we've been outdoors more often than in. the majority of the garden is in (with the exception of the tomato and pepper plants that were eaten by a vole last weekend). we've had a long stretch of hot weather and no rain, so we've been watering the newly planted garden and flower seedlings every night as the sun sets. it's one of my favorite times of day - warm and heavy light from the western sky sun.  color is returning to the yard and so is my desire to redo the front of the house. we've already torn out 6 yew bushes (or evergreens) at the front of the house, and we dream of a big country front porch someday...but that someday is long off, and for now, i will make the front as lovely and welcoming as i possibly can. this year, we'll be planting some flowers on a newly dug flower bed that lines the front bushes:


here's a closer look. at the front left corner is a patch of day lilies and towards the porch is a big bushy plant of lavender. there is a smaller lavender plant on the other side of the porch and then pure dirt in which to plant more prettiness. one reason i don't like these yew bushes is that they house hornets nests each summer. and we like to use the front door quite a bit. we don't like being greeted by several hornets, however.


before moving here, i knew only about hostas and impatiens. i had no clue that there were amazing plants with gorgeous flowers that grew back EVERY spring and summer! yes, i was oblivious to perennials. and i was unaware at how many gorgeous ones there were. it's not a good idea to have a novice flower gardener buy a house with large perennial gardens. because to me, this plant looks like a giant man-eating weed.





when we do yard work, they hang out with us. normally they play on their bikes, or with sidewalk chalk, or run down behind the house to the jungle gym, so they're pretty tired and hungry by lunch on the days we work outside. today, rowan really did stay outside with kenny the entire time and helped him a great deal with the digging and pulling out grass and carrying soil to the new bed. it was fun for me to watch. at the end of their work, kenny let rowan "drive" (steer) the tractor around the yard. i think he was inspired by the 12-year-old boy driving the vintage john deere at the memorial day parade this morning. ahhhh... country-living. soon enough, prom day will be here and rowan will be driving his date to prom in our newly painted vintage john deere tractor.

and at the end of the day, this is what we look like. please tell me that others' kids look just as "rode hard and put away wet" as ours do right before bedtime (or in the case of the warmer months, right before showers and then bed)? they're dirty, wet, sweaty, ripe, but most importantly, worn out and tired.

ahhh...spring and summer. longer days, more energy, beauty, room to run, and happy boys (and a very happy mama!)

it's true. i married a man who used to eat biscuits and gravy for breakfast most mornings out of the week. it's not my cup of tea, so i never really leanred how to make a good biscuit. i tried once, but i think i threw them out before i had a chance to serve them (hard, brittle, tasteless).

i mentioned mary janes farm magazine in a post that seemed to have gotten lost in cyberspace this morning (stephanie, i did get your comment...i'm glad to see i'm not the only one who reads it!), and the latest issue has changed my biscuit-making future.

for tonight's dinner, i made a biscuit that is light, airy, buttery, and flavorful all due to the recipe included below. what i love about it is that she doesn't use baking powder...she uses good old fashioned cream of tartar. her comment about this is that by doing so, she purposefully leaves out the sodium aluminum sulfate, sodium aluminum phosphate, and sodium acid pyrophosphate found in most baking powders. i can honestly tell you i have no idea what that means, but it sounded good to include with this recipe.... 

enjoy!

biscuit buns
makes 16 biscuit "buns"

2 1/2 cups flour
2 1/2 tsp cream of tartar
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp salt
6 T. cold butter
1 1/2 cup buttermilk

preheat oven to 450.
in a large bowl, combine flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and salt. using a pastry blender or fork, cut butter into dry ingredients until mixture resembles coarse crumbs with some pea-sized chunks throughout.
make a depression in the center of the mix to receive the liquid. add buttermilk all at once and mix just enough to form a sticky dough (do not overmix).
turn the dough out onto a heavily floured surface and pressout to about 1/4" thickness. dip a 2" biscuit cutter in flour and cut out 32 biscuits. on an ungreased baking sheet, stack two biscuits, one on top of another, to create biscuit "buns" so that you have 16 double biscuit "buns."
bake for 8-10 minutes, or until tops are a light golden brown.

*

i made a 3-bite burger recipe to go in between these biscuits: ground chuck, salt, pepper, fresh chopped garlic and melted cheese...a decadent cheeseburger!  so decadent that i also put a huge green salad on the table to balance out the artery-clogging main dish.

...are posted in two different posts at our homeschool blog.

for the past two years, kenny and i have attended the state homeschool convention in harrisburg which happens to fall on mother's day weekend. last year, being our first year, we were excited to have a day and a half alone together since kenny's parents live not far from the convention and love an excuse to spend time with their grandboys, and we were excited to see what homeschooling "looked like" since we were fairly new to the concept and were only gleaning our information via web sites and friends up until that point. i remember feeling extremely grateful for the adult-only time while we talked (and talked, and talked) with vendors about different curriculums. we knew right away what we didn't want (web-based schooling) and we knew fairly soon into the first day what we loved (lots of hands-on interaction).

our time away from the boys both last year was both fun and difficult, but needed. i'm a big proponent of kids-and grandparent time (without parents) for the sake of all parties involved. i love watching the boys with both sets of their grandparents. and i love having time with kenny to talk without being interupted on a minute-to-minute basis. :)

more information will be up at our homeschool blog later this week about the convention and our plans for next year (and the summer!) if you're interested.

at the end of mother's day weekend i'm completely overwhelmed by how much i have been given - a great mom of my own, three amazing boys to mother every single day, and a husband who is supportive and loving and never ceases to surprise me. there are days that i am not deservig of any mother's day celebration, but in reading one of my blog favorites, i recently read that Grace is where we live.

[i meant to publish this last week...never got around to it!]

the past two weekends were gorgeous - weather in the high 70s two weekends ago, and last week, it reached temperatures in the high 80s. even though we played in the the sun as much as possible and enjoyed the heat (oh, how i enjoyed the heat! after being cold since early october, i stayed out of the shade and soaked up the sun), it felt too much like august, and not enough like april. this past weekend, it felt like april. we had sun and clouds, moisture hung in the air, and it never got above the mid-60s.

our yard was already looking a bit neglected. our grass, thickening with color, was also growing longer, and the weeds were three times the height of the grass. the rest of the garden was beginning to grow many (many!) dandelions and we needed to work the soil. it felt like the best way to sabbath.

i love our garden. i especially love that my husband is the primary gardener. i love the idea of gardening...but the work that it takes to maintain a large-ish, organic, productive garden is BIG. i love planting and watering and picking the fruits of someone else's labor. but the weeding? the fertilizing (fish emulsion is not lovely to smell)? the pruning and thinning and...it's too much for me. i lose interest in weeding after only five minutes - especially if they're particularly difficult to pull.

this is the first year we've planted in march (or early april?). we've waited until end of may to plant a summer garden, but this year we're doing a three-season garden. our onions look lovely sprouting up above the hay, and i can tell the peas and potatoes are loving the cooler temperatures and on again-off again rain (they're sprouting).

while kenny did the gardening, i hopped on the tractor and mowed. i love the smell of freshly mowed grass, but each year i get less excited about all the diesel we use mowing the 6 1/2 acres surrounding us. i look foward to the day we build a fence around half of our acreage for a more environmentally friendly mowing method.

we were blessed with amazing weather this weekend. beginning on thursday, we had sunny days and temperatures in the 60s and 70s.  we were able to plant the rest of our "spring" garden (onions, potatoes, peas, and rhubarb), do some mini-spring cleaning inside and outside, but most importantly, pretend it was the dog days of summer and planned a cookout on the (local) beach.

after a morning of baking (strawberry pancakes for breakfast, strawberry bread, and chocolate chip cookies), we packed up our cooler and picnic basket full of baked goods and cooking tools (grill, charcoal, can opener for the baked beans...), packed up the "speed racer," "reactor," "instep trailer", "diamondback" and "adult huffy" into the van and set off for sand and sun.

the boys talk about their bikes using the names that are written on them. when we're on the trail, you often hear sawyer yelling in his superhero voice: "here comes the REACTOR!" that's his bike. the older boys love the bike trail and have been begging to  bike since the first warmish day of the season. this weekend promises to be in the 80s, so we might be repeating our weekend again.

not just one, but both of my sewing machines died this week. and just when i really got the sewing bug. i've been focusing on knitting and organizing over the colder months, and it never seemed enticing to sit in the cold guest room (where the sewing nook is) and sew when i could curl up under a blanket and knit or watch tv, or begin my love of cheesy british mystery-novels. but now, i want to sew. i have boy's pants and quilts and dolls and placemat-napkin sets and curtains all itching to be made...and my beloved 50-year-old sewing machines are gone. the motor on my green machine is fried, and the table-sewing machine's bobbin is really messed up. REALLY messed up.

i am sure that i could take both of them to a repair shop, but truthfully (and secretly), i'd love a new one. one that sews like a dream...one that isn't 50 pounds...one that doesn't wake the dead. i'll even take a new-used one, as long as it was "born" within the last decade or so.

and now my search begins. goodbye "green machine" and "other-sewing-machine-i-didn't-quite-bond-with."

kenny has finally entered the blogging world with his new gardening journal. follow him at the good husbandman. the blog has pictures and journal keeping of his seedlings, plantings, vegetable and fruit gardens, and flower beds that dot our landscape.

it reached 70 degrees yesterday.

that gave the boys an excuse to get the hose and buckets out, strip down to their shorts and barefeet and make a huge mud puddle in the driveway.

rowan told me this morning that they were "painting the garage brown with mud." i guess i have some damage control to do today. fortunately, it's sunny and warmer today and tomorrow. unfortunately, all three boys woke up with colds.

first of all...thank you, heather and bonnie, for volunteering your husbands and their drywall/plastering work. we'll be in touch!

we were gifted recently with some really fun new additions to our classroom. they're actually not really used for school time, but they're fun to have, and we've all been enjoying them!

this LARGE chalkboard we mounted on a big blank wall in our kitchen. it's perfect - the three boys can stand (on chairs or stools) and draw for very long periods of time - i usually encourage drawing time when i'm getting dinner ready, but they're constantly dragging a kitchen chair over and erasing, drawing, erasing again, drawing again during the day. here, we have adam drawing his famous rainbow. he also like to draw his faces all over it.

 

three wooden, antique desks were also given to us. they're perfectly beautiful. adam likes to share the chairs and the older two like to have their own. i've since moved them from the dining room window to the back porch windows. the boys like to draw or color on them. we still "do school" at the kitchen table.

does anyone else have kids who automatically start saying "cheese!" once they see a camera?



sawyer, taking his "personal time" to practice drawing out of one of his ed emberley books

everytime a conversation about a plumber begins, i can't help but think of the cartoon (sesame street? electric company?) about the parrot and the plumber. the parrot is inside saying "Who is it?" when the plumber knocks on the door but never actually answers the door...and the plumber has to answer over and over "It's the plumber...I've come to fix the sink!" getting angrier and angrier when the door isn't answered. am I the only one who remembers that? anyone? anyone?

here is our downstairs hallway ceiling, after the discovered dripping coming from our bathroom. kenny tore off all the plaster and made the hole a bit bigger for the plumbing work later this week. the job is a bit involved and complicated so we decided not to tackle it ourselves (or himself, since i would only stand under the ladder saying, "how's it going up there" providing no help whatsoever) and hired a plumber to do the work. since the plumber won't take baked bread as payment, does anyone know of a good plasterer who might do the work for a few home-cooked meals as a barter?

don't you wish that's how we all did business?