all about the garden

The first of our turnips that the kids planted as a surprise for me. I roasted some tonight with olive oil and salt. Next time I want to try some rosemary. I am glad I like turnips because there are quite a few. I think every single seed grew up! Turnip greens are, in my opinion, even better than the turnips themselves. They are great with potatoes! Can't wait to see what turnip flowers look like!


Below are some pictures of things you don't normally see in gardens. I have recently discovered that a few of the vegetables we enjoy with regularity are actually slightly more difficult than most to grow *successfully*. Both celery and cauliflower, as it turns out, REALLY like things a certain way. Mine apparently did not have either the soil or water requirements they prefer (or both or something else entirely). The celery I tasted was bitter and stringy and even tough- much to my surprise! And the cauliflower, well it never quite made it inside, as you can see from the picture. Both plants, though not up to my culinary standards were still ever optimistic and continued to grow and even to bloom flowers! And what I have learned (what I knew but have enjoyed seeing) was that all of these plants will bloom! if allowed. I want to add too that while I did not enjoy the cauliflower, the slugs (also ever optimistic) still managed to get a few nibbles in! And the radish flowers were so abundant and beautiful that I cut several bunches and brought them in and put them in a vase. Lovely. Who knew? Radish flowers! They taste like radishes too!


Pink radish flowers and trailing radish vine.


Little yellow-white celery flowers, swiss chard flowers (with red stems),



These onions are flowering and the tiny onion bulbs they made are flowering too, on top of the larger onion!


And here is the crazy cauliflower!

I love that the plants in the garden space continue to grow and thrive and bloom and make more plants and spread and volunteer and send out shoots and seeds no matter what I choose to do with them, whether I eat them or pick them or watch them. It is a good reminder that these plants are not here for me alone and that they have their own life cycle, their own destiny, their own way. Their flowers remind me of that and help me to keep in mind things like- if I don't eat the chard before it blooms and then the stalks are too tough to eat- it is not wasting the chard. Because to think this assumes that the chard has only one purpose in life and that is for me or someone near me to eat it. Not so!

I love the garden and growing plants for many reasons. One of the main reasons is that I find it deeply relaxing to be out with the plants. For this reason alone I find myself wandering out to pick around them and move them and plant them and water them. I have other ideas, though, that mix into my relaxation. Things like, wouldn't it be nice to grow ALL of my own vegetables like the woman in This Organic Life. Or, wouldn't it be nice to have a huge herb garden and then use the herbs in my soap that I like to make. Or, what about setting up a whole wandering gathering spot for the kids so they can just walk outside and gather foods as they like (Eva loves this and seems to do this regardless of how much I *set up*). The thing about some of these ideas is that while they are inspiring, they can also be stifling if I let myself take them too seriously (no matter how fun that may be!).

So the flowering plants have given me much food for thought over the last couple of weeks (if not food to be eaten). And I love how I feel even more open about the garden, about what can happen there, about what it means. So on that note, I am letting the chard fully blossom and then I am going to take them down, put them in the compost and put in some LOOFAH seeds (even though I found out I may not have enough time for their growing season!) and I am waiting for some ground cherry seeds to arrive. They have a little shorter growing season and I think they will be a lot of fun if they work out. More tasty fruit to pick besides the strawberries and the blackberries. I told Samuel too that if we have a lot of the zucchini and eggplant and cucumbers he can set up a vegetable stand and sell them in our front yard. He is very excited!

And of course the really great thing about all of this, flowering plants and letting things be and letting even more things go is that it naturally flows to my kids. Letting them be who they are, watching them do what they will do regardless of what I set out to do, these are things that I am ever optimistic about.

The trees in our yard are so prolific. There are dozens of small maple seedlings growing in the grass. At first I tried to dig up the seedlings to grow them in pots and then transplant them elsewhere later. Now there are just too many. They are beautiful though. When I showed Eva today that they were the little babies of our giant maple tree she was amazed. "That is the momma maple tree!?"


Little baby maple trees

Wow! Check out this onion!

This is an onion we pulled yesterday to cook up with some kale and cannellini beans. The kale is from our garden as well. Amazing!

summer time photos

It was quite warm for a couple of days. Today is cooler and the kids and I enjoyed a walk in the woods with our dog Jack, who is ALWAYS up for a walk in the woods. Samuel took some photos of me, Eva and Jack. We had a lot of fun taking them. I am giving up modifying them and just picking one to use for the photo for the about me section of this blog. It seemed odd to have a picture of me without anyone else in it because I so rarely find myself completely alone these days. Someone is usually vying for space on my lap or pushing a cat off or something. So the photo is not only a photo of me but is also a photo of how life is right now.



The kids discovered our Japanese Maple in the front yard. Of all the trees it is the most inviting to little climbers. It is close to the ground and they don't have to stand on a stool to reach the first branches as they do with the apple tree. Samuel decided to make it into a club, complete with a club picnic and games. They played water quirting games and sack races. There was another game in between but as I recall it was met with a good many shouts and cries. I got photos of the picnic and the sack races!





Samuel has been wanting to take a class in electricity. His intent is to eventually build a robot and he wants to know how the robots work. We have done some reading about electricity and I have searched around for classes and have not found anything promising, yet. But today we stumbled upon a great electricity kit at a toy store we like called Let's Play in downtown Hillsboro. We were there to replace the plastic sword that Sparrow ate while she was missing us one day while we were out without her. It is this great kit called Snap Circuits Jr. and you can really move around the different components to turn on lights, move fans and make music (although we haven't figured this part out yet). And I am thrilled that it is both visual! and spatial! and very hands-on! Samuel had a the fan up and running and then bypassed the button to keep it running at all times. I love how the kids can move the pieces and get an idea how the electricity flows. There are more complicated components that he can add as he gets the hang of it. We are definitely on our way to building a robot!

We are also enjoying a book we found at the library called Transformed: How Everyday Things are Made by Bill Slavin. This book is great! We've been picking out a couple topics each night. Last night we learned how baseballs and jellybeans are made. The night before it was neon signs and plastic dinosaurs. I am looking forward to pencils.

I took this quiz that will tell you which book you are. I am A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving. This is what the quiz said about that- "Despite humble and perhaps literally small beginnings, you inspire faith in almost everyone you know. You are an agent of higher powers, and you manifest this fact in mysterious and loud ways. A sense of destiny pervades your every waking moment, and you prepare with great detail for destiny fulfilled. When you speak, IT SOUNDS LIKE THIS!" I was intrigued and decided to check out the book. I have been so pleasantly surprised and am really enjoying the book. I had no idea John Irving was such a funny guy. He has a real dry whit to be sure.

Dogs and Balloons

Well, Sparrow left today and I was reminded how quiet our house feels after one of her visits.
We played a lot of fun games with Sparrow while she was here. One of our favorites was a game called dogs and balloons. Jack joined in with this one and great fun was had by all. The way you play dogs and balloons is this- you find some balloons and blow them up. Dogs stand around barking at the balloons while they are blown up and then dogs chase balloons when you let go of them and they stream around the room making high pitched balloon noises. Or dogs chase and jump up to catch punching balloons as children try to bobble them back and forth. Or dogs chase balloons you blow up and tie off and throw up in the air. Dogs and balloons ends usually with all of the balloons punctured by dogs' teeth and with children crying over the loss of balloons. Children swear they will never play dogs and balloons again and dogs continue looking doggedly at the bicycle pump you used to blow up the balloons. I did not, unfortunately, get any pictures of dogs and balloons. If you are curious about how dogs and balloons looks, you can look at the picture of our dog Jack looking at the water gun in one of the photos from the plastics roundup day. Just imagine Samuel holding a balloon instead of a water gun and imagine Jack (or any dog) looking just as intently at the balloon. Add some barking. There you have dogs and balloons.

Sparrow took dogs and balloons a bit further than we are used to. She continued puncturing things that looked like balloons for many days after the actual day of dogs and balloons. Unfortunately, we lost several unintended balloons as well as our globe ball and our giant exercise ball. Thankfully, I saved the hippety hop. Samuel made me put it in the garage until she left, which was probably wise.


Here is Sparrow napping on the baby dolls. She will lay down to rest just about anywhere. I love how dogs really know how to relax!



Here is Sparrow looking fancy!

Fun!

-three little bean bags lined up with a baby doll asleep on them
-nine lego creations built for me lined up on the window sill, one with Eva loves mommy written on it in permanent ink
-a baggie with lemonade in it, in the freezer, just to see what happens
-a doll sized teacup with sugar and ice cubes frozen in the freezer, to see how to make sugar ice
-little bowls of flowers on the table
-a jar with holes punched in the top and little bugs inside
-a bionicle standing up on some pillows, pointing his weapon at a fortress on the slide
-a slide in the living room
-lego guys using the spider plant vines as vines to swing on
-planting turnip and bean seeds in the middle of the grass as a surprise for me (and the turnips are thriving and I mow around them)
-stuffed tiger sleeping on bed of blocks and play silks (also near the slide in the living room)
-two water balloons in the refrigerator to save
-a bag of ice from the winter when we had ice to remember when we don't

A visit from Sparrow

Just when I think there is NOT a lot going on around here, I take inventory and look around. We are looking after a friend's boxer for about elevenish days. Sparrow has been our house guest before on several occasions and I would say this time is running the most smoothly- so far! As a young boxer, actually as a boxer... Sparrow has quite a bit of energy. She has reserves past most of us in this house, although on this visit the kids are really playing with her quite a bit, more so than on other visits because Eva is less worried about being licked and Samuel is just discovering how much fun he can have running around with her. They have played fun games before, they just seem to be going on longer and throughout the day this time around. (Right now our dog Jack is wrestling with her on the sleeping bags Eva put out in the living room and Eva is running around pretending to be a baby boxer and asking me just how much energy a baby boxer would have! And now Samuel and Eva are going to throw bean bags at each other.)



Sparrow joins in with Eva and her babies after the big tea party. Nothing like a sleeping bag on the floor!

Samuel and I looked at a few Rube Goldberg contraptions today to give him some inspiration for his own contraption building. Samuel wants to build a cage out of wooden posts with string wound around them for bars. We do not have any wooden posts and there lies the problem and the need for further inspiration. I think it is wiser for me not to ask at this time who he is planning to put into the cage.
Honda's Rube Goldberg
Star Wars Rube Goldberg
Rube Goldberg Machines

Eva had two tea parties today- one with her animals and Samuel (as a last minute guest) and one with me. We had decaf green tea with lots of sugar and watermelon (which is showing up in the grocery store but which I would like to point out is really NOT in season in Oregon until August). Our tea party was interrupted several times to go out to the yard and haul Sparrow inside. She is barking barking barking at the neighbors dog, who is this sweet little black mix named Roxy and who I do not want Sparrow to bark and lunge and charge at. Roxy just stands wagging her talk looking a little confused because she normally just gets sweet talk and tail wags from Jack from our side of the fence.

Here is a photo of Eva climbing what she can find, wherever she can find it! This time our gate in the back yard.



We went fishing the other day with Samuel's new fishing pole he received as a Christmas gift from Grandma and Grandpa Pearson. Samuel has been waiting and waiting and also debating what he would do with the fish when he caught it. Well, the fish has a little more time to decide also because we didn't catch anything THIS TIME! He spent a good bit of time taking us from one point to another to find a good spot and then practiced reeling the line in and casting it out several times. We also adjusted the hook, the bobbing thing and the weight several times. What I learned is that when we go fishing, I spend a lot of time adjusting the fishing line. But! not as much time as when we tried it out last year and this new pole is really wonderful because it actually works (in the sense that when you reel it up, it comes up and when you cast it out, it casts out!) I did not get a picture, but don't worry- Samuel has other fishing plans in the works, including going fishing with a picnic lunch, because as he says, it isn't very much fun sitting there all hungry waiting for the fish!

And of course, I did not forget to include a photo of our recent bounty from our garden. Lot of chard, kale, peppermint and spearmint for sun tea, chives, chive flowers, onions and onion flowers. Tonight we had chard and kale with chickpeas and cilantro over tortellini. Oh and the big new is our first strawberries! And sure enough we are not the only ones. The u-picks say they are out as well so we will be heading out to pick strawberries for sure in the next couple of days!



This is the amazing lavender in our front yard!



I just read in You Grow Girl that people used to think there was a strong matriarch in the house if you had a large and thriving rosemary plant out front. Men would go out and smash down the rosemary plants in secret lest their friends catch sight of it! Here is our very healthy rosemary plant, right out front (wink).

visual-spatial learning

So I was looking around at some other unschooling blogs yesterday and I found this wonderful site called Throwing Marshmallows. Her quote is really appropriate for unschooling- "Learning can only happen when a child is interested. If he’s not interested it’s like throwing marshmallows at his head and calling it eating.” - Anonymous.

She had some great information on visual-spatial learners. I recognized my Samuel in her description of her own son and was off taking the quiz she has listed to determine my own learning type. Turns out I am also a visual-spatial learner, which I suppose explains a lot. From what I have read about different learning types, I know that most people have a couple of ways to learn that are basic to them. This doesn't mean they can't learn things other ways. In fact, most adults have learned how to *learn* in many ways. The problem lies in how schools typically teach things to kids ONE way, mainly the left brained way, or through auditory-sequential learning. Which is fine if that is your primary way of learning. I managed just fine most of the time and adapted to this type of learning but boy do I remember some frustration. I also remember 4th grade as being fantastic and now I know it was because the teachers had us up and out and learning many different ways creatively and hands on. I suffered in Russian classes in college because they believed you had to learn the language by listening only and would not write the words on the board for me- the still unknown visual learner- to better understand. I didn't fully figure it out until I started birdwatching and lo and behold found it is easier for me to see the bird and identify it than by just hearing its song.

The long and short of it is that unschooling for me is partly about helping my kids understand how they learn things so they can better understand themselves and what they love to do, how they love to be. There is no one right way to do things and that includes learning.

Off to the library to get some more books about learning styles, oh and a couple of books on fairy tales too!