Resting

High 70s, low 80s. My favorite summer weather has prevailed for several days now--coolish mornings and sunny, not-too-hot afternoons. The kids have been away for a few days with friends and El Professor and I have been enjoying a schedule-less, projecting frenzy. No specific mealtimes, no permission sought or given, just time, time, time to get some things done. We've been resting, really.

The past two years, specifically summers, have been filled with urgencies that pushed nest cleaning off the schedule, while the detritus of life took over the garage/cupboards/every drawer/desktop. Two summers ago, El Professor was suddenly given the assignment of adding an endorsement to his teaching license with this alarming statement--'or we will most likely have to lay you off half time'. He had about six weeks to learn linguistics and to cram for one of the scheduled tests administered at the University. Last summer he fell and broke a few ribs which put a quick end to most of the summer 'honey do' list. In the midst of this, other life things were going on...good things, hard things, things. Two years ago we joined the Classical Conversations group that was being founded here and experienced a sudden (but wonderful, challenging) homeschool course change. The first months were like this. It was a great experience, so last year I agreed teach the grammar and writing course for 4th-6th graders. (Prior to this, I had never studied grammar.) I spent much of that spring/summer/fall/winter studying/cramming/thinking/planning lessons. I loved every minute of it, it was challenging, and it was worth the effort. Having said that, though, this summer we are resting. Resting from studying and cramming. Resting from a sense of urgency.

Life is good, but hard. My dad survived the septic crash his body experienced this spring and has been growing stronger. He spent seven weeks in the hospital. My dearest, loveliest aunt is fighting colon cancer. My sister's sweet mother-in-law is dying of a sudden, acute leukemia. Life is fragile and precious. In the midst of all of this, we are resting from the urgent push we have experienced over the past two years. We are continuing our course with Classical Conversations, knowing that the pace will be ramped up this year with both kids in the rigorous middle and high school programs. I will be teaching the same grammar and writing course this year, so I've been picking away at planning/thinking/studying, but I'm not cramming. Instead, we've been painting bedrooms, scrubbing mold, priming, trolling Craig's List, organizing, organizing, organizing, oiling the furniture, breathing deeply, and cleaning our nest. We have been helping the kids finish their math books and El Professor and I plan to study/review the Institute For Excellence In Writing seminar, and to help the kids do some preparation for the upcoming school year. Still, we are enjoying the break from urgency, the opportunity to take care of ourselves and our home, and are relishing falling-into-bed-exhausted from hard work.

Rainy Day....Hard Times.....

This morning there is a tingling energy outside. There is a cold front passing through and the energy is present in the sound, the light wagging of the twigs on the trees, the spin of the wind scupture outside my window. Yesterday the sun was out all day, and the golden warmth was such a needed thing for me. I sat by the window in the library, the kids quietly worked on their school work, and I read....and read....and read....and escaped. It was wonderful.

My dad is having a serious health crisis and I am wrestling with a terrible, pending sense of loss, despite the fact that we might not lose him. Dad is a retired physician, and around him is a swarm of doctors, some are friends and some are newer doctors, who are all on "It". "It" being a staph infection that has spread around his sacroiliac joint and lower back, setting up pockets of infection, destroying tissue, and making him horrifically ill. "It" has gone septic. The agonizing pain of the abscesses has been chased by powerful pain medications rendering him 'senseless', somewhat unresponsive. He has eaten so little in this long illness (over a month), that he is weak. He lays now, intubated, in ICU with more surgery to come. Among the Scary Things....will he emerge from the 'stupor' he is in? He has had a head to toe MRI, as his many doctors search for a possible stroke or brain bleed, while also searching for more of the rampant Staph Terrorist Cells that are setting up camp who knows where? The MRI showed no stroke, but what about the no speech situation? It's very distressing. There's a name for the issue of no speech/low responsiveness--'metabolic encephalopathy'. It's like a crowd of toxins/medications trying file out.....on a dirt trail.

The rain is beginning and it is cold outside. I know we need the rain. The lakes and reservoirs need to fill for the dry, summer months ahead. But I loved that sun yesterday. Still, I will try to embrace this rain, try to see the need for it, and will choose to move, hopeful, into another day.

It's a Salvage Christmas.....

Last year I had such a great time working on handmade gifts for our extended family, so handmade was definitely a repeat for this Christmas. One difficulty in chronicling this, however, is that my camera is broken and the kids' newish cameras were in various states of dead battery/lost charger/left at a relative's house during the handmade process. Hmmm. Most of these photos had to be taken on the 'hunk-o-junk only-10-photos-at-a-time-and-many-will-be-blurry' camera. This year's Christmas projects were garden gathered, or shopped for at the salvage/recycling center with a few thrift stores thrown in the mix.....

In early October, El Professor and I dug up and divided perennials such as the campanula that grows in our front garden and potted them for gifts. El Professor carefully researched zones as we have relatives that range from the high Oregon plateau desert to the marine San Juan Islands. El Professor potted Shasta daisies, daisy mums, lamb's ear, pink calla lilies, ground cover rose, butterfly bush (one sister actually wants those), campanula, and purple iris taken from a patch that originated from a tuber that my dear 82 year old aunt gave me. The iris ended up being especially precious because we just learned that this cherished aunt has terminal colon cancer.

The irises are on the far right.

White campanula

Last summer as the days grew shorter and the blue explosion of the hydrangea bush changed to a bluey-green, I cut and cut and cut the blooms and let them dry in vases all over the house.

The dried blooms became wreaths and they really and truly aren't such a sickly green. Thank you camera.

Some of the summer pepper bounty became chili strings. Remember--NEVER rub your eyes when you are working on these.

The apples from our tree and from the local orchard were made into applesauce, but the skins were cooked and jelly bagged and made into apple jelly.








Our raspberries were mixed with some blackberries that were gathered along a nearby bicycle path (El Professor insists you only pick the blackberries that are above the potential dog pee elevation), and the mix made a lovely jam. (We don't have dog, so the raspberries are exempt from the elevation requirement.)

Our friends were in the process of adopting a little boy as well as residing their house at the height of their grape season, so we were given many of their grapes. We gave some of them back as a lovely, dark red grape jelly.

I canned and canned in a one day session; the juices and purees were carefully frozen in late summer and early fall, ready to be made into jam or jelly.

Last summer out in the Oregon high desert, I picked up an oil drum lid that was lying out on the dry landscape. There is all kinds of treasure lying around on my father-in-law's acreage--arrowheads, interesting rocks, dried pinecones, rusty metal this-and-thats. There was something beautiful about that old oil drum lid complete with bullet hole, so I decided to try my hand at sign painting. (I'm not a painter and I don't have nice handwriting, so this was no small task.) The 'bomb' for me? CARBON PAPER!

1. Print text in a cool font

2. Tape cool text onto carbon paper

3. Work over oil drum lid with soapy water and steel wool

4. Tape carbon paper/text onto dry lid

5. Press hard and trace with pencil to transfer the text

6. Paint

The end result was a family sign for one of my sisters.

I got hooked on the idea of painting metal salvage, so I hit the recycling/salvage yard hunting for another piece of cool junk for my other sister. Our local building/recycling/salvage center is another place full of treasure. I found an old tool box with the lid half off, full of machine parts. I dumped out the parts and paid a whopping $4 for the prize.

More steel wool, carbon paper, painting......

...the lid became a family sign and the rest of the scrubbed out box made a great gift box for the jams/jellies, wreath, pepper string, with the transformed lid wrapped and tucked in. (Can you tell I blocked out part of their name? )

The oil drum lid sign/gift ended up in a cool old wash tub found at the recycling center. It really was cool, but the photos are awful. Oh well.

Much creative fun was had..... we'll have to start thinking up ideas for next year.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas......

It has been the busiest fall I've experienced in, well, a long time. We have a second year Classical Conversations group in our area and I've been teaching there all day on Tuesdays. Juggling that with homeschooling, learning the content for the classes I'm teaching, prepping materials for class, homemaking, making time for exercise, etc., etc. I love it though. It's been challenging.

I've been getting Christmas things out in stages, beginning with an Advent table. We have been doing Advent activities with the kids for several years now, with each year's Advent candle display being different. This year I decided to dig into the plethora of shells I have in the o-so-famous garage. My mom's side of the family is from the Puget Sound area and I have a lifelong love of shell gathering. My favorite part of this Advent display is that shells aren't flammable. :-)

I inherited these sweet little candles holders from my dad's parents.

When our kids were little, I decided to do Christmas displays that included Nativity scenes. We had a few Santa-ish things, but there were several Nativity related things, books, etc. This year I have three Nativity displays and the pop up Medieval Nativity book out. The kids each have their own little Nativity set to set up in their rooms.

My birthday is the day after Christmas. Between that and Christmas, my parents have outfitted us with the pieces of the Willow Tree Nativity.

I had a bare corner, so I 'shopped the yard'. I love twigs and dried things. This is dried prunings from the Russian Sage plant, and some twigs I've had around for years.

Last Christmas break, El Professor and I tore apart the ugly, gastly, horrible, cedar paneled 'study', whited out the walls to create a lighter space, got rid of the ghastly cedar beam that served as a mantle, and hung old windows on the wall. This room is on the north side of the house and the dark, depressing space has been transformed into my favorite room. I've always gone easy on fireplace/mantle photos so as to spare myself and the world from the ugly scene, so decorating the mantle was a treat this First Mantle Christmas. The 'mystery squash' that sprang up in my garden has evolved into 'the Christmas squash'. I love it. This is the second year it sprang up. After Christmas I'll have to seed save from one to make sure they are back next year.

I found this tin tile board in a treasure shop my sister's mother-in-law operates on Shaw Island in the San Jaun Islands. I collect vintage postcards.

My Hilarious Twin has a curly willow tree in her backyard. Twigs a-plenty!

These wooden Nativity pieces were the first I collected. They were great around little fingers. This year they are on the piano in front of the poppy painting. Joseph fell behind the piano when I was setting up--gotta love those long handled tongs!

Yesterday I canned 78 jars of jams/jellies from juices/berries/purees I prepared all summer/fall and froze. Guess what is ALL over my dining table? :-)

Today we are going to set up our tree. A few years ago we bought a potted Nordmann Fir living tree. 'He' is fondly known as 'Nordmann', and he lives on our back patio. Living trees weigh a TON, I need to do a thorough 'spider check', and you have to 'step' them in so they don't go into shock transferring from the Brrrrrrr to the warm house. Frankly, I think it's all kind of a pain. Last year Nordmann stayed outside and we cut a wild tree from up in the mountains.

We've been away.......

...to the 'dry side' of Oregon.

Up and into the southern Cascade Mountain Range.....

...to Crater Lake National Park.

And on over the mountains to the high desert where El Professor grew up.

Over the mountains where summer storms bring rumbling thunder and jaggy lightning, and where the 'cha-cha-cha' of giant sprinklers irrigating alfalfa fields lulls you to sleep at night.

Where bales of hay make the best play structures....

...and mustangs greet you at the corral.

Where grandpa is a cowboy and you can ride horses with the cousins....

...or shoot guns with dad......

...and drive the car on the outback country roads (even though you're not 15)...

...and where swimming holes are high desert rivers.

We've been away to a part of Oregon where the counties are huge but are populated largely by sagebrush....

...and tiny communities dot the landscape.

Where you can go way out in the outback, way out where the sagebrush expanse is like a sound sucking vortex, where it is sunny and so very quiet, and you can gather sunstones.

We've been out where the trees draw the line and give over the expanse to sagebrush and juniper scrub.

Out where the hills have names like 'The Coyote Hills' and 'Big Juniper', and giant escarpment fault block mountains rise up from the desert.

Where the desert rivers run into inland seas and evaporate. Many of the giant lakes are 'dead' from alkali saturation.

We've been away, driving back west across the desert expanse into the Central Cascade Mountains where my parents' cabin can be found....

...to gather with sisters and more cousins.

A region loved by the populated 'wet side' of Oregon, where the summer crowds crush, and the 'swimming holes' include rather civilized pools.

A place where my parents' purchased a cabin 30+ years ago, and selling it is in the near future--if the economy cooperates.

A place where the crazy, old pink tandem is still ridden by the children, just as we rode it when we were 'the children'.

Where 'Fort Rock' is part of 'the lore' of the cousins, and they build and arrange the rocks each time we visit.

Where the sagebrush and Juniper scrub give way to the mighty Ponderosas, and the mountains are lined up, creating the division between eastern, stark, dry beauty and western, wet, lush beauty.

So much to see and do.

It was a great getaway.