Six

From the very break of day,
Before the children rise and play,
Before the greenness turns to gold,
Tomorrow I'll be six years old. . . 

~ Gateways :: Wynstones :: Traditional 

Our dear boy had a lovely birthday yesterday.  The weather was mild and cloudy, just perfect for enjoying the front porch.  He got a little crossbow, a harmonica, and a trip to the library for his very own library card!  We did our birthday circle inspired by the Wynstones books, including his rainbow bridge story.  Roan wanted to make sure that all the traditions were in place for his big day. 

Willow got a garden girl, to go along with his Pelle, because it was her half-birthday.  Who could pass up such a sweet little chicken in a basket?  We celebrated with Becky and a big clap of thunder.  Truly, I don't think I've ever heard one so near and so LOUD!  Well, that is how he came into this world, anyhow, just ahead of a string of big storms and a tornado. 

Nature School

A certain little boy came smiling into the world this very morning, six years ago.  It's almost time for me to set up the birthday ring and lay out his presents.  He chose our nature school destination this week: The Snail Place.  If I were to guess, I think that it's Roan's favorite place away from home.  He was so glad to be back and to see the place without snow and ice.

The children went straight to work on their den, making "improvements" and adding to their glass bottle collection.  I spent my time pulling garlic mustard, of which there was plenty.  I'd get one spot cleared, only to find much more of it just a few feet away.  I think this is going to be a long-term project.

Laurel spent her time puttering around, often near me.  We found snail shells together, of course, and I admired the Dutchman's breeches that you see in the first picture.  They are always such a treasure to me--the whole woods there is covered up with the little feathery plants.  It is a challenge to find them blooming, though.  I was so pleased to see some!

In the bright sunshine, we found a whole colony of these plants.  I'm not going to speculate too much on their identity, but we'll just visit the place weekly over the next while to see what they do.  They certainly don't seem like ramps to me.

I also spent a part of my nature school time practicing some songs we'll be using in the next month or so.  I'm planning a sheep circle for May for Willow, since she really loves them.  In this way, I got some rest time, too. 

Well, I think it's time to get a move on.  The next week will be a busy one for our family and I've got to get a start on it.  Happiest of Thursdays to you!

Crafting On :: A Quick Quilt

A new bedroom with three new beds means at least one person needed some new bedding.  We have numerous small quilts and blankets, but none were just the right size for a toddler bed.  I think it's important to have generous blankets and covers.  Willow and I got inspired by Alicia's Calicozy Comforters and made this simple little comforter in an afternoon.

We used fabric that was already on hand, a sweet pink and blue print with some pink and blue gingham leftover from Willow's pajamas.

The back is the pink and blue floral.  Willow tied it in places to hold the batting where it should be.  It's not a completely perfect sort of comforter (all my fault!), but it is puffy and soft.

Oh!  Another word about toddler bedding.  At our house, we use top sheets, so I re-purposed a play cloth for hers.  It measures two yards long and works just perfectly.  I wanted her to have a bed like she was used to and she looks so dear when she is all snuggled down inside.

For more crafting, visit Frontier Dreams.

Circles

Round and round the earth is turning, 
Turning always round to morning,
And from morning round to night.

Enki Kindergarten Songs :: Traditional

I've been thinking a lot about our educational choices lately. The Enki materials talk about Spring being a challenging time for schoolwork, since the warm (and unpredictable) weather pulls our attention elsewhere.  I have certainly seen that in practice!  This is the time to really hold firm to our choices and boundaries, while also adding in some flexibility.  Homeschooling, as we do it, is holistic.  The whole of life brings the chance to learn and grow.  We do have set lessons times, every morning at 9:00 AM, but we also recognize the life presents us with many options that fit together.  We (myself very much included) are learning to balance whimsy and structure.

Things have been so funny lately, so much going on around us in the greater world and on our little street, that it has been easy to be distracted.  The more distracted I grow, the more challenging things become, and the less certain I feel about things.  It's a chain reaction that is also self-feeding.  It has been easy to feel like I am not doing so well at my work as a mother and a teacher.  I'll be honest--I've felt terrible about things in the past few weeks.

I've been working hard at trying to shift both things and thoughts since then.   In addition to working on improving our home to make it more useful and pleasant, I've simply kept going with what needed to be done.  Willow has been learning place value and working on reading the stories in Hay for My Ox.  Roan and Laurel have been listening to kindergarten fairy tales.  I've made an extra effort to encourage puppet plays, which we had let fall by the wayside.  We've all kept moving together and resting together.  The rest is just as important as the moving, I think. 

But circles.  This was about circles, wasn't it?  See, I am going off track again.  Perhaps it is fitting that I do!  I feel something so special when we all join hands and sing "Round and Round" on weekday mornings.  It stirs something within me that is so healing and comforting.  We need to know, over and over, that the world keeps turning and beginning again.  We grownups need filters from this overwhelming, information-saturated world just as much as our children do!  It may sound selfish to say so, but it is very true for me, being a sensitive person.  There are times that I really wish I could just turn off my feelings.

This video, in particular, captures why our family made the choice for Waldorf Education.  It helps to think of a spiraling curriculum that spans the years.  I am really looking forward to it!  Little things like this renew me and offer me some refreshment when I am feeling worn.  They give me focus when the picture is blurry and emotional.  I also turn to my bookshelf when I am at a loss for motivation or in a particularly frustrating tangle.  I guess the energy has been building for a time and the fever broke this past week and I now I am working on putting all the pieces back together, in addition to finding nourishing ways and spaces once more.

I wanted to share this sweet photo of Roan and Laurel together, reading the Alfie Out of Doors book.  Have you seen these?  The little fellow is younger than Roan, probably, but so dear with his little sister, Annie Rose.  They play so creatively, with boxes and little found bits, in their lush backyard garden and the English countryside.  As Willow has left early childhood, Roan and Laurel are often in their own world of play.  It is so sweet to see, even though it also means then end of a very special time of only very young children.

Well, another morning has come.  Heavy rain and floods are in the forecast.  I guess that will make it easy to focus here at home, though I think walks with umbrellas are certainly in order.  The children were saying just last night how they loved the smell of rain.  Wait until they see the giant pond that has shown up in our neighborhood!

Spring Cleaning

I am thinking of so many things lately.  Last week was so long, just exhaustively so.  The world seemed so heavy; life at home seemed so heavy.  It  seemed like every task involved walking uphill in a snowstorm of molasses while barefoot in roller skates.  Weeks like that make a person want to give up and run for the hills.  And hey, I have plenty of options here.

It felt like the fitting thing to completely drop the routine and the old familiars things and shift the whole house around.  I've been doing that ever since Thursday.  There were books to move and dust bunnies to clear out.  There was fabric to sort and fold, and little bits of styrofoam to sweep up.  The more I tried to make things better, the messier it became.  And then it started to get better.  I think I am in the inching-my-way-to-better phase now.

Environment (the space around me) is extremely important to my emotional health, I've learned over the years.  Coming from a terribly messy childhood room to a tidier home has been a continuous task of both looking closely and standing back to see the bigger picture.  There are times that I wish I had the same discipline over other areas.  Having lived here eleven years now, the house has started to become full, lived in, too much.  I have been brooding over these spaces for some time, even as I have continuously cleared things out.

Our position has been such that we've been given many, many wonderful things that were just what we needed or wanted.  People wanted to clear out and we were open to helping in any way we could.  In busier times, it's been a lot to sift through, but it had to be done.  It gets dragged through the house or the yard, and then I must collect it all again for trash day or a trip to the thrift store.  I think they are pleased to seem me coming with my bags. 

I can feel myself on the edge of a time of just focusing here for a bit, of spending less time helping others.  That sounds terribly selfish to say, but I don't mean it that way.  The people who live here, who are not me, need me to focus here so that I don't feel overwhelmed all the time.  We're coming up on garden season, after all, and that will be a big job at the scale we are aiming for this year.  See?  It doesn't sound so bad now. ;-)

Regime Change

Things come and go in seasons and waves and phases.  Lately, it seems that all the waves have been crashing together.  I want to say, "Take me back to September!"  I say September because that was the start of the school year when everything seemed so clear and the routines were so fresh and new and easy.  Following set rhythms isn't always easy.  There are always distractions that pop up along the way.

The distractions, as of late, seem to be far too many.  The days have felt like there are too many errands, too much stuff, and too much dirt.  Is that just Spring?  So much to do and so little time?  We don't do much, in terms of things away from home, but there's enough here to keep a person busy in perpetuity.  That's just life, right?  I've felt like all I do is move the things in this house around and that they are seldom in the proper place, or where I last left them.  Time to change.

The children's room has been a place of weariness for me for awhile.  Bunkbeds were a choice I didn't really like making, honestly.  I don't guess anyone does, but they save space and that is something we need to save around here.  Choosing to move isn't in the cards for us.  We've planted fruit trees, after all. ;-)  The idea of a trundle bunk seemed perfect--stash it all away in the footprint of a single twin bed.  Over time, however, the idea became grinding, literally.

After watching the scratches on my floors get worse with each passing day (from the trundle bed), and after things just seemed too much, I made whimsical/long-considered decision to jump in the car and drive to Ikea for a different solution.  I'd purchased a toddler bed from Voldemart for the playhouse and this was the push I needed to really shake things up.

I recall from my Joyful Toddlers! class that Faith's mother, the famed Rahima Baldwin Dancy, would make occasional shifts when things got too much.  She called it a "regime change," and I've kept that in mind ever since.  I certainly needed one.  This place and that monstrosity of a bed were suffocating me.  So, a Kura bed and a toddler bed and now, ahhhhh.  I can breathe and there is light.

It was a long day, driving six hours total to Charlotte and back, which seems like worlds away.  This place where I live, it is a place out of time, so trips to cities seem so foreign.  They may as well be the Jetsons while we are the Beverly Hillbillies.  Nonetheless, my children got to experience elderflower punch and Swedish meatballs not made by me and we got a bed.  And some tiny lights.

It was a big job, disassembling The Monstrosity.  And it was a big job putting together the Ikea bed, in all its utilitarian glory.  The directions were well-written, and the children were a wonderful help.  They helped brace and carry and track down missing screws.  We suffered only minor injuries and very little discord.  Perhaps we'd had enough of that already?

Of course, while I was still getting it all sorted out yesterday, family had to come over and look at my mess.  I'm sure they thought the whole thing was crazy and I told them I had plenty of rational reasons, though I am allowed to not make sense now and then.  It all makes sense to me, anyhow.  The children can make their own beds now.  The whole thing is not looming so high in the air (it comes chest high on 5'3" me).  There are no more wheels grinding across my floor.

I was alone yesterday afternoon while I did some tidying to the house.  It really was out of sorts in a big way.  I put some final touches on the room and put up the canopy for Roan.  He really loves it and I think this is a good use for it.  I really hope that the improved space will inspire more reverence in our sleep routines and self care.  I'm also hoping that our routines will be renewed, in general.  I'm in charge of that, of course, and I think we'll all be nourished if I can pull it off.
The porch is covered with the remains of the old beds, but I'll deal with those today.  There's still the tiny hutch to put on the back porch.  I put away a lot of things while they were gone and I think I got rid of some of my negative energy.  I told myself that its okay to move out perfectly nice furniture in place of something that works better.  First world problems, I guess.  I slept better last night and my back didn't hurt (perhaps I wore it out!)  I went to sleep in my own bed for the first time in years!

Crafting On :: Sweet Dreams

The nights are warming up, so I've been sewing some cooler nightgowns for the months ahead.  I've been given some fabrics that were just perfect for the patterns--right amounts and everything!

First up is Laurel's.  This is Simplicity 1569, which I have made several times before, and it's a really basic pattern that doesn't use a lot of fabric.  It's easy to size up or down, in addition to nightgown sizing being forgiving, on the whole.  It is too simple, at times, with no facing for the top, but that is easily remedied when needed.

Here's my nightgown--something for ME!  It's Simplicity 9012 and I'm really liking the pattern.  What a I like is that it is just enough--the yoke has no buttons or zippers to fiddle with and it's still modest.  The gown is quite long, with the hem coming down to my toes, but I'm enjoying the seersucker fabric I made it out of.  It was a quick project, perhaps a bit too quick on my part, but I promise I'll take more care in future endeavors.  I needed something cooler right away, and I use this weekly Crafting On post as a personal deadline.

And here's a sweet puppet Willow and I made.  We made this using the same techniques that I outlined here.  The little hands are made using black beans that I snipped in half and the bottom is held neatly with one little stitch.  Willow put the face on with map-making pens.  Simple thread makes up the marionette strings.  It's super sweet!

For more crafting, visit Frontier Dreams.

 It's such a stark contrast to leave the greening valley full of trilliums and drive the rest of the way up to Laurel Bed Lake. As the road climbs, things become more like Winter again.  The high-elevation man-made lake seems to live in a world all its own.  This is something that never changes, but it also never grows old.  There aren't many signs of life up there this time of year, excepting the downy serviceberry, some partridge berries (our favorite easy-to-find woodland snack) and the first of the squawroot. 

This downy serviceberry was growing in the most unlikely circumstances.  It was in full bloom with a trunk that didn't look very optimistic at all.  By the look of the wood, it's been like for some time.

I suppose that's a lesson in truly blooming where you are planted.

Easter Ephemerals

 

We hunted eggs only once this year, entirely losing one egg that I had decorated.  It had the sun rising over the mountains on it, such a pretty one, but it is simply gone (and I hid them!).  By lunchtime, the children were peeling them and eating them, content to let them be dedicated to the memories.  That is Spring in a nutshell, right?  Such a brief flurry of activity before giving way to the long-lasting green of Summer.

After lunch at home, we drove up Big Tumbling Creek to see the flowers.  It's always so good to be out among the thousands of trilliums that bloom there every year.  I guess it is our first real glimpse of green for the year, now that I consider it.  And how green it was!  We were all a little grumpy and hesitant at the start, with storm clouds overhead and rain falling, but it was so good to get out and walk.  We all quickly found the Spirit of Adventure and took off.

Roan was especially excited about the fiddleheads.  I don't think he had noticed them before, but we had talked about them here at home.  Overall, he was clearly so interested in everything around him.  His knowledge of the natural world is just in its beginnings, but he has a strong hold on it already.  (Please allow me to brag and feel proud.)

The flowers, wet from the rain, really were so lovely.  I only wish I could have gotten a good photo of them in a big group, though I know I have taken many in the past.  The landscape is such that it is fairly steep, so we were standing on a road cut down below most of them nearly every place we were.

Since we decided to spend some part of our weekends in nature, it has been something to really look forward to.  It does require us to separate from our usual routines, but it is always worth it.  It has added a new kind of abundance to our lives--the thought that we have so many public lands that we can visit, a plethora of places to choose from.  I've got more photos to share, but I'll save those for another day.  I need to spend a little time planning a trip to some wild places in WV. 

Happy Monday!

Spring Mornings

The Spring mornings are quieter than those of Winter.  The time shift helps with that, and it's a help to me, morning person that I am.  I really enjoy a some time to myself to start the day.  I know that it helps that everyone is simply exhausted at the end of each day, in the best way.  Spring and Summer days are so full that it can be a challenge to choose what to do, when all the world is bursting with life.  I guess that is why our school routine is more flexible (or more easily led astray) this time of year.

We took a walk to see some tulips yesterday.  I've never been a big fan of them, but the children are absolutely enchanted.  One house has well over a hundred, maybe two hundred, and another has some so big they could hold several tulips in their blooms.  You can see the children's excitement spilling over to me.  Every step, it seemed, held new wonders yet before unseen.  Trees with hollow places, fairy houses, blooming dogwoods, a light green coming over the land.  I can see tulip bulbs being added to our Autumn plans.

It's been hot this week--upper seventies and mostly sunny.  We got a bit of rain, but not much.  Things are still pretty lush outside and the small wet-weather streams are flowing, but I feel wary of the Summer ahead.  I'm savoring every drop of rain and always hoping for more.  It will be handy that next week is going to be rainy--we need it to help focus our energy inside and to feed the few seeds we have planted.

I've got some sewing planned for this Easter weekend, along with a picnic, and a few Easter surprises.  Everyone is excited for tomorrow.

Apple Blossoms

On a whim, we drove out to the Old Davis Homeplace yesterday.  It was nearly supper time, but the trip is short, so we went.  Oh, it was good to be in the country again.  Town life really does not compare, even though our little town is fairly quiet and there is plenty of green inside its limits.  I didn't take my camera along, which is for the best sometimes.  So, I drank in the changing trees and brightening fields with my own eyes.  I've said before that the forest in Spring is similar to the forest in Autumn.  The same reds, browns, and greens are present, but they are muted.  The time before the leaves is a wonderful pause.

It was so nice just to be there, to see the state of things after Winter, ever how mild it was.  The grass was full and green, the chickweed was taking over the place, the horse was frisky, the cat was rolling around, the blueberries were beginning to bloom.  The creek was running, too, so the children couldn't resist dipping their toes into the marshy edges while I just sat on a bench in the shade.  Just to sit in a place without the concerns of my own home, and to remember all my childhood wanderings in that place.  That is so nice.  I recall teachers discouraging the use of "nice" in my elementary years, but some things in life are just that.  Nice.

There are parts of me that really long to live in the country again, I'll admit.  There is a freedom there that is not found here in town, no matter how small.  We enjoy many conveniences--walking distance to Mike's work, no icy roads, easy trips to the store--but there are concessions we must make in the process.  And there are the fruit trees.  The House I Stayed in for the Fruit Trees.  I guess we will call it that.

The big old apple tree at my parents' house was just full of blooms.  If you stood under the tree with just a moment of quiet, you could here the whole thing humming with bees.  What a special sound that is!  I'll admit that the children have mixed feelings about bees, which I suppose is only natural.  This is a tree in our own neighborhood that was in a similar state.  How did I ever dislike Spring?

Nature School :: Walking Distance

Welcome!  It seems that it's time to begin again in a new place, so here is a new beginning.  Nature school day is often my favorite day of the week, since it obligates us to leave home and enjoy our surroundings.  If you're interested in the past year of nature school, you can travel to my old blog and check out the Nature School tag.

We went to our town's oldest cemetery, home of the Royal Oak, the oldest public tree.  It's just over the hill from our little bungalow, so it's an easy walk on a gentle Spring morning.  This little place is sadly in disrepair, if you can say that happens to tombstones.  They are toppled and worn, the people seem forgotten, though I am certain local historians have them on file.

The children named this tree the Fairy Palace, with this high broken branch acting as a balcony on magical evenings.

 We found a puffball in the leaves and enjoyed spreading its spores around.  That kind of thing never gets old.

 This is one of the better headstones in its proper place.  Maggie Virginia, just five years old.  The words at the bottom are the ones we know well "suffer the little children to come unto me. . ."

 The thing that makes this place unique, apart from its age, is the presence of many woodland flowers.  We found bloodroot, which is always so early that it is usually missed.  The petals dropped off at the slightest touch--the plants had already gone to see and we saw them just in time.

 These flowers, whatever they are, I could only snap this quick photo of.  That little hand snatched them off right away!  The Solomon's Seal, below, went the same way.  It did give me a chance to show the root to the children so they could see how it grows, year by year. 

In the same place as all these dear little natives, there were also plenty of day lilies, multi-flora roses, and periwinkle vines.  I wonder if they will take over or if these early Spring wildflowers have remained because they are up before the cultivated plants.  Only time will tell, I suppose.

Well, I think it's time to end this first entry.  I hope this new spot sticks.  I sure like the new address.