the boys have been asking about visiting their grandma and grandpa lately. so a few weeks ago, rowan called them up and told them that they were on their way. fortunately, he made the plans to visit on the same weekend that our state's homeschooling convention was taking place just half an hour away from grandma and grandpa's house, so we all drove out there last week, dropped the kids off with grandma and grandpa and had ourselves a mini-vacation!

the morning we left for the convention, the weather turned cold and raining. we got lost on the way, but eventually made our way into the exhibit hall, only 20 minutes later than we had intended. we were wet and cold, but excited to get our hands on the curriculum we've been looking at online for the past several months, and find some more fun gadgets to use as teaching tools. for the two days we were there, we walked up and down the aisles several times, chatted to countless moms and dads who are currently home-educating their children, found some really great stuff, walked out of some really bad presentations, but were overall encouraged, overwhelmed, and excited. we've toured a local montessori school and will look into the public kindergarten, and another private one for comparison. so far, homeschooling has been our favorite option (it's FUN!), but we're exhausting all our options while we still can.

here we are filling out the evaluation form:

ten points to those who can correctly identify that quote. (and some major props from kenny.)

we've tilled 3 1/2 rows and are trying to figure out which plants and seeds to put where. i'm planning on making salsa a lot this summer. because i've come to realize i just don't like store-bought, jarred salsa. the fresh stuff is definitely the way to go. the only problem is...i don't have a recipe for homemade salsa. i can look up recipes in books and online, but first i'd like to check with friends and family and even strangers who have made salsa before and love their salsa recipes. even if you didn't love your recipe, we all have different tastes...so send it any way. for instance, you may like your salsa hot and spicy while i like mine with a lot of juice and cilantro. send 'em on over, please!

now onto more bees!  i was the one to don the bee-suit today. our good friend buzz came over to mark our queen...in other words, paint her red so we can spot her right away next time we go open the hive and play with the bees.

kenny took out the empty queen cage from the hives yesterday!



when the bees are shipped to you, they separate the queen from the workers by sending her in her own cage. she and the worker bees eat their way through a sugar cork at the end of the cage. this way, the workerbees have time to accept her without harming her. once she is free, the workers do their thing to feed her and produce more workers with her.

the following picture shows the beginnings of some comb that the bees made since they arrived last week (this was on the side of the queen cage). the orange and brown bits are pure pollen (different colors from different plants!) and smell like a big fat bouquet of flowers (strong!). you may even notice a bit of raw honey between the pollen.

back in 1985, my family was fortunate to spend 6 months in oxford, england. i was only 12 years old, so the grandeur and beauty (and nook-and-cranny pubs) weren't really noticed by me until i went back to visit several times, several years later. i remember my mom being the only one in the house to wake up before dawn on may morning and walk downtown (we lived a short 5 or 10 minute walk from magdelen university) and enjoy may morning; welcoming spring to oxford.

since then, every may 1, i wake up and wonder how the choir sounded atop magdelen tower, and whether or not they had rain or snow, or warm weather. i don't know why it's stuck with me so much, as i never experienced a may day celebration.

so to acknowledge may day (which, i know, was yesterday), i'm sharing a recipe we had for dinner last night. it was a hit because our pickiest eater (rowan) ate two helpings. something that happens extremely rarely. i only say it was a hit, and not a huge hit, because kenny was fond of it, but didn't rave about it. when i asked him if he liked it, i knew the moment he paused before saying, "yeah...." that his answer meant, "i'll eat it again if forced to you make it, but please let's not put this in the heavy meal rotation." if he interupted my question with a hearty, "MMMMMMmmmm", then i know to put that meal in the heavy rotation.

the meal was a vegetarian one, and i could live solely on a vegetarian diet (with a few steaks thrown in every once in a while). this is why i find it challenging to cook for a family of five very different tastes. i know i'm not alone in this as the "head chef" of the house. most kids are picky eaters, and a lot of couples have different tastes. fortunately, kenny and have have many of the same tastes, but enough differing that i find it necessary to use "the old standbys" all too often.

i'm trying to break this pattern this spring and summer. with the addition of the One Local Summer meal a week, I'm also going to pitch all the old recipes (well, okay, not all of them...because they are tried and true!) and find new, fresh ideas.

our first review is of Lemon Asparagus Pasta (from Simply in Season, the Spring section).

The reviewers:
Kenny, adult: meat and potatoes with flare for indian, thai, and cheap chinese food.
Liz, adult: pasta, rice, veggies and sauce, with a flare for indian, thai, and mediterranean.
Rowan, 4 1/2: depends on the day or his mood, with a flare for cold cereal, or indian.
Sawyer, 3 1/2: if it's food, he'll eat it.
Adam, 1 1/2: if it's green, he won't touch it. in fact, when offered any vegetable, he gags. loves fruits and bread.

The recipe:
Lemon Asparagus Pasta

8 oz. angel hair
2 1/2 cups asparagus, cut into 1" pieces
1 T. butter
1/2 cup green onions
1 1/2 t. lemon peel
3 T lemon juice
3/4 cup milk
2 eggs
1 T. fresh dill
1/4 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. ground nutmeg

Cook asparagus in boiling water for 3-4 minutes. Add angel hair. When pasta is done, drain both the asparagus and pasta.

While pasta cooks, melt butter in large frypan over medium heat. Add green onions and lemon peel and saute 1 minute. Add lemon juice and cook until liquid is almost evaporated.

Beat together milk and eggs. Add with pasta and asparagus to pan with green onions. Cook over low heat until milk mixture is lsightly thick, about 4 minutes. Do not boil.

Stir in dill, salt, and nutmeg. Serve immediately.

****

Kenny's rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Liz's rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Rowan's rating: two plates= 5 out of 5 stars
Sawyer's rating: He had a sore throat, so he didn't eat much.
Adam's rating: He threw a piece of aspargus at me. How dare I even try?

we're thisclose to getting the plans for our summer garden in. we've extended it by several feet this year and we're still planning which plants and seeds go where.

it's also that time of year to sign up for a very cool summer challenge - one local summer. so all you foodies and gardeners out there...go sign yourselves up and start planning! i'm already thinking of the local farm stands i'll visit and the recipes we'll be making with our own garden produce.

we recently cheated and bought strawberries at the grocery store...but the boys were in dire need of something other than apples and pears - our winter fruits of choice. i'm eager to get to the local berry farm and pick all the berries we can eat. we got a little sick of strawberries last year with the amount that we picked that i still haven't used the ones that we froze! there is just something so perfect about a warm, sweet freshly picked strawberry that one frozen 10 months ago can't match.

bear with me (ha! another pun!) as the site may change it's look from time to time. we're trying to launch a spring look for smithical (because i'm a fashion designer and all) and we're working out color and print kinks. i'm not quite happy with it, but my graphic designer husband has a full-time job that takes him away from MY honey-do list. if only i shared his graphic design and computing knowledge. i'm just a lackey with a loud voice....

• sawyer calls his stuffed frog, "booby." i have no idea where he came up with it, but they have crazy names for a lot of their animals...this one just stuck. funny.
• when we're listening to music in the car and it's turned down low, sawyer's way of asking us to turn it up is, "can you please low it up?"
• rowan still says, "todeger" when he means "together."
• adam is our first child that babbles. he has his very own language and way of speaking and it's clearly intonations that hears from our speaking. he does have many words, and repeats very clearly words that we say to him. but he chooses his babble talk over actual words all the time. for now, i'm not worried. if he's still doing this in a year...i'll begin to worry. i'm trying awfully hard not to talk for him. he is "the baby" afterall!
  
• the boys love our cat, greymalkin. they call her "pet" and follow her obsessively around the house, creating sleep ares for her (piles of blankets) and go through periods where they want to feed her 10 times a day. grey has had a lot of illnesses recently, and she's coming up on her 17th birthday. we're worried how they'll take her passing on.
• art time: how long does it last with other people's kids? we do painting, sketching and gluing (we had a bad moment with scissors the other day...sawyer's sworn them off after a small, but nasty, cut he got last week) and all of the art times last about 7 minutes. all that set up and clean up for 7 minutes worth of art? i know this is typical and generally it doesn't bother me...but i'd like it to last longer. eventually. to make the clean up worth it! i'll reintroduce more kid-friendly scissors to sawyer soon and then bring him back to his other scissors when i know he's over his new cutting phobia.
• speaking of art time, we made some lovely felt crowns last week. i still need to sew the elastic on them and i think these ones will be a proto-type to a better felted (real wool) crown we'll make later. hopefully when their cousins ramona and astrid visit later this spring. BUT...my sewing machine broke. and my other one? it's extremely fussy. i'm in need of a new one and i can't decide whether i will spring for a good one now (with tax return money) or save for 6 months and get a cheapo one now? advice?
  

you'll have to forgive the abundance of bee puns i'll be making around here. i just can't help myself.

the honeys (short for honeybees) are moved in and all unpacked, living and working in their new hives. kenny takes the boys down to the hives at least 23 times a day "to say hello." but in all these trips he's noticed that the bees seem to be doing their job. they enter the hive with pollen on their legs (a sign that the queen might have already come out of her cage and is already laying eggs to make more worker bees), and on yesterday's check of the inside of the hives, they're busy making wax, or the little compartments that you can see in your mind when you visualize a honeycomb.

it's exciting stuff. the life of a honeybee is fascinating. if you give it just a little of your attention, you'll be hooked.  we are very impatiently waiting our next 6 pounds of bees in the mail. we should have another hive up and buzzing (see? i just can't stop) in no time.

i really wish kenny was the one writing the honeybee posts. because i'm like a 2nd grader giving a report on honeybees and he actually knows what he's talking about.


more photos! rowan, kenny, and buzz, our local beekeeping friend. yes, that's his name. appropriate, no? i wonder what cars driving by thought when they saw these three walking our yard:

rowan and kenny, suiting up to install the bees (every inch of your skin is covered). rowan and sawyer (and eventually adam) have to share the kids bee suit. they love getting dressed up in it. i'm thinking it'll make a great costume for halloween (already made!):

at 7:19 a.m. this morning the phone rang. it was the post office in our small little town (since the general store closed down last summer, the post office and the methodist church are the only thing in town next to several houses).

10,000 honeybees were waiting for us and i don't think they wanted to wait until our normal 3:30 pm delivery time to get them out of their office. kenny and rowan hopped in the car and went to pick them up.

it certainly is that time of year again...the time to dig in the dirt and enjoy the mess. warm temperatures and sunny skies have been dominating the cloudy weather lately. i can't wait for this book to come out next month. i plan on finding some fun stuff to do outside all summer long!

kenny's been wanting to plant trees for a while now, so we spent yesterday evening planting three new fruit trees in our yard. our orchard trees are old and produce maybe a pear once a year or so. there are three diseased trees, so we're cutting those down and we replaced them with three healthy, brand new cherry trees (2) and a peach tree.

we've been planning out our vegetable garden. if you remember from last year, we had many a critter problem (including our very own beloved chickens!), so the first order of business is to dig a trench and put up a fence. a small one, but a fence nonetheless.  no broccoli or pole bean will go in the ground until that fence is up. we're getting a little nutty this year: we're going to do a few rows of corn and maybe some potatoes, sweet potatoes and soybeans! i'm hoping to really can a bunch of tomatoes and beans and pickles this year.

go celebrate this fine earth we've been given to cultivate! get your hands in the dirt and get dirty and muddy today! happy earth day!