JourneyLeaf: Life a Page at a Time

Bare Toes and Good Buddies

Ahhhh.  It's getting to be that time of year...

 

  

 

  

  

  

 

  

  

  

  

  

 

Poppies

Crisp green.  Rich pinks.  Ruffled petals.  Stalks nodding in the wind.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Daisy

Definitely girly stuff on the blog today.  (I think my father-in-law must be good-naturedly rolling his eyes right now.)  

A few days ago I got a pedicure and the lady went crazy adding flowers to my toes.  (Click HERE and scroll all the way down for a picture.)  Today my niece and I got busy trying our hand at nail flowers too...  

 

We discovered that Amazon has tools to help put various size dots of polish just where you want them...

 

We went out to find some fun colors of polish just right for daisies...
(I used all Sally Hansen brand with #120 Diamonds as a base, #360 Mellow Yellow for flower center, and #300 White On for petals.) 

 

Goofy happy with the results!

 

My niece did her nails all in pink with blue and gold polka dots all over.  Here's her picture of it... 

We had a lot of fun and Eli watched the proceedings with great interest.  So he got a little nail art too...

 

          

 

Here's a video for a more sophisticated version:

  

 

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Light Enough to Fly

A boy and his kite...

     

 

 

 

 

 

We're still in the home-hunting swirl right now.  Nothing to report, but the last couple of weeks have been intense and a bit emotional, full of hopes and excitement and disappointment that loops back to cautious hope.  I'm so glad it is spring so we can get outside and forget all about it for a while.

 

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Soft and Tender Things

After four springtimes in Northern California where the seasons are much more subtle, it has been pure pleasure recently to watch the world turn warm again.  On March 30, we traveled down to Warner Robins in South Georgia for one of Brian's work programs.  Spring was in full force there.  It felt like diving into a pool of tender, bright green leaves.  As we drove back up into North Georgia, the trees were bare again.  

 

Then, during the first week of April, the wave of spring washed up here.  
In just days, the dots of green went from burst buds and tiny crinkles to miniature leaves quickly spreading to summer size.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Happy Earth Day 2013

Here are some old pictures from Earth Day 2010 when Eli was sixteen months old.  In Target's Dollar Spot, I found herb kits that contained tiny pots, seeds, and moisture-release soil pellets.  It was way to start Eli into gardening.

I have to laugh a little looking back at these pictures.  It looks like a nice, calm activity.  What I remember, though, is that Eli missed his nap that day -- most unusual for him at that time.  Usually easygoing, my little guy was instead like a bear hauled out of his cave and poked with a stick a month before spring starts.  Gruuuuumpy!

Eli grabbed at everything, fussed if I tried to guide him, and slung drops of water all over the kitchen.  But the seedlings did come up!

 

 

 

Later today I'm going to do a sort of inventory of our cleaning products and see if I can come up with some alternatives for the ones that aren't very green.

 

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Happy St. Patrick's Day 2013!

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HOMEmade Strawberry Jam

After reading Bruce Degen's lovely picture book, Jamberry, Eli and I plunged into making our own berry jam.  Strawberries glow like jewels, so pleasing to the eye.  Sweet, juicy, and fragrant too.  Eli and I played music, talked, and took our time with the work.  Making jam is such a homey pursuit.

Click HERE for the recipe.

 

 

 

 

 

 

As I wiped down pink-flecked countertops, I thought about our homemade jam.  I guess officially we just whipped up a batch of rentalhousemade jam.  Certainly this house feels family-rich.  And halfway through our eighth month here, it is definitely familiar.  Still, now that our lease time is ticking down and the house-hunting process has started in earnest, this structure around us feels decidedly less home-like.

Homebuying is such an odd process.  I'm very much a "home person," and moving makes me feel like a naked hermit crab eager for the safety of the next shell.  At the same time, I know we may very well be in our next house for many, many years, so we want to take enough time to choose wisely.  For months now we've been polling local friends, reading articles, making lists, and searching the listings.  We're giving a lot of thought to our priorities and are trying to understand local trends.  Best schools?  Traffic and business growth patterns?  Property value shifts?

Twice this month I have found houses I'm excited about, places I can picture our family living.  I moon over the MLS listing like a schoolgirl with a crush poring over yearbook photos.  I drive by the house in question several times, pausing in the street to try to absorb all the details.  Both times, I dreamed all night about the house in question.  And both times closer inspection revealed too many expensive, time-consuming problems to take on.  I wiggled into a potential new life far enough to get a feel for it, and then I find I must also wiggle my way back out.  For a little while, I carry a quiet disappointment.

Here is what I have learned:  house-hunting is a very soulful process.  

Buying a home you want to live in for quite a while makes you look afresh at who you are individually and who you are as a family, but also the community around you and how you want to fit into it.  At the same time, however, you have to know when to be flexible.  We have dear friends in their 60's who not long ago built their long-planned dream house.  They had funds to fully realize their wishes as well as lots of experience living in different houses.  The husband in the couple is a do-it-yourselfer well-practiced by working on the houses he's lived in as well as the houses of their three grown children.  The house they built for themselves is wonderful -- yet there are still things that don't quite suit them, that they would do differently if they could do it over.  That's because the perfect house doesn't exist.

Back in 2004, I bought my first house.  I was single and new to the Atlanta area.  I didn't have a husband or child to consider, but it was still a tough, months-long process.  And then one day I decided to look at a house on a whim, one that seemed boring on the MLS online list but was just down the street from one that seemed great.  The "great" house was a dud, but the "extra" house felt like home the minute I stepped foot on the front walkway.  It didn't have everything I hoped for in a house.  And, whew, talk about ugly wallpaper!  But I bought it without reservation and adored it.  I learned how to strip that ugly wallpaper off as well as apply drywall and rewire electrial sockets.  I spent hours upon hours repainting.  All that work was hard, time-consuming...and blissful.  I had to sell that house when I got married and I lost money on it, but have never regretted it a minute.  It was the first real home I'd had since my parents died.  

I've been living in temporary spaces since my marriage.  When we find our house, it will be my fourth move in six years.  I know it won't be a perfect house.  But it will be like that little Atlanta house I purchased and poured my heart into.  It will be home.

Home is coming soon.  (And, really, home is wherever my two guys are.)  So in the meantime I'm just going to enjoy the adventure.  That naked hermit crab searching through the tidal pools for a new shell can choose to appreciate the delicious feeling of open potential.

 

(Click HERE to see our raw materials still in the strawberry patch.) 

This blog post has been linked to The Magic Onions, a webpage dedicated to Waldorf education and childhood creativity.  Click HERE to visit The Magic Onions.  We especially love their Friday Nature Table where bloggers share their ideas!

 

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Strawberry Pickin' Time!

We went berry picking yesterday afternoon with our friends
Isabel and Niels...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mmmm.  I forgot how much better fresh "u-pick" berries are over the kind that comes in a plastic box at the grocery store.  Fresh red fruit for last night's dessert and this morning's breakfast.  And now to cook up some jam...

Click HERE for the jam post and recipe link.

 

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Adrift in Pollen

It is definitely spring because we are slowly getting buried in yellow dust.

 

This vehicle has been sitting still for several days.  Just so you know --
the car has shiny black paint job.

 

This time of year you can tell who parks in a garage and who doesn't by the tell-tale thickness of the pollen layer...

 

Be careful what you touch...

 

And that works in reverse.  At some point, Eli must have touched the side of my car with his snack-greasy hands.  Now the pollen is sticking to the residue...

 

The smoked glass top of our landlord's patio table...

 

If you pour a little water on things, the pollen swirls...

 

It even floats in clumpy rafts...

 

Here is the main culprit -- the pine trees.

 

Don't believe it?  Just give a branch a shake...

 

But there are so many other things blooming right now, that I swear sometimes the very air has a yellowish-green haze.

 

 

  

 

 

 

I'm sure by next year the pollen will be annoying.  Even if you don't get hay fever, after a while it feels like it sticks in your nose!  But after four years away from Georgia, clouds of spring pollen flying when the wind blows makes me shake my head in amazement and wonder.  And thankfully there are heavy rains predicted tonight to help wash the world clean again.

Click HERE for a good page for kids about pollen.

Click HERE for information about local pollen counts.

 

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