farm suite

Accentuating the positive

2012-01-20T10:30:00.000-08:00

Housebound for a week, I return to my standby coping mechanism of, "What would a pioneer woman..." (no, not HER, a woman on the frontier without interwebs or digital single-lens reflex or, you know, four-dollar lattes) "...do in my shoes?"

We've enjoyed a beautiful bout of snow and then weathered some record-breaking flooding. The kids used sleds and inner tubes to best advantage. My sweet husband engineered a tubing run on the steepest hill at our new farmsuite spot and then the big girls made a bunny hill for the babies.

One of the babies turned four years old during the snowstorm. I'm still in denial about this. The growing up, the passing of time, the essential fleeting nature of babyhood. I'm not in denial about the snow. No, no. Love that snow and the beauty of its blanket over winter's underlying mud and mess.

A little cocoa and homemade bread (or a lot, let's be honest) and some seed catalogs, a little online book buying, or browsing at least, these things will add up to joy and delight in any snowbound homebody's heart.

Note the mismatched boots. It's how we roll. And slide.

Two Spot napped in the snowlight. I love his old soul.

Ebony found the frozen grass delectable. I love her tenacity.

Of course the snow was ever so much more picturesque than the following three days of cresting rivers, evacuations (not us, but our dear farm friends and many more people and their animals). During those three days of being housebound we watched our little babbling creek rise over the culverts, we watched our tiny pond breach its cattail borders and flood the pasture that was so recently covered in fluffy white. We watched the news, which I generally avoid, and we watched our attitudes. We practiced gratitude. We practiced algebra. We thought about four-wheeling to town for a four-dollar latte. We resisted, because, really, self-medicating with a mocha is not in line with a grateful heart.

I don't think.

In non-farm, absolutely anti-pioneer-spirit news: Madeleine and Sarah were cast in small roles in a big musical. Grace is going to add tap dancing to her list of reasons for being. I took a lot of pictures. I didn't blog for weeks. Some of you may have noticed. (At least pretend you did, 'kay?)

I missed you all and hope you are warm and dry with a well-stocked pantry.

A fond farewell to 2011

2011-12-28T11:09:00.001-08:00

The theme tree

2011-12-12T10:31:00.001-08:00

We don't have a tree yet. A Christmas tree, that is. There are lots of other trees littering the yard with leaves and needles and branches and whatnot.

And yesterday or the day before -- it all blurs together -- I took a hike to the back acres and clipped armloads of fir and cedar branches which I then fashioned into a very uncraftspersonlike wreath complete with glittery button adornments. It graces my front door. It's Christmas decoration and plenty of it for now.

The girls are trying to convince us that the lack of a tree in what is now mid-December represents a hardship of some sort.

I think it's the lack of a working vacuum in a house full of construction debris, barnyard flotsam and various forms of 90-year-old flooring that best personifies my personal predicament.

In other news:

Madeleine, Sarah and Grace continue to dance themselves silly in preparation for The Nutcracker ballet. The chickens and ponies and bunnies and dogs have their respective nests and stalls and dens in perfect order. Sometimes I hang out in the barn just for the organization of it all. Oh, and for the cell reception. (The other night I was sitting on the hayloft stairs, visiting with a girlfriend on the phone while watching my breath crystallize in the frigid air. My cocoa cooled quickly on the stair next to me. A cat, not mine but left by the previous owner, thought the cocoa must be a delivery of Christmas cheer from house to barn. I didn't argue.)

This weekend, a tree.

Next week, Sugar Plum Fairies will dance on stage.

Next weekend, family.

Christmas in all its mystery and wonder will arrive Chez Suite. I know it will because love never fails.

Seriously. Some insulation would be nice.

2011-12-06T17:00:00.000-08:00

Oh. Did you come here for some December prettiness or a farmlike update of how I tackled the trio of ancient apple trees just before it was too late to prune or did you perhaps want to hear all about how 17-month-old Salvador will enunciate "up," "truck," "ball" perfectly clearly for his dad but never pour moi?

Check back later maybe.

Today my inspiration is this: I'm getting real.

Does anyone see the toilet up there? It's supposed to be out of the frame, to the right, where the new Suite upstairs bath will live. And straight ahead? That's the library.

Imagination helps. So would a little insulation.

We are still having fun even if we have to wear outerwear, well, indoors. It's been Western Oregon cold here, in the low 20s at night and high 30s all day. Crispy clear with a side of Jack Frost on the shady side of the house and barn. I have been ever so grateful that our new barn has automatic waterers and heat tape on the supply lines. This morning the big girls ventured to the end of the horse pasture, where we have a boggy little pond that Mr. Suite is excited to return to wetlands. Lo and behold the pond was frozen!

This never happens here. So the girls decided to ice skate in their boots and of course you know what happened next. Luckily it's all of a few inches deep at the edges.

So, in slightly warmer news, the new library will be about 12x12. One wonderful feature of this new old house is its decent room size, by "old house" standards. The master bedroom is 14x13 and boasts a 9x9 (!) walk-in closet. Of course to continue with the "getting real" theme of the day I have to tell you it is currently doubling as Salvador's bedroom. Each of the other two bedrooms houses two girls currently and while a new dormer bedroom is planned for Salvador, it's out there in construction phase eighteen or so. After a lot of discussion we decided turning the current attic space into a library is priority number two, right after finishing safety issues including the open staircase.

My "dining room" is a pass-through that houses what used to be my kitchen table... because my dining table doesn't fit. My "office" is an unheated back porch that used to be a laundry room. My laundry room is also a bathroom in the shop. My "family room" and "formal living" are one and the same.

The creek runs crystal clear under deep cover of fir, cedar and maple trees. A spring high on the hill feeds it. The apple trees and cherry trees are neglected but charmingly gnarled. The girls' rooms are paneled in 1970s paneling that they lovingly and happily painted Martha blue and sea glass green. Because new drywall in the bedrooms? That would be phase twenty-nine of the remodel.

And it's my dream. That's getting real.

The redheaded boy, the family tartan and the backward sweater

2011-11-29T16:20:00.000-08:00

We don't have a family tartan (that I know of). But of course if we did that'd have to be it. The girls have been doing a month-long research project on immigration and we are learning that we, as a Suite family, came over on the Mayflower and in a roundabout way from the halls of Napoleon and the pyramids of Aztec fame and other less-lofty but still fascinating paths to find ourselves on this little new farm in Western Oregon, where even the clouds are sunshine to my soul.

(Okay. That last bit was a bit misty but you get the idea.)

I am not yet wearing my cardigans backward and, shocker, that is not me in that photo.

But honestly I'm having a lot of fun here on Geranium Lane, where the internet doesn't reach us and the UPS man honks his horn outside the gate. All of our critters are now settling in to the century barn and the chicken chalet and the bunny hutch. I'm campaigning for a Jersey cow but so far Mr. Suite he is resistant.

I'll keep you posted.

Stairway to ... construction

2011-11-23T13:49:00.000-08:00

A little glimpse of the c-clamps that hold my life together these days.

Or that, at the very least, keep the babies off the staircase.

In house after house we renovated, remodeled and renewed and then we moved to the little church on a hill that was completely, beautifully redone and, if not exactly how I would have done it, it's important to note that it was not done by me. We moved in to finished floors and refinished wainscot and, you know, we just started living there. I didn't realize how beautiful that could be.

So here we are as in olden days, only a few children further along, renovating an old house and making it ours while living in it. Someone should make a reality television show out of the hilarity that is my day-to-day existence shuffling bins of school supplies and books with stacks of two-by-fours. Feeding animals and babies and wondering when the construction crew will show up.

Wait. I take that part back about reality tv. I just don't look that good in the morning.

Thankful and then some

2011-11-20T18:53:00.000-08:00

My little boy is just. so. cute.

If he weren't mine I'd prolly snatch him.

This year has been an inside-out, backward kind of year for me. You know the day when you run all your errands and run into friends you haven't seen in forever and run out of toilet paper and run back into town, and frankly, you just run, and then after dinner your husband says, "Honey? Your sweater is inside out. And backward." You know that day? Yeah. That's been my year.

Beautiful.

More packing, more playing

2011-11-13T17:18:00.000-08:00

I not only feel as though I owe you, dear friends and readers, an update or a dozen. I feel as though I owe it to myself to chronicle a fraction of the beautiful craziness that has been this move.

If you had told me six months ago that I'd be planning a new garden, tearing down nasty 1970s paneling, leaving my 1890s country-church-turned-farmhouse for a cottage of indeterminate history and a century barn that's better built than the house, well, this sentence clearly cannot support the number of clauses needed to describe my surprise and delight (and everysooften horror) and peace that has blessed us on this move to more acreage and more adventure and what we hope will prove to be an even simpler life than we found for five years in the tiny village we loved and left.

The all-new farmsuite is a mere 30 minutes from the former (still sweet but no longer the object of my hermitlike homemakery obsessions) farmsuite. The new place may be named Hoot Owl Hollow, if it's up to my children, and since (let's face it) I like to choose my battles, HOH it is for now. The circular drive that sweeps past my new little farmhouse and curves before my big antique barn I've tentatively named, optimistically, Geranium Lane.

While there are many charming plantings and outbuildings here, there are even more projects and situations the optimist in me calls "possibilities."

In fact this blog may go the way of a remodelaholic in place of its overly introspective writing ramblings, mommy musings and the like.

My husband, the dear engineer, has his work cut out for him at work and at home.

But, you know, as long as I have my barn.

Just short of a month into the move we still don't have phone or internet at home. But thank goodness for chocolate. (That and the red hair makes me know Salvador was surely not switched at birth.)
And the new house has nearly as many big leaf maples as the old house.

Just as many dogs and babies.

You know you're still reading the same blog because the pictures are ever so random. That's Josiah, one of my very favorite people. Too bad his family loves him because I just want to snatch him. Seriously.

And speaking of children I love... Sarah had an incredibly moving flute recital three days after we, a-hem, moved. Way to practice, honey. And to not lose your music in the packing boxes.

AND, since we're on the subject of performances, all three big girls are dancing in the Nutcracker this season. Because we have nothing else going on, that's why. So four rehearsals a week? No sweat.

Whenever I'm not wandering the propery, picking up heart-shaped rocks in the creek or tracing the square-headed nails in my barn walls, I'm stitching day-of-the-week towels. You know, when I should be unpacking. Or teaching geometry. Or taping drywall. Or driving in to cell range to make a phone call.

I miss you all! Please keep checking back... farmsuite is still here... just not as frequently.

Stretching, stretching

2011-10-11T23:20:00.000-07:00

So as soon as I'm all bloomwhereI'mplanted, I kid you not, as soon as I had the conscious thought that everything is okay, right now, right here, in this place I didn't want to move five years ago but which I have grown to love love love, just then, just now, actually, I am getting to fulfill some new dreams.

I am choosing flooring and considering dormers and skylights in my new pre-1930s cabin on a creek. I am dreaming of vintage feed store signs for my century barn. I am doing a happy dance (in between seemingly endless bouts of the dread packing) over my father-in-law's gift to us of a hay elevator.

I am making furniture charts, people, in earnest attempt to simplify and still have a place for everyone to sleep, study and eat while renovations, in their many stages, will take place around us. (They oughta give me my own Discovery show. It's gonna get wild.)

And I'm purging schtuff. Of course you know there's schtuff. And I can blame it on the five kids all I want but you and I know different. (None of them has a debit card or a driver's license, now do they?)

So I'm stretching. And it's good. How about you?

Exactly like that

2011-09-30T10:18:00.000-07:00

You turn it around and adjust it and then maybe flip it again until it looks the way you imagined.

It fits.

If I think too hard about this

2011-09-29T09:41:00.000-07:00

We have lived and loved here for more than five years. It was our move to the country that turned out to be a Total Lifestyle Makeover, a journey 23 miles from town but worlds away from what I now see was a relatively materialistic existence.

I've never thought of myself as loving the mall, per se, but the allure of spendy coffee shops and the urban thrill of a great antique find or of an amazing night at the theater... these are in my blood as much as the ponies and the garden (again, this year, with the 'kick me off the homesteader show' garden) and the free-range children.

I wrote a bit about the move here and its shifting of our resources, to put it plainly, to more time spent on fencing and more money spent at the feed store. We drank fewer lattes and the pricey children's boutique owners can hardly remember my name anymore. We brought home two babies to this house. We baked bread and we homeschooled and we started a little bunny business.

Living in this little, tiny, unincorporated rural village has been an enormous blessing. Living in a restored heritage church building has been a dream realized, even in light of the spotty heating and the all-too-open-while-tiny floor plan and the propensity of ranching old timers to stop for coffee as they used to do when the home was owned by a multi-generation founding family.

We have learned to make do, to make the best, to make joy and realize it.

We have walked to the post office, to the wood-floored, wood-heated general store-slash-deli, to the school, church, grange, to neighbors' barbeque parties, to rural art center events and to the abundant blackberry patches. We have spent entire weeks without opening the Suburban doors. We have loaded the shop and the barn and the entire small acreage with memories.

We have watched the fire hall's weekly training sessions from our front yard. We have watched Cycle Oregon's two thousand participants gather and marvel at our front porch. We have watched weddings at the next-door B&B and we have given countless directions to wine country tourists.

And now we are moving again.

My father-in-law gave me a little bit of wisdom that I want to share even though it's not fully sunk in. Yet.

Even in the face of exciting new adventures, it's okay to take a moment or two to appreciate what's passing, to mourn the loss of the known, to recognize what's been good before planning the new. In fact, it's probably counterproductive to start planning before recognizing that this change, though welcome, is hard.

Our new home, also a century or so old but without the known history of this place, is a grand gift and a new chapter to be sure. I just have to finish the last few pages of this one before the story can move on.

If wishes were horses

2011-09-25T11:06:00.000-07:00

Writing, like playing, is daily. Change is not as predictable but it is inevitable.The odd drive to clear one's head.

A trip to campus to goof off in the halls of learning.

A lifelong dream - a century barn - within my reach. Written on my calendar no less.

Grace, as my friend Heather put it, can really rock a hat.

"Millions" of crawdads at our new place.

More University photos with our two exchange students... borrowed from down the road for the period of 8 a.m. until 2 p.m. or so, every school day.

Just one funky sign on my fantastic new barn.

While we lived a little bit of a dream here in this 1880s church-turned-farmhouse, it turns out there is a surprise chapter to the book of my life. (What? I don't control everything? And, furthermore, God's plans are better than mine? Whodathunk.)

So November first we will turn the page and move to that three-story barn (well, into the creekside house, which is at this point not so picturesque) and to that creek and to a mature orchard and a little more remote rural existence.

Dogs and other happinesses

2011-09-14T09:33:00.000-07:00

Today as I quickly upload these snaps of late-summer fun and games I have six students at my school table. It's transition time.

We are still jogging through the last bits of summer chez Suite but the autumn rituals are tapping in for a good run.

A cozy wrap after bedtime bath.

Some wildflowers gathered for seed.

Mommy's seasonless dreams of pictures wherein everyone is smiling angelically and no one is pulling anyone else's hair or last nerve. It's the tradition that transcends cultural and national boundaries. (And you thought that was music?)

A fond farewell to summer

2011-09-08T20:12:00.000-07:00

Pardon me while I wipe the sticky sweat from my brow and then again while I smack that same brow in remembrance of my blog... amongst the canning and homeschooling and general chaos that rules my September, the computer can get a bit in the way. I do, however, have facebook and all the evil time-wasting that has to offer. So there.

Our summer was fun but now it's time for the best season of all (and I totally reserve the right to change my mind at the beginning of each new season): autumn!

This year we are homeschooling four out of five of our children (that Salvador, such a slacker, is waiting until he can walk to learn to read) plus two neighbor boys. It's a full schoolroom and I love it. Today's haiku lesson was mighty educational, for me, in that boys apparently write about very different subjects than do girls. A-hem. Let's just say that counting syllables regarding bathroom humor is funny to a 10-year-old boy I know. Very funny.

We have two new doggies Chez Suite and they are sweet indeed. Bernese Mountain bundles of joy, they weigh in at over 100 pounds apiece. (What was I thinking with the dog begging, you wonder. Me too.) Murphy and Molly do not prefer this extended summer-like weather at all. They pant and, let's face it, they drool. It's an ocean of drool in my laundry room currently. And I can't use scatter rugs because they eat them. Also? They prefer the horse paddocks to the dog run. This makes perfect sense in light of the fact that they eat more than do the ponies.

The little red school across the road from us is closed forever and it is very, very sad. I miss the passing of the morning bus telling me it's time to wake up, and I miss the gathering of country kids stopping at our picket fence on their walk home. I miss the whole one-room-schoolhouse feel of our rural community and we didn't even attend there.

The country didn't fix its financial woes while I took a bloggy break. Go figure.

I made it to the beach just once this summer, and barely in time for sunset. I've decided the fall is better for ocean-going anyway. (See how I can make lemonade?) We did swim at the lake 10 times, which exactly met Sarah's goal. I aim to please. And the lake is close and free.

We celebrated a half-dozen amazing birthdays and a couple of wonderful wedding anniversaries. At one memorable 25th anniversary party the bride wore her Tevas with her wedding gown and walked her Golden Retriever to the picnic table reception. And at one equally wonderful party for a four-year-old I love, in excess of 30 children ate cake with no artificial colors nor artificial flavors and it was a measure of their love for Eddie and his dietary restrictions that no one said a word. Then at my father's 60th birthday party his siblings traveled across state lines to surprise him and that is difficult to do. Surprising my dad, I mean. We'll try it again for his 80th. And that is perfectly safe to say here since he doesn't read this blog. (Right, Dad?)

We (of course, this part is the royal we) put gorgeous new fencing around the horse paddocks

and Dolly hasn't broken out once since then. Oh. Except for the time someone left the beautiful new lifetime gate wide open. Just that once. And it only took half a day to catch the dang pony. Not that I minded.

It wasn't a breakout summer, but it was my summer. We loved it. How was yours?

Finally, the blackberries ... a birthday... and a little ice cream

2011-08-13T12:43:00.000-07:00

Our summer moves more quickly, and more slowly, than any I've remembered. It was late this year, the weather in Oregon not sure what to do with itself. Kinda matched my mood, frankly.

My physical self rushes around, driving country roads on the way to camp. after. camp. after camp.

My all-too-active inner self soaks in the sunshine and reflects, light and otherwise.

This summer marks my dad's 60th birthday, my son's first birthday. My girls are playing multiple instruments apiece (we're apparently starting up a traveling family band).

I miss my grandmother something fierce this season. She and I used to pick blackberries every year. Our stained fingers filled the pails and she filled my mind with stories of her growing up on a dairy farm in Wisconsin; growing up in the Great Depression, having her first children in a log cabin, moving bravely across the country to San Francisco to raise all four babies through wars and an uncertain economy and civil unrest and gardening and on the whole living an amazing, rich life.

Yep. I miss my grandmother. So much so that a visit from her daughters, my dear aunts, brought me to tears. Just hearing Sandra's voice, so like her mother's, and seeing Pat's expressions, so like my grandmother's... this was the essence of summer fruit, sweet but tart. We wait a long time for that first bucket of berries, and then the ice cream and the pies and the cobblers crowd together so thickly that we think we can freeze some of it to enjoy later. But we can't. We have to gobble it up, this life. We have to take it as it comes ripe and say, this is what it is to live in the moment. Tomorrow's joys will be better, and fresher, if they're uniquely tomorrow's.

So this week we are enjoying the last camp (can you see me, ready to slump?) of the summer. Madeleine and Grace are fiddling around. (Har har.) They are playing Cajun music and loving it. The camp is across the road, run by the rural arts, and I am loving that. No driving. No driving myself crazy packing up the whole family. (Did I mention no driving?)

Paradoxically to my whole fresh fruit/live the now theme: Next week we may start canning, although I will likely have to buy produce at the farmstands since my garden has suffered the effects of a late start to the growing season and a general chaos in my being.

Not that I'm dramatic much.

I have missed you, friends. I hope your summer is as delicious and fresh as ours has been.

More pictures worth thousands... of words

2011-07-29T07:25:00.000-07:00

...because honestly...

I can't keep up.

Camps, glampouts, road trips.

The very occasional backyard nap.

More family drives.

A few farm projects.

A theater debut.

Homemade and homegrown pesto. Bruschetta. Much bettah.

Chicks become pullets.

Ponies become pets.

Roses reach higher.

Friendships blossom.

Characters develop.

Grandparents are made, not born.

We heat up, we cool down.

Sometimes speed up, then slow down.

We realize: It's the journey.

Spinning

2011-07-14T08:49:00.000-07:00

Moving a chicken house for the banties. Farmgirls can get it done.

Napping on the way to Crater Lake.

Tired of the stroller.

Running in circles.

Our summer is spinning along. Dizzying but fun. How is yours?

One year ago today

2011-06-29T22:16:00.000-07:00

And today:

I love to read birth stories and birthday stories and, truly, all kinds of love stories. But today I'm a bit wordless, a bit without the means to tell the story of the beautiful boy who turns one year old tomorrow.

Happy Birthday, Salvador.

In the weeds

2011-06-28T08:17:00.000-07:00

I've never waitressed.

I've nannied, written, worked retail, lent my voice to radio campaigns, slung burgers (for two weeks; don't ask), written some more, edited, sold houses and finally, most recently, I mommy. (Also? I make verbs where no action has gone before.)

So with that kind of resume it may take you by surprise to find I've never waited tables.

But I do so want to borrow a phrase I understand is a standard among wait staff. I'm in the weeds.

You may have noticed the lack of posting 'round these parts.

We're still here. Just laundry, weeding, watering and life getting in the way of bloglife. I hope you're all walking clear paths lined with lovely flowerbeds tended by, ahem, someone other than you....

In fact some days the weeds here are so tall I can't see the garden.

Who am I kidding? Not "some days." Every day.

I pulled weeds by hand for hours upon hours this past week and all I got was this t-shirt. No, no actually, all I got was that picture of the cat in the blackberry vines and the satisfaction of knowing my intended plantings will get more nutrients, more sun, more chance to fill my canning jars and freezer shelves.

On the upside, I just joined the Loyal Order of the Glamper. Life in the weeds is pretty good when I look up from the gritty, tangled mess of roots and notice those flowers and whatnot.

Jet lag anyone?

2011-06-22T21:47:00.000-07:00

Last weekend we walked across the lane to a little-known international airport.

A few dozen neighbors and family members joined us on our flight.

Head stewardess Madeleine announced that we needed to keep our trays and seats in the upright position because we were to expect a whilwind tour of what took the girls months to absorb and repackage into a travel brochure come to life.

Sweet friend Lyndsey set up her German souvenir shop while Grace, Sarah and Madeleine did the same for their respective countries of study: France, India and Mexico.

The Brementown Musicians performed.

Lady Liberty recited. Ghandi spoke too. Beethoven played. Geronimo was on hand to tell tales of war. Marcel Marceau performed a riveting mime.

A trip to the Palais de Fines Artes in Mexico City was a treat, where we witnessed some spirited dancing as well.

All the countries we visited had traditional dancing, even with some "tourist" participation. Papa and Grandma danced. Friends Cameron and Quinn and cousin Maiya danced and took part in a quirky French "fashion" show. The girls acted as tour guides and I have never enjoyed a trip around the world quite so much.

In India the snake charmer was a big hit while the air sitar played and Sarah shared some facts about ancient spice trading.

But the big hit of the day, not surprisingly, was the international food court.

The girls' and my favorite part of their end-of-year cultural program was the food, and more specifically, the desserts. Sopapillas (Mexican pillow pastries), gateau au chocolate (French chocolate cake), lassi (Indian sweet yogurt), chai tea, stollen (German braided bread with fruit and cardamom) and more exotic choices that I frankly can't spell weighed down the cafe tables while family and friends feasted after the performance.

There weren't very many leftovers.

But we were certainly left with fun memories.

I always say that the only thing I miss about traditional school is the chance to see my children perform in programs. I love the moments of stage nerves. I love the rehearsals and the messy prop creation. I love the camaraderie and the confidence gained. And now I know that just because we homeschool we needn't miss out.

(I also know those teachers at traditional schools are grossly underpaid and overworked when it comes to such events. Because people? I'm tired. And I'm now storing several lovingly transformed appliance boxes that somewhat resemble an elephant, an Austrian cottage inside and out, the Eiffel tower and some cactii. Sans prickles, thank goodness.)

Thanks for joining us! I hope to be all rested and returning to your regularly scheduled hodgepodge of farmgirl philosophy and crafty goodness very, very soon.

Fun and games

2011-06-18T07:32:00.000-07:00

We have family visiting this weekend.

We're celebrating dads and grandpas and father figures and love.

We are also celebrating the end of the Suite school year! The girls put on an amazing presentation complete with recitations, dances, musical instruments and five costume changes. I for one am exhausted. So the pictures will have to wait. Oh? And also? We finished priming the inside of the canned ham travel trailer. It's been a bigger project than I'd anticipated but it is so light and bright and cheerful sometimes I take my iced tea and a book out there and hide during afternoon rest.

Shhh... don't tell anyone.

Garden of Weedin'

2011-06-13T16:04:00.001-07:00

Sweet elderly gardeners everwhere have nothin' on me, I'm telling you. I am so totally tempted to find a gnome or a dozen and pop them in all around my yard between signs that read "Garden of Weedin'" and "Weeds. 5 Cents a Dozen. U-Pick."

On a related note, I have been a very, very good girl. Mr. Suite is exceedingly pleased because I have conquered my longstanding bad habit of leaving piles of weeds to die or dry or take root in pathways until he finally gets sick of the piles and comes along with the wheelbarrow. Bad, bad gardener me has now been officially replaced by the Toys R Us Kid me through the handy acquisition of that garage sale wagon pictured above. I pull it along behind me and fill it with weeds and then one of my actual kids takes the weeds to the chicken yard.

(My children, incidentally, do not dare write their "Rs" backward because their mother is neurotic about mentioning the inanity (and insanity) of that particular branding idiocy every single time we see the sign, or now, how-convenient-is-that, every time they pull my weed wagon. And, why, yes, I did just use multiple parenthetical statements much as a nesting doll, all the while criticizing advertising spelling. Brilliant.)

Ta da!

Cheap garden tool, happy husband, free chicken feed. It's a win-win-win!

How is your gardening season growing?

What to say about this? A party to end all parties.

2011-06-07T13:10:00.000-07:00

There are times when I wish I could send y'all tickets to my little village just so you could see and feel and hear the goodness that is this place.

Any given day this community is buzzing with the business of agriculture and with the gentle tourism of cyclists and wine country sightseers. But this weekend the gravel in front of the school was crunching well past dark with the comings and goings of country folk out for a fine time.

The gym floor during the Spring Fling was a great spot for Sal to practice his steps.

The booths at the utterly charming homemade carnival were great spots for the girls to spend a few quarters.

The little red school on the hill celebrated what may be its last ever Spring Fling. My dear friend Jayme painted faces. I do love her. And so do my kids! (Don't tell the other face painter but my oldest girls were letting people cut them in line to ensure they were decorated by the talented and lovely J.)

The evening glowed.

A Louisiana fiddler played while the crocodiles danced. Little Laura, sans croc hat, was the belle of the ball. She must have danced with half the county, filling her dance card with patented three-year-old insistence and confidence.

Gracie and a slew of other cuties went fishing without state licenses. (Grace is painted as "the night sky." You can't see but there's a star on one cheek. Very cheeky. And dramatic. Just like the girl. Nevermind that it looks a bit like she's painted as a chimney sweep with five o'clock shadow. Our other great neighbor Kyle painted Grace's face and she loved it.)

Some brave children even held alligators and snakes and turtles, oh my. (Petting zoos in our neck of the woods apparently can't bring your standard miniature goats and flop-eared bunnies because most farm kids wake up early to feed their own fuzzy livestock.)

If you don't want to move to the country, if you shudder to think of the early rising and the crowing roosters and the nine months of mud and three of baked clay soil, if any of that seems too much, consider a true country fair at a tiny school in the middle of farm and ranch land. Come visit. I promise you'll be charmed. And I'll keep the reptiles at bay.

Again with the daisies and dandelions

2011-05-31T19:28:00.000-07:00

I love those little lawn daisies ... you know, the three-inch-high flurry of white that hovers above your lawn just an hour after you mow? (Or is that just my lawn?)

Also the dandelions. A little later in the season the yellow polka dots will dominate my acre or so of grass that pretends to be a lawn. And as an aside, you know you're a country girl when you give serious consideration to just haying your back yard. For horse feed. Or profit. Because hay prices are related to weather and gasoline prices, we're anticipating paying approximately three thousand dollars a ton this summer. Since we are only feeding three horses it shouldn't bankrupt us much.

And speaking of fiscal parasites... I think I have figured out how the ponies can pull their own weight. It makes perfect sense! Work with me here: Gasoline is expensive and so is horse feed. Cars need maintenance but ponies just need love and the occassional hoof filing. So you see, a pony cart is on my wish list. It'll come in handy in case of global financial collapse or my increasingly likely conversion to Plain living.

But back to my lawn "problems."

I just choose to like the lawn daisies and the dandelions. It's a glass-half-full thing for me. Not to mention that they're pretty. I hope you're okay with that.

I also have a much-beloved whirligig clothesline, just erected this past weekend thankyouverymuchhoney, that would be against CC&Rs in most neighborhoods but which fits right in with my glamper and my attractive weeds.

A dog's life

2011-05-26T17:40:00.000-07:00

Bonnie Belle wouldn't move off the couch. She'd lived too long to be denied.

Plus she was just cute.

I am beginning to understand that I could easily become a purse dog person.

Please don't be offended if you currently have a teacup dog in your handbag.

There's something so portable about a smaller dog. I truly enjoyed being able to bathe Bonnie without a forklift or a garden hose. I loved how she never brought home large unidentifiable bones from the woods across the road. And I liked having her on the front seat of the Suburban as we went to town. She asked so politely for treats at the coffee drive-through. She never pulled on the leash and she usually didn't smell too eau de dog like some other outdoorsy canines I've known.

And don't tell anyone but I kinda liked watching a movie with a dog by my side on the sofa. It turns out I'm not so much the go-out-and-play-ball kind of dog owner but rather the sit-by-the-fire-and-read kind of dog owner. You know, where a dog appreciates good literature and is basically a cat with a wagging tail who (bonus!) doesn't get on the counters.

Recently I got in big trouble, and by that I mean Luuuu-ceeeEE, for attempting to rescue yet another and even smaller spaniel. But who could blame me? (My long-suffering husband, apparently.)

I'm on dog begging hiatus. There's an amendment to our pre-nup and everything. (Joking! Joking!)

But I miss Bonnie Belle. She went to puppy heaven far too soon. The fact that it coincided with postpartum whatever notwithstanding, I'd love to love another Bonnie Belle. (I was planning on naming the new spaniel "Maybelline.")

We will likely have a large, farm- and ranch-appropriate dog again. Don't get me wrong; I did love Jake with all my heart. That was a DOG. All Golden Retriever and golden boy, he was a great, athletic, supersmart dog's dog. Police officers were known to compliment him (and my husband) on Jake's manners. Heeling without a leash? No problem. Saving random children's pool noodles from the treacherous lake wakes? He was on it. Command of "sit," "stay" and "spot" in three languages? That was one smart dog. (Plus he hardly ever got on the couch unless he was sure we weren't coming home before he could vacuum it off.)

Our next dog may be another Golden and may be a Bernese Mountain Dog (even bigger and doggier I'm sure). But there will always be a place in my heart for the little Springer Spaniels and the way they look like they're straight out of a Dick and Jane reader. It's a simpler, gentler dog. Mostly understanding only single-syllable words. But still.

Rhubarb and strawberries and cherries oh my

2011-05-25T21:48:00.000-07:00

My second-year orchard is tiny and valiant.

My rhubarb plants, in the ground three years now, are finally ready to provide me a pie or two. Or even some rhubarb champagne. Left to ferment until it's alcoholic or consumed sweet with ice, it sounds delicious. It calls to mind my responsibility in our family as the keeper of my grandfather's massive oak wine press. In San Francisco and Calistoga he used to press grapes for sweet wine for my grandmother. She preferred it sweet, he did not. Making it thus was an act of love from a man whose love language was service long before love languages were named.

My strawberry plants are blooming but not yet fruiting. The plants themselves were gifts from my father's garden. I'm so glad to have them as he recently removed his amazing strawberry beds in favor of, I believe, more herbs. Grandchildren across the county are still crying over this choice. I guess the cousins will have to visit my little farm to taste Grandpa's berries... that is if the deer don't get them first.

Gardening is probably a love language all its own.

This afternoon for instance I really, really needed a time out. You know the kind I mean. After a full morning of school under the influence of spring fever and a full afternoon of flute lessons and fruitless bathing suit shopping with two pre-teens, one first-grader, a preschooler and a baby... followed by a walk that no one wanted to take and then a dinner that no one wanted to eat.... Let's just say toward the end of my day I wanted to some alone time in the garden.

I dug into the newly weeded raised beds with my bare hands. They were probably still a little too wet for planting but I would not be denied.

Little lettuces. Little spinach. Little happinesses all in a row.

This year I am satisfying both my instant gratification and my delayed gratification needs by planting six packs of starts surrounded by seeds and seedlings of my own planting. Brilliant, to my way of thinking. It's easier than labeling and faster than succession planting and, bonus, it's fun.

I returned to the house in time to love on the baby, the preschooler, the first-grader and the pre-teens before bed. Isn't that the best kind of time out, after all? The kind that re-sets one's attitude?

Today I'm grateful for my garden, for my orchard, for the weeds that overrun my flowerbeds and necessitate another mommy time out (or five) this week. I'm grateful for the legacy of gardening and for the love of plants.

What are you grateful for today? Is it garden-related?

Another miraculous weekend

2011-05-22T13:20:00.000-07:00

I mean that.
The everyday miracles were everywhere.

Beautiful.

And tiny.

But no less miraculous.

I hope yours was lovely too.

At the intersection of Quilt and Barn. With some out-of-character End Times discussion.

2011-05-20T22:57:00.000-07:00

There's that patchwork barn from my road trip of a week or so ago. Really the dreamy light does not do it justice. Can you imagine how many pizzas that rancher had to buy for the teenagers who painstakingly used all the oops paint in a creative manner? (Imagine with me, if you will. 'Cause I don't know anything about this barn or its owner other than it made my girls and me smile and wonder and make up fun stories about its quirky paint job.)

Outside my window the forget-me-nots and lilacs have upstaged the fading show of daffodils and tulips. Daisies and columbines wait in the wings for the next act. This springtime is gorgeous in our area, and I'm almost feeling guilty because I know so many are suffering through floods and severe weather patterns. Friends of ours who are serving in the earthquake recovery of Port-Au-Prince, Haiti are already experiencing punishing heat. Other friends are just now driving home to Oregon from storm ravaged Kentucky. The news from around the world is bleak. The radio and television stations are talking about the end of the world and they're not singing lyrics from a pop song when they do so.

The African violets on my windowsill have nothing to do with the parade of blooms outside, with my continuing barn obsession nor with the darting hummingbirds nor mounting projects stacked on my sewing table.

And, honestly. My faith has nothing to do with predicting whether tomorrow is the beginning of the end of the world. I hesitate to say any of this for the record, on the world wide web. But my faith is in the thin vein of beauty and truth, an ore much more precious than a prediction of dire circumstances on a certain date.

My God is a God of mercy and, yes, I hope you know Him too. I hope that judgment day is not a reason for fear for you because none of us can achieve the standard but through grace. Amazing grace.

My pantry is full and, yes, I hope yours is too. But I hope you aren't just hoarding water and canned goods for a catastrophe but rather thoughtfully planning how to take care of yourself and your family and your neighbors if need be.

Oh I so rarely get on a soapbox here but I can feel myself stepping up there now.

I read on a web site today about how much food to store per person for certain periods of time, making my notes and commenting to myself how similar the lists were to the provisions the pioneers must have packed for their westward journeys. And right after I found myself nodding with the web site's writer, I read that I should instruct my family to never, under any circumstances, disclose that we have stored food for emergencies.

Really?

Because I want you to know, my real and virtual neighbors alike, that what I have I will share. That whatever we can do for one another in the event of an earthquake or storm or financial hardship is what we should do.

It's obviously easy to say this from my comfortable chair in front of my computer screen, electricity humming and refrigerator full, children tucked in and husband reading by the sound of the Giants game on the radio.

I have a comfortable chair, a comfortable life. I'm guessing you do too.

But I never want to be so comfortable that I forget that some others are decidedly not. I want to share my comfort, my knowledge of God's mercy and grace, before others are frightened into a judgment day panic mode just as I want to share my pantry's contents with a hungry neighbor.

Take care, dear readers and neighbors. And as you're driving through the countryside of life, imagining the motivations and small joys of your fellow man, remember too their likely pains and trials as they too try to gather beauty in a sometimes ugly world.

I don't think tomorrow is the beginning of the end. But I do think we should live like it is. Not with fear nor with secrecy but with confidence and compassion. I think we should, I should, be willing to be a little less comfortable while it's still an easy choice. I think I should (because I know you don't come here for the preaching) place more emphasis on the bits of beauty, the patchwork-painted barns and the blooming violets and the play dough parties, because they are my icons for the joy of the world, for the hope of grace and glory amidst difficulty and strife. A true icon is very different from an idol; an icon points us to a larger truth while an idol, of course, is a substitute for the Truth.

May you find Truth and beauty and rest this weekend.

(And may I return with a lighter post next week.)

Spring fever meets summer planning? And a little melodrama.

2011-05-16T21:02:00.000-07:00

From my spot on the lawn I have done the math.

We have just three weeks of schoolwork left before summer vacation.

I almost regret the nearing of the end of this school year. Don't mind me, it's just my bittersweet acting up again. You see, next year Madeleine and Sarah will begin logic curriculum. My babies, those creative nutty bookish sweethearts, are ready for more advanced studies whether or not I'm ready.

Isn't this the way of motherhood? Just when I'm all snuggled down with infant Salvador and ubercontent with my rocking chair teaching style, he's ready to wean and the big girls are ready for their own desks, [classical] educationally speaking.

Ah, well, at least I still have Grace and Laura to torture. I mean, to read aloud to. You know what I'm talking about even when I dangle my prepositions, don't you?

And then will come Salvador with the Tonka trucks and the We Help Daddy texts.

The thought, the mere thought, of him starting school is enough to make me lose control of my tear ducts.

I'm preparing for empty nest syndrome and I like to get a running start. That's all.

From whence does all this melancholy and melodrama spring?

From looking at the short list of what must be done before our whirlwind summer can commence.

It's a pretty short list: A little geography presentation, a little Constitution recitation, a little long division. And then let the school holiday begin, coinciding tidily with the end of my stint of teaching exclusively elementary school and preschool students.

I'm not ready, my father said to me when I announced my engagement to be married fast upon my graduation from university. (Maybe it was slightly before, but that's hardly the point.)

And now here I stand at a hardly comparable milestone with the same reaction. I'm not ready.

Of course life doesn't give me a warning, a "ready or not" chant during which to secure a better hiding spot. (Living in the moment might have its drawbacks when one is gobsmacked by the future.)

So. For the summer. We are hosting family, camping, taking a road trip or two, celebrating birthdays and anniversaries, gardening, riding ponies, sending children to theater camp (Melodrama! I kid not.) and church camp and art camp and then taking a deep breath before we jump in the deep end. Again.

It reminds me a little of the time Madeleine (now 12) was about to lose her second baby tooth. She must have been five and the first tooth had come out just a month or so beforehand. As she approached me with the news of the wiggliness, her baby self said very soberly, "Mom, I don't want you to freak out or anything. It's bound to happen."

Yes, Miss Madeleine, it is.

What are you planning? What milestones do you pass this season?

I had something meaningful posted

2011-05-14T20:57:00.000-07:00

But it's gone.

And now we can forget about me ever remembering it again. Follow? Me neither. Clearly.

But we're having a fine weekend. We're playing with the new chicks. (I know! More chicks!) I went thrifting and bought some very exciting vintage fabric. Some of it is for my canned ham renovation and some of it is for summer wardrobe sewing.

It's looking like summer will finally find us here in Western Oregon.

Look at Salvador! (And the church steeple across the road. That's a little artsy, isn't it?) I took that picture from my very ambitious spot on a quilt on the lawn, where I laid around and read Stephen King's "On Writing" for an entire afternoon. Manoman that's a good book. I didn't expect I'd think that, frankly, because most of his fiction is not my preferred genre at all. But his memoir/writing guide is brilliant, insightful, crazy good.

Sarah's loving "Goose Girl" and those yellow shortalls. I'm not sure she's taken them off except for at bedtime.

I'm loving my special Wild Salad with dandelion greens, violas, chives and mixed lettuces. A little balsamic vinegar and extra virgin olive oil with crushed garlic -- yummy springtime dinner.

What are you loving? What are you reading?

And did anyone see my missing post or did I dream that?

I can see for miles

2011-05-10T16:13:00.000-07:00

Oh my word. It's sunny and 70 degrees outside.

The camas are blooming.

The lambs are frolicing.

I can almost hear Maria singing.

(the hills are alive)

It's all too picturesque for blogland.

I hope your day is lovely as well. I'm going to plant something now.

Groovy, again

2011-05-09T21:22:00.000-07:00

This is another of those "groove back" conversations.

The ones where I ask the room at large whether there's a groove to, in fact, recover.

I have never been that groovy a gal. At least in my own estimation. In spite of more than a decade of ballet I can't really dance all that well. I'm not even very graceful, to tell the truth. (A broken hip and a bad knee and a collection of other clumsinesses are testament to this vicious cycle.) And although I was told in my youth that I had perfect pitch I subsequently damaged my hearing and can't currently carry a tune. (Don't mind me though because I still do sing. Show tunes especially. It's good to embarass your children.)

I like routine and I love tradition. I dig a good garden furrow as much as the next farm girl, I do, and I've earned all the lines on my face through laughter and tears and too much time squinting at my handsome husband on a baseball field.

So even though the riff on a groove is cool in concept it's never really worked for me. And it's not that I think a groove is the same as a rut, although sometimes it seems comparable. I consider it more of a fault line, really, this shifting, mobile area of life that flirts around somewhat like a dance but less predictable. I fear the jolt when the comfort zone is inexplicably disturbed by the moving plates of life.

Pretty soon my baby turns 1.

Pretty soon my oldest turns 13.

I don't have time for a groove. I'm too busy looking up at the blue sky, looking down to see where my feet are placed, balancing on a beam of life with my arms wide open.

Momma hens

2011-05-08T12:16:00.000-07:00

That poor girl looks like she'd love some privacy in the nest box.

And what momma among us doesn't understand?

Today, though, I'm so very glad to be buried in babies and expecting my mom for dinner and in general nesting.

I hope your Mother's Day is lovely, dear reader.

Gadabout

2011-05-07T08:42:00.000-07:00

I put some miles on my husband's car. I filled my tank and my memory cards, literal and figurative.

I'm so grateful for my mom. Not just this weekend but all the time. I am blessed with a loving mother and with children who make me. This is a time to celebrate the women who mother you, the mentoring relationships you have with others, and the concept of maternal nurture.

Most years I accept lovely gifts of flowers and globby clay pots and fingerprint paintings. This year I'll make dinner and I'll soak up all the mommy love I can.

Who doesn't love that?

Cinderella in rubber boots

2011-04-27T20:07:00.000-07:00

This photo pretty much sums up our life.

We're a little hobby farm... and we try at every turn to inject some comfort, luxury, 'suite' life amongst the gardening and ponies and general country muddiness that spring brings.

We're a little family of seven living large with love.

We're wearing our tulle and our rainboots

and running down the road to visit the neighbor.

We're building a bunny grooming station

and in our spare time making a Spanish-language, just-for-fun ripoff of "Monopolio"
in which, as chance may have it, you could fall off your burro and owe 200 pesos to the doctor.

We're spilling an entire box of cocoa powder and running for the camera instead of crying.

We're staying up late on school nights.

Because we can.

We're going to bed early with books.

Because we want to.

I'm linking up to {pretty, happy, funny, real} if I can remember to do so. (Look. I remembered. I could not, however, manage to make Like Mother Like Daughter's beautiful button work.
Blame me, not the button.)

I just love that: "context of contentment in everyday life." You should too.

And I just love life.

You should too.

Not that I want to boss you or anything.

I have five children. I have enough people to boss.

I'm good with that.

Easter and a new day

2011-04-26T07:06:00.001-07:00

The Lenten rose is still blooming.

And I keep trying to get a picture of all five children. At church. With impossible backlighting.

At Grandpa and Grandma's house.

Where even the 3-year-old despairs the photo session.

Mr. Suite thinks the soggy back yard is the perfect spot.

Too bad we didn't get out the tripod and include him right in front of me!

Don't my buff-colored shoes make me look barefoot? Gah.

And my untucked blouse, rumpled sweater, fresh from nursing the baby? Perfect.

Doesn't Laura look resigned to a day of all pictures, no candy? Manoman.

Doesn't Gracie's goofball face make you sigh? Me too.

Doesn't Sarah telegraph her exhaustion? Poor beleagured models all.

Doesn't the fact that Salvador is actually barefoot bother you? Bleh.
Baby will shed his socks and shoes at every opportunity!

Madeleine alone stands ready for a portrait.

I think the memories, frankly, are way better than the pictures.

We had a blessed Easter. How about you?

I choose funny. For real.

2011-04-21T09:58:00.000-07:00

Today we're playing along with Auntie Leila, capturing the context of contentment in everyday life with a few photos.

And I love funny even more than pretty. I love to laugh, even when the children are extraordinarily naughty and I ought not be laughing. Don't you find that makes everything, well, better?

It's probably not as readily apparent as it oughta be why that ball-fire-hydrant-wading pool is funny, exactly. It's sunny in the photo but it's 40 degrees outside. My children, the two youngest girls, anyway, begged to go through the hydrant sprinkler in their bathing suits. Methinks some of us are ready for warmer weather.

And this too needs more explanation than a truly funny photo should. Last week's lemonade stand had a resident bandit who was short on quarters (and in the legs) but long on spunk.

Sarah's new chicken has a unibrow. That's funny, right?

I plant salad in an upcycled galvanized tub that I picked at the dump... my husband doesn't find that funny but I do. Also? We have an enormous garden that's just a bit further away. But pretty and funny and real go hand in hand here.

Toys from here to there. Maybe not pretty but happy and funny and real. And please note, Salvador crawling before he walks. Phew.

Missing my dogs, rambling about blessings, Passover and the economy

2011-04-20T17:45:00.000-07:00

Salvador really, really likes to stack blocks.

He likes to stack them. He likes to knock them down. He likes to chew on them. Blocks, blocks, blocks. Give the boy some blocks and he will entertain himself for twenty blissful minutes of mommy washing dishes or diagramming sentences.

Yes, Salvador loves his blocks. Unless they're Lego-brand blocks. Today the girls switched things up on the poor boy and he was irate. They didn't stack the same way at all. Nor would a tower crash in a satisfactory manner. It's funny watching these little realizations and it's funny realizing that these little quirks are adding up to a big personality.

You might want to prepare yourself for a little (a lot of?) thoroughly biased journalism. And also? A bit of mommy rambling.

What am I saying? This is what you come here for! I read recently that the "blogs about nothing have gone the way of Seinfeld." (I am so glad you are back writing in the blogosphere, Ei!)

As usual I am way behind the trend... I had no idea blogs about everything and nothing were out of vogue. And yet here we are. Me: Missing my dogs, posting the occasional upcycling project, chronicling the wildly exciting homemakery homestead news and boo-hooing about my baby's lightspeed growth not to mention my big girls' relentless march to young adulthood.

Oh! And we mustn't forget the incessant introspection. It's a navel-gazing extravaganza at times here. Don't be afraid to nod in agreement. Or nod off. Whichever.

Salvador also likes to crawl around with blades of the lawn in his four little pearly whites.

(Don't fence him in. My new dog, however, will likely need to be fenced in. I will be getting a new dog at some point. The passing of two beloved puppies in six months is not to deter me. I really, really am not okay without a dog. Go figure.)

Yesterday we observed Passover with some lovely friends. We reflected on thousands of years of sacrifice, on the one divine sacrifice and on the astounding gift of mercy that bring us to the place we are now.

Our friends, in the course of Old Testament readings for the Seder, re-enacted in a lighthearted way the plagues that preceded the Jews being set free from Egypt. The children may or may not have taken these plagues to be as odious as they truly must have been; the frogs and crickets were origami and Grace (my little amphibian lover) frantically gathered them up... the flies were bits of licorice that rained down and were promptly gobbled by our friends' dog... the 'boils' were face paint applied by our 15-year-old friend... the Schleich livestock fell over with "x"-marked eyes... you get the idea.

In the midst of these theatrical teaching methods, I was again struck by how very blessed we are. Our family, our nation, our world at this time in history is blessed. The economy is difficult to be sure. My husband owns an engineering, surveying and planning firm, which has been severely affected by the recession and the crash of the mortgage markets et cetera. My family used to rely on real estate for a significant portion of its financial security. Countless of our friends are in construction and development. These are people we love and the hardships are real. But they are nothing, nothing, compared to the grace and mercy we have been shown.

People around the world are suffering, right now, from the effects of poverty, storms, earthquakes and loss of loved ones. I am warm and safe and surrounded by the people I love and wishing for a new puppy. I am a little ashamed to say this next little bit, because it may seem obvious. (Madeleine L'Engle once said in a writers' conference not to fear to state the obvious. I try to take that advice for my own because I think sometimes we overlook the important while searching for the profound.) So here goes:

I have no right to complain. I am neither stranded in a desert nor bound by slavery. I am not under the law but under grace. I am fed and clothed and able to feed and clothe and shelter my family. I have the luxury of time to pine for a pet, for crying out loud.

I stack up my blocks and I think I know when and how those towers may fall.

But really, things can and do change without notice. I think I should enjoy the play time. I think I should notice the beauty and the blessings and take more than a moment to be grateful for the sacrifices given for me. And for you.

(Oh, and Honey? I want a new dog.)

I choose pretty. For real.

2011-04-14T22:22:00.000-07:00

When I was a girl I used to get in trouble for decorating my room. Well, more to the point: I used to get in trouble for re-decorating my room when I was supposed to be simply tidying.

And who wouldn't rather plant flowers than weed?

Who wouldn't rather read a book than dust the bookcases?

Who wouldn't rather have a lemonade stand than... pretty much anything? Maybe there is a little Mary Poppins in me after all.

A spoonful of pretty helps the real go down.

For today, and most days, I'm considering the lilies

along with the positively brilliant Pretty, Happy, Funny, Real linky

over at Like Mother, Like Daughter.

Batik and beyond

2011-04-13T08:41:00.001-07:00

Oh, I can't tell you how much your encouragement on my last post means to me. I may just go back and read those comments, one by one, whenever this homeschooling country life gets me feeling isolated. There's a big difference between lonely and alone, wouldn't you agree?

One can be alone and so happy to be so. But lonely is another thing entirely. Lonely is, as they say, a beast of a different color; so much for perspective and intentional simplicity and other catch phrases of the moment. Lonely is when introspection turns sour.

Friendship is a wonderful state without borders thanks to the internet. Each day, if my crazy schedule allows, I can sit with a cup of tea and a few of my kindred spirits, reading up on the happenings in their worlds. Writing is a blessed indulgence. Each day, if my willpower and opportunity collide, I can type or scribble some words with meaning or without and in some small way express the creativity that God gave me. The camera, too, I'm thinking, is a friend of mine. Nearly every day, if the light and the mood strike, I can take a photo to reflect on what's funny or beautiful.

Soon I hope to participate in something new over at my Auntie Leila's place. It's amazing how we're not related in real life. How can that be? I am so grateful to be able to find her encouragement and practical advice when I sometimes need it. Maybe you'd like to have a cup of tea with her too.

For today I'll be batiking (not sure that's a verb!) with my girls. More specifically we'll be ironing the wax out of the saris we made. I bought a junk iron just for this purpose. Yay me! And then we may move on to sewing our traditional Mexican skirts. We are ramping up for our big multicultural exposition (doesn't that sound official?!) in June, and the preparations are starting to overlap international borders.

Thank you, friends, for reading and for writing and especially for letting me know that I may be alone (save the company of five littles who are too cute for reality TV) but I need not be lonely.

Cats and Dolls, only decidedly not on Broadway

2011-04-10T09:45:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I want to feel anonymous. I live in the country;

I enjoy my serving of solitude with a side of going to town or at least going on the internet.

But sometimes I want to know someone's reading. Anyone?

In some of my pictures you can tell where we live

but most often I crop them just so to obscure our location.

Cropping is the only photo editing I know how to do.

Beyond my picket in the top photo you can glimpse ... the (in)famous underground house and the dear little red school. There's Chester Cheese, whom I have been trying without success to rename "Charles Dickens," on his way to visit the forest behind the school. I hear there're mice in them there woods.

And if you'll go with me for a moment of melancholy?

There's my baby's last year of little girlhood, right there,

with a view of the church that's also across the road.

We live in the middle of nowhere and the middle of everything.

We play tea parties with our dolls.

We obsess about that twisted post on the garden fence more than is healthy.

Chester still won't answer to "Charles."

Nor "Dickens." He thinks, in fact, he's camo cat among the fallen cherry branches.

Some daffodils still remain and the weeds flourish.

And Salvador's learning to drive. As all ten-month babies do.

Was your weekend wonderful? Do you have any tips on renaming a cat?

Or possibly on the subject of rural socialization problems among homeschooling mothers?

Hmm, now there's a subject for further consideration....

True or False?

2011-04-08T20:40:00.000-07:00

Girl Scout cookies are the root of all evil.

Or at least the square root of the circumference of my waist. Or some such math-like formula.

Discuss among yourselves.

Ragout of a post

2011-04-06T09:22:00.000-07:00

I'm working on the canned ham rejuvenation. Bit by bit it's coming together. My wonderful husband and amazing father-in-law "upcycled" a neighbor's deck that was otherwise headed for the burn pile and now it's the perfect landing pad for my awning poles this summer. Also? The girls moved right in with their Breyer barns and model horses. They didn't want to wait for the pressure washing. They may have come by that impatience honestly. See that red and yellow galvanized tub in the right foreground? I planted that dumpster treasure (yes, I mortified my husband and children on a recent dump run by asking another dump patron for his 'trash') full of sugar snap peas and buttercrunch lettuce. I didn't want to wait for the pressure washing either! My plans for Valentino are that it be not only a writing spot for me but a tiny guest cottage, if you will. The family plans are that it could also be a changing room for the wading pool! And the deck? Can pull double duty as a stage for summer backyard concerts. Who knew how much joy this little work in progress could bring? I am excited to show you my reupholstery and paint projects as they continue. And put your reservations in now because I'd love to host you in the canned ham cottage! My house is just steps away and the country quiet is intoxicating (unless of course the children are laughing and playing outside of course!). Meanwhile, elsewhere in the yard, a few violets decided we were never going to get to all the leaves and braved the springtime anyway.

Our indoor seedlings were this size when I took the pictures... and six inches tall when I uploaded those pictures!

We're still studying geography and culture of many lands. In the past few weeks we have batiked fabric for saris, handwoven colorful Mexican sashes, and embellished Austrian vests and hats. Grace can finally name and identify her continents... I wish we knew a continent memory song that flirts around at the back of my mind but never settles in well enough to teach it! Does anyone have an idea of this song or did I make it up in my famously imaginative memory?

The giant yellow daffodils are slowly giving way to a flurry of fragrant paperwhites. They are so beautiful! I wish that particular scent of paperwhites and mown grass could be bottled.

And of course bread still needs to be baked. Those sad little lumps of dough become an everyday miracle of their own. I am recognizing more of those serendipitous moments and household beauties, the more I look.

You too?

Front porch barefootin' bliss

2011-04-04T07:02:00.000-07:00

A little bug hunting...

...picture snapping....

...barefoot happiness.

Over the amazingly sunny weekend (spring! sprung!) my sweet husband and my wonderful father-in-law put a puttering deck in front of my Valentino canned ham trailer. What? You've not needed a deck on which to putter? I know. I am spoiled.

I potted some flowers. I considered painting but thought better of it.

I sewed a skirt for Sarah while I enjoyed having front and back doors wide open so I wouldn't miss a breeze.

We mowed, finally. ("We" is that famous royal we which consists mainly of me drinking sun tea and my husband providing the fresh mown grass aroma.)

We were fortunate to purchase a flute and a clarinet for two deserving and grateful budding musicians. .

And we released all the ladybugs we caught.

A good weekend was had by all?

Inspiration Point, again

2011-04-02T12:12:00.000-07:00

When I light a candle these days, it's with more than a wish for its fragrance or its romantic light. It's with more even than the prayerful reminder that a candle can bring. . I light a candle. Maybe because it's necessary light. My duty to provide enough light for my daughters' evening reading. My responsibility to light the way for my children. And bigger than that it's a symbol, an icon if you will, of the luxuries that surround us every day. . Each flickering light a point of inspiration. Inspiration. . To breathe in, to breathe spirit into, to become filled with divine thought or direction. I take a deep breath.

I move through the days, doing what I must and what I will and often what simply makes us smile.

In this way I listen for the spirit and the Spirit.

I wait. I am still in the manner of one who has things to do and does them, without an eye on the clock, or eyes on the prize, or an eye for profitability, but rather with an eye to duty and meditation and then I find sometimes with no little amount of surprise that I love the things that I'm doing.

Why does it surprise me still that the mundane can be profoundly meditative?

My girls make a tea party and I wait. It's a mother-daughter tea party to which their baby brother is invited as well. We sit at the table and sip hot tea and eat homemade brownies from the Little House cookbook.

Daddy's at work without much luxury of waiting for inspiration. My life, this bookish life of children laughing and seeds sprouting, is a luxury even when there's noticeable lack of what others might consider 'luxury.' These past weeks without hot water, often without electricity and sometimes without even cold running water, have redefined comfort. My chores approached a new definition of planning as I heated water on the stovetop -- propane, what a luxury! -- to wash dishes by hand. I wrung water from clothing and my hands and heart grew stronger with each day.

I think about pioneer women, as I often do. I think about my own grandmother, who paid for the doctor's assistance at the delivery of her first child with a flat of raspberries. I think about her little homestead and her huge life of love and family and frugality. And yes, of duty.

Duty and inspiration go hand in hand. Little luxuries and little hardships co-exist and illuminate one another much as candlelight. Who knew?

Cancel the week

2011-03-28T11:02:00.000-07:00

The past two weeks have found us replacing a well pump, dishwasher, water heater, front load washing machine, and oh, hey, by the way, the transformer that feeds electricity into our home.

(While I ramble on about our electrical drama, feast your eyes on a few photos of Gracie and her beloved new doll Samantha from the big bakery birthday. And although six may have been a mix, seven is heaven. At least the first week or so.)

In the middle of all that partying and fear of the house burning down we've enjoyed five ear infections, multiple visits with friends, homeschool spring break complete with a book buying spree, two trips to the movie theater and play dates galore.

The thing is, when you dream about "going off grid" and becoming a real homesteading family, it's easy to forget that hot water is kinda nice.

So is plugging in the Kitchenaid mixer.

So is washing and drying laundry (gasp) indoors.

And in honor of our week of mostly waterless and electricityless "roughing it," I thought I'd let you know that I may be canceling this week to soak in a very, very long and very hot bath.

Scrappy

2011-03-16T00:20:00.000-07:00

My friend Lexie got a sewing machine and outed herself today as a fabric junkie. I suggest she enter a 12-step program. Step One: I''ll take that offending substance off her hands.

My sister (Whose blog is not public. Gah. What kind of sister of mine is not all about the attention?!) joined me earlier this year in retreating for a weekend of quilty goodness. She, too, is a burgeoning fabric addict on a slippery slope. But don't think I'm a pusher.

My friend Katie, also, she sews a mean streak. She sews dresses from pillowcases and slipcovers from remnants and probably was the inspiration behind a little book called StitchAholic. Her first step, I'm thinking, should be to hand over the stash to one who can watch over it for her. I mean, I'm prepared to help.

Today I sewed nonstop at my dining room table. I sewed through Sarah writing a riddle about Gandhi (who, it turns out, was quite riddle-worthy). I sewed through Madeleine applying for a patent (no kidding) for an invention that may or may not be revealed here later. (When she decides whether she trusts you, dear readers.)

I sewed through making umpteen cups of "cold cocoa" (known as "chocolate milk" unless you're a particularly particular child of mine) for Laura and through just as many sessions of nursing Salvador.

I sewed while Gracie spent her last day as a 6-year-old just as Gidgety as ever, never once glancing at the plainly visible increasing stack of finished items. Oh, to be that happy-go-lucky. Grace is a butterfly of a girl, you see, alighting on a flower here, a sunny spot there, gently unfolding her wings in the most springlike manner. Any other of my children would have had twenty questions, no fewer, for me, about the pile of bright floral and gingham fabrics. Any other of my children would have started asking me to sew something specific. Not Grace. Grace Hannah collects happinesses like I collect pretty bits of floral fabric. She just does. She can't help it.

Just last night, to give you an example of Grace's way of walking through the world, this same child burst into my bedroom at well past midnight. A headlamp blinded me as she excitedly bounced up and down on my side of the bed, waving two books in and out of the glow.

"I finished these, Mom! Do you want me to read them to you?"

"I want you to know what happens!"

There is something undeniable about Grace. She is enthusiastic; she's single-minded until she's inevitably distracted; she's effervescent. It didn't occur to her last night that she busted herself for reading well past "lights out" just as it didn't occur to her today that I might be sewing her birthday gifts in plain sight. She's just so full of joy, that girl. She's good medicine in a world that doesn't seem fluttery nor innocent right this minute.

What did I sew, you ask?

I slashed through a lot of my own personal stash creating a wardrobe for Grace's as-yet-unmet dream doll: Samantha, a beauty of an American Girl that my mom bought for our gorgeous middlest's seventh birthday. Samantha now has one period (1904-ish) outfit, three skirt-and-sweater sets and a pair of pajamas. Grace also has a lookalike skirt set so she and Samantha can dress in matchy-match glory tomorrow.

And now I feel as giddy as Grace! I can't wait to wake up in the morning and see her open her gifts! I couldn't be more pleased to bust through fabric than for this reason. It was a delicious day of sewing and school and reflecting on Grace's sparkly seven-year life.

Plus I made some room for more fabric. Isn't that the way it works?

Salt dough travels

2011-03-04T12:49:00.000-08:00

Madeleine's been spending a lot of time in Mexico.

While Grace is around the world in France.

And Sarah? She thought India would be interesting.

The school year marches on and the 'big girls' have been studying topography, geography, culture and chemistry. We're sewing costumes and practicing recipes for madeleines (a French cookie) curry and fried ice cream. We're very authentic that way.

I love watching each girl's concentration meet with imagination.

I love homeschool.

This week we received the sad news that the rural school across the road from us is closing. We have loved that school, more specifically its teachers and staff and students, for five years despite our decision not to attend. We will miss the tiny red school on the hill. No matter how far we "travel," a little bit of our heart will remain there.

This one's for my dad

2011-03-02T10:01:00.000-08:00

Recently we enjoyed a day with family at the new Matt Court, aka Matthew Knight Arena, to watch the Ducks play basketball.

Laura had the best seat in the house.

My dad asked to review the snapshots before I left for home.

I told him he'd have to check at farmsuite.

So there you go, Dad, I have successfully lured you to my little weblog.

Meanwhile, back at the homestead:

Salvador is sick, the canned ham trailer rejuvenation project is on hold because I can't paint while he's coughing, my quilt tops still need sandwiched (see former excuse), laundry threatens to take over our every waking moment (not necessarily a product of caring for a sick baby, but not helped by that situation either), seeds call out to be started (and will wait for no illness), neighbor children are visiting every day after school (necessitating much cookie baking and Clue playing by all).

It's busy and it's a beautiful thing. Except, you know, for the sickness.

We live and learn

2011-03-01T08:31:00.000-08:00

How is it March already?

It's nearly time for spring fever for school children and mommies everywhere.

My daffodils are still shivering and the maples aren't yet in bud. I haven't yet started a seedling although I plan to do so this week. Winter storms still pound on the skylights and most passing cars still wear snow tires.

I suggested a hike to my sweet children the other day. A nice, long nature hike to collect mosses and cones. "That sounds miserable," replied one child who then entered a form of witness protection. She was right but it still stung. I'm ready, for goodness sake, for spring. So why won't the weather cooperate?

This is what I get for wishing winter away

2011-02-25T11:35:00.000-08:00

Sprucing Valentino

2011-02-23T08:05:00.001-08:00

Why, yes, that's my little nest of happy colors and summertime napping bliss. Theoretically I write out there too.

In that. My own personal "trailer park" in the back yard. Otherwise known as "Mommy's Bahamas," or, more recently, "Valentino."

It's cute but a little beyond shabby in its chicness.

When we were a cute little family of three and four we camped in vintage 1954 Valentino, trucking down the road and garnering stares and waves from Harleys and Hummers alike.

But Valentino is outgrown by our cute bigger family of seven. We have a new(er) glamper (glamorous camper? anyone?) that sleeps everyone and boasts a bathroom to boot.

Valentino comes complete with vinyl upholstered 8-track shelf.

...that I have finally found the gumption to strip. I'm gonna put some geraniums and a stereo there.

Can you say ugh? Ick? Vinyl upholstery and nastiness combine on the dinette side of my little Valentino. That's where I will set up my laptop docking station and finish the probably not-so-great novel. (I hate to put pressure on myself.)

So I've started slapping on the primer. With my husband's blessing it's ALL getting the white paint and beadboard treatment. Yessirree, even the adorable honey-colored cabinetry. I am going to strip it down and build it back up on the cheap. With paint and fabric I have in the bottomless pit of a shop.

Willy nilly you might say. It's brighter already. It's happier. It's my own little trailer park of one. With a tiny deck and a striped awning, a new red and white exterior paint job and maybe even some chenille upholstery on the dinette seats... I'd love to welcome guests by this summer.

And a note: It's hard for me to share the before and during shots without some "after" inspiration. But I'm doing it anyway.

Do you have a getaway?

Aching for summer

2011-02-21T10:26:00.000-08:00

Just a few weeks ago I was content with the season, happy for the cozy wintertime and quiet.

Today has me yearning for hot days, drooping blossoms, long evenings outdoors.

Wheelbarrows on the shady side of the house.

Joyous country picnics and neighborly cookouts.

Sunset at the barn, hot and dusty.

For today I'm sipping hot tea, sorting seeds and working on my quilt top all the while dreaming about summer. Which of course will come soon enough.

Quilt top at ninety percent

2011-02-20T10:33:00.000-08:00

I didn't finish the top... it still needs borders... but all the piecing is done and considering that I stopped to nurse the baby approximately four thousand times I am pleased with the progress.

Even more pleased with the sense of camaraderie and friendship I have come to know and love at this annual retreat.

RETREAT! Retreat. Retreat.

2011-02-19T07:47:00.003-08:00

Retreat. Now there's a word that loses its meaning quickly upon repeat.

This weekend I am blessed to be among friends and fellow fabric hoarders at a once-yearly mystery quilting bonanza. I have chosen my fourteen (so not a typo) fabrics at the store and from my vast stash. I have wiped down various coffee spills from my sewing machine cover and I have assembled my seam ripper, that most important of portable quilting paraphernalia, and other ephemera necessary for cutting little bits of cloth and re-assembling them into something near art.

I am likely visiting quietly over and under and around the hum of a dozen sewing machines. At my table are moms and grandmoms and young career women and starving artists. We all have some things in common and it is not necessarily what you might think. Our color sense and our politics vary immensely. Our ages range from 25 to 80.

Our commonality, then? We are retreating. We are purposing, if you will allow that dubious verb, to give ourselves a weekend of beauty and productivity. We are breathing in and out and it is a meditation, this endless stitching while barely remembering to sip at a cup of tea.

In my preparations for the retreat I found myself frantic. Go figure. Instructions for the baby. Meal planning and preparation for the family. Last-minute laundering, mopping, swishing and swiping in (vain?) hope of returning to somewhere to sit, somewhere to lay my sewing machine down.

I even emailed my husband to say that the getting ready phase could be crazy, because I knew I'd be relaxed at some certain point. When we leave on vacation I'm usually similarly frantic with the packing and the pressure until we are seated, mocha in one hand and novel in another. Then comes the whoosh of relaxation, of ease. Nothing to be done! It's already done! I am without duties!

Not really sure where I'm going here? ME neither. It's just that, when I was getting ready for the quilting retreat, I kept hearing that Civil War movie cry of "RETREAT" in my head. There was a general chaos and sense of near-danger in the urgency of the moment. And yet now? I'm retreated. I'm out of the battle zone (yikes... not that my home is that!) and in another kind of zone.

Hope to show you some quilt squares, maybe a finished top, when I return. And I hope your weekend is restful. I hope you experience your own retreat, without, possibly, the frantic trampling out.

Eh. I dunno.

2011-02-17T09:38:00.000-08:00

How's that for inspirational?

My baby's growing up.

He's doing gross-but-cute things such as sucking on his toes and laughing at his own spit bubbles.

He's fascinated with trucks and tractors and other big boy toys and, no, I didn't steer him toward these somewhat gender-specific activities.

I find myself in this time with a couple of writing projects stagnating, a couple of quilt tops to sandwich, and a couple of big things on my mind. These big things would not be along the lines of how to make my cell phone battery last longer nor would they be along the lines of democracy for Egypt.

But in this house of little people, the things I ponder seem big at the moment.

Again with the perspective.

Com'n over here and give me a big smooch!

2011-02-13T11:55:00.000-08:00

Happy Valentine's Day.
I know I've been a bit scarce around these parts.

But I really, really think you're sweet.

And I hope your special day is lovely... and filled with love.

Fancy Tuesday

2011-02-01T10:01:00.000-08:00

Ole! A cheap-to-free pinata that you can make too if you're so inclined

2011-01-29T07:11:00.000-08:00

My kids don't think it's a party without a pinata.

I think driving into town just for a pinata is a waste of gasoline and time (yes, call me a killjoy if you like).

We can't use a balloon covered in paper mache because we have one child with a latex allergy. That would have been my go-to method for creating a homemade pinata in the past. What to do?

Oh, to count the problems a country mom can conquer with an oatmeal canister, some Elmer's School Glue and a bin full of tissue paper. Not only does it make a fine (if a tad too sturdy) pinata, it makes for a full afternoon of messy crafting fun.

First we dug in the craft bins for tissue and a suitable cardboard canister. We didn't choose a cereal box because the shape of the oatmeal box seemed like more fun. Upon further review I might choose to use a cereal box because it might be a little easier to break.

Then we cut a millionbajillion squarish pieces out of stacks and stacks of pastel tissue paper. If you were very patient you could make a pattern. We are not that patient.

Then we spread Elmer's in small patches on the canister and on the lid. A couple of girls worked each side of the pinata. Picking up a square at a time, we twisted the tissue around the eraser end of a pencil (remember this technique from making tissue daffodils in preschool?) and pressed the twists onto the glue-y cardboard tube.

Presto-chango, over a mere two hours of mess the cylinder became fluffy and princessy and fit for a birthday fiesta.

We poked two holes in the top of the canister walls and threaded a long loop of curling ribbon through. Then we filled it up with candy and treats and popped the decorated lid on. Don't forget to decorate the bottom too!

It was kind of hard to break but it was really pretty for a freebie.

Thursday already? Thinking time.

2011-01-27T08:01:00.000-08:00

Lately I have been thinking about writing.

At first blush, this is not very productive, all this quiet and thinking.

But something is brewing as surely as the flame under the kettle means tea is impending.

Often of late an Idea sneaks in during quiet thinking time. It's so big, so capital, this Idea, that I am tempted to stop thinking! To rush to get that little notebook and immortalize my brilliant notion (full measure of humility here) with the instant-gratification sound of chicken scratch graphite hitting composition paper.

I resist.

If it's that good, it'll still be there when I'm done thinking.

I try not to overemphasize this thoughtful time by scheduling it or by calling it something grand (meditation? intimidation!). I just find it here and there, in the serendipitous moments of littles napping and biggles reading and dishes drying.

Do you afford yourself that time?

Monday at its finest

2011-01-24T09:40:00.000-08:00

Still raining

2011-01-19T11:23:00.000-08:00

It's cold and wet outside and we're not huddled by the fire waiting for Spring. We're watching the neighbors re-roof and we're reading a lot of Little House and we're playing with the ponies in the rain.

Mainly because our little homestead has no fireplace. Also? We have to send a couple of sewing machines to the hospital.

And a little bit because some of us were born here and think that if our animals are out in it, we should be too.

For the first time in as long as I can remember I am not wishing Winter away. I haven't even cracked a seed catalog nor ordered baby chicks. And it's time, isn't it? I'm almost late already.

Who is this masked farmgirl, content to let the seasons keep to their own pace?

Gah.

I think a still, small voice must be getting through to me.

Groove? I had a groove?

2011-01-15T09:44:00.000-08:00

I like to worry way, way ahead of time. (Which of course is ridiculous as there's not really an appropriate time for worry. But follow me for a moment, if you will.)

I especially obsess about things I can't control and/or about which I have only a vague idea, such as Empty Nest Syndrome and Blog Readership Decline.

Well, maybe I could work on controlling the blog readership thing. But in my random notions on the subject I'm sure that it would require posting regularly, with some, er, content, and even possibly some expectancy of quality. And the main reason that's a problem for me is that I'm too busy worrying about how to keep all my babies from ever leaving me in an empty nest.

Kidding.

Sort of.

After our fourth baby, Laura (who turns a dynamic, energetic THREE today!), I spent a little bit of precious time looking for my "groove." I emailed with some friends and some bloggy buddies, fellow travelers and writers on the subject of getting that groove back for goodness sakes. I wanted to know if I'd ever feel "myself" again. That writing, reading, traveling self who skipped the recipe section in magazines because she ate mainly yogurt.

But after the arrival of our fifth child, Salvador (who is all of six months old and still as delicious as can be), I'm not feeling the groove search. It's possible I'm still caught up in 2010's goal of living in the moment (which sounds a little, upon re-reading, like living in the past?). Or it's possible I've simplified to the point that I don't need to return to any pre-mommy glory days.

These days are fairly glorious all on their own.

And they're fleeting.

Our eldest, Madeleine (a scary-smart 12 years old!), second daughter, Sarah (still my 10-year-old bookworm mini-me), and our middlest, Grace (6 and a half and a Lego/puzzle/spatial genius)... these three have taught me that the baby years go too quickly to be wished away in any way, even in pursuit of finding oneself. There will be time for that when the nest is emptier. Right?

At this point, and I reserve the right to freak out later, I like my particular current groove just fine. I like my recipe-reading, bread-baking, baby-wearing life like I like jazz. It's sometimes unexpected. And it's beautifully full of high and low notes with an engaging beat of soul.

I might even call it groovy.

Watch and learn

2011-01-08T09:04:00.000-08:00

If I were a chubby little baby (a-hem) I'd watch other people fall down and laugh and I'd think falling could be fun.

I'd think there'd be someone to chuckle with me over this hilarity of falling. I might even think people fall on purpose for the experience. Over and over.

I certainly wouldn't confuse falling with failing.

I might do this and then grow up to be a risk-taker, thrill-seeker, limit-pusher. Or I might just grow into one fantastic individual unafraid to fall, or to fail, in the pursuit of new horizons.

I dunno.

This parenting gig might have something to teach me.

p.s. Did you get a glimpse of that baby's hair?

H-ha-happy (achoo) New Year!

2011-01-02T09:25:00.000-08:00

Let's ring in Two Thousand Eleven with our hankies, shall we?

Sal's eating solid foods, having moved directly past puree without passing 'go' nor collecting $200. To tell the truth he lunges at plates of food as though he were born for this eating thing.

We are all working around lingering coughs and colds to try to keep him fed in the manner to which he'd like to become accustomed.

A six-month well-baby appointment looms large this week as he's the only one, well, who's well. So of course it's a perfect time to take him to a waiting room full of more viruses.

Also? We're adopting new animals. JUST LOOK AT THAT CAT! Fifteen pounds of love and affection, right there, thankyouHumaneSociety. He's a little camera shy but is already settling right in chez Suite. Our favorite thing about Chester Cheese is his six-toe-edness. Rumor has it that Ernest Hemingway's cats were also blessed with extra digits. Maybe it'll bring some angst and adventure to my writing.

One can always hope.

I can practically see it now: The Running of the Noses. Toro, El Gato! But instead of dark bars, smoky cafes and exotic locales I'll have the church nursery, the perpetual veterinarian and doctor's office waiting rooms and of course my kitchen, where I'll be rustling up some more food for the babies.

Happy New Year, friends.

On the fifth day of Christmas (sing a little song with me)

2010-12-30T09:37:00.000-08:00

How about a snap of the church across the road with a dusting of Christmastime snow to put us in the mood for a singalong? These are a few of my favorite things.

Speaking of favorites, here's Sarah snuggling with Bonnie Belle on the couch. I love that dog more than is reasonable.

Sort of makes me want to cozy up with some hot chocolate and the piano for a few rounds of I'll be home for Christmas.

I think maybe I like taking pictures of the chicken yard in the snow because, well, it looks a lot cleaner that way. But there aren't any Christmas carols about chickens. I don't think. Hmm... Away in a manger? Alas, a roosting box is not the same as a manger. But I'm dreaming of a white Christmas anyway.

And God decorates for the season with or without snow. There's a song on the radio called Christmas in the Northwest. Its lyrics include "a gift God wrapped in green" and it's uber sappy. Just how I like 'em.

But dashing through the snow is more fun than contemplating inedible berries.

Ever since finding my Christmas I find it everywhere. To the tune of all I want for Christmas are my two front teeth.

I discover I'm singing carols in my head all the time. But it's not so much you better watch out.

It's a Silent Night, a miracle in the everyday that fills my head and heart and makes me a little dizzy.

I can't seem to take a decent photograph these days. Nor to string a coherent sentence together with another. I read recently -- can't remember where (search "mommy mush brain") -- a theory of the impending demise of the English language (presumably other languages also?) due to the prevalence of quick-type Twitter- and text-centric lifestyles.

I was prepared to freak out, because, let's be honest, I'm always prepared to freak out. And? I was a double major in journalism and English lit so somehow feel it's my duty to stand for all things Jane Eyre, King James, and, er, Chaucer. Wait. If those examples of the English language can all be, oh, exemplary, and yet so different.... Wait. Gotta think.

Huh. In a barely related vein I've read some alarming studies about the endangered family unit. About the rarity of the family dinner table and the paucity of surviving nuclear families (ooh... sounds dire indeed). These same articles, even books devoted to the subject, don't so much give a guideline or roadmap "back" to family unity but rather stop short at bemoaning our cultural abandonment of "traditional" family values.

While I can follow the logic of each of those arguments (barely -- let's remember I have five children who've stolen most of my brainpower for the foreseeable future) I don't personally find them to be all that scary.

I don't think the written word is dying. I think it's changing. The purist in me is mildly concerned but the realist says, meh, it's an evolving language. Change is inevitable. The proliferation of texting at least means most of this new generation is communicating with one another, possibly even with their parents. Do my kids use "text spelling" in their writing? Nope. (But they don't have electronic communication devices.) Will I be worried when the first of my children writes "ROFLOL" instead of something more articulate? For goodness sakes, no.

Nor do I think the family is an endangered species. Does my family look different than your family? Probably a lot different. Does my family look different than the Ingalls of Little House? Or The Marches of Little Women? Certainly. But I think the love my family shares looks exactly the same. (Every good and perfect gift has the same source.) I think my generation was raised with a keen understanding of the pain of a broken family and an equally sharp focus on building family, fostering love, and creating an unshakable sense of stability for the next generation.

.
So in the midst of my hymn singing and carol babbling I find some more Christmas, some more sacred in the everyday.

I may not be taking great photos. I may not be writing, or often even reading, great works of literature. I may not be raising the next president of the United Nations. However, I am taking a lot of snapshot pictures, hugging my and other people's babies, eating more than my share of fudge and singing a lot of goofy songs in my head while counting the dishes as a meditation.

That has to stand for something.

Found my Christmas

2010-12-22T08:07:00.000-08:00

For some reason I had a hard time articulating the way this Christmas has felt to me.

I read a little story over at a lovely writer's site and then I understood something new about myself. Isn't that the best kind of reading, after all? I was missing my Christmas.

Not for the hustle and bustle of it all. I haven't been near the mall this year... nor even the specialty shops. Not a single online "doorbuster" has busted thanks to me.

We've loved the handmade, homegrown Christmas of our own little family's creation.

And we've not forgotten, of course, the reason for the season: Jesus Christ come to Earth for love's sake.

But the joy? The joy was somehow muted until yesterday, when a box full of dress-up clothes, some superfun friends, and the Bible story read aloud brought it all out in me.

I was missing my Christmas. But I found it.

Merry Christmas, dear friends. May God bless your season abundantly.

Really? Or: The bedazzled dog

2010-12-21T15:17:00.000-08:00

Just a little peak into why we might put the glass ornaments on a twig tree rather than the real one. Laura, the intrepid table/tree climber.

Also treating you today to a mortifying but oh-so-real glimpse of my farmhouse floor on a recent day.

Which brings me to the point.

Um.

Something about middle age intersecting with parenting toddlers and babies and pre-teens maybe? It appears I forgot my point sometime between sweeping and changing diapers. Luckily it's Christmas break, or so I say, so no school today to further clutter my feeblish thought process.

Oh yes! I was going to say something about, "Today I knew I'd lost my mind when I considered an embroidered or maybe beaded sweater for the dog." (Still 'with it' enough to be ashamed of that thought.)

And then I noticed that, in addition to looking very cute with a hair bow (!) said dog sleeps beneath the "breakable" tree, which I spray painted directly over the "thankful" tree (after preserving its inscribed, dated leaves in a scrapbook). Not that I craft much.

It's happening, dear reader. Next time you visit my couches will be covered in plastic slipcovers. I'll start with 101 bazaar (bizarre?) items that can be created from a Clorox bottle and move on to crocheted carseat covers.

You're welcome

2010-12-19T10:52:00.000-08:00

I know. I know. You've been holding your breath waiting until Salvador could wear little tiny Wranglers.

So... since y'all don't live close enough to snuggle him personally... a pre-Christmas gift to you.

Ho ho homemade Christmas

2010-12-18T13:54:00.000-08:00

Welcome to another in the continuing if sporadic series I like to call "Simplify? Did I say simplify?"

While I pour you a cup of virtual tea I'd really love if you noticed in the first photo our incredibly authentic, clearly historically significant, thoroughly researched nativity scene, in which elephants march with drums right behind the wise men and camel as all are apparently on their way past the main event (you know, the babe in the manger?) in search of a somewhat Victorian, differently scaled schoolhouse from the Village Otherwise Located Across the Room On the Bookcases.

Suite's the name, anachronism's the game. Imagination, improvisation, justification. Anyone?

In this most beautiful of all seasons, the time of celebration of God's gift to the world, we at the Suite place are careful to edit the busy-ness even more than usual.

We strive for a heavy emphasis on Advent, on the waiting of the world for God's son, on love, on blessing others. We craft. We clip evergreen boughs. We light candles. And we rarely mention that secondary icon of Christmas. Oh, sure, the kids think it's a fun story, the Mr. Claus legend. But this year we didn't even write him letters.

So JUST WHEN WE LEAST EXPECTED HIM, Santa showed up at the girls' Christmas concert.

Laura was out of Aunt Maureen's lap before the Good Saint Nick could be seated. I just noticed that her shoes were on the wrong feet. Classic.

And then? He gave away TREATS. Can you imagine?

Little Sal certainly couldn't. He was unsure of the situation. Stranger danger? Meh. (Behind that big white beard are the sparkling blue eyes of Randy, an elder at our church and a retired sheriff to boot.)

Random. Not Santa- nor Christmas-related. But Grace and her friend Julianne are treasures beyond compare. That's what I'm talking about.

And by the way, the girls played beautifully. Have I mentioned before how I live for this stuff? How blessed I am to live in a tiny rural village where music and friendship are part of our everyday lives? The fact that we didn't have to choose between homeschooling and participation in fantastic community events is one of the highlights of living here.

Here's another picture, for Grandma who couldn't make it, of the musicians looking cute despite the terrible gymnasium lighting.

Stay tuned for more from this supposedly simple homesteading life.

And may your Christmas season be more blessed with love, with friendship, with grace, than you or I can imagine. Because I have a pretty big imagination. It's even big enough to enjoy a visit from St. Nick.

My highly productive life

2010-12-14T16:03:00.000-08:00

Seriously.

Today I started approximately twelve thousand projects and only finished one.

(That there spray-painted, twig-filled vase-o-breakable ornaments. Because I'm clearly late-onset ADHD, that's why.)

But hey. I blogged.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch

2010-12-13T16:33:00.000-08:00

Gee. Where's that Miriamblogger been?
Watching snowflakes fall.

Baking a rustic pie (or a dozen).

Thinking about the gardening (quilting, gift-making, you-name-it) that didn't get done.

However.
It is ever so much more edifying to think of what we have accomplished:

The big girls had a couple of music performances this month.
One with the whole band
and one just the two Suite musicians
at the Grange hall's Christmas banquet.
Oh? And also? We got a piano! More music to follow.

We've been sewing.
Madeleine and Sarah and I are participating in a hand-quilting class on Monday nights.
In addition I have some crazy amazing projects in my new secret sewing corner.
I thought briefly about being all together-like and blogging the various
cuter-than-cute projects but we'd hate to spoil Christmas surprises
for any readers who also happen to be friends in real life.

We've been partying with friends and family.
Madeleine turned 12 and invited 24 friends to her party. She goes big, that one.
We sang carols at some sweet friends' home after enjoying soup
and homemade French bread.
We hosted a lovely family of ten at our home for a celebration of our own making.
We were blessed with a visit from our former neighbors
pre-deployment.
I hosted some sweet girlfriends for a girls' night in of crafting and, of course, eating.

...which leads me back to...

I've been baking.
French bread, apple galettes galore, the odd Christmas goodie.

And I've been thinking. About all of you.
What have you been doing? How have you been?

A little of this, a little of that

2010-12-04T09:41:00.000-08:00

Bonnie Bell. The newest couch kumquat chez Suite.

I'd love to say we were able to remove all those leaves before the snow fell.

But even with an extra "driver" in the family this year, we didn't keep up with the leaves.

It might have had something to do with that little boy. He just turned five months old last week. He says, in this order, "Mama," "Dada," "hi" and "truck." I do like a child with priorities.

And consummate cuteness!
I may not be objective exactly, but he's pretty much the cutest five-month-old ever.
(Did I mention he's cute? And that he said "Mama" first?)

Even daddies in their work boots can be persuaded to take a break
when the baby toes are that delicious.

Keep on thanking

2010-11-30T08:57:00.000-08:00

This little farm is wrapped in picket fences. Bicycles. Quilts. Babies.

A thin dusting of snow graced our Thanksgiving weekend. The ice and threat of ice kept schools closed -- except for our kitchen table school -- and made for a cozy week.

However. It also kept my computer in limbo at the tech guy's shop for an extra nine days. Let me tell you, if you want to simplify your life a lot, let the computer take an extended vacation. And then let the cell service in your area go down due to ice on the tower. If you're hoping for such a perfect storm of Ludditism (word? not a word?), be sure to lay in plenty of reading material and groceries and of course animal feed.

WHICH LEADS ME TO MY HUGE NEWS.

We have a new puppy!

Pictures to follow.

She's not technically a puppy. The animal shelter thinks she's possibly of advanced age. But we haven't had her in to our veterinarian just yet. (Ice on the roads and all.)

Mr. Suite surprised the girls with Bonnie Bell, our new Springer Spaniel, the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. She's so cute that she inspires baby talk, even in those of us long determined that vocabulary is not built on such wee wittle woidy woids. She's even adorable enough to let me consider breaking the decades-held cardinal rule of no dogs on the furniture. What? She's smaller than a Golden Retriever. By a lot. Also easier to bathe. And if you're still partying with my justification festival you'll think it makes perfect sense that she's allowed on the couches, where no dog has snored before.

So between our lack of computer and related use of hardbound reference books for research papers (again with the WHAT?), between our somewhat self-extended cabin fever and our putting the garden to bed and the leaves to good use on the compost heaps, between turkey with loved ones and making the traditional thankful tree... between the cracks of all that beautiful life... we've been grateful.

Tell me about your thanksgiving. Go on. It's not too late. I for one believe it's in fashion year-round. Just like small(ish) dogs on the couch. And vintage bikes on the fence. For a certain type of girl, these are the little black dress, the classic cardigan, the new-old haute couture so blessedly ubiquitous as to be reported on rarely but enjoyed continuously by those in the know.

The thanks are the thing.

Long awaited (?) updates from the farm

2010-11-08T09:27:00.000-08:00

Tallulah died. The first cold, cold, snappy cold night of the season found her huddled under the heat lamp in the henhouse. We knew she needed a little extra coddling... what with her age, her molting near-nekkedness and the chillier weather... so we had plugged in the red warming light and brought her a personal feeder and waterer.

Maybe it made her last night more comfortable.

Maybe it was just her time.

But.

Just last autumn we were still raking leaves for the dog. He really loved to jump in the leaf piles with the kids. He especially loved to try to catch the leaves as they fell from the trees. It looked so very comical -- an 85-pound golden blur leaping and twisting to reach fluttery maple leaves.

We've had our share of loss this season.

The girls (and I) are campaigning already for a new dog, for a new batch of chicks, for a leaf blower (just kidding about that last one).

But if we look around, really looking, there's more to be thankful for than ever before.

It seems that simplify is, after all, an active verb. It takes a lot of thought and planning and frankly a lot of hard choices and a little loss to truly simplify one's life.

Running between chess and ballet class and band practice and horseback riding lessons, not to mention doctor appointments and, you know, delivering our fifth baby -- none of this was simple. None found us enacting that other cliche, either, of "living in the moment," which is a noble goal with a regrettably stupid catchphrase. Rather we stumbled from one event to the next. "Next" was the operative in my so-called stay-at-home, homeschooling, homesteading life.

I didn't know how to be still. I actually missed out on a lot of contemplative opportunities.

Did you know that kneading bread can be a chore to be rushed while the baby's asleep before homeschool co-op convenes? In those circumstances the yeast and flour and water combine to create a pressure-filled panic attack.

But with a little gumption and a clear decision a girl can say "no" to a few things, leaving room for the mundane to be even a bit beautiful.

"Be still and know that I am God." (Ps. 46:9) What I think this means to me, in this season, is that all my self-driven busyness is the opposite of stillness and, worse, puts me in the position of being god of my own circumstance. Which I gotta tell you I am so not qualified for.

In the midst of some gains and some losses and some difficult choices, in the direct aftermath of saying "no" several more times than is comfortable for a people-pleaser like myself, then did we feel some peace.

A little tranquility, at home in our little rural village.

And room for fun?

It's amazing how much more fun we have when we're dang I wish there was a better way to say this living in the moment.

When we're being still a lot more often.

Raking the leaves. Jumping in them. Reading some poetry and some fairy tales. Kneading some bread. Laughing more. Worrying less. Turning the light on for the chickens and remembering that God is in heaven.

Less is more

2010-11-05T08:21:00.000-07:00

Crispy day, pumpkin run, family fun

2010-10-25T08:24:00.000-07:00

Brace yourself.

This pumpkin patch, corn maze, farm stand, family day recap may be long-winded.
(Heaven knows the day itself was windy enough.)

It also may contain more photos than a dial-up country girl's blog oughta.

But we had so much fun and I wanted to share a little bit of it with you.

Some apples were bigger than Madeleine's head.

How can that be?

They were organic and everything.
I think.

Salvador gave this pile of pumpkins "one thumb up."
He was the cutest little trooper in his front pack and striped cap all day long.
And he didn't even get to pick a pumpkin.

He is a pumpkin. Wouldn't you agree?

We tried for a money shot but 'twasn't to be.

I don't know why I try.
(Actually, yes, I do know why:

There's an inexplicable moment of hope with every staged shot.
And also?

The failures are really, really funny to me.

I just love the drama.

Lucky for me I have four girls.)

Maybe for Christmas I'll get one snap of everyone smiling.

Without fingers in anyone's nose. Or crossed eyes.

Or cross tempers.

Or open mouths to say 'let's go already, Mom'

I can call it, that photo, when it happens, my Christmas miracle.

Ah. The landscape. It only needs light to be cheerful.

We managed to dodge a couple of inches' worth of raindrops
on our pumpkin patch and corn maze adventure.

It felt as though the wagon would blow away.

But it didn't.

Laura had to point out the "doyt." She wanted a clean pumpkin.

Who raised this dirt-averse country child?

She actually cried over the mud on her boots.

Tears.

And then some more tears because we couldn't take home a goat.

Disconnect, anyone?

The pumpkin is dirty but the goat isn't?

Look! Up in the sky! It's another...

...goat!

Not that this is remotely pumpkin- or corn-related...

they just liked feeding the goats.

But we liked the hot cocoa and kettle corn and Grandma time the most.

Our friend Zoe (the tallest girl in that farmgirl photo above) joined us.
She's practically a member of our family.

Except, you know, her own family loves her a lot too.

This little girl is not only not related to us -- we don't even know her.

I just thought she was too cute panning for gold in her purple boots.

I love family days. Don't you?

Happy

2010-10-18T11:51:00.000-07:00

Did I mention it was all birthdays, all the time, around here?

It's good to take time to be happy.

To wear our fanciest fancies or our comfiest jeans -- or both.

To picnic on the floor.

To pass the baby around.

And around.

Until he's ready for daddy time.

It's good for cousins watch the game.
(And for those on wine glass patrol -- that definitely didn't belong to the girls!).

It's good to make some wishes, blow out some candles.

And it's good to have enough children to help when the wind
requirement is more than aging lungs can manage.

Three birthdays and a funeral

2010-10-15T15:00:00.000-07:00

Joy and woe are woven fine,
A clothing for the soul divine.
Under every grief and pine
Runs a joy with silken twine.

-William Blake

We attended a memorial service last weekend for a wonderful neighbor who's gone to be with Jesus. Losing Barbara Brewer was a poignant reminder to cherish the birthdays, indeed all the days, while we have them. Losing her was also a reminder to wear lipstick whenever you feel like it, not just when there may be cameras.

Barbara was virtual mom and grandma and visiting nurse to many. Organic farmers and ranchers before it was marketable, she and her husband Joe are legends in our rural community. They founded the volunteer fire station and hosted probably thousands of agricultural college students on their ranch. She taught Sunday school and called me and dozens of others with prayer chain notices. She played piano and had beautiful posture and a stunning family. She spent her last days encouraging others. The photos shared at her service showed a pretty girl growing into an amazing woman. Her life and death were inspirational in the true sense of the word, spirit breathed into life.

I can't tell you how many fun August afternoons the girls and I spent picking blueberries or grapes in Barbara's yard overlooking acres and acres of rolling hay fields. My littlest would always find a kitten and Barbara would always encourage us to take it home with the yummy fruit. Looking back I know the most important thing we took home with us was the memory of her hospitable way of life, her metaphorical and literal open arms and welcoming front porch.

Losing Barbara made me miss my grandmother all over again. It made me think about homemaking as an art again. It made me grateful (again) to have moved to the country, where neighbors can be your family too.

We celebrated three family birthdays this last week as well. My husband, myself, my mom. Joy and sorrow intertwine and a tapestry of life emerges.

So THAT's why one bagel costs $1.25!

2010-10-07T14:28:00.000-07:00

oldGluten intolerance notwithstanding, we Suite family members love our bagels. When we do venture into a college town near us, we enjoy a splurge at a local bagel shop as much as the next Scrabble-playing girl.

And while we have for years been okay with baking a loaf of yeast bread (or five), making homemade bagels seemed too ... mysterious ... for us.

Until this week!
This was the week I donned one of my trusty vintage aprons and my courage. I cracked the Betty Crocker for procedural help and began with a yeasty bread dough of my own non-recipe.

(Roughly four cups of white flour, one cup of whole wheat. Two eggs. A cup or so of warm raw milk and a couple tablespoons of melted butter. Three teaspoons of yeast. Some kosher salt. Knead until your shoulders hurt. Rest. (The dough and yourself.) Let rise in a covered bowl until roughly double in size. Or, you know, use your bread machine on "dough" and a recipe. Whatever your modern homesteading heart desires.)

An hour or two later, split the risen dough into two, then each of those into six equal parts.

Roll each lump of slightly stiff dough into a ball and then make a hole in the middle. Stretch the little lump into a sort of a bagel shape. Contemplate this shape as a metaphor for a stage of life, an icon of ... something. (Not really. It seemed funny to me at the time.)

Check to make sure the baby is still asleep because you have a lot of steps left before you have bagels.

After the bagel-shaped lumps of dough have risen for about 20 minutes, broil them about two minutes per side. Betty says they're not supposed to brown. But I didn't read ahead, so mine did. Oh dear.

Meanwhile boil six cups of water, Betty says, with a tablespoon of sugar. Next time I'll boil more water in a bigger pot or else use multiple pots.

Pop the broiled bagels into your boiling/simmering water for seven minutes. I turned mine over halfway through because, hello, they floated like tiny life preservers. I promise I'm not speaking metaphorically again. A bagel is good, but it's not that good.

After they're all boiled, bake on a well-buttered (Betty says "greased" but that word grosses me out) sheet for about 25 minutes at 375 degrees.

Imagine you've died and gone to a bagel shop.

Imagine all the varieties you'll make next time. Blueberry. Onion. Cranberry. Parmesan. Not necessarily together.

Toasting optional!

There's the book budget to consider

2010-10-06T14:00:00.000-07:00

It may be obvious from my (lack of) posting schedule that things in real life have been busy.

Twice a week we leave our home to study and play and exercise with friends
in a modern version of a one-room schoolhouse.

Four times a month we leave our home to serve at a rural food ministry.

And every once in a while we leave our home because we need provisions
... what the non-pioneering-obsessed like to call groceries
and animal feed and the odd cleaning supplies.

But the one thing I'm actually willing to leave home for?

When we run out of books.

I have, like every mom I know, a long "to do" list. Mine these days is a little homemakery, homesteady (ooh, homesteady; I may have a new favorite imaginary word).

During different times of my life I've preferred the "done" list.

It can be encouraging to sit down at the end of a day or a week and list what one has done. You know, other than eating bon bons.

If I were questioning whether I'd accomplished anything I might make a "done" list. A self-administered pat on the back.

But these days? I am acutely aware of moments of mute powerlessness,
of my innate weakness
and, for crying out loud, my humanity.

(Don't get me wrong. I'm still supermom and all. A-hem.)

I keep a "to do" list these days because otherwise I might FORGET that I have anything to do other than play with the baby. Read to the toddler. Sneak in an hour of writing or photography.
Bake something.
Harvest the autumn garden in a sunny mood.

I might forget that the big girls have persuasive essays to finish
and instruments on which to practice. I might forget that the electricity bill is due
and the prescription for someone's glasses needs to be rechecked.

There's a new forgetfulness, even vagueness, about me that seems awfully inconvenient
given that I'm responsible for the education and feeding
and general state of the laundry of five children.

Give me an afternoon at home and I'd better have that chalkboard list, my calendar and computer nearby. Or else I might just while away the day just being. Without doing anything.

Not exactly superhuman of me. But it's pretty human, I think.

What do you think?

How much is that doggie in the window?

2010-09-29T05:47:00.000-07:00

Should you lose your beloved canine and go all melancholy crazy with the doglessness, try not to do as I do.

Try not to snap pictures of random other peoples' dogs thinking they look like they'd fill the hole in your family.

Or at least try not to stop in the middle of the street when doing so.

Dog envy. It's not pretty, people.

Running

2010-09-22T07:46:00.000-07:00

Nothing slowed down yet.

Turns out "simplify"

is an active verb.

I'll keep you posted.

I'm all over the place

2010-09-20T12:19:00.000-07:00

It might seem to you, dear reader, that I'm a bit unpredictable these days. Post, no post, poem, picture. Randomness abounds. Not to worry. It's just a reflection of my season right now, my crazy-beautiful life.

Lately I've been painting a little. That spindle bed for my room... a nice gray-blue. The girls' hideout in the barn loft... a pretty butter yellow.

Lately we've been swimming a little. Laura is intrepid in her alternating nail polish.

Lately I've been baby watching a lot. One particular baby I watch for the smiles.

Lately another baby o' mine has lost three teeth in quick succession (just two missing in that snap) and received notes and silver from the Tooth Fairy.

In other Suite baby news: Sarah had her ears pierced and lived to tell about it, Madeleine is in the throes of writing a new top-secret novella, the garden is finally yielding fruit regularly although the rain has now begun in earnest, we are loving our twice-a-month work at a nearby rural "pantry" ministry, homeschool is in full session although illnesses have kept us from attending our cool new cooperative homeschool adventure. The history of our state and the joys of pre-algebra fill our mornings whenever doctor appointments do not.

I still feel a change of season, heavier than that of summer-to-autumn. Five children seems much more than four. If possible I have become more hermit-like than ever before. Not sure how long this adjustment will take but I have the oddest feeling that it will occur, with or without my trademark (over)analysis.

Thanks for sticking with me. I'd love to have some heartfelt promise of projects and prose and posting regularity, but it's like this for now: I'm all over the place.

Seven wonders of the weekend

2010-09-17T09:10:00.000-07:00

1. There'll be naptime. Who among us does not love naptime? I have tried to institute a family "rest hour" during school days, but the tweens, they are resistant, while the effervescent first-grader is too bubbly to quiet down and the terrific 2-year-old is apparently allergic to naps. Or so she says. Ah well. On the weekends, Daddy is home and he has the magic authority that makes all naps happen. Even mine.

2. Salvador likes his own reflection. Is there anything more bittersweet and wonderful than the passing of time, the passing of newborn to little tiny person and big personality?

3. It's time for pumpkin stew and curried squash 'round these parts. It may be necessary to add some cheesy herbed biscuits to the menu as well.

4. We have no plans for this weekend! Other than the aforerambled nap.

5. Our new pony, a sweet Welsh named Ebony, is settling in nicely with Two Spot and Dolly. She looks like a tiny Black Beauty with a big white star on her forehead. Frankly she's every little girls' dream horse. Not that we like her much.

6. In a directly related manner, my mare Seven went to live with a new forever family. All of the angst and drama surrounding her last failed sale is washed away by the sheer rightness of this new home. We are so blessed.

7. My husband brought home more French roast coffee beans last night. All is right with the world. Or my little corner of it. I might refuse to look outside my corner for the weekend.

What's wonderful with you this weekend?

too busy for capitalization

2010-09-15T09:43:00.000-07:00

upon pouring my third cup of coffee (french roast)

i realize

it's been too long

i realize we've been draining the last of summer

just another half cup of energy for the cozy winter to come

the grasses are nearly colorless

we wait for the returning rain

half hoping

it's funny that way, anticipation, foreknowledge

a book by a favorite author

spine not yet cracked

new baby, new pony

old dog gone to chase squirrels in the clouds

lake turned cold and text turned to page twelve

it might be time for fall

Easy

2010-09-02T09:32:00.000-07:00

Last week it was so hot I had to unpack (non-maternity) shorts and capris.

This week it's raining cats and dogs and the horses are for sale again.
Curriculum is ordered and class has begun.

The blackberries may not be ready, but fall is on its way.

Change is in the air. It's on the tracks, chugging steadily for on-time arrival.

I'm okay with that.

(Reserving the right to freak out later though.)

How's your season going?

I Sedum chairs?

2010-08-30T09:31:00.002-07:00

I love sedum... and I love garden art... but I've never done anything to marry those two loves... until now.

When a painted, weathered porch chair lost its seat. That'll happen if you water a basket of geraniums on it all summer long for four years straight. And then, ahem, you use the chair as a stepstool to hang a banner for a yard party.

So the seat parted ways with the rest of the chair... and met up with some scraps of chicken wire. Cutting the chicken wire to size was the hardest part of the project. It helps if you take time to find wire snips instead of figuring the kitchen shears are "close enough." Don't ask how I know.

My lovely assistants gathered moss and carefully lined the chicken wire with a cushy planting area for sedum, which will love the airy drainage. I hope.

And on a side note, does it seem that my sorta-kinda-how-to is really more of a "how not to"?

Case in point. Moss and chicken wire will not support actual sitting.

I'll share pictures after I plant the sedum, which I have to dig up from between rocks and in a wheelbarrow I planted last year. Then I'll place the whole sculpture (artfully?) in the garden.

This was a fun, free project and it feels good to be back to making something out of nothing. Very farmgirl frugal of me.

Also? I know my puns are not that funny. But I crack myself up. And not just when falling through a porch chair.

What projects are you planning? Planting? Falling into?

Tan lines and tutus

2010-08-27T13:42:00.000-07:00

barefoot ballerinas

blackberries on the vine

baby in a basket

summer closes its doors softly

autumn peeks through textbook pages

produce and memories preserved

Sweet cousin visits, tastes country life

2010-08-23T11:29:00.000-07:00

My nephew Rio was here for a dose of cousin corruption this weekend. We made sure to feed him lots of things he probably doesn't eat at home.

And Laura did her best to confuse him about the concept of an umbrella.

(Unrelated photos of Salvador (this one with Grandpa) are going to be a staple around here for a while.)

But my favorite incident of cousin corruption is this one. If you can't read the title of that irreverent book, count yourself lucky. Madeleine read it to Rio and he giggled. A lot.

Sorry about that, Jess. We didn't mean to be a bad influence. Truly.

Seven wonders of the weekend

2010-08-20T09:49:00.000-07:00

1. The blackberries are finally ripening.

2. My sister-in-law and precious nephew are visiting for the weekend.

3. Salvador is seven weeks of smiliness...

4. ...and recovering well from a minor surgery that threw us all in a controlled tizzy this week.

5. I have made it thus far in the summer without thrifting once! (Amazing what you can save when you don't spend on bargains.)

6. My garden is alive and thriving, though the tomatoes are still green.

7. McMansions are no longer the gold standard. I didn't make this up. My little house is now average-sized. Whodathunk?