just spring
March 23, 2011 | Filed Under home learning | Leave a Comment
lazy bumblebees in widening circles around the house, in and out of the sun slanting gold-green on the grass. lola screams about it, the bee thumping on my back in one of his cycles that come too close. jude plays in the sand from nine in the morning until even now, late in the afternoon, staying under the dogwood tree to keep his shoulders from turning pink. he ate lunch with us on a blanket, drew pictures of dinosaurs in their bones while i read to them and then went back to the digging, alone for most of it, wind in waves over trees, wind that shakes in the windows on its way through the house. he’s coming in soon to do math in a black and white book, to read words in lists to me. i’m glad he can spend more of his time at age six outside in the wind, the garden, watching birds and making friends with the new neighbor dog. i try to hold these things close because much of the time i’m crazy with kids all around me, school to be done, the house in a mess, the books i want to read and the things i want to make waiting until a tired nighttime for the doing. kids that bicker, make messes, don’t want to be working their school things, all of it around and about. it’s hard to hold vision, hope, and belief in a way that it doesn’t get lost in the noise, the chaos, the needful.
sun arrows
March 21, 2011 | Filed Under lists | Leave a Comment
two weeks and then some of saying “tomorrow” to this little place. hopefully the swing of things will come to me again.
instead
company (and all that comes before company)
birthday parties
birthday gift sneakery
laundry
mopping with new mop
spring cleaning of the simplest variety
zoo
museum
rainstorm watching
sneezing
cupcakes, twice, two kinds, within the space of two days
making time to read
window opening
pushing lola high on the swing
knock me out
March 4, 2011 | Filed Under ordinary | 1 Comment
happy weekend to you. my weekend plans of tilling up the garden are probably not going to happen since there should be a cold, gray rain falling by morning. but we don’t always get what we want, max can tell you that.
drumfires
March 2, 2011 | Filed Under ordinary | Leave a Comment
jude in the yard with a giant bent umbrella, henry an apple in one hand, a stick in the other. they know that they will have to start their bookwork if they come into the house so they don’t bicker with each other, they don’t try to use the axe or chase the dog or throw the basketball at the side of the house or hurl patio chairs across the yard with a hulking roar. they hope to disappear into the white light of sun, hoping i’ll forget until it’s too late. i take advantage of this, although i know that they think they are taking advantage of me. the house is clean because of it. my orders are almost caught up, ready to ship out. the coffee doesn’t go cold in the press. there are only so many sunny spring mornings, and though i like getting the schoolwork done before lunchtime, some days it’s good to trade a morning hour for another that comes in the afternoon.
crows, three of them in the topmost branches of a tree. we watch until they all fly away, the last cawing long and fluttering up his tail feathers. in the morning a dozen, two dozen peck about in the yard and garden until the dog runs out across the grass to chase them away. one crow is a pretty thing, picking up and gliding away on a blue-black wing. three like something from a fable, storybook illustrations vining around the edges of a page. the hitchcockian flock in the backyard is terrifying, though, and i see a summer of pinning spinning pinwheels that catch the sun, overalls and a straw hat on a line in the garden.
cluster mobiles
March 1, 2011 | Filed Under royal buffet | Leave a Comment
i’ve put a few new-to-etsy (if you’re local you’ve seen the like at art & light this winter) mobiles in the shop, most of them ready to ship. i also re-listed some pieces that i’ve not had in there for awhile, so pop over and check them out! if all goes well, i will have a few bird mobiles in there by the end of the week as well.