Filling our freezer

I love early summer! We're enjoying all sorts of fruits, and stocking the freezer for later, and the best part of it is how much of this we're doing for free!

First were the strawberries from our own garden. We ate berries each evening when they came in, and then cut up however many didn't get eaten and put them in the freezer. I think we ended up with about a quart there. Not anywhere near the quantity that we typically use in our smoothies over the course of the year. Darn those slugs!

James found a plum tree at work that no one seemed interested in. . . so home came those free plums to be pitted and frozen. The final count there-three tubbies of 1 1/2 quarts each. Those go into smoothies because they're a bit too tart to eat plain.

Peaches showed up at the farmers' market last weekend, and when we asked for a bushel we were told we had to wait until early August when the freestone peaches come in. But then he offered us seconds at two quarts for $5, rather than $7 a quart for the pretty ones. Some of the seconds were bruised, some just had spots on the skin. We only ended up with three that were too bruised to salvage the majority of them. Final count-over 18 lbs of pieces to freeze for $15. Those are primarily for smoothies, but will also be used in cobblers during the winter. We'll continue collecting and processing seconds through the season. It's much easier to do the smaller batches than it was to do the whole bushel+ we did over three days last summer.

Best of all, the wine berries (wild raspberries) are ripe. We made the twins join us to pick them before they went over to their dad's house weekend before last, and brought home a quart and a half. James and I picked another three quarts on Sunday, and James had done another picking trip one evening while I was at kung fu. It looks like something in the neighborhood of five quarts in the freezer, not including all the ones eaten fresh. There's nothing quite like berries that make it from branch to belly in ten seconds! We haven't taken bowls to pick berries on our walks since Sunday, but have each picked and eaten almost a cup each evening. Life is good!

Next up. . .blackberries! (We found the first dozen or so ripe ones last night, so I'm sure James is going to be out picking those while I'm at my sisters. He's the real blackberry fan in the house, but Samuel gives him some good competition for the berries.)

My favorite beekeeper

James is really enjoying his bees, but he has learned to put on his hat and shirt when doing major work in the hives. This time he was moving a bar of brood (eggs & larva) from the strong hive to the weaker one.

Isn't this a nice looking piece of comb?

Kung fu

Samuel figures he's safely too far ahead of me in kung fu for me to catch up with him before he graduates, so I started this spring. I found that I had too much on my plate and skipped April, but was ready to test for my yellow sash in June. This is me doing my form at testing.

Samuel looks much better doing his forms, but he should. His final test (of 6!) to earn his black sash (after four & a half years) will be the 26th of this month. I love watching him! He moves with such grace and style.

Celebration-5/60/261

Five years/Sixty months/Two hundred sixty-one weeks since the wonderful afternoon that James and I gathered with F/friends and family to make our commitment to each other, and we're even more certain now than we were that afternoon!

It is wonderful to have found this man to be my love, my partner, and my best friend. I do so appreciate the relationship and life we are building together, and it was fun to hear my mom comment on it when I talked to her this afternoon.

I'll get pictures and news of other happenings up tomorrow, but wanted to post a quick acknowledgment of this wonderful day tonight.

(And how have we spent our anniversary? Well, I've had both orthodontic and dental appointments in the last two days, so my mouth is tender, so we had a simple -soft!-supper and watched the tape of today's Tour de France race segment, then took Torri and her friend Alex to get free little slurpees from 7-11.)

Miriam!

Finally, here's a picture from Miriam's dancing at the school Russian Night.

Safely Home

This is James, putting the new queen cage into one of his top bar hives. After spending most of a year (because he got taken with the idea too late to start last year) learning about bees and building the top bar hives, James spent Thursday-Saturday on a driving trip down to Georgia to buy his small-cell, and very docile!, bees. While there he learned how to make queen cups and cages, and all sorts of other useful tips. We wore the bee veils while loading the boxes into the hives, but haven't worn them since.
Now I get to tease him about the "exciting Sunday afternoons sitting there watching the bees buzz" (I'll get a picture one of these days!), and the eco-logic of driving twenty hours to buy four pounds of bees, and "interstate trafficking in captive females" (since they didn't get many drones into those cages). But I'm fascinated also, and looking forward to having our own pollinators and honey.
James has really upped the food production in the yard this year, or at least the food planting! We'll see what produces throughout the year. The kale from last fall is still producing, but is going to flower at this point. We're enjoying making smoothies with our fresh chocolate mint and berries foraged and frozen last year- really yummy!
I'm wrapping up my first year as a PhD student. My big paper for this semester is the proposal for my "thesis" due next April, but which I hope to complete over the summer or early next fall. I sent the first "complete" draft off to both professors who'll be grading it and my advisor, as well as the group of colleagues who'll be discussing it in our seminar this Thursday. I'll be expanding and reshaping it all week as I receive feedback, but my stress level has gone way down with that step completed. Beyond that, all I have left is creating a poster with my preliminary statistical analysis for Thursday's class, and grading students' papers before Friday.
We're looking forward to a visit with James's folks, and while there will be planning another trip to help move his grandmother to an apartment close to where they live until she can get into a senior living facility. Granny's having some health issues and is finding her big house too much to take care of and too isolating. At the same time, it's really hard to leave the house Grandpa built for her almost 50 years ago!
The kids are pretty much just keeping on. I do finally have the picture of Samuel's testing at Jing Ying. That's Samuel at the top, standing on Jose's shoulders- something they've been planning since they tested for , I think.

Kids and kin

Samuel (and two friends) started testing for his black belt in kung fu in February. At Jing Ying, testing to Black is a 6-12 months long process. Besides demonstrating excellence in the forms, including multiple weapons forms, the students also take responsibility for teaching others. It’s wonderful to see how much Samuel has enjoyed and accomplished over the last four+ years that he’s been studying here. I really appreciate the family feel of the school.

I tried to start kung fu last month, but reality intervened this month, and I’ve postponed that adventure until next month- when I’ll have more time during the summer (yeah, right!) to get into the groove there. Samuel had figured he’s far enough ahead of me that I wouldn’t be able to catch up with him. . . James just wondered when/how I was going to fit it into my schedule. (You can say “I told you so” now, darling.)

Miriam has been busy with learning Russian dances for a performance this weekend. I’ll try to get a picture of that posted, but you’ll be more likely to see it on James’s blog first!

Kyle called James on St. Patrick’s Day, just before he headed out for a band trip to Florida, and then was going to be heading to Ohio Valley University this month for a Bible Bowl event.

Liza was out for a quick visit last month, and it was wonderful to see her! She’s taking a photography class at the local community college, and busy with plans for next Fall.

Tori’s working and taking classes and dancing and still finding time to travel to dance weekends and drop everything to come down and be here for her little sister when Miriam needed her.

That’s one of my biggest joys. I enjoy the relationships I have with my kids, and treasure the time we spend together, but I am still the parent. There are times when I have to push or set a boundary, and there’s an imbalance in our relationship because of our role differences. It makes my heart sing to see how close the kids are to each other. I love my sibs, and am so glad to have them in my life. I’m thrilled to see my own kids growing into strong relationships also.

Last Friday James and I drove down to Alexandria to watch Aria’s theatrical debut. She was a spider in her elementary school production of Sleeping Beauty-the Enchanted story of Princess Briar Rose. It was a fabulous production, put on at the high school!, with live music and incredible performances. Aria was spectacular! She takes after her Aunt Becky in her delight at being in the spotlight (but I’m her favorite aunty because I was there!).

I’m so glad we live close enough to Rob & Lisa to enjoy watching their kids grow up! We were down last month for our annual Epilepsy Walk adventure, this time representing SeizureTracker.com! James and I were brochure distributors extraordinaire (“Have you heard about SeizureTracker.com yet?”). I’m so proud of what Rob and Lisa have done with that project! They’re fabulous parents, especially with all that they have going on with keeping their brilliant kids challenged while managing Evan’s medical needs. And somehow they’ve created time to develop this site and provide this service for others.

Our own beautiful corner of the world

James and I are enjoying the bursting Spring as we take our walks around the neighborhood. I haven’t had much time for gardening, but we did stop by Homestead Gardens Saturday and picked out a few plants. James got them all planted Saturday afternoon while I was doing my homework. We also picked up hyacinths in a pot for my desk at work (almost too fragrant for the enclosed space!), and another orchid for James’s collection. (Is it fair of me to encourage him to buy another one, and then tease him about doing so???)

Last night was just about the first time I did anything in the garden besides enjoy it. . . I took a few minutes and untangled the kiwi vines and wrapped/tied them further up the arbor. I had taken a few minutes last week to pollinate the peach blossoms (all 7 of them!) with a paintbrush since we hadn’t seen any bees around at that point, and helped a bit with planting peas last month, but James is doing most of the garden work these days.

James will be driving down to Georgia to pick up his special small-cell bees sometime in the next couple of weeks. Hopefully they’ll be well established by next Spring, and I won’t have to hand pollinate the peaches then.

We’ve accomplished one goal: eating something fresh from the garden every month of the year. We had fresh kale and black-eyed peas for dinner last Saturday (and lunch on Monday!) and I just harvested the last of my wintergreen berries. We may have strawberries before the end of the month. There are a few blossoms already. The peach tree and our bush cherries have blossomed. The apple and pear trees, along with the figs, kiwis, grapes, wolfberry, & quince are beginning to leaf out. The blueberry bushes are loaded with blossom buds. We’re going to thin those a bit, but will let them bear some this year.

James cleared the pachysandra from another bed in the front so that he could use that space for growing food.

Our frogs made it through the winter, and we even had a pair of wood ducks stop by for a visit to the pond last week. I was hoping they’d stay around and eat slugs, but haven’t seen them since. (Anyone know where I can buy slug-eating beetles???)

We’re looking forward to showing off our gardens, and are busy plotting ideas to share with my brother Chuck. He just bought another five acres- and has to hurry and get the gardens laid out before that plot gets infested with the equine epidemic that got his first lot. I figure that we’ve got four kinds of apples and four pears and a peach on our 1/5 of an acre. He can have lots more in an orchard in one corner, and still have room for his hops and salsa gardens. And he already has a handy source of manure to enhance the soil! I overheard James trying to talk him into a couple of beehives. . .

Catching up-school stuff. . .

After two months without blogging, I guess I’d better do a bit of catching up. This post is about my school stuff. I’ll do another one about the garden and a third about the kids.

School is going well, but keeping me very busy. I really set myself up for a challenge this semester when I carried a research project over from last semester, and then just kept complicating my life- with a trip to Hawaii and then taking an extra class- but that shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who knows me.

The research project was for my Sociology of Mental Health class, and I thought it would be interesting and relevant to research the long-term mental health consequences for children whose parents divorce. Interesting? Maybe. But definitely NOT fun, and way too close to home. As the original due date approached, I thought I’d change topics, but then I couldn’t get timely access to materials for my alternate topic (the University of Maryland doesn’t do much with Appalachia), and just before school resumed in January I admitted I’d be better off going back to my original topic, even if things with Kyle seemed to “blow up” every time I got into my research. I did finally finish that paper over Spring Break. The good news is that the vast majority of children whose parents divorce end up in the “normal” range as young adults (up to about age 30 is as far as the research goes), with about 10% moving from a low normal range to display clinical-level depression at some point in their twenties. Much of that seems to be related to their exposure to continuing parental conflict, or loss of relationship with the non-custodial parent (hence the personal relevance particularly with Kyle’s absence).

While post-divorce parenting questions were my motivation for returning to school, I won’t be following that path unless I can find a team to work with on relevant issues. It’s just “too close to home” at this point in my life. I joked about studying sex, since it’s much more fun, but I think I’ll be doing more with education or work-life balance issues, and probably involving the military. We have a fabulous Military Sociology program here at UMCP, and the advisors are tremendously helpful. It’s also the community with the most “older” students, and I’m quite comfortable there. I realized the other week that I’ve carried a dependent’s ID card for all but 8 years of my life!

Which leads me to another factor that complicated this semester: taking an extra class. The program pays for 10 credits/semester- three courses and a seminar that meets once/week or every other week & has minimal homework. My courses this semester are: second semester Statistics (Multiple Regression Analysis), the core course for Gender, Work & Family (only taught in alternate years), and the new Survey of Research Methods course that is designed to introduce us to various research methodologies and to help us prepare our proposal for the Second-Year Paper (Master’s Thesis equivalent but designed to be just about ready for submission to a journal for publication). Typically students also take Contemporary Theory Spring semester of their first year, but I couldn’t fit it in and it’s offered every year so that got postponed. I also had to postpone taking the Military Families course that I’d wanted to help with my research for next year.

. . . I asked Mady Segal for some guidance on foundational readings for my research on the impact of parental military service on children’s educational attainment. She first suggested that I scan the course syllabus, and then talk to some students who’d taken her course in the past. Then she thought I’d be better off if I audited the course this semester- do all the readings and attend seminar, but save the papers for some later time and get credit for it through Independent Study credits at that time.

The official “seminar” this semester for our cohort was a statistical analysis programming workshop (STATA). “Unofficially” I’m also in the Military Sociology seminar that all of the MilSoc folks attend, whether or not we’re registered, AND the Works-in-Progress seminar that meets every other week to discuss individual student research projects.

So, I’ve ended up doing most of the work for four classes, and that after taking a ten-day trip to Hawaii for most of the first two weeks of the semester! No wonder I’ve felt a bit busy.

Fortunately I’m figuring out how to play the grad school game more comfortably. The reading is easier now that I’ve learned the jargon and format of the articles. I am having fun.

It looks like I’ll be teaching my own class next Fall. I’ve tried to talk my way into a research position, but keep hearing that they have me in mind to teach. . . So this summer I’ll be preparing for that, plus creating my own mini-research experiences. One of the profs in our department is working on a Community Greens project in Baltimore and needs interviewers, so I jumped on that. And I’ll probably be helping with coding and analysis of another qualitative research project over in the Family Studies Department. Then trips to Colorado to help Becky with her yard, Boston for the American Sociological Association annual meeting in August, and Baltimore Yearly Meeting the week after that. No time to get bored here!

A trip to Paradise

They keep telling me they hope the weather improves (warms up) while I'm here, but gee, it's January and I'm running around in shorts and short sleeves. What's a little tropical breeze or occassional showers?

Lunch yesterday was a box of sushi and haupia malasadas (think doughnuts filled with coconut pudding). Dinner was more vegetable tempura than I could finish because Paul, Millie and Edwin all gave me most of their tempura from their combination plates. They are having trouble with understanding how I get enough to eat on my vegan diet. And I found dark chocolate covered macadamia nuts that are vegan too!

Paul's doing well recovering with surgery. The doctor cleared him for most activities except lifting/pushing/pulling. That means he's home in his place, but cleaning up and replacing kitchen gear after the remodeling effort are off limits. I wiped out the cabinets yesterday. We'll start putting things away after his nap. (I've been working on school stuff all morning, and he was ready for a rest by the time I got that part done yesterday.)

When Becky called yesterday, she asked if I'd gotten the bathroom done too. Gee, Bec, who's the bossy one? Three thousand miles away and she's still telling us what to do! (Love you bunches!)

It is good to have this opportunity to spend time with Paul, and to be able to give back some small measure of what he's given us over the years. It's interesting how this came up as I was considering what it means to be family, both in who is family and what we do with and for each other. But that's for another post.

"Can I tell you 'sumping '(something)?"

I've enjoyed spending the last two days with my niece and nephew, Aria and Evan. Evan is the one who enjoyed the miraculous improvement in his epilepsy after his surgeries last November, and is still doing physical therapy four times/week. Thus, when both Mom and Dad have to work, they need to find more than day care, they need a chauffeur! With this being my last week of winter break before I head back to class, I got to play "Aunt Mary to the rescue!"

I also cleared a box of books that our kids have outgrown and were ready to share with their cousins. At just four years old, Evan read me two books this afternoon. He was thrilled to find some books that looked interesting to him in that box. Most of the books on his level had already migrated down there for Aria when she was at that stage.
Now in kindergarten, and just turned six at Christmastime, Aria is a voracious reader. She discovered the Magic Tree House books-chapter books at a 3rd grade independent reading level, and devoured the first one in less than an hour and a half- all by herself! I took advantage of a few minutes while Evan was occupied with his trains to have her read for me. She sight read the first few pages of one of the American Girl books, totally new to her, with great expression. This is NOT a kindergarten or even first-grade level book! I don't know how her teachers can challenge her at all in the regular classroom! While her class is learning to count to 100 by tens, at dinner tonight we were working on counting to a thousand by hundreds, and then taking it all the way to a million. The kid is a sponge!

Meanwhile, Evan never stops talking or singing. And, being very polite, he checks to make sure you're really listening. . ."Can I tell you sumping?" "Did you see my fish? Isn't he cute?!"(complete with a cute squinch of his face and shoulders) "Can I tell you sumping?" "I love my new Little Blue Engine that Could." "Can I tell you sumping?" etc. (Lots of etc!)

It's so much fun to live close by, and to be able to enjoy watching them grow up!

Evan, can I tell you sumping? I love you! (And you too, Aria!)