Delicious Detox

This is how it feels to live in California in the winter after so many years in Michigan and Connecticut. I feel like I am detoxing a lifetime of ice in my veins and Seasonal Affective Disorder in strata so deep that the bottom is kind of unknown. Delicious detox. 

Lenten Sunshine

 Spending so many days indoors lately. Between windchill, cold temps, deep snow and mama laziness about dressing four kids up and down in all the required layers...we've just done a lot of holing up. The boys are starting to go a little crazy. Now that we are officially 29 days from Spring, I have managed to finally get each boy a set of real winter boots and an actual winter coat that actually zips. (How did my parents do it?!?!?! They had six!!!) We are finally equipped and the weather is starting to lift a little.

 The icicles are melting in the peak of the afternoon, the sky is aching blue and the sun is beaming down a lot lately. We have been braving cold and just going out and playing in the sun and snow until our hands ache. Its such a tonic just to be in the sunshine. Light matters.

 I was so excited last year when I bought a Seasonal Affective Disorder light to use on darker days. Hah. The boys stepped on it this year, round about November. I haven't been able to justify getting another so I've just been making it through relying on other boosters (liver, magnesium, coffee, hydration, visiting with friends, extra hugs...) to carry me through.

Today is Ash Wednesday and didn't make it out to get blessed or ashed which is a tiny bit sad. I also didn't run in a mad panic around freaking out about making it to church on time. There is enough space for everything in my life. I can do church and blessing and even ashing (heresy!!!) in the privacy and quiet of my own home sometimes and have a more holy interlude for the day I'm living today. I keep reminding myself that Lent is a season for letting go. I have a lot of that to do. Burying and symbolically burning and mourning the things that need to stop. This year I am fasting from close parking spaces, and leaving my dirty dishes heaped in the sink. I am going to try to write a few extra letters to those I love and drink more water and take time every day to do a little sacred devotional meditation from this cool website I just found called 3 Minute Retreat. Such a manageable, approachable, bite sized amount of devotion. I can do that.

Soak up all the sunshine where you are and think of us here, sending us the extra rays for our dark days yet ahead. Spring is still coming....

The Grey Part of Spring

Our speckled orchid, blooming in the sunroom window.

I was talking on the phone the other day to Mama (Big Grandma in the sidebar to your right) and she mentioned hoping that their recent trip to South Carolina to visit my sister, Lockbox (see the sidebar again for her) wouldn't sour them on the dregs of winter that they had to go back home to in Northern Michigan. Now that I am so newly returned from parts further south myself I have to admit to being pretty hungry for the vibrant colors of warmer weather too. I understand, Mama, even if I didn't head home to two feet of snow and maple syrup season.

Our fig tree, making a baby fig.

There isn't a flake of snow anywhere on our third of an acre but spring is still dragging out very slowly. We're living in those long cold days that hang heavily and greyly over everything...a dim, dirty light is all we seem to get for days on end and my photographer's eye is just hungry for some clean bright light, some warmth, some vibrant living thing.

My birthday plant, a little Meyer lemon, blooming (smells amazing!)

Yesterday I went out in the yard to check on the hyacinths (leftovers from the kind previous owner) and we found them up but producing only straggling buds mostly in white and pale pink. Monday is never a good day, I am prone to rash and irrational thought patterns. I gave up on the garden, and spring, and all plant life. And then A and I promptly had an argument. Overtired much?

Darned if the coffee plant isn't looking like its making flower buds again. See em?

Today, a night of sleep under my belt, marriage re-assembled and a little bit of light slurping through the morning blanket of grey I decided to take stock of the garden again and get re-inspired. One does not give up on the garden in the spring. It is just not done.

A single, tiny blue squill blooming in our backyard...one of my favorite spring flowers.

I was surprised what I found in the yard after a little investigation. There's a surprising amount of life and color starting to show. And folks, I have to tell you that it really looks like we're going to get great blooms on our inherited lilac! I am super excited.

Big fat, lilac buds.

All enthused, I decided to play hooky from my painting group and headed out to scope some local garden centers instead.

Lenten rose, blooming at the nursery.

Endless flats of pansies.

I can never resist the purpley pinky ones. They're my favorites.

There is something so boosting about garden centers, greenhouses, public horticultural centers and those tall, spinning racks of seeds in the hardware store....even if all of them tend to make me spend more money than I like to admit. Spending money on living things somehow seems less evil than many of the spendthrift possibilities.

My new watering can.

I found the perfect watering can (which I've been looking for for a good while), bought some pansies, and loaded up on crabgrass pre-emergent for our lawn. And bought, um....only a few dozen packets of seeds.

A straggling, but alive lemon yellow primrose.

Tiny purple veined violets which are blooming in our lawn!

I think I'm gonna make it. And until the real sunshine shows up, I'm drawing forsythia...sunshine on paper for foreshadowing.

Related articles

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Teething in the Glow of the Christmas Tree

It's a good day at our house. The kind of day when we have (finally, finally) a chance to reflect on the week and the season that have been whooshing past with all kinds of speed and just soak in good moments.

Moments like this. 

Is there anything sweeter than babies asleep in the sunshine? Poor little Nib has been extra sleepy lately because he's cutting the second of his two big rabbit teeth on the top. And also one side tooth. These will be his fourth and fifth teeth. He's positively bristling with ivory these days. I think the whole process must be hurting him a lot because, periodically, I give him a dose of painkiller and he collapses quite promptly into a deep sleep and is sacked out for an hour or so. I'm glad he's getting rest although I hate to see that he's in such pain that he needs to collapse to recover repeatedly. True to form, he's ridiculously good-natured for a teething baby. He is one of the most resilient individuals I've ever met.

The other thing that's wearing him out is his new incessant desire to stand and walk. I think we might have another early walker on our hands, just like Ru who walked at the absurd age of 7 months....right across the kitchen counter to his Aunt Jane's arms. Happy Thanksgiving he crowed and then boop, boop, boop...there he was walking. Maybe Nib will reprise the performance for Christmas or New Year's. Maybe I should alert all 8 of his aunts of the possibility and see if I can get them to compete.

The boys are all down for naps at the moment after a nice crackly fireplace reading session downstairs and then a long game of hanging and then re-hanging and then re-re-hanging candy canes all over our Christmas tree. I always forget to buy candy canes before we put the tree up, it's getting to be tradition, and then I have to run madly all over town finding some, mid-way through December. The bonus is that I almost always get a discount because they're already marking them down at our local drugstore.

I plan to get myself back down to the kitchen with all due haste, get a load of laundry humming and then mix up a batch of cookie dough for assembly-line cutting out and baking once the boys are up and buzzing their way down the stairs. We also have outdoor lights and fresh pine garland to hang before A is home and dinner is making it's steaming way to the table! Tis the season for all sorts of fabulous merriment!

Picnic Weather!

Was a lovely day today. Took the boys trekking over to A's work for a jolly little picnic on a bench in the sun at lunchtime. One woman stopped and said, "What fun! You know you're going to make lots of people jealous!" nodding towards the continual stream of strolling executive types clicking past down the sidewalk, clippy i.d. tags fluttering in the breeze and black dress shoes gleaming. We did get a lot of waves and hellos and folks, cold asparagus, drizzled with garlic olive oil, a squeeze of lemon and a generous dose of sea salt is d.i.v.i.n.e. when eaten sitting cross legged in the sunshine with no utensils, whole spears dripping and gleaming greenly, fingers all an oily, tasty mess and that amazing color of chartreuse/grass green stacked like cordwood in the make-shift tin foil bowl. Yum. Asparagus is one of my favorite foods in the world.

Ahem. Yes. Picnic. The picnic was really grand. First of the year. That's important. Everyone cheerful even though I was about an hour late arriving. Also good. Looks like it was chilly but it was tremendously comfortable and jackets would have been sweaty overkill. We're leafless but, really balmy at the moment.

And if you need real, further proof...look. Just down the street folks were lining up rather substantially for the local Dairy Queen. Note to self: Take the boys to Dairy Queen. Its a childhood institution. I think I may wait until its really good and hot.

Potty training continues on apace. Only two misses today...small progress is laudable! Still no initiating on his part which is slightly off-putting but really, I'd be asking a bit too much if I said that I truly expect him to have it all down in two days flat. I am not insane.

 Hope your weekend is fabulous. We're grilling steaks, visiting the midwife, and jogging off for a date alone together. Much sunshiney bliss awaits. May some of it come your way too!

Life is Back to Jolly!

                          Amorous couple frogs, who are singing                       

like crazy in our local waterways as of today!

My new earrings for golden sunshine days, glowing bee hives with 

one tiny bee on top

      
This morning when we came back to our house to check things out, the living room light was brightly blazing. What a fabulously welcome sight! I don't think I've ever gone through a power out that was that long before. I realize that lots of people in the world go through life without these modern conveniences but, it sure feels relieving to have it all worked out for us again. Home feels extra cozy, the sunshine feels extra warm and even my own piles of laundry, dishes and rotten food in the refrigerator feel kind of happy in some strange way. I am a person who loves her own little space.

Sap buckets are out at the local farms!

Happy boy!

So, we were back in our own home together for a traditional Irish dinner: corned beef, cabbage and potatoes. I meant to make Irish soda bread but, it didn't happen...but, really, it doesn't matter...we had our own meal, at our own table and the stove works and the washer runs and the computer is humming away in a friendly way. So, we all forgot to wear green and there wasn't a shamrock in sight but, A read us all the Wikipedia entry on St. Patrick and we told Ru very seriously that he was a genuine Irish boy and we celebrated with clear and thankful hearts in the warm glow of the lamp over the dining room table.

Wonderful boxes, stashed in a local greenhouse. 

 

Not to go on in an overly excessive way but, the weather could also not be more excellent: sunshine, blazing blue skies and 64, 65, 67 degrees depending on who's thermometer you're using or what patch of sunshine you're standing in. So lovely. We're thinking about a picnic dinner tomorrow night...spring is really here. Time to take the paper snowflakes off our windows and watch for our crocus to bloom (they're budding out now!).

So tally-ho everyone! I'm off and humming in my regular groove and I'll see you all in the morning!

Sunshine Day

I really like Jason Mraz' big hit song, I'm Yours, a lot, (its in my spring cleaning iTunes mix after all) but, I almost like this Sesame Street version more. Special props to Jane who introduced me to the original in the first place! Check it out though, really. Made me smile this morning when I opened the kitchen shutters to blinding sunlinght and I keep humming it as I check the cleaning list spread out on top of the piano.



If you don't know the original, just haven't seen the music video or can't get enough and want to see it one more time....here's it is.



Yesterday, I got all the beds stripped down to the mattresses and started washing pilllows, mattress covers, duvets...etc. I vac'd and flipped all the mattresses and have started putting them back together. I got rid of all the trash in the house, sorted through our food cupboards and fridge, and have sorted most of the drawers in the house. Today I get rid of the rest of the clutter in prep for real scrubbing. Purge the bookcases, sort the toiletry collection, and put away anything that's sitting out as well as collecting items with no home on the landing. Then we bust out the rubber gloves and the scrub brush!