this moment *and* the good word from my sponsors
{this moment}
{this moment}: a Friday ritual. A moment from the week to savor and remember.
Also, did you want to see the frost-puppies:
dangblastit!
It’s June (happy June!), and apparently I’m so ready to throw off all my responsibilities that I completely forgot to write and send in my newspaper column on Wednesday, y’know the one I’ve been writing for four years, never missing a deadline. It’s too hot to work (but apparently too cold for tomatoes) and I’m caught up in the excitement over my kids’ new lifestyle of freedom now that they’ve shucked off the little formal school they do. Someday, summers off for everyone. Socialized summers! Are you with me?
I have a new sponsor to introduce today, but first…some announcements from my longtime, faithful sponsors:
1) Dr Stacy Mulkey, from Namaste Health Center, is giving a talk on the 5 W’s of Living Gluten Free:
* what is gluten?
* Why is gluten a problem?
* When in history did gluten become a problem?
* Who should be gluten free?
* Where in La Plata County can you find gluten free products?
The talk is Sunday, June 3rd @ 4pm at Body of Work, 679 E. 2nd Ave, Unit 10. $3 donation requested to cover space and gluten free snacks from the Wood Ranches Gluten Free Bakery.
2) Natalie Christensen, co-owner of Feeleez: Toys for emotional intelligence, and Parenting Coach, is offering 30% off phone consults to readers of 6512 and growing. Natalie is fantastic at suggesting a pathway which illuminates blind spots and leads you to the sanest, most effective and compassionate trail through the trees of parenting. This is not hearsay; she is my go-to parenting sage. In fact, she’s developed quite a following in Durango due to my enthusiastic recommendations. Contact her here.
Sigh. I love my sponsors.
And, welcome to my new sponsor:
See the guitar? Isn’t that a beautiful logo?
The Guitar Dojo is a Suzuki Talent Education school located in Durango, CO (currently in the Smiley Building).
The Dojo’s next class is Dalcroze Camp.
Have you heard of Dalcroze?
notable farming stories
We are very serious about compost around here.
The other day, I was both thinking about compost (for a magazine article I’d been asked to write) and plopping compost into holes, the new row houses into which greenhouse broccoli plants were moving.
My assistant mulching broccoli plants with chicken bedding.
The prize, 2011
I was thinking about what I wanted to write about compost, which to me is a miracle on par with say, Moses parting the Red Sea, when I found, in a shovel scoop of compost, a desiccated mango pit. I pried open the hollowed-out clam shell of a seed, and inside, a small green worm wriggled into the light of day.
And I thought, that’s exactly what I want to say about compost.
Making compost is a practice of embracing surprises and being awed by the persistence and goodness of life. You can throw something that looks like waste scraps into a pile and it reinvents itself as free fertility. And it’s always a blessing to strive not for perfection but for completion. (My finished compost has been known to contain shards of egg shell, curling wedges of lemon peel, and sprouting avocado seeds, one of which was rescued by a certain 7 year old and is now a robust plant in our greenhouse).
Col, caretaker of many things, doting over the squash plant he started from seed. (Bright lights chard glowing in background).
In gardening too, it’s the surprises that chime the bell of my heart: last year’s forgotten potatoes resurrected as young upstarts, the peach pit that sprouted in our compost pile, now a fruit-bearing tree; the self-sowing indigo larkspur whose seeds I swiped 8 years ago from a neighbor’s garden, now shooting up everywhere like blue firecrackers; how after 10 years of mediocre fruiting, the plum trees in the alleyway behind our house are loaded with green orbs.
Frost-pecked plums.
Sometimes the surprises are of a different nature. Like coming home from our camping trip last weekend to find that the hand of a freak frost knocked down all the tomatoes in the hoop house (yes, those tomatoes, including all of this year’s “Hal’s Plums,” already heavy with fruit). While I was sitting around the campfire, drinking wine and singing John Denver songs like a cliche of my own raised-in-the-70′s, Colorado-loving self, a crazy cold front was moving in. By the time we were back at the campfire drinking coffee the next morning, those 13 tomato plants were a pile of withered, blackened leaves.
That frost seems to have bounced around the yard, swiping at raspberries, grape vines, our baby pears, squashes, potato leaves and peas. Peas! I’ve never in the history of growing food heard of peas affected by frost.
I’ve cut away all the frost damage on the tomatoes (which for most of them was the entire plant) and am waiting to see if any will rebound. I can already feel this frost shuffling around in my mental files, slipping from “tragedies” to “notable farming stories.”
And I’m always grateful and humbled to take part in nurturing a plant, to be one of the many forces that transform a seed speck to a meal; to know that in gardening, like parenting, and in life, I can only set my intentions and do my best and see what surprises await.
And also, there’s still another 20 tomato plants in the greenhouse.
rhubarb days and discounted summer sponsorship
Summer sponsorship sale
Do you have a business you want to promote?
I love showcasing handmade work and heartfelt services of talented people while earning some side cash for the family. It’s a win-win! I am offering discounted rates on summer sponsorship for the months of June, July and August. If you are interested in my rates and readership stats, please e-mail me.
Testimonials:
From Erin Goodman:
Sponsoring Rachel’s blog was a great experience that I have and will continue to recommend to friends who are looking to get the word out about their products and services. Not only did I enroll several 6512 and Growing readers in the class that I was advertising, I also connected with many wonderful kindred spirits who have become fast friends.
From Silver Sparrow Designs:
being a sponsor on rachel’s blog has been a wonderful experience. her blog reaches a wide audience of exceptional people who make very appreciative customers. i highly recommend advertising with her!
* * * * *
Have a lovely 3-day weekend, friends!
We’ll be at this camp spot in the big pines:
What will you be doing?
homestead happenings: cherish
Despite the fussing baby boy in the library yesterday who I badly wanted to scoop up and snuggle (you go ahead and get some work done, I’d say to his father who was on his laptop, I’ll be in the fiction stacks with Mr. Gummy Smiles; or maybe I’ll just make a sign: will re-lactate for crying babies)…despite that precious baby, whose very smell ripened an ovarian follicle or two of mine, I like these ages my kids are at.
Dan set up a fort for the kids in the backyard, the kind you could stand up in only if you were born say, after 2007. And it’s like someone plopped down Disneyland—the tarp and PVC version—in our yard because the kids head out there at 7:00am like commuters with their briefcases full of legos and beads.
Sometimes all they need for hours is a plate of snacks strategically pushed under the fort, while I putter around the garden feeling insanely lucky and happy to hear their chatter (Col: look at the triple decker bus I made! Rose: well I found the legos for the triple decker bus, so I sort of made it too, Coley); insanely lucky and happy to be together, but not y’know, so together that I can’t pull a few weeds with my free hand.
Inevitably, the kids pack up their Fort Independence briefcases and return to their lighthouse of comfort, which is me. And they’re just in time, because by then I’ve had enough time with the tomatoes and the luxury of following my own thoughts and want nothing more than their enormous small bodies to return to me.
A couple weeks ago Rose’s preschool held their annual “spring sing,” which consists of 40 or so kids singing their tirelessly rehearsed songs to the beautiful backdrop of their own hand-painted scenery. It’s always a festival of sentimental tears and laughs (the nose-picking kids, the Joe Cocker-types singing like it hurts). When all those gorgeous children sang Simon and Garfunkel’s 59th St Bridge Song (Feeling Groovy), so sincerely, so earnestly—let the morning time drop all its petals on me, life I love you, all is groovy—tears pricked the corners of my eyes and a voice in my head said: cherish this, cherish this, cherish their childhood.
I can feel summer revving up, this brief and magical time that’s like a placeholder in my children’s lives, marking days of river play, camping, and marveling over ladybugs. If it had a brand name, this summertime, we’d call it something like: the best of childhood. Something to cherish, indeed.
On the homestead:
:: The root cellar is 1/3 of the way dug. Only 5 more feet to go! Oy. Dan is currently working with the antlers, which will be the roof (covered with juniper bark and mud) of the root cellar, the antler kiva root cellar. And as our friend Ben says, “leave it to Dan to choose the most challenging building material to work with.” Antlers!
Who knew a big pit and attendant dirt pile would so increase the quality of a 7-year old’s life?
:: Our tomato plants outgrew the greenhouse,
And are out in the real world now (it’s like sending your kids to kindergarten!)
Okay, not quite the real world yet.
:: What are they doing?
Holding hands through the holes in a picnic table, obviously.
:: Did you get to see the annular eclipse on Sunday? We drove out to Chimney Rock Archeological Area to witness astronomical history. The kids, in their typical way, found it both spectacular (“it’s like a mouse is taking a bite out of a cheese wheel!”) and ordinary (“let’s go catch lizards now, Rose.”)
Would you call me superficial if while enjoying the eclipse, I also thoroughly enjoyed Rose’s baby chins?
:: The true face of homeschooling.
I freaking love it.
Hoping you too are cherishing these days.
xo,
Rachel
ps: winner of Use Your Words book announced on original post. Keep those essays coming!
kids books: keep or cull?
Every six months or so I pack up a batch of clothes and toys that the kids have outgrown. I’m pretty tough-hearted about it. I recently put our rocking chair—the one I nursed someone or other in for a total of 6 years—on Freecycle. My heart clenched for a brief moment but mostly I like the feeling of passing on what is no longer needed.
But books! I’m sure we’re over our holding capacity. Dan and I long ago realized that we only had enough space for reference books and a few can’t-part-with others. (We share a dresser, but each have our own bookshelf, which explains why I look the way I do). But the kids! Each book they own represents some precious strata on the geological timeline of their childhood. Like, The Snowy Day, which we read everyday when Rose was 22 months just to hear her say “snow. fall. plop. Peter (pee-tah). head.”
Puppet show, Rose at 22 months and Col in his winged-hair stage.
Somehow the three books we read over and over to Col in the NICU contain the particular weight of a 2-pound baby in my arms and all the attendant emotions.
Make way for ducklings – such a classic! Mr. Brown Can Moo – I remember when Col would recite this book! On the night you were born – so I can cry on every birthday until they’re 70!
There are some books we haven’t read for 3 years but fingering their pages is like time-traveling.
How do you manage your children’s book collection? How do you decide what to keep, what to cull?
Whew – such deep questions for a Monday.
xo,
Rachel
* use your words giveaway open until Wednesday morning. Thanks for your essays, brave Mamas!
When I had a baby and toddler—a baby who wanted nothing more than to squirm back into my soundproof uterus and a toddler who wanted nothing more than to live on a chugging, clanging steam train—I wondered, regularly, if simply remembering to floss my own teeth really counted as a sign of “coping well.”
Before children, I managed an herb shop and wrote for several regional magazines. Now, I was a stay at home mom, managing naps, deciphering poops and compulsively scribbling thoughts and observations on random scraps of paper. Recently, I found this note, from 2007, “Just went into Col’s room where he was supposed to be napping but was dismantling his shelves instead. He held up a board and said “Don’t let Rosie in! This is chokeable!”
It’s possible that I was a teensy bit depressed.
And, not surprisingly, it was writing that pulled me out of the trenches (or at least gave me something to do during nap time). I began writing a bi-monthly column just before Rose turned one, called Adventures in Motherhood, for my local newspaper (which, four years later, I still write). Dan would often ask, worried, “honey? You’re with the kids all day and then you write about them too?”
Giving my stories a voice frees me from being buried by them, helps me to unravel deeper meanings, and allows me to press pause on the fast-moving train that is our lives.
And today, I’m passing onto all you Mama writers, two opportunities to win a copy of Kate Hopper’s recently published book, use your words: a writing guide for mothers.
Kate Hopper teaches writing online and at The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis, where she lives with her husband and two daughters. Kate holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Minnesota and has been the recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship, a Minnesota State Arts Board Grant, and a Sustainable Arts Grant. Her writing has appeared in a number of journals, including Brevity, Literary Mama, and The New York Times online. She is an editor at Literary Mama. For more information about Kate’s writing and classes, visit www.katehopper.com.
Use your words is a treasure for any mother who wants to write. Kate Hopper, who has taught writing classes for nearly a decade, guides her reader through topics such as Using humor as a tool, Writing the hard stuff, Keeping the momentum going, Publishing: from blogs to books. Each chapter contains practical tips, exercises and powerful writing examples from writers such as (my favorites) Beth Kephart, Catherine Newman and Anne Lamott.
Use your words meets you exactly where you are. If you’re just finding your voice and need help generating ideas and creating writerly habits; if you’ve published your work and want help refining and polishing; if you simply want to create some stories about life, now, that your kids can someday appreciate. There is something in this book for you.
To win a book:
1) Leave a comment on this post (okay, that was easy)
and/or
2) Write an essay (600 words or less) using this writing prompt:
Character Sketch
Think of your child (or one of your children if you have more than one). Try to convey his personality by using dialogue, gestures, and facial features. Ground your writing in detail. It may help to think in terms of objects—what your child eats, what he likes to play with, his hobbies. What does her face look like when she is absorbed in a task? What does she look like when she doesn’t realize that you’re watching?
Note: Some of my students who have twins have found that they cannot write about one without writing about the other. If you have multiples and feel this way, go ahead and write them together in a scene. Think in terms of differences and similarities. When are they most alike, most different?
E-mail me your essay by May 3oth and I will choose my favorite, which will be passed onto Kate Hopper, along with the other winners from the use your words book tour. Kate will select a winner, whose essay will be published on Literary Mama, and who will also receive (in addition to the book), a 1-hour writing consultation with Kate via skype or phone.
Go forth and write!
WINNER of the book is # 18, Rachel: “OH! how exciting! I will probably have to buy the book even if I don’t win it! Next assignment… essay! =)” Rachel, send me your address and I’ll forward it to the publisher!
I am taking essays until Wed, May 30th!
D.I.Y. Kitchen: Energy Nuggets
pina-colada energy nuggets
almond-joy energy nuggets
Last week, prepping for camping, I asked Col what meals we should pack.
“Um, beans, tortillas, noodles, bread, apples, carrots, peanut butter and…” he stopped, shrugged and said “lets just pick acorns and Daddy can shoot a squirrel.”*
I know what he’s talking about. All this shopping and cooking and swiping peanut butter across bread; all this cheering the kids on to eat vegetables, and then sliding the dregs of those uneaten vegetables into the bucket of chicken scraps; all this washing of breakfast dishes while the kids are already lobbying for a morning snack. Sometimes it seems our life occurs in the brief recesses between eating, or maybe our life is the eating.
Last week the kids and I made a couple gallons of granola and it was so beautiful and satisfying to look at that when everyone tore into it, I caught myself thinking–in a Eeyore-ish way–“Oh, now everyone’s just going to eat it?”
I don’t recall any parenting books mentioning the sheer number of snacks kids require. It’s like day trading on Wall Street, getting a group of kids together at the park with their snacks. We just returned from a wonderful camping trip with four families and every time a parent brought out a new snack it was like feeding frenzy at the fish hatchery with every child edging closer, circling a container of strawberries.
Col and Rose love these energy nuggets, they really do, but I won’t lie and pretend they wouldn’t love them ten times more if they came in a wrapper. I’m the worst at making food appealing for kids. If I can’t find the gumption to shave my legs, it’s unlikely I’ll ever be shaping carrots into flowers. I’ve been known to pack a jar of peanut butter and honey with three spoons and head out to the park because sometimes it’s just about cramming the kids with calories so they can go play and we can stop talking about food.
But these energy nuggets are so good, and crazy-healthy. Dates, almonds, walnuts, coconut, chocolate, pineapple and apricots are all listed in the book, The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth, and those are the ingredients I use, although you could swap many things in or out.
Energy Nuggets
*pina-colada*
makes 20-25
1/2 cup pitted dates
1/2 cup dried pineapple (cut and soaked in water for 10 minutes to soften)
3/4 cup nuts (I use walnuts or almond meal; any nut/seed combo would work)
1/2 cup unsweetened shredded coconut
*almond joy*
makes 20-25
1 1/2 cup dates, pitted
1/2 cup unsweetened, shredded coconut
1/2 cup dried apricots
1/2 cup nuts
1/2 cup powdered dark, unsweetened chocolate
Mix in food processor (try half batches first to see what your food processor can handle). Shape into balls.
* if your mixture is too dry to shape, add extra dates, honey, or the water the pineapples soaked in.
* if your mixture is too moist, add more nuts or shredded coconut.
* we store these in the fridge if we’re going to eat them in the next 1-2 weeks, any longer, store in freezer.
* although these are the only two flavors I’ve made, I’m sure the combinations are endless.
Pitting dates is a good task for a child.
dates, almonds, coconut and pineapple – still a little dry. I’d add more dates here.
*Almond Joy* – which taste just like an almond joy… if you haven’t actually eaten one since 1998.
That’s a good-looking consistency.
Kati’s beautiful, goo-ball shaping hands.
Break for hugs! And yes, Kati *did* cut off her dreads, and looks fabulous.
Nugs in a jar.
*Dan’s never shot a squirrel, but there was this squirrel supper.
*Parenting E-Course winner announced on original post. I hate that I can’t pick everyone, because I can hear how interested everyone is. But, good news: Natalie is offering 10% off the course for any 6512 reader who signs up by Wednesday, May 16th 8pm. Just put “6512″ in the message section during check out. Natalie will refund you the 10% after check out. Go here to sign up!
