Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous to be understood. Let me keep my distance, always, from those who think they have the answers. Let me keep company always with those who say “Look!” and laugh in astonishment, and bow their heads.
—from “Mysteries, Yes” by Mary Oliver
“A portrait of my children every week in 2016.”
Lillia: You made it through your sixth grade year! While it was certainly a big adjustment from fifth to sixth grade, you were determined to step it up and work to your ability. I appreciate so much that you basically did this on your own, with very minimal pressure from us. And, you had a GREAT year. You got all A’s in your second AND third term, and your final grades for the year were all A’s as well—this qualified you for the high honor roll! This year you also ran for student council and were elected Member at Large, you starred in your school play, and you aced your spring dance performance. Words can’t describe how proud I am of all you’ve accomplished, and how wonderful it is to have you as a daughter. I love you so much, Lillia!
Zane: You have officially “graduated” from preschool, which puts you on track for kindergarten in the fall. This year you learned all of your letters and numbers, and how to write your name. You developed a real enjoyment for doodling, and you’re still enamored with babies and birds. You made lots of friends, and had your first real playdate this month. While it seems incomprehensible that you’ll be going to “real school” in the fall, I know that your kindergarten teachers are going to love having you in their class—your cheerful personality and natural curiosity will take you far. I love you, Zane-a-roo!
[Note: It’s been very hard to get photos of Lillia this year—she’s been very busy and I just haven’t been taking as many pictures lately, which makes me sad. Regardless, the picture of Lillia backstage at her dance performance was taken by Sarah Manning.]
I can’t tell you how excited I am to be writing my first garden post of the year! We’re doing things a little differently this summer. The big change is a new half-size (4 ft x 4 ft) raised bed just for the little guy (you can see him working on building it with Papa, above). After reading in several sources about the value of having a “children’s garden,” I thought there must be some way we could make it happen for Zane. Our back yard is framed by massive, old oak trees which are beautiful and give us much-needed summer shade—the downside is that their umbrella of leaves covers the entirety of the plant-able space and limits our ability to grow sun-loving vegetables behind the house. So…side-yard it is, and the new box fits just fine. Zane would like to grow tomatoes, radishes, flowers, and…eggplants! He’s a funny little fellow.
My parents have a great setup for starting seeds indoors, and they graciously gifted us many tomato and kale seedlings to get us started. Zane chose a cherry tomato and a kale plant for his garden. We still have room for some additional plants, so we’ll be acquiring those this weekend. I’d really like to do zucchini this year (we skipped it last year and regretted it). I’d also like to do some pickling cucumbers. We did beets and carrots last year, but they take so.long.to.grow. I’d rather focus on something else this summer. We also didn’t bring back the pea teepee, since the peas did really poorly last year, and it’s already pretty late in the season for peas. I think I might still try to do some bush-type peas in one of the raised beds, just to see what happens.
The last change is swapping out the unwieldy (but effective) cat-deterring chicken wire for more convenient (but expensive) deer fencing, also donated by my parents—it’s what they have been using in their beds for the past couple of years and it seems to work. I think it’s a much safer solution, especially for the kids.
What are you planting this summer? I’d love to hear about your gardening adventures!
“A portrait of my children every week in 2016.”
I’m really far behind on publishing the posts for my 52 week portrait project, so I’m just going to give you the pictures from weeks sixteen and seventeen, and let you write your own captions!