And Now He's Four

All that I wrote on Aidan's birthday last year still holds true. He still wears me out, and he still fills me up to the brim with his humor, imagination, and affection. What a boy he is! Finest four.

We didn't return from dropping off the visiting children until late afternoon, and John and Zeke were gone at doctors' offices (and then the hospital) all day getting a flake of metal out of Zeke's cornea, which made for an unusual birthday.  I made the birthday meal and cake in a rush, and Aidan sat grinning next to me the whole time. He wanted a car cake, but the chocolate cake recipe I used was way too moist. I guess picking a recipe titled "Moist Chocolate Cake" should have alerted me. I kept smushing it back together each time it split apart, while Aidan reassured me that it looked like a car.  (Because I kept asking, "What does this look like to you?")

Thank goodness for a lively imagination to see cars in boxy cakes, and thank goodness for chocolate sandwich cookies, which make everything better.

I'm posting all these pictures because his grin is just too good to skimp on.

The cake just barely stayed intact while he blew out the candles and then collapsed into a mound of crumbs once I cut the first slices (but they were moist crumbs, so the recipe was honest!). Yum. 

I am so happy that this Little Fire is ours to enjoy for this time. Here's to four, my boy, and beyond! We love you 'ooper, 'ooper, 'oooooper much, to the moon an' back an' back an' back.

Best Seat in the House

She dips the discarded cucumbers in leftover brine.
(Don't worry. Neither the stove nor the brine are hot.)

Garden: Birth to Death

When one begins documenting the garden's progress, excited to see everything growing prolifically, one must also document the corn and tomatoes pining away in standing water. I took the last batch of pictures when I went to the lower garden for the first time in 2 weeks to see if the lake had dried up yet. It hadn't, and now I'm done taking pictures because it's too sad a pastime.


ONE. SO EXCITED. LOOK AT THESE GARDENS!

TWO. WAHOO! EVERYTHING'S GROWING!

THREE. WOWSERS! GO, GARDEN, GO!

FOUR. Sun and rain in perfect balance!

Oops. Guess I forgot to take more than the beginning picture of the lower garden until now.  There wasn't much to see, anyway.

FIVE. Slightly less exhilarating. Beans are dead. Brussels are dying. Second plantings of cilantro, beets, and kale rotted along with the first. Tomatoes and corn valiantly trying to swim.

The arial view is lovely, though.

LAST SNAPSHOTS. Herb bed looks a little weedy, huh...

Asparagus jungle.

Pumpkins and sunflowers are both doing splendidly.  Before the rain stayed, cucumbers, zucchini, peas, and lettuce produced well, too.

Everything in between is rotting from the rain.

Hurrah for basil!

Three cheers for the sunflowers!

Two week update. Those swimming tomatoes and two rows of corn have stopped their efforts and have succumbed to drowning.  Brussels are almost all dead. Onions and summer squashes are dying. Potatoes rotted in the ground for the first time ever in my 16 years of gardening.  But pumpkins-- oh, pumpkins!  I am pinning my hopes on the pumpkins. And there's always next year...

(What's 120 tomato plants, anyway. Pfft. I don't even care anymore.)

All-Nighter Outside Our Windows

Ruger is not our dog, but he thinks he is. 

I took these pictures to show my mother that while I was standing on the steps, he poked his head out the living room door behind me.  He'd arrived there via the kitchen and dining room, via the door on the other side of the house.  It looks like he'd had a wild night, and his goofy expression made me laugh.

Leftovers

When all the children are grown, I hope grandchildren exist to leave notes like this scattered around the house.  (It's almost identical to my to-do list, even down to the meeting to determine who is Master.)

She also builds houses with clothespins.





Aidan still has a minor obsession with mailmen. A mail-lady who covers the route once a week discovered this and made a special trip to our house to deliver Aidan a U.S.P.S. water bottle, a drawstring backpack, and this huge magnet (which was part of her welcome package when she began working as a carrier and which is supposed to go on the back of her mail carrier vehicle). That...or our refrigerator.

Early June-- a break from planting.

Oh, baby. You are wonderful.

Deirdre! We finally used the hair color that you gave us ages ago! Everyone got in on the fun, but Aidan's the one who looked most natural.

While the girls were away, the littler ones and I smeared goop all over their faces.

A few hours later, poor Aidan just looked like a sleeping bruise.

Susannah or Big Foot?  Who can say?

I found Cadence in the tub, fully clothed and diapered. She gave me this look so she wouldn't get into trouble.  It worked. 

I called Aidan so that I could tuck him in for a nap. I found him hiding here.  (It didn't work.)

Millie made balloon animals until the balloons were gone.

Toads all summer long...

I enjoyed the irony of our new window sitting in the background of these cheerful Iowa test takers.

At least Susannah gave them iced tea for nourishment.

Real Time to Remember

I'm sorting and weeding through an insane amount of toys right now, my children being the privileged young royalty that they are, and Aidan asked me what the words were that he saw on the bottom of a model car. "Made in Hong Kong," I replied.

Those words immediately tickled Zeke's funny bone, and he began repeating them and chuckling.
"Honk-honk...Honk-honk...what a funny name! They must have a lot of cars in that world."

What's the Use of a Blog? REAL TIME.

I steer clear of instant-post-here's-what-I'm-eating-right-now media platforms, but even in my cavewoman's hole, I've heard that social media is all about being jealous of or inspiring jealousy in others, right? I haven't been doing my part lately on this ol' blog, so here's something to light the fires of deep-down-I-wish-I-was-HER inside your hearts.

1. The three kitchen garbage bags of mending are now empty. Yes, that's right, I'm talking about those three garbage bags of mending/patching/altering I've been toting from the dining room table/sewing table to hide in my bedroom whenever we had "real" company for almost the entire summer. Plus, I finished the other miscellaneous mending. How much mending can one family need?!
Those bags-- EMPTY.
Mending-- DONE.

2. For the first time in nearly 2 months, my husband is taking a shower with HOT water*.  Yesirree, bob. We are moving up, folks!

*With, as ever, grateful hearts to Teman and Keith, who take pity on our plight each time my mother spills the beans.

There. Go forth and be jealous, 'cause that's what blogs are all about. (Thank you, internet, for improving our lives.)

Real-ish Time

While weeding in the garden, despairing because the weeds sprouted so quickly that they gobbled all the kale and beets and half of the lettuce, I was singing along with Johnny Cash on his cover of "Hurt."

When I came to the lines,

"And you could have it all
My empire of dirt,"

I laughed.

Truth in a new form.

Small Thoughts While Planting Corn

They call it Fierce to face a cliff, to spider up
with climbing shoes and coiled rope, and Brave
to whack through bush in land unknown.
Brave to roam on earth that's tall and wide,
and Fierce to fly toward color, dust, and riot.

And so it sometimes is, but who I was
would not have called it such,
bent as I was toward tangle and wild,
reaches of trees and outcrops of stone.

A scrappy mass of freckles and bone,
not fierce or brave,
a simple tomboy hunting fun
(which these pursuits would seem to be).

Now I bend to sow the corn,
with silver threading brown,
the same I was before
but more

and Fierce and Brave are many things,
so few would fit into my young-girl mind.
Fierce is facing dirty bowls with tired eyes
and Brave is choosing children over shouts of all who name us Fools.

Seeds over space,
souls over all,
again and again,
with a song.