It was very simple, just taking a picnic basket and some egg salad sandwiches, sardines (yes, I said sardines), and other various and sundry things, like apples, . . . → Read More: A Sunday Picnic]]> “I love it when we do things together with the children,” I said to Mr. Carpenterman, batting my eyeslashes.  So we went on a tiny little picnic over the weekend.

It was very simple, just taking a picnic basket and some egg salad sandwiches, sardines (yes, I said sardines), and other various and sundry things, like apples, sunflower seed butter, chips and crackers.  Oh and some iced tea.  Yes, it was beautiful and warm enough to run and play. 

Four of us drove to some beautiful woods and had fun eating and walking and exploring.

Standing in front of some beech trees

While some of us climbed trees, some of us walked gracefully around and looked for identifying marks on trees and rocks and the like.

Our two youngest had fun getting out some energy.  Is there anything better than the woods for what ails you?

We examined trees with odd growths on them.

There was quite the stand of broomsage, and the carpenter said he’d be sure to tell me when it’s green so that I can make a broom. 

The Carpenter, who is an excellent woodsman and knows all of his trees, pointed out this and that.  I told the children they had to listen carefully because they would be tested before we left to go home.   We are homeschoolers after all.  They laughed and ran off.

Well, not really.  They listened to their daddy explain how this redbud had bloomed last year.  You can tell because of the seed pods.   He pointed out many a beech tree, silver and white maples, the eastern red cedar, sourwood and more.  He talked about the trees like he knew them personally.  I think they know him, too.

I love to see these HUGE quartz rocks!

We noticed a deer skull and wondered what had happened to the deer.  It was interesting to look at the teeth.    These are the molars and premolars. 

An outing doesn’t have to be expensive.  It doesn’t have to cost much of anything actually.  This was just the cost of our brought-from-home food, and it was so much fun!

A great longing for the old days when the trees could talk in Narnia came over her.  She knew exactly how each of these trees would talk if only she could wake them, and what sort of human form it would put on.  She looked at a silver birch:  it would have a soft, showery voice and would look like a slender girl, with hair blown all about her face, and fond of dancing.  She looked at the oak:  he would be a wizened, but hearty old man with frizzled beard and warts on his face and hands, and hair growing out of the warts.  She looked at the beech under which she was standing.  Ah!–she would be the best of all.  She would be a gracious goddess, smooth and stately, the lady of the wood.  Prince Caspian, The Chronicles of Narnia C.S. Lewis

Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there by any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on . . . → Read More: Whole Foods and The Little Wild Garden]]> My dear readers, I was thankful for lovely words in my mind upon getting up this morning.

Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there by any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.  (Phil 4:8)

Good for copywork, I think.

Yesterday the weather here was really nice.

I took a walk in The Little Wild Garden.  I admired Faithful, our dogwood, realizing that I have not journaled about her again and that I need to.  Coming soon to a blog near you.

Much to my delight, there were snowdrops in bloom around the goldfish pond.  Aren’t they sweet little flowers!  I wandered over to see if the hellebores showed any signs of blooming.  There is new growth, but no sign of a bloom yet.

The sun was so bright!  The air was warm enough to turn the fountain on for the goldfish.  My goldfish pond does not have a heater, so if it’s too cold (think ice) I can’t turn the pump on to run the water that climbs up through the fountain and runs back down.  I do love that splashing sound.

The birdseed fills the feeder that hangs, of course, from Faithful’s branches.  (Note to self:  Journal soon about your dogwood. )   The birds make me happy while I’m typing.

I consoled myself (over the fact that here it is cold February, which sometimes can get a person down) knowing that there will soon be daffodils in bloom in The Little Wild Garden.  The little neighbor girls will ask if they can have one. 

I’ll say, “Yes, take two.” 

They’ll make us all very happy.

Finally, friends, it is quite the chore keeping enough food for a crowd.  Remind me.  Is six a crowd?  I thought so.

Anyway, I’ve been buying the organic broccoli that’s on sale locally and keeping it cut up for dipping in Newman’s Own Ranch Dressing (I could drink that stuff).  I hate throwing out the broccoli stems, and yet they are rather tough and not as delicious as the crowns for dipping.  I decided to cut them into chunks and then run them through the food processor with some sweet onion.   Used in a recipe I have for broccoli quiche, with venison sausage, oh my did it turn out lovely!  I went ahead and made four of them, because three boys gathered around the table can eat one whole quiche as a “snack.”

Broccoli Quiche – Meant to make one deep dish quiche

Pastry or shell for deep dish pie shell
1 to 1-1/3 cups half and half (I use 2% milk)
6 oz sharp cheddar cheese, grated
4 oz swiss cheese, grated
6 eggs, beaten until frothy
1 bunch fresh broccoli — steamed and chopped
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp black pepper
1/2 cup chopped cooked meat (in my case, venison sausage)

Combine all ingredients.  Pour into uncooked pie shell(s).  Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes or until done. 

Now, I doubled this recipe, using only 12 eggs, 2-2/3 cups of milk, only cheddar cheese (no swiss)–and probably more of it than called for as far as cheese in total, and lots of venison sausage.  It came out fine.  I made four regular pie crust sized quiches (not four deep dish).   The point is, I think this recipe can be altered quite a bit.  You just need to have enough egg (and milk/moisture) to hold whatever else you’re putting in.  Twelve eggs for four regular pie crusts worked out well, but I did have the added moisture of probably a cup and a half of broccoli and sweet onion for two of them. 

Anyway, I am thankful today for food and the fact that I can easily walk, even, to a local fresh market and get good things.

I’m working on my goal to have 10 new things in the shop by the end of the day.

Enjoy this day.

The tree we have chosen is . . . → Read More: Our Faithful Dogwood]]> My dear friend Marqueta recently posted about her quest to follow one tree by observation and journaling for a year.  The idea started with this blog (The Tree Year) and is being referred across the internet by friends as a great idea, so Michaela and I are going to take part as well.

The tree we have chosen is a dogwood tree.   We are calling her Faithful.  I love Marqueta’s idea to name the tree.  Michaela and I will be journaling about her, taking pictures of her and learning about her.  At a recent visit to the Scrap Exchange, I found a wonderful notebook that will be perfect for this endeavor. 

Faithful’s lovely silhouette against a cold winter sky.

Her bark, which is medicinal, we hope to learn more about and actually use.

When I took off for my walk with Annie today, I carried a walking stick from a downed dogwood tree that the Carpenter found in the woods.  It’s my favorite walking stick, but I suppose I take it for granted too, and where it came from.

Here is today’s journal entry:

The Dogwood ~ Our Tree Journal
begun on 01/25/2011

Our dogwood tree is in our front yard and is about 10 years old. It started as a tiny, tiny sapling brought home from Grandma and Grandpa’s woods.

I think we may take our tree for granted. It’s always there for us, holding a bird feeder, but do we really notice her?

I think we’ll name her Faithful. She was faithful to grow, against all odds. She faithfully blooms. She faithfully houses our feathered friends and gives them rest.

A few more pictures from today’s walk.

I love this little spot beside the railroad tracks.

Another beautiful spot where you can hear water and see (below the water’s surface) old tracks–train tracks?–that run underneath the current train trestle.

Enjoy what remains of the day.

We’ll sit side by side on the little bench and look through my Beyond Five In A Row book of lessons.  We can have coffee and watch the goldfish.

Every Tuesday morning marks the beginning of three days off work for me.  I always think I’ll get . . . → Read More: Join Me For Planning]]> Would you care to join me by my little frugally-built pond?

We’ll sit side by side on the little bench and look through my Beyond Five In A Row book of lessons.  We can have coffee and watch the goldfish.

Every Tuesday morning marks the beginning of three days off work for me.  I always think I’ll get so much done, but then the days become a flurry of appointments, a violin lesson, a co-op or a fieldtrip, cleaning and menu planning, and, well, here we are at Friday morning again.

This Friday morning, I found my spot by the little goldfish pond to be a haven — I got some thinking done and, if nothing else, was able to clear my mind and relax enough to ease into a couple of work days. 

Let’s look around and see what we can find for nature study.

What a very large slug!  I told the carpenter about it and he said I should kill it.  Oh.  I cannot.  Not like this.  It’s a creature.  The carpenter said that’s the whole reason we cannot have a garden.  I love creatures too much.  We do have a garden, but I’d hate to see us try and feed six people from it. 

Not the prettiest of creatures, but fascinating for sure!  Reminds me of a leopard and an elephant all wrapped up in one tiny little specimen. 

There were butterflies everywhere this morning!  I counted about 20 on the front of the house!  They were fluttering all around the garden.   They were landing on my dress.  I had four on the front of my dress at one time!  My mother said it was supposed to be good luck  to have a butterfly land on you, not that we are superstitious or anything, but when it comes to creatures…

It seems the perfect morning for nature study, and we have just enough time to get in a little lesson.

I believe the butterflies must think they’ve moved into a Shabby Chic economy apartment.  You can see the old quilt through the plastic.  I mean, who’s to say they don’t just dig their new home?  They certainly are coming around.  Anyhoo…

Butterflies love tiny bits of water.  Where little drops splash out onto rocks, where little drops are hiding in leaves, where rocks in a potted water plant are moist from the pond water, that’s where the butterflies will be.

This sweet little buttefly looks like she’s looking right at me.  I’m not sure if she’s upset or glad to see me.  I think she’s glad because she sat very still for several photos.

Well, come to think of it, she looks a bit mad.   Maybe she wants her shabby chic home all to herself.

Enjoy this day!  More later on our nature studies, our math program, and our Five in a Row co-ops on Betsy Ross.

The morning sun was causing my green tea to absolutely gleam in its little Japanese cup . . . → Read More: Starting A Day]]> The mornings are still hot.  Even when we first wake up, we are met at the door with North Carolina’s humid, heavy summer air.  Still, I know that September mornings, and then the cooler mornings of October, are not far away. 

The morning sun was causing my green tea to absolutely gleam in its little Japanese cup yesterday as I started the day.  I thought of school, how I live my life, household things that needed to be done, and getting some “Mother Culture” in for myself during my days off. 

Time surely flies.  Yesterday is over now, and here I sit, this morning with a cup of coffee, wondering again how to order my day. 

Tomorrow’s our first co-op of the school year.  I hope to do a school post soon about how we’ll use Beyond Five In A Row, Ambleside, and the other eclectic sorts of things I tend to do around here.

One thing I can tell you is that we have five huge “Charlottes” (writing spiders) now.  You can be sure that our science and nature journaling will begin with these amazing spiders. 

Argiope aurantia with a cicada (if that tells you how big the spider is).

There were buttercups, purple vetch, oxeye daisies, white yarrow, yellow and orange hawkweed, honeysuckle, and yellow mustard.  A spittlebug was hiding in its lump of bubbles along the stem of the hawkweed.  I picked off a leaf and rolled it up to poke at . . . → Read More: Strictly Wildflowers]]> Strictly Wildflowers. One of my favorite chapters in Karen Andreola’s Pocketful of Pinecones.

There were buttercups, purple vetch, oxeye daisies, white yarrow, yellow and orange hawkweed, honeysuckle, and yellow mustard.  A spittlebug was hiding in its lump of bubbles along the stem of the hawkweed.  I picked off a leaf and rolled it up to poke at the bubbles, revealing to Don and Emily the shiny little bug inside it.  Don drew the spittlebug and Emily drew the daisies.

Currently in the garden, on the lavender and on other plants as well, we have the spittlebug.  Dishes, dust and dirty clothes call out to me.  My computer — and all the fun therein, calls to me, but the spittlebug’s call is louder.  Or, at least, it should be.

One of most vital requirements of a healthy homeschool is action.  I am convicted many days because of my habit of spending too much time on line or occupying myself with things that are not feeding Michaela’s mind or heart.  We’ll hearken more to the call of the spittlebug and the wasp and the gentle education that occurs with a notepad, a basket of colored pencils and nature.

Nature’s colors are real.  Her lessons are enduring.  There’s a time and a place for everything. 

See you in the garden.

There’s an abundance of seeds in the garden, signaling both the end of the harvest and the promise that there’ll be new plants in the spring. 

There’s a beauty to the end of life that is apparent in the garden — another . . . → Read More: The Colors of Fall]]> We are surrounded by the colors that are fall in our own little yard year after year.

There’s an abundance of seeds in the garden, signaling both the end of the harvest and the promise that there’ll be new plants in the spring. 

There’s a beauty to the end of life that is apparent in the garden — another lesson that God has nestled into his creation, if we’ll only take the time to look.

Not much beauty in the outward appearance of these pods, but inside are shiny, hard, beautiful seeds that feel sleek and full of life in one’s hands.

The coolness of fall has given some plants exactly what they need to produce a final spurt of growth, giving us just a bit more of the taste of the bounty of the garden before she goes to sleep for the winter.

Michaela and I have loved reading Farmer Boy and we smile at our own tiny garden and what we consider large work when we think of Almanzo. 

The little red seeds that Almanzo and Alice planted had grown into two hundred bushels of carrots.  Mother could cook all she wanted, and the horses and cows could eat raw carrots all winter.

Annie loves the cool fall days, running around the garden and enjoying being a puppy who’s the center of everyone’s attention.

I love the colors of nature.  I love the mystery of every single plant.  What it is capable of?  What can it be used for?

The amazignly tall lamb’s quarter is hanging full of seeds.  They are quite lovely.

Fall — caught between summer and winter, fullness and death.  There’s no lack of color in fall and no lack of interesting artifacts for children’s pockets and mother’s basket.

Though early spring is the violet’s normal showtime, this little violet has decided to bloom in the fall.  Nearly covered by leaves, her bright color jumped out immediately, letting us know she was there.

Under the arugula, a little brown snake was coiled up, perhaps thinking about where to spend the soon-to-come cold months of winter.

We are enjoying the slow-down feeling of autumn here and our leaf-gathering walks.  Michaela has found some huge leaves to press.  She has discovered that they are sycamore leaves.

Farmer Boy has been the perfect read aloud as we entered autumn.  It has made us very hungry each night at bedtime,  but also filled us with ideas for upcoming holidays and family gatherings.  It has reaffirmed my interest in eating as much as possible from one’s own land and the bountry of nature.

When Alice came home from school she smelled Almanzo, and she cried out, “Oh, you’ve been eating wintergreen berries!

…they went on their hands and knees all over those south slopes, and they ate wintergreen berries all afternoon.

Almanzo brought home a pailful of the thick, green leaves, and Alice crammed them into a big bottle.  Mother filled the bottle with whisky and set it away.  That was her wintergreen flavoring for cakes and cookies. 

May you have a wonderful October Tuesday.
Lynn

When I was a teenager we had a friend visiting from the mountains.  In driving around our county I was commenting on the beauty of it all.  My mother seemed a bit embarassed and noted that our friend, having come from the . . . → Read More: The Wonders of Nature]]> ‘The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handiwork. ”  Psalm 19:1

When I was a teenager we had a friend visiting from the mountains.  In driving around our county I was commenting on the beauty of it all.  My mother seemed a bit embarassed and noted that our friend, having come from the mountains, was from a place where the land really was beautiful.  While I did see her point, I didn’t agree at all that the mountains were any more beautiful than the sandy soil, scrubby oaks, pine trees, and blue skies where I had grown up.

I used to kneel down in the woods behind our house and marvel at the soldier moss growing at the foot of one of our oaks.  The sandy trail that cut through our woods looked like a secret path to me, and I often saw snakes and birds sitting in the trees, looking at me as I walked on tip-toe trying to be really quiet like the Indians would have been.  We had a montrous tangle of blackbeery bushes that offered up many blackberry cobblers through the years.  I felt rich.

It is humbling to think of the beauty God has put around us to enjoy.  I went outside this morning and sat in the morning sun with a cup of water infused with a few drops of Ashwagandha.  (I think my adrenals are struggling, but that’s another post for another day.)

The sun on my face felt so wonderful and Annie enjoyed running around in the garden.  Over the weekend I went on a foraging walk and gathered many rosehips for winter teas.  They are currently drying in a sunny, upstairs window. 

I woke up this morning so renewed and encouraged that Nature Study is a vital and easy thing to undertake.  Michaela’s first lesson today will be outside.  I may even have her continue there, but it’s cold.  We’ll see how warm it gets.  She’s been admiring the art in a new picture book here and I think I’ll have her experiment with the method of illustration done in the book.  It appears to be black outlining filled in with colored pencils.  I am hopeful that it will make a lovely start to Michaela’s Monday.  Surrounded by the beauty of falling yellow leaves, purple poke berries and bright nasturtium flowers, I don’t see how a bit of nature can escape from ending up in her drawing.

I thought you  might enjoy Charlotte Mason’s thoughts on sunshine, from Vol 1.  of Home Education, pp 34-35:

But it is not only air, and pure air, the children must have if their blood is to be of the ‘finest quality,’ as the advertisements have it.  Quite healthy blood is exceedingly rich in minute, red disc-like bodies, known as red corpuscles, which in favourable circumstances are produced freely in the blood itself.  Now, it is observed that people who live much in the sunshine are of a ruddy countenance–that is, a great many of these red corpuscles are present in their blood; while the poor souls who live in cellars and sunless alleys have skins the colour of whity-brown paper.  Therefore, it is concluded that light and sunshine are favourable to the production of red corpuscles in the blood; and, therefore–to this next ‘therefore’ is but a step for the mother–the children’s rooms should be on the sunny side of the house, with a south aspect if possible.  Indeed, the whole house should be kept light and bright for their sakes; trees and outbuildings that obstruct the sunshine and make the chidlren’s rooms dull should be removed without hesitation. 

With curtains open and rosehips drying in the windowsill, I’m busy working today and handing out school lessons from my work desk. The tea kettle is whistling. Enjoy this day.