ding! ding! ding!

we've tried pushing and pulling her around on our bumpy, lumpy yard.  and chasing her down and then pushing her back up our slightly hilly street.  but get her out in a flat parking lot and wonder of all wonders, she can do it!  the tricycle is cute and fun, and we will keep it, but we are borrowing a balance bike from a friend as well.  I'm curious to see what she prefers.

all I know is, this girl is growing.  and she is growing fast.  I go back and forth between my heart aching a little over it all, and bursting with excitement and anticipation over what is coming next.  I suppose this is just a condition of motherhood.

and...... it just so happens that the tree on the left corner in the last three pictures is one of our sugar maples that we tapped this year!  well, not ours, but still....  I now look upon it with a small sense of pride and ownership, as if it were.  not that a tree can really ever belong to someone.  at least I don't really think so.

week in review

my wonderful in-laws were in town this past week.  I really, truly mean it when I call them wonderful, and realize I am blessed to be able to say that.  they are two of the kindest and most generous and thoughtful people I have ever met.  if only there weren't approximately 680 pesky miles separating us most days.....  we spent plenty of time just hanging around doing our thing, plenty of time snacking and chatting, and (thanks to a coworker who made it possible for me to play hooky on thursday, and to Mike's folks for buying the tickets), we spent an entire day at the Biltmore Estate.  it is flower festival time there and the thousands of tulips, among other blooming beauties, made that quite clear.

yesterday, a solid 7 hours at the local library hanging the art show for the art program.  then I came home and promptly took up the whole couch, and called for some takeout.  noodles and lemongrass soup, please and thank you.  this morning I woke up with a sore arse and the conclusion that either hanging an art show is hard work (I was up and down a ladder all day), or that I'm a bit out of shape.  possibly a little bit of both.  hundreds of pieces of children's art now don the walls (and floors, and ceiling...) of the multipurpose room.  it is a sight to see, indeed.  this morning I went back over to tie up a few loose ends in preparation for our 'opening night' tomorrow night.

we've been filling the garden beds rather quickly the past few days, adding onions, summer squashes, and peppers.  coming next are the tomatillos, tomatoes, more peppers, leeks, shallots, okra, cucumbers, and more romaine.  I need to fill in some holes where germination was less than great for some parsnips, kale, and carrots.  the strawberry plants have little green berries on them, and it's time to cover the beds with netting to keep the birds away.  the garlic is standing tall and proud and I'm watching it, knowing that harvesting won't come for at least another 8 weeks, but already planning what can go in once it comes out.  winter squashes, probably.  no clue yet where we'll squeeze in the beans.

Mike and Claire moved the chicks out to the garage yesterday.  it's still a bit chilly at night, but they are snug and warm in their little crate/box home with plenty of heat from the heat lamp.  and now we don't have a quartet of spastic little birds scratching around and peeping all night long in our soon-to-be master bathroom.  soon-to-be is relative, of course.  but at least the chick poo has been swept out and we're back to where we were pre-chicks.  also, now there's no creepy red light streaming into our bedroom all night long.  a definite plus.  I recall the first night we had them, lying in bed listening to their sweet peeps along with a gentle rain.  I said something to Mike along the lines of "how peaceful, with the rain and the peeping."  well.  HA.

also this weekend: rain, rain, rain.  I love a good rainy day(s).  soft days.  stay inside and watch the drops roll down the windowpanes while a mug of tea steams up my little personal space kind of day.  yes, yes, yes.


*weekending with amanda

garden happenings

adorable old rain boots: repurposed for planting zinnias

woodshed: refilled

Margaret's eggs: still enormous and unable to fit in a carton

apple trees: blossoming for the first time (this is one of two heirloom Western NC apple trees we planted a couple years ago (one variety is Priscilla, the other Junaluska), frosts got them the last two years, even with protection.  fingers crossed this is their year!)

a rather busy morning of errands that included some great finds at a kid's consignment shop, lunch out with papa at Homegrown (yum! if ever you are here, go there!), paint picked out for her picnic table ("radish"), and some romaine to throw in because I'm getting antsy and want something green from the garden NOW.  aside from the half-grown arugula that Claire and I pick at when we're out there.  went looking for kale and left with this.  still looking for a few kale starts. (mine are several weeks away from providing dinner around here).

cute little flowers flowering along the side of the house....  yellow deadnettle, I believe.

Rose: strutting her stuff, perhaps a bit annoyed about being kicked out of the woodshed what with the refill and all.  that back building is the coop (coop/potting shed/bee/syrup/chicken stuff), in front is the garage that is not really a garage.  a workshop, really.

the beginning of a stone wall Mike is making on one side of the yard.  there will be steps going down on the left, so that we will have a more proper route than a muddy hill to get to the side yard.  he can do anything.  I know, I know... we all can "do anything we set our minds to.." but really, he can actually do it.  anything.  I am lazy and unmotivated in comparison.  or, maybe all of my motivation just goes to gardening and (sometimes) parenting, and (sometimes) doing art with kids that are not my kid.  oh, and starting things and then leaving them in unfinished piles here and there around the house.  there's quite a bit of that, as well.

strawberries: in our future

and babies, with recent first tastes of sunshiney foraging and such~  they are now officially named, too. meet violet, tilly (both Claire's choices), clover (my choice) and buttercup (papa's pick).

bees

working hard, bringing in lots of beautiful, golden pollen~

a little ways to go with the fence, but I'm nearly there.  and then I can make that xylophone!

a bit of capped honey~

and quite a lot of capped brood! if you look closely, you can see the larvae in the cells that aren't yet capped~ you can also see some uncapped honey around the brood cells.

the bigger, 'puffier' cells on the left in the photo below is drone (male) brood, and on the right is the worker (female) brood~  after a little while longer, as their numbers increase a bit more, we will try to split the hive and hopefully get back to two hives.  we'll take some of the capped brood and honey from this main hive and place them in another hive box, let them rear their own queen, and hope for the best!

the colors of some of this pollen they are bringing in is so vivid and brilliant~ ranging from butter yellow to neon orange, and everywhere in between.

it is so encouraging and wonderful to see such signs of a healthy and thriving hive after two years of touch-and-go beekeeping.  this is going to be a good year, fingers crossed!  hopefully our first year extracting honey!

full steam ahead

on sunday we rode a train from asheville up over the mountain (passing over the eastern continental divide) to old fort and back.  this little trip was special for several reasons.  typically, the tracks here are only used to transport cargo, usually wood chips or coal.  norfolk southern owns the tracks and there is no commuter/passenger rail service out this way.  the closest amtrak stations are located around 2 hours away.  there is a bit of a demand for passenger rail service here, but it doesn't seem likely to happen anytime soon.  so, it was exciting.  exciting for claire, who loved the train ride from nj to philly last summer when we went to see uncle kevin, exciting for us to see the area we know so well from a new perspective.  a trip that would have taken us about an hour round trip by car took 4.5 by steam locomotive. (oh yes, there's that, too- the train was made up of several old passenger train cars led by a 1904 steam locomotive.  there were two diesel engines as well, to assist)  we wound down the switchbacks after cresting the continental divide, and then it took nearly an hour to turn things around before heading back up and over on the way back to asheville.

we had only heard of the trip a week ago, and by then it was sold out for the four rides over the weekend.  we found out because mike got an email from the fire department soliciting volunteers to act as EMTs on board.  he jumped on it and got one of the few available spots, and in exchange was allowed to bring a passenger (and a half) along for the ride.  claire wasn't so sure at first about getting up at 6:30am on a mid-thirties april morning, but after waking a bit she was quite into it.  afterwards, we spent most of the afternoon in the yard, (me in the garden, papa working on a stone wall) but after hearing the whistle blow on the first leg of the afternoon train ride, mike decided he wanted to see it from another angle, and so he and claire headed out (with the bike on the back of the car) to hunt it out and try to find it coming through one of the mountain tunnels.  they made it just in time.  when he's home from work tomorrow I will add some of his photos and maybe a video, here.

she and them

she loves these girls.  over the course of the last several months her interactions with them have changed from mostly chasing them around the yard (sometimes with a stick) to doting on them and calling them, bringing them all sorts of 'treats', turning over rocks for them to find yummy bugs.....  it's about time, too.  that chasing them around the yard bit (not always with a stick, and no, she didn't hit them, but still....) was getting pretty old.

don't let the sort-of screen door fool you.  that Margaret knows her way around it.  to the point that I find her in the kitchen often and, once the other day, in the living room.  walking around slowly, cautiously, making her soft little brrruaaahhhhh sounds.   that girl gets around.  she's the one that went down the street recently, the one I found standing on top of Claire's picnic table next to the driveway when we pulled up the other day.  the driveway, by the way, is not within the fenced in yard.  the fenced in with wooden fencing and chicken wire yard.  hmmm.  silly bird.

impromptu backyard xylophone

as I was tying together bamboo section after bamboo section for our little bee-fence to be, and papa was hauling wood from the driveway to the woodshed, and Claire ran around doing a pretty good job of entertaining herself while we largely ignored her, I though 'hmmmm, bet papa could make some pretty music with this'.  he is a great drummer, and in my opinion, a stellar random-objects music maker.  one night over a decade ago, when we were maybe 20, stands out in my mind quite vividly.  I was working for the summer doing an internship with the park service on the outer banks (watching shorebirds and marking sea turtle nests) and he was down (we lived in nj at the time) for a visit.  we found ourselves at the house next door to mine (all multiple-tenant park service housing, a mix of park service folks, lifeguards, etc) at a table with many glasses and bottles spread out, all with varying amounts of liquid in them.  he picked up a spoon or two and put on quite the show.

anywho, back to the yard, and the (um, splintery) bamboo bee-fence project... I called him over and handed him some makeshift bamboo drumsticks and he and his girl went to it.  fun, fun, fun!  I may just have to create a little permanent musical structure out of some of the bamboo we've got on hand.  in fact, I think I will do just that.