Thanks for Sun

Thanks for Food

Thanks for Shelter

Thanks for Rain

Family Hands, Four Forty-seven pm Wednesday, November Nineteenth, Two Thousand Eight

For the next seven days I'll be posting photographs only. I'm feeling quiet.

Well

We have been sick, each of us taking our turn, some of us two or three at a time. Please pardon the abandoned blog this last week. I'll be back tomorrow to begin a photo series about which I'm quite excited.

Homes within the home

We have a joke about yurt living - "We don't just throw things in the corner!"

Except moving a house, albeit a small one, into a yurt makes for a great big mess. For way too long now, we have had piles, heaps, mountains, stacks, and (Patrick's favorite) inverted pyramids of STUFF all over the place. We needed to find homes within our home for all the things we hauled up here with us. On Sunday we did just that. Books lined up on the right shelves, art supplies alighted at an accessible height, dishes created a lovely rainbow in the cupboard, cardboard boxes collapsed and trooped off to be recycled.

Isidore was delighted to become reacquainted with a wide expanse of floor. He has decided to take on the chore of cleaning it each evening so that he can continue to enjoy after-dinner sock skating.

Sunday, with syrup

Extra fun from school

Our homeschool program just moved into a marvelous new facility and expanded its library. This week we borrowed a nifty electronics kit. It has been a nice way for Patrick to get in on the learning fun. It has all the pieces that come in a regular electronics kit, but they all just snap together, making it manageable for Isidore's little hands. Naturally they bypassed the simple stuff at the beginning of the project book and went right for the laser gun, followed by the the space battle.

I hear the school also has telescopes, so we might plan a few heavenly lessons next month.

Chilly Pop

Our morning temperatures are swinging lower and lower now. Using a woodstove to warm up the house means really being in touch with how much energy we use to stay warm. Each log must be purchased, stacked, carried in and then placed in the flames, never to be seen again. The woodpile is lovely and large as autumn descends, but then it we watch as already it begins to shrink.

Over at an environmental blog I like to read, http://www.crunchychicken.blogspot.com/ , she has a challenge going called Freeze yer Buns. The idea is that we conserve energy by staying a little cooler in the winter than we might have before. For households with a thermostat, this means setting it a little lower. For us, it means not starting a fire if we're only a little chilly, or letting it go out during the day while we are active and moving around or going outside. Not only does this make eco-friendly sense, it saves us money. So, here we go, the Works Family is joining the challenge. Brrr.

Cozy

The kids and I blew in the door from an exciting but very chilly day at our home school program's new site oh so glad to find Patrick had lit a fire in our wood stove. He had water simmering in the kettle and plenty of wood for the rest of the evening. I spent a few perfect minutes rocking by the fire with my book, my tea and my slippers, listening to the rain on the roof.

Thank you, my dear.

Welcome November

Rain followed on the heels of the windy day we saw a few days ago. Elizabeth and Isidore couldn't be stopped from dashing right out into it. Aliana went to find her slippers and hat. I put on soup for dinner.

We all enjoyed the sound of the rain on the yurt roof. It's a special sound. We are very cozy and well-insulated, but there isn't a lot of thickness separating the interior of our home from the weather outside, certainly not as much as in a tradional wooden house. As a result, each raindrop makes its arrival known. When it really pours down we are all forced to pause in our conversations and listen to Mother Nature's voice for a time.

Halloween

Autumn blows in

Funny, isn't it, how the trees shed their clothing just as we start to bundle up?

Yesterday saw a brief but intense windstorm that whipped many of the remaining golden poplar leaves off the branches above us and sent them soaring far across the pasture.

Fall is an awfully good name.

I love the dentist!

That's what the boy who sobbed and squeezed mommy's hand with a amazing strength exclaimed to his sister when he was finished with his check-up.

It is so darn hard to make my little ones do things they don't want to. I'm reminded by the sequence of events at the dentist's office, though, that I'm supposed to push my baby birds to test those wings now and then.

Patrick's Blog

Patrick and I now have dueling kitten photographs. You'll have to look at his blog to see the superior shot.


www.patrickworksphotography.blogspot.com

Poem of the week

Books to the ceiling,
Books to the sky,
My piles of books are a mile high.
How I love them,
How I need them.
I'll have a long beard by the time I read them.

By Arnold Lobel

Before Dawn

Our family wakes up early these days. At least for a week or two, Patrick is working a shift that begins at 4:15 AM. He and I have always watched each other suspiciously from opposite sides of the divide between cheerful morning people and night owls. Can you guess who's who?

For me this radical change has been a slightly uncomfortable pleasure. Getting up out of the warm bed is tough, but my reward is the quiet, still space of time ahead of me. I relish an hour of Internet addiction time, tidy up the house, get something of some sort rising or fermenting or stewing. Around the time the light begins to fill in the details of my view out the window I bundle up and head out with my milking bowl.

The world outside is really pretty raucous in the early morning. The hungry cows spot me as I step out the door. They don't moo so much as bellow. The roosters have been crowing for quite a while now, and when I open the coop they flap past my face in their hurry to get out to take care of chicken-business. The goats chime in next, saying good morning in three distinct voices. The geese and ducks splash and quarrel. As I milk, in the distance I hear cars taking children to the bus stop and dogs barking at those cars.

As I step in the door bearing milk and eggs Isidore is up and wants to know if we can get out the school books and get to work. He adores the math and reading books we began using a few weeks ago. Last week he began to really read, to sound out unfamiliar words. Though he enjoyed schoolwork already, this breakthrough energized him. After we do the brief lessons from the books he asks me to write down words for him to read. This game is still novel for both of us. After he tires of reading to me, I take my turn reading aloud. We dive into the workings of the human body, cowboy stories, and lots and lots of Halloween tales. Elizabeth joins us under the blanket on the couch, usually adding a poetry book to the pile. She has been rhyming words since she could speak, and loves to listen to poetry read aloud. I do wonder where that will take her. If Aliana is home we make room for her and let ourselves sink deep into the world of The Hobbit for awhile, our latest daily pleasure.

I am so glad they weren't in one of the cars bound for the bus stop this morning.

Introducing Phoebe

On All Hallows Eve we will have two black felines stalking the house. Aliana has chosen a black cat costume this year, and we have been enjoying the antics of an inky little kitten for the last few weeks. Dear Charlie, the friendly old guy who was living with Patrick when I met him, had to be buried on the hill this summer. That left the Works family very sad and catless.

Naturally Phoebe immediately became Elizabeth's favorite stuffed animal, and though she is often frustrated by this particular toy's self-will, most of the time Phoebe remains patiently curled up in Ellie's arms for quite some time.

The Trees on the Hill

It gives me a feeling of peace greater than I can describe to listen to my children tell me about the trees on the hill and share a glimpse of the sacred games they play there among the birds and leaves, rocks and moss.

In exchange I reveal a dusty page from my childhood, when those branches were a tiny bit smaller, those rocks a fraction younger.