Bird Nest

Exploding

 
These tulips landed on our dining room table for Mother's Day.  Every morning we sit at the table and watch how they explode and open further.  I keep thinking they are past their tipping point and yet the next morning they are reaching out even further, the colors even more determined to amaze us.

And this is in many ways reflective of how I feel about the family we have birthed here.  Our lives. Our little family.  My heart looks like these flowers when I take a moment to look around and see where I stand.

I feel so incredibly lucky.  Not in the sense that this life, these blessings have been handed to Rooster and I on a platter, but that we have found this path, this existence and somehow we have just floated through these smooth waters into the perfect spot.  I mean, we work hard and it's an effort to make things work.  It's certainly an effort to make things fit into the outline we've drawn out and dreamed of.  Some of our choices have not made things easy, a bit of swimming upstream to say the least.  But mostly, I'm amazed at how beautiful this thing is - this thing about being partners in this journey, about raising these children and creating our own little family.  Mostly, despite the grumbles and the cries and the heavy lifting, mostly our life looks just like these exploding and hopeful tulips.  It fills me with joy.  And I'm so thankful.

Sarsaparilla and Lemon Balm

I'm pretty big on holding back with my kids.  I figure they have their whole lives to find out about the world around them, including such things as sugar drinks.  But I just couldn't resist introducing Jbird to the world of root beer.  Of course, drinks like this will still only be for special occasions in our household - but still, he was pretty impressed with his "Sassparilla".  We had just encountered it in a book and when I saw it on the menu, I thought it sounded perfect.  Thankfully, he didn't ask for one this morning when we woke up for breakfast.

We've been heavy in our spring gardening.  We planted three more blueberry bushes (small ones) in our front garden - which means we will have five blueberry bushes out there.  I love having real food out front, and even better to have it mixed in with the garden flowers.  We filled out another garden box and are replacing and filling some gaps in the original garden design.  I've spent the entire week crashing through the garden books selecting just the right perennials.  And of course, multiple trips to the largest nurseries in town.  And now that the garden has just exploded in new green growth, I see I have my hands full weeding and cleaning out all of the errant visitors that came uninvited.  That, and it looks like the Lemon Balm went to seed and exploded in the entire garden.  I can see those little lemon balm seedlings laughing at me in my dreams.

Happy Spring days to everyone.  It finally feels like Mrs. Thaw has finished her work and Spring is here for good.

Sweet Mary

My Aunt Mary died this week.  She was fighting Leukemia and had been told that the treatments were not working.  There were very few days between that bad news and her death.  I hope that she found some sense of comfort, some peace in these days before her death.

Mary chose not to let anyone in at the end.  She would not let anyone see her or speak on the phone.  I think I understand her decision, her choice to close the doors.  And yet, I still feel so sad about it.  I readily admit that this is the kind of people we are.  We have the isolation gene in that side of my family.  I have this in my blood as well.  We are rocks.  We are islands.  We do not reach out and rarely let other in.  And yet, I can only hope that in small ways I am overcoming this "thing".  This thing that allows this to happen.  I understand it and have compassion for those that suffer this "thing". 

I wish that I could have said goodbye to Mary.  Or that my father could have said goodbye to his sister.  Or that we could have at least played around that awfulness and just made vague conversation, something to connect in the end.  Instead we are left with nothing.  And no memorial or way to mark this passing.  Just icebergs bumping in dark and cold waters. 

When my father called to give the news, I cried a bit, and asked jbird to have tea with me to create some pause in the day.  We had tea in her memory, "for Mary".  And yet, nothing feels done.

I know from experience that death rarely feels "done".  I feel silly to even look for that closure.

And yet recently, I have been thinking about death and birth and how we travel those journeys.  After our homebirth experience with Sparrow, I have been obsessed with birth and how our culture processes that experience.  And also death - the other sacred event.  And then there was that link a few weeks back, the photos pre and post death.  All of this has been floating and bumping around in my head for a long time.  I don't have answers.  I just know that it is so sad, on a deep level, how we face these two most important moments in our lives.  Or how we don't face them, how we run away, hide, or otherwise sterilize and de-humanize them.

And here we are.  Another death, pushed under the rug, as we are asked to walk past, turn our heads forward, look ahead.  Knowing there should be another way , a better way, doesn't make it clear that there is one.

Spring Sun Rays

 

A little wizard hat for the dress up basket. Jbird also wants an owl hood type thing but I don't know how to even start that project. 

 

And there are now some photos in flickr of the garden at request.  Nothing too amazing, but I'm very appreciative of the work our previous owner did in establishing these garden beds.  And every day I watch with anticipation to see what will bloom next, what will fill into the spaces.  Beyond our new vegetable boxes we just built, I'm thinking about using one of the 4 boxes for more landscape gardening.  I'm madly pouring through the native plant options as well as taking inspiration from what I see in our neighborhood.  I'd like to add a few more blueberry bushes.  These were such a hit last summer and are so sweet in flower gardens.  Who can resist a blueberry from your own back front yard?

As you may have noticed, most of our garden and vegetable work is right in our front yard.  We do have a back yard.  Indeed, a multi-tiered landscape that is partially tamed and also partially shaded.  However, for us, the main gardening happens in front.  Right out on the street.  I find it refreshing to walk past it every day, coming and going.  And often, we are right out in our front, playing on the sidewalk, talking to neighbors watching the world go by on our sweet dead end street.  We can have privacy in our back, or even on the side patio, but usually, it just feels right to be right out in front.   And it looks like we'll be out there all summer tending our new plants and vegetables.

Planting Seeds

We've had busy spring days - starting with a sweet visit from Grandma Gail (Rooster's Mom.)  While squishing the two carseats in the back of our car to make room for all of us to do some weekend explorations, I was privy to some adorable hand holding.  Not that we didn't move the carseats back apart after the visit - for although the hand holding was cute, the other poking and waking was not so cute. 

Portlanders seem pretty intent on gardening.  I spend most of our daily walks admiring the gardens we see.  And from the looks of our front garden, one might assume an avid gardener lives in our house.  But really, not so much - we just lucked out and bought a house from one of those gardeners.  I've counted my lucky stars that most of the garden survived the first year of us taking care of it.  And now that we are well into Spring, we've done most of the cleaning already; weeding and mulching and trimming. 

 

And we've now built two more planting boxes - in a nod to the idea of "Food, Not Lawns".  We're also trying out some of the Square Foot Garden ideas, and already, I can tell we will be overwhelmed with the harvest, assuming it actually sprouts from the seeds.  This is the first year we've ever just put seed in the dirt, so I have to say, it's an element of trust for me to assume they will sprout.  I figure between what we gather from our garden this year, and the CSA we take part in, we'll probably still be composting a good part of our weekly veggie bounties.  Sadly.  My goal is to get more of it into our bellies of course.

Jbird is only partially paying attention to the planting process.  Occasionally he will help me drop seeds, or water the seedlings, but more often he'd rather dig in just the spot I've asked him not to, or move only the rocks I've asked him to leave alone.  We are devoting a third of one of our boxes to his dirt play - but just watch, that's the one spot he'll leave alone all summer long.  Naturally.

Sparrow, he's not much help in the garden this year.  He'd much rather lay around inside sucking his toes and fingers.

Dog Tired

OK, I'm dreading each day that passes and I realize how behind I am in posting.  I have so many unfinished postings, photos not uploaded, etc.  And that stack still remains.  But I know it also doesn't matter in the end.  And frankly, I'm too tired to be that haunted by it.

My family has been sick and it seems I'm the last one to take the hit.  We have been eagerly planning some house renovations, getting the garden boxes ready for spring planting season.  Jbird has begun attending 2 half days at our local waldorf school.  Oh and also celebrating our 9th anniversary! (with an yummy dinner out, since Grandma Gail/MIL is in town visiting and could watch the sleeping kids...)

More soon, I promise.

Stamps and Pants

After way too long, these knit longies for Sparrow are complete.  The good news is I finally learned a lesson, and that is to knit for "next year" as this seems the only way to be sure that big baby Sparrow will still fit in the item by the time I finish.  OK, I'm not that slow of a knitter, but seriously, it does seem to take some pressure off.  So, the plan is to have sparrow wearing these longies next fall.  In the meantime, Jbird might just be adding them to his dress up pile.


Speaking of finding alternative uses for items, Jbird decided that these corks were "stamps" and frankly, they are perfect stamps. Before they were "stamps" they were "mushrooms".  My favorite discoveries are the open-ended "toys".