Yep. No words can explain the pure joy of pulling food right off the plant. No words necessary to explain their reaction….
After which the who-can-catch-a-berry-by-mouth game commenced.
May I present the winner….
Almost. Not yet. Not soon enough says one boy. His books have arrived and he is so ready. Three more days…
This has been home-away-from-home during my absence in this space lately. Mornings spent reading with steaming mugs nearby. Days spent hiking. Evenings full of exploring all the nooks and crannies of the eco-friendly farm which surrounded us.
Our host was a fascinating man with a heart for adventure. Quintessentially British, he sported a mop of curly untamed ginger hair and wore a button down shirt with rolled sleeves, glasses, and belted trousers tucked into gum boots. He welcomed our crew enthusiastically and showed the children all the possibilities waiting for them on the farm – bikes, badminton, ponds, and a real treehouse. He explained why the farm was a proper nature reserve and not just a vacay spot. He then showed us where the best hiking was and where to find the ponies I had my heart set on seeing.
Before embarking on the guest farm adventure he had spent many years in Africa as a safari guide. We swapped stories of travel and military life. He had fond memories of US Marines who shared music and cola and conversation in a far away place in the days before computers and ipods. His feet are planted on English soil again but he said Dartmoor was his wild. I get that. I need my wild too and we found it on this trip for sure, thanks to his maps and inside tips.
(just looking – we didn't eat them)
And now it's midnight and the day starts early here. I hope yours are also full of fresh air and wet boots.
Into the orchard this week. It is much cooler than last year this time which makes for a far more pleasant job of picking. If it was warmer we would be fighting the wasps which devoured the fruit right on the trees last year. There are two varieties of plums in great abundance – a red and blue tree. Which of these many English varieties is anyone's guess. I am always amazed at all the things I don't know. How many fascinating things there are to know.
Everything is coming in a fortnight early this year, says the farmer. Caught me a bit by surprise this year.
Framlingham Castle came alive with dancing and medieval combat last weekend and we were front and center for all the action. The sun even showed up which made it pretty close to perfect.
The reenactment, provided by the Plantagenet Society, was incredible. (I should probably not admit how old I was before I could pronounce that correctly. Suffice it to say it was before this weekend. But maybe not allll that much before ; )) They use authentic weapons – ie no matter how many times you rehearse, it's gonna hurt some. We were all wincing every time we heard a blow strike. We left convinced this would have not have been as romantic and sweet as it may have seemed to us before. I am pretty sure it was brutal watch it live back in the day.
I am always super happy when our kids work up enough courage to jump into the fray. I was so not that child, myself.
And a side note, if there are any Jack Black fans out there who watched his version of Gulliver I am telling you, this guy was SO the spitting image of Chris O'Dowd's villain. And if you haven't seen it? C'mon. For real??
"People will say it’s sad that she leaves a lesser scar, that fewer remember her, that she was loved deeply but not widely. But it’s not sad… It’s triumphant. It’s heroic. Isn’t that the real heroism? The real heroes anyway aren’t the people doing things; the real heroes are the people NOTICING things, paying attention. The guy who invented the smallpox vaccine didn’t actually invented anything. He just noticed that people with cowpox didn’t get smallpox."
– The Fault in Our Stars
The temperature has dropped considerably, but we got another cutting of rhubarb in which made me very happy. Hands down our favorite rhubarb crisp recipe is here. Cutting stringy rhubarb with a butter knife is a big treat for the little girls. They were able to do almost the entire recipe with very little help, which is pretty funny because neither of them actually like rhubarb. For them it's truly all about the process, which reminds me to slow down and enjoy all those interim steps instead of racing headlong to the end product.
Metaphor alert. You knew that, right? ; )
There is a definite autumnal feel to our days lately. Summer not only peaked at solstice but pretty much only happened during that small window. It's been cool and breezy and probably just right to nudge us towards the coming school year. We won't be starting for a couple of weeks due to upcoming travel and overseas book shipments. What happens now is likely even more important than the 'start' date though.
It is rather taken for granted that the focus in the weeks and months that lead up to 'back to school' is on adding – books, supplies, uniforms (school or sports or both), programs, activities. If those things are to be peacefully woven into our homes and our days we have to practice the art of subtraction. A familiar design principle, it is just as relevant to crafting focused, peaceful days as to creating art.
So, right now we are making room in our personal spaces. One by one we have been purging bedrooms and closets. Outgrown clothes removed, needed sizes noted. Windows and baseboards had been neglected and there probably won't be time for them once fall schedules begin so those are getting some attention now. The bookshelves are being sorted, last year's books taken down. School supplies purged and restocked. The vehicles have been emptied and vacuumed in anticipation of lots of commuting.
We have been talking about ways to make room inside ourselves too. The learning we have such high hopes for often ends up competing with ipod playlists, instagram images, facebook feeds, and 24hr news. Never before have people lived without pause and we are not thriving with the incessant inflow. At some point you can no longer effectively process new input and that affects both essentials and non-essentials rather indiscriminately.
Not good.
More than that, it has struck me so often as the years go by that there is very little opportunity for boredom and I think that's a shame. Tragic actually. Our older children read or explored simply because there wasn't something else to do. Without constant entertainment you make your own. You doodle, you build things, you take walks, you strike up card games. So we are corraling the screens to a small portion of the days, my own days as well. I spend a fair amount of screen time with my digital darkroom (photoshop etc) Lots of time is needed to turn out produce rich, nutrient dense meals for a houseful. I am trying to speak – with real live audible words – to my adult children and distant friends on a regular basis. Spoken conversation takes time. That time needs to be consciously carved out and necessarily leaves less for other things.
Moms often find themselves, midyear, chasing after solutions to what are actually secondary problems. Kids are naughty, laundry piles, exhaustion hits. Often several different little fires we are trying to put out are sparked by the same flame. So before we start filling up the calendar and the house, we are emptying.
Making room.
Some related thoughts:
The Virtue of Silence for the Teacher
Both of us doing the same work in different ways this weekend. Building bit by bit we are. Me, pausing from my window. This one, pausing from the roof.
Starry Sky Journal 