"I didn't think about it"

For a little balance in the story, I'm getting very tired of hearing that excuse from my teenagers.

We were supposed to be heading out early in the morning for a trip to visit grandparents in C'burg and then head down to Alabama to visit an adopted aunt & uncle. I say supposed to be heading out, because at 10 o'clock this evening, as I was checking to make sure people were ready to go and the boys were busy playing "Magic the Gathering", Kyle said he was intending to pack when he went up to bed. I realized I hadn't noticed Kyle doing laundry since he got here, and when he left last week I told him the hamper full of dirty laundry needed to be washed and put away before he left the next time. I don't need a hamper full of four-week-old stinky laundry sitting in the corner, and he is certainly capable of doing his laundry when he is here for a week at a time. So, Kyle's not ready to go. And I can't leave him behind and take Samuel when Samuel's hamper is almost full, can I? So Samuel gets "punished"/consequenced without getting the warning, and laundry isn't generally an issue for him. So we don't leave tomorrow, and then Miriam misses out, and she doesn't even have dirty laundry here-because she left all of her dirty clothes at her dad's house to ripen for two weeks!

Where's the manual to handle all this???

On the up side, I finally finished a 60-page translation project that has been hanging over my head for months! (No, I do NOT do written translation. I think I have finally learned my lesson.)

I had a joint celebration for that planned for Sunday evening, but Liza didn't think about the 5 PM dinner plans when her stepmother prepared a birthday dinner at 4. Rough spot to be in. And then we couldn't do a later dinner, because the kids had a church youth meeting at 7, which neither girl thought to tell me about. With Eliza preparing to head off to Hungary in nine short weeks, I felt/feel cheated out of a celebration time I needed.

They're still great kids, but I'm really tired of "I didn't think about it", and I'm not feeling very successful as a mother right now. I'm open to suggestions.

Proud of my kids!

We're having a wonderful week with the four kids here, and time to relax and enjoy each other's company. Tori "joined us" for a trip to the pool yesterday afternoon, but ended up driving her sibs to the pool in Annapolis after both Navy pools were closed. James made the stir-fry including our green beans and turnip greens, and Tori stayed for dinner after their swim. It's so much fun to have them all here and laughing together.

So, why am I proud of them? This morning the four resident teenagers got up and out the door by 8 AM to help our neighbor clean out her late husband's boat so that she can get it sold. Besides being very early for a voluntary wake-up, especially for a work project, today is almost ten degrees warmer than it has been this week, and fifteen or more warmer than days earlier this month. And de-junking a boat is dirty, hot, and sweaty work. They didn't quite get it finished before the heat got overwhelming, but Melissa is very appreciative of how far they got.

And, with their aforementioned interest in playing D&D this evening, the boys had the great idea to do their family work project time last night, before the boat work. Good thinking, guys! (Now, if Miriam will just get her windows cleaned. . .)

Sometimes I wonder. . .or. . . A Family Dungeon

I get myself into the strangest predicaments. This time it is a family D&D campaign. For the uninitiated, D&D stands for Dungeons and Dragons. It is a fantasy role-playing game that was quite popular when James and I were in high school. Now that our own kids are teenagers and interested in fantasy & role-playing & competitive games, they have latched onto James's old game manuals and wanted to play.

James was adamant that he didn't want to make the time commitment required for creating a dungeon, but I thought it might be an opportunity for us to create a world that requires the kids to consider ideas we value. Besides, it's something Kyle wants to do, and we're looking for activities to keep him interested in coming up here. In working to convince James to DM (Take on the role of Dungeon Master/world creator), Kyle "volunteered" (with a bit of coaching) to help James with yardwork to help complete the projects that will be neglected in the process of building the world, setting up the game. He also says he'll commit to being here at least once a month for the next six months (even during band season), so that we can play the game.

So now I get to see another side of my beloved husband. . .and the diabolical laughter from behind his computer screen can make a person nervous!!! The "it's only a first-level dungeon" comments aren't terribly reassuring either.

Our First Harvest of the Season

It may not seem like much, but here it is. . .
The picture was James's idea, but the excitement is mine. These are the first of the earliest beans we planted, and I nibbled a few on the way from the garden to the pot. We definitely don't have enough to serve everyone a full serving as a side dish, but they'll be great in tonight's stir-fry. (And they are delicious raw!)

It's sometimes funny to step back and look at how much we enjoy the (tiny!) "harvests" from our garden.

We're far from feeding ourselves from the produce of our hands and land, but we really do enjoy the time spent "digging in the dirt", so our mealtime contributions are bonus results. And we're figuring out how to improve things as we go along. Maybe next year. . .after we've sheet-mulched a few more beds. After all, these beans came from the earliest of the green beans in an area of two or three square feet, and came from the plants that survived a very hungry slug (before we got on top of that threat to our harvest!). And we'll have berry bushes in this fall, for small harvests next spring, and more in following years!

It's a blooming beautiful Ides of June

We've been watching these lilies grow from little sprouts early in the Spring, through the first blooms on the red lilies, and now we have these gorgeous golden yellow ones providing such nice contrast to the deep red ones. We're also enjoying tints of pink and bright white lilies also. James said (last night) we just needed some blue ones. Unfortunately, the blue spikey flowers haven't started yet.

I'm really appreciating this school fund-raiser! We ordered some $30 worth of perennial bulbs from Miriam's chorus fundraiser last year. Most everything has come up even stronger this year than last. Much better than the usual candy bars or over-priced wrapping paper!


Another piece of excitement in the garden is watching the beans growing. It won't be long now!





And this is what the color scarlet looks like growing in the Three Sisters bed:

Given that we can't do much to control our teenagers any more, we're shifting our focus to the garden. Lots more mulching is on the agenda for the summer, with virtually all of the intended plantings being some sort of edible food crop. It's amazing how much more sun there is when we cut back or remove some of the very well-grown (overgrown) shrubs/hedges.

And woe unto the kid who runs through and tramples a newly planting bed!


And, while we don't seem to have much influence over their academic performance, unplugging the dryer for the summer does somehow inspire them to hang their laundry outside to take advantage of the gorgeous day! And it gives them something else to complain about to their friends. ("You think your parents are bad? Try my eco-nuts! So much for modern conveniences, we have to hang our laundry outside, and they even have us hauling our bath water out to water the garden!!!")

They are looking forward to picking berries off our own bushes next spring!

We almost bought a washboard at the Oriental market last weekend-just for the humor of it. James chose the indoor drying rack instead. He'd considered getting one last year, but didn't buy it the first time we saw it, and they've been out since then. Liza grabbed that to hang laundry in her room yesterday when the sky threatened to rain on her clothes.

A Garden visitor

"Mom! Mom! You've got to come see this!"

Our visitor was strolling up the path when Samuel spotted him (her?). After our attention, he decided it was time to get moving, and put it into high gear to go hide in the Three Sisters bed by the time I found the camera and made it back out.

The corn stalks are now up to my knees, and the Scarlet Runner beans have started to put out flowers. The squash vines are still short enough that they're standing up, pretty much even with the beans at this point. Sometime soon we hope they'll actually spread out and act as a living mulch.

Our plan for the fall/once we harvest this planting is to widen the bed a bit more, sheet mulch the heck out of it, and plant our late vegetables-kale & broccoli and such.

The living mulch effect is working very well in the densely planted bean beds closer to the patio, and the first of the blossoms are appearing there also. Those beds are scheduled for sheet mulching later this year also.

James is working on forsythia removal these days. Our forsythia hedge hasn't bloomed well in several years, and we're looking for space for more food crops, so . . . Once the forsythia is cleared back to the tree line, we'll sheet mulch that and prepare it for berry crops. We're looking at Nanking Cherries, and maybe some blueberries or goumi or . . .

A few other possible summer projects: a woodfire-heated soaking tub, a small pond above Herb Hill, rainbarrels for all the downspouts, and . . .

Before you consider us too crazy, check out Path to Freedom. This is a family homestead in California that is harvesting 3 tons of fruits & vegetables from the 1/5th of an acre (including the land the house covers!) they own. Of course, 2/3 of their property isn't shaded by their own & neighbors' established trees.

Kid news-mostly

Guess life has been unbloggable for a while. Some of it I needed a bit of time to figure out what to say, and I figure you're all getting tired of "my garden is blooming" (but the irises really were spectacular last week!). Fortunately, flowers seem to grow with less effort on my part than my kids do.

Tori is working at Ruby Tuesday's, and seems to be doing well. We're see her once or twice a week. Her sibs and I all miss having her around, but this is part of the growing up phase.

Eliza is excited that she finally knows where she will be next year, even if she doesn't yet have a family assigned. She'll be about 85KM outside of Budapest (Hungary), and leaves in "two months, three weeks, and one day". Tuesday is her last ever day of high school in the US, and she's doing a bit of gloating-especially when Miriam comes in with her "___ days of school" countdown. The retort is usually something about Liza's college class continuing through the end of the month.

Such lovely children, and they don't bicker at all! (And if you'll buy that. . .)

James, Kyle and I will be going out for dinner at Ruby Tuesday's on our way to Liza's recital this evening. I wonder what we're going to find to fill our schedules when we only have two teenagers loading the calendar??? It feels like we'll go from five teenagers to only two in the space of less than five months-Tori moving out, Eliza off to Hungary, and Kyle's schedule is becoming less predictable and will be scant due to band August -November. Very wierd, and very fast, somehow.

Speaking of Kyle, he made Tenderfoot in Scouts this week, and received his letter in Band at last week's Band Awards Banquet. Sometimes the distance between our house and his mother's really sucks. We would have loved to be there to cheer him on, but. . .

Samuel continues juggling kung fu, cycling, Scouts, drums, schooling, reading voraciously, and just generally enjoying life. He's glad to be wrapping up the school year, and has his portfolio review on Wednesday. He is looking forward to going back to school for eighth grade next fall.

Miriam is wrapping up her seventh grade year. Completion of the Spring Concert means no more early morning rehearsals. Friday was "the last day to dress for PE". She's getting the experience of major exams with the HSA (High School Assessment) and final exam in Algebra I.
Meanwhile, James and I enjoy puttering in our garden and digging in the dirt. After a visit to an ecovillage, we're figuring out where to tuck a few Nanking cherry bushes and other edibles. . . stay tuned there. I think the scantily blooming forsythia bushes are not long for this world, except as compost for the new bushes!