Consciousness and Vegetable Death

The tomato vines have fallen on their faces, sprawling out of the beds and making their gangling way onto the cement patio, as if they were reaching for the back door of our home. Frost will not come here so watching the hot weather crops time themselves out is a totally new process for me. Its a gruesome spectator sport. There's no sudden icy morning to put them out of their misery so instead things go on blossoming at one end and turning slowly brown at the other, growing more and more thin and leggy, finally flopping in exhausted, ridiculous length like the cosmos that just fell over after growing taller than our garage, the neck of each new bloom absurdly lengthened like some overdone body shaping competition. The squash continued fruiting manically while also deteriorating into the most impressive mass of powdery mildew I have ever seen. Its a strange new way to switch growing modes. The swiss chard produced so heavily that I honestly lost sight of ever keeping up with eating it. Everyone received bouquets of big crinkled leaves and sunrise colored stalks but it kept coming and coming....finally I all but abandoned it ("Swiss chard boys?" *crickets*) and such a horde of aphids descended that it looked like black mold, growing all over each stalk and eventually creeping up and covering the leaves. I ended up sawing them all off at the ground to be humane. Its so different to grow here.

 I have grown plants my whole life and yet, BAM.....new biome and I feel totally new, floundering and astonished. A asks me all the time "What's that tree? What do you think that flower is?" and mostly my answers are just a lot of, "I have no idea." Its intimidating if I allow it to suck the air out of the room for a second...but if I just reach for my curiosity and desire to never be jaded and love of learning and excitement then suddenly its means something good. I keep trying to figure out the next thing, be grateful for the questions and stumped moments that keep me scratching my head and practice letting go of my anxiety, my need to be right, my choking expertism and my soul killing perfectionism.

One of the things that's so helpful about newness is that it forces actual conscious experience. So much of what we "know" isn't even actually absorbed or seen or focused on....let alone mulled over and considered. All the things are amazing and shocking and weird if seen from the right angle, newness is a great way to make it happen. It reminds of the phenomenon of seeing a word that you have known all your life and for some reason suddenly being unsure if it "looks right" because you just really see it for some unknown reason and it looks so odd, so whimsical, so bizarre...."Is that really how it goes?" Even though you've seen it your whole life and written and read it countless times, there it is, looking so conscious and oddly impressive. Its how people learning English feel when they see the word for the first time too, and you just got a freak glimpse of it like some odd wrinkle in time. That's me, in California. Although....I guess, its less a freak glimpse and more "learning English." Learn on!

Passionfruit Gifts

Check out this incredible fruit to my good friend gifted me after she harvested them herself from a farm she frequents. Only the coolest people are friends like this and come proffering exotic fruits and conspiratorial plans to use them to sprout plants in our yards in tandem. Love having people in my life who are givers, who see small things as gifts and who want to share this dynamic, interesting California life with me.

 Its a lesser known variety of passionfruit. This one won't be in the grocery stores...its way too thin skinned.

The fruit is about the size of a hen's egg and has the most tender, delicate feeling skin when fully ripe. The outer rind is the most gorgeous, dusty apricot with such a shocking, sweet, seedy pulp. Totally amazing! Can't wait to see it clambering in viney profusion over our garden fence. I hear the secret is just to take one of the fruits out to the garden and bury it like some secret sacrifice in the dirt.

Painting, Gardens and Jam

Our first crop of arugula has turned into a fluttering cloud of white blossoms, like a flock of little cabbage moths, levitating next to the hose reel. I need to put in another crop of spinach, (maybe some malabar spinach for hot weather?) and a new block of carrots. The boys have been so excited about our first round of carrots at this house that they have been pulling them as little finger sized snacks and munching them before they get any chance to get big and hearty. Love that delicious, culinary impatience.  Need to remind myself that they do indeed love things that are good them, in addition to the pizza and chips that magnet all kids right in. I tend to blow the negatives bigger and discount the positives and end up with a nicely lopsided view of what really happened with my kids.

The whole house smells amazing tonight. I just batch cooked some apple muffins to put in the freezer (flour and sugar free!) so that those junk food loving boys have something sweet to grab for a snack. There is also a second big pan full of cherry plum jam bubbling away in the back burner. It smells tangy sweet and I have added just the right amount of sweetener to leave it zippy in the back of the mouth but still sweet in the front. Love me some sweet tart flavors. The first batch was made with greener plums that were still pretty firm but had all fallen anyway. This round, the plums were all making big cranberry colored splats on the sidewalk when they fell, finding ones that were still whole and hadn't squished on impact was the trickiest part. They have more natural sugars this time and when you pop them in your mouth raw, the skin slips off and leaves you with a big juicy mouthful. So delicious!

I haven't been painting so much this week but, I am chewing on a couple of ideas and am hoping that the long weekend will be a chance to pull out my brushes and sit in the sunshine and drip some art out through my fingertips. Recently, I saw the good friend who spoke painting prophetically into my life and convinced me that I was a painter when I thought I loved art but only knew how to draw. I am so grateful for her insistent warmth and pushing.

 So much happy that this habit bloomed out in my life and I had a time when I shared art days with her. She still lives in New England and I had a quick breakfast with her while we were in town, its so amazing to see my art on her wall and come home to see hers on mine and know that we have entered each other's lives and flavored each other's world's so sparklingly. Good friends are the type who make you a better person for their having been in your life. She qualifies.

April Buzz

We are having warmer days all the time now...gardening happens, laundry keeps getting behind. We are putting seeds and plants in the garden and lingering and lingering to weed them. Lots of lazy outdoor homeschool reading and math in the sunshine. Then we keep having an occasional short sprinkle and all the locals warn me to get ready, because now it will be the last rain and get dry out. Interesting climate and such a different kind of weather. I feel like I did all winter. I have no idea what to expect or what anything indicates. Normal is a setting on the dryer. This is one way to get that effect.

Went driving out to farms today, maybe the first time I have really done that in an exploratory and rambly way since we moved here. Its time to find a farm to get eggs at and maybe milk although I am exploring taking them out of the diet of some of us in the family...sad day at face value, but greater health and happiness is the worthy goal.

I am really enjoying being the Team Mom for Ru's baseball team. Little League is a community that I really appreciate and feel safe in, so much lack of pretension and warm welcome for people of all levels. Its been a great way to boost my confidence with management tasks (eep! Reminder emails!) and get to know lots of people. I know who is charge of snacks and several coaches, I know who to call when you lose papers and where the meetings all are held. Being on the ins is a great way to feel more comfortable. Its always so exciting to meet more of our neighbors via playing on a team together and this time is no exception. So many people we could walk to hang out with...you know....if I was feeling brave enough to invite them over to play. EEP! Must keep being brave.

The fruit in our area is starting to ripen, strawberries are up and I am dying to do a big pick so that I can sock some strawberry jam and frozen fruit in the freezer. Am also dreaming of Paleo shortcake.... The cherries are going to start in the first week of May and then we'll be all into the plums and the apricots and so on....can't wait. Am hoping to do some serious canning this year. There will be tomato sauce making at my house (Holla if you want in!) and I want to do peaches, maybe pears and some applesauce too. The first year after a break in the canning schedule is always overly optimistic. Heh.

Nib just lost one of his great big front teeth this morning, which is really cute. I was pretty pleased when it came out to see how bright and clean and solid it was. I am slowly but surely cleaning up our diet. Especially my last two children are made out of darn strong nutrient, dense ingredients. Mama finally got her ducks in a row! Ru is wiggling out his first really large molar after a long break in the tooth losing regime. His adult tooth is coming out eagerly through the side of his gum above it! Pretty wild. MUST REMEMBER TOOTH FAIRY DUTY TONIGHT!!!

Cherry Blossom Haze

Just today, the cherry blossoms started opening. This next week will be stunning, the weekend may be a glowing daze. We are having magnificent weather with gentle breezes and buckets of sunshine alternating with torrential winds, chill and rain, rain, rain. The lawn is ready for a first cut and all the raised beds have been planted except for the potatoes and the children's garden. Our plum trees started opening their blossoms this morning. Must keep an avid watch on the fungus and pests and be liberal with my organic sprays and compost tea. I am also planning to order a giant dump of mulch to keep everything handily tucked in and moist for when the hot weather arrives. Its also time to divide any perennials I want to trim down and QUICK, finish the brick trim on the front walk! EEP!

 The boys are getting so panicked about being outdoors at all times that they are trying desperately to throw off the yoke of household chores. I am trying to remember to be insistent but it is SO hard! I am terrible at staying consistent and modeling the things I want them to learn. Most of parenting has been parenting myself, I swear. I must finish my chores before I get all distracted while feeding the chickens and wander over to check out the seedlings and trim the pear tree and admire the crocus and see if the grape vine is budding. Adhere! I must learn the things I am trying to teach. No time like the present. 

 This morning I gave myself a haircut. I would include a photo but I doubt it would be very dramatically visible to anyone. I cut about four or five inches off the ends but it was so stringy and brittle and damaged that there wasn't much volume left. I have to say that I love me some YouTube tutorials. That's where I taught myself how to cut my side angle bangs. That's where I learned how to cut my sister Lockbox's curly hair and that's where I went this morning when I had the itch to fix the scraggly, dried and breaking mess that was my hair. I parted and trimmed and brushed and angled and trimmed again until I had trimmed it all into gradual piecey layers, framing my face on both sides, all serious damage trimmed away and the parts that are left mostly falling in a regular and even fashion. I feel so much better. Cutting my own hair makes me feel like a dog that had all the winter mats trimmed of its paws or a sheep that's been sheared right before the June heat hits in waves. Its so relieving and freshening! Someday maybe I'll go to a salon and have them do it all for me but its hard to trust a random pair of shears when I know what I want and my own experiments are free.

 The bikes are back out and I am realizing that even though Dee is 7, I haven't really focused on working on getting him riding on a two-wheeler without training wheels very confidently. Goals for the Spring! Also, we seriously need to weed down our collection of wheeled vehicles. We do not need the gigantic fleet that we posses. Yay for the approaching neighborhood swap day!

 I am drinking a fair amount of protein shakes these days. I have decided that my new workouts and maybe just my normal activity warrants a more reliable protein supply and I have been whizzing them up when I am too busy to have a real sit-down lunch or when breakfast seemed like it had more produce than muscle feed in it. One of favorites has been a "pumpkin pie" version made with coconut milk, canned pumpkin pulp and cinnamon + vanilla protein powder. Yum! Its a treat that I don't really mind the boys indulging in with me and sometimes its serving as an ice cream substitute after dinner if I whiz in frozen fruit (Yay, new Costco membership this year!!!) and then scoop it into a bunch of tiny bowls.

 Pom is trying to potty train although I have been impossibly lazy about it. Here he is about to turn three and I am not there yet. I am embarrassed to admit that the "last baby" thing has infected me and threatens to allow me to spoil him. Argh! How can that be me? I know about that crazy stuff and I hate the idea of being like that. Its also just hard to be dedicated to the toilet cause when there is baseball practice and swimming lessons and co-op and gardening not to mention the laundry and the mopping. So much to keep on top of and his wearing diapers still seems somehow excusable. The good news is that he seems motivated himself on some level. He's doing pretty well at keeping clean at this point, telling me to take him to the bathroom when the need arises without any prompting. Staying dry is a whole 'nother story but hey....we can't ask the sun, moon and stars all at once!

I have been working on very little painting lately although I have a couple of ideas percolating and A is taking one of his necessary but unpopular trips to the West Coast again this coming week. I also hope to watch a few movies, maybe finish painting my bedroom and push a little bit of extra yoga into my life. Optimist much?

Hey, listen....its Spring!

A Seed Box Murder

I have been trying to put plants into the garden, some starts from the nursery and some seeds (with varied success). I had an unfortunate mishap with my stash of seeds which kind of put a damper on my productivity. I was happily gardening, my seedbox open next to my raised beds and my favorite hand tools all arrayed around them,my fingers muddy and my mind a dusty haze of happiness. Suddenly, I had a Cinderella moment and realized I had gardened away more time than I thought and needed to run madly to pick up my boys from kid's club. I threw the youngest two into the car and cleaned my hands with 5,000,000 wet wipes at various stop lights as I zoomed through town and dusk fell. By the time we were home again, all that was on my mind was corralling all the boys into the house and cleaning and pajama-ing them up for bed, every thought of my interrupted gardening wiped from my mind.

Sadly, it rained that night....it rained cats and dogs. I went dashing out that morning and tore open a few of the sodden packets in the continuing drizzle, trying to shake the damp seeds into the proper places in beds, planting dejectedly and frantically until I had to go running back inside to make breakfast. There was a solid inch of water in the bottom of my seed box and the many remaining packets were floating in a mini lake.

The viburnum hedge between us and the neighbors.

I never cried, and I have been trying to let go of the disappointment and see it as a chance to have a clean slate. I did just tell myself that I was going to try to buy more of my starts instead of starting things from seed as they take more time and often I sacrifice actual plants for my idealism. Still, the loss is real and every time I am in the garden I am fighting a feeling of general discouragement and an air of defeat. I haven't felt brave enough to throw out the seeds yet. I'm just holding onto the mildewed collection for a bit and trying to convince myself to let it go. Maybe once I have all the beds full of real plants I will be able to call it a day and pitch them, or maybe just writing about them is enough moving on and later tonight I will bury them in a shallow grave in the compost pile and chalk one up for minimalism.

Our first black eye. Must be Spring.

In other news, spring is incredible. I can't ever quite believe it is this tremendous and never really believe it will come or be quite so pleasant and delicious and stunning as it really is. The layered scents of viburnum, lilac and iris is enough to make you delirious. The perfume is unbelievable round about dinner time when the yard is softly golden and the sun is streaming in our open dining room windows. Everything you could possibly eat goes with the scent of blooming flowers. I want to linger over every single supper even if the kids are squawking so loudly that A and I can hardly hear ourselves think, or someone has say, brought a toy bow to the table and is shooting other diners with it, or perhaps if someone has begun throwing the peas instead of eating them....hypothetically speaking, of course. Spring makes it all worth it. Dead seed collections, and insane boys, I can hack it all with a floral smelling salts to keep me lively.

Poetry Friday: A Poem For A Weed

Today a poem about dandelions. Its high dandelion season here at our house, all the roadsides and wilder lawns dotted with yellow and the air heavy with their sweet nectar scent.

 Weeds are in the eye of the beholder. I've never lived in a house with a manicured lawn so anything that flowered was allowed and maybe even encouraged. All things have their place, especially in a wilder kind of horticulture.

Dandelions are an exotic, invasive but they have taken hold in the hearts of all children. Who doesn't have heartwarming memories of playing with them as little tikes? I love watching my boys play with them and I wonder if my sisters think of me like I think of them when I see them start to bloom every spring.

So, Lockbox, Foxy, Song, and Doubleddog.....here's to the sisterhood! This one's for you.


Dandelion Season

As a girl I loved the scent of dandelions
A warm smell of sunshine in honey sauce.
Sniffing the blossoms was a kind of food
To my sisters and myself, a conjuror's dessert
We played that the milky sap was Elmer's 
Our fingers tacky from the bitter, gloss.
We tore open innumerable flowers,
Beads of white swelling from the stems
We would squat in the sand on the driveway
And squint our eyes fiercely at each other
Smearing the flowers across our cheeks,
Leaving pale yellow racing strips behind.
We braided the stems into crowns to wear
And learned that dandelion stems are variable
Sometimes stiff and no longer than your thumb
Sometimes long and willowy and braid-able on and on
Around the head until your crown grows fat.
One time I left my diadem on the dashboard
Of our car and found the next day that magically
It had turned into a delicate, brittle circlet
Of wishing puffs....

Man Flowers

Noticed Dee pick a mini-bouquet the row of zinnias he planted the raised bed I let the boys have. Was amused watching him carefully select his blooms and compose them together. Was even more amused when I went upstairs at naptime and found the little nosegay in one of the "kid cups," neatly decorating the radiator near his bed. Love that boy.

Garden Soak

Feeling a little low today so I started the day with a little meditation in my sunroom Mama-Space and then strapped a warm mug of tea to my side to keep my company while I dressed various short people and made breakfast.

But the real pick-me-up was some garden time. God, I miss being out in the garden. Right about the time February is arriving, I am starting to go crazy for a touch of something, anything that's green. The weather was incredibly warm and inviting this morning, a light, misty fog rolling down our hill and an inviting giant mud puddle by the back door waiting for the boys. I took the pruners and some stray yarn (for tying up raspberries), a trowel, some scissors, and a trowel out and I just did...ceaselessly for a little over three hours. Pom rode along on my back, sleeping peacefully through most of my work.

The smell of leaf mold, the damp earth on my knees, mud on my hands, and the sight of all those tiny green tips working their way out of the soil, promised me that this isn't forever...soon we'll be well again, soon there will be spring and soon we can cure our grumpy days with picnics.

Boy, does that sound good!

I feel a lot better.

Green Brain

I have Green-Brain. Its that time of year. There are any number of things sprouting and greening and budding in our sunroom which is very cheerful. This is a good time of year to be one of my houseplants. I'm dreaming of gardens and gardening and yet feeling so cold averse that I want to spend all my time snuggled up indoors. All of that amounts to much more attentive, loving care for the plant members of the household right about now. I am clinging to each little chartreuse leaf and unfolding blossom to tide me over until the warm comes back and until the baby is willing to me wander farther than a foot from him with my pruning shears and my trowel.

Almost every night I am carting the clanging metal compost can outside to our backyard pile and dumping more veggie trimmings and fruit cores. I feel very motivated to grow the heap, thinking about all the earthworms that I hope are churning away in the core of the pile, making me sweet fertilizer for filling up anemic raised beds, and tucking around my sad strawberry plants. Its a good time of year to be anything gardeny that wants my attention. Green leaves, and curling tendrils and produce of all kinds from my own land are what I am dreaming about at night, craving at the library, and turning my camera on whenever I look around for subjects.

Pom is not a fan of plants, unless he can eat them. He puts everything in his mouth and is scooting around backwards making himself angry at the way everything gets father and farther away every time he moves. And he is starting to make stabs at standing and stepping a little with hands to hold. The doctor tells me he is 5th percentile for weight and height but I find it hard to be too concerned, when he's so impossibly round and happy.  He's just a small, plump, happy man.