Tag Archives: grandchildren

A visit from Maggie and Pearl.

family, food and cooking, summer, , ,

I’m still enjoying the afterglow of having Pearl and her daughter Maggie here for a couple of days last week. Just we three, three generations, happy to be together, however briefly. I don’t think I mentioned at the time that Maggie came by herself for two nights last May; on her way home from college she stopped here.

This time they were headed back in the other direction. We shopped a little bit for things she’ll need in her dorm suite, and Maggie took her car for an oil change. We cooked a lot, and it is so fun to cook with helpers who go on to appreciate everything on the table. Other times, Pearl very wisely suggested sitting outdoors with our tea or whatever, and there is nothing like being in the garden with people I love.

One afternoon Maggie told us mysteriously that she was going to run a quick errand, and when she came back she was bringing three It’s It ice cream sandwiches. It seems these treats aren’t available except in California.

The weather was fairly warm, but Maggie and Pearl had come from a hotter and more humid Wisconsin, so no one was bothered much. We ate the goodies on the patio, at dusk. It typically cools off here even before the sun sets, so to be gifted a rare balmy evening, coordinated perfectly with our desire to sit out in the most leisurely way — that was the icing on the cake, or the ice cream between the oatmeal cookies.

There had been cake, too, which I’d baked beforehand in honor of both their birthdays, belatedly. I used a Lemon Buttermilk Sheet Cake recipe from America’s Test Kitchen, which I found on someone else’s site, and changed just a little bit. It used the zest and juice of three whole lemons, and was the best lemon cake I’ve ever eaten. I forgot to take a picture, and I sent the leftovers along with Maggie.

Maggie got the idea to make lavender lemonade: She used several lemons from my tree, and dried lavender flowers I had sitting on the kitchen counter. It was just the right amount of sugar, and the nicest accent of lavender — yum! I sent her back to school with a few more lemons, and a lavender plant in a pot, for her balcony. So it was a pretty lemony visit all around, with plenty of sweetness to bring out the flavor.

Joaquin Sorolla, My Wife and Daughters in the Garden

Fairytales and Fireflies

books, family, weather, , , , , , ,

Today the boys rode their coaster bikes in the alley behind the house. No cars came while they cruised up and down. Kate brought out a plate of apple slices, and I showed her the rhododendrons that are starting to bloom and peek through the thick jungle of other flowers. It was getting hot, and soon we were back indoors.

Raj and I got to the end of Stuart Little, and the same day both boys cozied up to me after their baths while I read the last of the seven stories in Fairy Tales for Brave Children. That book contains works from the Grimm Brothers, Hans Christian Andersen, and other folk tale collections. Tonight we read “Vasillisa,” from Russia, which is a Cinderella sort of story, but with a doll who helps the disdained sister to do mountains of work.

I like the illustrations by Scott Plumbe. The one below is of The Selfish Giant, after he repents of his unkindness to children, and is lying in the snow covered in honor with out of season flowers. That tale is by Oscar Wilde.

It’s time for me to leave my dear family and return to California. I was really happy that a thunderstorm descended  this evening about dinnertime. Within a few minutes of the loud thunder and lightning flashes, the street out front was a river. A few of us stood on the porch to take in the show; I was amazed at how warm the air was.

But then the rain starting blowing sideways at us, and we went in again. It wasn’t long before the clouds had cleared and the “river” ran into the drains, taking the heat of the earth with it. By 9:00 we were sitting on the porch in 20-degree cooler air, and watching fireflies. What a lovely ending to my East Coast sojourn.

 

Tending the boys and the garden.

grandchildren, other gardens, summer, , , , ,

This morning I walked to the neighborhood recreation center with the boys to play with their stomp rocket. We had a lot of fun, until suddenly the grass was itchy and they were hot and/or tired. We headed home to have a cold juice and play in the basement for a while.

After that we made paper fans, played War with a deck of cards, put together a puzzle of the world, played with trains, and made some progress on a large Lego project that is a bit too hard for their ages. Two Lego workers had only one tiny walkie-talkie between them, which didn’t bother the toys, but caused the boys to fight over it. I slipped it into my pocket to make peace.

In the afternoon Tom went out back to tend the little garden, and we all joined him. I identified a few plants with my Seek app — Scarlet Bee Balm is a favorite with the bees, who taste its value deep inside the narrow tubes that are its petals, even though the flowers generally look a little worse for wear. I put my nose down close and found that flower to be the sweetest of the collection. I’ve never grown it in my own garden, but I would like to.

One prickly looking plant was the Carolina Horsenettle, Solanum carolinense, not a true nettle but a member of the nightshade family, which has set fruit that looks like tomatoes. Horsenettles are evidently all toxic.

Carolina Horsenettle
anise hyssop

The whole back garden seems to have been planted with bees in mind: anise hyssop and echinacea were attracting three sorts of bees as well, and in the heat, the bees were moving fast. But I managed to take a few pictures!

Scarlet Bee Balm

She visits her garden… sometimes.

church, food and cooking, humor, 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….