All Things Bright and Beautiful

Grace with a dropped blossom.

A nest of dried grass and lint and wool.

I think they want to make friends.

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New neighbor update:

I do think I ought not fume and post, people. It's just never a good idea.

They're still there. Their large blue-and-chrome motor home perpetually in my view as I garden, their Pit Bull barking as I garden in the beds beside my front porch, their parking job changing the traffic of the school bus and their existence changing the way I think about my rural life.

How blessed am I to have a home, to have dirt of my own to plant tomatoes and chard, to be able to lock my doors at night and call my harmless and goofy Retriever in from the yard? How blessed am I to know that I will have a next meal (or 90) at the same table, changing tablecloths to match the flowers my girls brought in? The working showers, the stuffed bookcases, the mommy time-outs.

The new (temporary) neighbors initially made my skin burn as though I were covered in fire ants. But that's moving on as surely as they will. They've brought a new element to the road. I think I'll call it gratefulness.

What Gives?

Over the past week (and a half) since I last popped in here to my second home the blog, we have new neighbors at my first home. The sticks-and-stone one. My castle, my retreat, my own sanctuary from the hustle and bustle of the world at large. The place I garden and the place my kids play in the tall grass looking for fairies. It's home. And it's remarkably rural, 25 miles from any traffic signals.

Don't get me wrong. The farmhouse is still a minor version of Grand Central, with neighbors (and their children) stopping in at all hours daylight and then guests and friends and family (who use the back porch entrance and who sometimes call first) stopping in any old time they like, sun shining or moon beaming down on the house of hospitality. You might have to step over six pairs of boots by the French doors or you may be asked to carry a flat of plants to the garden, but you're welcome to stop in for some iced tea too. Anytime.

So when we were relaxing around the stone fire pit in our front yard Saturday, shooting the breeze with my visiting brother, sister and mother over steaks and salad, I was completely nonplussed to see a large vintage motor home pull in to the white clapboard church's gravel lot across the road. It's robin's egg blue with a good deal of chrome. It's 35 or 40 feet long. My own personal RV is a 13-foot 1953 canned ham travel trailer with yellow and white floral curtains. I'm down with the cute and kitschy, folks. You cannot be more Bohemian than I. And frankly it's hard to shock me.

We live in a rural destination area and so are quite accustomed to horse trailers and cycling teams and Sunday drivers. Often the church across the road is an informal staging spot for trail rides and wine country hikes. Rented minivans and limousines and show-n-shine cars with their sexy curves frequent the road. Occassionally the Harleys find us too with their leather jackets flapping and their helmetless heads flaunting the law, gutteral engines spooking our horses and souring the milk at a nearby dairy.

The holiday weekend is certainly no exception to our experience. But this motorhome had (has -- it's still there) a different, er, air about it. When a known grower (not of organic veggies) pulled up to their mobile door, it was as though his nose led him there.

I was mildly concerned. But it's free country.

Then on Sunday afternoon the motor home's passengers left in another vehicle and for some reason tied their Pit Bull to the shady side of the bumper.

The dog began whimpering at first. Full-on barking soon followed. For SIX HOURS. People, the dog was in distress. The owners are nowhere to be seen. I made inquiries and learned that possibly the same motorhome had been camped behind a restaurant in a small town near us for a week or three. I was told (erroneously) that the elders of the church had given permission for a weeklong stay. Across the road from my picket fence, I might add.

I got good and hot and it wasn't the sunny weather.

Why doesn't [fill in the name of your favorite fuddy duddy church elder] invite them to camp in HIS yard? I thought, oh-so-charitably.

Since Sunday (when the Pit's barking incited a neighborhood-wide howling fest among the other dogs and barbecuing families) I have made more nosy inquiries. The motorhome is on its way to Montana. They have some, ahem, sales to make to raise gas money.

I'm at a loss, once again, with my erstwhile live-and-let-live.

Call Your Mother.

So I've had a bit of a swinging-at-windmills kind of week. Looking forward to more of the same, thanks so much for wondering.

For four days the four girls and I descended upon my grandmother-in-law who is also known as my grandmother-in-love. My husband's grandma, my girls' "Nana," is quite possibly the funnest great-(in the awesome sense of that word as well as generationally)-grandma known to kidkind. As I mentioned, she has a lot of touch lamps. She also has "artificial" (never "fake") flowers that Laura likes to "mell." She makes the best beans in the hemisphere. She introduced my children to Hometown Buffet and also to digging in gravel. She keeps a big toy box and a big sense of humor. Thanks, Nana, for a wonderful stay.

While in the fantastic state of California, we spent a lot of time with my superfun mother-in-law and my sweet sister-in-law and most importantly with my nephew. Rio. Now there's a kid who knows how to run a party! He has all of his cousins wrapped quite snugly around his smallest two-year-old finger. Not to mention Grandma, Nana, Mom and, er, me.

Of course while traveling we had to break out the DVD player. Don't hate me. It's three movies, interrupted by two potty stops, and we're there. Paul Bunyan, better known in our family as Papa Onion, is also graced with a visit both going and coming. This trip Babe (big blue ox... are you still with me?) was thankfully no longer beheaded.

Last time we drove through the Redwoods, the 30-plus-foot-tall ox had quite literally lost its head. Right into the parking lot. Sarah's horror is still fresh at the memory of his (must say that I had always thought Babe a her, but no-oo-oh, I checked this time and his parts are evident in massive lightweight concrete sculpture under which you can, ahem, walk and marvel) ... anywhat Sarah is still horrified to remember the gaping hollow neck.

So this time his head was back in place and the whole thing repainted in brilliant blue. HOWEVER. They forgot his nose ring. It didn't take my children 10 seconds to discern this. How many kids will be disillusioned, people, before the Enchanted Forest fixes it? We invite guesses.

After our Paul Bunyan-Nana's Beans-Drive Along Lost Coast-Shop Ferndale-Eat Hometown Buffet-Paul Bunyan trip we returned home to a happy husband and father who'd spent his week working, watching baseball, and contemplating how big and quiet the house can feel under certain circumstances.

Heh heh heh.

Little did he (or I) know that he was about to be sole practitioner of parenthood for three days while I ran away (my personal specialty) to the Sylvia Beach Hotel for a little bookish alone time. Reading! Watching the surf! Driving aimlessly! Taking photos! Meeting a strange (apparently under the influence of intoxicants) woman! Who hugged me repeatedly and told me to call my mother!

Okay. Just passing along what I learned on my trip. Literal and figurative.

Bridge Over

Maybe I've been reading too much "Eat, Pray, Love."

Maybe I've been reading too much. Period.

Last night I stayed up reading by the light of my husband's grandmother's touch lamp. Incidentally the kids are mesmerized by the matching brass touch lamps in her bedroom. Brush it with your pinky finger: On a little. Again with your index finger: It's a little lighter in here. One more time for SUPER BRIGHT. Now off. Bump it with your nose, the back of your hand, breathe on it slightly harder than blowing out birthday candles -- it's magic.

I'd hate to see what "clap on/clap off" would do to them.

And to continue this country mouse tangent, I have to tell you about the first time Madeleine noticed the electronic doors at the doctor's office. She was 18 months old and walking with her chubby baby hand in mine. We stepped into view of the electronic eye. The ubiquitous "clunk" of mechanics I don't understand and then the "swoosh" as the doors began to glide.

My baby, my firstborn, the girl who made me a mommy, gasped. Did she declare the doors to be magic? Nope.

"I scared it!" she said. As far as I can remember this is the first time my eldest declared her own self magic.

Oh to be that powerful and sure. Self-possessed. And able to open doors with a mere glance.

I can't remember where my tangent was going. Nor can I remember which path I left to meander the one in which the world is new through the eyes of my children. Where the Golden Gate Bridge is momentarily disappointing because it's not, well, made of gold. Where a touch lamp is entertainment and comfort food is a pot of pinto beans cooked the way only Nana can cook them.

Mother's Day Gifts

Last year our Mother's Day was a picnic by the river, chilly springtime gardening, and a new baby. This year I woke up, looked around, and realized that Mother's Day was fast upon us.
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My mom wanted something, not that she asked for it. I was so excited to know what she wanted that it took me right back to childhood. Remember when your mother would insist that your globby clay and fingerpaintings were her favorite items? I was sure then that there were secret unfulfilled desires, unspoken wishes for unchipped china perhaps or a bottle of Guerlain.
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Now that I'm a mom four times over I often line up my children's dandelion offerings. A hand pressed in clay. A stepping stone with shells from our tidepooling adventure. A Chinese brush painting of a dragonfly, signed in ink, cursive, by my eldest at five years old. Photos. Smudgy bits of art.

All this gift cataloguing got me thinking about the gift of motherhood. The state of being a mom, a woman with a family, and what a present that really is.

It's a gift for generations.

It's a gift to see your daughter cradling a baby.

It's a gift beyond compare to see your daughter cuddled by a mother many generations removed.

I can't seem to think of a single item that could make a mother's day more spectacular than the sight of knobbly, girly knees in tights and of course the perpetually sandy toes washed for patent leather shoes and then, then dancing with cousins and grandparents, asking the unanswerable. Whatever does it mean, Papa, to cut a rug?
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I hope my mother loves her store-bought gift. (It's so exciting, but this is also the year Mom got on the internet so we mustn't spoil it.) I hope I don't get a single store-bought gift this year.

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I hope I get more of what made last year's triumphs and tragedies magical. I hope and pray I get that mystical gift of family over and over again for so many years that I can't pick one from the other. I hope I get to line them up as dandelion vases and paper mache' ornaments, no one more precious than the last.
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Each priceless.

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I hope you get to do the same.

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Happy Mother's Day.

Making Up

So we're making up for lost posts.
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There's been a lot of tilling and digging going on at Farm Suite. My husband is making a new shade garden. We started it last year on Mother's Day and it's getting bigger and bigger this year. I'm not sure where the quiet contemplative bench I'd envisioned is going to fit in though.
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To an already shady area of our small property we've added a dogwood tree, six vine maples, a blue cypress, three rhododendrons, two azaleas and some native groundcovers. We are discovering a lot of cool existing plants in there too, like that bleeding heart and the pink-flowering shrub I featured a week or so ago. The huge native rhodies are getting slow and careful haircuts and lots of water.
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The reason I'm not sure there'll be room for my thoughtful bench, though, is that we also planted a large cedar play structure right next door to the shade garden. Because swings and slides and tree forts thrive in the shade as well.


No, way, officer. That building was not there when I started backing up.

Rabbit Run

Careful with the hex wire. By the way, did you know that all the progressive feed stores no longer advertise "chicken wire" at all? It's "hex wire" thankyouverymuch. I wonder if there was some sort of fowl play with the naming conventions.

...Anywhat...

Wrap the hex wire around the legs of an available outdoor table. Be careful not to wrap up your baby sister in there.

Just kidding! Laura was merely on the outside looking in. Actually, she was trying to entice the bunnies with blades of grass poked through the wire. Because rabbits are well known to abandon all the grass under their hoppy little feet for some hand-picked exotic grass blade offered from baby sweet hands. I guess.

Let's not think about the best-laid plans today.

Let's think about something else instead. Like lavender. And barely visible in that photo? Last year's mint mojito recipe on a skewer. Why is it outside? In case I need a mojito while weeding. That's why.

Farmgirl Friday Strikes Again

Yesterday we had a list of errands and appointments that conspired to keep us in town far, far too long.

The best thing I can say about being stuck in town all day is (thinking, thinking) ... we ran into my father-in-law at the feed store. It was a fun surprise that kept the girls entertained while I shuffled the contents (random accumulated crud) in the waa-aay back of the Suburban so the nice feedstore guys could fit in 500 pounds of grain. I am so glad they stack those suckers for me. And, bonus! When we returned home I was blessed by a chore-begging teenage boy visitor (saving up money I think) who for a mere four bucks hauled all that grain to the barn. Do I lead a charmed life or what? Also I may have a gift for underpaying. I think that's called cheapskate, tightwad, ignorant. But I am a great tipper. Am I dwelling on this point too much out of guilt? Why, yes, I am.

Speaking of guilt, I have a little copy for my dad's website that is calling my name. What with the long-awaited diagnosis, a smidgen of sunshine, a little late-night bookkeeping at the engineering office, a few run-ins with multiplication tables and a dentist appointment or two, this week has flown by with nary a moment for the important. I guess I better get on that.

The worst thing I can say about going to town is that Gracie had her first negative dentist experience. Luckily she now blames the entire thing on the dentist and not on, well, me.

Today I am determined to stay home (and finish the little bit of writing, Dad, truly). We have horses to bathe in the sunshine, more seeds to plant before this weekend's rain, and a friend coming to spend the night with Madeleine and Sarah.

Oh and laundry. There's always the laundry if I get bored.

Another Most Embarrassing Moment... Courtesy of ME

Here at the Suite, we strive to catalog at least three or four humiliations per quarter (Would that be approximately one a month? Oh dear.). It's small service but one we perform with a degree of... we can't say pride... with a degree of panache, if you'll agree. In fact I'd venture to add that we are nearing professional status with our (and I'm speaking of course in the Royal We which is a fancy way to say all the humiliation is mine, mine, mine) ability to turn a blush at any given moment.

Important but not embarrassing update interruption! Yesterday was a VERY big day. Sarah has a diagnosis. Hallelujah! We now know she has a twelve-syllable autoimmune and auto inflammatory condition that is exceedingly rare (one in a million: I always have said it and now it's medically true) but not as scary as some diseases the doctors flirted with and even name-dropped to similar effect as, oh, a visit the Dread Pirate Hemophilia would have on a ship of weary and perpetually seasick immigrants.

In defense of our team of specialists, I must say that Sarah's other known genetic anemia conditions somewhat obscured their view. Also in their defense I must add that they had to consult Harvard. If you want to feel special, and I guess in a good way, have your state's best pediatric disease specialists send all your images and labwork across the country to a place covered with ivy and high IQs.

In fact our favorite doctor on the team attempted to call us yesterday afternoon but hung up in the middle of the first ring from nerves and had to call back later. I love her because she admitted this. Sarah loves her because she has Wyandott chickens. We all have our reasons.

The worst part 'bout Sarah's diagnosis is that she may have periods of "moderate-to-intense" pain from benign bone lesions interspersed with unpredictable but long remissions. The best part about this disease is that it goes away in puberty. Can anyone say SILVER LINING?

Okay, now back to your regularly scheduled vicarious embarrassment.

After months of doctor, lab and imaging appointments for Sarah, yesterday was for some reason my turn. I had a long-scheduled mole check and a piggybacking knee injury to follow up on. Hey, oops, that made it sound like I hurt my knee in a piggyback incident. What I actually meant was that I had the mole appointment but hurt my knee (yeah, yeah, another joint bites the dust) and so snuck it in under the scheduler's radar. And after months and months of juggling to find someone to watch the baby and/or Grace and Madeleine while Sarah and I memorized eight-year-old copies of Golf Magazine in interchangeably plastic waiting rooms, I just couldn't find anyone to watch the baby for my mole appointment.

It was mid-afternoon. I left Madeleine and Grace glued to the Webkinz site at my husband's office. I took the baby, because she's not so much into the computer. Give her time. I took Sarah, because this is my family doctor. The doctor who's known us for years. Who lives for my kids' visits (alright, that might be overstating it, but I kinda believe him when he says so). Who kindly looked aside in my most recent [if you're only counting incidents at doctors' offices anyway] wardrobe malfunction.

Sarah and Laura and I went through Dutch Brothers. Don't tell their sisters. We bought: a split-shot mocha (two shots caffeinated, two unleaded, steamy dreamy bittersweet chocolate milk = heaven in the cup holder), a blackberry Italian soda (Sarah's treat of choice) and a whole milk, straight up (Laura needs the extra fat for her brain cells I'm told).

I am getting to the most embarrassing moment.

Usually I try to pick up an Irish cream latte for my doctor's nurse. This is one way we remain the favorites. But yesterday I forgot. Because I'm clearly not invested enough in the process. Or else because I wasn't sure I could carry my mocha and hold Laura's slippery chubby fingers adequately in the parking lot (notice the order in which I sadly described the priority there) if I was also carrying a latte for the nurse.

My doctor doesn't drink coffee. Because he's superhuman, that's why.

His nurse sweetly overlooked my lack of gifts and oohed and aahed over Laura's chubby legs in a Lulu dress just made for chubby baby legs. Sarah did the Highlights puzzles in her head because it annoys her when there are marks in magazines and she can't contribute to the madness.

We waited a while. Don't you always?

We waited a while longer. The natives were restless. I let Laura climb around on the exam table. (Foreshadowing alert.)

The nurse poked her head in to say the big chief was held up on a phone call.

"We're fine!" After all, I am adept at juggling four children. How could a mere two, one of whom is buried in books, be too much for me?

Twenty minutes later Laura knew every no-no in that exam room by name. She could climb up onto the exam table and shimmy down, hanging from her fingers while her toes barely barely touched the step and her tummy provided friction for a slower descent. It was an art form, a gymnastic toddler treat.

Finally! The doctor was in!

He greeted us all with hugs. I took my hand off Laura's back to shake his, basking in the glow of being called once again his favorite family. Prolly he says that to all the farm mamas, but I just don't wanna know.

Of course the very moment I wasn't looking, the very moment I was feeling all uberproud of my cute little brood, THAT was the moment Laura did a FREE FALL from the top of the exam table onto the top of her cute little ponytail. Her adorable little Lulu of a dress flung up to reveal the matching bloomers and cover her eyes.

First the clunk of baby hitting floor. Then the horrible silence of a child who's about to scream bloody murder ("Wait. Wait. My mother was holding on to me a minute ago!").

Then, of course, the screaming did commence. And it did us proud.

The doctor elbowed me aside to pick her up. I'm not kidding. He even apologized later. "I didn't mean to elbow you in the teeth."

Well, I didn't mean to allow for the brain damage. ("All of her kids are really cute, but that smallest one? A little off.")

Sarah (ever quick-thinking) ran a Dixie cup of water and immediately distracted Laura from the goose egg growing on her head. Meanwhile I just collected my pride in another Dixie cup and remembered that pride always goes before... what?

I think we're either (a) finding a new doctor or (b) bringing a lot more lattes to buy some nursely silence. Because at this point they've seen my nursing bras and they've avowed their love for my children, I think it's option b. I think.

Around the Homestead

The first sun tea of the year. There oughta be a parade. Come to think of it, there was: A parade of my children (with neighboring farm kids, of course) while I kicked back in that there Adirondack chair and poured.

Still a shaggy pony, shedding winter's coat.

My all-time favorite wildflower. Anyone know this plant? My brother and I used to pick it for my mom in the woods where I grew up. I was so happy when we discovered it in my new shade garden spot. It's deep under the native rhodies and is sort of a rangy climbing bush. The hummingbirds love it.

A few seed packets laid out for this past week's planting festival. I have a new favorite guilty indulgence... "seed balls." Little clay spheres filled with seeds. Throw them out in the pasture, in the corner of the garden, in a 12-inch pot, keep watered (or the squirrels will take off with them!), and watch them bloom.

Today, Peas and Potatoes...

...tomorrow, the world.

Today I planted 40 red and Yukon Gold potatoes in hills (due to continuing internal debate on the straw bale method), 32 string beans on one tepee. I am planning five tepees total but I'm just worn out this afternoon. The weeding! The stooping! The watering in! The hot sun! And let's not forget the children who wanted to be fed and bathed!

All two-thousand-plus peas (I still cannot get over that number) are up (although I haven't strictly counted the sprouts) and reaching for their trellises. I also put in five tomato plants today. Two yellow pear tomatoes because my kids can't get enough of those, and three heirloom multipurpose tomatoes for sauce, sandwiches and stewing. Seriously. I need some more tomato plants.

Madeleine and I planted turnips, beets, radishes and carrots yesterday in a bed that we hand-turned to add sand. Okay, to be truthful, my husband turned it first. But we finessed it.

I have heard that gardening is better than therapy (not incidentally, I've heard the same about blogging). I'm not sure though. I never got a sunburn while visiting a therapist.

And what do you think I made for dinner after all that organic dirt-turning and seed-flinging? Spam and eggs. I kid you not. I marched us all inside shortly before sundown and found a can of Spam that a friend gave us in a care package. The kids were very excited about this care package because it was chock full of grocery store convenience foods that I never, ever buy.

"Mom? What's Hamburger Helper?"

"Mom? Can we open the Sugar Snaps?"

"MOM! There's carrot cake in a box and FROSTING IN A CAN!"

"Mom? Does your friend love us more than you do?"

And then of course there's my husband. He spent the first four years of our marriage trying to detect whether I'd snuck tofu into (you fill in the blank). I had to call him at work today to tell him about the basket full of goodies. His response was pure joy. "Welcome to the other side, Miriam. Heh, heh, heh."

I don't think I'm all that radical, actually, in our food choices. I think I'm pretty mainstream. I think most of America is on the organic bandwagon. I think the nation's financial situation has brought more gardeners out of the closet, so to speak. And futhermore, if you are still with me on what I think, I think ice cream is best if it's just cream and sugar. Frozen.

But this care package -- bought with love by a friend who knows how hard it is for me to take a trip to the grocery store these days -- this care package just made me feel like a dreadlock mama. Honestly, if you do wear dreadlocks, I'm cool with that. But I shower every day and I usually use Lancome and Clinique products without checking whether there's a sticker about animal cruelty. I breastfed all my babies, but I stopped before they could ask for it in words. Again, if you're nursing your kindergartener, okay, then. I cook mostly organic and I bake all my own bread and we buy fresh pressure-pasteurized milk from our neighbor and then make our own butter and yogurt and sour cream and soft cheeses. It doesn't even tire me out anymore, all this homestead-type fussing about. What does tire me out is finding someone to watch four children while I go to town for things I can't buy in the country. Which brings me to the Spam.

The Spam? SO. INCREDIBLY. GOOD.

First I had to figure out how to get it open. I didn't understand the pop-top-tab-thingamajig so I accidentally broke it off. Then I had to finagle the can opener to open a rectangular can. Are you seeing yet why butchering my own pig (or whichever meat Spam approximates) would have been simpler for me?

Finally I pried the box/can open and then I fried (don't even bother to call it saute') the meat in some olive oil in a heavy cast iron pan. Then I added some mushrooms and tiny chopped-up brocolli. I beat half a dozen eggs and then folded in some heavy cream and shredded sharp cheddar cheese before pouring the whole mess over the fried Spam and mushrooms.

Um. Yum.

Um. Can anyone send me a case of this stuff?

Garden Roundup (not the weed killer... the tell-all!)

My windowsill geraniums are blooming and almost ready to move to the great outdoors.

My second round of peas is in the ground and poking ever so cautiously through the mulch, on the lookout for hungry renegade hens. I killed no pea-shoot-eating chickens after the last garden disaster... and I am proud of that fact. Instead of seeking revenge, I got busy and I risked my healing hip and a ridiculous new knee injury to plant a couple thousand more peas. And I must say, it is truly more than two thousand little peas I put into the ground in hopes of 30 to 60 pounds of harvest to freeze. My book said it would take that many to feed a family of four. Now, we are a family of six, but I thought to myself (rationalized is more like it) that the girls don't eat as much as some older children. And I seriously couldn't plant any more.

Today I did put in the girls' sunflower house though. This year it's moved out of the vegetable garden and into the front yard. My husband and father-in-law rototilled about eight feet by ten or so. It took four packets of sunflower seeds to go around the house. I can't remember whether I left a door or not! I guess we'll see when they start sprouting. The other seeds I put in today include nasturtiums and other edible flowers. I planted them all around my Meyer Lemon tree, which my husband just moved outside in its massive pot. Last year I used ivy geranium and lobelia around it, and that was pretty. But I'm leaning heavily in the direction of food-not-lawns so went with edible violas and nasturtiums instead. Same pop of color and trailing beauty, more salad!

The lettuces and spinach are all going strong. My kale and chards and cabbages I started a little late but they are finally sprouting.

Tomorrow it's potatoes. We picked up some peat moss for more lasagna-style mulch on the raised beds but I want to grow my potatoes in straw bales this year. The woman at my feed store is doing it, so I must try it. It looks so cute... and talk about an easier harvest! Just break apart the bale and pull out your new potatoes clean and ready to go. I will take photos for y'all as soon as I set them up. The only problem I see with this is that I already put in a few potatoes in a raised bed, so I'll have to remember to harvest those too, only with a pitchfork.

I do love gardening season!

Hah. Someone remind me of that when I'm complaining about my creaking and protesting joints.

Today while I gardened Laura played in her new favorite Flintstone-style car and the big girls hosted a lemonade stand. Another first for the season. Of course some neighbor boys joined in the fun and I nearly lost a year off my life when there were two children suddenly 30 feet up in a maple tree. Why me? The little monkeys, neither of them mine, climbed down much more slowly than they'd gone up. I waited to freak out (externally) until they were safely on the ground.

Spring Cleaning, With Fur

The maples are flowering. I hope the photo doesn't send you any allergens.

We took a couple of hours this morning for sunny day clean up of two very dirty ponies.

And then a ride. I can't bring myself (still) to photograph the girls riding. But trust me, Two Spot and Madeleine shared a nice uneventful ride. She wore her helmet, as always. Dolly tried her best to distract us and get the attention, as every Shetland should. But Two Spot remained fully focused on his 60-pound charge as though the long workless winter was of no consequence to his perfect manners. He even used his gentlemanly good tricks to bow down for the princess to dismount. Manoman I love that horse.

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Although Two Spot didn't witness the fall from Seven that caused M to break both of her arms, I have this fantasy that maybe he knows. Maybe the ponies talk about it at night. Sort of like Black Beauty. Remember Merry Legs and all the rest? Remember their conversations after the peoplefolk retired for the evening? I maybe believed in those stories too much as a girl.

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Also my parents had a talent for choosing what are known as "bomb-proof" horses. My girlfriends and I would lie on horseback in the summer sunshine, completely without saddles or bridles or a care in the world. I remember clearly the way my pure black Arabian mare radiated the sun's heat back at me as I read book after book with my head rested on her rump, one arm flung across my forehead for the glare, the other arm holding my book aloft.

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For crying out loud, that was dangerous. Other summer afternoons found us, my best friends Teri and Jennifer and I, STANDING on horseback to reach the highest cherries in the trees. Um. Standing. Alternately, when the cherries were done and the weather was too hot to read, we'd trot to Teri's place and ride the horses right into the small man-made lake at the upper end of her pasture. With nothing but halters on the horses and cutoffs and tank tops on ourselves, we'd float backward from the manes of our horses while their hooves stirred up the coolest water from deep in the pond. In the fall we regularly got in lots of trouble with Jenny's parents for running the fat off the cattle and sheep while we played rodeo. In the winter we huddled with steam breath rising in one Pony Club barn or another.

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Crikey, but did our parents know where we were? I'm sure they did, but my memories are so independent of parents that it sobers me to realize that my oldest children are coming to that age. They've always had opinions that stun me; now they have activities and interests that may or may not include me. The best I can do is choose bomb-proof horses, cross my fingers, and hope to sneak backstage periodically.

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And stick around to clean up the brushes.

It Must Be The Dresses

When you consider the source...


Maybe my hope was unfounded.

...but I can get pictures of everyone smiling on the tractor!

Or in their comfy clothes, snap away with the shutter. No problem.

I think it's the dresses that cause ugly incidents.

Yeah, it must be the dresses.

I Keep Hoping

The universal mother hope? A photo in which everyone is smiling, no one is pulling anyone's hair. No one's dress is caught in her undies and no one else is picking her petite nostril. It's what keeps me going. The hope.

Growing (Exponentially)

For years we had a couple of bunnies in a cute little three-bay hutch.

Madeleine painted the interior walls with sunny pictures.

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We built the bunnies a little grassy run for outdoor play.

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They came inside to hop around and explore the underneath of armoires and sofas.

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Sadly, our original bunny family went to bunny heaven. The story went like this: Boy and girl were only supposed to meet under supervised circumstances. However, they felt strongly about being ready for alone time.

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They subsequently and predictably had two litters. Perhaps not so predictably, ill-fated mama bunny ate them. Her babies.

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Yuck.

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It may be part of nature's plan, but I couldn't look at her anymore. So mama bunny went to live with some farm friends who (unbenownst to us but maybe irrelevantly) had different ideas about bunny keeping than did we ... Mama bunny may now be hopping around the briars but we'll never know.

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We kept the not-so-proud papa. He was a flop-eared sweetie. We decided boy bunnies are universally nicer than girl bunnies (sorry for the hare chauvinism; we are not scientifically sure about it but it's a working theory). So he lived for years as a lone ranger, the only rabbit on the farm but certainly not alone. He frequented the girls' dresser drawers. He was litter box trained. But nevertheless he died of bunny old age last winter.

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We got ONE bunny for Grace's birthday this spring. He came home to roost last month after much careful consideration. We would have only one flop-eared sweet little rabbit and he would be loved and cuddled and never to have a girlfriend. Sorry: Been there, done that, added to the small pet cemetery.

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Some other farm friends were earlier in their own personal bunnykeeping timeline and ended up with TWENTY-TWO baby bunnies this spring. TWENTY-TWO.

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Somehow a few of them ended up here. I think it's true what they say about rabbits.

Growing (By The Minute)

It's great to be 5.

Mad [about cake] hatters agree.

It's great to be 5.

Against direct orders, they continue to grow and change and become these amazing people I didn't ever imagine when I gazed into their baby faces.

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I don't know what I imagined, but it wasn't this rowdy trip through the looking glass.

Happy Birthday to Grace! It's so great to be 5 that she spread her birthday, in Suite tradition, over a week or so of family and friend celebrations. Also a lot of ice cream. We mustn't forget the ice cream.

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Also happy happy fifth birthday to her partner in crime Headlong of Calamity fame. Note to new readers: Headlong's real-life given name is actually rather mainstream but his parents are protecting him from the stalkers who would certainly come after such a cute little farm boy. They would be sorry, however, when he and Grace immediately refused to be parted from one another and then got their usual retribution of pouring out all the products in the closest available bathroom. On one anothers' heads. Finishing with a good dousing of baby powder to make a gluey mess.

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Alternately the inseparable friends plot elaborate revenge on all of their collective siblings for being, well, older.

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But before the list of the new 5-year-olds' adventures overshadows the beauty of the moment, let me just say: It's great to be 5.

Growing (A Garden While Trying Not To Crockpot Your Hens)

All those peas? Those two-thousand-plus cute sugar snaps and snow pod seedlings nurtured since two weeks before the last expected frost (or thereabouts)?

Scratched to oblivion by the suddenly not-so-cute chickens while I ran away to the coast for a weekend.

What's with me and running away anyways? Should be apparent by now that the causes of my flight response will STILL BE THERE when I return.

Ah, well. It's not too late to plant another couple thousand pea seeds. It's just that I was feeling so together about the spring garden timeline. It was my momentary though ill-advised foray into planning ahead. And we all know where that leads. To crushing disappointment and more scrambling to catch up, that's where.

Meanwhile, back at the farm:

Sarah is a bit more energetic after being on prednisone and (perhaps more relevantly) receiving visits from her much-loved grandma, auntie and cousin all last week. We are glad she's feeling better while we're waiting for two more cultures to grow in a mysterious research lab at a highly respected children's hospital. That sounds like fun. What if you were the lab personnel? "Let's go weave a replica of the Sistine Chapel's ceiling out of recycled grocery sacks... might as well since the cultures are growing."

We released the pullets, our two surviving adorable Americauna chicks who are now the chicken equivalent of stinky teenagers, into the big girls' house. The hens completely ignore their new little friends, as we should expect from respectable dowagers. The rooster, on the other hand, thinks it's his job to keep the pullets in the henhouse. He gets VERY bent out of shape when they want to venture into the chicken yard unattended. Thus the chickens were let to scramble through the kitchen garden while I was away. Thus the death of my pea starts. More depression.

My goal of completing a month of Nablopomo is miserably failed before it's half (a quarter?) over. I did take my laptop with me this weekend but didn't crack it except to watch the first half of Nights in Rodanthe. I had to fall asleep halfway through, now didn't I?

My other goal of completing the girls' Easter dresses is similarly halted by my now-familiar pattern of overflowing optimism and creative splurge followed by frustration centered around a lack of planning. Who knew hand smocking would be this hard? Suddenly the exorbitant prices on those boutique babies are seeming rather reasonable (and by "boutique babies" I mean of course the dresses -- I know of no boutique where one can buy a baby and if I did I may never have suffered through the ultimate creative splurge-creation panic cycle of pregnancy and childbirth).

Today my goal is small. I will strive to make no more bastard verbs. Reference title and the awkward "Trying Not To Crockpot Your Hens." I'll try. Not to cook them, and not to wrangle any more words into positions they never deserved.

Growing (Safely)

I reviewed a new Intelius product called Neighborhood Watch for Blogher this past month. To read more about how to track whether there are sex offenders in your area, visit me over at Every Crow.

Growing (A Pair)

What is this world coming to?

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Yesterday I was crude... and today it may seem the Suite headline is a little... um... vulgar. It's exactly that sort of metaphor that causes me to get secretly giddy with the naughtiness of it all.

While it is absolutely true that I need to be nicer to myself, it is also true (in my current estimation of things... and since I have no other perspective but my own, it's apparently true) -- it is also true today that I need to be a bit meaner to other people.
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And although my husband hates and otherwise loathes the turn of phrase, in my late 30s I am determined to "grow a set," "get a pair" and in general get a bit tougher.



Is it any coincidence that my first apparently unrelated photo (are there any other kinds of pictures on this here blog?) is of my boots headed DOWN the stairs?

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Just in case that was too vague, I will attempt to clarify: I am making a reference to my gutter humor and accompanying attempts to "grow a pair" and where it might land me. Somewhere on a lower floor than heaven, you might say.


Believe me when I tell you I have the boots that're made for walking.

And the boots that're made for mucking the (a-hem) inevitable stuff of life.

I have so many boots that it might be embarassing. Yesterday I took a quick tour around my farmhouse and found a few random pairs in the odd reading chair and by the back door and under my bed and even some in the closet.

There are yet more boots packed for my weekend getaway with the girls. I had to pack my vintage Capezios because they have seen me through motorcycle rides with bad boys and campus walks with other good girls trying to look like bad news. I had to pack my red Dexters because they are so over-the-top sassy with a prairie skirt and a peasant blouse that it makes me feel as though I'm that confident too. Who could be mousy in a pair of high-heeled red cowgirl boots? Not me anyway.

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Since my initial year of emancipation ... and that's nearly 20 years now... I have been a boot kind of girl. I'm not talking about the lady boots (although I have those too) that are best worn with tights and pencil skirts. I'm talking about your Gretchen Wilson, kick-butt-and-don't-look-back bad girl boots. I'm talking about the kind of boots in which I can't help but feel stronger than the average people-pleasing me.

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I often think of certain pairs of my boots as armor for the crappier tete-a-tetes of life. Meeting with a banker? Ex-boyfriend? Snooty group of Realtors? I've got the boots for that. Job I hate? At least I can gird up with a good pair of saddle-soap-smelling, height-enhancing Dexters.

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I may have waxed on about the boots a bit too long.

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Or not.

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It is difficult to be simply assertive. For example, I am (against my will) still a licensed Realtor. Was it my husband, my mother, my children asking me to continue pouring money down that career path? Nope. It was my broker, a kind but easily made of steel woman who only had to tell me it would mean a lot to her for me to stick it out through this market.

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Huh? I thought later.

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What? I'm spending thousands of dollars and dragging my children around planting signs in yards of homes that will not sell and spending my precious blog time composing ads for those same homes that will not likely even be shown in this market?

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Well, if it means a lot to you.

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That's probably enough. It's hard (close to impossible) to tell people no. I find I can do it for my children, but rarely for myself. It's hard to ask the questions of doctors but necessary and so I do.

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Once or twice I have dug deep and found a hidden ore of strength. This was funny after the fact but the mine subsequently collapsed (no one was injured) and the treasure lost.

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"I even used my super-low mommy voice. You know the one.

"You also know I was sweating big time. You know it was a good thing we were on the phone and not across a conference table because I 'bout wet my pants with the stress of being simply assertive. I was shaking so much when I hung up that I think it qualified as a workout. But I won! I didn't use honey, but I wasn't out to catch flies. I was swimming with the sharks, and I'm no Gidget (shaddup)."

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This quote courtesy of my last foray into growing a pair. Nearly a year ago. 'Nuff said.

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The problem with wearing my armor on the outside is that I'm defenseless without it. I can be easily surprised by a random request like, "Can we host the breakfast at your house? On the day after your daughter has her MRI?" Um, could you wait to ask me until I'm wearing the proper "take a hike, you assumptive weirdo" boots?

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I am not made of marshmallow fluff but of stronger stuff. Maybe not steel, but possibly boot leather. Possibly?