Fun

We all make our own fun...if we are creative and engaged.  Maisie's new fun is standing up under her own power.  Here she is looking out the windows alongside our front door.  THEY PROVIDE HOURS OF INTRIGUE for TYLER and ABBY too.

The adults had their fun with another installment of knitting group.

And we had a sighting of Tyler van Pelt.

* I promise we will figure out how to match the text with the photos soon.

The weekends  go by so quickly.  We started ours off with an anniversary dinner at Walter's on Friday night.  Saturday morning Maisie and I participated in the Lighthouse Foundation Walk around the Back Bay in Portland. Saturday night, we took our little monkey to Saco to Pumpkinfest.  Sunday has been more an at home kind of day with chores and NFL and such.

Hope you had a great weekend and a good week ahead.

Grateful

H.E. here dipping my toes into the blogging pond after pissing and moaning to H.T. about my lack of time to do things like blog, read magazines or contemplate my navel...These days, and particularly these weekend days go by too quickly.  We reconnected with friends Clark and Holly at their annual cider fest in York on Saturday-lots of kids, dogs, great food and dueling manual cider presses cranking out gallons of cider. We stayed a bit later than we'd expected in order to take in the beginning of the bonfire.  The little miss was a trooper in spite of the cold. This morning, we bundled her up for a stroll on the eastern trail and she tolerated this with equal good humor (in spite of what the scowl here may suggest).  The trade off for having so little free time and a lengthy list of obligations not completed is the delight that comes from having this little person with us.  My long history of Sunday melancholy has been replaced with gratitude for all the goodness in my life. And while I still have my share of pissiness, as well as a lingering postpartum mental retardation, I am so much better at appreciating each moment.

Grubby Biscuit Hooks

We have a grub problem.  It is not a problem regarding the health of our lawn (which in the long run is not so important as we plan on having quite a bit of it converted to gardens), but it certainly is a problem when it comes to these same  gardens and the hordes of Japanese Beetles we fed this summer and I expect will for more to come. We have roughly 1/2 acre of property, on average there are about 5-7 grubs per foot (at least where I have been digging; this photo was taken on Monday when I was planting the Cucumber Magnolia we bought to celebrate our first Mother's Day[thanks Grampy for helping get it in the ground]). Simple math tells me there is, as a low estimate, potentially 108, 900 grubs on our little patch of earth.  Nematodes and parasitic wasps are some organic solutions to the problem, as well as continued hand picking of the beetles. Apparently, you can tell the species of grub by examining it's poop shoot and the small hairs surrounding it. Not quit sure how I feel about taking up that little hobby...although, I can imagine some nice Liberty Graphic tees  from this sort of thing.

The good news is our soil is quite healthy and also supports a very large (probably equal to the grubs) colony of earthworms.

The MMC ER really wasn't that creepy at 1:30 a.m. with an approaching fullmoon

Yes, we were there early Monday morning with our little miss...we were concerned about her breathing, which seemed rapid and somewhat labored. She had been fighting a cold for a few days and had a few bouts of upchucking, but generally seemed quite pleased with self and the world. At the ER she had a fever of 101.7 which explained alot...some Tylenol and whamo, she was back in business.

She also has a "little chiclet", as HE calls it, of a new tooth popping through her upper choppers.

A Glorious Fall Weekend in New England

This weekend we decided to take a hiatus from doing any chores and spent our time enjoying each other's company (I hope) and doing fun, autumnal things. On Saturday, we went to the farmer's market in Portland and Heather E. got to chat up her beloved Ramona Snell, we bought some great and cheap stuff for Maisie at a used kids clothing store in Falmouth and we went to Skyline Farm to an fundraiser art show.  This place is beautiful and open to the public, skylinefarm.org. Last night we made a beef pot pie and an apple pie and had the company of Carmen (who rules according to the pie).  Today we started the day off with a visit to Heather E.'s Bates roommate, Susan, and her baby daughter, and then we checked out the Allen Avenue Unitarian Universalist Church. From there we went with Mimi to Thompson's Orchard in New Glouster for donuts, apples, and cider and then for a scenic ride to Quaker Ridge in Raymond.  Now, I am ready for some football...Go New England.

I tried to post the other night, but lost the draft with some internet problems and I don't have the energy or memory to recreate it, but I encourage you to read the interview, Everything He Wants to Do is Illegal at motherearthnews.com.  R-E-S-P-E-C-T.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

This is the post I thought I lost, the other night:

I've been working on a project for a workshop presentation called The Ecology of Loss.  It is in three parts and focuses on the natural world and loss, companion animals, and climate/species extinction and the grief that accompanies (or should) it.  I am always trying to discover novel and powerful ways to introduce participants to the concepts and get them to a place of caring about "the other" at a corporal level.  Today I was reading an interview  at http://www.motherearthnews.com with Joel Salatin (Everything He Wants to Do Is Illegal).  He speaks eloquently about respect and honor vs. abuse and disregard in the section talking about meat. At his farm, they are trying to offer people alternatives to cultural extremes when it comes to food.  His husbandy is based on respect and gratitude and a wider angle view.  It is hard though to break through the "trance" a lot of folks are in so that they even consider their actions. 

Today, may  you receive and bestow respect.

Mexican cage wrestling and knitting circle

It's been an exciting day here at the grange hall.  We started the morning before school with Maisie's exhilarating round of crib rail rattling and mattress jumping wearing a lovely pink and black Scottie dog poncho and ended the evening with a good old fashioned knitting circle.  I think we are all glad tomorrow is Friday.  I am taking Monday off because Maisie's daycare is closed, so I get to have three days with the girl.  Yippee!

The Remains of the Day

It's10:30 p.m.  and since I picked Maisie up 

at day care I have played with Maisie, changed, Maisie, fed Maisie, gone to buy yarn for our knitting group tomorrow night, gone to the grocery store, fed Maisie, fed myself, made spinach squares for tomorrow night, attended my online class, did dishes twice and updated the blog.  Whew!  This doesn't even account for what Heather E. has been doing...no wonder we are tired.  Look at poor Tyler even. At least he landed on one of Maisie's soft blankets.  One of my friends reminded me that Maisie is Chief Iron in the Fire so here are some pics of her reading before bed, with her most beloved 'tween, Caleb, and modeling her new winter hat.  Off to bed for now because tomorrow is a big day...KNITTING GROUP!

Overcoming inertia

You may notice the date for the conception of this blog is several months ago with more recent labor pains...so far the most difficult part of starting this blog has been...well, starting the blog.

We have many irons in the fire...chief among them is the work on our house. We started out in the early spring looking for someone to shore up our front porch and maybe put some gutters up. As with all old houses (ours in an 1840's farmhouse) what you see is not usually what you get and we are now entering our sixth week of renovations that were begun with a decision to join the "vinyl is final" camp.

The photos are of the beginning part of our winterizing efforts. Once the porch was removed we discovered the lack of stringers so the house was pitching out over wall.  So we now have a new attic, roof and porch/deck.  This led to the discovery that there was NO insulation in the house. 

Now we have insulation, new siding, and vinyl. 

To be continued.