celebrations!

It's autumn here.  Really autumn.  Not that 90-degree hogwash that we've had for the last two years, but chilly-morning, crisp-blue-skies kind of weather. We went for a fall hike last Sunday, and it was perfect.  We were all rubbing at each others' edges, wanting to be together (Dan leaves this weekend for a month), but needing a little space, and for us a hike usually gives us both.  Plus there  are fungi everywhere you look, which can't help but enchant even a grumpy person. Right?

I can't think of a better way to celebrate fall than with a hike through the woods, but we were also celebrating my birthday this week - a bit early, since Dan will be gone.  The day we were having our potluck (which is the way we seem to do these things), we got a new refrigerator!!!  I know, holy wah.  We've been needing it badly, with a drippy, leaky fridge and a freezer that needed to be taped shut, and our landlord acquiesced, so yahoo, a new fridge showed up at the door.  

Now, while this is a fantastic deal, I decided it was also a really good time for a meltdown. Talk to my hormones, I'm still figuring it out, but really - instead of feeling deeply grateful for a new clean! place to put our food, I sat on the couch for a good 10 minutes and cried.  And then I tried to explain to my bewildered kids why I was crying.  I told them it was because the doors opened on the wrong side, and that I was feeling ashamed for feeling so ungrateful, because we really needed a new fridge, but the doors were opening on the wrong side and I was really really disappointed. 

I was also feeling overwhelmed with the amount of food I dug out of our freezer. Several fist-sized bags of rice.  Three bags of black-eyed peas, 'cause I could never remember that I still had some for those two times a year I like to make them.  Several dead glow-sticks.  Old chocolate. (why am I admitting to all of this????? Good gravy.)

the freezer pile

And then, after venting for a bit, things got so much better.  I kept asking Ani to give me space, telling her that I was having some huge feelings and I didn't want her to feel that they were about her, and she kept moving in close because "Mama, I just want to give you some sympathy!" So we stopped bungi-cording (away!-close!-away!-close!) and settled on filling the fridge together. What a sweet kid.  My wise friend S stopped by and gave me a huge hug and calmly explained that you can easily move the hinges and handles on a fridge. Gulp, really? (Did I mention she's 20? And so wise.)  My friend J showed up and got really excited about the miscellaneous little packets of grain from my freezer - she took them home to cook up for her dogs, alleviating my huge guilt over the waste.  My friend ET showed up with a beautiful cake and she and J plotted for their handy partners to do the fridge adjustments as an early birthday present for me.

Their partners showed up and had other ideas - they were ready to drink beer and tutor Dan on How To Alter Your Fridge and Make Your Sweetheart Happy.  It was awesome entertainment, and I can now actually feel truly grateful for our new fridge.

doors? who needs doors?

I highly recommend the home-improvement-as-entertainment theme for your next party.  Add tasty beverages, highly artistic head-gear, ice-ax cake cutting and homemade confetti, and you will have yourself one heck of a memorable shindig.

I'm very serious about having fun

It was my favorite kind of party, where the unexpected happens, the company is great, and the laughter just keeps going...

swoon.

Have you ever tried to grow an avocado? You know, with the toothpicks and the jar of water and the hope and dreams of your very own avocado tree?  With avocados???  No, it's never worked for me either. So the other day I went to dump the compost and wha------? No less than 10 (TEN!) avocado trees growing. Right here in Ohio.

Sometimes when you're just not trying so hard, it happens.

Out!!

One of the places we love to go here is the farmer's market. There is the obvious reason - we LOVE the abundance of local, organically grown food, the incredible hand-crafted breads and jams,  and the free honey sticks  - but we really love the people we see there.  It is a truly social event, sometimes so much so that I beg off on my more introverted days, but Dan is usually more than happy to head the excursion, coming out of his solitary office life to enjoy some People Time.  During half of the year there is a Wednesday market in addition to the busier Saturday market, and every Wednesday the girls make a bee-line for a friend they've made there.  She is from the Ukraine, and greets the girls with a huge smile and a Russian greeting and more often than not, something sweet.  While I stroll and gather what we need, they visit and help make change, and there is a lot of love there in that little booth.

I was so happy when their friend invited us to her farm for a visit.  We couldn't turn that down...so we arrived this last Friday to a table of tea and pancakes before climbing into the ATV for a ride around the farm! Two kinds of heaven.

I love our conversations, because she was living in the Ukraine during the seventies, when my family was living in Moscow, and we compare notes on food and its availability (or serious lack there-of).  But really, the serious love is between her and the girls, she was eager to treat them to the ride...

the view from the pasture

Theirs is a cattle farm; they grow free-range, grass fed-and-finished beef.  She wanted us to come now because there are calves in the pastures with their mamas.  They were all hiding in the woods, where it was a little cooler.

It's a farm, so there are always surprises; today it was a cow that had died and was attracting a dozen or so turkey vultures. She was worried the girls would find it distressing, but they took it in stride and marveled over the flock of birds more than anything. 

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Saturday was the 14th annual PawPaw Festival!!! 

It's really about kids running amuck and hanging out with your friends. I will confess: I did not eat one pawpaw during this event.  Not that there weren't plenty to be found - pawpaw beer, pawpaw salsa, pawpaw ice cream...oh, wait, I had a few sips of a pawpaw beer. It was tasty, but on the whole I do not adore pawpaw.  I love that it is here, that it grows wild, and mostly that we have a reason to festivate (neither spellcheck nor I really think this is a word, but maybe it should be?).

Do you see the goat feet of the satyr??? I was too shy for a closer picture...

One lovely thing that happened was that I got to see my twin.  For the first two years that we lived here, I was constantly mistaken for this woman. It took me a while to get it - I just thought people were super friendly, and then I realized they were calling me by another name, but I've been nearly hugged and caressed by dozens of well-meaning friends who think I'm her.  In fact, I have been wondering recently (after a particularly loving response from someone in the grocery store!) if maybe one of the basic reasons we're here is so I can get to know this woman?  I finally did ask someone to tell me all about her, which they did happily (she is actually quite amazing), and I did meet her at an art opening.  That event was a bit awkward - imagine meeting someone who is always mistaken for you, but you've never heard of her nor has the reverse mistake ever been made, and suddenly her whole family plus many of her friends are surrounding you and gawking and grinning, exclaiming over the fact that you do (or don't, really) look like each other...it was a little anti-climactic.  It continues to happen, though less so, as she has a baby now and has started coloring her hair a bit.

This time (almost 2 years later) there was a surprising "Hey! It's my twin!" followed by an enormous hug.  I was a little giddy and goofy over the whole thing (don't I look it?!), as really, she is someone I think I would enjoy knowing.  Plus, you know something else weird? We share the same birthday. Mmmhmmm.  Pretty cosmic.

chilly, starry, pawpaw filled days

have you started yet???

It's what everyone is asking, and it always makes me feel a little anxious, regardless of who's asking!! I suggested to the girls that instead of calling what we do "school", maybe we should call it "routine" -  because we did start a new routine this week (the first of many that will organically emerge during the year, as we need them to).  We re-started our habit of Ani and I waking early and reading together on the couch (one of the books was about symmetry - which of course lead to snowflakes, and yes, it's chilly here in the mornings, but not quite that cold yet.); piano practice soon after breakfast; tidying up around the house together, and then sitting at the table for a game or some writing or art.  

This week, new notebooks in hand, it was learning a new poem by writing it out.  Eliza loves this kind of work, and got out her calligraphy pen and ink, writing in her best cursive.

It is a bit more laborious for Ani, but she has asked for more practice writing and, though she does a lot on her own (she likes to ask me if I need a shopping list made?), this is one of the areas she has asked for help with, so we just take as much time as it takes.  She will often opt for dictation, which I am glad to do with her, but today she wanted to make it about getting those letters right.

In the process, the poem got memorized, which was sweet...

The goldenrod is yellow;
The corn is turning brown;
The trees in apple orchards
With fruit are bending down.

The gentian's bluest fringe
Is curling in the sun.
In dusty pods the milkweed
Its hidden silk has spun.

"September" by H.H. Jackson

We decided to take our lunch out for a hike...it was a stunningly gorgeous fall day that met us.

those dusty milkweed pods

The girls were so giggly - I could hear them quoting the donkey from Shrek, which was cracking them up.  That cloud? That is a niiiiiiiiiiiice cloud.  I love that mushroom, that is a niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiice mushroom.

During lunch we looked at all of the tall grass around us.  At least we think a lot of the plants were grasses, but we took a better look to be sure.  Jointed? Yup.  Clustered seed heads? Yup.  Long, skinny plant, with long skinny alternate leaves? Yup.  Hollow? Um...Well, most of them. For the others, we recalled this little ditty...

Sedges have edges
Rushes are round
Grasses have joints from the top to the ground.

Wait a minute, was that how that goes? I have a Hands-On Nature book that cleans that up nicely, but the way I learned it from Dan (and I shared it oh so long ago, here ), was more like:

Sedges have edges and rushes are round and
grasses, like asses, have holes in the middle!

For some reason, the girls find that version a little easier to remember.

Ah, my girls. They are getting so big.  This is their "first day of...routine" picture.

This path took us through the woods as well, where we were spied on by deer, sat and wrote some of our own poetry, and found - OH JOY! - some mushrooms!!! 'Tis the season.

a puffball!!!

Such joy, being with these two, on a day like this.  So much laughter and sharing and wondering and more laughing (watching your mother try to pee inconspicuously in the woods is, apparently, hilarious).  And so, we have started. Something. 

pawpaw seeds found on a log