Help in the kitchen

Great blue herons to the rescue

We conquered the sleep-deprived grumpies today by getting out into nature.  (Is it just us, or do full moons drastically affect sleep in your house, too?)

A friend recently told us about a hike we had to take, to a great-blue-heron rookery, from a downtown neighborhood, of all places!

The last time we went (a few weeks ago), we saw the herons building their nests.  Today, Lucy and I returned and found them all sitting on the nests.

It's so bizarre to see these big huge birds perched high in the trees like that!

Right next door to the herons is a bald eagle, also nesting.

It's a truly amazing sight.

Closer to earth, we saw a garter snake,

 a tuft of unidentified fur (a mystery to ponder), lots of animal holes, big fat bumblebees, some butterflies, red-winged blackbirds, wood ducks, and heard many, many different bird calls.

 It was amazing to see that the brown woods we'd visited so recently was now lush and green. (And completely full of poison ivy!  We kept our bodies small and centered on the path.)

Later, we went out to dinner with friends, followed by dessert and dandelion-blowing in a little park in the center of our town.

And when bedtime came and went by an hour, with no sign of sleep, I got Lucy back out of bed and into the car and we went in search of the "supermoon."  We caught glimpses of it through the trees in all its huge orange glory, and continued looking for a good viewing spot as it rose, lightened, and got hidden by clouds.

It was well worth the extra-late bedtime.

My best cure for a difficult day--take it outside and breathe in the wonders of nature.

Here

We're here.
 
We're doing our usual things. 

The computer and camera have not been cooperating.  Life has been hectic.  I don't understand how to use this new blogger (please excuse the mess).

But things are starting to look sunnier.
Perhaps you'll hear more from me soon?

Green

Well. I kind of fell off the face of the blogging earth, didn't I? I knew I was really off when I missed the Yarn Along, twice. (Love the Yarn Along.) I don't know what got into me, but maybe the green I'm seeing all around will help bring back whatever I've lost.

Snowdrops in the receeding snow.

The vintage St. Patrick's Day cards I hung in my kitchen:

And best of all, a package in the mail (not green, though its contents were):

I won!

Thank you, Bley, for your beautiful work and your generosity!

More strategies for rainy days

Rainy day strategy #2: Wear good gear.
Ok, this should be obvious. But I'm surprised at how often it's not. I see kids trying to play but getting miserable and cold in their soggy, not-warm-enough, leaky clothing. I only recently discovered the existence of rain pants. What a brilliant thing! With those, a good hat (or hood), and rain boots, a kid can be covered head to toe and splash to their hearts' content. I'm also a big fan of snow suits, which in spring become "mud suits." That's Lucy wearing her lightest-weight snowsuit above; perfect for a cool rainy spring day (and I'm still loving those Stonz boots for her!). Much worse than kids not dressed for the weather ('cause many of them don't really mind being wet), is parents who simply don't want to be out in the rain themselves and so keep their kids from enjoying outdoor play. Why? They're not dressed for it themselves. This is how I look when I take the kids out to play in the rain:

What? You say I'm not fashionable? That my men's rain suit is a few sizes too large? It's true. But I'm also the mom who can play outside in the rain for hours, sit on the wet ground when I get tired, and pick up a muddy child who needs some comforting without a moment's thought to my clothes. Mamas, if you don't have rain gear and a snowsuit, get thee to a thrift store and buy some! I swear, it will completely transform your attitude toward the weather.

Rainy day strategy #3: Bring out art supplies.

Sometimes, a child is feeling grumpy about playing outside in the chill and rain. That's when I like to pull out something interesting to distract them from their (often temporary) discomfort. Art supplies are one of my favorite rainy-day tricks. Chalk, paint, and clay are all easily used on a rainy day and are transformed by the rain into a new experience. Look how brilliant the chalk colors are on a wet driveway!

Chalk. Rain pants. They seem like such simple little things. But if it's the thing that gets you outside on a rainy day, it opens up a whole world of possibility for discoveries about the joy of nature in all weather.

Play along with us during the month of April for Children and Nature Awareness Month by posting a picture of your child(ren) each day enjoying the outdoors! Get outdoors and climb a tree! The list of players is growing every day; check it out here.

If you're going to be wet anyway...

I don't intend a full post for every day of the (newly re-named) Great Outdoor Challenge. For the most part, I'll probably just add a photo to end of another post. But today's rainy weather got me thinking about how often I'm asked about taking kids out in "bad" weather (I don't like using that judgemental term, however; I prefer the Norwegian philosophy of "there's no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing.") I thought it might be nice to share a few of my strategies here.


It rained this morning. Most of the parents hadn't expected it, so the kids didn't have all their rain gear. I have boots for borrowing, so we geared up as well as we could. Today I chose one of my favorite rain strategies: if you're going to be wet anyway, might as well go to water. We headed for the little stream at the end of our block. There, the kids threw rocks into the water (or rolled, as size dictated!), searched for "treasure" (special rocks, bits of glass, fallen tree buds), waded in the water, and climbed fallen trees. We returned covered in mud, pockets full of treasure, happy and tired.




Play along with us during the month of April for Children and Nature Awareness Month by posting a picture of your child(ren) each day enjoying the outdoors! Get outdoors and climb a tree!

Get Outdoors Challenge

(Lucy plays in the sandbox)

Back in the 70s, my sisters and I had free range of our neighborhood. All the neighborhood children convened in the small patch of woods in the middle of our block, where we played for hours, swinging on vines, climbing trees, using long sticks to "clean" a "puddle" of the old leaves that had settled there (as an adult, I wonder, was that a vernal pool we were disturbing?) We walked a few blocks away to a big wooded area bordering a big river: we were to avoid the river, but were allowed to wade in the stream that fed it and spent whole days building dams, creating imaginary worlds, and sometimes falling through the ice into the stream (and solving that problem without any hovering adults.)

Today, it's the rare child who's sent out the back door and told not to return until dinner. Children learn in school about environmental issues, but does it really have any deep meaning without a long-term passionate personal relationship with nature?

Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods and chairman of the Children and Nature Network, has declared April to be Children and Nature Awareness Month. Lisa, of 5 Orange Potatoes , has created a challenge for the month: go outside with your children every day, and document it with a photo.


(a 5-year-old who's mastered chicken-catching)

If you've been reading here for a while, you know we're already outside every day. I am a huge proponent of taking children outdoors daily, in all weather, for large blocks of unstructured play time. April seems like an awfully easy month to do this: I can hardly stand to come inside with the weather as beautiful as it is! (This morning, we were out from 8 until 9, and then again from 9:30 until 12. And then back out again after nap.) But I wanted to join the challenge, anyway, because although I tell people "we go out every day," I find that I'm often surprised by questions like "you went out today?" and "what did you do outside for 3 hours?" And I can't tell you how many times I've heard family-child-care providers say they don't go out because it's too hard to plan around varied nap schedules (here's my solution to that), or because it's too much to get all the kids ready and out the door. Well, I'm here to say it is possible to get 6 kids ages 0 to 5 out the door on a daily basis. I like the idea of a month of daily photos to document what that looks like.


(Lucy shakes a sapling to ring the wind chimes hung there for the children)

So, let's just pretend that I managed all my 30 days of beauty photos before spring (I tried!) and I'll start fresh with this challenge: an outdoors-with-kids photo every day in April. I'll share Lucy photos and some of the other kids (although those photos will be cropped to protect their identities, as they're not my children).

Here's to getting off the computer and getting outside!

(Scroll on down; I posted twice today for 2 challenges.)

Happy Easter!

We're home, resting, after a beautiful, joyful Easter full of good food, good friends, and play.

Our dining room table, set for Easter:


with eggs from yesterday's dying party:


and Lucy's place at the table:

(with a bunny from Granny last Easter, new all over again, and a book from our shelves that she hadn't read yet but will love right now, and a basket ready for today's egg hunt.)

The Easter bunny must have heard me yesterday, because look what was waiting on the steps:


We went to a lovely backyard potluck party. There must have been a very big bunny delivering eggs there:
.

We played until we were exhausted:
.

Hope your day was as beautiful!

Getting ready...

I started the day with a quick change for our spring table:


And then it was off to spend the day with our friends, Tim and Eric, for our annual egg-decorating party. Eric arranges the table oh-so-beautifully:


And cooks up dozens and dozens of eggs:


We look to Martha for inspiration:


Tim made this egg (I hinted that perhaps the Easter bunny might want to put it in my basket?):


Hope your day was lovely, too!

Salad in sight!

It's been raining, hard, for three days. We've been out (we always go out), but not really been spending a lot of time in the yard. It was wonderful to take a tour of the gardens today and see what changes the rain has brought. That's the lemon balm, above. We planted it last year in this leaky watering can. A ton of the soil seems to have disappeared, and yet, this plant is happy. In fact, it's coming along much more quickly than the other herbs in that bed; I think the metal can acts as a sort of greenhouse, keeping it nice and warm.

Oh, I do love perennials! I began gardening 12 years ago with a large flower border. I couldn't see myself spending the time, money, and energy involved to fill it with annuals; if I was going to invest all that, I wanted flowers that would last! And what a treat it was to have that garden come back year after year, better each time.

For years, that was it; our yard is much too shady for vegetables. Or so I thought! Then I heard about forest gardening, and it seemed like the perfect solution for me: works in shade and includes perennials for lazy gardeners like me. So I've slowly been working on incorporating more and more food plants into our yard, keeping the principles of forest gardening loosely in my mind.

Now, imagine us at the tail end of the winter, eating stored food all these months. We've been eating well, don't get me wrong. But it's been a long time since we've tasted fresh fruit, or crispy veggies, or greens. There are no frozen berries left. No onions, even. Imagine the thrill when we wander around the yard and find this:

(wild leeks!)

and this:

(sorrel!)

It's just a bit. Enough for one meal, in a while, when the plants get bigger. But it's something. The seeds I planted haven't even poked above the soil yet. But my "forest garden" is already producing food. And it'll only get better every year.
...
Don't forget to enter my giveaway for a copy of Spring; I'm choosing a winner on Friday. Your chances of winning are really good!

Spring in a basket and on the table

Spring is here, and this week, you can see it beginning to show inside our house. I spruced up our little seasonal table with a flower-sprigged embroidered cloth, some spring books, a nest full of wooden eggs, and a crocus from the garden. By the end of the day, a neighbor had dropped off a big bouquet of daffodils, which really brightened it up:



(The books shown are Countdown to Spring by Janet Schulman and Meilo So and Spring by Gerda Muller.)

And I stowed away the winter books from our basket and replaced them with spring books. Two of the boys made us a new sign:



Clearly, we must live where it's winter for most of the year, because I have about a million winter books and about 10 spring books! I have a ton of gardening books, but it doesn't feel like time for those yet. In there now are:

Spring is Here! by Lois Lenski
This book is requested every single day, multiple times. Its text is so quaint and almost sickly sweet, but the pictures are so appealing, as is the feeling it brings of a simpler time. Today, the kids asked "what's hopscotch?" while reading it, which led into a whole morning's play.

Galoshes by Kit Allen
This is a favorite of my youngest children, most of whom can "read" it for themselves ("Galoshes. Shirt. Overalls.") There is something appealing about that bald round-headed kid. Lucy signs "shirt" and "hat" as we read and acts out "stomp" and "sleep."

It's Spring! by Samantha Berger and Melissa Sweet.
I cannot resist that joyful bunny on the cover, and apparently, neither can the kids. Simple and happy.

Spring Story by Jill Barklem
I adore the detailed world Jill Barklem created in the illustrations of these Brambly Hedge books. What I find fascinating is that it's a 5-year-old boy who most often sits and studies this book or asks for it to be read. I'm so glad that it's not "for girls only."

Wonders of Nature by Jane Werner Watson and Eloise Wilkins
This is one of the books I just found at the book sale. I was so thrilled! I love Eloise Wilkins' children; they remind me of favorite books from my childhood, and of Lucy's face, and of an innocence I want to preserve for young children. And the wonder and reverence for nature in this book is just delicious.

Maple Sugaring Time in Vermont by Lula A. Shaver and Topsy Samuelson
A friend bought this for me when we started sugaring a few years ago.

Wake Up, It's Spring! by Lisa Campbell Ernst
Again, a favorite with the toddlers.

Spring is Here by Taro Gomi
This book actually encompasses all the seasons, but focuses mostly on spring. The illustrations of the calf are particularly wonderful: large and simple, but with a complex twist the older children notice: the spots on the cow are also the snow melting away on the land.

Bear Wants More by Karma Wilson and Jane Chapman
Nothing can compare to the first and best one in this series, Bear Snores On. But this one is sweet, too, and if you love the first one, it's fun to see bear and his friends again in their other stories.

Tom and Pippo and the Washing Machine by Helen Oxenbury
Tom and Pippo are so adorable, and their adventures so familiar to toddlers. Here, they get muddy on a puddly day, and are separated while Pippo is washed.

Alfie's Feet by Shirley Hughes
Another book about rain puddles; and the importance of new shoes to toddlers, and the simple activities of daily life. We really love these Alfie books.

Over in the Meadow by John Langstaff and Feodor Rojankovsky
This folk song is not specifically spring-y, but the illustrations in this gorgeous rendition remind me of late spring days.

The ABC Bunny by Wanda G'ag
Again, not necessarily "spring," but bunnies seem to go with spring, don't they? This alphabet is unique in that each lettered item contributes to an ongoing story. And of course, the illustrations are wonderful!

The Golden Egg Book by Margaret Wise Brown and Leonard Weisgard
I've never understood the (gorgeous) cover of this book: despite how it looks, it's not about Easter or even a decorated egg, but about a plain duck egg. I almost didn't take it out for the group, thinking "Easter," but if that's not your thing, don't worry--it's not! I just adore the illustrations in this book with their sweet animals in egg-shaped spaces framed by flower-decorated borders. And, as always, Margaret Wise Brown's storytelling captivates children.

Missing from my basket (because, um, there are a LOT of books in this house, and my nice organization is currently all messed up and I haven't found these yet!):

The Happy Day by Ruth Krauss and Marc Simont
Oh, I have to read this sweet, joyful book now, before the melting snow is a distant memory! Where is it?

Mud by Mary Lyn Ray
Gotta love the idea that as soon as the snow melts, you're going to sink naked feet into gooey, squishy, wonderful mud!

Annie and the Wild Animals by Jan Brett
Again, best read while the snow's still melting away. This early full-on spring caught me off guard and unprepared!

The Story of the Root Children by Sibylle Von Olfers
For magic and fantasy.

30 days of beauty, day 14: signs of life at the edge of the woods