Pumpkin Pie On The Beach

 It was a beautiful day. Whatever ails you, there is little in life that a trip to the redwoods and the beach can't cure. The scenery and sights of nature here are kind of epic. Its super astonishing to keep realizing again that the things we can just zip over and see if we have an hour for driving are pretty national-park-level-of-fabulous. I am a little over-awed and feel ultra-bouyant once we are in the car and driving home from another place that's unbelievable with scenery to make you have an asthmatic episode and animals and plants from an episode of National Geographic. I'm not sure how long it will take to feel like this is my home state just because the level of daily shock and intimidatingly impressed joy is so high. Its hard to be jaded or feel normal or yawn at all. I live in California!

 Today we went to a new beach, Muir Beach, after the redwoods....which we naturally adore. Its all filtered golden light and mossy quiet....well mostly, you know....except for my boys sometimes shrieking and screaming and beating each other with fallen sticks. It does quiet them though, that incredible cathedral grove. I am looking forward to playing hostess to friends and family who come out to visit and have never been to a redwood grove.

It was a day of lots of fresh air, all warm and bright. Pom took a nap in the sand and we chased crabs as big as our hands put together in and out of the waves, climbed up rocks and redwoods and split rail fences. I got my 10,000 steps in without even thinking about it and utterly shorted myself on protein and water.

We are going to love day tripping out into the whirling mass of beauty here, and I have a feeling we will meet friends out at incredible places and hike our heads off. Its a little tricky to figure out how to work A into our adventures because so many of these spots are overrun on weekends. We have to get smarter about packing breakfast picnics and laying clothes out the night before for Saturday morning outings and beat the rush! Of course, this requires more advance planning....like knowing what we plan to do for the weekend....before the weekend. This would imply actual planning and communication about intended targets and chores and free-space for weekend time on Thursday night or something. Hmmm....

 Well, we can always just go listen to more James Taylor and just go with the ridiculously overcrowded flow. Organization is not our strong suite as a couple. May it ever be a target and may we someday communicate and strategize like a siamese twin generals! Someday....

I also bought a pumpkin pie...because it is officially the second day of autumn and I was in a funk and did not feel like baking....also it was 90 degrees today because we are still having a bizarre heat wave. We ate the pie with our hands, on the beach, because I forgot the plastic knife in the van and did not want to hike back to get it. Pumpkin pie is surprisingly festive and manageable beach food! Pom suggested apple pie and I told him that before that happens we have to go to an apple orchard and pick some. Next on my list: field trips to a raw milk dairy farm and apple picking. I am wistfully imagining myself canning applesauce with the boys next week....you know, since my canning jars will be buried on that semi-truck that is arriving on Sunday. That makes sense, right? At least as much sense as eating pumpkin pie with your bare hands on the beach.

Seashore Cure

Well, we have....as I tell the boys....only two more sleeps until our family is all back in one location again. We're all good and ready for A to come home.

Today the weather was still insanely gorgeous. The day started off with a misty, fog that was stunning against the beautiful fall colors we still have and the fog burned off into a beautiful, if sometimes cloudy day. It almost felt like spring...the air was moist and warm and smelled of leaves and green things.

We worked in the yard a little. I raked leaves into the hen's new pen which made them tremendously happy. We finished the stone garden borders in the front of the house which I have been working on for about two years. SO AMAZING to have it all done! I keep looking out the window again to enjoy the accomplishment. I also laid a little more of the brickwork (mortarless) that I am using to edge our front walk. Should have taken a picture...didn't think of that. I am using salvage brick that is all red and the standard size but otherwise varies in style and design and mossy character. I love how its turning out. I have maybe one third of the walk left to finish although at the moment I am out of brick and need to keep my eyes peeled for more being thrown out somewhere.

Poor little Nib was sick again today. This is his second illness in the course of A's travel. I let him sleep in a long time and then we did some gentle things around the house and read a bunch of story books and then it was time for something cheering. The boys and I took a cloth bag for beach combing and headed to the ocean.

It was gorgeous. We saw a school of big silver fish, swimming and sometimes leaping out of the water. We found horseshoe crabs and ark clams and beautiful driftwood and more oyster shells than we could count. There are oyster beds right off the coast here so loads of their shells wash up. Some of them get to be enormous. I also thought to myself that maybe next time the chickens are getting low on their store purchased oyster shell, I could just take a hammer to some of the extra shells we bring home from the beach. Wonder if that would work?

By the time we got home Nib was feeling 200% better (there is no place better to recover than the seashore) and little Pom was taking his place with a clingy attitude and permanent bad mood. I have him draped across my lap right now while I type...his feverish little self snoring away on my knee.
Have to remember the seashore for the next time I get deathly ill...it seems like such a wonderful place to be sick. The air feels cheering, the sound of water is theraputic, there are shells for combing, there are birds wheeling over you and the endless water sweeping out in front.

Man, do kids get sick a lot. Good thing I have an immune system that can handle it! I can usually avoid getting sick and if I do fall prey I usually get a lighter version. I'm all for that.

Do lets learn invincibility!

Wineberry Harvest

I haven't picked wild wineberries in a couple of years, they are the invasive "raspberry" of our area. They are delicious and roadside abundant and every year I mean to find the time to stop and pick but then the season goes whipping past and I miss it again.

The truth is, folks...if you make time, you have time. I tell that saying to my boys all the time and I aspire to live it out bravely. Today, between appointments with a thunderstorm looming ahead of me and four squirrely boys in the car, I pulled over and picked wineberries.

Stopping insistently to harvest a cupful made me happy all day and here, in the quiet of the sleeping house, eating them with cream and coconut sugar, I feel positively gleeful about my juicy riches. I might need to go out again tomorrow with a basket and snare the same high. The season is still on!

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.

Wee Sculpters

Had to share these cool paper-mache sculptures the boys have been making. We've been studying birds in science and Ru had the bright idea to make models of some of the birds we've been reading about. They carefully sculpted and painted them themselves, using our big family bird book as reference. Mostly the littler boys are playing along while Ru and I read about birds together. Jolly times though, learning about how the blue jay's favorite food in the world is acorns and how long a cardinal lives vs a blue jay! Next up he has a plan to make a life sized model of a blue jay nest, complete with stones picked from the beach painted to look like songbird eggs. We may present at our local monthly homeschool sharing night!

Winter Minutia

There is something very crisp and healing about a winter hike. Even here, in the land of very little snowfall the winter woods feel cleaner and peaceful. All the inhabitants of stream and leaf are sleeping deeply or gone away all together and everything from bud to burl is snugly folded for the resting season.

The palette is a simple: khaki, bone and taupe, so that every little snip of color shows up like a blinking sign in the even landscape. Its good to be outdoors and to feel pure solace, no chance of meeting other hikers on the trail, and hear only the hoot of your own voice or the echo of a raven's call in the distance.

Its time for little things to have a small moment to shine: the dark maroon purple of a wineberry leaf, the chartreuse carpet of moss under rusty oak leaves, the glint of mica in a trailside boulder. There were no bird's nests this hike but I always like to look for them once the leaves are down and all the occupants have flown off to other habitats.

 Away from highways and crowds and busy activities you can finally hear the drip of water off the spruce tips and the scuffle of a squirrel over the next rise and the rattle of the dead beech leaves in the wind. Small beauties, little things...but good to remember. All these small things are there, under the momentous importance of our busy lives if only we will take the time to bend down and see them.

That Glorious First Snow

One week ago we had our first snowfall. Last year was a very light winter, but we did get one big "winter" storm at Halloween...the year before that was of course a real doozy for us New Englanders with record amounts of snowfall. All of us out here are oh, so curious about what in the world this winter holds for us. I enjoy the light snow version for ease of use but I do appreciate a hard killing cold for the sake of bugs and the fluffy downpour for the sake of my house full of snow bunnies.

The boys were out of their skins over the snow last week. I basically gave up any hope of structured lesson time and let them have free-reign outdoors. They played outside until their fingers were numb and then came sobbing indoors just like I used to as a little girl...shaking all their fuchsia appendages while I rubbed them warm again by the radiator.....then back out again with soaking wet mittens before I could stop them. They made a giant snowball together, pulled out the sleds for a test run and threw snowballs at each other until they were all exhausted.

I know the snow will be back again and winter will come for real eventually whether real accumulation comes with it or not but there is something special about that first snowfall, isn't there? I love when it happens in daylight and we can all rush to the windows and shout and holler while we watch the flakes start falling and I also love it when it happens overnight and we wake up to a world newly sparkly and white like there were visits from snow fairies while we slept.

When I was a girl we often made snow ice cream with one of the first snow falls. I totally forgot this time around but I am all ready for next time with this childhood experiment. I think the boys will flip. I've never made anything with snow before and I have a feeling they'll be begging for it every time there's any white stuff on the ground. Ice cream is well-loved at our house. Traditionally snow ice cream is made with sugar and milk but I think this year I'll try a version sweetened with maple syrup and mixed with heavy cream for the real deal experience.

 For those new to this dish, go see Angela's wonderful recipe and directions over at her really great blog Salt of the Earth Urban Farm. I super-dig this blog about urban/farming living and homeschooling in the delightful city of Portland. Inspiration by the bucketful!