Month: March 2019

31 March

(Baby hostas, my new blueberry bush, crocuses Saoirse and I planted last fall, and mystery sprouts, which are probably coneflowers)

Today was for catching up on linen pants orders (just two left) and ripping more ivy and forsythia from the garden. I could really just do that all day.

Ian has been working super overtime, which means I didn’t get my usual weekend bedtime duty break, but we are reading Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban so I don’t mind too much. I did, however break my self-imposed no-eating-out-this-week rule and order dinner both nights of this weekend. I can’t actually do everything, and I’m probably going to be ok with that eventually.

I am trying to take it easier on myself, at least as far as the messages I ingest from the wider world and the messages I tell myself. Mom guilt is a huge bummer. We do things differently than most of our friends and peers, what with being different people with different interests, circumstances and resources. We do a pretty amazing job, actually. It’s only when I start looking at us through the imagined (and sometimes shared) viewpoints of others that I start to feel like I’m not doing enough, or worse, that I am not enough.

It’s all nonsense. I could make it all look perfect for Instagram if that was my goal, and probably unintentionally bum a bunch of other mothers out. I do worry about appearing lazy, which is wild when I think about what I do in a day. I need to remind myself that behind the scenes are often nannies and babysitters, housekeepers, tutors, etc. Full disclosure: I have the door dash app, and I’m not always afraid to use it. None of us can do all of the things all of the time. Watch me grow, alongside these seedlings and these children, into someone who can allow myself that truth.

by Valerie

30 March

A gardening day.

The many cats of Heartwood Nursery, and the purchase of three very tiny baby shrubs.

The pruning of a neighbor’s invading invasive, and the removal of some very old metal garden bed border.

I finally got my black cohosh into the ground and just as I finished, saw a peregrine falcon perch atop a neighbor’s small tree and eye us suspiciously before taking off again.

by Valerie

In which we catch up the blog and decide to attempt to use it more regularly.

When last we spoke, dear blog, over two years ago now, my family and I were living in a rented house in Charm City (Baltimore, for the uninitiated), with no pets, very few plants, and a partner/father who we really only saw on weekends, due to his very long daily commute. We are now in possession, in reverse-listed-not-chronological order, of one official-on-paper Husband who works from home and whom we are all so glad to see much more often, a front *and* backyard which will someday (soon?) be a lovely garden, a cat (atchoo!), in our very own home, in a small city in south central Pennsylvania. That seems like a lot of change for such a short period of time, but only when I type it out.

We are still homeschooling, although Saoirse was, I’m going to go ahead and say Blessed, (a word I have had many tiny arguments with, but which comes in particularly useful in certain instances), with a year of preschool at the comfortably small and sweet school where Alden spent his Kindergarten year. Now we busy ourselves with nature, art, and co-op classes, meetups with our dear old Maryland friends, outings with newer, more local friends, wearing costumes on errands, and trying to play with the cat without being accidentally scratched. It’s not bad.

I am hoping to get back into blogging regularly, mostly as a way to keep track of my own projects with the house and garden, homeschooling and creating. Maybe people will be interested, maybe not, but I find the format easier than paper journaling, since my drawings always disappoint me, my handwriting is not always beautiful, and I tend to have an abundance of photos. Here we are.

by Valerie