Yarn Along

I took a quick break from the shawl last week to crochet up this pretty little bonnet for a friend.

I love it.  I love the design, I love the ease of stitching, I love the old-fashioned feel.

I always feel I ought to be practical when I make things (and even moreso when giving things as gifts) so white, since it matches everything, was the obvious choice.

BUT~ couldn't you just see a bit of color in that medallion on back?    Like purple and green?  Or a pop of bright red?

I am thinking I'll be making a colorful version of this soon!  Though I don't know of any new or upcoming girlies in the near future, it will be a nice thing to set aside for whenever the need may arise.

Pattern:   Blessing Day Bonnet

What about you? 

Do you think it is better to stick with practical colors on projects or to go with your instincts?

Would you rather receive something colorful and unique or something that can coordinate well with anything?

I've been reading Flourish: Balance for Homeschool Moms by Mary Jo Tate. 

You'll be hearing more about it~ I'll be reviewing it in a few weeks.

Following along with Ginny and her yarn along...

The Edible Gardens in Early July

I've been meaning to show you the 'completed' garden for a while now.

Come to think of it, I've been meaning to show you a painted diagram of the gardens too because I like doing that sort of thing, but seeing how I haven't yet painted the garden layout... 

and seeing how many of the things I had planted didn't actually COME UP...

I guess it might have been a good thing I didn't show you my hopes for this garden because you won't know just how dashed they are.  ;-)

For example~  I was excited to try my hand at growing POPCORN this year!  I planted five rows and several varieties.  This is what has become of that:

Four measly little shoots.

?!?!

But really, the sweet corn isn't much better:

Sporatic and blotchy.  And we can forget about this "knee-high by the 4th of July" bit, too.

My sweet pepper plants have been eaten at best- possibly without any chance of rebounding, at worst- completely to the ground.  Of course, our hot peppers are doing fine- but only Matt loves those!

None of my lettuces/spinaches have come up at all.

None of my cilantro or dill has come up at all, despite additional plantings.

The basil is stunted.

Many of the 'seed' plantings had a bad turnout and I wonder how much of that has to do with being planted in hay.

And the bugs- oh, the bugs, and slugs and vicious little beasties!  This has been the worst year I have known for pests and I am not accustomed to being so overcome!  I have very little knowledge about organic pest control because I've always been lucky, I suppose...so I think a fair amount of pest research is in my (very near) future.

I wonder about the effects of hay in this regard too.  It seems like hay may be a beautiful place for beasties to burrow and live.

I feel sortof bad for blaming the hay- it really does help so much with weed protection and moisture retention- but it is the one big change I have made this year.  Not sure if these problems are a coincidence or a symptom.

Nevertheless, there has been some progress.

Here was the hay garden at the end of June:

And here it is this week, in early July:

The tomatoes are flourishing after the usual week or two of freaking out from being put into the big, rocky ground instead of their nice little cozy, crumbly little starter pots.

And I am very excited about the staking system I have in place.  I couldn't afford to go all-in to the whole trellis-fence staking this year (fence is expensive!!!) but I bought two rolls of it as an experiment with leftover cages and some wooden stakes Matt made for me to supplement.  The fence looks like it is going to work marvelously at this point.  I can't wait to see how it holds up to mature, heavily fruited plants!

If it does well, I will gladly never look at another tomato cage in my own garden again- and good riddance!

Mid-June I had a kind neighbor come and till me up a new 'patch' for pumpkins and sunflowers.   The animals were very curious about the whole thing.

It is next to the potato patch (on the left side of the picture).

And here it looks this morning~

This will likely be a tilled garden simply because hay is such a lot of work and by the time pumpkins start going crazy- there isn't much opportunity for weeds to grow anyway.  

But I may change my tune.

Along the back and pasture-edge are the sunflowers.  With a few scattered in among the pumpkins for good measure.

Because when you have a seed packet- why save the last few seeds?  Really!

 

  

The garlic is nearly ready to be harvested...

And the swiss chard should have been already!  That is on this weeks' agenda.

This is the potato patch- which likes its' new home (and needs to be hay mulched) ...

And the flower "cutting garden", right next door.

 These ladies would be nice 'pest control' if they didn't also scratch up my plants!  Now that gardens are in, they are stuck in the fence again until fall when they can be put to work cleaning things up.

I am not their favorite person right now.

The garden has more bare spots that I had hoped for (thanks to the non-viable seeds) so, though I thought I was through with the planting, I will try to fill in those spots with late crops like peas, radishes, lettuce and spinach (I WILL have fresh lettuce and spinach.  The end.)

There are always disappointments when gardening- it's just the fact of life.  My biggest one so far are the pitiful sweet peppers.  I will be sad not to eat crisp, fresh beautiful peppers from just outside the door. The popcorn is a disappintment too- but not as much so because that was an experiment anyway.

A few other new-to-me things: eggplant and okra.  We'll see how they go!  I have never even EATEN okra, let alone GROWN it, so it should be interesting...

In just a few weeks this garden will look entirely different and I'll be in the harvesting mode.  

Can't wait.

How does your garden grow?

It must be summer.

Weekends are full of picnics and parties, good food and friends.  Plentiful flowers to plunk on tables for decorations and the smell of the grill making the whole hilltop hungry.  And if I am really lucky~ a bit of time in the shade of the trees, crochet hook in hand.

It must be summer.

We hosted a 4th of July bash this weekend.  Six parents.  Sixteen children.  Having swirling, circling sparklers in the hands of that many rowdy, excited children gives a whole new level of danger to the holiday devoted to setting fire to explosives for fun.  In order to keep grabby hands filled, Matt took to lighting a handful of sparklers at a time.  Seems men, like children, have low/no regard for danger.  No one was hurt or burned or stabbed by sparkling sticks though and for that I was/am grateful.

My sister had two emergency foster children living a sad story and at one point in the dark of that evening, as one of the girls sat on Matt's lap around the bonfire eating S'mores, I overheard her say to herself "This is the best night of my whole life."  And my heart ached for that poor little girl because it probably was.  What a sad, sad thing.  My heart just aches for those people who are not as fortunate as we have grown so accustomed to forgetting we are.

The next day was a Bocce ball tournament and more S'mores (it is a sad life we lead) at the other Newmans' and Sunday, I forced myself to do nothing but linger long.  And, of course, crochet.

I've been hoping to finish this bridal shawl for some time now and it keeps getting put off.  I brought it out Sunday afternoon and found I have much further to go than I thought.  10 more rows in fact.  But, if I can finish two rows a day than I can be done by the end of the week.  I'll be happy to have it done.  I have a few other projects I've been itching to begin but forcing myself not to until the shawl is finally done.  This is not usually my way of things, but I am tired of half-finished projects lying about.

I have plenty to do this week~ and with two days of severe thunderstorms in the forecast (today and tomorrow)...I might just be able to tackle the serious bit of cleaning and purging I must do upstairs and in the school room.  I refuse to allow the school room to look like the chaotic mess it always does during the school year when we are not even doing school!

It Is Good

I don't know how many times I have read the creation account of Genesis chapter 1 in my life time- but it is a lot.  I realized recently though, that up until this point, I have been missing something.  Something profound! Something pivotal to my life as a woman, as a wife, mother, homemaker, teacher, gardener, and list maker.

It goes something like this~

Day 1: God creates light and separates it from darkness.  He saw that it was good.
Day 2: God separates the waters from the firmament (heaven).
Day 3: God separated the dry ground from the waters and called them Earth and Seas.  He saw that it was good. He brought forth grass, herbs and fruit trees and saw that it was good.
Day 4: He made the lights in the heavens~ the sun, the moon, the stars and set them in the firmament and saw that it was good.
Day 5: God filled the seas with all manner of living things and He created all manner of flying creatures and God saw that it was good.
Day 6: God brought forth living creatures and beasts of the Earth.  He saw that it was good.  He created man and woman in His likeness and blessed them and He saw it was very good.
Day 7: He rested.

Do you see that?

God, who could knit bones together with breathe and form whales to frolick in waves with mere words, might have easily spoken a word and everything, from sea mist to tyrannosaurus, dust to people, galaxies to glaciers would have been formed.  In a single word.  Why didn't He?

For the same reason that He rested on the Sabbath.  God who can breathe life in one utterance- who does not sleep and does not abandon and does not cease and is always present and all knowing and all powerful- does not need rest.  He did so, I believe, to show us how to live.

He, who could have been finished with the creation of this world and of very life with a single breath, chose instead to work in increments for us, knowing that we must work little by little. He chose to rest on the Sabbath, knowing that we would need rest.

And this is the part that I have always missed...

God knew that Day 1 wasn't how He wanted His completed creation.  He knew there would be changes to make tomorrow.  But He declared "It is good."

He was satisfied!  Even though things were left undone, even though things were not 'just so' or perfectly finished...He was content with the day and it was GOOD.

This is a lesson I needed to hear and a lesson I need to imbibe.

I begin each day with a mental (and often, paper) list of things that should be/must be done and I begin in earnest almost immediately.  After a day of doing, when I finally lay my weary bones in bed, I begin to think of all that was left undone and all that will be required the next day and the list is just as long, if not longer, than when I first began.

 In those late evenings laying in bed with a mind full of tomorrow's to-do's, I often dream of a day where I could do nothing at all... a day like that lives with the brownies and fairies in the forest- things you enjoy thinking about but realize don't actually happen.

It can be extremely frustrating for me that I never seem to get ahead though I work so hard at trying!  That I seem to always be struggling just to keep up- with homeschooling, with the gardening, with the house, with life. That I have to fight to stay one step behind instead of ten steps behind.

But perhaps there is good in that.  Perhaps there can still be PEACE in that.

If God was content on Day 3 without any zebras or flamingos or pineapples or the sun, then I ought to be content with the work I have been able to accomplish...whether or not it is perfect or even completed. And I can look forward to a new dawn to begin again, knowing that each day I have been given will be filled with new and exciting ways to bring glory to God.

God doesn't expect us to finish.  He expects us to be content in the working.

At the end of the day, when I see a long list of things to do tomorrow~ I am going to try very hard from now on to look at what I accomplished in the day, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant or how incomplete, and be able to declare with a triumpant voice that it was good.

Another Judah-ism

Corynn : Have school buses been around for a long time?

Me: Oh, they've been around for a while.  They were around when I was a girl.

Judah:  You are a girl.

Me:  When I was a YOUNG girl.

Judah:  You ARE a young girl! 

Me: (chuckling by now)  When I was a young girl in SCHOOL.

Judah:  You ARE a young girl in school!  

Ah yes, we homeschool.  Which means, I guess I am still very much in the midst of school.

 Wise beyond his three years, that boy is.

REVIEW: Veritas Press Self-Paced History Course

Of all the reviews I have done this year for the Schoolhouse Review Crew, this is my most favorite so far.  I have been so excited to have been given the opportunity to review the Veritas Press Self-Paced History Program: Explorers to 1815 by Veritas Press and I am excited to tell you all about it too!  The Veritas Press catalog is one of those staple homeschooling catalogs I use when it comes time to order homeschool stuff every year.  In fact, I keep the catalog throughout the year because they have such great book recommendations! (shhhhh.  Don't tell.)  Needless to say, I have often oogled, stared longingly, pined for, and (yes) coveted the chance for my children to get their hands (and heads) on their history program.

And now they have!  YAY!

(And now I am faced with a conundrum- because I don't think they'll ever want to go back.)  



The Veritas Press Self-Paced History Program is a comprehensive, chronological online history curriculum that spans the ages in five different courses:

- Old Testament and Ancient Egypt -

- New Testament, Greece and Rome - 

- Middle Ages, Renaissance and Reformation -

- Explorers to 1815 -

- 1815 to Present  -

The course we were given access to was the Self-Paced History: Explorers to 1815.  It went along so well with all we learned in history this year! This program (along with all the other self-paced history courses) offers 160 lessons covering 32 important historic events along with the people, areas and traditions that formed them.  These topics are covered in an incredibly engaging way~ giving children a perfect mixture of child-friendly games and silliness coupled with the authentic documents, journals and readings of deep and mature thought.  An interactive treasure hunt in which your correct/incorrect answers either sink or sail the ship you are on is sandwiched between two journal entries from Christopher Columbus' real sea-faring journals.  Silliness- Maturity.  Perfect.

Veritas Press is a classical educational model which focuses on memorization of information within the Grammar stage so this curriculum encourages memorization of dates and times, people and places to create those mental 'pegs' for later conceptualization.  The Grammar stage is the youngest stage of educational development so this program is geared for grades 2 through 6. Two dressed up actors teach history alongside a talking totem pole named Ickahabi and then the information is reinforced into memory with clever games, songs and puzzles.  I believe the repetition of the concepts through different medium really helps cement the ideas into memory.    And there is a memory song sung within every lesson that works their way through the Memory Cards.

Oh!  I forgot to mention the memory cards!



The corresponding Veritas Press Explorers to 1815 flashcards are large, glossy memory cards that cover all 32 historical events/people within the online teaching program.  Beautiful works of art or maps grace the front while important dates, short summaries and extra resource lists can be found on the back.

The Veritas Self-Paced History program can be used anywhere, anytime and at any pace and requires nothing but the internet and computer.  There are additional recommended reading titles for additional study but these are not required to complete the course.  The program is priced at $199.00 and they recommend students beginning the program to be at least 7 years old. (Do keep in mind it is for one student and for only one year...though they do offer a discount on additional students.) The flashcards are an additional $19.95.

We finished homeschooling "officially" for the year a few weeks ago.  When I suggested my children keep working throughout the summer on History there were actual CHEERS.  (I kid you not.)  They are so excited to do history each day they practically beg!  They have genuine disappointment on their faces when I tell them it has to wait until chores, after breakfast, whatever-it-has-to-wait-until.  Summer is such a busy time for the Mama (me!) what with gardening, canning, and the other bazillion things that pull me in a million directions.  But I am not at all concerned about doing history throughout the summer because, as opposed to our normal history program that has me reading for hours to them, I am not needed at all to do their lessons. This frees me up to do all my summer chores with much less FRAZZLE (ifyouknowwhatImean).

If only all areas of home education could be so simple for the Mama and so eagerly anticipated by the children!