Weekend

We spent this past weekend picking strawberries (30 lbs!) and making jam.  I think I was able to make almost enough to last us the year.  When I count the blackberry jam that I'll make later this summer, we should have more than enough to support my kids' pbj habit.

While the kids and I were making jam, my husband was in the city at the final interview and tryouts for Jeopardy.  So sometime in the next 18 months he may (or may not) get called to be on the show.  Whether he gets the call or not, at least he didn't leave empty handed.  He won the mock game at the tryout and won the Wii Jeopardy game.

National Colonial Farm trip

Yesterday we braved the rainy weather and headed over to the National Colonial Farm.  They were having a "green" homeschool day.  There the kids learned a little about recycling, planting native trees, grasses, and flowers, and worm composting. 

J and C weaving coasters out of "plarn" (strips of old plastics bags.)

C getting as close as she dares to the worm colony.  Believe it or not there are about 4,000 red wigglers in there!

Unfortunately, the sky opened up before we were able to get to the far end of the farm.  That's the one place they all wanted to go.  At the far end are some old mulberry trees that they remember climbing and harvesting berries from.  Since we just planted a mulberry tree in our backyard, they were very excited to go see these old trees again to help them imagine what our tree might look like someday.  I could be wrong, but I don't think the mulberries are quite ready yet.  So maybe it is just as well that we didn't see them yesterday.  We will plan to go back sometime in the next couple of weeks (maybe with Daddy) on a sunny day to really explore the farm again and visit those wonderful old mulberry trees.

Commiting to this house

 When we moved in here we thought that we would be here about two years.  Definitely no more than five.  Well, SEVEN years later we are still here and have no plans to move.  That's not to say we wouldn't love to move somewhere else.  It's just that we have to stay where Ray's job is and our house isn't worth what we paid for it.  So it really doesn't make sense for us to move.  The problem with thinking that you are only going to be in a house temporarily is that it makes it very hard to really invest in that house.  There are so many projects that I would have done six or seven years ago if I had known we would be here this long.  I look into my tiny backyard with no shade and no privacy and think, "If only I had planted a few trees when we first moved in..."  Well, I don't want to be here in five years thinking, "If only I had planted something even five years ago."  So this past weekend we planted a privacy hedge and two trees.  This is what our privacy hedge should look like in five years:



This is what it looks like now:

If we are still here in five years, I'll be so thankful that we didn't put off committing to this house any longer.  If we move before I see this row of sticks turn into a real hedge, then we still had fun putting it in and imagining what our yard could look like. Either way we win.















 

As I said, we also planted a couple of trees.  A mulberry tree that actually looks like a little tree already.

And a Royal Empress tree that is actually just a tiny stub of a stick protruding from the ground, barely distinguishable from the mulch.  I have high hopes for this tree as it is reported to grow up to 18 feet per year.  We shall see....