~Iain and Elijah spotted a pileated woodpecker from bed this morning

~breakfast plans were altered in an attempt to allow Goosey to sleep later.  I ended up serving leftover chicken dippers and acorn squash with maple syrup (the later having been cooked in the crockpot overnight).

He says, “look with my tape measure, I can hang from the ceiling!”

~the neighbor’s cat, a frequent visitor here and much beloved, especially by the small fry, had an unfortunate run in with a porcupine this morning.  We suspect it was the rather portly fellow that sometimes comes out to nibble things, around the edges of our yard at dusk.  Iain and Elijah discovered her in her rather prickly state and I sent them at once to fetch the neighbor.  They helped get her home and stayed for the de-quilling.  And then a bit longer still to visit with the frogs in the pond.  All is well with her now.  She came back to play just after.  And that was our excitement for the day.

~I got a roast and golden beets into the crockpot early on in the day so that I could easily feed dinner to different people at different times again tonight.

~We’re trying to identify this skull we found in the woods, but I keep forgetting to pick up some more books at the library to help us out.

~The weather was very fickle today, one minute being bright and sunny and the next threatening rain.  We hit a clear patch and decided to high-tail it to the woods to try to identify wildflowers, but before I could quite get everything ready to go, the sky opened up and it started raining, snowing and sleeting all at the same time.  All three boys were playing baseball in the yard at the time, waiting for me to finish up a few things.  Galen looked up and said, “I think it might be time to roll out the tarp!” (a reference to how they would go about protecting the field for a major league game)

~We settled for guide books by our own fireside instead.~mid-morning snack: apple and collard smoothie

~Elijah is growing cacti from seed, he has 8 of them so far.  Iain is attempting to grow pitcher plants.  They have been planted in a pot in the refrigerator for the last 5 weeks.  In another week he can take them out, then they might germinate in 1-3 months.

~lunch: catfish with leftover asparagus soup and kale salad

fetching wood

~The older ones are off even earlier today.  It’s choir day and they and rehearsing for their last concert of the year.  My parents a making a special trip up to see this one and everyone is excited.

~Another night of just me and the littles.  There are a lot of nights like this at this time of year, but it’s a short period.  Starting next week there will be baseball games and we’ll all be going out several nights a week!

~We three home bodies headed out to the garden to try to prepare some space for more cold weather veggies.  Until we were forced back in by a heavy hail shower.  Funny how the forecast was for little to no precipitation today!

~Galen has been looking for more challenging “work” lately.  A bit of woodworking together tonight.  We’ve started building a peg loom.

~After dinner II, which took place at a reasonable time for once, the older ones went to their bed’s to read and Steve and I curled up to watch an episode of Mad Men on Netflix.

~I’m really not sure how much longer I’ll be able to resist making myself a circle skirt.

~I’m almost done the second sleeve on Elijah’s birthday sweater!