Category Archives: Life

white sands and grey sands

     This post is all interrelated, but only from my perspective.  It’s all curled around and into itself like that shell.  I could try to explain it, but I don’t think it would make much of a difference to you.

Do you know that song?  We used to sing it as a round in the family folk chorus we attended years ago.  I often found myself humming it or singing softly to myself as I worked on this little dress, while sitting on a beach back in June.  That Rabbit Heather Tweed yarn with it’s little flecks of rich brown and delicate beige reminds me so much of the sand on the shores of a particular pristine kettle pond, one of my very favorite spots in the world.  It’s peaceful there.  This entire dress was knit while we were away, but I only recently worked in the ends and added the button.  I thought it was so of that place that I needed to work some part of it in somehow.  I brought home a little pouch of trinkets that I thought might work: small shells, smooth pebbles.  This sea snail shell seemed to make the best button.

Reading, reading, reading; thinking and researching and reading some more.  I’m reading Why Can’t I Get Better: Solving the Mystery of Lyme and Chronic Disease in bits and pieces, whatever sections seem most relevant.

     Healing Lyme: Natural Healing and Prevention of Lyme Borreliosis and Its Coinfections by Stephen Buhner came highly recommended to me, and is rather heavy as you might imagine.  It’s a very valuable resource, full to the brim with important information.  Yet, I’ve been struggling to get through it.  In the beginning it was because vision problems were causing me difficulties, but also because it was freaking me out and I could only assimilate the info in small doses.  Even so it still made me feel like there were ticks all over me and tiny worms corkscrewing themselves into my eyeballs and brain.  I’m towards the end now, where I thought I would feel hopeful and I suppose I do to a degree, but the protocol is vast and over-whelming, so there is that as well.

Then there is Out of the Woods: Healing Lyme Disease for Mind, Body and Spirit, also difficult for me to read, but for entirely different reasons.  While the other books come from a more technical place, this one is mostly a memoir.  One that I can relate to so intimately.  For most of the book she is struggling- desperate and suffering.  When she describes how she feels physically it conjures up such a strong and acute sense memories for me of the way that I felt or the way I still feel.  All the same it is inspiring and very much worth reading.

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baby things, Books, EDS / POTS, Kids, Life, Mama Care, Yarn Crafts
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42/52 and gathering in

Seraphina: Watching the leaves showering down.  It was her first time in mittens this season.  I joked that she was bobbing for tomatoes, as she kept leaning over and trying to remove the cherry tomatoes from the plants using only her mouth!

After an unusually warm September it seems as though deep autumn is very suddenly upon us. With our first hard frost on the horizon we spent Saturday bringing in the last of the delicate, tender produce.  As if eager to emphasis the point, snow started sifting down as we filled baskets with green tomatoes…and continued through the next day; wildly swirling at times, but mostly melting on the still warm earth.  Garden fresh flowers filling my windowsills, with snow falling on the other side.  Such a strange contradiction!

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52, Food, Gardens, Kids, Life, photography, snapshots
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41/52

Backwoods picture by Steve.  As a treat to himself upon completing a chainsaw safety course, Iain has invested in a chainsaw of his own.  After much research he went with this one, which he has been very happy with.  He’s been helping Steve to clean up some dead and down wood on our property, with Elijah along to assist.

We’ve recently come to the conclusion that the boys have outgrown the wilderness program they have been attending for the last year.  Together we have decided that for now they will continue to immerse themselves in nature after a more self directed fashion.  We’ve set aside one full day out of the school week where, after the basic daily math practice and language arts have been completed, the rest of the day is theirs to devote to often experimental, adventurous, passionate, outdoor education.  For now I’m letting them go where they will with this, but from time to time I’ll have assignments for them; things to look for, to think about, to explore, to hopefully inspire.  So far the older boys have been devoting the bulk of their time to gathering wood for sugaring off in the spring.  As you can see, the wood gathering mentality has proved contagious and is trickling on down through the ages.  That little one there?  Never one to be left behind, she scaled the wall one day when she heard them off in the distance!

They are all very excited and pleased with our new plan.  Today I watched Galen make a tidy stack of shingles for a structure he has in mind.  Given support and space, I’m always awed by their creativity and determination.

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52, Homeschooling, Kids, Life, photography, snapshots, Waldorf
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Autumnal Blooms

This week Steve and I have pushed the concept of lack of sleep to new limits.  I left Seraphina in the care of someone else for the first time ever.  And also the second time ever.  I spent a spell in the hospital.  We said goodbye to an old friend, much, much too soon.  We accomplished almost nothing in the way of homeschooling.  I’ve given grave and serious consideration to some of our commitments and have come to some conclusions that will alter our day to day life.  It feels like there are more to come.  I don’t really know why I’m sharing this here.  I think I’m just so desperately tired that I’m no longer capable of filtering.  I’m like a sieve.  It has been a very long week.

These flowers are mostly passed over now, though the zinnias and calundula remain.  All of the petals have dropped from the black-eyed susans.  The asters are ragged.  The sunflowers in all their glory were beaten down by a storm.  After a painfully slow start, our morning glories have decided now, when the garden has already been touched by frost in places, is the time to cloak themselves in buds and scattered blooms.

I’m knitting.  I don’t seem to be managing much else, but I’ll knit quietly through illness, through car rides, around a sleeping toddler.  She needs clothes for the cold weather to come.  Miles of yarn has passed through my fingers in the making of clothes for my baby.  It’s comforting in it’s rhythm and simplicity.  I’m the queen of basic patterns right now.  The birthday sweaters in my knitting bag are a pleasantly challenging lot, but my daytime mindless knitting is all as straightforward as knitting gets.  The little sweater above is an In Threes, with lots of room to grow.

I’m re-reading Simplicity Parenting.  I pick it up from time to time.  As my children grow, different aspects speak to me.

 

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baby things, Gardens, Kids, Life, Yarn Crafts
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Catching Up

Let’s call this post 38/52 and 39/52 as well, shall we?  I count at least 5 kids up there, so yes, I think we shall!

Our plans for the last week and a half were upended.  Many things shifted and changed.  We had company.  Various family members from out of state visiting, leaving, others coming, some returning again.  I’ve barely touched the computer in the last 12 days and I have an inbox full of unanswered (mostly unread, eek!) emails.

Galen is working on a homeschooling project, gathering and recording stories, to start compiling a family history.  He was conducting interviews throughout the week.  So far it has been a beautiful, moving and poignant experience, at least once he got past a fit of giggles over the first one.

My father oversaw music lessons for the week.

Have I mentioned that I’m learning French?  Galen and Mairi wanted to study French because of ballet, so I am learning along with them.  It would not be my first choice of second language, but it can’t be denied that there are some fabulous patterns in French, so there’s that at least.  Also, it turns out that I’m part French, which I totally didn’t know until like this part year, so maybe this somehow makes up for lost time?

After an unusually warm start to September, autumn is finally starting to set in.  Last weekend we harvested all of our squash and made our first batch of applesauce.  This weekend I pulled out my wool tights to go to a corn maze.  On my sister’s last night here we roasted peaches and ate them topped with homemade vanilla-caramel ice cream.  We’ve been eating way too many sweets.  She added a few rows to the now well-known blanket.  It feels good to start to settle into the inward arch of our year.  I think Mairi Rose and I will plant some bulbs in the garden this week.

I wanted to thank everyone for the kind comments and messages over the last several weeks!  They really do mean the world to me.

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52, Food, Gardens, Kids, Life, snapshots
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my feet were cold…

I made socks.  I’ve finally come to the conclusion that if I’m ever going to open my drawer and actually find socks, I have to own socks that can not possibly be mistaken for Elijah’s (or Galen’s or Steve’s or Iain’s).  They must be unquestionably mine.  The life cycle of a pair of my socks goes something like this: I buy myself a pair of nice wool socks.  It’s exciting!  You would be excited to if you never had any socks to wear.  I wear said socks.  Such a delight!  When they are dirty I put them in the hamper.  I may even come across them again while doing laundry.  This is the point where things start to get fuzzy.  I don’t see them again for at least a month, maybe more.  If by chance they do somehow reappear in my drawer, they do so with a great many holes and thin places that I don’t remember from the first and only time I wore them.

I divided everything up, taking it on faith that if I worked my leftover yarn into stripes there would be enough.  I think this might be the first time I made a toe up sock?  I prefer toe down,  But toe up has it’s advantages, like when you are knitting until you run out of yarn.  A shorter sock is one thing.  A toe-less one is pretty useless.

I cut off all of my hair.  I’ve been too tired and sick to care for it.  Actually I made poor Steve do it, while he nervously asked if perhaps one of the neighbors wouldn’t be better suited to the task?  He took off a solid 14-plus inches.  I think I’m at peace with the decision, which wasn’t really so much a decision as a reaction, even though I prefer my hair long- especially when I’m on the chubby side, as I am now.  Usually I somehow don’t quite feel myself without my long and wild mane.  But this is who I am right now.  It’s the most that I can manage.  And that’s ok too.

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Life, Mama Care, Yarn Crafts
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37/52

Mairi Rose: With her eager little gap-toothed smile she the very portrait of a true 1st grader!

Seraphina: She really is the silliest of girls sometimes!

We’ve had a damp and chilly weekend here and I’ve found myself sick, yet again.  Thankfully it’s just a cold this time.  For those who are keeping score; since the beginning of June, that’s 2 colds, 2 infections (totally unrelated to the colds), some strange virus I can’t remember the name of that turned the skin on my torso into flesh toned leopard print, and of course Lyme Disease.  That’s without counting other debilitating things like the pinched nerve and so forth. fun, fun.

We made apple butter, roasted tomatoes, tilapia chowder and many pots of tea.  I cast on for Mairi’s birthday sweater (dress actually).  My long lost, missing, size 6 curricular needles finally showed up in a hat Iain had been working on.  The dress yarn is bright and cheery and I’m greatly enjoying watching it knit up into neat little gathers.

About the tilapia chowder!  I keep meaning to update that recipe… It’s delicious the way I posted it, but if you really want to make it into something amazingly special, replace the water with broth, make sure to include yams, don’t skip or skimp on the dulse or tarragon and use a really creamy canned coconut milk like this one for the last part.

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52, Food, Kids, Life, photography, snapshots, Yarn Crafts
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just the two of us

For months now, Galen has been wanting to take me to see all of the special places they visited during the nature program he attended last year.  We started talking about it in winter and decided it would be best to wait until spring.  Time after time, something came up; illness, weather, scheduling conflicts.  Finally one night I told Steve, “That’s it, tomorrow we are going.  This is the most important thing I can do with this day.”  And go we did, albeit four full hours later than I intended, leaving everyone else to fend for themselves at home.

I’ve been jokingly referring to it as our immune boosting trip.  We stopped at a friends garden on our way to munch on some rose hips (very high in vitamin C).  Once in the woods we gathered ripe elderberries to snack on (general immune support) and Galen built a little fire on which to prepare us some hemlock needle tea (also high in vitamin C).  Between that, the fresh air and all that good ole’ vitamin D, I figure we were pretty thoroughly bolstered up.  The pleasant company and laughter probably didn’t hurt either.

I have to say, it took every last bit of everything I had in me to make that trek, but it was worth it.  I know it meant so very much to him, and being there with him, just glowing with happiness, meant the world to me as well.

Fact: the start of the (home) school year along with our various commitments and new schedules is kind of kicking my backside all over town at the moment.  I want to be posting here with more regularity, but as with our hike, other things keep cropping up to prevent me.  Things are going well, except I’m not sleeping nearly enough.  I read something the other day (I have no idea where!) about how if you find yourself up at 12:30 trying to put together lesson plans, then something is out of whack with life and it’s time to address it.  It’s not that I don’t see the wisdom in this, it’s just that, well, when else is everything going to get done?

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Herbs, Kids, Life, Mothering, snapshots
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32/52, 33/52, 34/52

Some how there were very few pictures of Galen the last several weeks?  It happens that way sometimes, where one child isn’t represented for a while.  At other times there will be a ridiculous surplus of photos of that very same child (see the post below!).

Some highlights: A tree fort in progress, late season sheering, a first tooth lost, berry picking in her new favorite hat, the joy of a new play space, and a tiny girl who continues to climb into or onto everything she can find.

Mastitis is the ailment of the week.  It’s just been a constant barrage since the beginning of June. I’m starting to have serious concerns about the abilities of my immune system.

I’ve been watching talks given by Shefali Tsabary on YouTube.  There is great strength there.  I plan on checking our library for her books.

I wanted to thank all of the people who have commented on this post.  I was truly touched by your observations and kind words.  These days, for the most part, there are only a few people who comment regularly here.  Sometimes I feel like I’m mostly just talking out loud to myself.  It was nice to be reminded that there are other people out there, busy people like me, who don’t always have the time or the desire to make their presence known, but who none the less, are still appreciative of this space.

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52, Books, building, Kids, Life, photography, snapshots
6 Replies