Early Bird

The vegetable gardens were both completed before June 1st this year, when, on normal years, the gardens haven't even been plowed by that date.

We have this good man to thank, my brother Piotr, who drove up with a couple of his boys and spent the day preparing my mom's and our gardens.  It still feels unreal to have everything in the ground.






Millie took these pictures while I was inside nursing Cadence.







They make me happy-sad, because they're such a close parallel to these.

We can't thank you enough, Pete.  Visit this summer and we'll stuff your van full of zucchini, and that's not an empty threat promise.

By the Sweat of These Brows

As I type this* in the middle of the day, it's forty-five degrees outside.  Forty-five degrees.  This is only worth mentioning because I'm sweating just looking at these pictures from two weeks ago.  We worked for eight straight days, most days from morning until supper, to finish the gardens, and several of those days were in the mid-nineties.

It's hard to believe.  (It doesn't help that I'm wearing a bathrobe over my clothes right now, and am thinking about starting up the pellet stove.)

I am so thankful for the children.  I gave a rotten example of joy and was cranky and crankier in the heat, gracelessly accepting the gifts that warmth and sunshine are (tho' I was thankful when the sun moved across the sky and gave us a few shadows to work in at the end of the afternoon).





Thankful, too, for a baby who forced us to take turns in the shade of the maple.  (Good, fussy baby.)

Oh, and Annika took these pictures of pumpkin-planting, per tradition.

*I wrote this yesterday. Today it's 20 degrees warmer, thank goodness.

Mining Black Gold

Part of our garden chores each year is shoveling several wagonloads of manure and transferring them from my mother's horse pasture to our gardens.  This involves lots of labor, as you can imagine, and everyone pitches in.


Well, not everyone...












We take turns shoveling it off the wagon.





These two nut berries wanted a picture together.  Don't they look proper?

Or not so proper...




It's not the most fun chore, loading and unloading manure, but these happy faces are the result of finishing the last load for the year.  Yippee!







Side note:  I don't know why girls seem so girly, even when they're not.  Annika unconsciously rested in a similar fashion eight years ago.

We are assuredly the fairer sex, even with grubby feet.

Also (not) of (any) note (whatsoever), I always seem to grow my nails out during garden season before chewing them to the nubs again.  You know those strange pictures of anonymous hands holding nail polish?  Here's my antithesis to the classic French manicure-- a Manurecure.  Don't all rush out to get your own all at once, now.

Ticket to Ride

Waiting for the wagon...

We call Aidan "monster" for a reason...











And then John came.







And then they went.

Saturation Point

On one of the hottest gardening days, we frantically finished the tomatoes while watching the rain move steadily our way.  Not much matches the exhilaration of watching a massive sheet of rain move down the opposite hill as the wind picks up and whips everything around, unless it's leaping about in that first heavy downpour.









No need to wonder why I wasn't out there soaking my bones with them.











Right inside the door were a baby who narrowly escaped getting soaked herself and a scaredy-cat dog.

Green Eggs and Bottom

What uproarious passage in Little House in the Big Woods causes this?





And this?











What sentence does Piper read over and over so that she and Luci...





can do MORE of this?!





I'll tell you.
Source: page 14
"When it was cool they took it down and cut it up.  There were HAMS and shoulders, side meat and spare-ribs and belly. There was the heart and the liver and the tongue, ...."

After reading it aloud, Piper asked me what spare-ribs were.  I told her, and then gave her an unasked lesson on where the other portions of meat were located, making the mistake of telling her that the HAM was found on the pig's...ulp...bottom.

BOTTOM!  HAM!  BOTTOM!    HAHAHAHAHAHAHHHHAAAAAA!!!!!!


Teaching further and showing them a picture on the internet didn't help a bit...

Always Room for One More

There's a baby on my lap.















And there's one on hers, too.

Diminutive

Aidan keeps stealing the dollhouse tableware to use himself.







It doesn't seem like the practical choice to me, but at least he's willing to share.

Lazybones

I am years behind in sewing, doodling, and wood-burning gifts.  I wish I was exaggerating when I use the measure of years, but, alas, it's true.

At least I made Zeke a shirt on his birthday.  He wanted another tractor shirt, as he's fast outgrowing last year's birthday shirt, until he spied and immediately coveted a robot shirt in Aidan's drawer.  Forty pieces of fabric later, he, too, has a robot shirt, and it's even cooler than Aidan's.  (Thank goodness Aidan doesn't care.  These days he's happier wearing nothing, anyway.)

First Comes Love, Then Comes the Bridal Shower

My sister Becky knows how to host a party down to the last perfect detail.  She and I shared duties for our sister Deborah's bridal shower, but I use the word "shared" as loosely as possible.  The girls and I made a bunch of food, but take a gander at what (crazy, crazy) Becky and her girls pulled off, will you?

They made favors and gift bags, banners and games,

table and wall decorations...you name it.

(And there's Millie, slaving away over six batches of soft pretzels while I take pictures.)

We both made way too much food, even though we should have known better.

Becky and Cassie even found time to throw this together at the last minute.  Eh, no big deal, just a butterfly formed out of fruit...

More cakes?  Yes, please.

Enough with table decorations and fruit butterflies and cakes.  Where's the lovely lady of the hour?  I'm glad you asked. She's smack dab in the middle, opening lingerie blenders and toasters and whisks and such. (Don't worry, Deborah, I saved those pictures for you.)

Debbie is a lovely girl, and we're all so happy to join around her with joy in what God has brought about.  Three cheers!

 Mopsy made the most touching gift.  She took Dad's favorite dress shirt and sewed it into an apron for Debbie, a gift that turned the jolly crowd bittersweet and teary at once.

I took no pictures of her opening the gift, knowing what it was and with my heart and eyes full, but I did take this picture of Aidan lightening the mood a few minutes later.  When I heard everyone, so quiet only moments before, burst into laughter, I looked up from nursing Cadence to see Aidan bare from the waist down.


Told you we were potty-training him.

It was a full and tiring and joyful day, one spent well in celebration of one we love.