Ordinary Time

We've reached the part in Botany where we learn about fungi, particularly mushrooms. Today was all about playing with mushrooms and really looking at them. I had bought a selection of mushrooms when I was grocery shopping yesterday. We had portobellos, oysters, and alba clamshells to look at.  These are the oyster mushrooms. We identified their parts including cap shape, gill type, texture, and stem structure. Then we attempted to make spore prints. I say attempted because it was not successful, despite following the instructions in our mushroom books. Oh well.  Finally, we chopped them up and sauteed them to have for lunch. Y. decided to cook some noodles to put the mushrooms on, making enough for H. and R. as well. She also added in some leftovers from last night to it. Now, in fill disclosure, I am really not a fan of mushrooms to eat. I will eat them, but I certainly don't seek them out. I want to like them. I think they're cool. But I'm really not there yet. Thinki

I finished spinning the blue wool I had dyed.  I'll let it rest on the bobbin for a bit and then chain ply it. I am very close to having actual yarn to show for this project. I also finished combing the unappealing brown color and am working on spinning it. There is not going to be as much of it because I scrapped a lot after the ill-fated attempt at processing it using the drum carder. Isn't it weird how this brown looks in the picture? It is far more appealing here than in person.  I've also started to comb the next color. I decided to work on the emerald green. And perhaps my biggest news from the week is that I finally sat down and figured out how to continue with the socks I'm knitting. I'm so ready to start knitting something new. But I also feel as though I have a significantly better idea of how knit socks are constructed.  Not a huge amount to show for the week, but certainly got over some hurdles.

We're nearly done with February and I am noticing small things that say spring is coming, winter won't last forever. This morning in the barn when I was cleaning stalls I became aware of quite a bit of birdsong. I looked up and three or four male sparrows were singing their hearts out, sitting on posts that often hold bird nests. In the center of the barn we're two female sparrows, not singing, just listening. I don't know which birds paired up, but one already had a nest, so I think he was already chosen.  The horses are starting to shed their winter coats. It was light still at 6pm. I did the evening barn chores without gloves on. And after looking at the calendar realized I needed to get the seeds that take more than eight weeks to be ready to go outside going. It was sunny today and I almost got warm enough while I was outside that I thought about taking off my coat.  I realize we could still have some cold days, but it will be time to start preparing the gardens fo

I've been thinking about children and food and cooking. This is mainly because I often see parents asking where they can find cooking lessons for their children or how they (the parents) can stop being short order cooks every night. I can't help but think these two things are very much related to one another. What put this back in the front of my mind was that G. and Y. happened to wander through the kitchen as J. and I were starting dinner. They both like to help stir things and we're wondering if there was something that would need to be stirred. We were having risotto, so the answer was yes, it was pretty much all stirring. I handed G. the spoon, proceeded to tell them both how to cook risotto, and then went and sat down. They understood the directions and were perfectly capable of carrying them out. They didn't need me hovering around. Both expressed pleasure at having added another dish to their growing repertoire of recipes they are able to cook. Children in their

We'll dive right in, but this may be short because I'm having trouble remembering what happened of any note this past week. Bristol's leg is looking much better. I'm still wrapping it, but the bandaging has been downgraded to something much smaller. We got three eggs from the chickens this week.  Last week, one of the (many) times I was at the library, I happened upon a Star Wars craft book that I thought K. would be interested in. He was, but I was a little unprepared for the craft he immediately chose. It was making some sort of Star Wars character out of a dried out apple. Lovely. So this is what has been decorating my kitchen counter. Y's new birds are settling in. She loves them and has been spending a lot of time with them. Her goal is to get them well hand trained. H. has been very interested in some of the many drawings books we have. Here is her latest drawing. What fascinated me was watching her use a ruler to get the really straight lines. We had an absol

2023 has been a good reading year for fiction so far. All last year I found it difficult to find fiction books that caught my interest and there were extremely few five star books (if any) in what I did read. This year? Completely different. The last book I finished was Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr. I had several people recommend it to me, so when I found a copy at the library I grabbed it.  Other than knowing it involved multiple story lines, I didn't know much about it. I'm okay with multiple story lines, so that's never a deal breaker. The ancient Greek story of Cloud Cuckoo Land is the connecting thread, though I admit that I was really curious how the author was going to tie everything together as the pieces were so incredibly disparate.  A word of warning, though. This is not a book with a quick start. It takes a while to get to know the characters and to figure out where each of their individual stories is headed. At one point I even Googled, "Does Cloud C

J. spent a lot of time playing Dungeons and Dragons when he was younger, really enjoying the storytelling and adventure aspects of it. Over the years he has played with some of the children who have also enjoyed it. (Does it surprise anyone that L. was completely enamoured?) L., G., and Y. also discovered the podcast The Adventure Zone which, if you don't know it, is listening to some brothers play D&D.  So when J. came across a teen D&D night at a local library, those three were all in.  Which makes the third Thursday of the month a very unusual night in our family. It's also one that everyone looks forward to. Because D&D begins at 6:30, that means that I need to have some sort of easy dinner that is ready much earlier than we normally eat. I've been relying on the crockpot which has the added benefit of no real dinner prep. Those who are going to the library grab a quick meal and head out. That includes K. While he isn't interested in D&D, he is very

I mentioned that our co-op had been cancelled due to weather last week which meant an entire day of unscheduled time. I decided to take advantage of it and do some weaving. I had made sure the day before that I had finished dressing the loom so it was all ready to go. It felt like a total indulgence to spend an entire afternoon weaving.  I was able to weave the entire sampler that I planned so I could decide how to weave the napkins I want to make.  Here is the entire piece off the loom. I took these pictures before I washed it and trimmed the ends. It's really difficult to see what's going on, so I'll share a close-up of each section. I used the same sequence of patterns for each color of weft. This is a taupe and black linen. It's the same fiber that made such a rotten warp with the last attempt. It is much better as a warp. The linen changes the most with washing. When I'm weaving with it, it is somewhat stiff and course, but after it's washed it's very s

For long time readers, you are extremely familiar with our good friends the H-S Family, The P Family and the W Family. For years these are the families that we did life with and they all appeared regularly on this blog. Until the H-S Family moved away and then we moved away. I think we are all still recovering from those seismic changes in our lives. But these are also friendships of the sort that allow us to pick up right where we left off regardless of how much time has passed, such as this afternoon when the moms were all able to spend a couple of hours together.  For the newer readers here, you might not be as familiar with these very important people in the life of our family. So, I thought I'd do a quick search to see how many posts I could find where they featured. Be forewarned, it is not a small number. I might have made a passing child hyperventilate a bit at the number of tabs I had open on my computer to make it happen.  Here is a quick trip down memory lane. I will try

And it's Friday again. This morning we took Y. and she picked out her parakeets.  Meet Mist (blue) and Willow (green). They are both female parakeets. By this evening they were starting to move around and investigate their cage a bit. Y. is very excited. On Valentine's Day K. woke up and decided he would make cookies for everyone. So he did. J. had a meeting on Valentine's Day. I fed the masses and then J. and I had salmon, green beans, and baked potatoes all by ourselves. Well, all by ourselves except for the children who would wander through the dining room and ask why we got the good food and they didn't. (I did a baked potato bar for them with multiple different toppings so it wasn't a horrible dinner. Don't feel too badly for them.) The hens have not laid any eggs since the one I showed you. Our co-op was cancelled due to the icy road conditions that were predicted. The weather never looked horrible but the sleet that fell all day did make any surface super

Y.'s birthday isn't until Tuesday, but tonight was the night everyone was free to celebrate, so that's what we did. She chose dumpling stir fry, stir fried lotus root, and jasmine rice for her birthday dinner with apple pie for dessert.  Did I get any pictures? No, I did not. My excuse is that when we have so many people around the table it is very difficult to get out of some seats and grab your phone which is in the other room.  I'll share a picture of her birthday gift, though. Well, part of her birthday gift. The main part of her gift is the birds which will go inside, but she needs to be a part of that process. Y. was pretty excited because she has wanted birds for a long time. But really, I want to know how on earth she is sixteen!!

When I look at my blog stats, it shows me which posts have been viewed. Usually it's the most recent ones by a week or so, but every so often some older ones get thrown in the mix. There are some posts that show up a lot for one reason or another, but there is a whole lot that don't. That's not surprising when I have over 4000 posts published here. Once in a while I'll see an old post listed and click on it to see what it was. I truly do not remember a lot of what I have written and I'm curious. Often it is just a nice walk down memory lane of what we were doing ten to fifteen years ago. Other times it is not so nice. This isn't because the memory is bad; I do tend to remember very clearly the hard stuff I have written about. It is not so nice because I am brought up short with my old self.  I will say I consider my Old Self to be the writer of posts any time previous to March 2012. That's very specific, isn't it? That is because it was in March of 2012

You know how I blithely wrote last week how we were probably going to get more chicks this year because most of our hens were getting old and not laying as much? Well, with egg prices these days the thought, "We should get chickens must have passed through more than a few people's heads.  On Saturday, I was sitting down for a few minutes after lunch and thought I'd just do a quick search to see what chick prices were these days and what various hatch dates were. We had already decided not to order through our local farm store because their hatch dates were too early and I'm done with chicks in the house. At this point I was blithely thinking I would be deciding between many options.  And then reality set in. I looked at some websites and reality began to dawn... all their chickens were sold out having been pre-orderered. Actually I should clarify. All their pullets (female hens) were sold out; I could buy as many roosters as my heart desired. My heart desires no rooste

I think life might be feeling a little more under control these days because I actually did some fiber things. (Okay, calming down if you don't include the extremely bad news about our van. Bad, bad, bad. I'm just pretending it doesn't exist right now... the problem, not the van... though that's probably not sustainable.) But back to more enjoyable topics.  First, I wove this scarf on my rigid heddle loom. The second picture shows the fringe twisted. All I need to do now is wash it and it's all done. But, shhhh... this is a surprise gift for a friend. The second thing I did was to finally measure the warp for sampling the napkins I want to weave. You'll remember that this is attempt number two.  I have it sleyed through the reed, so the next step is threading and winding it on the loom. And then, finally, I can start experimenting with different patterns and wefts so I can decide how I want to weave the actual napkins. Having to take off that first warp really s

I mentioned yesterday that watching various classes and courses has what made me actually keep at the treadmill nearly every day. I can know something is good for me and still not get around to doing it if I don't find it interesting. If I do find something interesting then it is very difficult to do something else.  I have also discovered that I need to keep a pencil and paper on the treadmill because more often than not, I will hear an idea or book or fact that I want to keep track of. Which is why I have a very scribbled note here on my desk with the word 'phone' followed by other cryptic scrawls. I wrote this yesterday so I still have a chance of remembering what I was trying to remember and that I wanted to write about it. So after that very long introduction, here we are.  I'm currently watching a course on people skills and what I like about it is the presenter references various scientific studies. I'm all about an interesting brain/behavior study. The one t

This may end up being the weekly update per version.  H. is really great about learning something new in her art class and then coming home and practicing that new thing multiple times. This habit definitely has improved her skills significantly. Here is the artwork she finished today with her new skills. It's quite something, huh? There was no tracing involved at all if you were curious. The shimmery effect is done by using salt on the paint. I have been having everyone watch a complete Great Courses class, watching one or two lectures a week, on cathedrals. Earlier this week K. built a cathedral in Minecraft. I have to say, he did a darn good job of getting all the important parts in there. I am very happy to report that Bristol's leg is looking significantly better. I'm still wrapping it, but I'm no longer worried about it. And she finished her last dose of antibiotics at dinner tonight which is going to make all of us happy. The weather has been warmer, which is lov

Look at this! That would be an egg J. found in the coop today. Based on the price I paid for eggs on Monday, you're looking at $0.42 right there. This five dollar a dozen egg price-thing has been killing me a bit since I have a coop full of poultry who are lounging around, eating (a lot), and definitely not laying eggs. This one single egg gives me hope that maybe my egg buying days will be coming to an end soon. It will probably be right around the same time that egg prices fall. Truthfully, though, most of our chickens are getting a bit old, which means their egg laying is slowing down. We've been thinking we're going to wait until it's a little warmer and then buy some new chicks in the secondary coop. We have a chick warmer, but if we're going to brood them outside, it needs to be quite a bit warmer than this. And we will be brooding them outside. I don't need another round of brooding chicks in the house. I say that every year it seems like. And we're c

Every so often I am struck by the competency that I see in my children. Sometimes it's things they do on a regular basis, but I haven't really stopped to appreciate it, and sometimes it's a new skill. It can be easy to get stuck thinking about our children and not take into account new skills or new levels of maturity. Of course it can go the other way just as easily with early adolescence, so it's nice to mark the moments where you aren't parenting giant toddlers. Some examples from today... I came downstairs this morning to discover L. making chocolate chip muffins for everyone.  Everyone pretty much gets their math done first thing in the morning without me having to ask. They also know to save their questions until after I've had some food and a second cup of coffee. H. volunteered to help R. make valentines for co-op tomorrow. H. did mention to me that it can be hard to help people, to which I agreed. So points to H. for both helping and being able to ident

The grass across the bridge looked long and sweet. Three goats did stand and stare across the way. So easy it would be to cross the bridge, except that underneath it lived a troll.  The littlest Billy goat: "I'll go and try my luck to reach the shore. Wait here and see if I can get across. My stomach urges me to go across." Trit-trot, trit-trot, trit-trot, trit-trot, trit-trot. The Troll: "Who goes across my bridge at lightening speed? I'll eat you ere you gain the farther shore. You'll rue the day you tried to trickster me. I'll roar and eat you till you are no more!" The littlest Billy goat: "Behold and look upon small, thin frame. One mouthful would I make for such as you. Hold to you patience, send me on my way. My brother comes and he is more to chew." _________ I'll spare you from having to slog through the rest of the story. I'm sure you all know how it ends. But really, I know you are all thinking, "What in the world...

While I did do some fiber related things, none of it makes for very good photos because continuing to comb and spin blue fiber doesn't look very different whether you're on the first 100 grams or the last 100 grams out of 400. I'm getting closer, but still not there.  I also still haven't figured out exactly how I want to make my warp for my next sample before starting on the napkins. I think I have it nearly figured out, but not quite. It's difficult to take a picture of that as well.  The only thing I have to share are two more dryer balls I made with the waste from the last round of combing I did. It's a good thing that I will continue to have lots of wool to make these things with because I cannot keep dryer balls in the dryer to save my life. I'll have them for several weeks and then they go missing. I know that some child has accidentally taken them to their room along with their clean laundry, but when asked everyone denies any knowledge of them at al

I love chicken mole (moh-lay). There is a Mexican restaurant where I grew up that makes amazing mole. I've tried to make my own, but have never been happy with it. So while I make a lot of meals from scratch, this is not one. Instead, when I feel the need for some I order this from Amazon. A friend of mine, when I asked her for a mole recipe, told me this is what she uses. It's not inexpensive, so we only have it as a treat every now and then. I have tried every single mole sauce I can find around here, but none of those was nearly as good as this one. It's what we had for dinner tonight. If you like mole, I highly recommend it.

A. stopped by with the kittens today. Since she was already out this way so they could have their first vet visit, she brought them over so everyone could meet them. They are pretty darn cute.  The photo is G. holding Apollo so he could meet Juniper, held by Y. I got the picture seconds before Apollo hissed and tried to bat the kitten. Actually none of our adult cats were fans of the kittens. Grumpy old things.  Afterwards, J. and I went and ran some errands together and then had lunch. All by ourselves. Without any children. We have not had a meal out just the two of us since November. It actually might be even longer than that because I can't actually remember when we had a meal out and alone. It was very nice. We'll have to do it again sometime. R.'s new medicine protocol seems to be working, even at night. Sometimes we will hear something, but like all parents lie in bed and wait to hear if the sound was a one-time thing or if it will keep going. More often then not the

First up, J. found the seed box! It was in the shed all along. I did look in there, but evidently I didn't look carefully enough. I'm going to blame the weather. It was dang cold to be out poking around the shed. The weather. I'm tired of cold. Today barely got above zero, but there was a wicked wind chill. We are supposed to get warmer tomorrow and the rest of the week. I'm looking forward to it. There will probably be mud. I'm not looking forward to that. I was supposed to take a knitting class tomorrow to learn to knit brioche, but it was cancelled due to low enrollment. Bah. The younger people all cleaned up the downstairs today... even dusting and vacuuming. It involved much very long music. That is a trade-off I'm more than willing to make. Bristol's leg is slowly healing. I was worried it was becoming necrotic, so sent a photo to the vet. It is not and she thinks the leg is healing well. I cannot tell you how relieved I am. Because I only have a limit

We have a family group chat between us (E. and J.) and our six older children. A few days ago, B. shared a funny phishing text that he received: Hello, I am your Egyptian uncle (you probably don't really know me but my name is Joshua and I am your father's brother) and I am here to tell you that your aunt Bil has died. ❤️😥  if you would like to donate to the funeral funds please send me your credit card number Thank you and may your aunt Bil rest in pieces.🙏❤️ As you might imagine, there was quite a bit of family joking about this particular text. We were particularly amused by aunt Bil resting in pieces. And no, B. did not supply his credit card information. Then earlier today, B. receives another message from the same phone number. It says: Brainy:0 This is far more odd than the original phishing attempt. So he asks, "Who is this?" It's the kids extra phone :] L. is the one currently sending you random things. Yes, indeed, L. was the original author of the fir