They're Here!

The babies are here.  Not the chicks I'd have expected; we are waiting until it is warmer and we have a coop-like structure built.  No, the snakes have hatched.  We'll have reptiles sunning themselves on our rocks for weeks now whenever the sun is out.  I keep meaning to turn the ugly garage cinder block foundation into a lovely painted, raised-bed flower bed but can't because I'm not sure the snakes will keep breeding there if I do.  That and a total dearth of extra time and energy, but who's counting.

Warmth

It finally got cold enough for me to turn on the heat in our house. We heat the whole 2000 sf with a propane Jotul heater in the living room that looks just like a wood-burning stove, realistic logs and all; we have a slightly smaller back-up stove just like it on the second floor landing in the office but it never cycles on as the downstairs one is super efficient and heat rises.

I was preparing to lay down on the floor and reach up under the stove to light the pilot and get it started when a twitch caught my eye. This little beauty was curled up next to the hearth stone and the wall. Palpitations, and some startle and then I recovered and said, too loudly, "oh, how LUCKY we are to have a visit from this nice snake! Homestead Mama, could you get her OUTSIDE before I start the stove? She won't like the heat. Bay-bees, come seeeee the cute harmless snake! Want to pet it?" And then I panted away my adrenaline while the kids scared the snake with loving touches and it bit H-Mama a few times in irritation. (Tiny teeth, no harm done.)

I'm not afraid of them, but I don't want to be eye to eye with a snake unless I PLANNED it that way.

We carried on with our stove-lighting ritual of cookies and hot chocolate while it blazed it's glory into the night. I love my house, fauna and all.

Let It Grow

I have been busy getting the teaching garden up and growing in the back forty. The kids are tolerating it with unprecedented aplomb - something about the mix of digging, dirt, snails, and orderly square-foot gardening inspires them. That, and many, many popsicles. If you walk through our yard, you'll encounter a path that invites you through into the meadow. A buddy rototilled a patch of our 8 acre meadow for a garden. I've managed to put in six 4' raised beds planted in the square foot companion gardening tradition featuring a mix of already started plants and seeds mostly donated by our beloved Noona.We'll have beans, peas, pumpkins, basil, peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, beets, carrots, and salad greens. Or not. They are coming, but with tons of rain, little sun and dogs who run through regularly [I totally haven't gotten up the fence yet] we'll be happy with whatever green things choose to take root. And what a sense of accomplishment! My son is learning to touch baby green tomatoes with ONE FINGER and how to plant seeds. My daughter, the lover of all things orderly, is quite keen to weed all living things out of the beds - I have to monitor her closely or she'll kill all our veggies along with the opportunistic weeds. That's her below saying "WEED!!!"

Behold the glory. Purple garden fairy is a lovely extra, eh?

The kitchen potager in the immediate yard is also coming nicely, filled with herbs, flowers and overflow veggies.

The Birthday That Keeps on Giving

Weeks ago I ordered three Fat Albert Colorado spruce trees from a local nursery; they were finally planted on Friday. They are to shield the corner of our yard from passing cars and possible future building, but are so lovely I'd have put then in anyway even if we didn't want the evergreen coverage. The Fat Alberts will max out at about 25 feet, and be much fuller around the bottom than a regular spruce, which will offer us good visual cover from the road. They are stunning.

In what was quite possibly the best birthday present of all, Monito fell asleep Friday night at 7 pm and slept through to the morning. He was up at 6:32 am and H-Mama swept him up and took him away and let me sleep in with Pequita. Once we all got going around 9ish, H-mama went out to buy a replacement part for the lawn tractor that I cracked mowing over a big rock. She was unsuccessful in finding a store open with the part we needed but had managed to buy my birthday present, five hellebore plants for the shaded spot near our front door. I've been wanting some of these in my yard for years, and finally have the beds ready for the plants. She also bought a very cute cast iron owl for me. We left the lawn tractor in a pile of bolts, belts and cracked bits and loaded the kids in the car and drove to our former landlords' house. They are moving to Hawaii in a month and had offered us free pillaging of their established and lush perennial beds - too good an offer to pass up as we rebuild our flower gardens. We were most successful, coming home with Bachelor buttons, Jacob's Ladder, forget-me-nots, hardy sage and marjoram, yellow iris, hens and chicks, two kinds of allium, three kinds of flowering creeping ground cover, and columbine. We will likely be going back in a few weeks for more.

Once cannot drive to our old landlord's house without passing the local quarry, which - fortuitously - had a sale going on. Two sleeping babies + sunny weekend day + a love of all things rocky, and voila, a fabulous two hours of activity. The kids woke up within the first thirty minutes, but this was all for the best because there were skid steers moving rocks everywhere and the babies LOVED watching the activity, climbing all over the boulders and getting filthy. I regret that I didn't have my camera.

I don't know how many other people there are in the world who go out to fetch some free plants and end up buying 6.25 TONS of rock on a whim, but we did. We bought a huge boulder to put on the corner of our property. Every winter we get a couple cars skidding onto our lawn since we live on a rounded corner lot. Most stop at the road's edge, but not all. I want to protect our new spruces and also discourage foolish people who speed when it's icy from careening into our yard. The boulder we bought outweighs H-Mama's Toyota. We almost didn't get it, because the fellow heading the sale told us it was $400 per ton [= a $900 rock] because it was not just your average rock but the very dear type of rock they split into slabs and use for architectural facing and stone furniture. The manager happened to wander down from the office as we were picking out some meager stone scraps with which to make a project for the kids and overruled the price quoted us on the boulder, giving it to us for the same price as all the other rock, over $300 less per ton, saying, "Happy Birthday, Ma'am". We also selected two massive lichen-covered field stone slabs to sink into the yard for the kids to climb on. Homestead Mama and I both love an expanse of sun-warmed rock upon which to climb in the summer, and since our yard didn't come with one we are retro-fitting one in. We can imagine our kids playing on it for years to come. In addition to all this, we ordered 2.5 tons of thick cut stone to line our driveway garden beds. We now have a bit of prep to get the sites ready for the delivery - there is a huge truck with a 24' boom to swing it all into place. I will be placing the driveway edging rocks myself, but this is where all the lifting and carrying 50+ lbs of baby 8000 times a day will come in handy. My shoulders have never been stronger.

We rushed home at 6 pm from with our plants and I raced to put them in the ground before their roots dried out while H-Mama started mowing the yard with our neighbor's mower. Monito took this opportunity to climb onto a 2' high pile of rocks in our front yard [yes, some would call us rock crazy; I prefer to think of us as avid hardscapers] and found a twelve inch metal spike that used to hold a bit of our house together. He had a lovely time whacking it on things until I noticed him chewing away on it. Sad boy had to finish out the evening on Mum's back in the Ergo carrier. Harder for me to dig this way, but safer for the wee bairn. Pequita entertained herself by shoveling mulch in and out of the birdbath.

H-Mama ran out of daylight in which to mow around 9 pm and came inside. I was already inside with bathed, pajama-clad exhausted babies. Monito was asleep within seconds of starting to nurse, and Pequita and I ate watermelon and watched Sesame Street on the couch until H-Mama came in to put her down. We had boxed macaroni and cheese for dinner at 9:45 while we watched Top Chef. A most stupendous birthday.

Homestead Mama will be home from work for three more days because it is a holiday weekend and she took Tuesday off from work to celebrate the adoption. It feels like a birthday bonanza. Yay!

Happy Mother's Day

Mother's Day may be a Hallmark contrived holiday, but we worked damn hard to get here and are basking in it as much as we can. Save for the random and generally fleeting moments, we agree that we have never been happier or more satisfied with our lives. We feel damned lucky.

Frankly, I have never felt more like a mother. Pequita is going through a most fun stage wherein she cries and pulls a Gandhi* at the drop of a hat. I believe it is called the terrible twos, and she's right on target. I have many mothers and grandmothers all over town patting me on the back and telling me that it gets easier as they smile that smile that means 'oh thank god my kids are through that stage.' I am quite touched that they reach out when they do, as it actually helps when she is on the floor of the grocery store bathroom/ parking lot/ playground/ gym/ children's museum having a tantrum. Monito, my little golden boy, is smack in the middle of the mommy-centric phase wherein he screams when anyone other than me tries to touch him. H-Mama will do in a pinch unless I am in the vicinity. This coincides with his teething. My nip.ples are raw and swollen because of Monito's top teeth coming in. He now has three on the bottom and one on top; that second top tooth is right on the verge of breaking through and he is still figuring out how to nurse without killing me. Who am I kidding - he isn't trying anything, just happily chewing away aaaaalllllllll the tiiiiiiiiiime. Homestead Mama remembers almost quitting breastfeeding in this stage, and I can totally see why.

To celebrate the day [= to get twenty extra minutes of dozing] we lolled in bed watching Thomas the Tank Engine when the babes woke up. I mowed the Figure 8 last night, so we are going to take a morning walk on the back 40 once my coffee brews. In years past we've mowed a path for our old dogs on the nine acres we let remain meadow to make it easier for their old arthritic bones to meander along short grass. Now, we'll keep it mowed for the babes. As summer progresses, the flowers, weeds, shrubs and grasses grow up tall on either side of the path and it is jolly good fun to see what is blooming or what animal is nesting at any given time. I love to mow it, as whatever grows back there smells very distinct and sweet when cut. I've never smelled a better mowing smell and I revel in it. Right now, the wild strawberries are flowering. In a few weeks, we'll have tiny red fruit to pick and eat along the path as we walk.

We Homestead Mom's have been, well, homesteading. I've been spending every spare minute that could have been used for blogging changing a grass-challenged bit of our garden into a glorious shrub and flower garden. It isn't glorious yet, but will be in a year or two when all the tiny plants I have put in fill out a bit. Right outside the front door is a large pine tree which has been overshadowing the yard completely. I decided to get rid of the foundering grass and plant native woodland plants that will flourish in the acid-rich soil and with only partial sunlight. We killed the grass by spreading out black plastic on it last spring, then - whoops! - had Monito and had no time to finish the job. A few weeks ago, I pulled up the plastic [the neighbors must have been thrilled!] spread out three cubic yards of mulch and started putting in plants I harvested from other places in our yard and a few evergreens from the nursery. Our carpenter Dave is unbelievably generous and has brought us pot after pot of plants he and his wife have thinned from their yard - hosta, Solomon's Seal, a few varieties of lilies. Pequita was bereft when the massive hill of steaming mulch disappeared from the front yard, as she really loved climbing it and rolling down to the bottom. [My children both looked like vagabonds, filthy and wet with dirt ringing their mouths as they continually tried to find a tasty piece of earth. Sadly, they remain that way and likely will for the duration of summers.] I eased her disappointment by installing a bird bath with WATER in it - the birds will clearly never come to it, as it is constantly getting emptied all over a certain younger brother, as well as having shovels, rocks and Legos left in it. So while I am holding off on showing you kitchen renovation pictures until it is done, behold my latest time investment. I couldn't be more pleased. It was completed almost entirely with one baby sleeping in the car and the other either on my back while I shoveled or moving mulch right along side me with her little shovel and big dump truck.

The patch of yard before. [I'd like to cut down the tree and put in a cluster of 8-12 foot tall pines for privacy, but H-Mama will hear nothing of it. I am holding out hope that we'll get the rest of the garage painted grey this summer.]

Mulch Mountain.
Monito, a.k.a. Bubba, loves to help.
The bare wall leading up to the front door is now flanked by Solomon's Seal. It will fill in and be lush in a few years. You can see the broken flower pot that serves as a toad house in the lower left corner. We check it each and every time we exit or enter the front door to visit the toad that lives under it each year. Poor toad.
The clematis plant that I gave H-Mama for mother's day. She has wanted one for years.
And the after picture. There's plenty of room left to put in perennials and more rocks to climb on, but the bones of the garden are in.
*Pulling a Gandhi: sinking bonelessly to the ground in an effort of passive resistance. Unlike the real Gandhi, Pequita's is accompanied by much screaming, clawing and crying. Most impressive. I'll try to get tape of it for you.

A Very Big Day

A quick post, while everyone naps on Sunday afternoon.

Saturday, Hottie Friend came and picked up Pequita around 8 am to pal around the Farmer's Market together so the rest of us could sleep in. She dropped off a tired and hungry baby around noon - I was in the shower so didn't get the play-by-play, but perhaps some pictures, HF?

I set off with Homestead Mama, my parents and the babes around 1 pm for a friends birthday party for her 3 sons, twins age 10 and the other 8 years old. We spent 3 hours at their house enjoying the cool summer day. There were screaming children running around all sugared up on cake and playing with new birthday toys, adults sipping beer and chatting on the lawn, and later on fishing in the pond and skeet shooting. (I told you we lived in a rural area.) Pequita spent the afternoon attached to Homestead Mama, and I spent my time with an 8-day-old barnacle stuck to my chest nursing. Just as H-Mama and I were ready for a nap, we all got in our car and headed off for a city about an hour away to go to the zoo - I slept the whole way there. The fertility clinic that we used to get our babies was having their 10th anniversary, and had rented out a local zoo for all its clients, past and present. I know there were over 2500 RSVPs, and when we arrived (about 20 minutes after the scheduled start) the place was already packed with children of all ages, hundreds of minivans in the parking lot and more strollers (single, double & triple) than I've ever seen in one place. The RE (reproductive endocrinologist) Doc who owns the practice is a whiz at marketing, and I'm sure the press was there and that it was a tax write-off. Regardless, it was quite an amazing time - the staff we had grown to know and appreciate over the past 4 years were there milling about, and the Doc spent the entire 4 hours that the zoo stayed open for the event at the end of a line that resembled the line to see Santa at Christmastime at the mall. We enjoyed the catered hot dogs and hamburgers, decided to stroll the zoo and come back to shake hands with the Doc later to avoid the line. He'd met Pequita, but we wanted to introduce him to Monito. So stroll the zoo we did. Pequita is old enough to really enjoy animals which are obvious to her - the petting zoo parts were her favorite. We patted an elephant and some goats, and saw tigers, penguins and many other animals. Grandma and Grandpa posed for a picture with the unhappiest penguin on the face of creation.

The highlight for Pequita was riding atop Grandpa for most of the trek around the zoo.

It was perhaps too much for me 8 days post-C-section, carrying the nursing baby the whole time. I was exhausted and sore by the end of the day, but we had a really great time. Upon returning to the zoo entrance, we found the good Doc still at the end of a huge line of grateful families all waiting to get their picture taken with him, and show off the kids he helped them have. We decided to skip it entirely and go visit the office in the next 2 weeks while Homestead Mama is still on parental leave. I have some expensive meds to donate to them anyway - they give them to patients with no insurance who need help affording the IVF process, and my account gets credited. This will help with storage costs for the embryos we still have in the cryo-tank; we'll be hanging on to them for a while longer until the dust settles with our family and we are certain we don't want more kids.

Needless to say, we all slept in on Sunday morning.

Red Tailed Hawk

I woke up slowly on Monday morning (is there any other way?) and when I opened my eyes fully discovered that we had a red tailed hawk sitting on the tree branch right outside my window, about 20 feet away. I whacked Homestead Mama awake quickly and was granted amnesty from a return thumping as she agreed that I had good reason. The hawk was preening while keeping an eye open for breakfast. I have never seen one so large and so close up - we could see the red speckles on its belly, the talons gripping the perch, and its hungry ever-scanning eyes. After 7 minutes of watching it, something moved in the garden and it took off towards the ground. When we were dressing 15 minutes later, we saw it in our meadow further away from the house. It was perched on a mound of mulch happily consuming whatever it had caught. We continued to marvel at the glory of it all until we realiezed we should be making sure all our cats were inside and accounted for - it was a big hawk! With the whole pack intact, we went about our day. I love living in a rural area. (Picture below is not mine. I may have been awake, but I wasn't funtioning this highly.)