In the Spring

We had to say goodbye to our chickens this spring.  From what we understand, someone complained which lead our borough to send us  letter that we were in violation of ordinances and told us we had 10 days to get rid of them.  I spent the days leading up to day 10 gathering info and ordinances, but at the end of the day we hadn't read as well as we thought in the first place and it totally stinks.  The hardest part for me, beyond the strangeness of standing in the kitchen window and not looking out to see my girls and missing their eggs and sweetness, is that I really want to take the time to work on trying to do what I can to try to change the ordinances to at least allow us a few chickens.  But we're prepping our house to get it on the market in the next few weeks, so between house hunting and house prep and end of the school year activities and getting ready for baby #3 while I'm still sick 24/7, I just don't have the energy right now. 

Everything else is normal.  Good weather, windows open, kids happy outside (thank goodness!), yard work, grilling, lots of end-of-year school events, getting excited for the pool to open, lots of holidays and birthdays, getting excited about the baby.  That's all I have right now! 

Frosty

I'm standing in my bedroom alone doing yoga in the middle of the afternoon. I'm laughing at myself and my utter lack of physical grace, just happy to be moving.  I'm awkward and my body feels cumbersome, but I will myself to let go a bit and feel my breath steady itself. My gut is awkward and cumbersome, but I try to just move in each moment in a way that feels good. I feel myself slide into comfort in my own skin for just a moment and it surprises me, it's not something I'm conscious of feeling often.  It happens in movement and it happens in nature.  When I'm walking or dancing or doing yoga or closing my eyes and thinking or when I'm in the woods or when I'm in the backyard for 5 minutes on a frosty morning with a camera, like the photos above, capturing the tiny bits of freezing and colors before they melt with the sun and die with the changing seasons.  

On the First Day of Fall

I'm drinking pumpkin spice coffee and my toes are chilly in flip flops.  There's a little pile of leaves in the backyard that they raked this weekend and they're already jumping in the pile.  I'm thinking about picking out front porch pumpkins and mums and trying to make myself wait until October 1st, though I'm not really sure why. There's an entire dogwood tree in our backyard (our only official backyard tree right now) that has already turned completely red.

Fall is always such a strange time.  It's my favorite season for the weather and the fun and my birthday, but it always feels like such a whirlwind that starts in September and ends with a snowy January and you look back and wonder how the heck it all flew by so quickly.  So I kind of don't want to do much. Is it weird to acknowledge out loud that I'm a lot better at doing seasonal projects than I am at just keeping up with the day-to-day stuff that needs to happen in our house?  John is a million times better than me on most days, especially when it comes to dishes and laundry.  So this year, I want to focus more on just keeping more basic holiday sanity by keeping up with the normal, everyday stuff.  I've already decided that there's only one thing we (John and I) "need" to get for Christmas: a dishwasher.  ("Need" obviously being completely relative since we don't truly NEED one at all. ) And there's not any sort of great space in our kitchen, so we're thinking about one of the small versions on a counter.  We have a perfect corner that's basically unused space that would work well for a counter top version and I keep reading that they rate a ton better than the portable options.  Anyone want to give any input or share experience?

In the meantime: I'm getting some mums and pumpkins to place outside my door and if I can be patient, I'm making myself wait a few more weeks for them.  Nick is being the same thing for Halloween that he's been the past 2 years (a firefighter) and Mia just needs a cape and vampire teeth to be Dracula.  Throw in a day of pumpkin carving with friends and the possibility of a Libby's pumpkin bread kit and I think we're completely set for fall.  If we feel really crazy, we might pick apples.  But we probably won't and I'm kind of happy about that.  I'm feeling the same about Christmas. (Am I annoying you by talking about Christmas already?) Usually I make a million lists and plans and all sorts of stuff, all in the name of trying to keep it simple.  So I think I'm going to skip the lists and if I feel motivated for a holiday craft for the kids, get out the red and green construction paper to make chains.  Maybe slice and bake some oranges.  I'm not wrapping books, I'm giving them to the kids in a big basket to go nuts.  After all, she can read now.  And he's trying  Which means she can read all of the Christmas books! And I wouldn't want to deprive them of any reading time by having the books wrapped;)

Does someone want to remind me that I said all of this in the next few months when I start thinking about making lists??  All they really care about is the time with family and putting up a tree.  A few presents are the icing on the cake and the rest is just gravy if we have it in us to make it happen.  I need to remember that.

A Season of Flowers

Every year for the past few years, at the end of the growing season I told myself that I was going to grow more flowers the next year.  Then spring would come around and I'd try to plan all of the veggies to plant and throw flowers in here and there and forget about it until the season was over.  So this past spring I decided that this year would be the year I'd grow more flowers.  And then I started planning.

Do you have a garden?  If you do, you know how it goes.  You make a list of things you "need" in your garden, but then you order seeds and get a few extra for fun and you find plants here and there and suddenly, the garden is a lot more full than your original "plan."  I looked at my maps of where things would go and started to figure out where I could add extra growing space and realized just how many flowers I'd actually be growing and I had an idea: What if I asked around to see if anyone wanted some of my flowers?  I wasn't sure how it would all play out, so I started with a Facebook post asking if anyone would be interested in a subscription to a flower CSA for the summer.  And I got way more response than I expected.  I had 14 people sign up for the season for either weekly or bi-weekly flower shares from June-September.

Honestly, I was terrified.  I was looking at a big patch of grass in my backyard and crossing all of my fingers and toes that I could turn it into a patch of land that would grow enough flowers for my subscriptions for the summer.

The learning curve was crazy (to say the least) but I did it.  I made at least a million mistakes that will help me to plan better for next year, but here's the thing: I loved it even more than I thought I would.

I had no idea how it would all turn out when I started in the spring, I just knew that I wanted to grow a whole lot of flowers this year, and I wanted to be able to share them, and that really did happen.  Everything you see above was either grown in my garden or foraged nearby from the roadside or generous neighbors.    It didn't seem like so much at the time, but now that I look at those photos, I'm blown away by how much actually grew.  And I can't wait to get planning and growing for next season!

For now, I need to get some of dying plants out and get some fall crops and cover crops in there to keep the soil healthy and hopefully make it even better for next year.