Busy Days

We have been working hard on our little farm these past few days. The rain has stopped and the earth is drying. The plants are reaching up and down with green tips and hairy roots. I am now applying myself to the happy task of filling 2oo square feet of gopher and deer-proof garden beds with seeds and home-grown transplants. The boxes are constructed of huge redwood beams and galvanized wire mesh, so I expect to be using them for many years to come. They will hold onions, leeks, root vegetables, lots of greens, and many kinds of herbs. Tucked in here and there will be flowers, too, including some red peonies that I have dreamed of for years. Thank you Ruchama!! Each of the children have a little section all their own. Ellie planted flowers and chamomile for tea. Izzy will be growing peas, carrots and flowers. Aliana, ever practical, figures I will be growing enough vegetables for everyone, so she is going with nothing but showy, delightful blooms.

I also have a large sunny area that Izzy and Papa are discing in the first picture. This will be planted in corn, beans, squash, melons and potatoes. Yum. I just have to get up the nerve to use the gopher traps. Yuck.

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

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.

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.

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.

Mr. Misterio Speaks

This evening I paused in my work to cuddle with Isidore for a few minutes. Lying in my lap, he told me, "I wish I could live life over and over again." I asked him why he wanted to do that, to which he replied, "So I could be a baby again and nurse, and then grow up again and be like I am now, over and over again."

Okay.

Mr. Misterio

When Isidore was born my darling Auntie Deedee crocheted him a beautiful soft blue blanket. He has slept with it just about every night since then. As a newborn we swaddled him in it and called him the blue burrito. A couple of years ago he started calling it his woopee. For several months now it has been doing double duty as a super-hero cape. Daily he ties it around his neck and leaps off the couch to assault his sisters, as any brother ought to. His super-powers are awesome.



But, incredibly, they just got much, much stronger.



On Friday at the farmers market we were in line for churros. Yum. They have become our Friday evening market treat of choice lately. I felt a little tug on my hand. Super-boy had spotted some capes for sale at a nearby stall. Mean old mom pointed out that he had a perfectly wonderful cape already. Didn't he love his blue cape? I went back to my churro purchase.



By time I was taking my first bite of deep-fried goodness Isidore had been transformed into Mr. Misterio.



Patrick confessed that as a little boy he had always wanted a real cape. Not a pillow case or a homemade cape, but the real deal. So when Isidore of the crocheted-blanket-tied-around-his neck-cape tugged on his hand, there was no hesitation.










That night Patrick's old friend Eric came up for a visit. When Mr. Misterio put on Jimi Hendrix, Eric brought out his guitar. Mr. Misterio gleefully whipped out his own ax, recruited Aliana for piano, Patrick on the harmonica and Elizabeth on the ukulele. They had quite a session.







Apologies to Rory for the foot on the piano, I swear we don't do that all the time. And yes, that is a lampshade on Aliana's head.

No picky eaters allowed!

My family is amazing. The bunch of us are all weirdos, but we either don't care or don't know, depending upon the individual in question. That's really why we're homeschooling, to avoid the embarassment of sending them out into public. Just kidding. I think.

This morning Isidore was complaining because we were having fried eggs and sliced oranges for breakfast again. Ever practical (see my post from March 26) Aliana pointed out that we have lots of homegrown eggs right now, so we should enjoy them. She explained that eggs are healthy protein filled food, and that oranges help our bodies fight colds and lower cholesterol. I simply stated, for the seven hundred twenty fifth time (so maybe I'm exagerating) that I will not tolerate picky eaters in my family.

Did either of these attempts sway dear Isidore? Nope. Breakfast was eaten under threat of force.

After he managed to finish his meal without dying of boredom from eating eggs and oranges for the third time this week he scampered outside with his sisters to collect snails from the garden for tomorrow's dinner.

Yes, the child who fights over consuming two of the most common items on an american grocery list thinks it's a great idea to eat a creature not many people on this continent would even consider food.

The kids are all very involved in what we eat. They eagerly peruse the seeds catalogues just as I do. They help to plan the garden, plant the seeds and as it grows they water, weed and harvest. Some of my very favorite memories of my time with my children are in the garden. When I signed us up for the 100 foot diet challenge they cheered me on. We have been brainstorming, and realized that in the spring the snail population explodes. In years past we fed buckets of them to the chickens. This year we're going to cook them with a little garlic and butter and eat them ourselves.

Yum.

Isidore the photographer

When Isidore was attending preschool for awhile Patrick and I were naturally asked to take pictures at school for events and yearbook pages and things. Once when I had my camera along Isidore asked if he could use it. He uses both my camera and Aliana's all the time, so I thought nothing of it. A few minutes later he came crying to me because another parent at the school took the camera away from him, thinking he wasn't supposed to be using it. I explained that he had my permission to take pictures, but the other parent couldn't quite believe I would be so foolish as to hand such an expensive piece of equipment to a four-year old. Hey, I figure if I start his training now he'll be taking over sooner, and off to retirement I'll go!





Here are a few of his shots.

The really blurry one is Elizabeth somersalting. I love that one.