-
Holiday Traditions
Thanksgiving to Christmas is just crazy busy. What makes the busy-ness tolerable is the fun stuff that we do every year. Last Saturday, after hosting 42 people here for Thanksgiving, we girls had our fifth annual Christmas cookie bake. Ok, let me re-phrase that…Kristin and Shelley came over and baked all day. Julie’s sorry excuse… Continue reading
-
Leaf management
It was a great day in the Hereford Zone today. John spent the morning fixing the brakes on the Jeep while friend Mike and son Gage were hunting in the woods. It was Youth Day today and 15 year old Gage got a young buck. So Mike and Gage butchered the deer by the driveway… Continue reading
-
Fall
How do you know you are with a city kid? When, driving up I-83, you enter the Hereford Zone, and he points at the trees and asks, “Is that Fall?” Yes, it is. The leaves are falling by the buckets. We could probably measure the leaffall in inches, like we do the snow. In theory, today is a… Continue reading
-
October
Hooray for Christopher Columbus! Not only was today absolutely gorgeous, but it was the first of a three day weekend. That meant I could actually enjoy it. By October, the school year is in full swing and is taking its toll on me. What an exhausting week! Most of the exhaustion is mental–the constant busy-ness of each day with the… Continue reading
-
Redneck Gourmet
Monday marks our thirtieth wedding anniversary and I don’t know what better characterizes our life together than John’s recent adventures in cooking. Civet d’écureuil. One of our many cookbooks that we read more often than we cook from is Paula Wolfert’s The Cooking of Southwest France. For a couple of years now John has been eying… Continue reading
-
Mouse
I don’t have a picture to share for this blog, but you wouldn’t really want one. Shelley and I are in the kitchen talking over a glass of wine when she suddenly starts shrieking. “What? What?” “Mouse! Mouse! Behind you! Under the stove! It was a big fat thing! It kind of looked like Fluffball!” (For those… Continue reading
-
Schedule shock
A calm thought: Sunset in St. Malo Chika is a 6’8″ 16 year old from Nigeria who just arrived at our school–three weeks into the year– to play basketball. His first language is Igbo. His second language is English. He is in my French I class. Culture shock doesn’t begin to describe his first week here. … Continue reading
-
Sleepy bumblebees
Where do bumblebees sleep? This is one of those questions that is very important when you are about age four, but then you put aside for other more important questions like, “Will I ever be able to retire?” or “Will I still have my job next year?” Currently, in our back yard, there are several bumblebees sleeping on the… Continue reading
-
‘Astyanax’ Red-spotted Purple Butterfly
aka Limenitis arthemis astyanax There are a few types of phone calls that will really get me flying out of school to get home. One is my mother calling to tell me she’s taking my visiting aunt over to my house to show it to her. “Do you think we could get in?” All the way… Continue reading
-
Turtles
In a last gasp of summer, we enjoyed a weekend with Harper and the rest of the gang for crabs on Saturday. John found a baby box turtle while mowing the back 40, and it almost went home with Harper as another new pet. He was a cute little guy (we guess it was a guy), probably… Continue reading
Slightly Off the Grid 