back on this horse

if this blog were a plant it'd be brown and dead.

that said, and because i don't have the ego to convince myself that you care why i've not updated, i'll get straight to the good stuff.

1) our garden. we have a lovely small garden, which is decidely NOT brown and dead,because i have been a faithful steward to *it*, unlike this blog.. several tomato plants (one beauty has 25 tomatoes on it!), 18 squash plants (9 of them are insurance against the various blights that affect squash around here), 8 blackberry bushes (some of them already putting out fruit, though they aren't supposed to do that until next year!), five exotic bell peppers (chocolate, yellow, and purple), a sweet potato that volunteered further life from its grave in the compost pile, an avocado plant (planted on the day of rowan's birth), and some greens that are definitely listing.

2) the kids. i'm really enjoying these long summer days with jackson and rowan. we've been working and playing together and jack is so much better at listening and not arguing and being compassionate with his sister when he has constant reminders and long stretches of time to see how these courtesies affect our family dynamic. i'm really enjoying him, and getting lots of practice with using non-violent communication and active listening, with both kids. both rowan and jack are thriving.

jack is raising tarantulas.


















rowan is happy and in love with learning about the living world, especially what happens when things die. the compost has been a really useful source of examples for talking about how energy is neither created nor destroyed and how life begets life, even in death. she's taken to asking people we've just met what they want to happen when they die..."would you like to burned when you die? or buried so the bugs can eat you and you can turn into dirt and make flowers grow? what kind of flowers would you like your body to grow?" which is shocking but healthy, i think...better than her announcing to very surprised clerks that santa is dead (to her credit, she just means the real saint nick is no longer among the living...but the looks she got amongst all that saccharin yuletide cheer were priceless, though i tried not to laugh).




3) my work. i'm finishing the first part of my master's thesis on attachment parenting and it's good but hard work. i have 25 pages that include an introduction, problem statement, significance, and an extended literature review. having an advisor who thinks that intensive mothering is oppressive to women is a real challenge, but in a good way.

4) my other work...the one that actually feeds us. my work at home biz is growing all the time. i have lots of custom orders lined up, as usual, and we are selling at one market per week. we stopped one market some distance away because it was just too stressful and hot and long and we spent too much money getting there and setting up and eating while we were there. some things i have done recently... hmmm, i can't seem to load any more pics on this post so i'll start another and see if i can show off my pretties there.