b o t t o m l a n d

30 days of summer :: 4

I'd better pick up the pace with this picture project, or I won't have 30 days before the end of the summer!  We've been consumed with home inspections and buying appliances off of Craig's list.  Buying used sure can save a lot of money, but it takes so much time!  As much as I'm passionate about reusing and recycling, I can sympathize with the temptation to just walk into a store and buy what you need.

So here are some shots from the other day that capture this summer for me:
Hanging out at the new house with friends...  Somehow sharing our excitement with others makes it all feel more real.
And then cooling off at the lake at the bottom of the hill...  Here's Clara "helping" Baby Georgia with her hat.  Clara loved the water when she was that age, and then she went through a stage of being afraid of it (namely, last summer).  I'm so glad that she's regained her confidence with swimming.

**Note:  I had fun fooling around with these photos on picnik.com. Ooo, I could spend way too much time on that site!

30 days of summer :: 3

It's a muggy, overcast day, so we spent some time sewing this morning.  Here is Clara with her very first "sewing" project, inspired by Ezra (and his mom, of course!)  I am always grateful for the inspiration of other mothers, both the ones I know "in real life" and my fellow bloggers.  I don't embroider, so I never would have thought to get this out for Clara, but it's way easier for her to do than true sewing with a tiny needle and tightly woven fabric.  This provides the perfect introduction to using needle and thread.

30 days of summer :: 2

::Clara's very first kite flight::

::pure joy::


::some random kite haiku::
(found by googling "kite haiku")

Primary colours
splash the slate sky; thin strings tie
dun earth to green sea.


Dream kite drank the sky,
ripped my fingers for freedom,
dragged me off my feet.


Unreliable
winds: my kite lifts, loops, crashes,
snaps my hopes in sand.


Picked up. Patched up. Climb
high on a steady breeze:
lift my heart again.


You smile, feint, escape,
soar away. I stand limp-stringed,
dropped, directionless.

30 days of summer :: 1

Okay, so I haven't been paying much attention to this blog for the last month.  We've been a wee bit busy, between putting on a festival of 1,000 people 24 hours away from home, putting on a birthday bash for our little girl, buying a house and trying to squeeze in some family vacation time on Cape Cod.  Excuses, excuses... 

But the truth is I miss blogging--this space is a tool that helps me stay focused on the things in my life that I am grateful for.  So anyway, to re-acquaint myself with blogging I'm going to try to do a picture project.  We're having so many wonderful summer days around here, and I thought I'd celebrate in SouleMama style with 30 days of summer pictures.  Now, I may not get to doing one every single day, but I'll try for at least 5 a week.   Here are some recent sweet memories to get things started:
On the dock at Elbow Pond, our favorite summer spot.  Clara is turning into quite the little swimmer!

We had a brief but glorious evening with our dear friends Elaine and Nate, who live too far away in Princeton, NJ, but were up in New Hampshire visiting Nate's parents.  Clara enjoyed helping them pick greens for a dinner salad from Nate's folks' garden.  Look at those lovely raised beds!  I can't wait to have a garden of my own next year!

**Do any of you photo folks have any idea why my pictures always look so washed out when I upload them to typepad?  They have such lovely, rich colors in iphoto, and I see other bloggers with good color on their blogs...  I don't know what I'm doing wrong.  Any tips?**

home

What I like about this picture is that it looks like such a sweet spot to build a house.  Wouldn't it be lovely to gaze at this each day?   It needn't be a big house, just something cozy for a small family to live in...  Perhaps something like this little house:
 
Yes, that would be lovely!  And the only thing such a property would need would be a barn.  A medium sized barn, just big enough to house some sheep and goats.  Oh, and chickens of course!

Yes, this would be a great place to raise a family, and welcome friends and family for rest and rejuvenation...  I have been dreaming of just such a place for as long as I can remember (probably since reading the "Little House" books as a girl!), and tonight we found out that those dreams are becoming reality.  Dave and I have moved around a lot in the six years of our marriage, and the time has come for us to sink our roots into some good land.  We are delighted to share with you all the news that this is happening at last!  Our offer on this little house and the 6.5 acres it sits on has been accepted, and we are going to have a home of our own!   I am delirious with joy...

we're back!

It's been a long and winding road, but we're back and beginning to dig ourselves out from under the mountain of laundry amassed by a week of camping in a dusty field.  I've lost three attempts at a post now, so I'll leave you with just one snapshot--one of my favorites from our two-week-long adventure:
 
Yup, that's our crazy friend Shane breathing fire alongside some incredible poi (fire dancing).  Did I mention that we had a great time at PAPA Fest?  Fun was had by all, and I can't wait to share some of our reflections.  Look for a good bit of catching up in this space in the next couple of days.  In the mean time, happy summer!

**  Clara made a dear friend in Lucy, the dog of our friends Cassie and Chris, who, we are sad to say, was just hit by a car the other day.  Those of you who knew Lucy know what a dear dog she was.  We will all miss her! :(

road trip

Remember in my last post when I promised birthday details?  They're going to have to wait.  We've transitioned from birthday madness to road trip madness.  We're in central PA at a lake with Papa D's family for a few days, then we head off to IL for PAPA Fest for all of next week.  I will have some computer access, and will be trying to blog, but if I don't show my face around here for a while, you'll know why.  I will be back online no later than Tuesday, June 24th, and perhaps sooner than that.

For now I'll leave you with the momentous picking of our first tomato!  We have two huge tomato plants growing in the window of the back hall, and our first fruit ripened on Little C's birthday, so she got to pick it!

i'm not dead yet

 Folks, it's been a whirlwind around here.  I am still alive.  I am still interested in the modern art practice of blogging.  I am planning a splashy entry to mark the end of my neglect of b o t t o m l a n d.  But in the mean time I'll leave you all with this shot of my beautiful daughter being crowned 3 by my husband.  We've had birthdays and baby showers, house hunting, conferences and road trips.  Yes, folks, life is a wild ride!

june delights

Poppies in the garden! Spring tonic: lilacs...

The irises are just beginning to open!

Can you see the ant opening up the peony leaves?

You know it's really summer when the woodstove serves as a  flower stand, rather than a heat source!

she climbs!

Hello again, and sorry for my long absence!  We've had a wonderfully busy week, full of visitors and the special activities that come with hosting.  We've had long, lingering philosophical and theological conversations, we've shown off the farmstead that is the latest object of our house-lust, we've eaten at favorite restaurants and cooked yummy meals at home, we've taken long walks and even squeezed in some gardening... 

One extra-special thing that we did was go rock climbing with Papa D's oldest sister (that's her with the braids).  Over the past few years, she's become quite an avid rock climber down in her neck of the woods, and she's been eager to try out our local rocks.  (We live quite close to Rumney, a popular destination for rock climbers, claiming some of the best sport climbing in the Northeast.)  Papa D and I both used to climb quite a bit, and while he's kept it up, I haven't put on a harness in over 4 years.  It was so much fun to be climbing again, and just to be up in the woods.  And the best part of the day was getting Little C climbing!  She used a special child's harness and quickly took to it with the fearlessness of a toddler.  In fact, she didn't want to leave!  I was so incredibly proud of her diligence and continued effort, even though it was difficult for her.  Papa D and I both struggle with pushing ourselves through challenges, and we've often talked about how we can pass along the virtue of diligence to our child.  It was so exciting to see her try again and again, and to see her face beam with pride at her accomplishment.  We were all tired at the end of the day--the best kind of tired that comes from exerting yourself doing something you love.

Psychologically and physically, it felt so good to climb again.  I have to confess that I get too easily intimidated by activities that I once was good at, but no longer spend much time doing (like writing, kayaking, skiing, climbing, hiking).  It's something I don't like about myself--it's as though if I can't keep up the level of involvement that I once had, I don't want to do it at all.  I used to lead wilderness expeditions for incoming freshman at the college I attended, and as a guide and a student of outdoor education I had a moderate level of skill and confidence in these areas.  But once I got out of the rhythm of regular involvement in backpacking and climbing, I've had a hard time doing it at all.  It's as though I'd rather not face my out-of-shape-ness, or that fact that things don't come quite as easily as they once did.  So it felt like something of an emotional hurdle to overcome to commit myself to a day of climbing after so long.  I'm pretty proud of myself, and I did okay up on the rock too!






















Here's Little C, unwilling to admit that it's time to go home.  Don't worry, sweetheart, we'll do it again soon!

happy cooking!

I don't like the spicy sauce because I'm only four and a quarter.  Maybe when when I'm older.  --Nate

We're expecting house guests (Papa D's sister and brother-in-law) in a few hours, and so I may not pop my head up here for a few days.  I did just want to briefly share this amazing book that I got out of my library all about cooking with kids.  Mollie Katzen, the author and chef, is the vegetarian maven who has published such classic cookbooks as The Enchanted Broccoli Forest and The Moosewood Cookbook.  This book is geared towards the 3-6 set, and is full of great ideas about engaging kids in the kitchen.  Kids love to cook, and already Little C (at less than 3) is able to take on meaningful, simple tasks in helping me prepare our meals.  For many months now she's been good at stirring and pouring, but she is able to use a sharp knife under my close supervision.  I am a big believer in the Montessori/Waldorf principle of giving kids real work to do.  I think our culture vastly underestimates children's ability and interest in participating in the work of real life (I know I've posted about this before) and our life attests to the value of including kids in household work and chores.

 

Anyway, this book provides great inspiration for hitting the kitchen with your little ones!  Kids are much more eager to eat healthy food when they have helped prepare it.  Even better, get them started in the garden growing the food that will become their dinner!

Here's some "rules" as outlined by the preschoolers that Katzen worked with in developing this book:

• No walking away with knives!  --Theo
• Be careful when it's in the oven.  Stay still!  --Meila
• When the food is hot we can look with our eyes, but not with our hands. --Leah
• Say "No thank you" instead of "I hate that!"  --Sarah
• Stir slowly because we don't want to get it on our clothes.  We don't want to get it on our shoes, either.  --Sarah Jane
• Don't run in the kitchen or you could bash into cabinets.  --Ethan
• I think I have to be six to like spicy food.  --Eli
• You can't stand on a stove.  It's not a climbing structure.  --Molly
• Don't put food on your arms.  --Nyko

a poem for today

from The Cure at Troy

Human beings suffer,
they torture one another,
they get hurt and get hard.
No poem or play or song
can fully right a wrong
inflicted or endured.

The innocent in gaols
beat on their bars together.
A hunger-striker's father
stands in the graveyard dumb.
The police widow in veils
faints at the funeral home.

History says, Don't hope
on this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
the longed for tidal wave
of justice can rise up,
and hope and history rhyme.

So hope for a great sea-change
on the far side of revenge.
Believe that a further shore
is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles
and cures and healing wells.

Call the miracle self-healing:
The utter self-revealing
double-take of feeling.
If there's fire on the mountain
Or lightning and storm
And a god speaks from the sky

That means someone is hearing
the outcry and the birth-cry
of new life at its term.

~ Seamus Heaney ~