Missed Sap Seasons

 Its Sugaring Season here in Southern Connecticut. Yet again, I have considered but then skipped tapping the maple trees here on our city lot. Only one of our trees is a sugar maple but we have several other maples, red and Norway on our city lot and any maple, as a learned a couple of years ago, can be tapped for sap! Maybe next year. I have to buy a few spiles and buckets and stop making plans to run away to the tropics screaming during the exact week that the sap runs hardest where I live. Heh. We leave for Florida soon.

 We are taking a class at one of the local nature centers (the kids and I, although I have to admit that I am a tag-along and the class is supposed to be for my sons) and today it involved a hike through the snow and sparkling sunshine to inspect the woods, chew birch twigs together (Mmmm!!!! Wintergreen!) and take peeks into the first few filling sap buckets. Next week we are promised tastes of maple syrup since they will be hopefully getting enough sap to start boiling it down. Even without any action, it was super fun to visit the sugar house and pat the stove and sit together on hay bales around it. Maybe next year is the year that I will put on my giant canning stock pot and keep the stove at a simmer while I lug buckets of pale golden water indoors triumphantly. I'm quite keen on the idea....I just keep forgetting every year. Maybe I should put a reminder in my electronic calendar that will go off mid-January and tell me that I want to tap trees. "Order Spiles and Scrub Out Canning Pot" it could say. Laura Ingalls, move on over.

 The boys and I got out our first big teeny piece jig-saw puzzle after dinner tonight. I was giving them lessons on sorting out the edge pieces and examining the cover illustration for small clues on the gray shag rug in front of the fireplace. So much fun. Dee took to it like a duck to water, I had to pry his little engineer hands off the project when it was time to take a break for the night. A's family are great puzzle lovers and my ended family love puzzles quite a lot although my own natal family group didn't do them much at all. I think my Mama found them tedious or boring or maybe the baby was always losing pieces and the dog was always eating a few and somehow that rattled her..... Anyhow, its kind of a new pasttime for me and I feel really happy about bringing some piece of A's childhood into our family activity.

 Joke books are huge this year, especially with our newly confident reader who is suddenly devouring everything written within reach. He's incessantly reading his new joke book that he got for Christmas and loving his new handwriting book which has him doing jokes for copywork. Such a hilarious, brilliant otter idea for a kid like mine.

Well, its time to go to bed. The quilts and down comforter are calling and my good man is waiting. I hope you all have a snug night and wake to a day full of challenges and excitement, little gifts and new lessons. I am thinking of you out there as we pass the middle of the week, as my tiny nephew recovers from his surgery this morning, as my garden sleeps under the snow, as I plot lesson plan in my mind, as the mending sits waiting in the downstairs closet and as we all recover, rest and rejuvenate under the half moon. xoxo!