Pruning

I am not a trained gardener. I have no skills to speak of and I'm usually pretty giddy when my plants don't die. I have great gardening heritage, though. Both my grandmothers kept beautiful gardens and could make just about anything blossom. I sometimes lean on that heritage and go with my gut. I throw seed in random places. I mix things willy-nilly. I rip up stuff I don’t like. As our yard currently shows, Chance doesn’t generally turn out very good results.

Stan's mom is also a fabulous gardener. Unlike me, Stan learned how to garden. He knows the right things to do to keep our plants in good shape long term. He understands which plants will fare will in our space. And what he doesn't already know he's patient enough to research. That's probably the biggest difference right there: patience. I want to go out and make beauty happen; Stan wants to cultivate it. Most of what looks good in our yard is a result of Stan’s hard work.

This week Chance did a little extra work in our yard. I walked out to the backyard this morning and found an extra bush blocking my path. On closer examination, it turned out to be a very large, very leafy tree branch. We’ve had some wind gusts and apparently one was big enough to take down a healthy limb from our tree. It’s a robust tree so losing one limb isn’t likely to have an impact, and the limb missed the house. So far, it’s a pretty neutral affair.

I had trouble moving the big bushy thing and realized that the fallen limb had gotten entangled with the rhododendron. Uh oh. The rhododendron is not our healthiest bush. It’s gotten bashed by fallen branches a few times and has struggled to come back. I’m rooting hard for the little darling so I was quite concerned. I reached in to gently pry fallen limb from the bush and found two newly broken rhododendron branches. Both branches were previously hit and had been struggling to regain life. Previously they seemed to be winning the slow battle so I wasn’t willing to prune them, even though I knew I should. Here, in one swift move, Chance did the pruning I couldn’t bring myself to do.

Our yard has a smaller, but much healthier rhododendron and I have another reason to continue my haphazard gardening ways. I’m going to really enjoy those blooms.

The Politics of Dennis Moore

[If you find yourself at a loss, go to youtube.com and watch Dennis Moore parts 1&2. This is part three and makes a little more sense with all in place.]

Stan and I have been watching a lot of Monty Python over the past year. This sketch had us in tears and it has come to mind many times over the past months: Financial meltdown, health care debate, and now the Grecian debt crisis and the precarious state of the Euro. Should the people of Greece suffer because their governors made bad decisions? If Germany has money because of wise decisions, then how much of their practice (& hopefully wisdom) do they get to impart as they bail out Greece, Spain & Portugal? I'm quite glad I'm not a global economist right now.

Even in our own conversations at home we're facing similar themes. Monkey wants to give away every pencil and eraser we have because some of her classmates are running out. Someone said they don't have a glue stick so she wants me to buy more so she can give them away. She also doesn't understand why someone doesn't take the neighborhood homeless lady in to live with them. How do we keep the spark of compassion alive while we try to explain the complicated structures of responsibility and consequences of actions? This redistribution of wealth is very complicated.

Chariot Gypsy

Last weekend was far too busy, just like most of the school year. On Tuesday I took a day off. I didn't leave my house all day and I didn't clean or straighten a darn thing.

I started my day outside with small bits of gardening. I potted some plants folks have given us over the past two years. [We really can be trusted with plants, I promise! and we're much better at tending to the kids.] I went after a few weeds. I put up a rock border on the flower bed. Then I attacked the ivy that has been choking our rhododendron and crowding my periwinkle. It felt amazingly good to bring order to my yard, and to put boundaries on my world. (It would be even more wonderful to do that with my internal world but I'll take the progress where I can get it.)

Around 5:00 I decided I was done. I grabbed a glass of wine for myself and a sippy cup of juice for Puddin'. Puddin' happily dug in her dirt pile and drew with chalk. I listened to the birds and reveled in the breeze. We rolled in the grass, played hop-scotch, blew bubbles, and did other giggly things. It was a wonderfully clear and relaxing afternoon. This wine perfectly matched the atmosphere.

Chariot Gypsy 2008 has plenty of jammy fruit, but is not overpoweringly sweet. Think dark cherry with hints of strawberry, very little wood or mineral flavor. It's tannic but not uncomfortably so. The alcohol content was a little high for the adult in charge but I sipped slowly and didn't operate any heavy machinery.

Stan came home to find us still on the carport sipping our drinks, with evidence of our relaxation strewn all around us. He grabbed a drink of his own and sat down to join us. A huge point in Gypsy's favor is that Stan didn't get a headache.

You can find your own bottle for about $5 at Trader Joe's. If you don't have a Trader Joe's, consider moving - or come to visit me since I'll be stocking up for the summer.

[For the record, I recently went on a cheap-wine-buying binge at Trader Joe's. You'll probably be hearing about a lot of these wines. It's hard to find cheap bottles with personality that don't give headaches. TJ's is the best source I know. Don't tell them though - I wouldn't want them to get a big head.]

What happened to my blues?

Yesterday was one of my melancholy days. I wrote for a while and reflected on the ways my view of the blues has changed over the years. I came up with some pretty good insights for myself and I think I wrote them fairly eloquently. I even found this beautiful picture, which illustrates my melancholy quite accurately. You'll notice that none of that is here ...



blogger was not behaving yesterday so I couldn't get the text to save. Then, while I was on another website trying to find answers, my page disappeared. I'm not sure if blogger gave up on me or whether my subconscious hit a button. Either way, the thoughts are gone out into the abyss.

I hope you enjoy the picture and that you enjoy a restful weekend, full of things that bring deep peace.

3.14 and so forth

This morning Stan put on his pi shirt and I said "maybe I should make a pie." [side note: Stan's reply was "make it square and we can say πr²." We're so geeky.] None of the kids were up yet so I'm pretty sure we weren't overheard. Fast forward a few hours and Puddin' is playing with the plastic food in her grocery cart. She turned a purple star into a "hot chocolate pie cake." Hmmmm. & Mmmmm. The spirit of pi/pie has entered our home and will not leave until we have offered and eaten sacrifices. Now comes the big decision - chocolate or berry?

The picture, by the way, is from last summer. I bought a carton of pie cherries from a farmer's market on a whim and then whipped up a recipe of my own. It was the first pie I'd ever made completely from scratch. It was mighty tasty and I was darn proud. That was the moment I converted to the holy order of pie. All hail the almighty π.

postscript: I finally settled on a chocolate banana pudding pie with graham cracker crust.

Growth Spurts

Mama: Puddin', you're such a big girl.
Puddin': No, I not.
Mama: You're not? What are you?
Puddin': I just Puddin'.

Puddin' is growing up fast, just as toddlers normally do. Stan and I feel pretty confident in our ability to deal with this. The other two, however, are a different story.

We recently moved Monkey up to the next size in jeans and Peanut isn't far behind. Both of them are to shopping at the same shoe stores I do. And they're hitting new emotional milestones too. They've outgrown most of our child-rearing knowledge so Stan and I need to go back to school.

Do you know any good books on the emotional/social development of preteens? What are your favorite parenting resources?

Ready to Run

Puddin' has discovered a new game: on our walks to and from the school she calls out "run please" and we all run (at a toddler pace.) Then when she's ready she calls out "walk please" and we diligently comply. She's also excitedly practicing stairs on her own and climbing much more than before. She wants to take the long route, preferably the one that I'm not taking. This is all very good news.

Puddin' is over-the-top verbal. She can say pretty much anything she thinks of - and she thinks of a lot of things. Her gross motor skills have been quite lacking, however. She hasn't shown much interest in exploring, climbing, dancing, jumping, or any other toddler movements. She'd gladly talk about them and even sing you a song about them. She'll sit and read many books about such joys. Now she's starting to finally take some risks.

It's a big mental shift for me to change the way I interact with Puddin'. We do lots of verbal things, obviously, and much of my day she and I putter with our projects in parallel. To get her the kind of space and freedom she needs I have to choose different spaces and actions. (Somehow it no longer seems fair to put her in the stroller while I run.) I'm trying hard to balance the various needs but Puddin' is still yearning for more space and stimulation.

While I work on solutions, my own body is crying out for space and stimulation too. The weather is gorgeous. There's more light. After months of being stuck inside with annoying exercise dvds I can finally do exercise in ways that feel more fulfilling and natural to me. I'm not sure how to get enough time to do all that for both me and the littlest darling. I'm worried that by the time I come up with the solution the weather will have turned sweaty and sour. In the meantime, I'm learning to love Puddin's little game. It's not great exertion but she's a very fun exercise buddy.