Ordinary Time

Banner by H., which says, "Happy Easter" We had a lovely day together ending with dinner with extended family.  He is risen! He is risen indeed!

When you have acres of land covered in thousands of silver maples, it means that a major spring task is going around picking up all the branches that have fallen over the winter. It may feel like acres of thousands of trees, but in reality is probably closer to one acre and dozens of trees. Either way, it's a lot of branches. Silver maples are just messy trees. I don't know if you can tell, but there are two big branches hung up in this one just waiting for a strong wind to knock them down.  Around the base of each tree are lots of sticks and branches. These aren't good for the mower, so they need to be picked up. Plus it just looks better and less like an abandoned property.  We spent a good chunk of the morning collecting sticks and branches and carrying them to the burn pile. There were three wheelbarrow loads full.  And there are still random piles of sticks and branches scattered around the yard. The burn pile This is a job that needs to be done after every storm durin

It's felt like a busy week, but I was home enough to finally get ahead of things around the house. We spent a good part of two days to get some real cleaning done to be ready for Easter. It's nice not to have to battle entire armies of dust bunnies to move through the house.  Today Y. decided to make dessert steamed buns. These were something she had enjoyed in China and wanted to have some. She put chocolate chips in half and butterscotch chips in the other half. They turned out very well and were quite good. R., though, excited to offered a steamed bun after the main meal, happily to a big bite. The chocolate was a big surprise and not a pleasant one based on her tone of voice. H. also felt a bit cheated. We decided that they did not have a chance to enjoy this particular type of steamed bun when they were in China.  Another thing that happened today was that J. and L. began work on a treehouse. This is something that L. has been wanting ever since we moved here. They still h

I have a lot of various thoughts running through my head that I think are related, let's see if I can combine them all into something coherent. I actually have no idea if I can.  To begin, a brief outline of my differences trains of thought. First, J. and I often discuss learning and education. That's not surprising since he works in a college and I homeschool and read educational theory for fun. He mentioned that some college students, those who were in high school during Covid in particular, seem to be struggling more than previous students.  Then there was the conversation where I kvetched that with the prevalence of only online textbooks these days, there would be no way I would ever have been successful. I know myself well enough to know I cannot learn from text on a screen. I find it difficult to focus, sustain concentration, and to remember things. This is a telling because with a print book, I can succeed at a very high level. I did extremely well in school.  Next up is

As you all know, we are working our way through Lonesome Dove at teatime. We're very neatly halfway through, just fifty or so pages away from having read 425 pages. Did I mention it is a very long book? We might finish it by the end of the school year. If we're lucky.  Anyway, sometimes you read something that you find yourself thinking about long afterwards. This happened yesterday and I have found it coming to mind throughout the day. The Hat Creek Cattle Company is taking a herd of cattle from Texas to Montana. Along the way they find themselves without a cook, so need to hire a new one. We meet the new cook, Po Campo as he is walking from Austin to where the cattle company is currently stopped with the cattle. " 'I like to walk slow,' Po Campo said. "If I walk too fast I might miss something.' 'There ain't much to miss around here,' Newt said. 'Just grass.' 'But grass is interesting,' the old man said. 'It's like my

It's been awhile since we've had Fiber Monday around here. That would be because I really don't have anything to show. I'm still spinning the fiber for the fabric I want to weave. I'm still knitting the hat I'm working on. I'm still weaving the band on the inkle loom. They all have had some progress made, but they are at the stage where all progress looks pretty much the same as the previous progress.  I did take a class on freestyle knitting and crochet at the yarn store in Tempe. I loved it and have lots of ideas. I even have the ability to meet with the teacher occasionally as I figure things out. But I have had no time to begin to work on my first assignment since getting home, so nothing to show, either.  My one accomplishment is to have taught one of my Sheep to Scarf students how to weave a twill pattern on the very simple weaving boards the are using. It's not a straightforward thing, so I'm proud of both of us for getting it working.  This i

We are three birthdays in March and as people have grown older we have taken to doing one big March celebration. Tonight was the night everyone could make it. Well, everyone but D.; we did FaceTime him so he could enjoy s bit of the celebration.  Our March birthdays are W., A., and K. Games were played, Kenzie got a walk, cats got played with, Vienna had many visitors, food was eaten, pie was served, gifts were given, and much laughter happened. And not a single photo was taken. When you have 16 people having dinner together everyone is having too much fun to think about taking photos.  I should have taken a picture of one of the pies I made for dessert, though. Last summer I had told you about finding a place where we could pick cherries and Saskatoon berries when we were up in Michigan. We came home and I responsibly froze all the berries we had picked. Where they sat all fall and winter. I suddenly remembered them this afternoon and decided to try making a pie with some. They made a

Look, a regular update post! Life might be getting back to normal.  There was snow today. We didn't get as much as other areas, though. It was just a light dusting which melted away by afternoon. Areas north of us had a lot of snow. This is much more typical March weather, and while it doesn't excite me, it feels less ominous than the weirdly warm weather we had. In our pot luck assortment of chicks which arrived last summer, we ended up with quite a few Easter eggers. This means we can fill an entire carton with blue eggs. For some reason, this makes me insanely happy. And we have a lot of regular white and brown eggs as well. I planned two egg heavy dinners this week, using dozens of eggs, and we still have dozens left. I guess fifteen hens laying an egg a day will do that.  I had planned for everyone to watch a movie about Martin Luther and the Reformation, which they all dutifully sat down to do while I paid bills. But the disk (yes, we still use a DVD player) from the libr

Thursdays are our co-op day, so the combination of being gone all day and teaching three classes means I'm wiped out by evening. This means you get an advertisement for your blog reading today.  I finally sat down and planned dates for various horse classes (for children) and retreats (for adults). If you live farther away, but wished you could come visit the horse's, the retreats would maje a good excuse to make the trip.  Here are some links and details. Feel free to share with anyone you think may be interested.  The spring schedule at Bittersweet Farms is open for registration. There are horse classes and parent-tot classes. https://www.bittersweet-farm.com/classes  And I have several guided journaling retreats for adults. Come have a couple of hours to take a break, enjoy the outdoors and a chance to experience a little Equine Assisted Learning. https://www.bittersweet-farm.com/retreats/p/journaling  And I have openings for Equine Assisted Learning sessions. These are for

While I was gone, R. had a couple of bad moments, often involving screaming at five am. While she was able to be calmed, J. did not get the most restful weekend. This surprised me because in the days leading up to my leaving, she would have a litany of things she would tell me. "Mommy go see Grammy. Mommy come back. Daddy take care of me." This was far better processing about an impending departure than we had seen, so I was hopeful we had turned another corner.  While there was interrupted sleep, it could have been (and had been) much, much worse. Of course, I also wasn't one of the people being awakened in the wee hours of the morning. I'm still going with progress, even if very incremental, has been made. What was interesting to me, though, was what happened this morning. First, she slept in. This is not a child who normally sleeps late, but her sleep had been interrupted, too, so she must have been tired. I was glad she could ratchet down enough that she could act

Just a brief post to say I made it home by about 1:30 am last night. It was a late flight, but the plus was that I had an entire row to myself. I have now made it through the day including meal planning, grocery shopping and two hours on Zoom. While I was gone, G.'s and L.'s passports arrived, as did all those previous, irreplaceable documents we had to send in for Y.'s and K.'s passports. Then today, G.'s and L.'s documents were returned. I can officially cross off 'obtain passports' for those four. Just two left to do at some point in the future.  Since it's D&D night, I'm going to curl up with a book and try not to fall asleep before a more appropriate time. 

Sticking my head in the orange trees to smell the orange blossoms one last time before I head home. It is truly my favorite smell in the world. 

There was a brief moment of sun this afternoon, so I was able to read outside for a bit. Here was my view. It also meant I was able to finish Terror, Love & Brainwashing by Alexandra Stein. (A little light reading for a weekend away.)  What drew me to this book was the juxtaposition of attachment theory and totalist groups or belief systems.  Attachment theory is really a descriptive way to describe how people interact with each other and relate to the world. Usually attachment styles are determined in early childhood by relationships with intimate caregivers.  In a way, the book was not what I was expecting. I thought it was going to be a discussion of which attachment styles are most likely to be susceptible to cults or totalist thinking. It turned out to be far more complicated and interesting that that simple premise. The short version is that any person with any attachment style can be drawn into totalist groups, even those with healthy attachments. What type author really foc

After eight hours of judging a piano festival I've got nothing left. It was a lot of writing. Writing which was done very quickly while trying to give positive feedback and constructive comments that will be helpful but not feel overwhelming. It always feels like a very fine line to walk, because I don't want to be the reason someone decides that playing the piano isn't for them.  So now I'm going to watch brainless television in comfy clothes and not think about anything even remotely constructive. I have some knitting sitting next to my, but that might be too much for my have that still feels a little crampy. I might add a warm cup of tea to the evening's festivities because for the second day in a row, Phoenix has been colder than Chicago. Someone should hire me just to visit places that I expect to be warm and dry so I can bring the cold and rain. 

J. has been working a bit on the barn while I'm in Arizona. 

I get to start all my indoor seeds outside. Which seems odd and wrong, but enjoyable. L. and H. healing mix up the soil blocking mixture. All the little soil blocks planted with seeds. So They did get moved inside under the grow light. It is March after all. Kenzie gets to do his favorite thing of napping in the sun.  The pony gets washed! Vienna is normally a very tidy pony, but during her worst days where she was laying down nearly continuously, it was difficult to keep her from lying in her own filth. It wasn't pleasant and I'm sure it bothered her. With the warm weather and her improvement it was a great day to clean her up a bit.  The cat got to do her very favorite thing and go outside. And Y. sat in the dry lot crocheting for a while to keep the poor lonely pony company. (We're working on that lonely bit.) Plus Vienna ended up with a hair scrunchy. What I don't have a picture of is L.'s continuing efforts to train her own chicken army. L. has been profligate

Who said school had to be serious? Today we were learning about the animal kingdoms of Monera and Protozoa. Among the phyla in the Protozoans is Vorticella. This organism is bell-shaped and had a stalk which connects the Vorticella to a surface. We learned that organisms in this phyla have no locomotion; they are sessile.  We had come across this word earlier, but I wanted to be sure everyone remembered what it meant, so I clarified. "Sessile means they don't move from one place to another. They stay stuck where they are." Then I added, "Not unlike teenagers on a couch looking at their small electronics."  And then for good measure, I drew a picture for everyone.  And because we were learning about Vorticella, I added one attached to the couch along with the teen.  While no one actually took issue with the idea that teens with small electronics don't move from couches, they did take issue with my drawing, complaining that it wasn't a very good picture. 

So how about some gardening? It was a beautiful day and for the first time in ages, everyone seems to be in good health. After the grocery store, I decided I really needed to get the cold hardy seeds in the garden beds.  L. was a huge help. We first needed to clear off the new pile of well composted horse manure, then fill the wheelbarrow and take it to the garden to mix it into the garden beds. I had Bern avoiding it because it felt like a job that would take forever. With, two people, it went far faster than I had expected.  I planted lettuce, spinach, mizuna, Chard, beets, borage, and sugar snap peas. I even planned out the beds so I can plant lettuce in succession in order to prolong the harvest. This seems like a big gardener step from just dumping all the seeds in the beds all at once.  Here they are. Having sat for over a year, the compost is very, well, composted. Our two wheelbarrow fills barely made a dent in what we have. While we still have more beds to fill, there is plent

Sometimes connecting with adolescent aged children can be challenging because hanging out with parents is not always at the top of their list. If you can join them in an activity they are interested in, it can be helpful.  G. and L. are very interested by video games and one of their favorites is Skyrim. They have been after J. to play it for a while and this afternoon he sat down to have a second Skyrim playing session with them. J. is not bad at video games (as opposed to me, whom they don't even ask because just figuring out the mechanics of it feels too difficult to try to teach me), but he's used to different controllers than what they are using, which makes it challenging.  I have to say it's very amusing to watch J. try to figure out the game based on L.'s fairly cryptic instructions, then have her get frustrated and reach over and do it for him. As a bystander, it is even more amusing to listen to L.'s commentary about the whole thing. I felt as though somet

Evidently my new hobby has become arguing discussing things with people I know on social media. I don't want it to be and I know very well that it is not the venue for reasonable discussion. But sometimes I come across a statement that someone makes that I just can't scroll by because it is so wrong and there are other people reading who could be hurt by it. Not pushing back on outrageous and erroneous statements gives tacit approval. There are just some things that I cannot approve of tacitly or otherwise. This is also a case of knowing your audience. Sometimes the comment comes from a source that I know without a doubt won't be open to discussion, so I do keep scrolling. It's a fine line.  This particular instance happened to do with a post sharing the listing of a child on a re-adoption site. I don't even want to share the name of this particular one because I am so adamantly opposed to them. The listings made me want to weep with grief for the child and a combi

It has been a crazy busy week. All I did this afternoon was sit on the couch... because I could. D. comes home for spring break tomorrow. It will be very good to see him.  Those seeds I talked about starting last weekend? Well, this is as far as I got. The bags of stuff to make the soil mix for the soil blocker which we've been stepping over all week.  The pile of seed packets on the island that has sat here all week as well getting more and more scattered. I will need to reorganize them... again.  We have been watching A 's cats while she stays with a friend between apartments. Her cats have been a little slow to warm up in the temporary surroundings, and Nefertiti has not gone out of her way to be welcoming. This morning, though, there was a brief detente and no one growled or hissed. (That someone would be Nefertiti, by the way.) Vienna continues to improve and we are seeing her personality come out again. I had a horse class here this morning and she seemed genuinely excite

 Y.'s and K.'s passports arrived today.  I cannot tell you how relieved I feel when one of my adopted, immigrant children have a US passport issued. It always feels a little nervous making to apply for them and once they arrive it is another document to prove citizenship. I don't think someone can have too many of those, especially when there is anti-immigrant rhetoric being so terribly common. I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw the envelopes in the mail today. We are still waiting for G.'s and L.'s, but we didn't expedite their passports, so I imagine we won't see them for another couple of weeks.  This is all I have this evening. The past four days have been non-stop. Yesterday I left at 8:45 am and had things on the calendar until 5:30. I really don't enjoy living that way. Tomorrow by mid-afternoon the craziness should abate. I'm looking forward to it. 

If that title doesn't make you want to click on the post, I can't imagine what would. Let's start with the hedgehogs. Y. has taken on the task of making them both crocheted hats to match the season. Since it is now March, they needed spring hats. But since some of my children just can't seem to completely shake whatever cold is going around, L. has been putting their hats over their noses as masks. To keep them safe, you know. This annoys Y. So in an effort to keep the hedgehogs' hats on their heads and to keep them from getting sick, not only do they have new spring hats, but they have new spring masks as well.  Now on to the brainwashing. A friend recommended a book to me and it arrived at the library yesterday. It is Terror, Love, & Brainwashing: attachment in cults and totalitarian systems by Alexandra Stein. Nothing like a little light reading, huh? I'm actually really excited about it. As I understand it, the author takes the different attachment style

I've done some spinning over the past week, but that's about all fiber wise. And endless photos of yarn on bobbins have limited interest... even for me. So let's talk about Vienna instead.  She has been standing up more and for longer periods of time this past week. Our farrier was due today and I had warned her that Vienna could be having a lying down morning. But Vienna was up when I got to the barn and was still up when the farrier arrived.  Here's the good news. The farrier was able to get all four hooves trimmed. That's far better than I was bracing for. And she didn't see any really bad things... severe bruising, pools of blood in the hooves. She definitely sees Vienna as having moderate laminitis and not acute. Vienna is sore, but it actually seems to be her muscles and joints and not so much her feet. Doing nothing but laying on your side is not kind for flexibility and ease of movement.  All this means is that Vienna got to be turned out into the dry lo

I had a ridiculously large pile of library books that sounded interesting that I had begun reading. Some I started and decided that I didn't need to finish them. Either they weren't what I thought they would be it they were so similar to books I had already read that there wasn't a whole lot of new information to be gleaned from them. I dislike it when the partly started pile of books grows too large, so the past few days I've been sorting through and deciding what I really want to finish.  One of the books that hasn't made the cut because it falls into the second category is When the Body Says No: Exploring the Stress-Disease Connection by Gabor Maté. I like the book, but I have read quite a few on very similar topics and it's time to move on. However there were two passages I had marked that I wanted to share with you.  "There is another way to look at it [the body's fight or flight response]. The fight-or-flight alarm reaction exists today for the sa

Despite Nefertiti's help, I did get some planning done for this year's garden. We are going to plant a smaller garden this year in the hopes that it will be more manageable to keep up with. I sorted through the seeds (once the cat had decided to get up, and ordered a few more that I needed. (I still have a lot of seeds, though.) I know which ones I need to start now, which I need to start in a couple of weeks, and what seeds I'm going to plant outside this week. I even went to the store to pick up the things I need to make the soil mix for the seed blocker. It was a lot of looking at seeds, but have I actually started any planting? No, no I have not. I hope to get the seed starting equipment set up tomorrow and some seeds planted. We'll see how that goes. But I at least have started the process. 

It's March, but I honestly don't have any idea what season it is anymore. I do know I was wearing all my winter outerwear in the barn this morning. I have a bunch of sick children. There has been a lot of laying about on couches and I pretty much cancelled school. We didn't even make it to our co-op yesterday. I think some are at least showing some improvement.  This means that as well as not knowing what season it is, I'm not really sure of the day, either. Disrupting the usual schedule will do that.  Vienna was up all day yesterday. This is the first time in weeks that this has happened. She lay down for a little bit today, but stood up when she thought I was bringing food. I don't blame her for lying down. The gloomy, cold weather today made me want to go back to bed, too.  Sometimes when we walk by our stuffed hedgehogs we see this.  There are certain family members who like to take the hedgehogs crocheted hats and put them in the hedgehogs' noses. When anot