Full

 The week started with some craziness - long over-due intense play...

 ...which ended with a fever and a mystery virus that didn't keep us still for very long...

Esme's treehouse - do you want to live here, or what?

 We have had a hard time finding our groove this week, which doesn't mean there weren't some bright spots - like lunching with fermented foods - a long discussion that I got to overhear between the girls, about the virtues of kimchi versus pickles...until they discovered that the "pickled" beans Ani was eating weren't actually pickled. This moved us into "advertisement" mode - how to sell those fermented foods??...

 Eliza decided she could sell grapes. Girl, you could sell anything.

 Mmmhmmm, you too. I mean, I'd eat it. I do eat it (hummous and live-fermented green bean sandwich, of her own invention).

 I experimented a little more with the shirt stencils, this time for a friend's birthday. I forgot to get a photo of the finished shirt, but I worked on the image from a photo I'd taken of her goats...I think it turned out much better than I'd thought it would!

 Some of our rocky week was due to fighting off the virus.  Both girls have gotten it, and Dan and I alternately have felt run-down, which hasn't put us at our best.  Eliza continues to want "school", so we've gotten into a bit of a rhythm with projects and consistent math lessons, but there have been a lot of the harder moments of figuring out how to treat each other well.  It has been really helpful to me to do some reading (this always helps me!) - a few of the links from this post of Stacy's over at Sweet Sky helped bring me back to the basics on how I want to be with my kids (specifically the golden rule of parenting link). I also stumbled upon Teacher Tom, who spends his days with pre-schoolers, and he had an articulate post or two about treating kids as whole people, instead of as people-in-training, and it makes sense to me in a very deep way. (Teacher Tom may also be my new favorite super hero...)  A good friend also happened to come by one afternoon when I was deep into self-doubt mode (what do I think I'm doing here, keeping my kids at home only to bicker with them all day?) and pulled me out of the mire. And again, there were more bright spots...old-time "parchment" paper to make with cardstock and tea bags (we did this before, here)...

 Which meant of course that we had to go make some pokeberry ink (the link is to when we did this before too!) (and yes, caution! it is poisonous!!!).  It is such a beautiful color, and of course we had to have quills to use with it...

Feather falls from the air - Ani

 Today was so much better. Gotta hit rock-bottom before you can go back up, I suppose. While we aren't 100% over feeling ughy, we hit the ground running this morning, with Eliza and I making pumpkin muffins and the three of us getting out the door for a short hike to find elderberries.

Sisters. This heals me. A lot.

Jewelweed, in abundance

 We talked about plants that are similar to each other in leaf type and position, and had a long look at this nettle...

 ...and a close copy, called clearweed.  It is edible, like the nettle, and not stingy (and not as tasty nor as nutritious).  Ani nibbled some and declared it her new favorite green.

I think this is a hickory tussock moth...

A saddleback caterpillar, also a "stinger", enjoying a pawpaw leaf

 Most of the elderberries had been eaten already by the birds, and looked like the empty cluster below.  We still managed a few though, and I'm going for a hike in the morning, where I might find more.

Arrowhead flower (new to me - isn't it beautiful?)

 I loved how shrouded this mushroom was...looks like it's sporting its own personal fungus.

 Muddy hike. Complete with pumpkin muffins.  It turned our week around. At home there was a lively lunch, a short movie, some more math and games and reading and drawing and supper making and finally...bed.  Buoyed by days like today, we will figure this out...