a spider, a date, a walk...life!

We've fallen a bit in love with this spider.  Her proper name is Argiope aurantia, and we check in on her many many times a day.  Isn't she wonderful? Not only is she just beautiful, but she is an amazingly effective catcher of food.  Her web is spread across our comfrey plant (friend to spiders!), and it has a "zipper" of webbing that hangs below the hub, where she lies waiting.  The zig-zaggy zipper is called the stabilimentum, and there are many hypotheses as to why it is there: to warn mammals and birds not to run into the web; to distract from the hub, where she is waiting (unlikely, in my opinion.  I mean, I notice the stabilimentum, but there is no missing that gorgeous abdomen); reflecting UV light, it actually attracts insects. 

One morning we noticed a huge hole and a missing zipper, and she was working on a large insect (a bee?).  Only a couple of hours later she had repaired the hole, replaced the zipper and was again waiting, having tucked some of the food away for later. Impressive.

It has rained the last day, and there are a few trees in our neighborhood that are hinting at autumn.  I am right there with them, urging those little leaves towards a little glamour...

 We walked up to meet Dan for dinner the other night, before going to see a friend's art opening. We had time for some mugging before our food was ready...

(After this photo, Dan suggested we try making a picture where we don't look "weird", but since I found this to be the best one, I don't guess that we succeeded.  It looks like us, anyway!)

(All right, he's convinced me that this one's worth sharing - see, Mom? Here  I am!! )

Ah, another sign of the season: abandoned zucchini.  Does this happen in cities too?

She couldn't resist...

We roamed through the art show, featuring new faculty on campus, and then found our way downstairs where the girls and their friend, N., had set up a serious game of pool.  They had gotten started before we got there, having made quick work of the show, and had done a nice job of figuring it out for themselves.

Love that stance

 And then there was our walk home, through town and down the hill at sunset.

And since I took no photos of our friend's beautiful work, I will share one of the poems used in her work called oDE to ee cummings, which hung as an altered book of his 95 poems...

in time of daffodils(who know
the goal of living is to grow)
forgetting why,remember how

in time of lilacs who proclaim
the aim of waking is to dream,
remember so(forgetting seem)

in time of roses(who amaze
our now and here with paradise)
forgetting if,remember yes

in time of all sweet things beyond
whatever mind may comprehend,
remember seek(forgetting find)

and in a mystery to be
(when time from time shall set us free)
forgetting me,remember me

ee  cummings

"the goal of living is to grow"...indeed. 

really home.

Loading these photos, I found myself thinking really obvious thoughts like, wow, flowers are so incredible! And don't even get me started on insects!!!!!  Yeah, my thoughts run pretty deep these days, mostly towards the grateful and the content.  

My people came home in the early hours of this morning, tired but so happy to have ventured to Maine.  Dan had good news and bad news, which do you want? Um...well, it all turned out to be the same news: he lost the Silver Baby Cup Golf Championship by 2 strokes. Wow!! So, sad, because he almost got it, and good, because this year's champion is next year's host! Ha ha!! Dodged that bullet...Maybe we can figure out where we'll be next year first, and then go for the gold.

Things looked pretty much like Life around here today, at long, long last.  Ani and I walked to the garden to weed like mad-women (she is one mean weeder) and harvest some surprise onions, some wonky sweet carrots and a bowl full of jalapenos.  And that lovely basil.  

I realized while cooking some vegetable soup from some of these good garden veggies, that simply the smell of garlic and onions sauteeing makes me feel like I'm home.  I missed that.  And then there are the four new jars of things fermenting on my counter...

And the critters in the front yard, doing their amazing things...

And Rat-a-tat-Cat and The Wind in the Door and feeding the worms and a pile of library books and the inspired writing of a new story and the laundry and the puttering about, the making, the doing...

Home.

The tricks of September

autumn olives

goldenrod

okra

Ani and I have had the weekend to ourselves, thanks to the annual Silver Baby Golf Tournament (our family is on the road as I write, home to us), and her request was for "some major kid time".  We managed to combine some major Mama reconnecting time with some major kid time, and ended up a little tired and grouchy, but feeling like we're really back home after our busy summer.

arranging bones with Ari

some awesome fort-building with N.

When September rolls around, I feel as though the year is starting.  Years of schooling have trained me to smell newness in the air - new clothes, new paste pots, new pencils...it's a hard habit to break, even starting our 5th year of "official" homeschooling.  How it manifests itself nowadays is in  near-manic planning for me and the endless "hasn't school started yet?" from strangers.

 Near-manic planning? Now wait a minute.  I don't see much "schooly" stuff around here, you say.  Well, this is my point: in spite of knowing, deeply, that the best learning happens around here through play, conversation, reading, and our experiences out in the real world, I still feel the urge to carefully plan out our days and weeks, outlining math schedules (really!), science objectives, writing exercises to improve facility with handwriting, spelling, sentence structure.  It's like I can't help myself, though I know from experience that very little of that actually works in our home. I'm not saying it doesn't work for plenty of school-at-home-ers, but it has never been what has worked for us.

So, why do I go through this and how am I making it work for me this year?  Well, I'll tell you what I think and I'll do my best to come back and tell you how it all turned out, all right?

First, there is this idea that I have experienced in action, that the more structured your approach to something - say, Farm School, for instance - the more freedom to be found within.  That is, the planning and the forethought prepares you for some possibilities and opportunities, but leaves a wide open space for freedom of choice.  You can have an idea and be prepared for the way a day can flow, and within that structure, there is flexibility.

Second is an idea that I ran into years ago on Here in the Bonny Glen, which she calls "tidal homeschooling".  It is the idea that sometimes the kids and the interests are leading the learning, and sometimes it is my suggestions and ideas that lead us.  To that end, I gather lots of ideas for games, science projects, art projects, books to read.  I also make lists of things the girls are talking about, or things they say they'd like to know more about.  This year I am interested in helping them set some goals for their year - are there chapter books they want to work up to being able to read? Are they hoping to write poetry or plays or build something (Ani is thinking of a large clock. With a pendulum.)?  

But back to what really happens here: learning all the time.  There is no official start date to our working together.  That would mean not counting the snake dissection or the trip through the cave or the incredible empowerment of going out on the water in a boat by yourself, or any of the things, big and small, that were learned this summer.  Yes, as classes begin - choir, piano, and a new day of homeschool co-op - our time will be structured differently.  Sometimes at this time of the year, after a summer of Outside, the girls ask for a "schooly" day, and so that's what we do.  As the weather changes (fall is coming at some point, I gather), we will turn a bit more inward toward the cozy reading spots in our house, or to the kitchen for some communal cooking.  And yes, I have spent the last few days in a daze of brainstorming ideas and projects and oooh, wouldn't this be fun??, all of which will be written down in my notebook and some of which won't be looked at again, but this internal clock of fall = new beginnings is less a starting than a re-evaluation of what we are doing all of the time.

And for the record? In addition to interest in creating a pendulum (out of tape and a chopstick), Ani is wondering why the first windowsills were made (we voted for ye olde cooling of pies, and so the window wouldn't just fall out of the wall) and just how many individual plants there are in the world? Lots of thinking going on here...

making baskets

This is a post that, embarrassingly, started back in April (you can tell by Eliza's long hair!).  I had called my friend M to ask if she'd be able to have my girls for a couple of hours while I went to a doctor's appointment.  Not only did she say yes, but she also offered to make baskets with them, sort of along the lines of, "I've been meaning to do this for a while, and should we just go for it?" 

Of course I said Yes!  This woman is incredibly generous with her talents and with her time, and over the next few months we finished and started several baskets, with me working in some childcare for her in trade for her materials and time.  I love when that works out for everyone.

What we learned was called continuous weave, meaning that the ends overlap and are hidden, creating the illusion of being woven out of one long reed.  Ani started her basket, spiraling around the bottom spokes, but then the allure of playing with her friend, M's son, and the legos, the hose, the water balloons...well, her basket sort of became my project, which was fine with me.

Eliza, not surprisingly, had no problem learning the various skills involved, and aside from the occasional need for stronger, adult fingers to hold and pull, she accomplished her basket on her own.

We finished our baskets mid-summer (that's "mine" in the foreground above - it's now a wastepaper basket next to Ani's bed; Eliza's holds her fabric scraps), and M, Eliza and I started new ones that haven't gotten too far yet.  I think the one I'm working on is called Appalachian flat weave.  Actually, Ani and I were over at their house yesterday (Eliza is still in Maine), with the idea that we'd further our progress, but then there was dinner and there was a bottle of wine, and so much to talk about, and having experienced this a couple of times - I mean, Mamas need to unwind and let off steam too, right? - I'm starting to think that "making baskets" might become a euphemism for a mad session of talking, brainstorming, laughing...I'd like to think that we are merely following in a solid part of the basket-making tradition.