To celebrate his seventeenth month, Michael slept through the night for the first time in his life.
It’s quite a momentous occasion. Jake and I woke around 5 am, checking our nanny camera in shock as we realized we’d gotten eight hours of sleep for the first time in over a year. I feel like a completely different person…it’s amazing what sleep does to a body and soul!
Now, pray this is a habit that Michael will continue!
Michael’s vocabulary keeps growing in leaps and bounds. It would be impossible to list all the words he knows now. He picks up new ones every day. His current favorites, oft repeated, are “bagel”, “book”, “tractor”, “truck”, and “hot”.
Bubble beard
His current fascination is machinery. Trucks and tractors are his top two favorites, with cars, planes, boats, and trains following. He especially loves riding on the tractor/lawn mower with Grandpa. He often runs down to their house yelling “GRAMPA! VROOM VROOM!” and making a beeline for the garage. If Grandpa isn’t there, he’ll still climb all over the mower without him, rocking the steering wheel and bouncing on the seat.
He loves books and reading. He loves lift-the-flap books the most right now. We recently visited my favorite local used bookstore and he was delighted by their selection of board books. We plan to go back regularly: he seems to have inherited his parents’ love of books.
We switched him from a floor bed to a real bed frame and rearranged his room to make it a little more toddler friendly. He loves it, and we do too. Having two separate play places in our house has helped him play with his toys more.
He’s becoming even more active and energetic (which I didn’t know was possible). He’s constantly moving, running, jumping, climbing, and falling (intentionally or by accident). He wants to be moving at all times. He dances to music, tumbles on the couch, and sings along to songs. Whenever he falls or hurts himself, he says “BOOM” in the saddest voice you’ve ever heard until we give him a hug and/or kiss the boo-boo.
He’s obsessed with cherries — as I pitted them for canning, he kept sticking his hand in the bowl and eating them. Grapes are a close second. If he could live solely on fruit and bread, I think he would be happy.
Sleepy boy
He loves playing in water — his water table and wading pool have been life savers as the temperature rises. He has a tendency to try and climb in the water table and sit in it, or dip his juice pop in it.
He loves giving kisses, and always goes in with puckered fish lips, exclaiming MWAH! He does this with us, with grandma and grandpa, and with icons or pictures of Jesus.
He has a slight cold right now which makes him uncomfortable and snuffly. It’s unfortunate that it corresponds with my hand injury: both of us are not operating at 100% and wrangling a toddler with limited dominant hand mobility is a struggle, to say the least.
So I’ve dusted off screen time again, after a month of no TV. We’ve been snuggling and watching Brambly Hedge together during the mornings or late afternoons, once he’s tired of reading or playing outside. Even though I would prefer no tv, I still cherish these gentle moments and cuddles.
June has felt like a jumbled trinket box. So many mismatched, beautiful things tumbling around, difficult to organize or describe. Instead of trying to sort through all of it, I’ll take you through the whole trinket box with me.
It’s cherry season, and most of the orchards that surround us have already been harvested. There’s always some left over to glean, and the farmers don’t mind if we go through and take the fruit that was missed.
Rainier cherries
I canned up six pints in light syrup so we can have cherry cobbler in the winter months. There’s nothing better than warm cherry cobbler. I’m also planning on gleaning more and making a few pints of cherry jam.
I have been harvesting my lavender as it blooms and making lavender simple syrup for coffee and cocktails. It’s been a delight to sip lavender lattes in the mornings while watering the garden or playing with Michael on the porch.
My home brewed kombucha is finished: and it was delicious. I made two flavors: lavender, and blueberry honey mint. I’m already brewing a second batch.
After taking a break from spinning, I finally finished the yarn I’d been working on for weeks. This is a 2 ply, fingering weight Rambouillet fiber, dyed by threewatersfarm on Etsy. The colorway is named “Teal Wins”.
I wanted to challenge myself and spin a thinner yarn than I usually do. It was definitely a challenge, but I succeeded. My goal is to never have an empty wheel, so I started a fun spin using a dyed Falkland fiber from Nest Fiber called “Spring Ahead”. It’s bright and colorful and a joy to work. I’m spinning it much thicker, and planning on making this my first chain ply yarn. That means it’ll be a self-striping yarn once I knit it up.
I somehow found a way to stuff yet another bookshelf into our tiny cottage (Jake knew I was up to trouble when I was carrying around his measuring tape). I’m organizing my book collection by genre, and also trying to scan them all into LibraryThing. I look forward to the day our home library will be organized and catalogued, but I fear it’s a long way away.
But now, after organizing and purging a few books that don’t really belong to my library, I have four empty shelves (in bookcases not featured in these photos). I can now justify my impulsive used-bookstore visits.
I really missed reading. In With All Her Mind, writer Haley Stewart likens reading to conversations with authors and ideas throughout the centuries. On the days where I have very little adult conversation as I play with my toddler and attend to my different household duties, reading nourishes my intellectual life.
My “to be read” pile
I’ve been continuing to read in the evenings instead of scrolling through my phone. The tech detox was only for the month of May, but I’m still figuring out the rules I’ll set with technology and social media in my daily life going forward.
Technology is a tool that can be used well. But so much is working against us using it well, trying to get us to spend as much time (and money) as possible on our devices. This article really shook me: The People Who Don’t Want You To Sleep. As the author quotes:
You can try having self-control, but there are a thousand engineers on the other side of the screen working against you.
former Google design ethicist Tristan Harris
So I’m still grappling with the role technology should play in my life and the questions that come with it. What does a healthy relationship with technology look like? What limits are good, and what limits are draconian? When does its usage cross the line from tool to addiction? What does my phone usage do to my soul and my journey towards holiness?
I’m trying to reach for books or writing or knitting or spinning instead of my phone, or just sit with quiet hands and listen to the birds or the neighbor’s goats or my child babble to himself as he plays. And yet, I still find myself itching to check my email or scroll Instagram. When did it get so difficult to do nothing? To embrace silence and leisure?
These are the questions I’ve been grappling with as I try to determine what my relationship with technology will be going forward. Some of these questions and my thoughts on them will be making an appearance on my Substack in the following weeks. But in the meantime, I will mother and clean and garden and work with my hands, and remind myself that this work is just as beautiful and good as writing.
Postscript
I had almost all of this post written, and then on Sunday night I was using a mandoline to slice vegetables and accidentally sliced a lot more than just brussel sprouts. My middle finger is missing a very sizable chunk. I’m grateful for my cousin, who answered my FaceTime when we couldn’t get the bleeding to stop after ten minutes, and who walked us through the best ways to care for it.
So these are the last knitting and spinning and canning updates you’ll see for a bit, unfortunately, as my finger heals. Pray for me: almost all my favorite hobbies are off the table as I heal, and I’m not someone who enjoys sitting still…
June is our month of rest: we have no travel planned, and are staunchly attempting to have more restful weekends.
That being said, between our church obligations and the homestead, our days end up being quite full. We’re trying to take each day as it comes, and be intentional and thoughtful about our time. That has meant a lot of time handicrafting, and reading, and gardening.
I finished my Nightshift Shawl while traveling last weekend and I’m in love with it. I have wanted to make this pattern for years, and last Christmas my parents gifted me a kit for it. It’s made with special color-shifting yarn (Spincycle Yarns) and the mosaic (or slip stitch) color work technique, which causes the shifting rainbow effect.
For me, it’s a landmark in my knitting progress. I’m so proud of it. I’ve been wearing it on the porch in the mornings while Michael plays and I sip coffee.
I’ve been reading quite a bit during Michael’s naps and while he’s distracted with other things. I’ve never been able to stick with just one book: I often read several at a time and hop between them as my interest directs.
I’m currently halfway through The Unsettling Of America: Culture and Agriculture by Wendell Berry. It’s quite thought-provoking, and I have several different essay ideas that have sprung from some of his words. I’m sure we’ll see trends from Berry’s work in a lot of my upcoming posts: gardening, Creation, stewardship, technology, the Machine — there will be much to come, I’m sure.
I recently started a Substack (which you can find here, if you’d like to subscribe). I’m planning on using it to publish essays that don’t quite fit the theme of this blog. For this space, I’ll keep discussing faith and family and homesteading, and more. For the Substack, I’ll explore thoughts on things such as Orthodox-specific faith, feminism, education, consumerism, and more.
I’m also reading With All Her Mind, which is a series of essays by Catholic women on the intellectual life. It’s encouraging and beautiful, with essays by mothers and lawyers and nuns and professors. It reminds me that although I’m not in an academic space currently, my mind is not stagnant or going to waste.
For fiction, I’m still listening to Jayber Crow by Berry. It’s a quiet and profound story, and I love listening to the narrator’s soft drawl as I work at my spinning wheel.
My garden has started to produce! Now the great zucchini surplus has begun. I have two plants, and I’m sure I’ll regret planting two before the summer is over. For now, I’m enjoying the fresh produce.
My tomatoes (Early Girl variety) have begun to grow as well. I love checking on them as I water in the mornings. My three plants are a little too close together because I had limited bed space when I planted them, but they’re making the best of it.
My beets, sadly, did not survive for a variety of reasons: dogs, strange stormy weather, nutrient deficient soil, and probably many others. I’m doing more research for next time, and hoping for a hearty crop on my second round.
My parents’ beets, however, did very well. We blanched and froze them for soups in the winter.
Their potatoes also did really well! Michael was very excited to find some mini ones that were “Michael sized”.
There’s something incredibly satisfying about tending to a garden and watching what comes from all the dirt and weeding and watering and care. Every morning when I water, I watch the zucchini blossoms unfurl, and smell the spice of the tomato leaves, and see the bees nuzzle the lavender, and I am reminded that Paradise is indeed a garden.
We just returned from spending a few days in the Southern California area for my best friend’s wedding. It was a beautiful and joyous occasion, and I’m so happy for her and her new husband. May God grant them many years.
It was delightful to catch up with college friends I hadn’t seen in quite a while. Although so much had happened and changed since I last saw most of them, we laughed together and discussed topics in typical Torrey fashion (if you know, you know) just like old times. And just like old times, we owned the dance floor, singing along to the music at the top of our lungs.
We were able to see family friends for dinner on Friday, and we stayed with my in-laws: Michael had so much fun playing with Oma and Opa. He loved reading the “knock knock” book with Oma, and playing with the dryer balls and looking at icons with Opa.
I also was blessed to attend Saturday Vespers at St Michael’s in Whittier. It was here I first discovered my home in Orthodoxy. As much as I love the Eastern Rite, the Western Rite is where my heart is at home.
It was beautiful to see Michael running in the courtyard of the church where I met his father five years prior (almost to the day!), and playing by the statue of his patron saint.
It’s always difficult for me the day after a trip like this. Distance is a hard thing. I don’t like being far away from the people we love, and our visits are limited by time and resources and logistics. Reunions are joyful, but parting is difficult. Our family and friends are scattered across the state, the country; the globe.
In our spread-out, disconnected society, distance is a fact of life. I would argue technology has played a large role in increasing distance between people. There’s a reason our age, the most technological, is also the most lonely. Even with the benefits of technology to bridge distance, nothing replaces being in person together: sharing a meal, or a hug, or a laugh.
And in a fallen world, distance is unavoidable. Until Christ comes again, there will always be distance to traverse. Distance between us and our loved ones, between us and our family; between us and God.
I find it helpful to dwell on the journeying instead of the distance. Instead of thinking on how long it’ll be until my next visit, I consider every call or text or letter as a small step towards my friends or family before we’re reunited in person. Instead of thinking about how far away I am from the holy person I want to be, I consider what my next step should be: morning prayer? Attending to my rule of life?
When having dinner on our journey with dear family friends, we sang Dona Nobis Pacem in a round. Older voices, younger voices, confident voices, quiet voices: all taking part in the music. For a moment, it felt like the music had drawn together those who were not with us because of distance or death. It was a foretaste of the meal and the music that await us in the next life, by God’s mercy.
Give us peace, Lord, and be with us on our journeys until all distance is behind us.
This tech detox is kicking my butt. I didn’t realize how addicted I was to social media until I deleted it from my phone and realized how restless that made me. I must admit, I’ve fallen away a few times, finding myself scrolling or mindlessly watching things. Each time, however, I’ve pulled myself back on track.
But man. It’s been hard. If you see me liking your Instagram post or watching your stories, feel free to yell at me to get back on track.
Anyway.
I’ve been reading a lot during the in-between times of the day when my son is playing quietly or distracted by something else. It’s my alternative to staring at my phone, and it’s worked well. I’ve been surprised by how quickly a few pages here and there add up. So far, I’ve read eight books of varying lengths and topics. I’m also currently working through two books, one fiction and one non-fiction and both by Wendell Berry: Jayber Crow, and The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture.
I was deeply struck by what Berry said in the very first chapter of Unsettling America, outlining the difference between those with an exploitative mindset and a nurturing mindset.
The exploiter is a specialist, an expert; the nurturer is not. The standard of the exploiter is efficiency; the standard of the nurturer is care. The exploiter’s goal is money, profit; the nurturer’s goal is health — his land’s health, his own, his family’s, his community’s, his country’s…the competence of the exploiter is in organization; that of the nurtuerer is in order — a human order, that is, that accommodates itself to both other order and to mystery.
Wendell Berry
Berry describes modern agriculture as dominated by this exploiter’s mindset, using technology to take all it can from the land and pouring in chemicals and fertilizers to make up for the depleted nutrients in the soil. I can’t help but see the similarity between this and our love of expediency and productivity. As a culture, don’t we do the same with our lives and our time? Sleep deprivation is a badge of honor, as is overtime. We constantly are told to look for ways to improve our performance and utilization. We live through to-do lists and measure our days by the tasks completed. We take all we can from every second we are given and pour in coffee or alcohol or pornography or social media to make up for the depletion we feel.
But what else does that remove from our lives without us noticing?
In the same chapter, after he speaks about the difference between the exploiter and the nurturer, Wendell Berry addresses our attitude towards work.
But is work something that we have a right to escape? And can we escape it with impunity? We are probably the first entire people ever to think so. All the ancient wisdom that has come down to us counsels otherwise. It tells us that work is necessary to us, as much a part of our condition as mortality; that good work is our salvation and our joy; that shoddy or dishonest or self-serving work is our curse and our doom. We have tried to escape the sweat and sorrow promised in Genesis — only to find that, in order to do so, we must forswear love and excellence, health and joy.
Wendell Berry
We are a culture obsessed with work and yet, ironically, we are also a culture that abhors labor. We look for faster, easier, “better” ways to do things, turning our noses up at once-sacred professions that often refuse the shortcuts: farming, parenting, and the list goes on.
As people who’ve grown up in a society full of an exploitative mindset, perseverance is hard. It’s easy to feel like something’s wrong if we run into difficulty (I touched on this idea in my last post). We have grown accustomed to instantaneous results available at the push of a button or exchange of a dollar: clothes, food, entertainment, etc. We’re used to technology removing discomfort and wait times and inconvenience.
We have produced much comfort and convenience, but at what cost? What has been leeched from our lives by technology?
Cultivating a nurturer’s mindset in an exploiter’s society is not easy, and Berry doesn’t mince words when he describes the the cost of our complacency and the difficulties it entails. But humans are made for a nurturing life. We can restore the goodness and virtues that have been sucked from our lives while we were blinded by the charm of the exploiter.
What does this look like?
We must ask the questions of the nurturer, looking to health and wholeness over expediency and profit. Practicing resurrection, as Berry says in his poem Manifesto: The Mad Farmer’s Liberation Front. Learning to labor and to wait, as Wordsworth says in his poem A Psalm Of Life. Servingby only standing and waiting, as John Milton says in Sonnet 19. The list goes on — the importance of nurturing, of patience, of embracing slowness without visible progress — all themes which show up time and time again in poetry. Perhaps because poetry itself fights the exploiter’s mindset.
(I take comfort in the fact that is one thing AI still cannot do, and may never be able to do: write real, good poetry.)
I have been impatient to get our front yard perfectly cultivated, exasperated by how unfinished it looked. But as I read Wendell Berry, I realized how backward that approach is. Now, I’m working on embracing the slow, messy process. Yes, our front yard looks like a weed-infested patch of barren land. That’s what it was until we built our house. Life and beauty and order don’t come at the push of a button. They come with sweat and labor and love. With watering and weeding and shaping.
And slowly, life and beauty and order are taking shape. My garden boxes are alive and verdant with herbs and vegetables. My zucchini and tomatoes are both growing well. My peppers are flowering. My chamomile and roses and marigolds and lavender are all blooming and fragrant.
This approach to gardening should translate over my approach to my life, too. I am nowhere near the person I aspire to be, in holiness or intelligence or skill. It’s easy to get frustrated and beat myself up for where I’m at, telling myself I should be better. Yet that will get me nowhere, just like looking at the weeds and uneven dirt of our yard and getting impatient will accomplish nothing.
Yes, I’m not as patient or disciplined or holy as I’d like to be. But instead of getting impatient and shrugging off the idea of growth and change, or wasting time and money on the latest self-help fad, the only thing that will produce life and beauty and order in my life is the same as what cultivates that in my garden. I should approach myself with the same nurturer’s mindset of wholeness and health.
The only way forward is to put on my gloves and pick up the shovel.
P.S: for those who may be interested, I also started a Substack. It feels a little redundant given this blog, but I enjoy the ad-free, creator-centric nature of Substack and see it as friendlier than WordPress when it comes to owning and distributing my work and my words in the future, with the way social media is changing.
I currently plan to publish the same posts on my Substack as I do my WordPress blog. However, eventually, I’ll probably post some a few extra essays on Substack with my *spicier* takes on Orthodoxy, gardening, technology, parenting, and other varied topics.
It’s been a busy time: both my siblings graduated from the University of Dallas this weekend, and we flew out to be there with them and cheer them on. It was so wonderful to see them again.
They both have awesome jobs in Texas, and the beginnings of flourishing adult lives. I’m so proud of them, and all that they’ve accomplished and the ways they have grown in wisdom and virtue. They are both truly remarkable human beings. I’m delighted to call them my brother and sister.
Michael did amazingly well during the graduation, and my incredible husband wrangled him the entire time so I could watch my siblings graduate. However, my mom did snap a pretty hilarious picture of his grumpy face I had to share:
I felt something bittersweet as I watched them walk across that stage. It seems like only a little while ago I was graduating college and they were graduating high school. It seems like only a little while ago I was moving into my dorm freshman year and they were helping me carry boxes from the car. It seems like only a little while ago we were all kids running around outside and building fairy houses and jumping on the trampoline.
It’s a new chapter of life for them, and for us. Things are changing. For the first time in decades, none of us will have the rhythm of the school semester woven throughout our year. Now we are all adjusting our concept of home, and strengthening our concept of family.
Michael with his godfather and uncle
The twins’ graduation made me realize just how much Michael has grown too, with another pang of bittersweetness. He turned sixteen months over the weekend, and it made me think of all the ways he’s changed and grown over the past month.
This tech detox has extended to the whole family: he has had no screen time (except for during the plane ride, which was a necessary exception for all of us). Instead we’ve been reading a lot of books. While parenting without screens has been much harder, it’s been delightful. He usually brings me a stack of books and snuggles next to me on the couch, turning pages for me and echoing his favorite words.
His favorite books are currently Little Blue Truck and Brown Bear Brown Bear What Do You See? We read them several times a day, and we have them memorized. He loves chiming along with “beep” or pointing to “brown bear”.
Another thing the tech detox has helped: instead of seeing me stare at my phone, he has been seeing me read much more often. During the in-between times, I sit with my book instead of my phone as he plays with his trucks or kicks his ball around our porch. Now, if he sees me sitting with a book, he often comes over with a book of his own.
We’ve also been playing in the garden quite a bit. He loves stacking planting containers, and putting dirt in his dump truck. He found out he can eat strawberries straight from the plant, and promptly consumed all ripe berries (and unripe ones too, when I wasn’t looking).
His language and comprehension has exploded. He’s fascinated by the names of body parts and loves to point out eyes and noses and mouths and toes, on us and on himself and on pictures in books. His newest favorite is “belly”, which means I have to keep an eye out when we’re in public, because he might decide to suddenly lift my shirt and triumphantly shout BELLY! for all the world to hear (and see).
He’s tall enough to reach things on the table, and has started using chairs to climb onto the table and reach the countertops. Nothing is safe. He also discovered the fun game of emptying bookshelves.
On the flight to Dallas, I was touched by my son’s tender heart and sensitivity to Christ. While we were sitting on the tarmac for almost an hour waiting to deplane, everyone’s patience was thin. Michael, sitting still on my lap for a few rare seconds, suddenly saw my cross necklace and with a big smile leaned forward and kissed the cross with a resounding mwah! He did this several times, pausing in between to look at me, or look at the figure of Jesus on the cross. We kiss the priest’s hand cross every Sunday at the end of Liturgy, and I hadn’t realized how deeply that had become engrained in him.
I forget how often I fall into the trap of equating hard with bad. It’s so easy to let comfort and ease dictate my choices. However, parenting has helped me veer away from this tendency. It is the hardest and most exhausting and difficult thing I have ever done, and it is the most delightful and fulfilling and rewarding thing I have ever done.
Sometimes the hard, difficult thing truly is what’s best and good and makes us holier people: tech detoxes, or working out, or life changes, or growing up.
This homestead update will be a little different than usual. First, I wanted to share an article that unsettled me and pierced me with conviction regarding my technology usage.
I strongly encourage you to read it. The statistics she quotes are harrowing: enough to make me look at my toddler and realize he watches me stare into my phone much more than I would like. I think of the technological landscape he’ll have to navigate as he gets older, and I realized my modeling isn’t setting him up to deal with it well.
It also reminded me that our use of technology is not spiritually neutral. It either hinders us in becoming more Christ-like, or aids us on our path to sanctification. And my passive scrolling has not helped me become holier.
So I’m on a tech detox, and it’s been great. I’ve felt more present, more grounded, more whole than I have in a long time. I have many thoughts that will probably make their way into a future blog post. But until then, I simply encourage you to read the article above, and put your phone down a bit more.
I recognize the irony of writing about tech detoxing on an online platform, where it’ll be linked across social media. I’m not quite anti-technology, but I do believe its insidious presence in every facet of our lives is not as harmless as it may appear. The older I get, and the more I see the effects of technology on my generation and the generations after, the more I understand the Luddite movement and agree with Wendell Berry.
I have been filling my reclaimed hours with reading and gardening and music and making. We’re all still on the very end of our colds, but thankfully the brain fog has lifted.
My dear friend from college was in the area for a work conference, and spent Friday through Saturday with us. It was lovely to catch up, eat good food, play board games, go to thrift stores, and laugh together after nearly 6 years of being apart.
I found a wooden sword at the thrift store for $4. Michael is thrilled.
Our two shipments of bees came in, and my dad and I did the “bee drop” to put them into their new hives on Sunday evening. Jake was amazing and took photos for me.
The bees come in wooden boxes with the queen in a separate compartment. We prep the new hives and carefully remove the queen compartment from the wooden box without letting the other bees out.
We replace the cork stopper in the queen compartment with a marshmallow and set her in the new hive. Then, we open the wooden box and gently shake the bees out into their new home.
The bees quickly get to work exploring their new home and eating through the marshmallow to free their queen, while my dad and I put the finishing touches on their hive and make sure they’re nice and comfortable.
This brings our total number of hives to four. They seem to be healthy and thriving, and we’re hoping for a robust honey harvest this year. Bees are such fascinating, beautiful creatures…I could sit in front of the hives and watch them dance forever.
Michael and I picked up a flat of fresh strawberries from our local stand and canned eight half-pints of strawberry jam. As I hulled the berries, he stood next to me with his head tilted back and mouth open, waiting for me to feed him pieces of strawberry.
As I was cooking down the berries, he was being awfully quiet. I then realized the table is no longer a safe place out of his reach.
We still have quite a few berries, and for our next batch I may try out an alternative pectin that requires less sugar.
In knitting news, I’m enjoying this simple DK sock pattern by A Wooden Nest. I needed something simple and practical and easy on my hands as I continued to recover from this cold. I finished a pair for Jake, and now I’m starting my own pair. For Jake’s, I used KnitPick’s Stroll Tweed held double in Sequoia colorway.
I’ve taken to sitting on the porch in the mornings while I drink my coffee and Michael plays. The oak tree sways in the breeze, and the killdeer hops across the driveway, and the red tail hawk calls in the distance, and the morning sun crawls across my lap with its Midas touch. It brings to mind one of my favorite poems: the Peace of Wild Things, by Wendell Berry.
When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
It’s been an interesting week. A few days after Pascha ended, we got hit with another cold — worse than the others we’ve weathered this April. Two weeks later, we’re both still popping cold meds like candy to get through the day. The amount of cough drops and tissues we’ve been through is ludicrous. We’re hopeful we’ve finally hit the tail end of it.
A flock of geese in the early morning
Then last weekend, I had a nasty fall over a dip in our gravel driveway — while holding Michael. Thankfully, Michael walked away with a single scratch on his arm, and I took the brunt of it. My legs and palms, however, are a different story. They’re pretty gnarly-looking. I’ve gotten some concerned looks when I wear shorts or skirts in public.
Some wildflowers ready for pressing
So because of all these things, it’s been a different type of week. My body is healing from the fall and my mind is fuzzy from the headcold. I’ve still been moving forward with homestead tasks, slowly doing my spring cleaning and reorganizing while my knitting and spinning are on hold.
Our little cottage had its HVAC system installed, and just in time for some 90 degree weather. It’s been oppressively hot the last few days, and the new air conditioning system keeps our cottage a little oasis.
The warmer weather has turned my focus towards the tasks that prepare for the bounty of summer. Spring cleaning is in full force: so far I’ve organized and deep cleaned our garden shed, the fridge, the closet in the guest room, the master bathroom, the laundry room, and several cabinets in the kitchen.
The biggest task so far has been organization. Our storage is pretty limited, so I’ve had to get creative with the ways I organize the kitchen and laundry room to make room for the canned goods I hope to preserve this summer. It’s a goal of mine to have a robust, shelf stable pantry that I’ve put up myself.
My garden is set up to help me achieve this goal: I’ve got a handful of tomatoes, zucchini/summer squash, strawberries, and pepper plants happily soaking up water and sun. I’m hoping to add cucumbers and beans shortly. I know I’ll also be able to take advantage of the bounty of my parents’ fruit trees to make jams and sauces.
My little garden helper
I have big plans for the garden eventually — but the most pressing thing right now is controlling the native ground cover plants that threaten to choke out my garden beds. You can see them in the photo above. While the wild look is endearing in its own way, I desperately need to borrow my dad’s weedwhacker.
Beets! Strawberries!Tomatoes!
I grew up processing tomatoes and apples with my mom in the kitchen with a water-bath canning method. I pressure-canned for the first time, and I’m absolutely obsessed. I make chicken stock from the carcasses of any rotisserie chicken we get for dinner, and I was tired of it going bad in our fridge before I could use it. So I faced my fear of the pressure canner, watched some YouTube videos to figure out how it works, and now I have two beautiful quarts of shelf-stable stock. It will be perfect when soup season rolls around again.
Also, inspired by my cousin and one of my favorite YouTubers, I’ve started to brew my own kombucha. I drink enough of it that it makes sense to start making it instead of buying it, plus it seems like a good place to start exploring fermenting. So far my scoby seems happy enough, but only time will tell.
Knitting and spinning, as I said, have been mostly on hold. However, the warmer weather and Michael taking longer naps (2 hours!!) gave me some inspiration to sew a few quick garments. I updated an old maxi dress I never wore to a midi skirt I love, made an airy blouse, and finally finished a skirt I’d had on hold for a while (no photo of that one yet).
Even though the past two weeks haven’t been what I’d planned or expected, I’m still grateful for the different ways spring has entered into our lives, brushing out the last of winter’s cobwebs. I hope however your spring is going, you get the chance to spend some time in the sunshine, or feel some dirt beneath your hands, or make something beautiful.
How do you know you’ve truly reached adulthood? You get really excited about new kitchen dishcloths.
More accurately, I’m really excited about THESE dishcloths: I finally came up with the perfect combination for my kitchen needs.
Most people are already familiar with the “grandmother’s dishcloth”: knit on the bias with a little lace around the edges. I’d knit several of the basic dishcloth using this pattern I found on Ravelry (linked here for those interested), but it wasn’t my favorite. For one thing, it had a tendency to warp and not be square after a few washes, which drives me nuts. Also, the single strand of cotton yarn made it rather thin for tougher kitchen scrubbing.
My well used “grandmother’s dishcloth”
Inspired by two of my sisters-in-law, who were both making their respective kitchen cloths when we visited in Ohio, I began thinking of ways to make a dishcloth that was perfect for my kitchen.
I’d made scrubbies with three strands of yarn in the past, but those were too hard on my hands as I knit. One strand was too thin. Two strands of worsted weight cotton was then my Goldilocks choice. I wanted it to be flexible enough to fold easily, but thick enough to work as a potholder in a pinch.
I needed something textured as well: garter and stockinette stitch were too smooth and didn’t scrub as well as I wanted. I also admit I’m a knitting nerd: I have a favorite stitch pattern. I love the way seed stitch looks and feels, and it was perfect for this dishcloth.
Putting all these things together, I came up with my favorite dishcloth pattern. I’ve made it in three sizes, and I’m absolutely obsessed. I’ve already made five, and I don’t see myself stopping any time soon.
I’m not a pattern designer, nor do I ever see myself pursuing designing: but if it helps to see my process written out, I’ve shared it here! It’s not fancy by any means, but I’m thrilled with how well it fits all my needs.
Michael is 15 months old now, and he’s an active, adorable, mischievous, precious toddler.
The chickens were wondering where he got that egg
His language and communication has exploded — he has too many new words to record here. However, he has definitely learned “no”, and uses it exactly as often as you’d imagine a toddler would. He mimics words back to us often, and interacts with “Miss Rachel” whenever we have screen time: clapping and singing and dancing along. His current favorite sound is “VROOM” — he will enthusiastically make it whenever he sees anything with wheels.
His favorite person is still grandpa: whenever we’re at church and he sees my dad in the choir, he shouts GRANDPA over and over and immediately runs over to him. He does the same with DADA. It’s adorable, but makes participating in church services a little difficult — if grandpa or dada are busy (as they often are), his protests usually increase in volume until I drag him out to the narthex.
Matching with dada on Lazarus Saturday
Even with all the difficulties that come with having a toddler in church, I love watching Michael at church. He has a reverence for holy things that surprises me, given his age. Even if he’s upset or exhausted or fussing, whenever he’s in line for communion and reaches the cup, he immediately settles and is quiet as he receives the Eucharist. Even though he runs around the sanctuary, he stops before he reaches the solea (the platform in front of the iconostasis).
We’ve started weaning: day weaning is basically complete except for a short nursing session before naptime. We were going to wait to start weaning until after Pascha, but Michael went that way naturally with the help of nicely timed distractions from Jake and my parents. Night weaning is a different story…hopefully we’ll have progress to report next month.
Sleep is still abysmal. He’s always moving, always talking, always doing something — getting him to stop and be still enough to sleep is an exhausting wrestling match that we often repeat several times a night. Once in a while he sleeps for a three hour stretch, and we were elated and shocked when he slept from 9 pm to 3 am a few weeks ago. However, that hasn’t happened again. We’re hopeful might weaning will give us a little more sleep.
Being outdoors is Michael’s absolute favorite pastime. Now that the weather has warmed, we’re out in the garden and on our porch every day, soaking in the sunshine and spring. He loves his own set of garden tools (gifts from a dear family friend) and I have to keep a careful watch to make sure he doesn’t behead my plants with his zeal.
If there’s a puddle or standing water or any kind, he will find it. He loves putting rocks in puddles, or trying to climb into the dogs’ water bucket. We’re hoping to get him swimming lessons this summer to continue to foster his love of water.
He’s absolutely fearless — he plays with my parents’ dogs even though Max is twice his size. He loves sitting on my dad’s lap and throwing the ball for them. If left to his own devices, he would explore forever and never come back. I’ve often looked up from my gardening to see him halfway down our driveway to my parents’ house. I’m grateful we’re further back from the street.
Max making sure he doesn’t wander too farWalking to dada’s office
Thankfully, he seems to have outgrown his hatred of riding in the car, and will happily play in his car seat without complaint for most drives. Longer drives are still a gamble, but overall our daily errand running is much more enjoyable for both of us.
A Pascha gift from my parents: he’s obsessed
He remains an adventurous eater: he recently had a bite of my spicy sushi and returned for more. His favorite foods are currently raspberries, mozzarella, grapes, pinto beans, bread of any kind, and blueberries.
I recently knit him a pair of socks from a limited edition self-striping yarn I purchased from a small business: they’re absolutely adorable and a tad bit big for him. However, I didn’t think about the fact they don’t have grips on the bottom…he took one step on our hardwood floor and promptly wiped out with a screech and a glare of betrayal. Good thing I made them large — we’ll have to wait until he’s a little steadier on his feet.
Watching him grow over the past month has been delightful — I look forward to seeing what sixteen months brings us.
five acres four generations 