~rainbow mondays~ tomato surprise

Posted on September 16, 2013 by marybethrew

red: ashberry tree behind our living school where a flock of cedar waxwings has arrived on their annual migration to devour every berry.

orange: quinn at the easel, a turtle peeking from his shell.

yellow: a surprise tomato variety in my greenhouse; this tomato seeded itself from a plant i grew last year, i did not intentionally plant one this year. i didn’t know that’s what it was until this first one ripened!

green: duckweed on the pond

blue: steller’s jay in flight

purple: indigo rose tomato; the first on a plant i grew from saved seed… as tomato season everywhere else is winding down, my tomatoes are finally getting started.

~rainbow mondays~

a splash of color on monday morning

a photo study documenting the colors of the spectrum: the balance points between light reflected and light absorbed

a bowl of cherries

Posted on June 25, 2013 by marybethrew

and what, may i ask, are you using your old baby carrier for?

“mama, did you know that if you put two odd numbers together, you get an even number?”

“wow, yeah i did know that, but where did you learn that?”

“i just was thinking about it and figured it out.”

forty-seven seconds later, i asked him to align his ankle and foot, the way i’ve showed him countless times: total obliviousness. i finally walked over and manually adjusted his right foot, so it wasn’t hooking out away from him in the position he was sitting in. i explained, “it’s better for your feet, your ankles, your knees, and your hips to sit this way.”

“oh. are there a lot of vitamins in it?”

life is…

hm, maybe i do harp on and on about certain foods (cherries!) that contain lots and lots of vitamins? i have been feeding him a constant diet of fruit hoping the bleepety-bleep summer cold he has had for a week will go away. that, and playing him hard and running him around as much as possible in as much fresh air as possible. (lots of vitamins in fresh air, don’t you think?)

incidentally, quinn likes the newest saying i’ve bestowed on him (you know, like “don’t borrow trouble“). he just seems mystified by the fact that a phrase such could have a meaning so unrelated to the words involved in saying it. “life is a bowl of cherries?!” he’s probably thinking it has something to do with life being comprised entirely of these oft-mentioned building blocks known as vitamins, and that cherries contain enough of them to support the biosphere. i explain, “it means everything is so much fun!”

he doesn’t disagree with that statement about life. at least my vitamin rants haven’t crushed his spirit and paralyzed him with fear of rickets and scurvy.

last year marked my first and last marathon 70 pound cherry pitting session using a chopstick. it’s nice having a mother-in-law-ish person (mother-out-law?) living within walking distance, because we can share such needful modern conveniences as a cherry pitter. an added plus is that the mechanics of the simple machine are fascinating to this child, and he offers to pit cherries roughly every 20 minutes throughout the day so he can once again study each part and tilt his head at another angle to watch the mechanism at work.

after the above quotes about odd numbers and ankles took place, we played monopoly (he is getting good at putting 1s, 5s, 10s, 20s, and 100s together to achieve various amounts for buying properties. collecting $45 from the bank was no biggie. he quickly gathered $17 when he really needed $18 one time, but then when i stopped him, he noticed the mistake. it’s amazing how a little motivation (that it’s a game!) pushes kids from ones to tens to hundreds places. he is, for whatever reason, especially motivated to receive change, always wanting to ensure that he overpays the bank, necessitating subtraction. oh, okay, i guess you can do that, honey.

thus proving my unschooled child can stand in line and doesn’t need to go to school for it

if you asked the three of us what the highlight of the weekend was, rich would probably say, “reading the sunday paper,” but i think quinn and i would agree that it was attending our friend’s wedding reception, though for two different reasons. him: bouncy house. me: what isn’t awesome about seeing a good friend glowing all day long in a beautiful gown? watching children bounce themselves into oblivion, sweating out the toxic dye from the red velvet cake they’ve just devoured? legitimizing my preference to hang out behind the lens of the camera on the edges of everything and not have to make excuses for why i am not very outgoing?

i got to take pictures at a wedding. it was so much fun, i might have to do it again sometime. a little thought that crossed my mind of “maybe i’ll toss in my camera” turned out to be providence in action, as the hired photographer had to leave early and the bride arrived late. i was glad to have something more to give than my low budget homemade hippie wedding gift of a mix cd. don’t get me wrong, i put lots of good energy and meaningful songs into that present, and since i’ve always been low budget, it has been my traditional gift to wedding havers for some time.

red velvet; vitamin content? zero. contribution to life being a bowl of cherries? considerable.

i stepped out from behind the lens long enough for the bride to take this photo. it was a nice day to get a picture of us, as it marked our year and a half anniversary. we spent the past week having our respective children taking turns being home, reflecting on what nice children they are, and discussing how not to take each other for granted. which, i think comes down to a blend of humor, not taking ourselves too seriously, and a good solid division of labor, spiced with a strong work ethic on both our parts, and being equally reliable for the things we do for each other. in short, i can make no sense of it, because it seems the more we depend on each other, the more we don’t take those things for which we depend on each other for granted. all i know is, it’s working for me.

to the washer of my car, changer of my oil, oil filter and air filter, remover of the petrified mouse nest from air filter case of said car, cutter/chopper/stacker of wood and bringer of fire that keeps me warm all fall-winter-spring, vacuum cleaner operator, tire changer, best-popcorn-ever maker, power washer wielder, irrigation engineer, motion sensor light installer, music putter-on-er, movie chooser, stairs builder, lawnmower pusher, cheerer upper, encourager, blog reader, lover, recipient of my very most heartfelt cd compilations, listener, provider of hugs, partner:

i will gladly be the maker of your egg sandwich, packer of your lunch, maker of your coffee, scratcher of your back, keeper of your garden, baker of your chocolate chip cookies, bed maker (my mom’s jaw dropped upon reading this i don’t doubt), audience/seamstress/usher of your plays, your biggest fan, cooker of your dinner, scooper of your ice cream, picker of your fruit, canner of your pears, sewer of your carhartts, holder of your hand, hanger of your pictures, cheerer upper, lover, encourager, writer of embarrassingly mushy blog posts, curtain putter upper, provider of hugs, listener, partner… from here on out.

a month of non-local in a year of local

Posted on March 28, 2013 by marybethrew

i’ve been grasping for cooking inspiration in the past few weeks, and i have this funny feeling i am not the only one out there feeling the marchness of march when it comes to cooking and food. ever since reading babs’ animal vegetable miracle years ago when i had an infant, (oops did i just call her babs out loud? sorry, my bff knows i’m talking about barbara kingsolver), i have been working on one year of local after another. i guess that would make six of them! goodness. i am not nearly as strict most of the time as babs was in her book, but then there are long stretches of time when our diet comes from well within the 100-mile radius. when those times involve months like march, though, it means a lot of canned fruit, frozen veggies and hopefully we haven’t run out of potatoes yet.

we’ve been sick quite a lot this winter, and between that and just feeling completely blah about what’s in the jars and freezer bags right now, i have granted myself a month of non-local in the midst of my half decade of local. i’m only a week or so in, and feeling really good about this decision.

i’ve found that if i indulge a little bit, it helps me utilize the food i have stored away in new, exciting ways. our standard fare of burritos and quesadillas seem ever so much more exotic topped with pineapple-avocado salsa (a recipe i got out of the newspaper). that one pineapple stretched pretty far, and also gave us a batch of pineapple curry over brown rice (which was also from the newspaper and included a bell pepper from way out of season, but also more seasonally/locally appropriate scallions and cilantro, which i had almost forgotten about!) a little more pineapple mileage went into the best smoothie ever made, as well as a fun tropical evening beverage for rich and i.

best smoothie ever made will be difficult to replicate, given that i was emptying a particular constellation of mason jars from the fridge that will likely never reoccur, but here is the rough outline (get out your jars and your rubber spatula):

1 ripe banana (yes, we usually have no bananas.)

a few pears plus juice from bottom of jar

a few chunks of pineapple

splash of homemade apple cider, dregs and all

end of the jar of raspberry/lemon/lemongrass jam which included about 4 slices of meyer lemon rind and a hint of raspberry plus a few seeds (lemon does something for a smoothie….)

handful each of frozen blueberries, strawberries and pluots

few slices of orange quinn didn’t finish and i stuck in the door of the freezer the day before

sprig of fresh cilantro

if you’ve noticed i don’t do food posts often, it is partly because i usually forget to take a picture until after i’ve gobbled up the final product.

babs never recommended being so stringent that you didn’t have, for instance, your coffee beans or olive oil, though the mindfulness that ensues from endeavoring on a year of local does inspire one to find closer-to-home ways of meeting the hunger needs for greater percentages of your total diet. what fats/oils can you source more locally than olive oil? toss in some butter from a local dairy perhaps? can you meet your starch need with more potatoes and quinoa rather than rice?

citrus is really talking to me right now, which is decidedly never going to come locally. we always binge on clementines around christmas, but this year we’ve also been enjoying grapefruits, limes and oranges in larger quantities than in recent years. one grapefruit can turn a dinner salad into a whole new flavor sensation. dinner salads are a frequent thing lately, and the greens and carrots are still local, providing the backdrop on which the avocados, sunflower seeds, yummy smoked gouda cheese, and citrus harmonize. i often marinate up some local chicken or toast some local walnuts in local honey to go in the salad, or toss in some of my local dried cherries. i generally make my own dressing (yogurt/tahini/lemon? a vinaigrette with some of the citrus juice or freezer berries?), but the grapefruit juice and avocado make additional dressing unnecessary, just don’t forget some salt and pepper.

my heart is still here locally, and i’ve been gathering our one-mile radius staples of (the amazing and wonderful) stinging nettles (added to pasta and burritos this week) and miner’s lettuce (added to salads). it’s just that one pineapple can go a long way toward balancing out your palate after a long winter’s nap to where it wants to eat more local staples.

so, if you’ve been feeling uninspired in the kitchen, my advice to you is to allow yourself a few crazy non-local items this month: grab avocados, citrus, and tropical fruit, along with plenty of scallions and cilantro this week when you do your grocery shopping. go ahead and allow yourself that mango, guilt-free, to liven up some coconut curry and mix up the winter blahs. it will give you new eyes for your chest freezer and your pantry full of mason jars, and maybe, just maybe make spring arrive a little more quickly!

~this moment~ camping

Posted on September 7, 2012 by marybethrew

doting on baby friends

aftermath of his first sleepover with buddies

hot dogs for every meal

lots of soak time in the creek

wild blackberries at their perfect ripeness

~a friday ritual~

photos capturing a moment from the week.

a simple, special moment.

a moment i want to pause, savor and remember.

a summer of unschool

Posted on September 3, 2012 by marybethrew

tomorrow is quinn’s first day of school! but not his first day of unschool… it’s roughly his 2020th day of that. and counting… by the way, in case you are catching up here after a while away (i know i have been missing some posts on blogs i follow throughout the summer months) quinn is attending our living school this coming year, a radically cool school that i believe will seamlessly mesh with our unschooling life. you can read my education manifesto here, and get excited with me.

i haven’t done a month of unschool post in 3 months, so here’s the whole summer in a nutshell! this summer featured lots of gardening of course. i have found that quinn chooses to participate occasionally, and more often than not is content to let me do my garden thing while he does his thing. and this way, the times he does choose to join in seem all the more quality. he participated with abandon, for example, in planting sunflower seeds we saved last fall, and our vast sunflower crop is just about to burst into bloom!

lots of fruit was harvested- huckleberries, cherries, blueberries, and again, there were times i went off and foraged and quinn chose to abstain, while the times he chose to join me were in general very good. (grumblings of “i’m never ever coming to pick cherries with you again!” were heard, but he easily shifted back into eating 1107 more cherries off the tree with sparkle stories coming through his headphones. he’s a good sport.) he helped with other odd chores, such as picking up grass clippings, watering in the greenhouse, feeding our friend’s goats, washing and setting the table, mixing pancake batter, and more, on his initiative.

we worked on interpersonal skills. (i always find it so funny to have to label such things- camping with friends is just life, it’s not just about socialization of children. but we did do some socializing.)

we spent time with baby pancake, who is doing her own unschooling, and excelling at it i might add. (here she is working on her fine motor coordination by picking up black beans and dropping them in a mason jar.) we spent time outside as much as possible!

indoors, we learned a lot of new games! we played twister, several kinds of monopoly, and quinn has begun a love affair with chess. he likes it in a box, he likes it with a fox. he likes it in a house and with a mouse. uno was also played, which is not new, but much loved in our family.

artsy craftsy things were a constant. quinn is way into coloring and sticker books these days. we also did some collage art, some computer “paint” program, and a large t-rex drawing in a cool coffee shop that had paper and colored pencils laid out on every table for customer doodling. that last photo shows how even stickers provide real-life skills needed as a bill-paying adult. (there are some in our household who might postulate that we may be approaching sticker excess….)

literacy. solidifying his grasp of letter sounds. keeping score at a baseball game. pretending to read the newspaper. actually sounding out a few words here and there in storybooks (but he is often reluctant to do so and i am not pushing it!) and playing dinosaur train on the computer (one day at mama’s work). books we’ve read this summer: books about dinosaurs, mrs. frisby and the rats of nimh, and my side of the mountain, as well as lots of storybooks i didn’t keep track of. nimh is an old favorite for quinn, while my side of the mountain is becoming a new favorite.

he worked on numbers. he seems to like to see them in front of him, and will initiate this type of counting (with strawberries, or tortilla chip “volcanoes”) on his own frequently. legos are a big hit right now, and i can see the way they help with number concepts, just simply through play. he does some simple grouping/multiplying at times.

how is it that i have only one single dinosaur picture from this entire summer? this one is from the laughing planet cafe, the day he got a filling (hence the expression as he tries to suck through the straw with half of his face numb), and the cafe has dinosaurs on every table. what a find! oh, and the food is good, too! i happen to know that dinosaurs remain firmly on his very most favorite things list, so don’t be fooled by the lack of dino footage. he will talk your ear off about them and you will learn a lot. watch out.

there’s always so much i forget about as the days rush by. my haphazard phone camera method of keeping track of it all misses many subtle skills learned and projects undertaken. also missed are the things that are so fleeting and can’t be photographed- like when he learned on his own that when he stuck a toy propeller out his car window, it was super awesome and spun really, really fast. i know this somehow translates into his eventual love of physics as a high school junior, i just can’t articulate it at the moment. sometimes it’s just that i forgot to charge my phone and can’t take a photo due to low battery syndrome. but looking back, it seems to me we did have quite a full summer of learning and living and loving!

(and i’d be lying if i said i didn’t feel like this last day before kindergarten was a big deal. a big deal it is, i admit it! a happy one! a rite of passage, yadda yadda. oh, the mixed emotions of motherhood!)

because grammy needs some photos of quinn

Posted on July 23, 2012 by marybethrew

playing with romper, the family chihuahua. this little rugrat is almost starting to grow on me.

a game that is fun even for one player. also helpful for reinforcing knowledge of left and right.

cherry picking, feather finding nature boy.

more berries have been picked. this time boysenberries. (i found a mutant! doubles as a rorschach design. what do you see?)

yummy. and the berries aren’t half bad either. 😉

and because i know i won’t be posting around the farm on thursday, here’s some garden photos from yesterday.

anybody need some kale?

bullet points

Posted on July 16, 2012 by marybethrew

i’m moving. officially. it’s a happy move. a very happy, very much in love move. very.

oregon country fair. at 8 pm quinn succinctly put it, ” the fair was fun. now i’m tired.” i haven’t been to fair in years, and for a long time it was a place full of shadows for me. once upon a time a man left me and went to fair and cheated on me, an act that broke me down more thoroughly than any other act ever committed by another person. i healed, but you know how those big bad scars can always heal a little more? try having a man leave me last week and go to the fair, but before he left, he scattered rose petals on our bed, then called me every day to tell me how much he misses me and loves me, then escorted me around the fair all day sunday like it was his home turf and i was his distinguished guest, and loving me in spite of character defects like forgetting where i parked my car. since blogging about it is kind of like screaming it from the rooftops: good people, i love this man.

(from left to right: a sliver of evidence of me wearing a dress that quinn said made me look “like a stranger” but he finally agreed to let me wear it if he got to be a stranger, too. hence the ears. second of three ice creams for the day. handsome man with his hair down, hubba hubba.)

bubbles!

(5 minutes after we pulled out of the fair parking lot.)

our newly consolidated household may be facing double unemployment in the not too distant future. it feels like we’ve been lucky to avoid it this long. let’s hear it for

free food. i just picked, pitted, and processed around 70 pounds of feral cherries. my fingers are black. i put rose petals in some of the jars. i happened to have some handy.

stuff happened on the boat that really shook my foundation. i’m not supposed to talk about it and frankly i want to spare you. instead, i cried my way home listening to science friday in a rental car, hearing about astronaut re-entry adjustment issues (i felt i could relate, as the road rocked nautically beneath the car) and sobbing for the passing of lonesome george. i wrote some ugly thoughts in my journal (the paper one) such as “devastated and grieving” and “i don’t want to be a scientist anymore.” for better or worse, my wish may be granted soon, if the funding fairies fail to negotiate an extension of my contract. it is far from being a mb-specific issue and most of the offices on my hallway may be dark soon. watch for starving scientists in your area, coming soon to a theater near you.

quinn lost his first tooth! oh my aching mama heart. how? when? i had a baby and all of a sudden he’s so big. he’s starting to read. it feels like time is accelerating. he wanted me to hold him and dance while brokedown in bakersfield played live at the fair and i found myself agreeing to it in spite of the sore arms and shoulders i got out of the deal. soon i won’t be able to hold that sack of sugar even if i want to…

~around the farm~ a panda in the bamboo

Posted on June 14, 2012 by marybethrew

as i was readying my camera to attempt to take pictures of quinn chasing dragonflies, i got this “awesome” shot of my man’s elbow, and our two grubby yardwork pantlegs. sitting on the bench in the backyard, taking a break, as we do. i love mistake photos that capture just exactly how it is.

“my crop is coming in,” he says, waving his hand toward the section of lawn he purposely temporarily mows around.

then there’s his other amazing crop… have i told you about the bamboo?

that’s my hand! there are several varieties of sizes and colors, this one definitely takes the cake in terms of diameter.

he caught me rustling around in there one day when i was first checking out the stand and called out in a faux-gruff voice, “is there a panda in my bamboo?”

bamboo is considered the king of the permaculture plants. many of us cringe when we think of bamboo, because we’ve had it drilled into our heads that it’s “invasive” and will “take over” if left unattended. while there is truth woven among those fear-driven warnings, permaculture insists on one having a relationship with one’s plants, and bamboo thrives on that interaction with its caretakers. if utilized properly, bamboo behaves itself. and oh, the many uses! i ran out of pvc pipe for the watering standpipes of my sub-irrigation tomato planters…. and my panda found a very handy replacement.

a bow saw worked well for cutting the lengths of bamboo, and a tire iron (the long skinny part for prying off the hubcap and cranking the jack) was essential for the job of piercing through the sealed ends of each cell of the bamboo- it’s not an open pipeline right off the stalk, in other words. but it was fairly easily achieved with the right tools.

and there’s the queen, comfrey. accumulating scarce nutrients through its impressive root system, making more mulch that you can shake a stick at (you can hack it down several times a season, and it will just keep growing back), attracting all kinds of beneficial beasts, and providing healing remedies.

veering off topic, i took a day off work to go pick me some strawberries. not certified organic, but the right balance of weeds and slugs in the field reassured me that organic practices, or at least benign neglect, were at work on this farm just like mine. rich inspected my unstained hands (i won’t say clean, i had dirt under my nails) before i left, and sure enough, 36 pounds of berries later, they were bright red. my canning buddy and i went a bit earlier this year, since i leave in a week for a 10 day research cruise, and we want to go strawberry picking twice this year!

we made a little side excursion to collect wild rose petals for some of the strawberry jam

and scoped out the plum crop, which neither of us had located before now, in our top secret free apple-pear-cherry-blackberry-and-now-plum picking location!

back on the farm, the hummingbirds are insane. maybe it’s the magical trees like this that keep blooming in quick succession, or the comfrey plants, or maybe it’s the ~~crack~~ sugar water my honey puts out for them in the feeder. hard to say.

i love the way he dotes on animals. you’d know what i mean if you saw him with this pretty girl, tinker, who is not fooling anyone pretending she is hard at work hoeing weeds. i think i may have to get him some chickens, ducks, goats, and bees soon. how about it, sweetie?

and then there is this lovebug. shockingly grown, helping me spread copious quantities of sunflower seeds around the garden, saved and dried from last year’s crop, hopefully promising that this year’s crop will be 50 times as big. seed to seed, one of the many things i’ve wanted for him to experience as a child. he seems to take it in stride as just another thing people do. he doesn’t realize (yet) what a lunatic his mama is.

around the farm

Posted on April 26, 2012 by marybethrew

remember the around the farm posts? i’m going to need a spot to put all of the before and during photos of my new digs (yuk yuk). i think most of my readers know i’m head over heels in love with this guy

but i’m not sure how much i’ve said about the land he lives on, and how i’ve fallen in love with that, too. and so the setting for my around the farm posts has changed to that new home where both quinn and i feel our roots reaching steadily into that nice dark rich soil.

quinn is holding his earthworm friend named centipede next to the 850 square foot garden that up until very recently was solid salmonberry. in case you’re worried about the salmonberry, please don’t. it takes over any neglected place, so we have plenty more left and plenty more will undoubtedly spring up again, hopefully not in the middle of the garden after i worked so hard pulling all those roots out!

so this new home… it’s just such a magical place. i can’t hear any cars, unless it’s my honey’s truck coming home from work. i can’t see any city lights, or even any neighbor’s lights. i can see the stars, i can hear the birds and the frogs. the bees have been buzzing for weeks and the hummingbirds are already zooming around the zillions of blooms.

there’s a bunch of abandoned nursery pots and flats sitting around waiting for me to put them to good use in the greenhouse. there’s a sweet man who will walk to the greenhouse from where he’s been busy chainsawing back the brush from the pathways, just to deliver a trillium that was in the path of destruction and needed a safer place to hang out.

there’s a ready supply of old tools that i can feel free to use until i break, and when i do, a professional welder is on hand to put them back into working order for me. (i did use tools in the plural, because yes more than one shovel has been repaired thus far.)

that was because of all those salmonberry roots. this nice pile of soil used to look like this just a short while ago:

and although last week it looked like this:the rain let up a bit over the weekend, and next week i will document my progress on the snazzy garden design i’ve got cooking up in my head (and sketching a little bit on paper, too.) re-reading some of toby hemenway’s gaia’s garden, and a few other permaculture and gardening books have rekindled my excitement about ecological design, companion planting, polyculture, and food forests…

speaking of polyculture, our community garden bed is still producing several over-wintered goodies to eat (parsley, beets, oregano, celery, broccolini or brussels sprouts-ilini, if you will- essentially the bolting tops of brussels sprouts, leeks, chives, chard, and several kinds of kale. i am seeing lots of up and coming alliums (garlic, onions, leeks, scallions) looking mighty fine in there. apparently they thrived on the cold and wet winter conditions we experienced.

granddaddy leek

granddaddy chioggia beet, practically the size of quinn’s head. it went nicely with our roasted mck ranch chicken and mashed potatoes the other night.

smiling garden gnome

back on the farm, the potted garden of my rental life is starting to congregate (one trunk full of pots at a time) on the sidelines of the newly dug beds, more than ready for their new lives in the real world.

~this moment~

Posted on April 20, 2012 by marybethrew