Ordinary Time

Today was one of those beautiful though somewhat rare days that are both the perfect temperature (high sixties, in my open) and sunny and fall on a weekend with nothing on the calendar. We did quite a bit of cleaning up outside, but some time was also spent working on the tree house.  Floor boards are getting installed, so I sent L. up with my camera to the some pictures.  The ones of J. and L. working on it I could manage myself. Here is a better picture of how high up it is. I sat for a while and watched. It was a perfect day just to sit outside and enjoy spring. I had a pretty nice view. It almost felt as though I could almost see the trees leading out. I'll admit I still pinch myself that this is where we live. I get the same feeling when we're working outside that I had when I was little and would build the outline of cinder block houses in my backyard pretending that was my house. It feels like play. That's not a bad place to be. I did do some gardening. I got the lon

I spent the evening at our church's inaugural disability inclusion game night for older teens and adults. I think it went very well. H. had a great time.  But since I have nothing left, I'll leave you with a fritillary picture. This afternoon I discovered the fritillary in our side garden was blooming, but I hadn't noticed because it was hidden in the dried ornamental grass I had yet to clean out. I freed the fritillary and discovered this year it has six blooms! I was so excited because I love it. 

I made the realization today that it was seven years ago today that we signed the contract on this house. (You can read about that day on God's Provision .) It made me sit back a bit and appreciate how much has changed in the past seven years. It is also a little painful to read all my emotional roilings from that time. We were in the throws of possibly the biggest change in our married life and I was a mess. I knew I was a mess, but couldn't be anything else. There were too many unknowns and too much imminent loss which could not be counterbalanced by the vague hopes and dreams I had for what was to come.  Yet here we are, settled in a good place with friends and connections of many varieties in the community. There are even horses, five of them!, in the barn. In those first years I didn't think we would ever really feel comfortable here, then just as we thought we were finding our feet, Covid hit and we very much went nearly back to square one. It feels good to be on this

Today was a gorgeous day and the first day where it felt comfortable enough to have teatime outside. Here was our view. Everything is starting to bud out and there is a light green haze beginning to cover all the trees and plants. I do love this part of spring.  But onto Lonesome Dove. After three months, we are now a little bit over halfway through. Yesterday we read chapters 57 and 58. They were brutal. In my looking to see if this was an appropriate book for high schoolers I never saw these chapters mentioned. Had I known they were coming up, I would have skipped them and given a synopsis. Of course that would have meant I had to read them beforehand, and really I would have preferred a synopsis as well. You would think someone would have mentioned them. We were caught completely by surprise. And not in a good way. Plus, I have never been so angry at an author for killing off characters that I liked. It was just traumatic all the way around. Today when we sat down to read, I said th

The eclipse took over yesterday, so here we are discussing fiber on a Tuesday. And believe it or not, I have a couple of small things to share.  The first is that my long awaited heddle bars for my loom arrived.  They are very long, thin pieces of metal that hold the heddles (what the yarn is threaded through) on the shafts. Each shaft needs two, a top and a bottom. I have six shafts that needed them, so there are twelve heddle bars in that box.  It's going to be a process to get them on. The six shafts need to be removed from the loom (they're heavy), then the bars need to be installed. Once they are on, I have hundreds of heddles (~200 for each shaft) that need to be threaded on. Finally, the shafts need to be rehung. It doesn't sound like a quiche weekend project, so I'm anticipating the loom being out of commission for a couple of weeks. But once it's back together, I'll have twelve shafts to play with which I am very excited about. My painted warp scarf has

Because, really, what else could today's post be about? We did do other things, such as learn about Renaissance music, did some math, had a business call, paid bills, and did the grocery shopping, but aside from that it was the eclipse. L. also spent part of the morning researching eclipse conspiracy theories for fun.  But after lunch we all headed outside to enjoy the beautiful weather and use our eclipse glasses. R. looked through her glasses, but I think she was pretty be baffled by the whole thing. Y. and K. H. understood something of what was happening. Our explanations about why the moon waxes and wanes were too good, though, because I couldn't convince her that she was seeing the actual moon and not a shadow. L. L.  For a treat to go along with the eclipse viewing, I bought ice cream cones. We also had Magpie and Mambo here because W. and MC drove down to the area of totality.  We were at 94% coverage, but even that wasn't quite enough to make it look that much diffe