Plans for Next Year: Chickens, Bees, Frogs

Next year I want would like: a second colony, in a homemade top bar hive. chickens, 3 of them. the beginning of a dwarf fruit tree orchard. a guild around the cherry tree. an earth oven in a straw bale shelter, a strawbale low wall with welcoming arch up front, and  some strawbale benches, shelters …

A Five-Year-Old’s Physics, Biology, Meteorology, Etc.

Amie drew her family for school (DH, Mama, Amie) ~ A: Water isn’t heavy. It’s just air that’s blue and wet. ~ I found her hiding behind a tiny notebook.  I asked her if hiding her face makes her entirely invisible. Incredibly, she did seem to believe this. Then she thought about it for a …

A Gardener’s Spring

This time of year I get that lump in my throat. I see my seedlings come up in the basement. I do the rounds of blogs – mostly gardeners, homesteaders – and see their seedlings come up as well. It touches me deeply. It is a reawakening of a childlike feeling of wonder, that, with …

Transition: Becoming Indigenous to a Place

During the Transition Training we watched a lot of images and videos of Transition Initiatives, and at first I watched them with mixed feelings of joy and anxiousness. My heart sank because I inevitably thought: “I can’t make that happen.” That sinking feeling stems from the fact that, though I arrived here over 11 years …

The Brumble/Gumble/Mumble Rule? (I forget)

A couple of days ago Amie and I were having some milk and coffee (respectively) in a coffee shop when she spotted the large lump on the back of the head of the man sitting right behind her. I had seen it long before she did and was hoping she wouldn’t turn around because I …

Amie Again Talks About Death

(It’s that dead bird again) Well, at bedtime Amie again asked to talk about the dead baby penguin. Again she wanted to know why there was no blood. Was it really dead? I explained that it died because it was too cold. Probably its heart stopped working. I explained that our blood needs to circulate …

Amie Talks about Death Again

In the evening Amie watched March of the Penguins. We had shown it to her about half a year ago but she wasn’t interested then. This time she was, going “oh so cute!” and so forth, but really paying attention when the little chick dies of exposure and the mother mourns over it. – what …

Reading and Writing Checks Already, Arithmatic, and the Metaphyics of Time

What with all the gardening around here it’s been a while since I wrote about Amie’s non-gardening doings and goings. Here are some newer developments. We’re working on her letters. She recognizes all the upper and lower case and can sound out and read three-letter words: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4RYw1LUqv8 But writing them is something else altogether, especially …

You Grew Up, Rabbit, That’s Why

Amie and Pooh Bear It was our co-houser’s birthday so Amie and I baked some cookies and sang Happy Birthday while he blew out a candle. Then we sat down to eat, and we each had a glass of milk. Amie repeated that she had made the cookies for him and Rabbit (Amie picked the …

Amie Talks about Death and Jesus

I had three very strange conversations with Amie today. Part one Out of the blue (we were washing hands) she said: – Pooh Bear is very fluffy so he will never die again. – So you think if you’re fluffy you can’t die? – Yes. But I am not fluffy, so I am going to …