Ginger & Bella Houses

outside view of the house; notice the steps they made on the right, going up to an outdoor patio! The bundle of sticks is a camp fire, and behind that is a stool made from a rock balanced on twigs.



the pink flower at the right is in a vase made from the tip of a bamboo shoot. Bed on left, side table made from a scallop shell, with the inside piece of a conch shell on top for decoration. The big scallop shell at right is a table and also a place to cook.



love the moss pillows on the bark bed--they chose this spot because moss was already there for a carpet. Desk in the back right of the room, with a bark stool.




bathroom with seashell sink. A broken piece of flagstone from our patio is the floor.



outside view of bathroom.



Emma's newest creation--a sofa with rhododendron cushions, a seashell bottom and a lilac leaf for comfort. Not sure how long that will hold up, but very pretty!



I am so proud of the imaginative play that goes on in my house every single day, and one of the longest running games around here involve tiny animals (Only Hearts Pets, if you're a parent who keeps abreast of fad toys) of varying species. I can't keep all the names straight; cries of, "No, Mom! That's Kirby!" or "No, Mom! That one is a girl!" are frequently heard in my house. But the two stars of the game are Ginger and Bella, a cat and a panda. They own a very spacious dollhouse upstairs, they are the stars of coloring books, drawings and comics galore, and they also have a vacation compound under our dogwood tree. Emma was showing me some new features this morning, so I asked her to take some photos so we could always remember this game.

New Year's Resolutions--Yes, In May!

I know, I know, it's May, not the time for resolutions. But really, I have a good reason, and that's my garden. You might recall that last year I overhauled the perennial garden in the backyard. When we moved into this house five years ago, I thought "perennial garden" meant that I never had to do any work in the garden, because after all, the plants are perennials...doesn't that mean they take care of themselves? That's what it should mean! I am the worst mix possible: I love having a beautiful yard and flowers to fill up vases in my house all summer long....but I really, really hate yard work! And after pricing out what it would cost to have landscapers do all the work for me....let's just say that if Matt had only cared about being rich, he should have saved himself the trouble of getting that Ph.D. and gone into yard work instead!

But I digress. I finally got tired of my formerly lovely perennial garden being an overgrown weed patch and last year I decided that I was going to do something about it. So I worked. HARD. And with practically no help from my family, I might add. Matt and Rachel gave me a bit of help when it came to buying the forty tons of mulch I needed and humping it from the store to the car and from the car to the back yard...but once it was in the back yard, it was up to me to heft it all over the garden. The kids helped a tiny bit, when it came to planting, and Matt dug a few holes when I needed a deep one for roses or peonies. He also worked with our neighbor's rototiller to turn everything over before I began. And the kids helped a bit collecting the three hundred thousand pounds of beautiful stones I collected from local beaches over the course of the summer, so I could ring the garden in (and hopefully keep the lawn from encroaching while I did it)...so okay, I STILL don't have that project completely finished...but in my defense, rocks are heavy, it's a pain in the neck to collect so many, and my garden is large--I'd say it's probably 30 feet long by 10 feet wide (but don't quote me, because I'm terrible at eyeballing measurements!)

My theory was simple. The former owner of the house was apparently a master gardener, or at the least she could afford to pay for people to do it for her. The perennial garden featured gorgeous flowers, but the problem was that I had a hard time telling weeds from flowers, so it all got very out of control. Also, she stuck to a pretty boring color palette of yellow, purple, and tiger lilies in orange thrown in--I happen to hate tiger lilies. I like them on roadsides, but I hate them in gardens. They are messy looking with their massive foliage and they don't make good bouquets because they wilt as soon as you cut them. I decided a better plan for my style of garden was to plant bushy perennials that might spread out...I used various butterfly bushes, coreopsis, roses, peonies, lavender, Montauk daisies and others of that nature (OK, yes, I've forgotten some of their names!) so that when weeds pop up, it would be easy to tell them from the plants I wanted. Then I could yank those troublesome little buggers before they became a problem. The fresh mulch looked so pretty, and I laid landscaping cloth underneath too...so really, weeds wouldn't be a problem at all. No sun, no growing.

Someone really ought to give weeds some kind of award. Really. I have had trouble many times in the garden--with veggies, herbs, flowers--I plant them and sometimes they just die. For no reason whatsoever. Really, no reason! And yet--I am a champion with weeds! Landscape cloth? Mulch? HA! Those weeds just come right through it. No trouble at all, don't mind if I do! I'd imagined that this year I could sit back and watch my beautiful garden, maybe spend three or four hours (all summer, as in three or four hours TOTAL) pulling out the weeds that would sprout, and finally finish up the rock collecting to border the garden at my leisure. All done. Finito. Flowers to enjoy and that's all. We bought a new hammock and I'd envisioned reading novels while I looked at that beautiful garden....I guess the lesson here is that gardening is a series of endless chores that make you want to stab yourself repeatedly. All those people who say they love gardening? I think they are either Stepford wives, compulsive liars, or are quite simply insane. What's to love about backbreaking labor that never ends? I just don't get it!

I should pat my kids on the back here and say that sometimes they are willing to help me. Emma and Julia, especially, will help me weed and plant things. They are all willing to pick things from the garden. And Ben can be counted on to pick yellow dandelions for me--at least that way they won't go to seed and make more of their horrible clones. Gardening is an area where I can say Matt is a terrible husband, however. (And this is not something I can say of him often; he is mostly a very good husband. But gardening? He is a jerk about gardening.) He mows the lawn, and will trim bushes if I nag him for a few weeks first. He will rake leaves in the fall (again, with the nagging) and he's aces at shoveling snow. But work in the garden? N-O-P-E. No can do. Never. Not in this lifetime. He tells me "I hate gardening, and I don't care what the yard looks like." I've tried pointing out that he enjoys vegetables and herbs that we grow. I've tried tantrums. I've tried the whole "if you LOVED me, you'd give me some help..." I've tried pointing out that this should be a family project, and by not helping me, he's subtly encouraging the kids not to help me....all for nothing. This seems to be the single area of life where I simply cannot budge him. (*sniff*)

This spring, the weeds have been really bothering me. Every time I went out in the yard and noticed new weeds sprouting in the garden, I wanted to punch someone. Every hour I've spent weeding has bred resentment in my mind, that I have to do all this alone, even though I already do so much for this ungrateful family....and every time I stop to buy four bags of mulch so that I can drag them home and dump them over the garden in the hopes that it will slow the growth of these pesky weeds (and I can only buy four bags at a time because otherwise we'll wreck the new shocks in the van that we had to put in because LAST year I supposedly wrecked them bringing home too many bags of mulch and beach rocks...blah blah blah...and by the way, four bags of mulch weigh about a million pounds and cover about nine square inches of the garden) every time I do this all I can think of is that it's going to take a hundred MORE trips to buy enough mulch to cover it all, and what's the point anyway because obviously the weeds grow right through it anyway...and so, here is the resolution part.

My resolution is simple and beautiful in its simplicity. Every day (assuming the weather is fine, and that I'm home, of course) I will get outside in the garden or yard, and I will weed. For half an hour, or possibly forty five minutes if we're home all day and I feel like it. I set the alarm on my cell phone and put it in my pocket, and I work like a machine till it rings. This is going to make all the difference in the yard and in my levels of psychotic rage, because it breaks the job into tiny pieces--rather than going out once in a while and spending hours working like a crazy person while the rest of the family does something fun--which is basically anything that doesn't involve yard work!--muttering to myself about how I'll never get it finished, how horrible it is, how nobody is helping me, etc. --I am working steadily and daily, and in short bursts of time. In half an hour, I can get a surprising amount accomplished, and more importantly, I know the job won't be finished, so I don't care that it isn't. I'll be back out tomorrow, and after I've worked for a month or so, maybe I'll even be scrounging around trying to find something to do. At least that's the hope. There I go, being terribly optimistic again....at the least, I can use it to make my husband feel extremely guilty that he's such a lazy sack when it comes to the yard, and maybe I won't have to nag quite so much when it comes time to trim the bushes again.

Easter Picture, by Emma

Emma made this Easter bunny picture, so I thought I'd share.

Spring Craft, by Emma

Emma wanted to make a spring craft for art last week, and she worked and worked for almost two hours to make this Easter egg. The bunny is made from individual pieces of paper she meticulously cut and glued--she discarded many parts before she was satisfied with her work. I really loved seeing her so intent on getting it just the way she wanted it!








If it's hard to read, she wrote "Emma 2011 (for art)" in the middle of the mosaic.

Spring, A Poem by Julia

Spring
by Julia

The blossoms blooming on the trees,
shaking and bumbling and buzzing with bees,
the birds building nests will now take a small rest,
to kick back and eat a few fleas.
In the air, the butterflies flit,
and a few have alit,
on a few flowers out in meadow open.
The monarchs will lay their eggs in one day
on the milkweed bobbing in the breeze of the ocean.
The lambs frolic and play
in the green grass of today,
and bleating, stay close to their mothers.
But once they're done eating,
their fear is all fleeting,
and they go off to play with the others.
The rain will blow,
the flowers will grow,
and like so,
the clouds will pass on in the shape of a koi.
And spring is the bounciest, flounciest,
wiggliest, jiggliest,
twirliest, whirliest,
flingiest, springiest
season of JOY!

More Photos by Rachel

Just a couple more photos from Elizabeth Morton Wildlife Refuge. Because they're pretty.

Enchantment

Yesterday we took an afternoon trip to Sag Harbor to the Elizabeth Morton Wildlife Refuge. The refuge is small; the loop trail is only three quarters of a mile long with a spur trail to the beach, but it is a unique jewel in Long Island's crown because over the years, the birds there have learned that people bring them food, and will land right in your hands to eat! I have never seen this anywhere else; we have hand fed squirrels in Boston and used to do the same in college at Drew University, and we did hand feed birds at the National Aviary in Pittsburgh--but those weren't wild birds, and they didn't land on us, they flew by and snatched food from our outstretched palms. These are wild birds who have learned this trick, and we just never tire of it. Julia said a number of times that this was her favorite place in the world, and that she wished she could live right there.

We usually visit in the depths of winter, because of course you get the greatest number of birds on you when they have almost nothing else to eat. However, we had so much snow and such cold temperatures this year that I had to keep putting the kids off. It's even colder there because you're right on the water, and it just isn't fun to be there if you're freezing. Also, I wasn't sure if there was any sort of snow removal there because although it's a popular place, it's still a trail. Although it seems that many birds hang around right near the front of the trail, so I guess if you just walked in and stood you'd still get birds. Regardless, early spring is still fine--the woods are just beginning to green up, but the leaves aren't on the trees yet and I imagine there aren't too many insects yet, so our friends were still hungry.

The easiest birds to attract are the sweet little black capped chickadees. They are bold and brave, sitting in your hand and choosing just the right seed. The tufted titmouse, with its big eyes and cute little hairdo, is the next most common visitor to our hands, followed by the nuthatch. The last time we went we were lucky enough to have the red headed downy woodpecker land on us several times, but this time we didn't get that privilege, although we did see a few. The squirrels will follow and yesterday we saw a few chipmunks for good measure, but for some reason, the squirrels won't get close enough to hand feed--they will accept donations that you toss over, though. (This vexes Julia and Emma, who love to get squirrels to come and take nuts right from their hands in Boston.) Dozens of cardinals will follow you throughout the refuge, but they will never land on you. We have tried and tried, and they desperately want the seed--they will take what has fallen to the ground as soon as you move away, but they simply refuse to get close.

The biggest surprise yesterday was from our fellow visitors. We saw four other groups while we were there--ranging from couples to a group of five--and not one of them had come with seeds! One lady said they used to sell seed at the front, which I then vaguely remembered from one of my first visits, but they didn't have any out now. Luckily, we had a gallon bag of sunflower seeds, the birds' favorite, so we shared with everyone we met. If you ever go, don't bother with mixed seeds! We had chickadees flinging that seed around and only taking the sunflower seeds--they can afford to be picky, I guess, when they have devoted followers! Anyway, it was a wonderful time, and Rachel got some of her usual fabulous photos.....

School Year Winding Down

It seems crazy to say that our school year is winding down at the beginning of March, but I can clearly see the end of the tunnel. The three younger kids are actually finished with a few elements of the year, such as health and some language arts books, and are within sight of being finished with others. Other subjects, history being the most glaring example, are going to need some intensive work in order to finish, but we'll get there. Rachel, having more work to do, just plugs away and will finish in June, but still, I am going to have to finish the requisite length of the school year doing more unschooling than bookwork with the younger ones.

This is fine, since I have always flirted with the idea of unschooling but am too A-type to actually implement it. Spring is gardening time, and gardening is a perfect unschooling science opportunity. We have shelves and shelves of nonfiction kids' books, which originally I started collecting with the idea that they would be handy for homeschooling but in actuality do a lot of sitting around because we forget they even exist, or we follow book lists in our curriculum. Sometimes it's actually easier to get books from the library than to look through our extensive collection! After all, the library is organized, and our bookshelves...are not. Rachel's most recent English assignment is Edith Wharton's "The House of Mirth," and I was on my way to the library. Matt reminded me that we have that book somewhere--well, DUH! I was an English major! Of course we have that book, and many, many more classic works of literature--but finding it was quite another matter. Besides, as I pointed out to him, it was highly unlikely the book would be checked out of our library, and so we'd be helping by adding to circulation statistics. So with time at the end of the year, I picture letting the kids pull from a plethora of interesting subjects--from rainforests to birdwatching to the Salem with hunt to atlases--and just seeing where they lead us.

Creativity is also huge around here. Right now Julia is sewing a stuffed rooster from felt, fabric and buttons. She got a kit for her birthday but decided that rather than follow the strict pattern, she'd make her own--and I have to say, it's cuter than the kit's version. Drawing takes up copious amounts of time, and once I order more felting needles the kids have been loving that, too. Of course Rachel can spend hours with her camera, and the younger kids have been playing with mine, taking photos and making videos. Lola the hamster also provides hours of creative time, because Julia and Emma delight in making complicated courses for her to run out of recyclables, spending hours planning, cutting, taping and then playing with Lola in the run...when I was a child, I did this too, but the difference between me and my kids is that the mazes I made would hang around for months--I think that the kids actually prefer making the mazes, because they are constantly adding on or making new ones. Then there's writing, reading and the numerous pretend games they play. I think we can fulfill more than enough academic hours even when the workbooks are finished.

Rachel has found a place at the local community theater working the lights. This started a few months ago, when I volunteered at the theater as the box office manager. Rachel came with me a few times, and we had fun together. I told her I thought that she would have a lot of fun in the theater even if she decided she didn't want to be on stage, so we spoke with the lighting director, who loves sharing what he knows and is always in need of help. He called her for the next show, running now, and has been really encouraging and complimentary to her. She wants to keep working on that, and I am encouraging her to put herself out in the community. We are also increasing the social life of the homeschooling teens in our area by planning purely social outings like movies, ice skating, browsing at the mall, etc. This gives Rachel and her friends ways to simply hang out as they'd do if they went to school--with homeschooling, there are so many field trips and classes planned, but rarely time to just be together.

We are waiting to hear if she has been accepted to a volunteer position this summer, too, which would allow her to go camping with a group of peers somewhere in the country to work on an environmental project. We should hear about that in the next few weeks and are really hoping she can go. In May, she and Matt are going to take a road trip to Wisconsin together to check out the Conserve School, a semester school she hopes to attend in the spring next year, where she would get to learn all aspects of environmentalism as well as new sports such as skiing, ice fishing, canoeing, and extreme camping.

We have a big family reunion in July, which we're all looking forward to. My niece and her husband are opening their house in Delaware and we are also chipping in on a huge rental house; between the two we will house 32 people, ages about one month through 75 years. We're looking forward to the beach, the boardwalk, plenty of talk, food and card games and just being together, and are especially excited that my sister Amy and niece Chloe will be there, visiting from Vienna. We hardly ever get to see them, so it will be a treat.

Finally, to my extreme delight, we have decided to forego organized sports and are instead working with some homeschooling friends to start meeting at parks to play sports--you know, the way we USED to, just meet up with friends to play baseball or kickball or soccer or basketball, without all these horrible schedules and fundraising that you have to endure when you sign up for Little League or Police Athletic League or any of those other leagues. Don't get me wrong; I think sports are valuable for kids. However, since my kids don't have to abide by a school schedule, I REALLY loathe being forced to abide by school kids' schedules when it comes to sports! I have had enough of having every weekend from March until June or from September to November completely ruined by having to sit at ball fields half the day, and I have definitely had enough of the practices being scheduled two or three or four times a week at 5:30 in the afternoon, wrecking dinner completely. Not to mention that during sports times of year, even if the day has been warm and sunny, by that time of day it is usually windy and cold! I have had more than enough of freezing half to death watching sports and a bunch of kids I have no desire to know playing them! Call me snobby, but it's the truth. Playing sports with homeschoolers means we can meet during the day, when the spring days are gorgeous, and the kids can play rather than stand around with all the endless waiting that leagues entail.

Another year gone by in a blink. Can't believe it, but I'm kind of getting used to it.

Rabie Baby Comics, by Ben

I have posted many pieces of art and writing by Julia and Emma, and Rachel's artistic bent is in photography. Ben has not previously showed too much interest in spending time drawing, though he does enjoy writing sometimes. So it came as a surprise to me when he spent nearly an entire day drawing comic strips featuring Rabie Baby. This may need some explanation to some: for several years now, Julia, Ben and Emma have played a hilarious game they call Rabie Baby, in which Emma is a baby who has--well, rabies! The rules are many and complicated and I'm not sure I know them all, but I know that Rabie Baby is afraid of water (hmmm...she IS rabid, after all, so she has hydrophobia) and can be tamed by being (lightly) whipped with a dish towel. She also loves to move in slow motion sometimes and she's very good at death scenes. It is a game that has brought us much laughter.

Normally I would post the comic for you to see, but since Ben doesn't spend half his day drawing as Julia does, his comics are a bit crooked and really too small to be appreciated unless you are holding them. (He drew the panels only about an inch square!) However, his prologue to the comic is too amusing, so I am putting it here with spelling intact:

Cover: Raibie Baby Comics Rabie Baby of the Many Nick-Names

Prologue: Lord of the Fuzzles

Fuzzles are cute, loveable animals that are often kept as pets. They are never evil at all. They do not bite, are good with children, but do not like loud noises. But one terrible roar scares them too much for them to run. Yes, it is the Legendary Raibie Baby. They worship her, hoping that the rabid Fuzzle will not eat them alive. She has only three weaknesses, and only two people know them. These two people are named Ben and Julia. And the weaknesses are: water, a dish towel being used as a whip, and furniture. They ward her off with their weapons--into the human world! Julia and Ben are the only ones who can stop her! List of Raibie Baby's nick-names: Rubba Bubba, Rubziti, Rubba Babeer, Rubba.


Weird? Yes, but imagination is a wonderful thing!

Cheetah, by Julia

Can you tell Julia is having lots of fun with her birthday drawing supplies? :)