Belated photos

I have several posts with lots of photos that I never posted. There’s one all the way back from the winter. There’s a series of photos from May, and there’s a bunch of photos I took up in the wood recently that I have been re-sizing for my blog. Now, which should I post? Should I post them in order, starting with the winter one even though it’s from so long ago?

I have to stop this habit of getting lots of photos ready for posting, but never posting them. I spend so much time JPG-Smartsaver-ing the photos, resizing them, increasing the contrast, and figuring out which ones to post and in which order. It all just takes so much time, and before I know it it’s months after when I’ve taken the photos, and I’ve never actually posted them.

Since something is better than nothing, here are a few photos from the spring/summertime bunch:

Okay, that was more than a “few”. Each of these photos belongs to a series of dozens of photos, and I have a hard time narrowing them down. There’s a lot of unique good ones out of each set. So, of course, I want to post them all, but that’s sooo many that it’s overwhelming.

Good Times

My friend JoHanna invited me to come over while most of the rest of her family were gone at a conference. I was excited about it, and had a good time. JoHanna is my friend Cassandra’s sister; Cassandra wasn’t there because she was one of the ones at the conference. Their youngest brother Micaiah is friends with Caleb, and he invited him to come over too.

When I was younger, I thought it would be fun to sleep over at a friend’s house, but it never happened; I have never slept over at anyone’s house but relatives, till now.

When we got there, JoHanna and I talked about garden stuff, and went out to see her garden–she’s growing a vegetable garden, and we both like to see things grow and produce. She probably enjoys it even more than I do, but sometimes I have tips to pass along which I heard from my dad, mom, or someone else with a green thumb.

After supper I worked on scrapbooking while she worked on a project of her own. I was surprised and happy to discover that we were both able to get stuff done, and talk at the same time. I have a hard time multi-tasking; also, I am always so wishy-washy that I have trouble figuring out how I’m going to do it. But this time, I was not plagued by indecision so badly. I felt like going, “WOO-HOO! I am finally scrapbooking the photos I’ve taken! Now that I’ve finally started again, I’m going to do ALL of the photos I ever took!!” Ha. (All 3,568,834,201…. of them )

Elizabeth, JoHanna’s younger sister who was also home, was in the same room the whole time, so we were a threesome. I played music from our music collection on my laptop on random shuffle, and both she and JoHanna seemed to appreciate the songs. “I never listen to music, really. Well, not very often,” Elizabeth said. “I like your music better than ours!”

She would remark on the songs sometimes–usually, “I like this one!” (and bobbing to it, or making a funny remark: one song started out dramatically, “In the Beginning….” and she quipped, “….was the End!”) but occasionally, “This doesn’t sound good…” or “Too slow and boring” (I agreed with her, in that case!) We have a pretty nice collection, because there are so many different people in our family who have bought so many different styles of music, that each song that plays is something uniquely different from the previous one.

There were some times we all had a good laugh together. There was an elusive bad smell in their (spotless) house, which we couldn’t figure out the source of. Was it perhaps a diaper in the bathroom? Nope. Was it the garbage in the kitchen? Nope. It seemed to be coming out from the floor. After much investigation, JoHanna was pretty sure it was coming from garbage in the garage.

Elizabeth couldn’t stop commenting on it–”That STINK! Oh, I don’t like that stink!”

I teased her, “Really? We all love stink!”

Pretty soon Elizabeth was making both herself and JoHanna laugh by how many times she’d impulsively exclaim about the smell. (which really didn’t seem that bad, to me.)

JoHanna said the smell didn’t seem to be coming from outside, but hey, we could send Caleb and Micaiah outside searching for it, in case!

Either Elizabeth or JoHanna said, “They’ll ask, ‘What did you do at the ____’s house?’ and they’ll reply, ‘Oh, we went searching for a stink!’” They both laughed.

Reflections on this suburbia dwelling

My aunt and uncle live in the suburbs, I guess you’d call it. The houses, even though they are different, look like cookie-cutter houses–each a slight variant of the next, but you feel sure that there’s an exact copy of it a little farther down. The houses are very close together, so instead of looking out at the varied landscape of lawn, fields, and trees forming the horizon as at home, I look out at houses neatly set side by side, each with a garage, each with their own little ornamental trees and shrubs. At home, I can see neighbors from our house. But here, your eye doesn’t even have to wander to look from one to the next; they’re all right there in a row.

It used to bother me to walk down the street here. All I could think of was how at home, there are things for your eyes to rest upon as you take a walk, whether it’s a walk down the street or up our hill–there are views, there are hills, there are fields and trees. Here, it felt there was no where to go–I felt penned in by the houses, houses, on every side, no matter where I went.

But now, though I still wouldn’t want to live here, it doesn’t bother me. I guess I’ve gotten a little more used to it. I kind of like the way the neighborhood is set on a hill; at home, we are in a valley (of sorts), so it makes an interesting change. I like living in a valley better, but for one thing it is interesting how there is seemingly more sky here; the horizon is much lower.

I spend most of my time inside, or out on the porch. I’ve gotten so used to my aunt and uncle’s house that it feels quite comfortable and familiar, and I’m doing my own usual things–my own projects, and the Internet is the same whether here or at home–that it’s almost a jolt sometimes to go outside and remember that there are people out here.

Of course, there are always people outside of my narrow four walls of existence. But it’s a much more immediate realization when you go outside and you actually see them. At home, I can hear the neighbors sometimes, but I don’t see them usually unless I take a walk. Over here, at regular intervals, someone will walk by on the street, passing by right in front of me. In the evening especially, kids will be outside, shooting basketballs or going up and down the street on their scooter or bike.

Dog-sitting again

I’m dog-sitting again for my aunt and uncle again. It’s funny, after the week when I was first dog-sitting, when I got home it felt as if I had never been gone. In some ways the week following, when I was home and doing something different each day, felt much longer than the week of dog-sitting where I did pretty much the same thing every day. Or maybe it didn’t feel longer; just longer than a week usually feels? Because when I had to leave to go dog-sitting again on Sunday, it felt like, “Was it really only a week ago since I was last dog-sitting? It seems like so much has happened since then.”

Yet now that I am back at my aunt and uncle’s dog-sitting, it feels like I never left. As I spend half an hour watering all my aunts grasses and bushes in the evening (she asked me to water them every day), I feel like I’ve been doing this every day for three weeks. As I let the dogs outside, then back inside, then back outside, it feels like this is a routine that has been going on for a long time.

I just think it’s so funny how my mind “erases” things so fast. When I got back into the rhythm of home life again–making supper, washing and drying a lot more dishes than I do when I’m over here and it’s just me, helping a neighbor, etc.–it seemed as if the whole week of dog-sitting hadn’t even existed. I think I do that a lot with other things in my life too. When you’re at certain phases in your life, it seems like no other stage in your life ever existed, and no new one ever will.

So what do I do with with all the time alone? Well, I bring a lot of projects to work on. And I don’t wind up doing hardly any of them! I could be so productive over here, if I’d just focus on working and do nothing else. Instead, I work on something for a while, then get restless and look for something to eat (not really because I’m hungry, but I just seem to do that when I’m feeling bored) and get on Facebook or something and see if there’s anything new. Then, I go back to working on something.

Pesto Calzones

Okay, here goes. Gotta write another post, before I fall into the habit of not posting again!

On Sunday, I made pesto calzones for supper with pesto still leftover from last year. I was kind of amazed there was still some left in the freezer–enough to make the calzones, and yet more after that–we have made so many batches of pesto lasagna over the past year, it seemed like surely we must have used it up! But then again, it seemed like I spent practically the whole summer last year both cutting and processing parsley, and cutting basil and turning it into pesto! This summer, I have only cut snippings of the basil once so far, and it was NOT two huge 13-qt bowls of cuttings like I’d often get in one day last year! Partly that is because I grew less of it this year–a lot less–and partly it’s because, although the basil plants are doing great, they have yet to turn into magnificent basil “trees”. (Lol. I exaggerate.) Probably they need more water; I haven’t watered them faithfully this year, as I did last year. I like to water things, but I just seem too busy lately to get around to it.

For anyone who doesn’t know what pesto is, it is basil, olive oil, pine nuts (but we always use walnuts instead), Parmesan cheese, and garlic, blended together to a paste in a food processor. Pesto lasagna is our family’s general favorite way to use pesto (if anyone wants the recipe, ask) as well as Fresh Tomato Pesto Pizza when the tomatoes come on. But it had been so long since we’d had Pesto Calzones (recipe at bottom of post), I wanted to make them for a change. When I was younger, it seemed such a special, “heavenly” meal–they were only ever made on birthdays, if someone requested them. We had a lot less pesto on hand back then, too.

Collin seconded the wish for Pesto Calzones rather than Pesto Lasagna, and since he’s going to be going back to college before I know it, I decided I had better hurry up and make them.

The first thing to do is to make the bread dough. I have made bread before, but I was unsure of myself. My older sister makes wonderful bread using starters she makes the day before, or several days before, and Evan often makes stupendous pizza crust or great rolls by just “making it up” as he goes along, throwing in some semolina flower or whatever he thinks would be good in it. He has a good instinct for it.

I asked Evan for tips on making the bread. He didn’t feel like elucidating on it, as it seemed quite simple to him, and he directed me to Titi. Titi said, “Well, I usually start the bread the day before. Evan more often makes bread the same day, so ask him.” Rather than asking him again, I walked away smiling to myself at how they both said to ask the other person.

About the only thing I know is, well, you put in flour, yeast, and water, knead it, let it sit, and knead it again. And really, that pretty much is all. Titi gave me some pointers–if you’re using a full 5-lb bag of flour, put in about 6 cups of water; yes, put in the water first; put in about a 1/2 TB of yeast, and 1 (or 2, I forget what she said) TB salt; no, you don’t have to wait for the yeast to dissolve in the water before you add the flour.

“How long do I knead it?” I asked.

“Till it feels right!” Evan replied, sounding frustrated that such a self-explanatory thing need be explained.

So I didn’t worry about it. I added more flour, because it was so sticky it was clinging to my hands in globs, making it hard to knead–I wound up having to add a lot more flour. (Not so much to make  it dry, but workable.) I kneaded it for a little while, let it sit for a half hour or so, and kneaded it again, putting it into a bowl greased with olive oil.

And then, the warm day and the yeast did the rest. Warm weather is great for rising bread! By the time I was ready to use it, it had doubled in size, I think.

The filling for the calzones is quite easy–just mix in some ricotta with the pesto. Our recipes for “Pesto Calzones, More” (we had to up the recipe, as the amount we made before was no longer enough) called for 3 cups of pesto and 3 lb of ricotta. That sounded like dubiously little pesto to me, so I added another 1 1/2 cups of it.

The recipe instructed to divide the dough in half, each half into 3 pieces, and each of the three pieces into six, or something like that, for a total of 36. That actually didn’t sound like very much to me, for our family full of grown and growing boys. However, as I began to cut the dough into the allotted sections and to roll out the individual calzones, I discovered even a smallish lump of dough made actually quite a large calzone! The recipe said to put about 1/4 cup of filling in each one, but that looked like a tiny amount, so I put in more like 1/2 cup or more. I was glad I had stretched the filling with extra pesto to make it go farther.

The recipe said to roll each one out so that the dough was about 1/8″ thick. Doing that for each one, made the whole thing take quite a while longer than it originally seemed it would. When two baking sheets were filled with 6 calzones each (they only barely fit–as I said, they were large calzones), I put them in the oven and worked filling up another two sheets. In the 20 minutes that it took for the first batch to be done, I still hadn’t finished making the next batch!

I was rolling them out as fast as I could. I had to keep re-sprinkling the table with flour so that the dough didn’t stick. But to tell you the truth, I was kind of enjoying myself! The calzones baking in the oven smelled really, really good. When they came out (I had to switch them around in the oven halfway through to prevent burning), they looked perfect–they had puffed up and were firm, golden brown on the bottom and lightly so on top.

Because I had been more generous with the filling than the recipe anticipated, and also because I had made a bit extra dough, I ran out of filling before the dough was gone–it only made 28, not 36 calzones. It was  fine, though. Everyone gobbled Pesto Calzones to their heart’s content, and there were even a few leftover! There would have been more leftover, if Caleb and Deirdre hadn’t eaten another after supper was over .

They came out very yummy. Besides the pesto, the bread part was really good.  A large part of what made the bread come out good, I do believe, was the very high temperature they were baked at (450!) and how thin it was rolled–it gave it a really good texture.

However, they always seem a bit lacking as a complete supper. Also, I am beginning to suspect that the sad truth is that I don’t like pesto as much as I used to… hehe. Although it tastes good, it doesn’t taste “heavenly” like I used to consider it! And I tire of it faster. It used to be the thought of tiring of pesto was alien–you mean there’s not enough pesto to go around, rather! But now, most definitely it does grow old on my palate. I, personally, think some batches of pesto come out better than others. While I was making them, I tasted the pesto from two bags, and it tasted better from one than the other.

Just as a side note, I made a salad with this meal with the second-planting of lettuce in my garden. I was amazed that, after the week in the 9o’s when I had been gone (one day it got up to 99!), the lettuce hadn’t bolted! Lettuce doesn’t like heat, and it tends to bolt if it’s in the 80′s for any length of time. With temperatures in the 90′s, I would have considered it a practically impossible that it wouldn’t bolt. (When lettuce “bolts”, it begins to tower up with smaller and smaller leaves, and tastes extremely bitter.) Is this the secret? – It was Forellenschluss (also called Freckles) Romaine lettuce! I remembered seeing on the seed packet that it is good at with-standing the heat, and that is why Titi selected it. Admittedly, it was starting to get a little stalky. But it definitely had not yet bolted, and it didn’t taste bitter. It did taste a bit more… grassy, or something, than lettuce does in the spring! I also had some Majestic Red lettuce in my garden, and that–even the ones that hadn’t bolted–did taste bitter.

Back to Pesto Calzones! Unfortunately, I didn’t get any picture of them. I wasn’t planning on posting the recipe or writing about it at the time. Here is the recipe, scaled down (I would have scaled it down more, but then I would have had to change the bread recipe too, which is a bother):

Pesto Calzones

Makes 24.

1 1/2 batch Speedy Gonzales Bread

2 cups pesto

2 lb ricotta

Make the dough. After mixing dough, place it in a bowl greased with olive oil and let rise.

While dough rises combine pesto and ricotta.

Punch dough down to deflate. Divide into 24 pieces by dividing into 4 pieces, then each piece into 6. Form each piece into a ball. Roll ball into circle about 1/8″ thick.

Place about 1/4 cup (I use more like 1/2 cup; it depends on the size of the calzone) filling onto one side of each circle. Bring the other side of the dough over the top of the filling, and seal the edges with water and the flat edge of a fork. Prick the top with a fork in a few spots and place on greased baking sheet.

Repeat with remaining dough balls. When you are about 3/4 done, preheat oven to 450 degrees. Bake them for 20 minutes at 450 degrees. Serve immediately.

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I’m not sure what bread recipe to put in here. The recipe says to use Speedy Gonzales bread, which we don’t usually make these days; as I described in my post, we just make bread in a bowl and knead by hand, and we use less yeast, I think. You don’t need as much yeast when the weather is warmer, by the way. Here’s the recipe for Speedy Gonzales bread, and then I’ll give the approximate recipe for how I made the bread… not tonight though. It is confusing me trying to figure out what proportions would go with the recipe I gave. I used a whole 5-lb bag of flour, which made enough dough for 28 large calzones, plus one small loaf of bread leftover. I need to figure out how much of everything you’d use to make less calzones.

Speedy Gonzales White Bread

14 1/2 oz bread flour

1/2 TB sugar

1/8 tsp salt

1 envelope Rapid Rise yeast

1 cup hottest tap water

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 egg

1 tb sesame seeds (these last two ingredients aren’t needed unless you’re making it into loaves)

Put flour, sugar, salt and yeast in food processor bowl. Pulse 2-3 times to blend.

With machine running, pour hot water through feed tube slowly, till all is incorporated and dough forms a ball. Let process 40 sec.

Remove from work bowl. Place on flour dusted surface. Cover with greased plastic wrap and then a clean towel. Let rest 10 min.

Grease 2 8×4 loaf pans.

Punch down dough by kneading 1-2 times. Divide dough in half. Place each half in loaf pan. Cover with greased plastic wrap. Let rise in warm place, such as unheated oven, for 35-40 min. (till double).

Preheat oven to 425° (Remove bread from oven first.) While oven is heating, combine egg and salt. Brush on loaves, and sprinkle with sesame seeds.

After allowing 10-15 min for oven to heat up, put bread in. Bake for 20 min at 425°. Then lower heat to 400° and bake 10-20 min. more.

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Trying to begin writing again

It truly does get harder and harder to write a blog post the longer since I have done so.  There becomes days piled upon days of things I could have written about, but never did. It feels rather overwhelming when I come back to try to write again. It’s not that so many great momentous things have happened, but there are all sorts of topics I have had in mind to write about. Once I actually open up my blog, I feel like I should then do justice to all (or any) of those things. I also feel like whatever I write, I should write it well, so that it is something interesting to read. But the more unaccustomed I am to writing on a consistent basis, the more it feels like I just can’t write anything, much less well.

Anyway, probably the best way to get started again is to talk about what has been going on lately. So, here goes.

I just got back from house-sitting/dog-sitting for a week for my aunt and uncle who live about an hour and a half away. They have two Shih Tzus, which are small dogs. I have found that I have grown to like their dogs better than I used to. It’s not that I ever particularly disliked them, but they just seemed boring, and no substitute for a human companion when I was bored and lonely in an empty house with them. Now, as they have gotten more used to me and I have gotten more used to them, I begun to have a feeling of companionship with them. I feel like I understand what they mean by what they do, and instead of just being “the dogs”, I “get” their personalities.

I did not mind being away from home for a week as much as I thought I would. Previously when I dog-sat for them, the silence and the emptiness of the house made me feel rather forlorn. Being used to living in a family where there are always people around, being completely alone was a hard thing to get used to. Besides, what was there to do to fill up the time? (I always brought things to do, but couldn’t seem to get myself to do them.) This time, I listened to audio books on LibriVox on my laptop while occupying my hands making knotted arrowhead friendship bracelets, or occasionally doing something else while listening. I really meant to do more productive things that just that, but alas, I always seem to fall into doing just one thing and nothing else. I thought I had made 6 or 7 bracelets, but when I came home and counted, it was 9 (each with different color combinations). It takes a few hours to make each one.

Today Caleb got the Spy Pen in the mail that he sent away for a long time ago. He and I (since I’m the one who washes breakfast dishes, and consequently take care of the empty cereal boxes) have been saving the codes in certain Rice Krispie boxes–each code is like a point toward getting something. Two codes gets you a spy pen, three or four (I forget which) gets you a pocket translator, and so on–with 8 codes you can get a soccer ball. All of the things are “Cars 2″ themed. Caleb carefully thought it through and figured out his priorities in what he wanted to get. With each thing requiring a different amount of codes, there are various combinations of things you can get, and there’s a limit to the total amount of codes you can redeem.

He was happy with the Spy Pen. It writes in invisible ink, and when you shine the blue light of the pen on it (an ordinary flashlight won’t work), you can see the secret message.

“See,  Cadie, this is what you can do with it,” he said, showing me what he wrote on paper (in ordinary pencil): “Meet me at the apple trees at 4:00″. Then he shone the Spy Pen flashlight on it, and I could read the TRUE message in invisible writing, which read: “Meet me at the fort at 2:00″.

And this, I guess, shall be the end of today’s faltering attempt to begin writing again. Maybe I’ll write more about the dogs, the books I listened to on LibriVox, and the things happening around home next time. (Plus, I have a lot of photos I keep meaning to post!)

Fun at the Forts–Riding out the stormy weather in our ship

About a week ago, we had little-girl visitors. Titi went over to visit her friend Abby. While they visited at her place, I brought Abby’s three oldest girls–Millie, Annika and Susannah–over to our place to visit. (Abby needed to get her garden in, which is why she didn’t come over.)

Yes, the little girls in these pictures are the three oldest! At times it’s hard for me to wrap my brain around that. Since Deirdre is the youngest in our family, she’s still the “baby” in a way, so she still seems like a little kid to me. There’s no one after her, so even as I get older and she gets older, she still seems like the “little kid”… her and Caleb both, in a way.

So then, when I see Abby’s girls and realize that Millie, the equivalent to Deirdre in age, is the oldest, and after that there is still 4 more, it makes me go “wow” inside my head. So many little girls! Susannah (the youngest in these photos) seems quite little to me, but there are two more after her (equal in cuteness, I can assure you ).

Of course, we have so many boys in our family . . . it’s just that I am forgetting what it’s like to have lots of little kids! Little kids who are always talking, laughing, fighting, adventuring, doing things. I almost fall into the trap of thinking of little kids as less smart than they really are. They’re not just “little kids” (generic); they are themselves. Millie is not just the oldest of a troop of little girls; she’s herself, quite a smart, bright girl who reads a lot–a book-a-holic, just like Deirdre–who can carry on a conversation with you, if you are willing to. Annika, next after her, is no less bright; really, all little kids are a lot smarter than us “big kids” remember sometimes. I remember feeling like grown-ups had no idea when they acted like I was such a little kid when I was 5 or 6. Didn’t they get it I was just me?

Anyway, after that side-tangent… here are photos! I experimented with different effects on the photos, so I’ll post some of the different versions.

They all were eager to see Owen’s new fort. They had seen and played in his fort up in the woods many times earlier, which is made out of long sticks leaning against a big pine tree–it kind of looks like a big stick-tepee, with a platform of sticks on one branch. They also had seen the first tree-fort he built by nailing boards across the space between two trunks of a black cherry tree. (He was too tall to fit in that one not long after finishing it!) But I told them Owen had made a new, much more magnificent fort!

(Since Owen will be reading this and balk at that word, don’t worry Owen, I didn’t actually call it magnificent. But they got the drift.)

As soon as they got out of the fort and said hi to people, they said they wanted to see the fort. Owen dutifully led them up to it, and they all followed enthusiastically.

I went inside to make lunch, so I didn’t see their first reactions to it. However, when I came out to snap a few photos, they were climbing all over the fort. It looked like they had taken to it like butter on bread. I could tell the fort was going to be a main–or maybe the main–attraction of the visit.

When I came up to the fort, by the way, I was walking through the tall grass in the field toward it. “Whoof, a bit hard to walk through all this grass!” I said, and one of the girls said, “You could have just followed the path.” Sheesh–the visitors know the property and the paths better than I do! Not really–but it didn’t occur to me to get to the fort by going through the “Secret Garden” area. Owen probably led them up that way. At any rate, they were certainly very quick to explore and become acquainted with all the paths and areas!

Here is the fort, in all of its glory! Oh, Owen would want me to point out that Caleb helped some, too, and he also wouldn’t like me acting like it’s something so great. To someone who knows about proper carpentry, it may be a crude construction; but for young children full of imagination, this sort of thing is stupendous.

Annika, especially, was all over the fort. One of the great things about the fort is that it doesn’t just have one designated space where you have to be, or one designated ladder. There is an open area below, which is the main area of the fort (where all the sword-fight battles go on, and such) or, alternately, the deck of a ship. (There is even a hole in the side of the fort with a long wooden thing which can be an oar.) There is a mostly-enclosed space at the end, and above that another enclosed space with a plank leading up to it, and there is a ladder on the outer edge of the fort leading up to the ceiling. But you can also climb around other ways; from the outer ladder, you can swing around to the plank leading to the open area, and you can walk along the edges like Annika is doing here.

When we have had the opportunity to show the fort to other little kids, they checked it out, but it didn’t go much beyond that. Yep, a fort. Yep, it has several spaces and a ceiling. Now let’s go do something else. Bye! Millie, Annika, and Susannah, on the other hand, thoroughly enjoyed it. Annika in particular found every possible way to climb upon it.

Susannah is sitting on the plank leading up to the second-story space.

This is a picture I snapped of Owen, when he had his head bent down… I didn’t mean to have the zoom in so far. I include this photo, because we need to have a picture of the guy who made it!

Here is Deirdre, coming out to join us, walking through the “Secret Garden” area and the locust trees.

I thought it looked nice in black & white, too.

These next photos are of them in the little tree-fort Owen made several years ago. It didn’t compare with the Big Cool Fort, but it was still worth climbing up into; everything is worth climbing up into! They climbed all the trees in the area around this fort, so it was only natural that they should climb into this one with the ready-made plank.

I like how the effects I did to this photo really brought out the colors in Millie’s skirt.

In black and white. Millie looks like the captain of a ship, or something, to me. She was the captain in effect when we were all in the large fort, pretending it was a ship. Officially, they made me the captain (because I was oldest), but Millie acted more like a captain, shouting out the orders. (A captain, I am not.)

Adding in a little green again. I thought it was a neat effect, but my favorite version of it is the first one.

Now Annika comes up to join her!

And now, naturally, Susannah wants to come up too.

Susannah was quite happy up there, and Annika was quite happy in the tree beside her. Susannah peeked through a crack between the boards and cried out, “Annie, look! Look at me! Annie, look at me!” over and over. Annika was talking to Owen from her vantage point of the tree, and apparently he was more interesting.

I liked this one in black and white, too.

I took a few photos of Susannah in the tree fort:

Black and white. (Which do you like better? I like to have the colors of her face, but I like the contrast in the black and white ones, too.)

She was peeling bark off the tree trunk. (After all, there wasn’t much else to do up there!) I had to tell her to stop, because it’s not good for the tree.

At the bigger fort that Owen made, Susannah liked to sit on my lap on the roof. I sat with my feet dangling over the edge, but Susannah informed me: “My mom doesn’t evah let me sit with my feet dangling. Because she’s afraid I’ll fall off.” So, since she wasn’t supposed to, I didn’t either.

The top of the fort was my favorite place to sit, and hers too. Annika, however, kept urging me to come down and follow her. “Climb down here!” she kept urging me. “No, stay here!” Susannah insisted. The conundrum was luckily solved when we felt some raindrops and Susannah decided she’d get down from the roof.

I pointed out to the girls that the fort had a hole in the side, with a long ‘oar’ through it (some long piece of wood). With that discovery, the fort instantly transformed into a ship. Millie became the unofficial captain, calling out orders. (I was, apparently, the “official” captain; I said Millie should be the captain, but she grinned and said, “No, YOU are! You’re the oldest!” and the others agreed with her.) Several other of the kids were dubbed “look-outs” or “person in the crow’s nest”.

At some point Caleb presented one of his inventions, which he said was a rocket. It was a cone-shaped piece of paper with a partially-blown balloon inside of it. The girls watched from their various vantage points–out a window, or from atop the fort–as it went whizzing, rather anticlimactically, toward the ground. He tried it several more times, with them as an interested audience, and someone said our ship was shooting torpedoes.

The weather soon became unsettled; the sky was gray, and the wind was picking up. Annika said, “I want to stay out here and get rained on!” It had been so incredibly hot and humid that the thought of getting rained on sounded nice.

The locust trees nearby not only were waving in the wind, but the locust blossoms were streaming off. It was neat to see; the air was filled with locust-blossom petals. My dad, who was working in the garden on the opposing hill, packed up his stuff and called out to us “It’s gonna rain!”

I knew that, of course, but I didn’t think it would hurt to stay out; the fort had shelter, after all.

As the wind picked up, it was easy to imagine that we were on a ship out on the sea with stormy weather approaching. The lookouts called out “Storm approaching!” and Millie called out for the sails to be drawn in, with her and Deirdre calling out for everyone to get below (one of them said, “Everyone on deck!” and the other insisted, “No, everyone below“).

“Who wants to steer? Who’s gonna steer?” someone called out, and the person at the helm kept changing.– (The tiller, apparently, was at the same place as the hole in the wall where the oar was.)

Then Millie decided we had to be evenly divided, so that the ship would be weighted right; half of us below, and half of us above. There was much shifting around, as the younger kids in particular kept changing their minds about which level they wanted to be on.

Somewhere in the midst of this, it started raining. Not just a rain–but hard rain! It felt as if the weather was cooperating with the game. Obviously, it was a tumultuous sea.

The rain pattered down on the fort ceiling, but we stayed dry. Well, the people down below did; on the upper level, it leaked a little bit. And in the end, no one stayed dry, because of all the switchings between the upper and lower level. Not to mention fighting off pirates!

Annika (who loves pirates) had decided to be a pirate invading the ship, so she got out and was climbing up the outer ladder to invade our ship. Millie, on the up-and-up, was ready with a torch or some other weapon to defend the ship with. I was oblivious; I wouldn’t have known we were being attacked by pirates if someone hadn’t said so. Some captain I am! (I’m telling you–Millie was really the captain.)

Susannah would sometimes step out from the shelter, whether to switch to the bottom shelter or just to feel the rain, I’m not sure; as soon as she felt the rain come down on her, she’d shriek and laugh in delight.

Not only was there rain, but there started to be some thunder and lightning too, and the rain was coming down harder than ever. It was concluded that we had to escape in rescue boats. The storm was too much for our ship. Caleb went back to the house to get some umbrellas. When he came back, he and Millie escorted people back to the house through the pouring rain with the umbrellas. The kids left at the fort, who before had been thrilled to be there, now felt abandoned as the rescue boats left without them. They were assured that their turn was next.

Soon, everyone was inside. Seeing the wet kids, I felt a twinge of guilt for having let them stay out in the rain, despite the fun they had. A responsible adult doesn’t do that, but I always am biased towards the side of having fun. But they all dried off pretty quickly, and no one seemed to be cold. Everyone had to adjust to being inside again because suddenly, the ship game was over, so now what to do? Eventually everyone wound up reading; it was one big reading party. (And the rain, incidentally, stopped not long after we came in.)

What I’m growing this year

I have been doing a lot of gardening lately. Actually, a lot of it is taking care of seedlings that I’ve started indoors; does that count as “gardening”?

Dad does the big vegetable garden on the hill. Mom usually starts the seeds indoors for the things that need to be started early (which is most), but she didn’t get around to starting anything besides the leeks, which are the first things to get started–as early as March. So I have been starting the rest of the things, and taking care of the seedlings.

I also start a lot of flower seeds for my own garden(s), because I always have this delusion that I’m going to grow lots of different types of flowers. In reality, I don’t wind up having room for that many, and I don’t take good enough care of my garden, so it winds up being only a few things (like zinnias, cosmos and poppies) that take over, and the other things sink into obscurity and abandon.

Nevertheless, I always get an itching to try new things every year. We have so many flower seeds, because Mom has been able to get a lot of free seeds, so I always feel like we can’t just waste them. Since we have so many, we should try them out!

This year, the flower seeds that I have started indoors are asclepias (milkweed, but a variety with bright orange and red flowers that attracts butterflies), sweet william, bee balm, candytuft, nicotiana, forget-me-not, and snapdragons. Just now, I also started various zinnias, cosmos, something called “torch tithonia”, cleome, alyssum, scabiosa and feverfew.

(In case anyone’s wondering, by “starting seeds” I am referring to sticking them in dirt–seed starting mix, more specifically–which goes into cell containers, that is, plastic containers divided up into sections. Once they sprout, they are placed under the light set-up we have in the den.)

Most of these are new things which I have never tried before. I tried cleome and scabiosa other years, but they never sprouted. Or in the case of the scabiosa, a couple sprouted but I don’t remember seeing it bloom much. I have grown forget-me-not, but not from seed like this year; I got a clump of forget-me-not from a neighbor, and it has since taken over my whole garden. The forget-me-not I am starting this year is a pink kind, which is a new thing for me. I do love the blue forget-me-nots, too, but unfortunately the blue ones in my garden were not blooming very well. I have seen stunningly baby-blue forget-me-nots, and the ones in my garden definitely weren’t. I think it got too dry for them.

Snapdragons I used to not like (I don’t know why), but now I feel like they are a cheerful and unique addition to a garden. I always have trouble getting them to sprout, though. This year is no exception. Out of two cell packets–one with 6 sections to it, another with 4, each with several seeds sprinkled per section–only 4 of them sprouted. I’m happy that any sprouted at all. Two of them at least are growing nicely. There’s something about snapdragons which seems special. They grow so slowly (or at least it seems like it) that when they are 2 inches higher than they used to be, it feels like “Yay! They’re still here, they’re still alive!”

Dame's rocket

Sweet william I know we have grown before, but I don’t really remember it. I always like flowers that have clusters of blooms, like phlox, dame’s rocket and dianthus (sweet william is a type of dianthus, I guess). I haven’t had much luck with phlox, so we’ll see how it goes with sweet william. Dame’s rocket, by the way, is something which my mom had growing in her garden which I always thought was really pretty, and for some reason I always got it mixed up with phlox. They looked alike to me back then, but now I can see the difference more clearly, and anyway dame’s rocket blooms in late spring while phlox is in the summer.

Back to my list: asclepias, torch tithonia, and bee balm are all things that are supposed to be good for attracting butterflies. Off the cuff, I decided to try to plant flowers that attract butterflies in the garden bed around the propane tank. Cleome also is good for attracting butterflies, apparently. When I was younger I heard Evan and my mom refer to “Bee balm” and I always wondered what it the world it was. Apparently, it has bright, spiky blooms. We had some already growing around the propane tank which I think it I accidentally pulled out last year.

I wonder why I remember Evan mentioning it. Evan usually liked to grow practical things (like pumpkins for pumpkin pie), so I wonder if he wanted to use it to make tea or something, or if he just liked it.

Candytuft is something which I had NO idea about. I had never heard of it before. But since, as I said, I always like to try something new, I decided to try it!

Last year’s experiments were primarily stock and statice. I kept good care of the seedlings and the plants, and they grew well. But they never bloomed. That was disappointing. All that expectation for nothing! Stock, in particular, my mom thinks is hard to grow around here. She thinks they like a long growing season and more moderate temperatures – not too hot and not too cold, and not a very big difference in temperature between day and night.

And then there’s zinnias and cosmos. I never can resist starting some of them–because we have so many varieties, and because they are so bright and cheery! Also, my grandma really likes them and lately I’ve been planting them for her in her garden. Zinnias are sooo easy to grow, and then have such a bright showing of color.  They grow very quickly and vigorously, and turn into tall, sturdy plants with many branches. They like lots of water and lots of sunshine and lots of heat. We usually get lots of at least one of those!

Cosmos, on the other hand, my sister Titi favors more than me. I like them, but I have trouble with my plants being mostly bushy leaves–extremely bushy and healthy, yes–but not much blooms.

I was going to talk about the vegetables seedlings I’m taking care of as well, but I guess I’ll save that for another post. I’m getting at least as much enjoyment out of watching them grow. There’s something satisfying about knowing that they are something useful, and delicious. Lately I have been in the process of hardening them off (getting them used to outdoor temperatures). Unfortunately, I had a few casualties in this hardening off process – not of the vegetable, but a few of the tender flower seedlings my sister had started. I forgot about them, and when I came outside some of the seedlings were not only totally wilted, but snapped off! Argh!

Trees by the Creek

When the trees first start to leaf out, the trees along the creek across the road look really beautiful and ethereal in the late afternoon lighting. The new leaves are translucent, and they shine in bright reddish and light green colors in the light.

I love it! This time of year only lasts for a short while. Already, the trees have leafed out more so that they more green, and denser, so that the sunlight doesn’t create the same gleaming effect on their baby-leaves anymore.

Playing and joking with our cousins, and the mystery of “Air-he-air-hoo’s”

It’s really hard for me to figure out where to pick up again after not having written anything for so long. There’s a lot of things I could write about, but I’m not sure which one to write about or where to start.

Our cousins Christian and Elizabeth, who are Caleb and Deirdre’s age, are staying with us for about a week. They both seem to enjoy hanging out around here, whether they’re playing with Caleb and Deirdre, playing on the computer, or even just hanging around not doing much of anything. Unfortunately, Deirdre hasn’t been up to her usual perky self. She has a cold which has really taken the steam out of her; I think C & E brought the cold with them.

Christian and Elizabeth (nicknamed Bebis) both enjoy jokes and being goofy. So do Caleb and Deirdre, so they get on together just dandy. Lately the jokes that have been creating the most laughter involve double meanings of words or phrases. Once Caleb gets into gear, he comes up with a lot of funny phrases. Christian “gets” it, and laughs and laughs, repeats what Caleb said through his laughter and laughs some more.

Here is one example. One of the kids needed to use the bathroom (and since we only have one, that means people have to wait). Evan called out “Bathroom’s free!” when it was empty. “Oh, okay, I’ll be sure to buy it while it’s still free!” Caleb quipped. Christian dissolved into giggles. “‘‘Okay, I’ll be sure to buy it while it’s still free,’” he repeated to himself, laughing.

That particular time was while they were playing Legos. I was really entertained listening to them while they were doing Legos, because they were all clearly so absorbed in their game, and cracking each other (and me) up with their random jokes.

I was putting together a puzzle on the table in the dining room, and they were at the table adjoining it. We have a huge tub of Legos, and Deirdre and Bebis were at one side, with Christian and Caleb at the other side. The way our kids play Legos is almost like a game of House; each person builds their own house, complete with a garden or whatever else they want it to have, and often one person decides to be a store-keeper.

Caleb had decided to do it a little differently this time, and he made a rule for himself that he couldn’t look through the Lego bin for pieces, and other people couldn’t give him pieces straight out of the bin either. The only way he could get pieces was by buying them from other people, or picking up pieces that had spilled out from the bin.

Consequently–since in their game the Lego guys needed to eat (or at least Caleb’s apparently did)–Caleb’s guy was very destitute. He was desperately (or it sounded desperate) trying to sell and trade things to get a bite to eat, often adding in “My guy’s going to be starving again soon”.

“Is there ANYTHING anyone wants to buy?” he asked, after trying unsuccessfully to get people to buy things from him.

I told him he needed to be more specific in his salesmanship, so he said “Ok fine. Garden help! Helmet repairs!” [and so on] ” . . . lightbulbs without generators!” Christian burst out laughing at “lightbulbs without generators”. I think it was a reference back to an earlier joke they had made, but at any rate “lightbulbs without generators” amused Christian so much that when he remembered the line at the supper table, he started laughing all over again.

Caleb’s guy was so hungry that when he managed to trade something for a horse, instead of using the horse he gobbled it up, which also made Christian laugh. “Phewsh!” Caleb said. “Now my guy won’t be starving again for a while. If you get hungry enough, horse meat tastes really good!”

Caleb and Deirdre also kept advertising, “If anyone wants such-and-such, just call me!” At first it was various things which people could call for to buy, but they started turning it into jokes, like “If anyone wants to talk to me, just call me!” or “If anyone wants to steal my stuff, just call me!”

Deirdre had said that “I’m going to sell this stuff for free”, which made us all laugh, because of course that’s an oxymoron. (Though I doubt they know the word “oxymoron”; if I’d mentioned it, they probably would have laughed harder) Then she was saying, “If anyone wanted to steal from me, now would be a good time.” As you might guess, there was more laughter from Christian and Elizabeth at this.

She kept repeating, “Now would be a good time to steal my things, if you want to!” Someone (maybe she herself) added to that, “Just make sure I don’t see you, so I don’t catch you!” Christian gladly “stole” a few things from her.

“Deirdre, they aren’t really ‘stealing’ when you let them have the stuff; they’re getting them for free!” I said, but she was purposely being silly, and we all had a good laugh or two (or three).

Another thing that made us laugh was when someone would say, “I would like a new head.” or “You can have my pants”. What they were discussing by saying these things was trading out one part of a Lego guy for another; a different face, or a different bottom section to a Lego guy. But it sounded so funny when they said such things, it would make peals of laughter break out amongst themselves.

“Well gee, how many parts of you do you need?” Caleb asked Christian. “I can have your head, so I suppose you only need your hand, and I can have everything else?” (or something along those lines), which of course made Christian laugh.

Now this is something which I find amusing, but to Caleb and Deirdre it is perfectly natural:

I had heard Owen, Caleb and Deirdre say a certain word before, but never paid attention to what they were talking about. When playing a different type of game I have often heard them mention “Terriners”, and when they play Legos I hear them mention “air-he-air-hoo” guys every now and then. Both always vaguely registered in my mind as mysterious, unknown things with names that somehow sound so fitting without me even knowing what they’re talking about.

I have since learned what Terriners are (little dinosaur-like critters), but my ignorance of the meaning of “air-he-air-hoo guys” was brought to my attention today when I heard Christian and Elizabeth start saying it. “Oh, that one’s an air-he-air-hoo guy. Oh, here’s an air-he-air-hoo guy.”

What was this strange thing?

It sounded even funnier hearing Christian and Elizabeth use Owen, Caleb & Deirdre’s sound-effect word as if it was a perfectly natural, proper title for something. Which is, of course, how Owen and Caleb and Deirdre use it. Bebis had a bit of trouble saying it: “Hey, this one’s an air . . .he . . . hair . . . hoo guy” she said, a little more slowly. Caleb and Deirdre actually corrected her at one point, because she wasn’t saying it with quite the right inflection: “It’s ‘air-he-air-hoo’, like that, you know, like (they say it as a sound effect) “‘Air-he-air-hoo! Air-he-air-hoo!’“

Everyone knows what that sound effect means, right?

“What is an Air-he-air-hoo guy?” I finally asked. Bebis showed one to me, explaining: “It’s a type of Lego guy that has a round head like this, which isn’t actually from a Lego set, it’s from some other thing.” In other words, a non-Lego brand Lego guy. Christian and Elizabeth don’t use that name for them, but when in Rome, do as the Roman’s do. (or call things what they call them, in this case)

I doubt either she or Christian have any idea what the “Air-he-air-hoo!” sound effect means, or where it came from. (Unless they asked; Christian asks about everything.) So I will have to ask my siblings some time, and get this mystery revealed.

Well, Caleb just came and looked over my shoulder, and he tells me the sound effect is “Just the noise they make”.

“But why do they make that noise? What does it mean?” I asked him.

“I dunno, I think Collin made it up, and he pretended they were monkey-like guys or something, and it’s just the noise they always made.”