Cattails and daffodils

We collected a few cattails from the edge of a creek way back in October. They sat in our kitchen for months. Drying, I guess. And looking sort of pretty. Mae decided that taking them apart would be fun. The fluff is amazing. That is fluff floating about in the above photo. I learned that people used to stuff pillows and mattresses with the fluff. Animals use is as a food source, it is a huge mass of seeds after all. It is also good for starting fires......

but if you just let it smolder, it keeps the mosquitos away. At least, thats what I'd always heard growing up at the lake. I'm not sure I ever tried it there. It worked here, but mostly because there aren't any mosquitos.

Spring is here. The fruit trees are starting to bloom, the wisteria is starting to show purple flowers and I've started my tomatoes. Summer is now in my thoughts.

burning the tree

Every year we burn our Christmas tree in the backyard. It was fairly chilly this day (Lucy has pants AND a sweater on, you can only imagine me (scarf!)) The fire felt really good.

Henry got the tree all chopped up and the fire started.

They're looking up because they're wondering if the tree above will catch on fire.
It didn't.

Henry practicing his firebending.

I know, we have lots of wildfires in these parts, but remember it had just rained 10", so we were pretty safe.
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It has been perfectly lovely ever since this day, warm and sunny. Even I have been wearing shorts!

liquid sunshine

I have to interrupt the snow posts to show what we did today. It was an outside day from beginning to end and we enjoyed it all! Above is an orange from the tree in our backyard.

They are huge and sweet this year.

Mae needed help battling this orange. They eventually won.

It looks like Henry is trying to pull the whole tree down, but he isn't. These oranges were still firmly attached to the tree.

He won, too.

These oranges were too big for our squeezer press thingy.

Making juice. Deeelish!

Fruit babies

We have quite a few fruit trees in our backyard, some are successful, some are not. These are pictures of the ones that currently look pretty good. Above is a dwarf fuji apple. The blossoms are a beautiful mix of dark and light pink.

Some type of fig that often don't taste very good, somewhat bland and watery. But the tree is covered in fruit, so hopefully, this year they'll taste better.

And my pride and joy, a little plum. I swear I've checked on this tree every day since it started showing signs of blooming in February. I looked today and one of the plums is turning plummy purple!!!
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Aside from checking on fruit trees there is not much else going on here. School is officially done. The home garden is 90% planted. The school garden is slowly getting planted. Some knitting is happening. And another, completely new to us, yarn craft is settling into our laundry room. I'll reveal it next time.

weekends

We were out grilling in the backyard last weekend with Grandpa Dave and Grandma Carol and this is how the kids kept themselves busy.

Look, no snow. In fact, I think we're done with precipitation until October or so.

This kid was in charge of the the fire and the sausages.

This is the very same kid. Would you eat sausages grilled by him?
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This weekend (like last weekend) is also full of baseball and birthday parties. Maybe even some backyard grilling. Fun!

splash, don't crash and craft

Yes, I know we only live one half mile from the beach, however, the weather has been a bit non-cooperative for beach going this week. The fog has been hanging out just onshore which means there is usually a cool (okay, cold) breeze blowing in off the ocean. Our backyard, on the other hand, is protected from the wind and is generally quite toasty hence the pool. Pretty cool how we added jets isn't it?

Look who is learning how to ride a two wheeler. And look who is helping.

Agreeable siblings!

Thought I'd show you a bit of crafting we've been doing lately. This is soap that we wrapped a bunch of wool around and rubbed it until it became felted (here is a good tutorial). They work as a washcloth and soap all in one. Brilliant!

And pretty.

Another pair of socks! For me!

Aren't they purty? The pattern can be found here if anyone is interested.

Can't wait to share my next pair, they are quite nifty.

More after holidays stuff

Well, I guess this story starts before the holidays, technically, but its only just now finishing up. When we were in Portland in November, we stopped at a fabulous yarn store, the Yarn Garden. The stop before was a shoe store where Mae picked out some new sneakers. This is the yarn she chose to go with those new sneakers. (I picked out some sock yarn, too. Stay tuned.)This color is called bearded iris and it doesn't look like they have it anymore. Oh well. It took exactly one month to make these socks. It was a pretty complicated pattern. But very satisfying as the end result is one amazing pair of socks.
I'm just so lucky that someone in this family (besides me) wants to wear hand knit socks.

Lucy and I had some sweet warm chai the other day. You can tell it was cold as I'm wearing my vest in the house, Lucy who never gets cold, of course, was barefoot. Not this week! We've had about 6 days of above 75 degrees. My daffodils are coming up. No kidding.

This was also taken during our cold week. Our annual burning of the Christmas tree. More warmth.

And finally, some sibling warmth. Lucy and Mae collaborated on the cover of their new book "The Christmas Fairy." I'll share more as they complete more of the story. Each kid received a few Bare Books for Christmas, definitely one of the best presents you could ever give or receive.

Running with shoes!

Hi again everyone. I realize it has been a while since my last post and I'm not totally sure why. I had thought (and even said out loud) that now that I'm no longer working, I would be able to post more. Hmmmm. I'll have to work on that. I've got lots of pictures (knitting, apples, soccer, playgrounds) and lots to talk about (back to school, knitting, soccer, not working). But, for now I'll stick with running.
We set up a very tiny hurdle course in the back yard and then ran around in circles for about an hour jumping over (and sometimes tripping over) that bamboo hurdle. It was fun. And tiring.
The most amazing part is what you see here. SHOES and SOCKS worn by the barefoot/flip-flop princess. I don't know what made her want to try these out (it didn't hurt that they were a purple/pink combination) but try them out she did. She even wore them to school one day last week. So I guess it was a success.

Here's Mae, without shoes!? Maybe we were in some parallel universe?

Play Structure

A little backyard fun this weekend. Although Isabel doesn't look like she is having too much fun in the middle picture. I wonder what was going on when I took that?