Independence Days Challenge: garden in pots

Lavender, ready to be harvested and dried.

Time again for Sharon's Independence Day's Challenge:

1. Plant something:
The kids and I planted a garden-in-pots on top of our second driveway, in one of the only tiny bits of frequent sunniness we have. I didn't have nearly enough pots for all the seeds we wanted to plant (our planned-for guerrila-gardening raised bed has been abandoned for now, as the location proved to be much shadier than we'd remembered.) But we made do with what we had, and are trying Kentucky Wonder beans, Moonglow tomatoes, Blondkopfchen tomatoes, Straight Eight cucumbers, Double Yield cucumbers, German chamomile, and Boston Yarrow squash (all of these go toward the Growing Challenge). It rained most of the week, and the beans and chamomile are already sprouting.

Chamomile sprouting. Teensy tiny seeds plus toddler hands equals very crowded seedlings!

2. Harvest something:
Eggs. Foraged elder flowers.

The herb garden, picked over by children and chickens (notice the nearly-leafless comfrey--you can tell how tall the chickens are by how high its stalk is bare).

3. Preserve something:
Froze 2 qts spinach. Drying elder flowers.

Our first tomatoes appeared this week.

5. Preparation and storage:
Added several jars of peanut butter and coconut oil to the basement, trying to restore our depleted supplies.

My potted Meyer lemon tree has doubled in size with all this rain.

7. Eat the food:
I finally made kale chips (well, I've made them in the past, but I finally made them without burning them...) and the kids loved them. Sure to become a regular lunch item. I used up some of our many frozen-last-year red peppers to make a roasted red pepper sauce for spaghetti. The kids and I ate bread with radish butter and salt (yummy for those of us who dared try it. Gotta do the 10-times-more thing for a few of them...). We're eating lots of greens, of course: salad, swiss chard, bok choy and (new at the market this week)--broccoli!

Crafting rags for Craft Hope

Craft Hope is back on my sidebar, as I'm joining in again for project 8--making rags to assist in the clean-up of marine animals affected by the Gulf oil spill.

Making rags seems like such a minor thing in the face of such an incredibly devastating event. And yet...it's something. It's something concrete and proactive and easy. It may not make much of a difference, but even if I only manage to help save one animal, it will be better than sitting here fretting about it all.

I've cut up an old towel, and will be looking through receiving blankets and burp cloths for more rag-worthy material tonight (the rags will be discarded, so I'm going for quantity over quality here). I'm thinking about what else I might do to personalize them a bit--I thought maybe a stamped "thank you" on each one might be nice for the workers who'll be using them.

This is the easiest Craft Hope project yet. If you've been thinking about joining in, but haven't yet, now's the time!

And because what's a post without a photo?, here's Lucy, doing her part for marine life, too (she's feeding a seagull a sea urchin, after observing seagulls smash and eat their food on the rocks while we were on vacation).

Late-spring nature table

A visit to the river yesterday resulted in a pair of temporary visitors to our nature table:

See the muddy water there on the right? When the mud settles, you can see two teeny little fish swimming around in there. We're observing them, and drawing them in our nature journals, and trying to identify them with the help of a favorite book.

Here's our late-spring table as it stands right now:

--A blooming milkweed.
--A birds' nest we found on the ground a few years ago, holding a painted egg that was a gift to Lucy.
--A beaver-chewed stick and a stick etched with bug trails, found on walks with the kids (one boy said, on finding the bug stick: "give this to Lise; she likes bug tracks.")
--Friday's Flowers.
--A shadow box containing a dead baby snapping turtle and a snapping-turtle egg. We found these--with the clues that told the story--on our vacation. The turtle was by the side of the road, baked in the sun. I looked around for a nest, and found one--full of ripped-open eggs with cooked yolks! All around were dog footprints. We imagine the dog dug up the eggs, which baked in the sun, and one turtle escaped, but couldn't make it on its own. So for now, it's part of Lucy's book and our nature table. Though the children weren't with us when we found it, they love the story and delight in telling their parents about it.
--A beautiful piece of birch bark from a hike.
--Our temporary visitors.

Nearby, on the coffee table, is a tray of our beach treasures, sort of an extension of this little display.

What treasures have been added to your nature table recently?

Independence Days challenge: first visit to the farm

(my big huge swiss chard "plot"--but hey, I grew them from seed in my shady yard; I'm proud)

Time again for Sharon's Independence Day's Challenge:

1. Plant something:
Beans in a feeding trough atop my driveway.

2. Harvest something:
Eggs. Lettuce. Guomi berries (our first harvest from this planted-last-year bush. Each kid got to taste one.) Chives, lemon balm, thyme, parsley, lovage.

6. Build community food systems:
I went to a town meeting about some nearby fields the town wants to buy, curious about the rumor that part of it might become community gardens. So far, I was just catching up, in my ignorance. But next time, I will be a more vocal advocate.

We went to our first CSA pick up at "our" farm. (In the past, I bartered for food with a organic-farming family in my program, so didn't have need of a CSA; and when that ended, I couldn't get in to the farm I'd chosen, so I stuck with the farmer's market. But I'm thrilled to be there at last.) What an incredible place! We're very excited to meet some of "our people" there--you know, enviro-conscious, local-eating, food-preserving freaks like us. And we're thrilled for Lucy, who gets to hang out weekly with goats, ducks, and crowds of chickens, and to play on the cool play structures they've rigged up for the kids. And me, I get to eat shaved ice with maple syrup while I choose whatever goodies I want to fill my bag! Mmmm. (If I had a spare $1,500, I might have to buy one of those cool machines myself!)

7. Eat the food:
We had a giant bag full of fresh produce this week. What unusual bounty, after the winter! And we bought 6 quarts of strawberries and some asparagus this week, too, so we were in produce heaven. We ate strawberries alone, strawberry muffins, strawberry-oatmeal bake, and strawberry-chard smoothies. We ate roasted asparagus and pasta with asparagus. And fried rice with bok choy, turnips, radishes, and eggs. And green eggs with chard. And stewed rhubarb with honey. Guomi berries off the bush. Lettuce from our garden with dressing made with our herbs.

On Mount Desert Island, the book

Here's a project I'd hoped to finish on vacation.

A big board book for Lucy, about our annual vacation.

I'd packed the blank book, glue, and double-sided tape,

bought new markers...

gathered souvenirs throughout the week...

and found a place where I could send my photos for next-day pick-up.

Their machine was down (after an hour and a half choosing and uploading and registering...).

So it didn't happen on vacation.
But I was able to get to it last night, and Lucy loves it all the same.

I get my blank board books here (I have no connection to this company, just love some of their products).

I am not a scrapbooker (as I'm sure you can see). What I am is a teller of the stories of children's lives. Lucy loves to hear her days told back to her. I designed this book around the stories I thought would stand out most to her about our trip (tossing a seagull feather into flowing water and watching mama run to bring it back, collecting treasures, watching seagulls smash mussels on the rocks, staying in a cottage...). I envision reading it again and again now, to revisit the stories, and then reading it again and again next year, in preparation for that year's trip. My best review would be her demand for "more!"

Crochet on display

Remember my crochet class? It's over now (pooh!). And lo and behold, I actually made something! Several things, in fact. (I've got a new one in the works to show you soon.)

Last night was the annual exhibition at the Hill Institute, where I took my class. It was super hot and sticky, as well as crowded, so we didn't spend as much time looking at everything as I would have liked.

(Eric came with us, and Lucy insisted on holding both his hand and mine. See how hot she was?)
But wow. It was really impressive, all that talent gathered into one place.

One of our favorite exhibits was the handmade canoes. Gorgeous. Someday, Andi and I would love to take that class!

Lucy thought they were pretty cool, too.

The botanical drawings and paintings were another favorite of mine. Observational drawing is something I ask children to do all the time, but it's not something I feel confident doing myself. These were amazing!

Beautiful baskets of all kinds. (Why did "basket-weaving" become a joke of a class somewhere along the line? I'd love to try it.)

Many quilts of all sorts.

Two of my favorites.

The pushed-aside materials in the classrooms were just as beautiful as the displays.

Someday, I'd like to try a hand at one of these looms.

And oh, how I'd love to try hooked rugs (but they wouldn't last a second in this cats-rule house.)

Finally, we came to the crochet display. Sadly, it was the one area that hadn't been arranged beautifully to show off everyone's work. And I have to say, it was clear that mine was the work of an amateur. But still, I was proud to see my things on display. (That's my hat, sweater, and soaker on the left side of the table.)

There were many more exhibits I didn't capture well: furniture making, weaving, painting, knitting (oh, the knitting was incredible!), sewing... I can't wait to take my next class there! What should it be? (Unfortunately, I have to wait until next year. It's Andi's turn to take one next.) Meanwhile, I'm still hooking away whenever I get the chance...

Friday's Flowers: almost too busy to stop and smell the roses

Shew! It's been a hectic week! (Thus the disappearance since Saturday. Sorry about that.) I feel like I haven't stopped moving since we returned from vacation. Lucy and I picked a lovely bouquet for our first meal back, but it died on the dining room table before we sat down there again (and before I took a photo!) The week hurried by so quickly, I didn't pick any more until this evening. Out in the garden, I found we have very little blooming right now. So here's my mini bouquet, in the dying light of the evening, snapped quickly before we dashed out the door again (more on that tomorrow).


Check out other "Friday's Flowers" participants here at FIMBY.