Getting Away....

Tucked between the Washington mainland and Vancouver Island, Canada there is a series of islands, some belonging to Washington State and some to British Columbia. I read that the inland sea surrounding the islands has been proposed to be named the Salish Sea, after indigenous peoples who originally inhabited the area. It is known officially as Puget Sound, and is connected to the Pacific Ocean by The Strait of Juan de Fuca and The Strait of Georgia. The islands belonging to Washington State are known as The San Juan Islands, while those belonging to Canada are The Gulf Islands.

I grew up visiting the region because grandmother lived on Samish Island, which is actually attached to the Washington mainland by dikes. Samish Island is along the relatively shallow Samish Bay, where the lowest tides go way, way out exposing muddy, clam-rich tidal flats. At low tide my sisters and I would tag along as my grandmother and mother dug the big 'horseshoe clams', and sometimes we would find a feisty crab in the watery seaweed moats that separated the tidal flats. At night, if the tide was high I would look out across Samish Bay to Bellingham Bay and see the barges. When I was really little I would declare that the lights of Bellingham were China--after all, I had always understood that China was 'over the sea'. Before this became a 'moneyed area' and had a sea wall, the beach front had a series of funky little houses, the beach was strewn with driftwood logs, and winter high tides would flood the residents. We would dig steamer clams in the rocky, barnacle beach that existed at the wave line just before the first tidal flat, and play 'house' in the open ends of the driftwood logs--the clam shells were our dishes. The steamer clams are gone--I think the population and the seawall did them in--and my grandmother's house has long since been torn down and rebuilt by a cooperative of my cousins. I think the seawall has pretty much halted the winter high tide floods (along with the steamer clams). I guess the 'horseshoe clams' are still in the flats, but you have to have a permit to dig them these days. I still get my fix of the wonder of those islands though, because my sister settled in the San Juans several years ago, but her island isn't attached to the mainland by dikes--you have to take a ferry boat. (And we dug clams on her beach without a permit.)

The first week of July we had a wonderful get away to the San Juans to visit my sister/family. Our last visit was two years ago when we took Daniel's Boy Scout troop for a long weekend camp out, so this trip was very relaxing by comparison. Here is a run down of some of the fun...

Every July 3, Deer Harbor, on Orcas Island, has a big fireworks show observed mostly by mobs of boaters harbored in the bay there. Gene Hackman used to own 'Fawn Island', which is in the bay by Deer Harbor. The fireworks are launched from a barge out in the bay. My favorite part is boating through the channels to get to Deer Harbor. One narrow channel is known as 'Millionaire Row' and the boat speed limit through the channel is slow so crashing wakes don't rock and roll the Millionaires' docks, boats, and beaches.

My parents and my twin and her husband were a part of this get away, each of us staying at a different spot in the vicinity of my sister's house. We stayed on the boat....lovely. Lapping waves. The ebb and flow of the tide at our fingertips. A bald eagle. (I am finally, a week later, not 'rocking' anymore.) I have never 'stayed' on a boat, and this was fun.

The view from the boat at a lowish tide....

Early morning, coffee, dry cereal and....yes, the grammar book from which I will be teaching this year. (I have been boning up all summer. Maybe this year I'll equate adjectival clauses with seagulls and the quiet lapping of the ebbing tide.)

Digging for clams. My mom and I cleaned the dozen or so clams that the kids and I dug, and I made an olive oil/garlic/clam sauce for pasta. Many of the clams are chilling in my sister's freezer, waiting to become fritters or chowder.

Hiking is a must in the islands. You can hike up to high view points like this. Amazing.

On the 4th of July, my sister/family decorates their restored flat bed truck for the old fashioned parade through the village on their island. This year much of my family and my sister's in-laws partook of the festivities. The weather was warm, the parade was packed, and the evening fireworks were, again, launched from a barge out in the bay.

My mom, a five year cancer survivor....

It was a wonderful get away. We hiked, boated, played badminton, dusk volleyball (with my mid 70s parents joining in!!!!), dug for clams, cleaned/cooked clams, shopped in the village, tagged a wilderness trail for a future hiking trail, kayaked, saw a bald eagle, rode the ferries, boated between the islands, ran out of fuel in the tiny motorboat (in the channel between islands), had to row the tiny motorboat until we could get a cell signal in the middle of the channel, were rescued by my brother in law in his boat (out in the channel), hiked over a mountain, had to hitchhike after hiking over the mountain (because we couldn't get cell service to request a ride from my sister back to our car, which was still on the other side of the mountain), and visited my sister's in laws where they own/run the store on Shaw Island that was previously owned/run by nuns.

Badminton on the lawn...overlooking 'The Sound'....so lovely.

Oh, and on the l-o-n-g drive home, we learned that you can do crazy things with a Dasini water bottle if you tear the label off.......

Anniversary~4th of July~Family Get-Away

Wednesday, July 8 was our 20th wedding anniversary. What fun it was for this to coincide with a family reunion~4th of July trip to the San Juans where my older sister lives. This week I plan to post photos--it was truly a wonderful, wonderful week. The weather was fantastic and we stayed long enough to do most of the things I love to do when we are in the San Juans--enjoy the rocky-life-teeming beaches with the kids, hike the forested 'mountains' to view the islands from up high, ride the ferry boats, shop in the village, go for a boat ride, stop in downtown Seattle during the journey, and just hang out.

The weather was amazing, and unseasonably warm while we were there. This is a shot of Mt. Baker from the ferry landing at Anacortes. I grew up viewing Mt. Baker from my grandmother's house on Samish Island, which is not too far from Anacortes.

Looking out a ferry window from the lower passenger deck....

The ferry ride takes a little more than an hour, stopping at three of the islands...Lopez, Shaw, and Orcas.

One of the island ferry landings....

Playing at the ferry landing beach.....

We arrived at the Anacortes ferry landing 2 hours early, which is recommended during the summer season. Usually, this will put you near the front of the line for your ferry. Much to our relief and surprise, we were in the LAST group of 8 cars to make our ferry. My twin and her husband were only 20-30 minutes behind us as we sojourned up Interstate 5, but they ended up waiting 3 hours for the next ferry. The islands experienced an unheard of mass of visitors and many travelers had to spend the night in line at the ferry landing as the tickets were oversold and there wasn't enough ferry space. The locals were marveling and we were concerned about experiencing the masses again, in an exodus from the islands when the 4th of July weekend was over. Our solution? Stay an extra day! :-)

The channels around the San Juan Islands are buzzing the recreational boaters, commercial boats, and the ferries which serve many of the islands. Anacortes is also a launch/arrival point for Canadian ferry traffic.

Summer Garden Treasures

The first lettuces of spring are so full of hope and the promise of summer (ick--also full of little sluggies that get a one way trip down the disposal), but it is the beginning of the summer garden treasures that I love. This week El Professor has been up in our giant, overgrown cherry tree doing a much anticipated pruning job. He waited until the cherries were ripe and then pruned off cherry loaded branches to be picked over. We've never been sure what kind of cherry our tree bears...some opinions have been Royal Ann, others have been Rainier. Either way, the cherries don't keep for long and we have usually given away the bowls, bags, and bucketfuls that we don't eat. We have given away tons of cherries this year already, but I have also decided to try preserving some with the dehydrator a friend gave me.....

I love dried fruit and these are pretty good. I found a recipe for Cardamon/Dried Cherry Scones I might try. A little research also showed that cherries can be frozen.....I bought a pitter to speed up the process of prepping cherries and have put several bagfuls into the freezer. Later we might use them with the juicer. I'm going to make some cherry jam, too. Hmm. The sound of cherry jam doesn't send me running to the toaster for a lovely summer-bounty-coated piece of toast, but it's worth a try.

While El Professor was picking cherries, I picked raspberries. This is the third year our raspberries have been in and they have been loaded. I filled a lasagna pan with red berries and put them in the freezer. Anne gathered some berries last week and worked them into her baking project......

The lavender is in bloom.....

....and there are 41 bundles drying in the garage.

The cilantro and the tomatoes are never ready at the same time--at least not in my garden. But I've discovered that you can make salsa with that spring/early summer cilantro by keeping canned whole/peeled tomatoes in the pantry.

Oh yes, and lettuce. As the days heat up I will work to keep some slow bolting lettuces in the garden, but they never do as well as spring and fall lettuce. (Maybe the sluggies won't do as well either.)

Sweet Day

It was a sweet day, Father's Day was. In the past few years my dad has had some hair raising health issues, including a span of several months where he was unable to walk or stand. Father's Day was a sweet day, therefore, as he was up and about and was the grill master for a fabulous dinner. El Professor, the kids, and I spent a lovely Father's Day afternoon/evening with my parents at their house, the house they purchased when I was four. We drove home in the late light of summer solstice.

Happy Fathers.

Happy Summer.

First Jaunt of Summer.....

This is usually the last week of school.  All over the state schools are finishing up classes, saying good bye, and teachers are beginning the task of packing up their classrooms for the summer. The district where El Professor teaches, however, shortened the school year by a week to help with the huge budget shortfall, so all of the usual end of the year festivities, grading, packing, etc., happened last week.  El Professor's car looks like a storage locker as he is moving schools next year, but he is off for the summer.  

Early in the week, El Professor's brother/family called to let us know they would be coming to the area (their oldest, my nephew lives just north of here) and wondered if we had a free day.  We decided to get together and head for Mary's Peak, the highest peak in the coast range, for a picnic and a hike.... 

...never mind that Mary's Peak had her head in the clouds.  At 4,097 feet above sea level, the view from the top is amazing....when the weather is clear.  

It was misty, moisty, and magical up in the clouds.

The wild flowers were beautiful.  It looked like a rock gardener had come and planted along the path.

Our favorite memory of Mary's Peak has been walking with butterflies everywhere.  Even with the earliness of June, and the mistiness of this particular day, the wild flower meadow had butterflies galore. 





It was the first jaunt of summer and is, hopefully, the beginning of a good season.  

The Heart of the Matter (or why we home educate)...

I was out on the patio the other day, checking vegetable starts and ‘outdoor tasking’ when Daniel launched into an explanation of a flawed proof for evolution, sighting a 1953 experiment conducted by a man named Stanley Miller.  The information he was spontaneously sharing came from the book, It Couldn’t Just Happen, that he read this year for his Classical Conversations Rhetoric class.  Although first published in 1987, this book remains an excellent resource for opening and maintaining a conversation about origins.  For Daniel, some of these conversations took place during his Classical Conversations Rhetoric class, and it is for honest conversations about fundamental topics, such as origins, that I have maintained a deep interest and desire to see our kids schooled outside of the public education system.

I was a public educator prior to ‘retiring’ in 1998 to manage our home, raise, and school our two kids.  I spent 11 years in the classroom teaching 1st and 2nd graders.  Those years were busy, demanding, and stressful, and while I was ready to hang up my stick of chalk when the opportunity came to do so, those years were also full of sweetness and I had the privilege of working alongside some very well intended, loving, serving colleagues, many of whom were also Christians.  Still, as our own two kids approached school age, the public school system wasn’t an option in my mind.  Large class sizes, my children’s maturity issues, etc. were all part of my concerns but, ultimately, the heart of the issue of educating our children has been an issue of world view.  

In September, Daniel had to write a science report on ‘amoebas’ for his Classical Conversations Biology class.  Each week, the students in the middle school class, Challenge A, research a topic, write about the topic, hand draw an illustration, write a bibliography, and present all of these to their cohort (classmates).  A quick check of our home library afforded very little information on ‘amoebas’, but we did have one book, John Holzmann’s (of Sonlight Curriculum) Biology.  Excellent.  Now, as the assignment required two or more references, we needed another book.  I stopped at St. Vincent de Paul, ‘O Excellent Supplier Of So Many Of Our Books’, and grabbed a middle school biology textbook.  $2.50 (which was less than my library fine).  There was a whole section in this book on amoebas, complete with illustrations.  As Daniel and I read over the section, however, we found that the information was so laced with evolutionary information that it seemed to be more like a tool of evolutionist indoctrination than an honest study of one-celled creatures.  Ultimately, I recycled the book (in the ‘blue bin’, choosing not to regift the book to St. Vinnie’s), and discussed with Daniel how one of my frustrations with the school system is that materials, such as this book, are used to teach core subjects, and that the information is dedicated to a theory of origins that is taught authoritatively rather than acknowledging the status of ‘theory’.  There are no disclaimers such as, ‘Some scientists believe.....’ 

Families have different reasons for choosing home education or home based education, and I have gleaned some great encouragement and wisdom on the subject from many sources, including an article written by Ron Julian of the McKenzie Study Center and Gutenberg College.  (Read it for yourself here.) Written in 1993, seven years prior to our own foray into the waters of home education, the issues of shepherding our children’s hearts through their education rings true today.  Home education was a growing movement in 1993, and the heart of the matter remains the same today.  

For our family, joining Classical Conversations has been an unexpected mercy in our home education journey.  It has been a financial sacrifice for us, but it has been well worth the cost. Granted, we could have combed through the book It Couldn’t Just Happen on our own, but the opportunity to discuss the information in a tutor-guided session with several other students has been valuable.  Weekly accountability to get the readings done has kept Daniel on track.  Daniel, who doesn’t *love* to read, loved this book and I am grateful that he had the opportunity to look at some of the arguments that evolutionists claim support their theory and to explore the huge, gaping holes in those very claims.  Several months after reading about Stanley Miller’s 1953 experiment, Daniel is still chewing on the information.  Home education has given us the opportunity to look at the holes in what our society, education system, and culture claim to be true in fundamental topics such as origins, and I am thankful. 

Garden Weekend

I like to get the vegetable garden in before June, and May 30 just makes the cut.  Saturday was the first uncommitted day I've had in several weeks.  The weather was hot and sunny, but by moving the garden umbrella around to various spots, I spent the hottest hours of the day working in portable shade.   

Here are a few snapshots of the constant work in progress.....

The red worms always amaze me.  We, or rather they, make much of our soil.  During the fall/winter/early spring I had a steamy pile of leaves and grass clippings cooking by the driveway.   

I'm a little late getting my seeds started.  

The vegetable garden space and my portable shade.  I planted purple bush beans, red celery, white pumpkin, zucchini, Genovese basil, peppers, Scarlet Runner Beans, lettuce, and carrots.  

One section of the garden is thriving with cool weather lettuces, sugar snap peas, cilantro and Walla Walla onions.

The raspberries are just forming.

The kids and I went garden junking last week at the recycling center.  Daniel found a bunch of bricks for his garden area, and Annie found this wash tub and garden gate for her area.  

The campanula 'bell flowers' are in bloom.

This week I am going to have the kids plant their garden areas using a modified 'homestead' agreement.  They get to keep their area if they work and develop it.  If they let it go, I will be the claim jumper and will come in and take over.  :-)  At this point, they have cleared their areas and Daniel has helped top dress his area with crumbly red worm compost.  

It feels like summer!