One tab is open to wonderfully photographed food blogs filled right now with warm, beautiful looking soups and stews. The other tab is open to a seed company filling my mind with images of next year's garden.

Both are food for my spirit in such different ways.

The one reminds me that a cup of hot tea will go nicely in my hands while I plan our warm and filling supper. The other takes me far forward into those sunny, warm days of digging, playing, harvesting a perfect tasting freshly picked vegetable still warm from the sun and full of flavour.


On the other hand, this is what my next project is...


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The children are outside playing merrily in the snow. A real, ground-covering, snowfall. It's even a decently cold -6C to make it a legitimate snowy winter morning. They're happy.

And reminded of the cold wetness of snow melted on wrists. But happy overall.

Everything is so much brighter too with the light reflecting off the white snow. I do love the beauty of a new snowfall.

The Christmas tree is up, lighted and not yet decorated. That'll be the project for this evening with hot apple cider and perhaps some cookies. They've eaten most of them already. Yesterday evening I read The Best Christmas Pageant Ever in front of the glowing woodstove with the tree in the background. If you don't know this story, read it. It's a quick read and has been a family tradition since I was a little girl. Pieman was sure I read really quietly for a little while as he lay stretched out on the couch after a long day's work but nobody else seemed to notice.

Every now and then I spend some time reading food blogs. These are the two I read this morning. And this I read last night while looking for dinner inspiration.

Sailing

It's possible I've blogged about this before. This sailing. It has become one of the favourite activities of my family on windy days. In winter they use a toboggan. Yesterday they used the little red wagon; Radio Flyer is true to its name. They had a hard time getting the tarp centered properly and it turns out that a lighter child would have made it all easier. But they were successful.

The stories told with the most enthusiasm though were those when the child held the tarp by hand and ran or was dragged along. I was shown some good scrape marks. My favourite scene was seeing the tarp snap in half the 1" x 2" board that it was tied to and that CTM was holding. He lurched suddenly to a stop with the two pieces in his hand while the tarp flew off happily, finally free from its bonds.

Are we just a weird homeschooling family? or are we creative and family-oriented? It's all in the perspective I suspect. In any case, it's fun to watch and experience the joy. Each child seems alive and bright when they come in, and I don't think it can all be explained by the 'bracing' wind.

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I was born and raised Mennonite Brethren. Although I no longer have a membership in such a church I still consider myself to be MB. At times I forget how important it is to me. Then I read a book by Margaret Epp and am reminded. Easter approaches and I make paska and am reminded. I catch sight of a tub of dry cottage cheese, think of vareneki and am reminded. Hear my mother singing in harmony with her sisters and am reminded.

Amidst all the stories I hold and memories I treasure I realize one thing: food seems to play such a huge part in the MB tradition! Here is a blog I love. Many of the recipes here I recognize, some are newer than those in my Mennonite Treasury cookbook or my We Are Our Mother family cookbook. The beauty behind the food though is something deeper, a desire for relationships. The beautiful gift of hospitality and welcome. A sharing of our selves with each other and even strangers. That is why I sometimes weep when I come across recipes and the stories that go with them. They bring memories of people I have known, times when my life has been influenced and enriched by those with whom I have been privileged to share a moment. Of course my family is central to many of those memories. I am Mennonite Brethren.


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The first fire in our new woodstove. (New is such a loosely worded term in this case since we've had it for over a year and a half, first just inches into the front door since it came home on the back of the pickup during a snowstorm, but at 400 lbs Pieman and I could only slide it so far, then sitting in our cloakroom. Then it was installed with the chimney reaching through the ceiling into the attic. And there it sat. For a looong time. Now it has been fully installed and certified for insurance purposes. Finally a fire. It's going to be a cozy winter!


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A full day of learning started at 8:30 am with baking a cake. It has officially ended with the icing of the cake at 5 pm. Lots of action in the middle including Greek, history (ancient Greece coincidentally), math, Bible, hockey (ok, that's happening now and in the kitchen as though that's normal). The play outside included spontaneous chestnut hunting and caterpillar noticing.

I like a good day.

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Cattails, children running through the fields and woods, fall colours, pumpkins, tomatoes rescued from frost, hot soup and hot chocolate, squash and beans harvested from our own garden. The crunch of leaves underfoot, a warm sweater. Cozy. Fall. Yes, it means winter's coming but what a waste to not enjoy today.

(And after all, winter's beautiful too!)

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There's a hole in my roof, dear Liza, dear Liza, there's a hole in my roof, dear Liza, a hole.

Well fix it, dear Pieman, dear Pieman, dear Pieman, well fix it, dear Pieman, dear Pieman, fix it.

But how should I fix it, dear Liza, dear Liza, but how should I fix it, dear Liza, fix it?

With a chimney, dear Pieman, dear Pieman, dear Pieman, with a chimney, dear Pieman, dear Pieman for the woodstove.


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Yellow tomatoes float through my dreams as I start research on how to can the non-red tomatoes. Yellow spaghetti sauce? Doesn't work for me.

I had had visions of bushels of tomatoes filling my bowls and spilling out onto the counters. The reality has been that the weather has not been that warm this summer and the tomatoes have drifted in in manageable waves after each warmer day or two. Some are now frozen, some are dried, some are roasted and frozen and all have tasted really nice. There's nothing quite like a fresh from the vine still warm tomato exploding taste into your mouth.

Some of the oh-so-pretty and even tastier cherry tomatoes we've been fortunate to enjoy this summer.

Gladiolas leftover from a pig roast on Saturday serendipitously made their way to our house. It's a huge bouquet! and gorgeous.



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The tomatoes have started ripening.

So far we've been able to keep up with eating them. We've had almost exclusively the cherry size so far in an array of colours. But the larger ones are starting to ripen and they're harder to eat in a mouthful so my eye has been caught by tomato recipes. Tomorrow I'll try slow-roasting some.

Friends and books, can be there a better combination?

When the two met in a living room on Saturday for 4 to inventory 1200 the only thing missing was the chocolate...which we found. We also found joy in each other's company and satisfaction in neat stacks of boxes filled with cared for books.

(Admittedly the host home was left with some un-neat stacks still to be cared for. Sorry and thank you.)

The sad thing is that the books will be returned to somebody else's living space far away. The other sad thing is that the friends live scattered like marbles on a tiled floor. Thankfully, plans are to be swept together periodically.


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I just dropped BTG off at her first youth group.

The boys have gone with Pieman to play and watch soccer.

I don't have to cook supper for anyone and am eating a toasted waffle while sitting at the computer. Food at the computer is a no-no at our house.

Conversely, I don't have anyone to cook supper for.

I feel like crying.

I was told my blog is out of date. Sorry Calgary!

We have had sun this week and beautiful hot weather. We've eaten our first yellow cherry tomatoes the size of a marble. I'm hoping the next ripe ones will be bigger. Still enjoying peas, lettuce (a little bitter), swiss chard, kale and now kolhrabi and beans. The broccoli and tomatoes are coming. So are the Armenian cukes. The pumpkins are turning orange but the squash is a little slower. It's in a different plot.

I picked up Morton from the airport late last night. She's still sleeping. I'm going to start our breakfast pancakes. The kidlets are waiting patiently for her with their books, each ensconsed on a couch or chair. Pieman's chatting with his Dad who just had a birthday.

I've been referred to a learning languages page called LiveMocha. Looks good. Also a blog called The Linguist on Language. Look like fun.

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water, water, everywhere

water in the pool, children swimming

water from the sky, cat dodging

water on the garden, vegetables growing

all is thriving

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Cat eyes

things I've seen since my last post

a really good omelette

a joust

a begonia in a hanging basket, planted by niece and nephew

our first lettuce and radishes for Pieman's birthday supper

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more things I've seen

a cardinal showing off for us

elephants (new bronze statues)

blue poison frogs (or poison dart frogs? something about blue and poison and frogs)

two rhinos

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The end of our school year has come. We finished up our work last Thursday and to celebrate we got up at 5:30 am on Friday morning to spend a day in the life of Ye Olde Village.

It's been a full month of May. Certainly not very warm overall and the wind has kept us strong. But I did take advantage of the few hot days and got the garden planted so I can now enjoy watching it grow. Unfortunately the weeds grow too. As a friend said yesterday: I can look at the chore of weeding as simply decluttering my garden. Makes it seem lighter.

Yesterday I was inspired by this friend and decluttered dandelions for two hours. 

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He asked.

She said yes.

Our family is growing.

Great cheering for the new aunt by the kidlets.

Brother and sister-in-law sigh with pleasure.

We haven't heard yet from the parents or the sister and brother-in-law.

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We watched her walk across the cornfield to our house. We had no idea where she had come from but she seemed to feel at home here and enjoyed the food and shelter we provided. The children called her Missy.

One day it rained and rained all day. Nobody remembered having seen Missy. We haven't seen her since. Good luck, little Clucker. Hope you find a roost to call home.

Today's bird sightings:

• a pair of american goldfinches


• a red-breasted nuthatch (see photo)


• house sparrows


• grackels


• chickadees


• starlings

The finches and nuthatch are new this spring and a delight to watch. We love to sneak up on them through the window. They're feeling rather brave actually and we get frequent if not long peeks. They do love to flit around!

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A sunny day today tricks us into thinking it is warm. The forecast for the weekend is though. We will enjoy it no matter what does or doesn't get done. The garden is top of my list. Pieman may have other priorities. The kidlets will no doubt play, read, eat and sleep.

Today BTG participated in Shakespeare's birthday party at our local theatre. She learned sword-play and MacBeth as the 55 or so students involved acted out a version of the play. I was a little disappointed for her that the expected big stage was not used, the rehearsal hall being substituted. (This is different to the reports we had from friends who were involved last year.) BTG, however, thought the rehearsal hall a less intimidating space and was glad. She had a blast and gave us a thorough demonstration of the sword-play, complete with quotes of how they unseamed their victim.

Meanwhile, the boys and I visited with our Spanish-speaking friends over a coffee. Maria from Ecuador invited us to get together with her and her young children for some extra practice. These arrangements can be so loosely phrased that they never happen so I'll have to work on some concrete plans. I think it will be fun! How I long to be fluent in Spanish. Longing alone doesn't make things happen though. It is good for me to set in place those things that compell me to learn more and practice what I learn.


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a lesson learned

There is a land called Crete in the midst of the wine-dark sea, a fair land and a rich, begirt with water, and therein are many men innumerable and ninety
cities. (Odyssey, XIX)

So begins our history section today from a book by Dorothy Mills called The Book of the Ancient Greeks. All ears are open and careful hands intently draw into notebooks what the ears hear. Narrations of the paragraphs are thoughtful; CTM even goes on to tell the rest of the story from another book he has read. The next paragraph I read out is in fact this story. We read the other book too. (Wings by Jane Yolen) The drawings are quick yet precise. No dawdling today.

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Easier it is to read the blogs of others than to write my own post.

Here are a few I enjoy regularly:

PeaceLedge
the real life home
Higher Up and Further In


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tonight my daughter played

The story of where we got this piano happened so fast it hardly seems real. Except for the evidence: the heavy, solid, almost wider than doorways evidence.

Pieman and I have long wanted our kids to take music lessons. The other evening in a brief conversation as we drifted off to sleep, Pieman suggested that we try to track down a piano anyway even if the lessons don't come yet. Sure, I yawned. A few days later I remembered and sent a quick email to a couple of friends mentioning we were looking for a "if you come and get it it's yours" type of deal. Within hours Pieman received a phone call about this piano. The funny part though was that he had not realized that I had sent out the email. He'd been at work, had just walked in the door and answered the phone while I worked on supper. I hear a strange side to the conversation. "Are you asking me or telling me?" (Sounds like a telemarketer and he's got Pieman at a bad moment.) Then a laugh. Then some personal remarks. (Not a telemarketer? Someone he knows. But WHAT are they talking about?) Turns out they've arranged to pick up the piano in two days. Four guys, big heavy piano up a steep flight of stairs, a flurry to return to their homes and eat or release their wives from kid duty to attend their various events (at which I also was in attendance and hurried, burning my tongue on my soup in the process.)

Do I say thank you? or I'm sorry?

Thank you.

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As I work my way downstairs with the vacuum cleaner buzzing in my ears, Pieman flings himself towards the window yelling something about Tundra Swans. He's been outside stacking the never-ending woodpile. We knew that the swans were migrating and were apparently landing by the hundreds on a semi-nearby lake. It seems that they fly over our house to get there and since we have a wetlands area near our home they decided to stop over. We piled into the car and raced over to try to catch a glimpse.

We got some great pictures. We also saw lots of Canada Geese, half a dozen muskrats swmming under and around the still frozen lake and enough birds to make us feel that the wetlands were just alive with Spring! More remarkable to us since we all wished we had thought to grab our gloves and hats to combat the icy winds. Wish I had muskrat fur.

Mild days. Still I cannot work the ground. The garden plot is appearing slowly from underneath its white blanket to reveal sodden, matted vegetation brown and gray after a winter of death. Which makes anything living a surprise. In a corner, just visible, are eight bright green shoots. I've been waiting for these, hoping. This was the first corner of the garden to appear a week or more ago during our first warm spell. I chose this part of the garden to plant some garlic cloves last fall because it was the closest to the house. I don't know what they will do. They are "supposed to" grow in the spring after a winter's work underground. So far, they have grown but here is a surprise for me, although not such a surprise after all. The snow was a blanket; the little sprouts after having been exposed for these days are less bright green, less lively looking. They have not grown at all and appear to have shrunk and dried. I will keep watching them. I expect that they will gather strength when they are ready to and grow up to the sun's warmth.

Do rabbits like garlic scapes? I never did get any peas last year but the rabbit was fat. This year I have a new plan. Fencing. I will have fresh peas.

Speaking of new plans. Our chickens have not laid more than one or two eggs for weeks. After losing one to an accidental strangling and then spending an hour in the muddy bean field being frozen by a chill wind while chasing and herding the blasted 5 remaining escapees, AND discovering now that the problem has not perhaps been a lack of egg laying but a newly acquired taste for raw egg and shell, I made the call. Only I don't know who will butcher only 5 chickens so the "call" was an email to a friend who might know where to find someone locally who will do it. Privately, I hope she will offer. I'd rather not have to drive an hour away to have 5 chickens killed. It's the plucking and innards that are the problem. My boys are eager to try their hand at beheading a chicken.....does that sound awful? I think it's the desire to see them still "alive" without a head. Apparently somewhere once upon a time (read it on the internet!) a chicken "lived" for 18 months without a head.

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What do we do now? is the wail.

I know he is asking which book shall we start now that we have finished reading both The Fellowship of the Ring and Walk In My Woods. But my reply is, "cry?" as I leave the path in the woods that has led me through the life of my Aunt Margaret and her family, which is my family. And on a broader scale, I have seen God at work through generations of people who have loved him, who have been impacted by others who have loved him and who in turn impact others.

I am older now since I read it last. I understand so much more. I hear more in the words on the page; Margaret Epp said more in her sentences than she actually wrote.

I have been deeply moved and thus deepened. So have my children in proportion to their age, just as I was the first time I read Aunt Margaret's story. This is how we learn and grow, in stages, as we are able to absorb and stretch. The prayer is that we never become rigid.

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finally made it to the library

Northrop Frye. An Educated Imagination.

Chapter 1. So far, I'm interested.

I forgot to pick up my library book. I had put it on hold weeks ago and then waited. I even forgot which book it was (and still can't remember!). Someone had a big fine to pay. The library phoned Tuesday to say it was in and that I had until Saturday to pick it up. I knew that I was going to be in town Thursday evening--plenty of time. But I didn't plan for the snowstorm or the onslaught of runny noses, including my own lethargic state.

OK, lethargy for me isn't that uncommon in the cold of winter but it helps the story.

I snapped awake from my wee nap on the couch this afternoon with the sinking remembering that I had forgotten to pick up the book. I really wanted to read it too. Now I'll have to pay $0.50 for not picking it up and try to remember what it is called so I can take it out before someone else does. Thankfully I do have it written down. It was something about learning or how the brain works or using our brains to learn or....maybe it's time I read it.

I think I'm done updating for now.

Enjoy reading. Don't forget to hop over to "the world as we see it" and see what we've been up to in the sketching department.

feed the birds

With national bird count day coming up, we copied this idea for a bird feeder and had a great time preparing and hanging it. However, all the birds seem to have flown away. We spotted a couple of chickadees yesterday but nothing else besides our own chickens. It's been warmer. Have they all gone north? or west? east, maybe? They shouldn't be going south.

I should add that our winter birds consist of juncos, a few chickadees--still my favourite bird, the occasional flock of sparrows and a rarely visiting blue jay. After having lived in Costa Rica where birds were as abundant as Canadian snowflakes, this seems barren.

But those flashes of colour and life do bring us joy when they come.

hungry?

K2's meal options for his cooking day: oven baked potato wedges and a salad.
He added the crackers and cheese as an appetizer and made it a two course meal.

CTM and K2 have badges to work on for their weekly club. Here are CTM's cooking badge results. He also made cookies, but they were too tasty. I was quicker with the camera for the cinnamon buns and cake.

frost

I took these photos last week (maybe the week before?) when we had a huge frost one morning. It was a beautiful, sparkly, winter wonderland morning. The air was crisp and cold and oh so clear. I went out to start the car before our trip to the orthodontist and couldn't help grabbing my camera and taking a few shots. K2 came out behind me and as we rounded the corner into the backyard all he could say was, "Wow! Mom! Wow!" which was just an echo of my own heart's cry. What else can be said in such a glorious display of God's magnificence?
Have you ever heard hoarfrost tinkle like thousands of little bells falling around your head?

more frost photos