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It's a Jungle Out There

I don't have much time these days to get my thoughts together in a coherent way but I thought at least I could post some photos of my organic garden. Let me just say that when I planted it back in May I thought I didn't really have enough in it. For weeks it looked kind of sparse. Well in June I got back from the beach and decided it just wasn't taking off. It hadn't had enough water and had weeds taking over. I spent the day weeding and watered it a few times. BUT... the biggest thing I did was that after weeding and watering I covered it with cow manure and compost. That was the magic key I guess, that and some great thunderstorms. I have a jungle in my yard now. One of my plants is over four fee tall.  

                                                                              

The most amazing thing is that much of what is growing I didn't plant, at least not on purpose. I have a number of things that came out of the compost I threw down. I have butternut squash and pumpkins growing and another squash type thing that I'm not sure what it is yet. I'll have to see what comes up. Hopefully it is some acorn squash which I love. Anyway I have so many zucchini that I'm giving them away left and right. They are really delicious too.

Following is a recipe I invented to use the zucchini I have. Take a large baking dish and layer the following:

zucchini cut in 1/4 inch rounds, salt and pepper to taste, Italian seasoning, olive oil, large bread crumbs (I make these by toasting whole wheat bread and cutting it into small squares),  generous amounts of olive oil sprinkled on, and mozzarella cheese, I do this in two layers and then bake at 375 degrees for about 30-40 minutes. I cover it with foil. It is delicious.

We have also made chocolate zucchini cake. I won't post the recipe but you can find a number of them by googling it. It is fantastic. I had guests over and they couldn't believe it was full of zucchini. I half the sugar used in the cake and add a half a cup of chocolate chips. Yum!

I admit that due to the overwhelming number of squashes they are squashing out the tomatoes but it is kind of fun to see thing appear almost over night in the garden. I hear it must be the cow manure. Experienced gardeners call it black gold. I have also found that the zucchini literally grow over night. I can check the garden in the morning and find a couple that are too small to pick and then come back the next morning and they haver grown larger than I am supposed to let them.??

I will end with a couple more photos but they are about a week old and the garden has grown even more since and the tiny pumpkin is getting much bigger.  Happy gardening.

Mimi                                                                                                                                                            

Nature Photography For Kids

A month or so ago I taught a class on nature photography for kids. It was a lot of fun. We had a short discussion on how to get a good nature shot complete with "framing" the shot with an actual mat, to get an idea what we wanted to shoot. Then we took a long walk through the woods. It was beautiful and the class got lots of great photos. When we came back we looked at a slide show of everyone's photos with an LCD projector. One child got better photos than I did, she was an expert at 11. Most everyone had fun and a couple of kids got some close ups of an adorable toad. Here are the shots I took before the class to run on the screen while parents were dropping off kids. They are colorful but not fantastic.
                                                                                 

 

Camping,the Beach and Biting Flies

We are already back home and getting into our summer schedule and partly why I haven't gotten a blog together on our beach trip.  The girls and I had camped all across the US when we went on our cross country trip but it was the first time Tony had joined us. It was memorable. The first two days were absolutely ideal with temperatures in the lower 80's and little humidity. It got down into the lower 60's at night and so the campfire really felt nice.. S'mores were had and enjoyed by all. All of us except Tony slept well those first two nights. HOWEVER, the third night we were there the weather took a turn for the worse and we has an amazing thunder storm which although is very exciting in a small tent is also a bit frightening, especially when there are four kids, two adults and two tents to worry about. I wouldn't even have minded the thunderstorm but the temperature suddenly went into the 90's and with humidity. We were locked in sweat boxes in our tents and nobody slept well. We awoke tired and cranky from our lack of sleep the fourth day to be greeted by swarms of biting flies. It was horrendous to say the least. I thought I would just be done with it and spray with bug spray but I discovered they could care less about deet and continued to bite us. We made the quickest exit we had ever done throwing everything in the car and high tailing it out of there, leaving our site a day early. We had so much fun on day two that we ended up spending just a bit more time than we should have on the beach and we all managed to get a bit too much sun, despite using the sunscreen liberally. So on our last day we spent the day at the Marine Science Aquarium and had a wonderful time there. We got to sit in a osprey nest (a pretend one), pet sting rays, and have a picnic outside. A good time was definitely had by all and "all's well that ends well" as my mother in law says but I don't think Tony will be in a hurry to join us again for camping.

 

The Downside of Homeschooling

 I decided just now to write this post because I have noticed that a I get a number of hits on my blog due to people who plug in "the downside of homeschooling" in a Google search. It got me thinking and I decided just to go right ahead and as usual not be shy. Ok, here goes, there are downsides to everything, including homeschooling but they may not be what you think. While I was reading others thought on the downside to homeschooling I happened to notice the old socialization thing,

 "One of the downsides of homeschooling program is the fact that it lacks the social component, which teaches the child to interact with other people. .."

First of all, this was a direct quote from an internet article and it isn't even written correctly, I cut and pasted, so it isn't my grammar error. Further more, give me a break, what in the world does this person think we do all day, I mean really! I'm sorry but this makes me really laugh.  Maybe they think that we sit with giant stacks of books alone in our homes in the woods never getting out to see any one all day. The truth is that a couple of years ago I had to limit the number of things each of my children did because we got out too much and I was worn thin. Homeschool families get out any time of the day they feel like getting out, not only on the off school hours.  We have more opportunity for all kinds of social interaction and on a regular basis.

Since when did sitting in a room with twenty five or more same age mates all day become "socialization"? I was a public school teacher and let me tell you we weren't always all that "social", I would call it crowd control. We had to come up with all number of techniques to keep kids doing what we wanted them to do when we wanted them to.Social interaction happens anytime a person interacts with another person. This can happen anywhere and anytime. If it was limited to school only, we'd all be in trouble.

Back to the downsides as in truth there are some which were in a previous more gentle post on homeschooling. It isn't free. We have to pay for things that most people can get included in their public school institution. This isn't always a bad thing but it can be more difficult on the budget. There are ways to do it cheap but cheap isn't free.

Someone needs to be there to do the homeschooling and this often means the loss of a second income, though in truth there is a large movement of people who work part to full time who also have decided to homeschool and make it work. In general at least some sacrifice of time and energy will be made on the part of the family. You as the parent will now be responsible for your child's education but aren't you anyway??

While scratching my head here trying to come up with another point to my downsides list I asked my kids and they shouted out, "fighting" so I'll add that one in. Your homeschool kids generally being siblings will have more opportunity to not get along with each other. My kids do fight and they even fight with me. I'm not proud  of this just honest. The girls also said that when you say you are homeschooled people make assumptions about you which  are generally not true.  So that about covers my real list of downsides. I leave you all with some photos my "unsocialized" teen daughter was able to take right in the middle of her OFFICIAL school day. She stopped what she was doing and took the time to get a bit more info on the turtle she found and I think she did a great job with the photos too. I'm so glad she was here to see him instead of being "socialized" in the local public school. Please forgive the sarcasm, I usually try and avoid it.

Mimi

Perfect Weather

Today was one of those days that we don't get enough of here in Virginia. It was around 70 degrees Fahrenheit with no humidity. I chuckle when I think that in England this would be considered "red hot". Perhaps that is because of the constant level of humidity there which brings me back to my original subject. We suffer here precisely because it is so darn humid most of the time. It is always so nice when we get that wonderful dry warmth, not heat.

We have been enduring a years long drought too which has not done much for the garden. Three out of four of my beautiful red azaleas did not bloom this year, however, they are sprouting little green buds so they aren't dead completely. In the past two weeks we have had so much rain that we've endured an amazing amount of flooding. Fortunately I managed to get my veggies in just before the rain. It looks like they didn't drown from the six or so inches we got in two deluges. Now if we can just get a reasonable amount of rain over the whole summer we'll do great.

For my job I sometimes work at a local reservoir which flooded  and left quite a mess of debris for us to clean up. Below are the flood photos. Instead of throwing the debris in piles in the woods I suggested that we use it to create a garden under the nature center and there it went. It made a lovely brown mulch too. Now we need to find some native shade plants and that will make me really happy.

Speaking of happy, today was such a nice day. For once the yard and garden are green and lush because of all the rain and hubby managed to mow the lawn and do the weed whacking despite the fact that he wasn't feeling great yesterday. I have weeded and separated my perennials and gotten them all tucked safely in their new beds. I do sometimes feel like I'm putting them to bed for the summer.

The compost is also coming along swimmingly as well. Because I've been teaching composting classes I'm experimenting with a bin on my deck and turning it each time I put something in to see really just how long it will take to get the finished product this way.??

I signed the kids up for swim team today even though with four of them doing about six camps between them I'm not sure how we will actually get to a practice or a meet, we'll do our best. We are not a camp family but this year we are doing the camps because of my job. Two are camp counselors and two are participants and I am leading one camp. Then we have a work camp and a church camp and then our family camping trip. One can not camp too much, I think.... I'll let you all know at the end of the summer. I am not at my computer so I'll see what photos I can dig up for my gardening post, no pun intended.

Shakespeare and Cokie Roberts

My brain is rather gelatinous lately as I seem to be so worn out at the end of the day. I do have lots of thoughts that I keep meaning to jot down so I can blog about them later but I don't seem to have the pencil and paper when I have the thought. Those thoughts will have to wait for another day. I am at my husband's computer and so had a look through his photos and low and behold I completely forgot to mention our wonderful trip over the Shenandoah Mountains to Staunton, Virginia.

For Tony's 50th I took him away. It only took us three months to manage it in our calendars but better late than never. We stayed in a 1920's hotel called The Stonewall Jackson Hotel which was really quite nice, not too fancy but very comfy. The best part was that it was right next door to The American Shakespeare Center also called The Blackfriars Playhouse. It was modeled after the old Blackfriars in England.

I had never seen a Shakespeare play and we saw Macbeth. It was absolutely wonderful. I learned more about Shakespeare by seeing the play and taking the behind the scene tour than I ever did by reading the plays in school. A few things surprised me, first of all I didn't realize that there would be no amplification. They did not have any microphones. The theater was created in much the way the original would have been and they used the natural acoustics. Secondly, they actors chose their own costumes and they were a mix-mash of old and new; which according to our tour guide was exactly what the original Shakespearean actors did. There were also very few props but the actors kept us totally into the show with their amazing presence and incredible use of the language. My favorite was lady Macbeth and her "out damn spot!" I loved the witches too, they were really creepy, again with few props. Following are a few shots Tony took during our tour of the place.

I must work out to get the kids there to see a play also. I think it would replace months of reading just to see one play. Speaking of months of reading, my eldest two recently got the opportunity to meet Cokie Roberts. She was giving a speech at a professional organization which happens to be in the same building where Tony works and he got an invitation for them. It was good for Mia who has blossomed into quite the feminist lately. Stupid me though, I went out the night before to get her book for them to have signed and I got the wrong one. She was signing her newest one, Ladies of Liberty: The Women Who Shaped Our Nation and I got a later issue, Founding Mother's: The Women Who Raised Our Nation. Oh well, she didn't seem to mind and they both seemed interesting. I have not had a chance to read either.

Here's my little plug for homeschooling, if the girls had been in school they would not have been able to go. As it was, they were the only teenagers there. I would have loved to have gone too but I had a work engagement that I could not miss. They sat in front, paid attention and Mia asked a great question. She wanted to know why the US hasn't had a female president. Mia was most impressed by how "normal" Cokie Roberts was. She said she had a bit of fuzz on her dress and a tissue hanging out of her purse. It made me smile. At the end a good day was had by all.

The Napping House

I read an article in the Washington Post today which said that a nap a day keeps the doctor away, well not exactly like that but that napping is actually a good thing. I've known that for a while. I have napped off and on for most of my life.

When I was pregnant I HAD to nap. I would become comatose if I did not. It was rather difficult with my first two pregnancies as I was working as a teacher. I don't remember exactly if I did nap every day but I know I made every effort to. After I left my daytime teaching job and began teaching adults in the evening I definitely napped every day, usually with a little one or two beside me. I remember being pregnant with my third daughter and having a four year old and a two year old. By nap time we were all in desperate need of a little rest.

In truth, I have never gotten out of the habit. I don't nap every single day but every day only every day I am able. I have generally kept this information private because napping is, well, frowned upon in our get up and go modern society. We prize ourselves on how little sleep we can survive on. I am glad that I realized how much better I feel after an hour or so (a little less some days, a little more on other days)

Lo and behold, I can finally come out of the closet or bed in this case. Studies are saying that it is actually good for the brain to take a rest during the day. I must admit I don't feel my brain is any the better I still can't do crossword puzzles or Sudoku but my mood certainly is improved. People have napped since the dawn of time. I guess, mostly it comes from keeping away during the hottest part of the day. I wonder if Eskimos nap as they don't have the hottest part of the day. I was sad to hear that they are doing away with the official siesta in Spain. It is hotter than blazes there in the heat of the day and air conditioning or not I think they should have kept the official break mid day. Who am I to say, though I visited Spain in 1988 I don't live there.

My children rarely nap and all gave it up rather early. I will continue my habit and at least now I have some research to back me up. Nappers of the world unite!

Mimi

Pandora's Music Box

What a drag life would be without music. I listen to music all the time and so does my whole family. We have the classical genre covered by my husband and thanks to him the girls have been exposed to it and enjoy it as well. I have never learned to appreciate it fully. I sometimes think this is a sure sign of my weak intelligence, but I need to be honest because well I'm just that kind of person and well secondly I have Eyes for Lies stopping in to my blog now and again so I have to be especially careful (just kidding but she does have a fantastic blog.)

How do you listen to music? Back in 1977 when I was in high school I saved up every penny I made at my $2.65 an hour job (about $350) to get a monster stereo turn table with, get this, a built in 8 track tape recorder. It had a pretty good sound. Actually, I have no idea what kind of sound it had but it was loud and that mattered back then. Being the fifth child and one who didn't drink, smoke pot or sleep around I don't think my parents cared much about the noise, they were glad to have me home and safe. Now that I have teens I totally get that! Rock on kids, I know where you are, I'll jam some cotton in my ears.

Funny thing, after all the advances in technology I listen to music on my laptop with some hip $10 speakers my hubby had left over from work and was dragging around in the back of his car. Hey, it works for me. I sit scanning my old photos, reading the news,  doing my email or blogging all the while listening to my tunes on my ten dollar speakers. If I feel like really cranking it up and tuning out the rest of the world I put in my $10 ear phones.

Here's the new part, most of the music I listen to is free and I do it totally legally. How do I do this you ask, we'll let me just tell you. It's called Pandora. I discovered this awesome site about eighteen months ago and it is all I listen to. Pandora is a website where you create stations of songs, groups, or singers you like. They will play some of the original music but they add in songs that are similar that you might like. As the songs play you get to click on a thumbs up or a thumbs down. What I have found is that I like most of the music that comes my way. Little by little I have discovered some amazing Indy groups that are so much better than what you normally get on the radio.

While I normally minimize the site while I do at least three other things at a time I have purchased at least three cds of music that I first discovered on Pandora. I know three isn't much but I am not much of a consumer, so three is a lot for me. I will buy more in the future I'm sure. Let me just tell you about some of these wonderful artists and these are not in order of my favorite. It has to depend on the mood I'm in of course.

The first group was actually suggested by a fellow blogging friend north of the border up in Canada and where this fantastic group comes from. Jen of I Miss My Mind the Most suggested The Be Good Tanyas. Let me tell you, these girls rock, not in the traditional sense but they are awesome. I must admit that my kids listen to them and want to know why their voices are so strange. Kids, they actually have voices, they are not created by a manager in a studio. They sing and play my very favorite, THE BANJO! Their music is a combo of folk, bluegrass, country and blues.

The next favorite group is also from Canada. I wonder what they're doin' up north to create so many good musicians? Maybe they're all rockin out to keep warm? The next group is called The Duhks. They are a group of twenty somethings that play a combo of folk, gospel, zydeco, celtic and whatever they feel like. I discovered them on Pandora with a bunch of other great artists like Sean Hayes who has some wild hair but makes me want to dance every time I listen to Rattlesnake Charms.

The Duhks really play all kinds of music but with Sean Hayes it's his unusual voice and lyrics that appeal to me. He plays an acoustic guitar and mostly a folk singer I guess, but he has something very different about him and I love his stuff.

Then there's Gillian Welch who almost could be a country singer but since I don't like country music she must not be because I love her music too. I guess she's not country because she doesn't wear a push-up bra or heavy make up. Her voice is eerily like Janis Joplin too. She sings with unbelievable feeling. To me it sounds like she really means what she's singing.

The above mentioned are definitely my latest favorites but there are many more. I will mention some of the artists I have discovered and the songs that I especially like. If you go to Pandora you should be able to listen to their music and eventually the songs mentioned will pop up. Along the way you'll also find all kinds of neat music that you never knew you liked. Happy listening and if you feel like it let me know who you discovered.
Lastly here are some other favorites.

Brandi Carlisle singing Josephine. She sings with a sweet rich voice that reminds me of Mama Cass from the Mamas and the Papas. Louden Wainwright singing Unhappy Anniversary a catchy bluegrass tune. The Waiffs singing London Still, Mia and Jonah with Bird on the Wing. I don't like all their music but I like how they harmonize in this song. Lastly I can't believe I really like Sun's Work Undone by The Hackensaw Boys because, well... let's just face it I can not call them anything but country, though for some reason they call their music bluegrass with punk?? Then there's Redbird a beautiful country/folk group with lovely tunes my favorite at the moment being Lighthouse.

What is really amazing is that this is really only one genre that I listen to, there are others perhaps for a Pandora's Box 2 post for another day.

Mimi

Godspeed Anthony

My dearest friend Sharon got the call that no mother EVER wants to get. Her eldest son was killed last week in Iraq. I truly can not imagine what she must be going through. I have not spoken to her yet but can't imagine how I can help but give her a shoulder to cry on. Anthony was thirty-one and has left five children behind. Forgive my language please, but war sucks! If you are the praying kind please say one for this grieving family.

Mimi

Family Photos

At the moment and all this past weekend I have been spending hours scanning hundreds of photos. I had a camera since I was 13 years old as I mentioned in my previous blog with the lovely photo of me at the prom with Napoleon Dynamite, and so I have billions of photos or so it seems. Such fun! I did not mention in that blog about all the photos of my dad's funeral or the ones where had lost lots of weight and did not have his normal vigor and energy to be blunt when he was dying. I tend to go for the happy memories but the sad ones are certainly valuable too.

It really is not an easy job scanning photos and why it is I am SO glad I finally bought a great digital camera a couple of years ago. The difficulty does not lie just in the physical labor involved in scanning photos which in itself can be tiresome and time consuming but in the emotions that one can run into while doing the scanning.

I happened to have a number of photos stashed away with old diaries. Needless to say while trying to organize the photos I dug into the diaries brining up a ton of interesting reflections on my life. I am a thinker and often live in the realm of my mind. It isn't always a productive habit but one that can be hard to break. At times it has helped me, my mind that is, acting as a free therapist of sorts, helping me to work things out and keep healthy. At times it runs around in circles and I get a little lost. Usually with some time and my other free therapists (my husband or my sister)I move right along. The most amazing thing about the diaries is how much I have changed. I am just not the same person I was at any other point in my life. I guess that is a good thing as I still consider myself a work at progress even at the ripe old age of 47.

Back to the photos, what is so amazing about them is that when I look at them I feel simply overwhelmed with what a great life I have had. Each photo, including and especially the not so perfect ones, remind me of what a lucky person I am. I have had so many amazing experiences and most of all, corny as it sounds, I have experienced so much love. From the outside looking in some people might have even felt sorry for me. At one point in our lives I fully admit that we were so poor we were eligible for government benefits but that was because I was desperate to stay home with my babies and raise them myself.  When I was working,I did not get used to leaving them with a care provider as my friends suggested I would. I cried myself to sleep for the first week and was miserable the entire time I worked away from them.

When I came home from work permanently, I would take my kiddies off to the library story time where we'd sit and listen to the story with all the kids dressed in their fancy Gymboree outfits with their nannies. I was one of the only moms there with my kids. Mine had the Gymboree outfits because I bought them at the thrift store but I doubt anyone knew that. Moms would come up to me and tell me how lucky I was to stay home. I wasn't lucky I just made the decision to do it under any circumstances. I never felt happier than the first day I didn't have to go to work. I remember well being absolutely ecstatic that I could go out and push my daughter on the swing in our apartment complex.

I do not feel any urge to compare my life with any one else's and I am so happy that my daughters will truly get to choose which path they will follow in their lives and I will try my best to support them but I don't regret the fact that I will have little to no retirement. My retirement is my family and I'm sure we'll be fine. Now that they are old enough to be left alone for short periods I have been fortunate to find an amazing job that is not just a way for me to make some extra money but something that totally suits my interests.

Here's to family photos and here are some of my favs