Natural Attachment

On Tuesday we left daddy home so that he could get some extra sleep and get some music done. We hoped on the bus and headed to the Central Northside a.k.a Mexican War Streets. First, we skipped through a community garden close to where we hoped off the bus and then we ran into Beleza and grabbed a vegan turnover and something to sip on. Elijah found a puzzle on the bookshelf that amazingly enough had all its pieces! We ran across the street from Beleza to another little garden-y spot to look around.

Next we walked over to The Mattress Factory [an art museum] and got to see its new exhibits — Inner & Outer Space. We also got to see its new expanded location just a couple doors down. We spent the majority of our time out in the garden at the museum. Elijah likes to run around the ‘urban lanscaping’, which is basically the remnants of what was once a house, but now only bits of its basement and steps exist. There is also a pretty neat little water feature, complete with a little waterfall.

After we left the museum, we walked over to the Old Allegheny Community Gardens for a look-see. Sorry, no pictures of the community gardens, but believe me when I tell you that everyone’s lot looks wild and fantastic and there are LOTS of huge sunflowers everywhere!

Today, we meet up with a family that we ran into at the park last week. Elijah and the little girl get on with one another quite well. The mum and I exchanged numbers and made plans to meet up today so the the kiddos could play. I got to meet the dad today and he’s a cool & fun guy. The mum is really nice, an artist and someone who likes to hang out at The Moose. It’s nice to finally meet someone nearby, who is fun to be around and who doesn’t take this parenting gig so damn seriously! They aren’t homeschoolers, but they are awesome. Bella, the daughter, and E have fun together and that’s what it’s all about. We’re going to hang out with them again at their house in Manchester next week one evening. I kind of forgot about taking pictures of them, but I did snap a couple of Elijah dancing at the park before Bella and family arrived. ~~Elijah just informed me that he wasn’t dancing, but that he was being ‘king of all the trees’…so there you go~~

This afternoon, after we both had a nap, because we got up so freaking early to go to the park, E made a race track for some vehicles and I was on the ball with the camera.

Then we ‘had to’ walk over to Rite Aid and get some more pretzels and check out their popcorn selection. I snapped a picture of the kiddo goofing off in the driveway.

We’ve had a good couple of days, filled with people, places, some creativity and lots of online computer games

No, I haven’t forgotten how to count…this is the ninth crate of green goodness from our CSA. I totally dropped the ball on taking pictures or posting what we got last week…sorry. Just take my word that it was plentiful and good!

This week’s share had to offer:

Lg. head Lettuce
Lg. bag Carrots
8 Pickling Cucumbers
2 Green Bell Peppers
2 Yellow Wax Peppers? (if you know what those yellow guys are, let me know)
1 Fatty Jalapeño
2 Zucchini Squash
8 Red Potatoes
Sm. bag Green Beans
11 Tomatoes
6 Green Onions
Sm bunch Cilantro
1 Pint of Blueberries**
Bonus:
*Sweet neighbors Sarah & Bill shared some Cherry Tomatoes with Elijah and I as we walked home and sent us home with a Pimento (the reddish looking bell pepper thing in the picture).

**We also ordered a flat (12 pints) of blueberries from our CSA.

***Tonight I picked ten black heirloom tomatoes, two large bunches of basil, one large bunch of sage and one roma tomato from our community garden.

I cut and froze three and a half quarts worth of green beans from this week and last week. I frozen six pints of blueberries and made two dozen blueberry muffins and one and a half dozen blueberry mini-muffins.

I’ve got tons of cukes to try and pickle…with a new recipe. I need to make and freeze tomato/pasta sauce and cut and freeze some squash to add to soup this Winter.

Did I mention that we are flush with yummy veggies right now!

So, we haven’t been to the community garden since June 13th, right before we left for vacation. I finally got down there tonight at around 8:30 pm. Oh My Gosh…like, all that rain we’ve been havin’…our little measly lot has turn into a jungle of sorts! (No, I really don’t talk like that!)

Tonight (from our plot) I harvested:
1 med. head worth of leaf lettuce
Few bits of bib lettuce
15 radishes
Few sprigs of basil
Few sprigs of sage
1 tiny (about the size of a roma tomato) purple bell pepper — I couldn’t wait for it to get bigger!

From the Community Side I Grabbed:
Few sprigs of Dill
Few sprigs of lemon thyme

On my walk home, I harvested some lavendar from a yard — I doubt they’ll notice!

I apologize that these pictures are so fuzzy, but it was just about dark and camera was having issues, or rather I was having issues — either way, the pictures do not speak the true name of our garden.

This last picture is of our plot with our salad & chives up front, super tall radishes, giant cauliflower and broccoli and wild and sprawling black heirloom tomatoes (at the far end). There are other things in there, but those are the biggest guys right now.

We landed back home from vacation yesterday afternoon. We had fun, the tree house cottages are AWESOME and my in-laws are doing well.

Points of Interest During Our Time of Absence:
* Tree House Cottages @ The Maple Tree Camp in Gapland, MD
* The Virginia Living Museum — as Elijah says, “it’s like a museum & a zoo shoved together!”
* The Children’s Museum of Virginia — which wasn’t all that grand in our spoiled eyes!
* Edgar Cayce Day Spa — where we both got massages…in the same room…together!
* The Heritage Centre – yummy eats, groceries and gifts/supplies
* Kid’s Cove @ Mount Trashmore Park — totally awesome place for kiddos to play & “Free Runners” to practice
* Trader Joe’s of Newport News, VA — because, even when DH is away from work, he still has to ‘be there’!

I would recommend that everyone who enjoys the outdoors-life, take a weekend or week to enjoy the tree house cottages in Maryland. They were wonderful and the owner is such a nice lady. Everything is very laid back and flexible. The rates are very reasonable and the cabins rock…actually the whole grounds rock. We found mushrooms, fuzzy caterpillars (that I think glowed in the dark), daddy-long-legged spiders, fireflies, mayapples and the supplies needed to make little gnome homes. E was very helpful with gathering sticks and leaves for daddy and fire making — he was even quite skilled in helping to actually start the fires. He had his pocket knife, but never once got it out to use it…maybe it will come in handy helping me in the garden. William was able to basically perfect fire building in a log burning stove, which is nice, since we will hopefully own one in the future. I found that I can make rather mean chili on a log burning stove!

We managed to make it out to the beach one evening from about 10:30pm until a little after midnight…the ocean really is best at night! But alas, a storm and sleepiness were both rolling in, so we had to make for the hotel. I’d love to try and spend the night at the beach in the future — I can imagine the sleep that I would get!

We were a bit disappointed with the children’s museum…or maybe we were just disappointed that it wasn’t as grand as our children’s museum. Either way, it’s a huge space, with lots of ‘dead space’ that could be used for exciting exhibits. Most of the exhibits seemed to be old, not well kept and plenty of things were broken.

The living museum was really cool. I would like to see Pennsylvania try to do something similar. I’d like to go back either without E or when he’s more willing to let me go at a slower pace to ‘enjoy’ it more — read, I really wanted to dawdle and he wanted to run through it fast. Very neat, none the less.

William and I enjoyed our massages from the Edgar Cayce spa. It wasn’t as grand as I had hoped, but it was a neat place, friendly staff and awesome grounds. I think I just needed more than one hour of massage…can a buy a year of it?

The in-laws enjoyed seeing us and spending time with the kiddo. They’re doing well in VAbeach. Their house is very nice and suits them well. They both are enjoying the environment and community. My MIL still (not so secretly) pines for us to move out there… While being near the beach does have it’s perks, being in VAbeach, isn’t my idea of ‘the beach’. Not to mention that we couldn’t afford to live anywhere that we’d find suitable for us there. Besides, we are quite happy in the ‘burgh…actually, I find that I feel more at home here than I ever did back in Oklahoma — I think that has more to do with the fact that I am completely free to be ‘me’ everywhere I am and not just around small circles, in hidden corners.

So, now we are back and getting back to our life…not that vacation isn’t our life too, but it’s nice to be home, in my own bed and not expected to do anything for anyone else — outside of the normal daily expectations…never-mind!

Our community garden now has a fence with a lock…not exactly sure how I am supposed to be gardening with a locked fence and no email detailing this new development, but I am sure that I will get to the bottom of this in a day or so.

Tomorrow is CSA number three for us (fourth of the season, but we missed last week because of vacation) and I am so excited about it! I can’t wait to see what awesome green goodness awaits us.

Well, before I go to bed, I want to leave you with a little bit of teenage-wisdom, which can be found here.

Goodnite.

Unscholg = Unschooling + (web)blog: things specific to OUR unschooling (not yours or there’s ); a log of unschooling.

I had originally wanted to write little bits and bots about our unschooling journey and what E is up to, but it’s really so hard for me to separate things out into little neat boxes for readers…unless I try super hard and over analyze everything thing we do. We are living and learning…learning is everything we do. Our educational philosophy, parenting philosophy and life are not one without the other. I am finally at a point where I don’t see in ’subjects’, but rather really neat and often profound connections that E makes between thing ‘A’ and thing ‘B’.

With that said, I’ll do my best to give a recap of the last week. This is just more of a list of things…I have expounded on some and left some comments here and there…it might make no real sense to many of you, but that’s why this here Unscholg is OURS and not YOURS!

5th:
Noggin TV
Walk to & from picking up CSA (it was hot & E wasn’t too happy; I felt sad for him)
Pick up CSA share
Online computer games w/Mum  (these vary & he insists on not playing the same one more than once!)
Asked to make hand-puppets at 11pm, which needed pipe cleaners and none could be found — we still haven’t found/bought pipe cleaners ;(

6th:
Noggin TV
Kapla blocks
Wooden blocks
Lincoln logs
5# dumbbell — he really likes this thing & actually uses it!
Online computer games w/ Mum

7th:
Noggin TV
Online computer games w/ Mum
Lincoln logs
Wooden blocks
Outside w/Mum - played with a ball & checked on the garden
Outside on screened porch (alone) - trucks & such
Figured out that it’s so much fun to open his Sigg bottle & make water messes!

8th:
Noggin TV
Took apart 2 dozen pens
Lacing beads
Online computer games w/ Mum
Made lots of food & water messes!

9th:
Noggin TV
Zingo w/Mum & he made up a memory-type game with the tiles too
New dinosaur puzzle
Summer box of goodies from Great Grandma J
One of his dismantled pens exploded & he was covered from head to toe in blue ink!
Long bath — his skin is still stained a bit though!

10th:
Noggin TV
Walk to & from Community Garden
Community Garden — weeded, watered (and played with water!) & dead-headed the spring onions.
Visited w/ Matt, Tracey, Annan & Dugan while at the garden
Online computer games w/ Mum
Kapla blocks
Watched me mix up & apply henna to my hand

11th:
Noggin TV
Sprout TV
Online computer games w/ Mum
Cardboard box car & related shenanigans
Very lazy day w/ lots of ‘just hanging out’!

12th: so far today
Sprout TV
Noggin TV
Walk to & from picking up CSA
Picked up CSA share & ate some of the strawberries on the way home
Online computer games w/ Mum
Made random made-up ‘organs’ w/ some Fidgets (neat little blocks stung together by elastic through the middle)

So, that’s it…man, maybe I should have picked a ‘better’ week to post with! Ha! Tomorrow we are going to be purchasing a Leapfrog Leapster for Elijah…he doesn’t know it yet! Hopefully it will be something new to engage him during our car rides during this vacation…and it might spawn a life-long obsession with ‘video games’…and that’s okay with me. So long as he enjoys himself and the others than are around him.

Over the last couple of weeks the kiddo and I have been venturing outside to tend to the yard and garden areas. We are about to get some plants into the soil.

Today we planted some really old cucumber seeds, poppy flower seeds and sweet basil seeds to see if they were any good. It was just something to hold over the kiddo until our local nursery (The Urban Gardener) opens up in a couple days.

Our List of Things to be Planted:

• Lemon Balm (melissa officinalis)
• German Chamomile (matricaria recutita)
• Apple Mint [woolly mint (mentha suaveolens)]
• Bergamont Mint (mentha citrata)
• Spearmint (mentha spicata)
• Dark Opal Basil (ocimum basilicum “purpurascens”)
• Lemon Basil (ocimum x citriodorum)
• Catnip (nepeta cataria)
• Oregano (origanum vulgare)
• Rosemary (rosmarinus officinalis)
• Garden/Kitchen Sage (salvia officinalis)
• Divining Sage (saliva divinorum)
• Lyre-Leaved Sage (salvia lyrata)
• Red Raspberry (rubus strigosus)
• Red Clover (trifolium pratense)
• Carrot (novelty cultivars: red, purple, yellow and white)
• Radicchio [”italian chicory” (cichorium intybus)]
• White Clover (trifolium repens)
• Wild Strawberry (fragaria virginiana) (rosaceae)
• Low Sweet Blueberry [”maine blueberry” (vaccinium angustifolium)

There’s also onions, garlic, tomato and broccoli among other things, but I think most of those will be saved for the community garden we are involved with.

I usually hate working out in the yard, but this year I have been looking forward to it. It’s nice to feel the soil between my toes and to get my hands in the dirt. Elijah is sure enjoying it too.

We have signed ourselves up to work in the community garden that is just getting started in our neighborhood. It’s located in the yard right behind The Vault, our neighborhood coffee and tea bar. This will be a wonderful adventure.

More garden notes to come.