Tuesday, March 31, 2015

a collection of things

You know it's bad when your 5-year old sighs and says: mom you've gotta get that song out of your head!

Aoife has pink-eye due to taking a handful of sand in the face. Less than a week before we begin April, the month of road-schooling.

In the grocery last week, Aoife spilled a container of berries, and had smoothie all over her face. I joked about her being a mess and needing a bath. A grocer overhead me and commented: "at least they are girls. With boys the mess never ends."
"I don't know." I replied. "Last week when the snow was melting and everything outside was nasty, these two got 3 baths in one day and generated 2 loads of laundry. So, I don't know of its a boy thing or just a kid thing." He went back to his lettuce with a pensive look.

I spent all last growing season with the song "like a snake in the grass" whispering in my ear each time I stepped through the garden fence. Today, I met the snake. A passive, pillbug-eating brown garden snake. And I am thankful for the help controlling the pests.

We have just enough training pants that if I skip doing laundry mid-week, Aoife has to wear regular panties or a diaper. After two weeks in trainers she is anti-diapers. However she detests wedgies. Her big girl panties are a tiny bit big and do not stay in place. She runs around screening "poopy poppy!" Whenever they have traveled to uncomfortable locations.

Three years ago i watched as a bee pollinated my store-bought tomato plant. it then clumsily flew to the fence and slowly died. i vowed to start growing all my garden plants from seeds. Two years ago, I found a jar of canned cherries in the back of my cupboard. We opened it and enjoyed a few by the pool. The jar got left on the banister overnight and by morning was overrun with bees. The bees drank all the syrup and reduced the quart of cherries to a mere handful. Last summer i saw lots of bees hovering about my marigolds and radish flowers all season long. This spring, my neighbor discovered bees swarming out of the trunk of her pecan tree. I am hopeful that both colonies will survive another year. 

Please don't spray your flowers. The bees, butterflies and some types of wasps (who trap and eat spiders, including the brown recluse) need them to be non-toxic.

Monday, March 16, 2015

Just checking in

Good morrow everyone! 

Spring break is upon us and you are overdo for a dalton family update!
Since our last meeting, we have been iced in, rained out, snowed on, iced again and now flooded as everything tried to thaw and dry out. And naturally, thunderstorms are on the horizon as we begin tornado season. Don't be surprised if you hear about dallas and Mosquitos in the news a lot this spring. It's gonna be a bad one.

That said, we planted our early spring crops just before the first freeze and everything survived! At least until the chickens jumped the fence, ate the kale and thinned out the lettuce. Everything else is going strong and I plan on getting the rest in the ground as soon as possible. Which is difficult for me as I have commitment issues with silly things like plants and stickers and scrap fabric. I mention this because we have started the process of buying a house. I loathe doing all the work of putting in an amazing, organic, square foot garden thoughtfully companion planted and rotated from last years planting just to leave it all for someone else who may not appreciate, or eat, any of the produce.

*Le sigh*

But with scrap fabric! I am bound and determined to turn this pile into a skirt, 3 dresses and a car seat cover! Hopefully I can get it all done before we find our new home.

Also, taking apart that bunk bed again is not on the top of My Fun Things To Do list. But at least the kids sleep in their room for a while now.