One of my favorite times of year is this brief moment in February when the almond trees explode into bloom, showering a carpet of white petals down our street and turning bare stick orchards into fairy wonderlands. With the occasional storm looming dark blue-black on the horizon, the flowers are often a striking contrast against the sky. Soft petals spreading against frost and wind and rain, trees blooming in spite of the storms: I’m in awe of the joyful defiance of life.

We’re mostly healthy after the storm of illnesses that kept us down for most of January. We’re now preparing for the season of Lent as it fast approaches. Given I’m still breastfeeding Beatrice and Michael is just 3, we’re taking an amended approach to Eastern Orthodox fasting this Lent — no meat or alcohol, but keeping dairy and oil. I’m also taking a break from social media (Instagram, etc) though I’ll continue writing blog posts. I appreciate the intentionality fasting requires of me: I’ve learned to meal plan for the entire week and use up leftovers in other meals. I’m hoping the social media fast also helps me prioritize intentionality in my leisure time, too.

I took advantage of our good weather and good health over the past week to work in our garden. The crabgrass had infested all the beds over winter, and it was satisfying but backbreaking work to clear it out. I also hauled a cubic yard of compost into the cleared beds to get the soil nice and ready for planting. I still have 1.5 beds to weed and one more cubic yard of compost to shovel, but all the rest are clear and ready for plants.

We now have strawberries and herbs planted as well as sunflowers and peas. I’m also trying to start a berry patch with blackberries and raspberries and planted some flower seeds to attract pollinators. We also found some frogs hiding in the beds: I’m hoping to create more spaces for them to live comfortably, while also growing and maintaining an organized garden.

Jake has been working on figuring out more efficient irrigation for our raised beds and I’ve been researching mulching methods and natural pest control, so I’m hoping we will have more success in the garden this summer. I always get excited in the spring and make grand plans, but I know that the intense heat of summer often leads to seasonal depression for me: I’m hopeful my work up front will help us have a successful garden despite heat waves and being stuck indoors during the worst of it.

Michael and Beatrice have both been enjoying the time outside. Bea still refuses to walk unless forced to, preferring to crawl everywhere at the speed of lightning. She has also learned to click her tongue and alternates between that and screeching as her main methods of expressing excitement. Our house is quite loud, quite often. I’ve taken to wearing earplugs during the worst of it.

Michael is quite the helper in the garden: he helped me shovel compost into the wheelbarrow and was my official snail hunter, helping me squish them or throw them over our fence. He also helped Jake uproot some dead trees and plant some replacements, as well as add more boards to our garden fence. It’s bittersweet to watch him grow from toddler to preschooler: it seems like yesterday he was a mischievous baby, and now he’s a rambunctious and inquisitive little boy. I’m in awe of his fearlessness, his creativity, and his kind heart.

Felix has made himself right at home: he’s gone from quiet and shut down to a boisterous, happy, noisy puppy. His wounds are healing well, and we’re scheduled for a vet visit soon to make sure he’s up to date on his shots.

He stays mostly at my parents’ house — they currently have more bandwidth to deal with all the training a puppy requires. However, on weekends he often comes over to play in our garden or chill in our living room. Michael adores him wholeheartedly. Bea is a little wary of him, given he’s a gangly pup who tends to knock her over accidentally.

I still haven’t finished any of my numerous knitting projects, but I’ve made progress! I’m focusing mostly on my homespun Traveler Cowl and my easy shawl project. I love the adventure of using handspun yarn: I’m never quite sure what it will look like until I’ve knit it. The easy shawl has grown enormously, and I still have two more sections to go. It’s going to be a delightfully large and cozy wrap when it’s finished.

The rising prices in the grocery stores have got me prioritizing food preservation and homemade snacks. I’ve been making whole wheat pita to eat with hummus for snacks and curry for dinner, and molasses brown bread for breakfasts. I’m slowly working through the stuff we have in our freezer — next, I have 24 cups of frozen strawberries to jam, and four gallon bags of frozen homegrown tomatoes to can.

I must admit, things outside my sphere of influence have been overwhelming and concerning on many levels. It’s been easy for me to look at the state of our nation and the world and get lost in anger and helplessness.

To fight this, I’ve been turning my focus to the work that’s right in front of me, and realizing what a gift it is. While gardening, mothering, and homesteading might not obviously be combating the larger issues spiraling around us, it is the work set before me at this time. It is good work. And it is a gift.

What a gift to stay home and use my time and energy to make nourishing meals and a peaceful sanctuary for any and all who walk through our door. What a gift to dig the dark earth and work with it to produce food for my family. What a gift to walk alongside my husband and nurture these two souls, readying them to fight dragons. May they be as joyfully defiant in the face of evil as the almond blossoms in the face of the storms.

What a gift.

For the first time in 2025, we are nearing a semblance of our normal routine. The kids still have stuffy noses and my dad and I are finishing our rounds of antibiotics, but we are regaining our full energy and health.

The TV has been on way too much as a matter of survival, and my reading and making habits sadly declined as I spent most of my limited free time napping or scrolling Instagram. Now that we’ve mostly recovered, we’re finally reinstating healthy boundaries around screen time. I also plan to delete Instagram and Facebook for Lent! Little steps towards being more intentional with our time.

We did have an exciting weekend, however. Jake and I were on our way to a breakfast date for my birthday/Valentine’s Day…and we ended up turning around on a highway to save a dog instead.

Jake snapped these pictures of me, his crazy wife, wading through and around a drainage ditch to get to him. The poor little guy was soaked and shivering, and had a few puncture wounds that looked like they may have come from a coyote attack. I wrapped him in a blanket and we took him home to clean his wounds and give him some food.

We were going to try to drop him at a shelter…but he’s so sweet and gets along so well with all the other animals and kids, he’s made himself right at home with us. We still are going to see if he’s got a microchip and see if anyone’s reported him missing or is looking for him at shelters — but given his state, we think he was probably abandoned.

So, his name is now Felix (from the Latin word for lucky). We aren’t sure what type of dog he is: he’s small and long and coarse haired, and seems like he might be a terrier. He’s staying days at our house and nights at my parents’ house, given they have room for a kennel. Michael especially loves helping “take care of Felix”. And everyone else is absolutely smitten, whether they’d admit it or not.

Almost all of our pets have been ones that either turn up on our doorstep or we rescue from peril, and they all come to us at just the right time. Our beloved Bandit passed away a while ago, and now it looks like Felix is here to join our little homestead.

It reminds me of a scene from one of my favorite books, Madeline L’Engle’s A Swiftly Tilting Planet.

“Aren’t you going to get another dog?”

“Eventually. The right one hasn’t turned up yet.”

“Couldn’t you go look for a dog?”

Mr. Murry looked up from the tesseract. “Our dogs usually come to us.”

Our little Beatrice is 11 months old, and her personality is bubbly and vibrant. She won’t take any crap from her older brother and shrieks to make sure he knows it. She still isn’t walking — she has taken steps here and there, but still prefers crawling. She has learned how to climb up on chairs, couches, and even the little table — usually she does so with a triumphant crow.

She stands by herself often and uses the little chairs as walkers around the kitchen too. Her favorite game is “bonk”, very much like Michael at this age: she gently touches her forehead to your forehead and waits for you to say “bonk” — then giggles and repeats. She loves banana, ground beef, and anything her brother is eating.

Michael is growing up so quickly. We’ve been reading longer books together, and right now he loves Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, as well as a handful of fairy tales like Jan Brett’s Goldilocks and the Three Bears and Trina Schart Hymen’s Little Red Riding Hood. He enjoys making “packages” of magnatiles and playing mailman, and his newest game is “Cookie Factory”, where he pretends his bedroom is a cookie factory.

We celebrated my birthday earlier this month in a quiet way, given everyone was still recovering from illness. It was a lovely day, despite being sick and our plans changing last minute. Jake got me beautiful flowers and a book I’d been wanting, as well as a new e-spinner for plying my yarn. My mom made me a delicious London Fog cake. I felt very loved. As a stay-at-home-mom it’s easy to feel isolated from most of the world, especially in the midst of these crazy illnesses. I’m very grateful to everyone who reached out to wish me many happy returns.

I finished plying that handspun yarn I wrote about in my last post, and fell in love with it so much that I cast on a Traveler Cowl with it immediately, before it even fully dried (though I don’t recommend doing that).

I also finished a quick worsted weight spin from a rustic Romney wool that will eventually become another hat for Michael. It was a bit rough — I’m not very good at chain-plying yet — but I still love the colors and it’s still knittable.

I’ve been knitting a lot but haven’t finished anything: lots of bouncing between projects depending on my energy levels. My handspun Traveler cowl is growing well and I love the shifting colors. It’s nice and lightweight, so I’ll be able to wear it in the spring when I finish it. To cope with being down with the flu last week, I cast on another sweater — the Ranunculus sweater. I’m knitting it out of a cotton/linen yarn and going to make it short sleeved, so I can wear it this summer.

I’ve been spending a lot more of my free time writing, which has been a huge blessing to me. I finished a short story and I’m working on another. I’m also reading the Westmark trilogy by Lloyd Alexander, Jade City by Fonda Lee, and a collection of essays by Peter Maurin (who worked closely with Dorothy Day).

I feel like I’m slowly getting my spark back after the ultra-marathon of pregnancy and postpartum. Even though we’re still not sleeping through the night, both Michael’s and Bea’s sleeping habits have gotten a little better and Bea’s nursing less and less. The illness is abating, the sun is shining more frequently, and we made some choices to lighten the stress on our family — both Jake and I finally feel as though we’re shifting out of survival mode.

The daffodils are starting to pop up in my flower garden: little yellow buds of hope amongst the weeds of my overrun garden. There’s so much to do to maintain our little homestead it can feel overwhelming, but I’m grateful for the good work that lies ahead of us as we prepare for spring and for Lent — both manual labor and spiritual labor.

There is much that is heavy and despairing in the world. But I see Felix’s grateful puppy eyes, and hear the giggles of my babies playing together, and I’m reminded that there’s so much good, too. Children, puppies, flowers; sunsets. And the daffodils that pop up year after year.