sausage scented car.

Last night when we fried sausage patties for a bedtime snack, we were glad we put in the effort. This morning my girls and I fried scrapple and were doubly happy with our work of yesterday. You can buy scrapple, but you don’t really know what’s in it. From all the reports, there’s some weirdness that goes on behind the scrapple making scene similar to the weirdness that goes into hotdogs. We don’t do weirdness in ours, so everybody’s happy. (If you don’t know what scrapple is, I am sorry for you. Maybe google it. I didn’t have a clue until our family moved to Pennsylvania from Kentucky. Around here, it’s common fare.)

Hey! They tell me spring is right around the corner!! But right now isn’t so bad either. I want to show you a sprinkle of pictures from my phone. This first one is ice crystals that formed on cattail fluff blown across the surface of the pond one day. Gregory took the photo.

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The state of the ice is of consuming interest to the small fry. Once it was finally thick enough to be safe, they work to clear it whenever it snows so that we can have skating parties. My children have no notions of hibernation. They get this happy trait from their father. Also, he believes in good gear to stay warm and dry. It certainly helps!

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They love skiing so much. I love it too- the idea of it, that is. I love that they do this while Gabe and Alex are patrolling. I love that they get out and enjoy the mountain. I love staying home in the quietness, picking up the yarns and knitting needles, putting away the coloring/painting/snibbling projects, cooking up extra food, planning for the next week. I love that they will have developed better winter muscles as adults than I have because they have so much fun in it.

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I have no plan for my writing this month. I could use a little help here to sharpen me up. Instagram has a questions feature that says, “Ask me anything.” This is your chance, if you would like to do that in the comments. Feel free to be anonymous if you want. I’ll see what I can dredge up.

The Pig That Forgot it Was Sunday

I left church early that day with a headache. I planned on a nap as soon as I had fed the children leftovers for lunch. As we walked in the door, a note fluttered to the floor.

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Well, that was that. Maybe it was impaired thinking due to the ache in my head, but I didn’t change out of my church attire or require Gregory to change. Alex and Gabe weren’t home, so we did what they would have done. After all, Petunia has channelled her Guinea hog ancestors before and gone on long ambles through the countryside. Always she amiably followed a bucket of corn back to her pen, no problem. Gregory fetched a scoop of cracked corn from the barn and reported that Petunia had gotten out through the wooden gate, tipped over the barrel, and eaten about half of the corn. This should have been a warning: Petunia was not even remotely hungry.

We drove down the road, looking in all the back yards. Finally at the bottom of the hill we saw a cluster of neighbors in the woods. Sure enough, they were trying to entice a portly black pig into their barnyard with some grain. Petunia appeared to be enjoying the attention, leisurely chewing and swinging her head around from person to person. Gregory waved his scoop of grain under her nose and she began to follow him through the briars at the edge of the woods. When he got to the road, she veered and scuttled back into the woods, Gregory hard on her heels, rattling his corn scoop and trying to persuade her back out to civilization. The neighbors watched, amused, and offered to fetch a rope. I thought maybe a leash would work better and drove home quickly to fetch one, as well as to pick up Rita, our best animal catcher. She had boots on, but I still didn’t think about changing out of my slip-ins from church. Back I went in my long navy blue dress, not intending to be involved in any way except to encourage the young fry.

Greg is the most defeatist of all the children when it comes to animal husbandry, and this was no exception: This will never work. She isn’t hungry. There is no way we will ever get her to follow me all the way home. Can’t we just shoot her?

At this point I should have listened to him. The corn was all in a little pile beside the road where Petunia obliged us by trying to eat a bit, but as soon as the leash got close to her head, she scooted for the briars. Unlike us, she didn’t give a patooie about the prickles and poison ivy. I looked down at my brown flex-soles, sighed, and resigned myself to a long , arduous chase. Only you don’t chase pigs. They will not be herded and any gap in a string of people trying to do so is the first place they will spy. As portly as the average adult pig is, they are amazingly agile. “Just stay with her, keep her in your sight!” I hollered to Greg. The undergrowth was so thick I couldn’t see either of them, but I heard him reply, “She’s in their pasture!”

These neighbors have a horse pasture with one strand of shocking wire at waist height. It had no meaning to Petunia, but at least she was in an open area where we could see her. Gregory and Rita joined her to try to persuade her toward the open barn doors near the horse corral. Meanwhile the horses went nuts, galloping round and round, snorting in agitation at their porcine visitor, who gave every evidence of thick-headed enjoyment of the situation. I ran down their lane, hoping to direct her between a swamp and the house. Petunia took one suspicious look at the dark barn doorway and slithered neatly between all the people into hog heaven, the gooshiest, pooey-est barnyard in the vicinity. She was not interested in giving up her Sunday afternoon field trip, keeping right on course, due west toward a much deeper woods where I had no hope of ever finding her again.

I looked at that barnyard and stepped in on a hummock of grass, figuring if I stayed on the more stable looking tufts, I could stay reasonably clean. The second hummock betrayed me and I lost my shoe. It was ridiculous anyway. Why not be ridiculous barefooted in ankle deep poo? I tossed my shoes and the girls tossed their boots and Gregory tossed his sneakers. We were getting just a little bit miffed, but we had learned a few things from Petunia, and we acted like we also were on an unconcerned, although thinly-veiled-anxiety-ridden stroll westward. She changed course and came back toward the barn.

“There’s pellets in that barrel inside the barn doors,” the lady of the house bellowed down the hill. I squelched into the dim interior, moved the whiskey bottle off the top of the barrel and opened it. Down at the bottom was a small layer of pellets for horses, sure enough. It was such a vast barrel and I am a short woman. I barely managed to keep one foot on the ground as I dived down to scoop up the food. As I attempted to entice my pig into the barn again with the scoop of pellets, she took a sniff, disdainfully turned up her snout, and trotted up toward their house. Incongruously, just then we were joined by a spotted fawn frisking around. We only lacked a clown on an elephant to make the circus complete.

There was a small stand of trees and bushes up there where Petunia decided to go for a break from pesky humans. “Hey,” Gregory said, “I think we could pen her in there if we had a portable fence.” I was considering driving home for ours when the elderly neighbor suggested using the chain link fence that was precariously draped around a small garden. He cut the twines that held it upright against some aged posts and we proceeded to drag it out of the weeds. Chain link fence is much heavier than one might expect and I was afraid he would drop with a heart attack. The girls kept vigil close to Petunia while Gregory and I helped to haul the fence up the hill.

The bushes were planted next to an antique tractor, a snow plow, some assorted children’s swing set parts, etc. etc. We managed to get the fence upright and tightly joined together at the seams with red baler twine. Where there was a gap I set a folding table that was leaning against the tractor wheel, apparently there for lack of storage in the house. Petunia now had shade, grass to nibble when she felt like it was time for a little something, and a playground. I doubted it would keep her in for long, but maybe it would work until Alex got home. The back up plan was to take the trailer down and attempt to load her onto it, but there was no way my crew of children and I were going to try it on our own. We were hungry, muddy, and frankly, we were making sausage in our minds. We promised the neighbor some if we ever butcher the troublemaker.

I kept apologizing for infringing on their Sunday afternoon relaxation and they assured us that they had nothing better to do, it was no problem, etc. etc.

Retrieving all our poo-caked footwear, we went home and cleaned up. I made lunch, and when I had time to think about it, the headache had not improved with so much fresh air and exercise. I had that nap and was brought back to earth by excited shouts at the next door neighbors a few hours later. “Your pig is in our backyard!” they called.

I looked where they were pointing. There was Petunia, belly swaying gracefully, heading due east toward her pen. Maybe she missed the security, or maybe she missed her husband, but she was coming home. Gregory opened the gate and she trotted straight to her wallow, easing into it with the exact familiarity of any weary human coming home to the recliner at night.

I drove down the road to her makeshift chainlink pen at the other neighbor’s house. There was the spot where she had easily nosed up a hole big enough to squeeze under. The only fence a pig respects is shocking wire, so I wasn’t surprised, but my neighbor was. We visited for a while, making small talk. I was glad, because I had never connected with these folks except to wave as I walked past. Before I left, the lady of the house dug out a volunteer Rose of Sharon bush for me. I have never especially liked those bushes, but I planted it in a corner where it should do well and serve to remind me of surprising friendships in unlikely circumstances.

But I still want sausage.

Want to see the culprit?

My Suburban Smells Funny

and other tales of August worth.

“May I have an apple in bed?” Addy asked, since she knows that there isn’t much chance of me saying yes to anything that could rot her teeth after she brushed them, and apples are practically toothbrushes anyway. There were no apples in the fridge, so the next up was, “Or how about some pieces of dried chicken?” I was startled out of my absent-minded washing of yesterday’s dishes that had stayed on the counter all day because we got home late last night and went to church this morning. Sure enough, she had found a baggie of very dry chicken bits, saved from our roasting/canning operation of 20 old hens last week. “Maybe a pepper. I could eat a pepper,” she hedged when she saw that I wasn’t excited about her choices. My two little girls make up for any vegetable deficit in the older children. Same parents, same parenting style, only less “now eat your broccoli” fuss, and here they are, regular veggie devourers. It does make you wonder. This is Rita with a legit bedtime snack that makes her just as happy as milk and cookies.

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I wasn’t going to plant regular tomatoes this year because I have a good source where I can buy a couple boxes of Romas and make a big batch of sauce all in one day instead of having them trickle in over the course of a month. When my neighbor gave me plants he had nurtured in his sunny windows, I had to plant them, so I am hauling in a bumper crop all month. The vines are blighted and ugly, and still the babies swell and turn scarlet. It’s astounding! I planted some pineapple tomato plants that are luscious for sandwiches, and shiny purple “Dancing With Smurfs” cherry tomatoes that aren’t good until they turn red, which I think is a little bit of false advertising.

August is all about harvesting and preserving bushels of stuff for winter. Have you ever had tiny, tender green beans that you just picked an hour ago and lightly sauteed with a bit of garlic and olive oil? If you did, then you know why I garden. Or a slice of tomato so huge that it hangs out over your toast, sprinkled with sea salt and freshly ground pepper? How about crisp cucumbers sliced into a vinaigrette? There is no farmer’s market that can yield that sort of freshness, although it’s better than vegetables shipped across the country, for sure! August turns me into a food snob, because I can. It’s when all the endless hovering and ministering to the plants yields fruit, and does it taste good! So that is what we are currently eating. (Too many melons, a funny problem to have.)

Tomorrow starts our third week of school. Olivia was looking at old pictures and said, “Mama, you used to play more.” It’s true. Somewhere things got too heavy and much. I quit going outside for recess and impromptu soccer games in favor of throwing some laundry into the washer or starting dinner. I am working to change that. We bought some new games and are back to starting each day with a read-aloud before we hit the math books. My Consumer Math guy is still working his summer job, so he is not included in this picture.

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I don’t buy reading curriculum. We just read and read and read. If you ever wonder who really funds the libraries, it’s people like me who suddenly realize that August 23 is past and I have a humongous pile of books overdue. Hey, at least it goes to a good cause. Each year the children also get books as gifts when school starts and again when we celebrate our finish. I buy them second hand, at library sales, on Thriftbooks, or Ollies. Making sure my children love to read is the ace up my sleeve for success in education.

Last week we finished Kate Seredy’s The White Stag, a fascinating tale of the Huns in the days when they were sweeping across the world after their ancestor Nimrod died. It’s historical fiction/fantasy, so we did web searches and verified Gregory’s trivia bit about Attila the Hun dying of a nosebleed. The thing about reading aloud is that the children really don’t suspect that they are learning, but I am guessing they will always remember that choice bit.

Addy’s book, Poppy is by one of our favorite authors, Avi. It is the story of a very brave mouse. The book I got for Rita is one of Cynthia Rylant’s stories, Gooseberry Park. It has been a great success because Rita is not an avid reader yet, and she says this is the best book ever. I personally have not found a Cynthia Rylant book I didn’t like. Of course, there are over a hundred of them, and I haven’t read them all. Olivia reads all the time, and fast. Thimble Summer didn’t last more then a few days before she was whining about not having anything to read. We agree that Elizabeth Enright’s stories about Gone Away Lake are actually better than this one, but she is another solid author.

The boys are more into non-fiction. Alex is reading Capital Gaines: Smart Things I Learned Doing Stupid Stuff. I might just mention that the title describes the appeal of the book for him. I stood in Barnes and Noble, staring at the $25 price tag, then I looked up a used copy without a dust jacket on the web for 3.99 and left the store empty handed because I am cheap like that. Gregory received a copy of Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage. He and I shared story grip on this book and had to keep swapping out turns to read it. Then we discovered all the youtube videos about Shackleton and were astonished anew. We are also working our way through the New Testament during the summer months. Our favorite way to do this is listening to Max McLean on audioBible. And that is what we are currently reading.

The animal population here on the farmlet thinned out briefly. We sold Lamb, who was now big enough for Mutton. Rita worked her charm on him and got him into a pet carrier for the ride to join a herd of other sheep going to market that day.

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We also hauled 20 chickens to the chop. They were old and no longer laying eggs except on good days, when they felt like it, if the light was mellow and the grain fine. I was grateful I didn’t have to butcher them; all I did was roast them, pick the meat from the bones for canning, and then make bone broth. I feel quite happily fortified for soups and stews this winter. Yes to collegen! No to leaky gut! (I just googled that.) We also sold a bunch of fat leetle rabbits, which makes me feel like my name should be Mrs. McGregor, because I know they get eaten, but at least not by me. I thought it was a good thing, emptying a few of the gobbling horde out of the barn, but my husband came home from the salebarn with a flock of ducks and my son bought different rabbits and more chickens.

My mom used to say I shouldn’t get married until I could butcher a chicken and bake a pie. I couldn’t do either when we set up housekeeping, but it seems to have worked out all right. I can bake a pie now, but I have to admit to a secret feeling that someone should commend me every time I do. “Come on,” I chide myself. “You’re a forty-something Mennonite housewife. You’re supposed to be able to bake a pie.” Here’s a really good thing to do with peaches, super easy, super un-fussy, without a ton of prep and dishes.

Buy or make a pie shell, with enough pastry to put a lid on it.
Peel peaches until you have 4-5 cups of slices.
Gently toss them with 1/2 cup sugar, 1 T lemon juice, 4 T minute tapioca.
Pour the peaches into the pie shell and top with pastry.
Seal the edges, cut a few decorative slits in the top, give it a wash with milk and then dust with sugar for a pretty sparkle.
Bake at 350 for 45 minutes

The tapioca does all the work of thickening the juices and holding the peach slices together when you cut the pie. It tastes fresher than cooked peach filling because it wasn’t cooked, obviously, until it went into the oven. Mom had minute tapioca variations for apple pies (2T tapioca and some cinnamon) and other fruits too. We children loved these the best of all the pies she made and that was a lot!

In my spare time, hahaha…. goes off in fits of giggles…

When I have some minutes or an hour, I play with clay. Since I have a kiln, I find my mind constantly veering toward what I could make next. My first firing was full of wobbly pieces that took me 6 months to accumulate. When I saw how the glazes made even lowly pinch pots pretty, I got down to it and filled the kiln again in a month. I had a few big bowls that made my heart sing proudly, but then I had some issues with firing too hot, too quickly and the moisture in the bowls shattered them into thousands of worthless shards. This sight was what greeted my eyes when I opened the lid. I learned a valuable lesson about patience in letting my pieces thoroughly dry out before doing the first firing, as well as double checking the switches when I turn on the kiln.

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This shattered mess happened the morning before I went to the funeral of a dear family friend, the person who actually first introduced me to a love of pottery. It felt like an underscoring of the sadness of losing Karen.

Thankfully most of the pieces were fine, but they were all small bowls and mugs. The next kiln load only took 2 weeks to fill. I must be getting better! Sometimes I watch potters on Instagram and see that they could easily throw enough pieces in a day to fill what looks to me like a cavernous kiln. Then I don’t know whether to power on or laugh at my struggle, so I do both. That would be the current events on the creative stage.

What I haven’t been doing is writing, and this bothers me. I feel the urge to not forget all this wonderful mix of stories in the mad whirl that is August, which is really too much and just right. One steamy day I got into the Suburban to run errands and was greeted by a rush of super-concentrated air. It was the weirdest blend, like dirty socks (there actually were some under the seat) and fishing tackle mingled with wool and a cloying overtone that I couldn’t place, like very ripe peaches. “Oh, that’s Rita’s air-freshener. She put clove oil on a tissue to smell good.” That’s August in a nutshell here.

My letterboard pep talk to myself goes like this:

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Parting shot: I like my Gregory’s pinch pot better than most of my attempts at symmetry, but I do really like this mug. I get a lot more than coffee out of it. It feels exactly like a smooth egg in my hands, and try as I might, I haven’t been able to make another just like it. Yet.

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One Way to “Git ‘er Done”

“Oh, you horrid dog,” I exclaimed when she grabbed every weed in midair as I tossed it toward a compost pile. I looked at the yard, strewn with twiggy lavender branches and gigantic dandelions. Now we would have to rake it yet. “UGH! Gregory, go put Lady on the deck!” I ordered in exasperation.

“What did she even do?” he wanted to know. He’s always a softie when the dog is in trouble. I pointed wordlessly at the mess and he said, “You sure can’t take much, can you?”

That, from the child who was born by emergency C-section after his mother (me) had experienced 2 hours of exhausting and fruitless pushing and a transport to the nearest hospital because he (Gregory) was star-gazing in utero. I did not point out to him that his birth nearly killed me, but I thought it.

We were working on mulching the perennial beds. I had prepared these borders for mulch weeks ago, freeing them of weeds and waiting for an opportune time such as a day when my husband has off work with nothing better to do. Today I looked at the recurring carpet of fine weeds coming up, then I looked at the weather forecast, which is rainy, cloudy, rainy, rainy, rainy, for about as far ahead as can be seen. It was pay now or pay later, and I dislike carpets of weeds, so we (Gregory and I) hitched up the trailer and went for three scoops of mulch.

All my life we pronounced it “mulsh” like it was from some special pronunciation group. Then one day I heard yet another person say “mulch” with a “ch” at the end, and I got out the trusty dictionary. What do you know? They were right and I was wrong. I have been correcting my habit ever since, but my children think it sounds so affected and wrong. I said it as often as I could today, just to make Gregory splutter and to pay him back for laughing at me when I couldn’t back the trailer as well as I should have. “Mulch, mulch, mulch,” I said under my breath, just loudly enough for him to hear.

Before we mulched, I told Gregory to cut off the tulip leaves just because it looks so much cleaner. I know you aren’t supposed to do that, but I do it every year and so far they have always forgiven me and bloomed again. Daffodils aren’t quite so gracious, so we just doubled their leaves down and mulched on top. I transplanted some volunteer pink petunias and brought purple coneflower volunteers up from the edge of the garden.

Would you like to know what we did about that carpet of teeny weeds coming up? We have been saving up our empty cereal boxes for months for the purpose of putting them under the mulch. Gregory and I decided that it lends a sort of nobility to eating cereal at breakfast, what with the repurposing and all. We made sure the words were on the bottom so that if the mulch happens to shift, you can’t see how many Marshmallow Mateys we have eaten.

Every year I have trouble with plants dying out in my perennial border. A friend suggested that it may be because it is right along the picket fence by the road where the snow plows throw in the salt. It makes sense to me. I just keep experimenting with different things to see what can tolerate those conditions. So far purple coneflower has done well, but all the black-eyed susans croaked. The daylilies are okay and the yarrow is spreading out of all reason. My favorite peonies are flourishing, but the peppermint tea at the end is not happy at all. Not to worry, it’s what I love about gardening… so much scope for imagination! Gabe thinks it is weird how I like to move plants around. Why not plant it where you want it and then leave it there for always? I don’t know why not; it’s just not how I roll when I garden. It is so much fun to dig up a clump of roots, divide it, and rearrange the environment.

After a few hours of steady off-loading with a scoop shovel, I was pretty hungry. Olivia brought me a baked sweet potato with a sprinkling of cinnamon on it. I ate it without taking off my gardening gloves, peppering it with some tiny bits of mulch. Gregory felt the tug of all the cereal boxes and disappeared for the space of a bowl of Chex.

At seven o’clock the predicted rain started to sprinkle down on us. We had one-fourth of our load on the trailer yet. I speeded up and the jokes stopped. Gregory pushed the last mulch into a pile and put away the shovels while I drove the Suburban down the hill to park the trailer beside the barn. Right then I decided I couldn’t face turning, backing, turning, backing, nearly jack-knifing, etc. As he came to help me unhook the trailer, I told him we are just going to let it sit until tomorrow, and I plodded up to the house in the drizzle.

“Are you seriously that beat?” he asked. This, from the boy who took bathroom breaks and snack breaks and cardboard-shield-making breaks while I plodded doggedly along.

“I am just about dead,” I admitted. But guess what? It is raining steadily and I am feeling pretty good. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that the ibuprofen has taken hold.

And for one parting shot: This is Mother’s Day, in the evening, when I suddenly remembered that we had not taken our annual photo because we left for a choir program at 6 AM. A Hallmark photo it is not, but it reminds me that a mother’s best defense against the erosions of time and reason is maintaining a sense of humor. Seriously.

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No Clouds in Sight Today

It was the first thing I noticed when I got up. The sky was still pale grey, but there were the high honks of geese flying northward, and there wasn’t a cloud in sight. Rita saw it too, and sighed with pleasure. Here is what my indoor grass looks like by now. About time to get out the mower, I think.

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The breakfast preparer for this week dragged out of bed too late to cook anything, so he got “promoted” to lunch and supper clean-up. It was cereal for the kiddos, protein shake for me. Gabe was still sleeping off a late night. When I picked up the French press, it felt full, and sure enough it was. A taste revealed rather bitter coffee, and Gregory said he made it, but he forgot to let it bloom. I tasted it again and asked him if he used the ground McCafe coffee that was in the cupboard (for cold brew purposes). He had. I assured him that blooming it would not have made it better, so we tried again with fresh ground beans. Yes. That’s what we were going for.

The sunny outdoors spurred the children to really stay diligent with school. Rita finished first, much too fast. I discovered a story she wrote that consisted of a title and nothing more. She got discouraged because she couldn’t write as fast as she could think, so I let her dictate and the thoughts rolled out just fine. Addy was on a roll too, finishing a book and doing the test, all in one. She gets a dollar for hundreds on tests, but today her haste got her in trouble. She kept getting her “k” and “c” spelling mixed up. Too bad.

The little girls got inspired to make lollipop cookies when they saw a recipe in a Paula Dean cookbook for children. Rita, with her characteristic serenity, mixed up the recipe all by herself. I was in the basement and she had never mixed cookies before, but that doesn’t faze Rita. The dough turned out really crumbly, so she did ask me to help her troubleshoot. Turned out she missed the shortening and used banty eggs, which are only about half the size of regular ones. Once we fixed the problem, the rest wasn’t hard at all, and yielded just the results they wanted. We did discover that the cookies have to cool completely before you can pick them up with the stick.

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Alex cooked scrambled eggs and toast for lunch. I walked away from the table for a bit, and when I came back everyone had abandoned ship, leaving only empty plates behind.

I took a short rest while the house was completely still. When I got outside, the girls had cleared out the junk out of their playhouse, moved a bunch of stuff into it and set up housekeeping. That makes me so happy, every time it happens. It means fewer treasures in their bedroom and a lot of creative play. The dolls needed fresh air, so I tied them onto the girls’ backs. First, though, we had to put their own hair up in a bobble so it didn’t get mixed up with the tresses of the babies or knotted into the baby wrap.

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I coaxed Gabe out of his study by starting some pruning. I had only done the grapevines and the dwarf cherry tree, and when I mentioned that I should do the espaliered apples, he came out and helped. The trees are his specialty, but last year we muddled through without really doing anything because of school. They all grew a little wild. The espaliered apples were shooting off in all directions, but he brought the branches into neat order again, crisscrossing them over each other. I am guessing he took about half of them off. It is a little hard to see the design, but when they start leafing out, they are really pretty.

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I hauled cuttings to the stick pile, and moved my rhubarb plants so that I do not have to till around them. I am on the lookout for someone local who has rhubarb that has red stalks. Mine is a greenish-pink variety, extremely hardy and with huge stalks. I have so much extra that I dug out three clumps of roots for friends with quite a bit more in the garden. If anybody with red wants to swap with some green, I would be happy!

The sun was benevolent all day. I soaked and soaked it in while we worked. The steps leading to the backyard got some drastic help, especially the unkempt lavender hedge. As much as I love a border of lavender, it takes some work to maintain the plants once they turn woody. They still smelled good when I trimmed them, even in the deadness of winter. At the top of the steps I noticed lots of bulbs pushing their way through the leaves and silver mound artemisia. I pulled out all the lambs’ ears. Again. Back when I brought it home, I had no idea how it could take over a flower border. For three years I have been pulling volunteers, and still it comes back. In the spring it looks magical, with fuzzy silver ears for leaves, but then it spreads, some of the leaves die out, and these unimpressive flower stalks pop up. I do have it in the rock garden slope, where it is perfect. Here are the before and after photos.

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I should mention that the huge grass Gregory is trimming was planted there intentionally to hide the unsightly electric meter. It has flourished and is now so large that the meter reader has to sidle behind it to get his numbers. Except for the few months in early spring when the new shoots are still small, he really has to earn his pay at our house. I feel really sorry for him when the dog springs out of her hiding place under that hemlock tree and does the startle-bark she saves for unsuspecting delivery guys or other visitors. I would look for another job after one such encounter.

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It looks blah, but I feel the stirring underneath the dirt. There is so much going on that we can’t see!

All the twigs and dead grass made for a perfect campfire. Addy wanted so badly to make what the children call “tortillas” on the fire. It is really more like bannock, with a dough made of just flour and water, fried in a cast iron pan and eaten with some salt or plain. She and Rita nursed their smoldering fire until they actually had some embers to cook on.

At five, when Gabe was working on the brambles and our larger orchard, I put away my rakes and came inside to make supper. The first thing I did was clear away the flour/water mess that Addy made when she mixed up her bannocks. Later I saw by errant blobs of gluey flour that she had taken her operation to the bathroom sink, probably because it is easier to reach. I could have called her in to clean it up, but at this point she struggles not to make a bigger mess when cleaning things that can puff or run.

Supper was quick: grilled hotdogs and sausages, herb-buttered pasta, peppers ‘n onions and some fried sweet potatoes.

I just squeaked in a few swipes with a comb and a toothbrush before it was time to go to choir practice. When I got home, Gabe was studying, Olivia was putting away folded laundry, Rita was knotting something out of fabric strips and paracord, and Addy was dancing around in her nightie.

That’s about it for today.

(You folks do realize that tomorrow will be the last day in February…?)

Tuesday in the Life

Strictly speaking, today started where yesterday ended, at midnight. Gabe and I had a President’s Day coupon code for unlimited pages in a printed photo book. We entered the code at checkout at 11:59 and held our breath(s) (Do married people hold their breath or breaths, seeing as two are one? I don’t like quandaries like that in writing.) to see if we would indeed get unlimited pages. We had been working together on this massive project of compiling a book of the adventures of 2017, and at a crucial point my text boxes did not get saved when he was adding pictures on another computer, so we were pushing it really tight to the deadline. The coupon worked. We went to bed this morning at 12:15.

It was a shorter night than one could have wished, but the morning was so balmy and promising that even the sleepiest among us sat up and ate the scrambled eggs.

The girls hustled with school because they knew it was ladies’ sewing day at church and they wanted to go. Addy and I read the story where little Tim had fun in the tub and when he got out, he did sob. Mom got him a top. Little Tim hid the top under the cot and did nap on the cot.

Sometimes her stories are so unexpected, we have to giggle at the conclusions. If you have never taught a child to read and gotten to watch them when the lights go on, you should try it.

Our arrival at the sewing was fashionably late, in time to do a little work before we had lunch. For a lover of fabrics and yarns, knotting comfort tops to send to relief agencies is a lot of fun. The ladies in our sewing committee have streamlined the art of comfort knotting so that often they get close to ten done in a day, maybe more. It may be a small thing, but it really is a good feeling to think of someone in dire straits receiving a beautiful warm blanket. Blankets are love, so we pray for the people who are on the receiving end to feel the love we are sending.

I made a little detour on the way home to pick up milkshakes for the boys who were assigned to clean out the animal poo in the barn after their school was done. This is the worst job on the farm, really… worse than picking rocks or pulling weeds, because it has accumulated all winter and requires muscles and pitchforks. It was 73 degrees, absolutely delightful outside, which was why they had to do this job because the weather has to permit. Was it ever permitting today! They wanted to save the chicken poo for tomorrow because it is supposed to stay warm, but I didn’t let them. They admitted to being grateful when it was done, to not have half the job hanging over their heads. Sometimes in parenting you just are right and you know it.

The girls spent hours playing house in the backyard, erecting little booth shelters with sticks and draping a pashmina or a grass mat over top. I went for a walk in flip flops. Oh, lovely February, please stay this way and forgive us for ever saying anything ugly about you.

The sun streaming in my windows gave me an urge to clean the worst one, which was in our bedroom where the stink bugs hover. They seem to wait to relieve themselves until they make a great big spot, almost like the tobacco stains that grasshoppers leave. Every week my white trim gets besmirched, and sometimes my white down comforter. They like white toilets. It’s beyond annoying, especially when it seems I cannot ever get them all with the vacuum cleaner. We had reached a sort of uneasy truce, where I let them go if they stayed on the outside of the window sash. I spent almost an hour cleaning that window, an hour that I multitasked by talking on the phone with my sister, so it wasn’t unpleasant. Still, I went in search of some nasty chemical spray that we had for the spiders in the basement. Sure enough, it is supposed to work for stink bugs too. No more truce. The battle line has been sprayed onto the outside edges of the window sashes. I expect only to see casualties from now on.

Supper was picnic food, sandwiches and mandarin oranges. The girls ate outside while I practiced songs for choir. Our group practice usually takes about 2 hours on a Tuesday night, so when I got home I tucked in my children, cleaned up some rubble, and ate 4 spoonfuls of Ben and Jerry’s Truffle Kerfuffle with roasted pecans, fudge chips, and a salted chocolate ganache. If I eat more than that, Gabe will notice, so don’t tell him. I bought this special for him when he hits a rough patch while he is studying, but it sits there in the freezer and taunts me. It’s the salt in the sweet. To be honest, I thought it said salted caramel when I bought it, and we all know it wouldn’t be 4 spoonfuls if that were the case; I need an intervention when it comes to that combination. By the way, Gabe wouldn’t reproach me, but I would reproach myself and then I would have to go buy more for him.

Well, it feels like time to say, “Good night!”

Thanksgiving in the Barn

It’s already a week late, but since Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, I want to share ours with you.

I impulsively suggested that we host Gabe’s family at our house this year, hoping the weather would permit us to use the top story of the barn for long tables. Every week I checked the 10 day forecast until I was reasonably sure that we could keep it warm up there, cracks and holes in the siding boards and all. I didn’t have a very good back-up plan, but as it turned out, I didn’t need one.

We haven’t done much up there except some woodworking projects. Gabe and the boys packed all their project stuff into one area that I curtained off with a big piece of muslin. Here is a pic of Wednesday night, as we tweaked this and that to try to cozy up such a huge space.

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My dad went out of his way to help us scrounge up propane and kerosene heaters, four of which we borrowed from him. The kids rollerbladed gleefully around and around the cleared areas. My mom went out of her way to give me pumpkin pie lessons. Everything looked great until the cracks appeared. This has never, ever happened for her, so I tell you, it’s me. (I opened the oven door to slide in some pie shells while the pumpkin pies were baking.) Now I know exactly what to do and what not to do. I was overthinking it, apparently.

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Thursday, Thanksgiving Day, dawned with brilliant sunshine. We were so grateful for a warm day that made it easy to stay comfortable with our limited heating options.

This photo of Rita, who is 8, and Chloe, who is almost 3, could be labelled “Kindred Spirits.” I never expected to meet another Rita, but there she is! When I listen to Chloe’s mother telling of her accomplishments and exploits, I simply have to grin at all the fun she has signed up for, mothering a child with such a rich inner life.

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Everybody chipped in with food prep, and it was fabulous! We had the traditional North American turkey and dressing meal at lunchtime. In the evening I tried to keep the menu more authentic to the first Thanksgiving. We had crab dip (not that the Pilgrims were likely to mix their shellfish with cream cheese and mayo…) with sourdough and cheese spread, pear butter, popcorn, venison jerky, veggies, Gabe’s mom’s apple snitz moon pies, and lots of hot drinks.

My sister-in-law Ruby was determined to master the art of sourdough bread. Master it she did! Look at those beautiful loaves!

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I love this photo because the evening was my favorite time, with close fellowship around the propane fireplace. Photo credits go to my husband. I was much too occupied to remember to take pictures. Top of my thankful list was the joy of having a space to entertain a lot of people! Next was having a husband who designed and built that space. And family… we are so rich with roots all the way to the twiggy newest branches, connections to the past and promise for the future!

And the evening and the morning were Thanksgiving Day, and it was a good one.

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