Tiny Grass

Yesterday was lovely. It was nearly 70 degrees and the first day this year that I’ve gone without a coat or hat. The kids and I spent lots of time outside while I dug around and tried to find some signs of Spring. Read more »

I’ve had no time to blog lately. We’ve been incredibly busy, which is nice. Spring seems finally to be just around the corner. Being so busy has helped give me more confidence homeschooling wise. I know - they are learning things even when they don’t seem to be doing anything. But still, seeing us all doing stuff gives me more tangible proof that we are all learning. It helps me feel productive. The boredom of winter was really getting on my nerves. Most of my interests entail being outside - nature, gardening, hiking, etc. For weeks at a time, it just wasn’t possible for me to spend much time outside. Since J is only 22 months and likes to rip off her gloves, I just couldn’t keep her outside in freezing weather for long periods of time.

Here are some of things that we’ve been doing lately:

• Yoga. M and I have been taking a parent-child yoga class through our library and it has been great! In preparation, I took a book out of our library called, Children’s Book of Yoga, by Thia Luby. It is really geared to connecting our bodies to the natural world, and M loved looking at it and doing some of the poses with me at home.
• Playing in the mud. The washing machine is still running. Enough said.
• Drawing in our family nature notebook. Arp hasn’t actually contributed to it yet, but M and I have both been drawing a lot, especially in the last week. While it was cold, I was drawing some of the things we’ve found outside while sitting at the dining-room table. It was just too cold outside to hold a pencil very long without gloves on. But in the last week I’ve been doing quite a bit of drawing outside. I’ve made it my business to document the return of Spring.
• Shopping for the ducks and endlessly planning their house. House building day is scheduled for the 18th, and the ducks around the 27th. I feel like I’m waiting for labor to begin. Was that a contraction?! (See, if I was really a dork, I would have said “conquacktion”. But I didn’t. See?)
• Reading up on weird waterfowl illnesses and trying to figure out if I have the guts to suture a duck on my own, or perform my own post-mortem. I’m pretty much viewing this project as halfway between livestock and pet. The question is, how much money am I willing to spend if my ducks get sick? (Obviously I would never leave an animal to suffer.) I’m not sure I know the answer to this yet since this is our first endeavor in a farm-ish sort of project. Time will tell.

I loved The Swiss Family Robinson as a kid. It was one of my favorite stories, along with Robinson Crusoe and the Little House books. I remember going to Disney World long before I read the book and wondering what the treehouse was all about, but I understood once I was old enough for the book. After reading this abridged edition, I realize that the cornucopia of flora and fauna on the island is utterly outlandish, but as a kid it seemed perfectly normal for an exotic island to have lions, tigers, elephants and ostriches. The story is still a blast, and M enjoyed it quite a bit too since it was a special ‘Daddy & M’ book. Along the way, I got a nice flashback to some of my dreams and fantasies as a kid and realize that some things don’t change but are slowly forgotten.

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Early last week we got a subscription renewal request from National Geographic - except our subscription hadn’t even started yet. We knew they’re very thorough in their subscription renewal mailings, but this was a new level of efficiency.

OK - the title over-dramatizes our life without mindless tv watching, but it was coincidental that our current subscription started the day I cancelled the satellite tv. They seemed to have paused a bit after cashing our check (a sweet $10 subscription that came out of nowhere) and sent 3 at once. I think we last had a subscription maybe 3 years ago, and it’s like welcoming an old friend back into the house. Except this friend never runs out of cool stories and let’s us decide which vacation slides to skip.

This is what I love about hiking: the utter quiet, except for the sound of leaves under my feet; the methodical rhythm of looking down to avoid tripping, looking up to see the trail, and hearing my own breathing as I labor; putting to use my waterproof hiking boots when we hit a swollen stream on the trail; planning the route; looking up the history and points of interest; seeing M’s happy face when he can run ahead on the trail without fear of cars; the fun of teaching my son to read a trail map and trail markings, just as my father taught me.

This is what I love about hikers: I’ve never seen one litter, and I find almost no litter on the trails; the knowing smile and friendly greeting you get when you meet one trailside, which seems to say, “Isn’t this place great? We know you are one of us!”

A few weeks ago we hiked a bit on Schunemunk Mountain, the highest mountain in the county I live in. We haven’t made it up to the summit yet, mostly because it’s a bit steep and long for M to hike yet. We rarely get babysitters, so we’ve been wanting to get to the summit ridge for quite a while. My goal is to do it by springtime, though. The hike we did a few weeks ago was on one of the lower trails on the mountain, one that is less steep.

This is a picture of the Moodna Viaduct, right on the trailside. I like the picture because it reminds me of the old train postcards my father used to collect.

And here’s one of M making a funny face. The view is to the east and the Hudson River.