On Monday the weather was a balmy 47 degrees that soon felt like 74 as the sun surprised us in the afternoon. While I worked on the garden, trying to deter a strip of stubborn dandelions, I heard the summer sound of the ice cream truck coming around the corner. The driver is a woman and I suspect also a mother, since kids often accompany her in the back seat of her truck. She appears in the summer, bringing her vibrant-colored vehicle around the block, tinkling its tunes of advertising, but she also has appeared in our neighborhood during school vacations and conference days. I suspect that she has a job which accommodates the school calendar. Perhaps she works for the school district but has a side job driving an ice cream truck in her spare time.
My imagination went wild as I weeded. I started to consider what fun it would be to have a secret life as an ice cream truck driver. What if I kept the cute colored vehicle in the garage so no one knew. Batman has his Batmobile in the cave, and Spidey hides his suit. I would have my ice cream truck. When the magic moment arrived (otherwise known as 73 degrees) I’d emerge in my magic ice cream mobile and deliver treats to the residents of my city. The best fantasy would be if I could give out ice cream for free. The kids and I could toss popsicles and ice cream sandwiches out of the windows like confetti. Imagine the smiles that would sprout on the faces of weary people and cranky children handed a treat. We’d leave them laughing, with sticky ice-cream-covered chins, and wondering who was that woman anyway?
Tags: journal
This year I’m removing my strawberry plants from the garden. Shovel in hand, I noticed the little white blossoms and had to photograph them before they were gone forever. It’s intriguing to watch the shy flowers turn into fruit as the petals fall off and the small yellow center transforms into a big red berry.
Strawberries are fun. The kids had a great time gathering berries. We’ll miss them. These plants were a gift from a friend who moved away so they have extra significance. But the strawberries also are difficult to control with their long roots and runners. They had taken over most of the small patch I can use to grow my vegetables. Next year we’ll get new ones.
Yard work is fun. That’s one of many discoveries as I’ve spent good portions of the past three days taking advantage of the dry weather to work outside. Here are a few lessons I learned….
Yard work is a work out. After spending three hours moving mulch, I could feel many new muscles. In other words, I was sore. It did more for my back and lats than my running ever does, and the shoveling made great machine squats. On the cool day, the kids felt cold but I was hot and thirsty, as if I had taken a long run.
Yard work is dirty work. I shouldn’t take the kids with me and incorporate them into my mulch-moving task unless I also have the time to give them all baths afterwords. Plan on lots of laundry too.
Yard work is hard work. Moving the shovel and wheelbarrow made my fingers thick, red and bumpy with potential blister sites. I came inside and thought about the easy life I have had, my soft white fingers that rarely blister, and the level of labor I’ve never known.
The family that digs together stays together. Okay, I’m exaggerating that one. But the hours the girls and I spent working together with newspapers and mulch to improve a strip of dirt into a garden also improved our relationship. For the rest of the day the kids were exceptionally affectionate and grateful, showering me with hugs and “I love yous”. I think they liked working on a project with me. Maybe they liked being together with me, playing an important part in my job, and seeing our efforts have an effect.
Yard work is expensive and creative. It takes time to make a change, whether it is adding mulch or digging up a bed of strawberries. Of course, there is always the option of hiring someone else to do it, which motivates me to do it myself. Mulch isn’t cheap. Neither is time. The water bill gets a bump too, from extra bathing and laundering. When the garbage truck judged my can to be too heavy with weeds, I had to think of a solution or cough up more money for disposal fees. (note: strawberry roots carry too much dirt!) Each day this week I think I’ve spent more time than I calculated outside trying to accomplish something, and ended up throwing away the day’s schedule into chaos. Combating areas where unwanted plants had invested deep roots, I experimented with various methods of elimination, including decorating the strip of dirt with colorful sports pages: hey, I had a chance to catch up on the NCAA basketball tournament…after it was over. But what work doesn’t have a cost or require creativity?
Yard work is rewarding. At least some of the time. Weeding can be too redundant and make me wonder why I try. I have enjoyed though looking out the dining room window to admire our strip of dirt now a new bed of dark mulch. It’s a beautiful site, compared to the weeds that once ran wild there. It’s beautiful in its potential: I like the sight of a garden with mulch and also a project that has possibilities. It’s also beautiful because it reminds me of my independence, the work I did by myself, as well as my interdependence, the work I did with my daughters. I can’t wait to see what will grow.
Yard work is fun! In weeks like this, I could confess it is even addicting…good thing there’s always more to do…
Tags: gardening
Watching the frog eggs develop this week surprised me. I’ve never seen a tadpole appear. The eggs which were dull black dots last Friday when I took them from the pond, now have transformed into transparent sacs, growing in size to accommodate the metamorphosis begnning now. If I move the bowl sometimes I will see them wriggle inside the membrane, these creatures now around a centimeter in length, long and thin, life shaped like a comma. Looking at the one in the tank, I can spy a pair of gills and the distinction between head and tail. It’s amazing to watch them change from egg to tadpole, as if they are in an invisible womb, or rather a visible one. I wonder what it would be like to see our own children as they change through these small stages of early life. What would we think if we could watch them form from the earliest moments? Since we can see these tadpoles as they grow, we could call it a transparent process. But it’s not transparent: I have no idea what is happening. I can only observe and be amazed.
Footnote:
I wrote this paragraph a week ago. Monday morning we noticed the tadpole in the tank had hatched. During the past week we’ve fed it goldfish flakes and watched it dart around the tank. It spends most of its time, as a proverbial aquatic ostrich might, hiding its head in the gravel, camouflaged as debris. Already the frog-like eyes can be seen as well as feathery gills. Since it is a small frog, a tree frog, I imagine that the metamorphosis will happen fast. We are excited to watch this little life transform.
Tags: homeschool
In addition to cooking crab cakes, and taking care of a tadpole, I’ve been busy reading the manual for our new camera, a Canon PowerShot A520. As proof, I offer this picture Ted took of me on the sofa, where I often spend late night attempts at reading and napping…
Our 2000 vintage PowerShot S10 met an untimely end after I dropped it a few too many times in the midst of my juggling. But perhaps it was timely for this new camera is fun, offering many options for photographs. It fits in the palm of my hand, has a better zoom lens and creates higher quality images. Since the macro function operates differently from our previous camera, I’ve been experimenting between programming the pictures myself and utilizing the pre-programmed modes, such as ones for portraits and foliage. I think it will take us a while to learn how to take advantage of all the features.
Although I felt I should have suffered longer for my mistakes and waited a while for a new camera as penance, I was happy when Ted ordered it this week. Now I can record all the changes of spring I’ve been noticing.
Until the rechargeable batteries arrive on Monday, we’re trying to ration our use of the camera, but I did upload a few more photos at my flickr page…
Tags: Uncategorized
For a special treat last night I made crab cakes and tartar sauce:
served with baby potatoes, spinach salad, rustic bread and our current favorite white wine, Hofer’s Gruner Veltliner 2003. I bought two Dungeness crabs, cleaned, removing the meat and mixing it with bread crumbs, spices, egg and mayonnaise. Capers, pickles, parsley and scallions flavored the tartar sauce.
While we ate dinner, I baked a cobbler containing pears, dried cherries, almonds and chocolate chips tucked beneath a coconut-sprinkled crust. We ate the dessert, still warm from the oven, in bowls with scoops of raspberry sorbet.
Tags: food
