I begin to doubt myself

or perhaps, I need a vacation.

I love the Pacific Northwest. I love it here. I love the prevailing political sentiments, I love the public-oriented government entities, I love big, clear street signs and I love ferries. I love the Mountain. I love the Forests. I love that you can see four volcanoes at once on a clear day. I like being able to walk to the Sea and drive to a glacier on the same day (not that I ever do). I love the copious availability of free, low-cost and yes, the expensive, educational opportunities for our children. I love the masses of like-minded people and that one can source just about anything needed within a hundred mile radius.

The weather itself doesn't even bother me most of the year. Summer, naturally, is an odyssey. By the time Autumn rolls around, I have so much work built up from our summer activities and purchases that I don't have time to lament the passing of Summer's bloom and warmth. The darker months surrounding the Solstice don't even phase me. I need the rest after harvest season, and I enjoy the quiet. I find the noise and bustle of the children jarring to my sensibilities during this period, but I keep them busy enough with organized activities outside the house that it levels out.

But I hate--and I do mean HATE--the months from the end of January into the beginning of May. That's a long time to be disenchanted with your natural world. Winter doesn't really show here, in my experience, until this time. Even this year, when Spring appears to be sneaking up on us early, I refuse to fall for it as I did last year. Frigid weather is coming back this week, which no one seemed to believe would happen, and I do have some glimmer of satisfaction that this year, at least, I didn't install a garden ridiculously early just to watch it die.

What I hate most about it though, is not the waiting for the signals to GO! PLANT! YAY! It is my body's response to the intermittent cloudiness. My spirit is refreshed from a long winter's rest and now I find myself wanting to channel energy into project after project. I plan them well, I organize my supplies, and then.... nothing. I sit like a lump as if petrified by the fall of a shadow. When the sun is shining at this time of year, I zip around like I have no limits. I see nothing but the possibilities in my minds eye. I do not see dormant trees and rotting leaves, I can almost physically perceive the outlines of things I want to build, plant or paint. As soon as the light fades, I droop like a morning glory and quite literally forget what I planned to do. I have been working for weeks and today I sit here as if stupefied.

I believe that being in touch with the natural world is a good and necessary way to live, but this is ridiculous. For P-daddy, it is even worse. He doesn't connect with and during the solstice months the way that I do, and he starts suffering in October. Given that I only know the man because he deliberately chose Southern latitudes for the abundance of light, I begin to feel.... cruel.

Sometimes I wonder, despite my love for this place and the community we've grown here, if we wouldn't be better off choosing somewhere more sunny.

The Beach in February

A random sunny Saturday in February, at the beach.

Tossing rocks and watching the dog discover his water retriever genes.

Manning a pirate ship

that spies an oncoming craft.....

.....leading to an attack!

My son thinks it's summer, not February

Some moments of reflection

Family Style

We took the weekend and packed it full of family stuff. It was nice, reconnecting with just us and carrying no outside plans. We made organic blackberry applesauce, using our own blackberries. I should say that this time, all I did was turn on the stove and mash the product. The kids did all the work.

The tongue of concentration

P-daddy even acquiesced to go to IKEA-- on a Saturday-- so that was a huge deal for him. We have some interior redecorating to do so we're desperately in need of some inspiration for furniture placement for a home-based lifestyle like ours. (I am just not finding it online so if you want to spam me, feel free to do so in the comments!)

D-meister always dresses for the occasion. The perfect outfit for IKEA? Eurotrash!

They're clearly stunned by the Vibrancy

The point

And sometimes, we get the point. <3

New Year's Eve

Which, in our house, always means:

This year we tried out "family time" for his actual birthday. (The next day, we had a New Year's Day dinner and our friends sang to him then.) So we did things he wanted to do and ate food he planned.

For his cake he wanted cupcakes.

G-girl being goofy while D-meister opens his presents. Make no mistake: he fully knows what she is doing.

Big Brother wanting to "help" with the Transformers.


Our youngest is five now!
I still remember our first December in this state, when we welcomed him into our family.

Boo Boo and the Beach

We were blessed with a beautiful sunny day shortly after Christmas and took the new puppy down to our beach. We had a hard time getting him to leave!

A Boy and His Dog

Another Boy and His Hyper Dog

Run it Off! Run it Off! GO GO GO!

I want to go back!

Christmas Day 2009

On Christmas morning, I had a camera under the tree so I was able to take pictures this year.

That's a LOT of marbles!

G-girl is quite the outdoor enthusiast. Can't have too many flashlights!

Wedgits!

Is this a big giant dollhouse?

It is!

D-meister is a self-assured little dude.

N-man loves the Boo Boo

P-Daddy and N-man putting together the giant legos set

Food not lawns, baby!

The squash are taking over the spaces between the gardens. It actually works for the salad garden; the leaves provide a nice shady spot so the salads haven't been bolting.

He found the green beans.

Jungle Predator. Watch out.... he might kiss you!

Oldie but goody--

10 ways to garden with your partner and stay together

from the Seattle PI, 2003

1. Eliminate the competition.

The most important thing is to avoid getting your partner interested in gardening in the first place. Then you get complete control over the garden.

2. Divide and conquer.

If your partner is keen on gardening, divide the garden down the middle. Better yet, try to interest your partner in mowing, weeding and general maintenance. That will free up your time for the really fun stuff.

3. Hoard the good stuff.

Spend at least a quarter of your free time going to nurseries. This will allow you to find those rare and attractive plants that will make your side of the garden look better than your partner's. Don't even hope to have any money saved to see you through your golden years.

4. Avoid the cutting edge.

Hide pruning shears from your partner until he or she promises not to turn any more plants into balls and doughnuts.

5. Don't throw the rocks.

Use super huge boulders in the garden. There are two ways to do this: Have them delivered and placed by the quarry where you bought them, or rent a truck and a backhoe. The backhoe method is much more fun, but remember: Place the rock in the garden, not through the side of the house, particularly if your partner is inside.

6. Secretly encourage sharing.

Use your partner's gardening tools with reckless abandon, but only when he or she is not home. Get them as dirty as you like, but wipe the evidence away before your sweetie comes home.

7. Subtle is good.

Enlarge your garden space by chipping away at the lawn. Do this by removing a few feet of turf at a time, and quickly filling in the new garden space with relatively mature plants. Hopefully he or she will not notice until the next time you set up the croquet course.

8. Acquire new lands.

Be quick to search for and claim new areas that become open. While my wife was away one weekend, I dug out a large camellia that she wanted removed. She was delighted until she realized that I had already filled the entire area with my new acquisitions.

9. Don't overlook concrete.

Cram every open space with containers before your partner has the same idea. That will give you somewhere to plant all of those incredible rarities that you couldn't resist buying and have absolutely no space for in the garden. Don't expect to ever park in the driveway again.

10. Claim bragging rights.

When neighbors and friends come over, lead them to your garden areas and wax poetic over the design, plant combinations and rare treasures. Be sure to denigrate your partner's side, particularly if it is gaining more compliments than yours.

If you follow these tips, don't throw away the marriage counselor's phone number. You will certainly need it soon!

-- Ciscoe Morris

When Chickens Attack

The desperation to get the chickens in their tractor-- outside-- reached a fever pitch about a week before we actually got the feat accomplished. Poor P-daddy's knee took a whallop so the project and the husband were out of commission for a while. The tractor is still not technically finished-- it needs a proper roof-- but it's well and done enough for the chickens to be quite happily outside.

For about two weeks prior to that, they were inside at night and then we would put them outside in a "play pen," a range shelter we cobbled together out of a soccer goal and unrolled chicken wire just leaned against it. The chicks grew so fast for we inexperienced poultry tenders; the unhappy limbo for us came in the time during which they lacked enough feathers to be outside at night but they had so much energy and poop that they made our home miserable when they were inside.

We finally gave up on the brooder box entirely when they were about a month old, and just barricaded off the breakfast nook with baby gates and plywood. We spread a gigantic tarp over the linoleum, covered that with pine shavings and just ignored it. Or tried to-- while they happily accepted dominion over our table, they also began roosting on the baby gates themselves, perched about 5 feet in the air. Sometimes their combined weight would take down the gate and defeat the whole setup. P-Daddy was most unhappy.


One of the books I read while embarking upon my self-directed, intensive get-er-dun course on raising chickens serenely suggested that like the author, the reader would probably raise the first batch of chickens in a box in the kitchen. The author sagely noted that "the dust they raise can be considerable" and that the rest of his broods were raised in the garage. This, my friends, is called UNDERSTATEMENT.

A Sunny Father's Day

And summer finally showed up!
P-daddy and I were around for this marvelous day-- it was what he wanted to do for Father's Day, after all-- but I am not showing beach pix of us. No thank you!

I still don't know what it was. Don't care to know!

G-girl's repose on a floating dock.
They normally wouldn't be able to reach it, but it was an unusually low tide.

D-meister the firebender

Gardening is Up

pictured: pak choi, five varietals of lettuce, celery (under cloches), acorn squash, vidalia onion, marigold, nasturtium, beet, tomatillo, spaghetti squash, spinach, fennel, black valentine bush beans

Here are some shots of the front gardens. My ailing camera went kaput on me, asking for more energy (shaw! who needs recharging?) so I really didn't get much taken today. Even people who know me well will see things they won't recognize. P-daddy and I have been very busy during these troubling months. Focusing on life and beauty helps us through.

Our Lady of the Spent Rhododendron

We took Food Not Lawns seriously and built a number of raised beds in the front yard. We're experimenting this year with square foot gardening. I have been pretty enthusiastic about it, doing everything Just Right. Shortly after I installed everything in the front, I began reading Gardening When It Counts, written by a PNW gardening guru who founded Territorial Seed Company and now resides in Tasmania. He leads his book with why bio-intensive gardening (SFG) is a Very Bad Idea in poor economic times. Le Sigh.

The fruit trees in among the garden boxes.
Foremost tree is from the Cherry Deer Incident.

I still have huge honking garden beds in the back, and I had already planned to row plant them anyway. It assuaged my anxiety as I read the book, making me feel like I wasn't totally off the mark. I haven't ready something so down-to-brass-tacks about horticulture since college. This is a garden writer who takes the reader seriously, which I certainly appreciated.


The Rose-Herb Garden remains a thorn (haha!) in my side. Reclaiming this huge, broad bed from the manicured rhododendron-in-beauty bark bed that was there before has been a monumental task. We haven't spent one month ignoring it since we moved here nearly four years ago, and we're still slogging it. This particular bed will have the biggest visual impact of anything we have done when we get it finished, but it's the worst kind of thankless work getting it there; it's the sort of task-set people who don't like to garden think about when they say "I don't like to garden." Fortunately, I do like to garden. To that fact, add that I also love herbs and roses AND I like a good challenge, and it's ~L~ versus the garden bed. Along with some (finally! finally!) earthworms, ~L~ may be winning at last.

Rose bordering the herb gardens

pictured: salad burnet, lemon thyme, culinary thyme, chives, oregano, chocolate mint



A few from the back:


We're trying to grow some tomatoes upside down this year. We have two topsy turvies, with a roma in each. In the background you can see the sunflower house and beyond that, the net we're planning to use to grow the snap peas we have started and waiting.


The sunflower house is all volunteer this year. The cherry-eating deer literally slaughtered our sunflower starts. (We have to start them because of the slugs there in the rock wall adjacent to the sunflower patch.)


The strawberry patch is perennial now. It needs some weeding attention, but otherwise, it pretty much does its own thing now.

Happy Birthday Baby

Except I think she's officially a tween?

She chose a slumber party this year instead of the chaotic backyard affairs we normally put on. She must love her mother. G-girl planned the menu and the activities (battle rings! hiking) while Mom ran waitress duty. There was a particularly sweet moment, for me at least, when the girls asked me what I was doing.

"Clipping roses. I have made you a rose bouquet for your birthday." They responded with much giggling and twittering, a little too excited about the roses.

"That's what we're doing!" they replied in unison. "Becca decided to give me a birthday bouquet too!" They'd been in the forest gathering wildflowers while I'd been getting the roses.

The girlies had a good time while P-daddy (mostly) kept the boys occupied. After D-meister went to bed, I was grateful that G-girl invited N-man to watch the movies with them. He returned the favor by being quiet as a mouse, grateful to be included. He was so quiet, I was unaware of when he went to bed.

Tired girlies who don't look very tired at all!

The girls had a blast-- staying up until about 2 am (that's when I finally gave up hanging out with them)-- and then being awakened a wee bit too early for anyone's taste at 7 am by a recalcitrant chick that had flown the brooder. They rescued the screeching peep and then were right back at the party business of giggling and chatting. P-daddy said it sounded like we had two flocks of chickens in the house.

Around 11 am, after a huge actual-birthday breakfast of sausage, fruit salad and strawberry shortcake, we took 2/3 of our guest girlies into town for the Maritime Festival, where they got to enjoy a parade and the kiddie section until they met up with their Moms. It sure was nice of the city to throw G-girl a parade and a party for her birthday!

The "Berthday" girl and her friend!

I remember little you......

She didn't do this with her cake this year....

she still gives us this expression when we interrupt her....