Category Archives: play

She visits her garden… sometimes.

church, food and cooking, my garden, play, , , ,

I wish I could be a better gardener, the kind who visits her garden each and every day for at least a few minutes, to pull one weed, or sniff a flower, or pinch aphids. Today I got my hands into the dirt and into the slimy fountain, and accomplished the setting out of these starts I bought a week ago. I checked on my worm bucket and found the worms happy. I picked all the Swiss chard from two mature plants and cooked it up into a recent favorite: Extra Garlicky Chard with Cannellini Beans; this time I threw in some dried tomato bits as well.

The last two weeks have been full to bursting with all the best sorts of non-garden busyness. Two book clubs had discussions in the same week. At a sister parish a baby was baptized, and another baby soon to be born into our parish was showered.

One day I drove to Sacramento and Davis to visit people, and another day I took care of two girls, A&Z, who played house upstairs and down, using all my dress-up collection, every doll and doll blanket and stuffie and pillow, toy animals and Playmobil…. Most of it they dragged over by the (cold) woodstove and set up their house with the two loveseats for beds, and played going-to-sleep.

This all may sound mundane to many of you, but to me it is unusual; never in my family or my children’s families have we birthed two girls in a row in the same household, and when you have mostly boys, or girls five or more years apart, the children play differently. I have been fascinated to watch these little homemakers.

For Valentine’s Day my grandchildren in Colorado sent me a box full of heart cookies that they had baked, redolent of butter and love ❤ They didn’t last long!

One day I spent experimenting with red dye to color eggs for Pascha. As some of you know, because I asked you directly for advice, I offered to take on the project this year for our Orthodox parish, which gives out about 200 red eggs on Pascha night. I wanted to try different dyes, colors of eggs and methods ahead of time so that during Holy Week I would have my plan firmly in mind, and the best dye on hand. I have yet to write up all that I learned so far, but I accomplished my goal that day, and also ended up with quite a few eggs, in various shades of red and pink, to eat in the next week.

I have been doing at least a little bit of my Purging-Organizing Project every day. I took a carload to the thrift store, and keep dumping pounds of papers into the recycling bin. The  more of that I do, the more fun it is.

My church Book Group #2, which I might call the Wednesday Book Group, to distinguish it from our Women’s Book Group, is reading C.S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy, also called the Ransom Trilogy. Though I read it two years ago, or maybe because the story is fairly fresh in my mind, I am really happy to have an excuse to get into it again, and have a really diverse group to discuss it with, too.

There are always so many things I want to write about, regarding my reading and thinking. But less and less do I feel the liberty to spend the necessary time to think that much — so I am considering replacing at least some of my blogging with barking….

The purples are out.

my garden, play, winter, , ,

Cold weather has returned with the sunshine, and the fountain was frozen this morning. I have two little girls here all day making good use of my toys and the playhouse. It’s interesting to see the teamwork of these females in making a home of the playhouse. The typical use that my mostly boy grandchildren make of it revolves around “cooking” with whatever they can find, but my guests requested blankets and pillows and stuffies, and they created a cozy nest. It was cold enough that they needed their puffy jackets, but they asked to go barefoot.

Up at Pippin’s place where the temperatures were a little colder midday, 40 degrees, my grandchildren chose to eat lunch outdoors:

In my garden, the rain and sun combined to bring out — the flowers! Well, a few flowers… the purple, ground-hugging sort so far. But I see some taller iris buds. In February things will start to get exciting!

From sunrise to sunset.

family, mountains, play, , , ,

On Saturday we left the house early to get to the hot air balloon festival before the sun came up. Smokey the Bear was the first to get inflated and lift off. This is the same event I attended with Pippin seven years ago, and most of the balloons were the same, too.

In the middle of the day we took naps, and tended the garden. That is, Pippin gardened and I took pictures.

Late afternoon we took the camp stove and makings for Frito Pie up on the volcanic peak of Mount Shasta, to the Old Ski Bowl, 7800 ft. elevation (The top is almost twice that high). We ate our picnic dinner and stayed for the sunset.

The children took me up a ways to a place among the rocks that they call the Sunset Cafe, and we pretend feasted on plates of salad, strawberry bread and chocolatey desserts, artfully arranged from whatever vegetable and mineral materials could be found lying nearby:

We gazed off toward the west…

And when it was starting to get dark, both Ivy and Jamie fell within about ten minutes of each other, and cried for a while in pain from the shock of sharp rocks slamming into knees and ribs. Jamie had tripped over the giant rock loaf of “strawberry bread.” But they were soon done with that and we set off down the mountain again.

Today was full. This is the first year Ivy didn’t have a themed cake, and the first year she helped make her birthday pie.

Everything has been delicious.

Popsicles and pastimes of summer.

children's books, family, nature, play, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

“Grandma, look at that wasp!” This colorful insect was resting near us on a geranium leaf.

“I’m impressed that you know that is a wasp, Ivy. Lots of people call all bees and wasps ‘bees.'”

“Bees have hair,” she informed me, “and wasps don’t.” The supposed wasp had floated away to a lamb’s ear flower, but not before I’d snapped its picture, wondering why it was so lazy and unthreatening, unlike our ubiquitous yellow jackets who seem only to rest when they perch on the rim of my fountain for a drink. We zoomed in on my picture to see that indeed, it was pretty bald — but maybe not entirely. After looking at more pictures of wasps online, I’ve decided this is very likely not a wasp after all, but a syrphid or hover fly. It’s more like a fly in its shape and wings, and pictures of syrphid flies came up as “yellow jacket look-alikes.” On the other hand, this insect approaching the salvia has more the look of a wasp, with its legs dangling down:

But as an example of hairy bees, I showed Ivy a picture of my favorite bee of all, which you might have seen here recently in a slightly different pose. She definitely has the darling fuzzy hairs:

It’s always fun for me if the grandchildren are visiting during hot weather. Popsicles and water play and the play house keep them happy outdoors, where I can play also, doing little garden tasks and walking back and forth to the clothesline with the towels and swimsuits. And many pairs of shorts, because Jamie was too tidy a boy to endure having popsicle drips drying, as I thought harmlessly, on his clothes. Eventually I gave him a bib, a largish bowl for his lap, and a spoon, so he could enjoy the treat to the fullest.

When the sun is baking all the air and sucking up moisture, I think it the most fun ever to wash a little shirt or whatever in the kitchen sink and hang it on the line. One shirt didn’t get that far, but dried in no time draped over a pomegranate bush.

I clipped my fast-growing butternut vines to the trellis, and swept the patio while the children sat in the old galvanized trough we call the Duck Pond, named for its use in another time and place, keeping three ducks happy in what was mainly a chicken pen.

Ivy played in the “pond” by herself one afternoon while Jamie napped, and I sat nearby rereading passages in Middlemarch. She found the tiniest spider floating in the water and held it on her finger, wondering if it were dead. “Why don’t you put it on a hydrangea leaf, and maybe it will revive,” I suggested. Of course, I took a picture of it on the leaf, because neither of us could see the minute creature very well with our eyes only.

When I zoomed in on my photo, it revealed a flower with eight petals. 🙂

At the patio table a few feet away I trimmed my six Indigo Spires salvia starts that I had propagated from a branch I accidentally broke off several months ago; I’m reluctant to transplant them to 4″ pots during this hot month, but that’s probably what they need…

Having gained confidence about African violets from a Martha Stewart video that I watched a few weeks ago, I tackled my plant that had grown two baby plants, one of which was already blooming. The babies I managed to cut off with roots attached, and potted them up snugly.

 

We thought to walk to the library, but the tires on the Bob stroller were too flat and I didn’t feel like pumping them up, so we drove. It happened to be a craft day there, and Ivy wanted to do all the things — but first, to design a Loch Ness monster from clay, because she said she had recently watched a video about that creature. Jamie patiently held the monster and observed, while she went on to make a jeweled crown and a flag.

 

The children actually looked up unprompted into the dome of the kids’ room at the library, and we talked about the stories pictured. I picked out some books to borrow but wasn’t thrilled with the three we read later at home. What I did love was a book someone gave me recently — was it one of you? — titled Joseph Had a Little Overcoat, by Simms Taback. I read it twice to the children, because they liked it, too.

Joseph seems to be a Jewish man, and his overcoat gets tattered, so he cuts it down to a jacket, and when that gets overpatched, into a scarf, and so on. When he ends up with nothing at the end, it seems he doesn’t exactly have nothing after all. Good-natured resourcefulness and humor make for a charming story. I loved the ending, and the proverbs and sayings, and the many unique outfits and beard styles and colorful details. Joseph looks like this every time he realizes that his garment needs altering>>

Some of the artwork includes photographs in collage. I think if I were Jewish I might enjoy the book even more because I suspect that the photographs might be of famous people pertinent to Jewish history and culture.

A typical proverb quoted in a frame on the wall of Joseph’s house,
showing barely over an inch square on the page:

Over four days I read lots more books, like In Grandma’s Attic, The Ugly Duckling, Finn Family Moomintroll, a Thomas the Tank Engine collection (not my favorite, but a chance for Jamie to share with me his vast knowledge about that series), and one that I’ve read more than once to them via FaceTime, How Pizza Came to Queens. I got out my collection of costume jewelry, much of which used to be my grandma’s, and which I keep in her broken down jewelry box; and my small group of Moomin figures, and puzzles that are many decades old, but The Best and treasured.

One morning we cleaned in and around the playhouse
before eating a breakfast of sourdough pancakes in the garden:

With more washing up afterward…

As I was showing Ivy some rosemary and oregano she might pick for pretend cooking in the playhouse, I glanced up and gasped so that she started. “My milkweed bloomed!” She looked on admiringly and I told her that I had seen the same species of milkweed growing wild near her house up north.

Ivy and Jamie departed with their mama this morning, and I’ve been transitioning back into my quieter life. They all were the best company for kicking off summer.