Marica has been taking photos of everyday beauty (mostly during our time in NZ), editing them, and has turned them into a nice little video, which I’d like to share with you below. Proud Mama moment!
Incidentally, today is also her birthday. Her eleventh. Which, while we’re sharing videos, makes me want to share this beautiful song.
In February we had a 1920’s festival at our homeschool co-op where we learned about some things that happened in the 1920’s in general, and in our area (Thomas Edison, who lived nearby, was actively inventing cool things; the Holland Tunnel between NJ and Manhattan was being built); we got to dress up in fun costumes, someone came in to teach us how to dance the Charleston, and we had a 1920’s themed feast. So much effort went into the whole event to make it a memorable and fun time for everyone. This is one of those posts where the photos will tell a better story than me. What a fantastic time!
(Photo credit: thanks to Russ Dubé for the last 8 photos.)
Merry Christmas to all of you, from all of us!
(Though perhaps a better title would have been My Veggie Garden, but I’m generously including Ben because he heaved heavy compost bags and helped with digging and building a frame for my beans.)
I decided that this year I’d like to have a veggie garden again after not having one for three summers. I built the veggie boxes myself, which really sounds more impressive than it actually is because they came in a kit set and I just had to put them together. I did, however, have to use a power tool — a.k.a. a drill — to build them. I planned and planted, watered and weeded and then we all enjoyed the harvest!
When we got back from our great two-and-a-half week long roadtrip, we were greeted by a veggie garden gone wild. Our kind neighbors watered our garden for us and the plants had grown phenomenally and produced a big crop!
We went from this:
To massive plants and this great harvest:
Our garden continued to do well through the summer and well into the autumn. Not so much that we didn’t know what to do with it, but enough to keep in a good supply of good, healthy veggies freshly picked from our own garden. Does anything taste better than a carrot you just pulled out of the ground?
Here it is after it had started to slow down in the autumn:
As of now, in the middle of November, I still have a bunch of different herbs, swiss chard/silverbeet, and celery going, but I don’t think they’ll be around much longer. I love growing my own food — it’s so great to know there are zero pesticides or chemicals (though does anyone know how to deter those darn squirrels??), just old-fashioned good food!
I’ll leave you with this funny fella.
He came to to a delightful end in our stomachs, along with his brothers and sisters who all got roasted with a little olive oil, salt and pepper and sprinkled with some fresh parley. If I was a carrot, that’d be how I’d want to die!
Aliens in the Apple 