11 May

A small garden update! After clearing most of the unwanted things from the back bed last weekend, it sat untouched this week while we shuffled sadly between outings and obligations. We lost our dear cat, Cow and have all been shaken a bit by this loss, but we’re carrying on, as people do.

Today we visited a native plant sale and came home with a few new plant friends. I spent some time before dinner marking off the edge of the bed (it will be stones eventually) with a motley assortment of boundary makers, then dumped nine bags of raised bed soil in the space. It was super chunky and I found that the best way to break it up was by hand, which took a while, but was very cathartic. Then I raked it into place, trying to level the bed, which is on a slope, so that most of the fresh soil will be at the front, where I’d like the edible things to go. By then the only seedlings I had time to place were the hollyhocks along the back wall, but having them in does give me a sense of accomplishment.

And now it is predicted to rain for a few days, which is fine because I have sewing to catch up on and without the wet weather dissuading me, I don’t think I could resist being out, working in the garden.

by Valerie

5 May

The garden lately:

  • A kind neighbor (who I believe is also a Master Gardener) gave me these fantastic seed saving kits. They came in very handy today when I discovered I had left two packets out in the rain, and another was soaked by some wet kale in the grocery bags.
  • Alden finally got his hands dirty this weekend, helping me clear out the bed along the back of the garage. I am hoping that next weekend I will be able to finally plant all of our little seedlings. Then I suppose I should work on the front yard, which is honestly a bit of an eyesore. Sorry, neighbors.
  • I hosted the first meeting of our neighborhood Garden Club. I wish I had been more organized, but it was small and sweet, and I was happy anyone showed up at all!
  • I have been thinking about putting a redbud tree out front, as our street is lined with beautiful old sycamores, but our house does not have a street tree. A redbud seems perfect to me, and look, a happy little volunteer seems to be growing under the Japanese Maple out back! I am hopeful that I can transplant it.
  • Between the cat’s illness involving a couple of emergency vet visits (and me being convinced he was not going to make it) and a child needing a tooth pulled, I have been more distracted than usual. Trying to focus on the garden helps me to unwind, as does crafting for a few swaps. More than a few, actually. I just sent off hats for one, and am now working on four more that end this month or early next month. I seem to need to keep busy when I’m stressed. The trick is to not allow the fun things to become stressful. I’m finding the endless rain to be a little bit of a help now, as it’s so much easier to justify staying home and tending projects here when spring isn’t screaming her siren song.
by Valerie

16 April

  • Last week Ian took Friday off and came with us on a small hike at one of our favorite new spots. We found all sorts of new wild things growing since last time we were there, and the kids identified the little chartreuse flowers as spicebush. The fact of their profuse blooms has me mostly convinced that ours did not survive shipping and potting, but I will wait a bit longer.
  • The rainbow runner is for a summer crafting swap I am participating in. I have made a few table mats and runners recently, but I will admit that I usually find the process very dull. I actually enjoyed making this one, with its somewhat (intentionally) wobbly piecing, hint of hand stitching and bit of appliqué. I honestly don’t know if I would chose something like this to purchase, myself. I wonder if there are other makers out there who often find themselves creating work that they enjoy and feel proud of, yet would not necessarily choose to own. It makes me feel odd(er than usual.)
  • Yesterday, Notre Dame Cathedral, a place for which my only personal connection is what I half remember from Art History classes and wishing I could visit Paris, was on fire. Today my Facebook feed is filled with the righteous, reminding everyone of the more important issues of the day, as if we need reminding. Why do we continue to feel the need to measure tragedy against tragedy?
by Valerie

10 April

This week has been a lot so far, but today I caught up on some sewing and laundry, and finally started the bigger kid on his state-mandated standardized test. It was nice to just quietly cross items off my list.

Speaking of lists:

  • Sized my children’s hat up to adult size, for a gardening themed swap. I’m excited to make one for myself. (Unseen sewing included beginning another pants order for a repeat customer. Note to self: document the making process!)
  • Brunnera, given to me by a favorite neighbor.
  • What the heck is that broccoli-looking stuff growing in the ivy in the front yard?
  • Pretty daffodils in the backyard. Among just a few flowers that came with the house and surprised us.
  • Our weeping cherry, sparking joy.
  • Maybe a hydrangea? I don’t remember a hydrangea being here, but it might have been butchered right before we moved in, like the forsythia. I’m excited to see what this turns out to be.
  • Sunset behind the healthier of our two Pieris japonica.

Of course I just remembered that I need to design the flyer for our neighborhood egg hunt, so off I go to do that one last thing before bed.

by Valerie

7 April

An excellent weather day called for finishing up a sewing order first thing, bolting down some leftover pizza and hurrying out that back door into our messy canvas of a backyard. I got so much done, but one wouldn’t necessarily know that just looking, so I will enumerate my accomplishments. My muscles and I do feel accomplished today.

  • Many, many forsythias unearthed, including one which I named The Mother, and which would not go without a fight. I plunked my baby elderberry (seen in the compost with the fence behind it) into her former home.
  • Also removed: Almost as much ivy, which was thankfully more amenable to being ripped from its earthly home. That bare-looking soil under the stairs was covered in ivy. That was a fun place to crawl into. I planted fern babies there instead.
  • Planted ferns among the black cohosh along the shady side of the garage, and also in Saoirse’s back corner magnolia rhododendron fort. (I have SO much to learn.)
  • Plunked 36 viola odorata into the front grass.
  • Placed Saoirse’s two dwarf hairy penstemon plants at the top of the slide.
  • Isn’t my assistant gardener the sweetest?

At one point I came in for a glass of water and flopped onto the living room floor for a quick rest. When I got up, I had this amazing sense of newness and gratitude, and that “I can’t believe this is my life” (in a good way) sort of feeling, which was all the more surprising and welcome considering how grumpy I felt this morning. Gardening is really healthy stuff, huh?

by Valerie

4 April

How do people save their “before” pictures until there are “after” pictures to compare?

One day this yard is going to be truly spectacular, but the more I work on it, the further in the distance that one day seems to be. That’s fine, since the process and the dreaming is probably more than half of the fun for me. I say this, and half-believe it, while simultaneously ripping up, buying and planting without any really solid plan. I think maybe process is more important to me than dreaming.

I just spoke with Alden the other day about the importance of Planning. He wants to make both a movie and a card game, but most of what he has now are the visuals. He is my child. I really tried to come up with a convincing argument for Forethought and Research, Sketches and Drafts! I wonder if he realizes I was mostly talking to myself.

In case you’re wondering, the bag in the foreground holds 30 Christmas fern bulbs, followed by a small bag of viola odorata roots, and four very young Nikko blue hydrangea, all of which I found on Etsy!

The hydrangea are so very tiny, I am debating whether or not to buy two larger plants to go where I planned, and maybe pot these? And honestly, the more I think about it, the more ridiculous it seems to surround what I think is a white panicled variety (given to us by a neighbor) with smaller blue. I mean, I want a sort of wildish garden, but I don’t want it to look haphazard.

We are getting dangerously close to haphazard as my potted shrubbery line up, awaiting their planting days. Does every new gardener feel like this? Give me all the plants–I’ll figure out where they go later!

by Valerie

31 March

(Baby hostas, my new blueberry bush, crocuses Saoirse and I planted last fall, and mystery sprouts, which are probably coneflowers)

Today was for catching up on linen pants orders (just two left) and ripping more ivy and forsythia from the garden. I could really just do that all day.

Ian has been working super overtime, which means I didn’t get my usual weekend bedtime duty break, but we are reading Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban so I don’t mind too much. I did, however break my self-imposed no-eating-out-this-week rule and order dinner both nights of this weekend. I can’t actually do everything, and I’m probably going to be ok with that eventually.

I am trying to take it easier on myself, at least as far as the messages I ingest from the wider world and the messages I tell myself. Mom guilt is a huge bummer. We do things differently than most of our friends and peers, what with being different people with different interests, circumstances and resources. We do a pretty amazing job, actually. It’s only when I start looking at us through the imagined (and sometimes shared) viewpoints of others that I start to feel like I’m not doing enough, or worse, that I am not enough.

It’s all nonsense. I could make it all look perfect for Instagram if that was my goal, and probably unintentionally bum a bunch of other mothers out. I do worry about appearing lazy, which is wild when I think about what I do in a day. I need to remind myself that behind the scenes are often nannies and babysitters, housekeepers, tutors, etc. Full disclosure: I have the door dash app, and I’m not always afraid to use it. None of us can do all of the things all of the time. Watch me grow, alongside these seedlings and these children, into someone who can allow myself that truth.

by Valerie

30 March

A gardening day.

The many cats of Heartwood Nursery, and the purchase of three very tiny baby shrubs.

The pruning of a neighbor’s invading invasive, and the removal of some very old metal garden bed border.

I finally got my black cohosh into the ground and just as I finished, saw a peregrine falcon perch atop a neighbor’s small tree and eye us suspiciously before taking off again.

by Valerie

In which we catch up the blog and decide to attempt to use it more regularly.

When last we spoke, dear blog, over two years ago now, my family and I were living in a rented house in Charm City (Baltimore, for the uninitiated), with no pets, very few plants, and a partner/father who we really only saw on weekends, due to his very long daily commute. We are now in possession, in reverse-listed-not-chronological order, of one official-on-paper Husband who works from home and whom we are all so glad to see much more often, a front *and* backyard which will someday (soon?) be a lovely garden, a cat (atchoo!), in our very own home, in a small city in south central Pennsylvania. That seems like a lot of change for such a short period of time, but only when I type it out.

We are still homeschooling, although Saoirse was, I’m going to go ahead and say Blessed, (a word I have had many tiny arguments with, but which comes in particularly useful in certain instances), with a year of preschool at the comfortably small and sweet school where Alden spent his Kindergarten year. Now we busy ourselves with nature, art, and co-op classes, meetups with our dear old Maryland friends, outings with newer, more local friends, wearing costumes on errands, and trying to play with the cat without being accidentally scratched. It’s not bad.

I am hoping to get back into blogging regularly, mostly as a way to keep track of my own projects with the house and garden, homeschooling and creating. Maybe people will be interested, maybe not, but I find the format easier than paper journaling, since my drawings always disappoint me, my handwriting is not always beautiful, and I tend to have an abundance of photos. Here we are.

by Valerie

4 October

October is bringing the seasonally appropriate weather we have been pining for, as well as an unexpected melancholy, and bees. We seem to all have some work to do to adjust to the shift, and we are all in a state of either crabily bouncing off one another, or lost in a fog of our own inner worlds. Been trying to get us out of the house as much as possible, which is helping, I think. We’re pocketing leaves and acorns, admiring spiders (some of us from further back than others,) and mantids, and noting what the birds are saying. There is a list of things we haven’t gotten to, miles long, mostly made of comparisons. I’m considering a social media break to temporarily shut out the noise. Funny how inspiration can so quickly turn to noise, if you let it.

by Valerie