embroidery – Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs..

Hello April!! The sun is shining this morning for the first time in days and I am so happy!

April is so many things. This month, it is Easter. It is also my mom’s birthday month, and she will be 74 this year. It’s also the Springtime in Paris movie event that Lisa and I are hosting, and I am hoping to find some fun French things to do this month to really lean into the theme. (I have a few ideas but we will see!) I am currently working on a new embroidery project that is French themed so there is that!

It is also the month I am going to reread Watership Down again, for the whoknowsthenumber time.

Let’s start there, with Watership Down. Reading this book is liking walking down a path that I have traveled so many times, it is well worn, it is well known – yet I always find something to surprise me. Depending on my frame of mine, my life at the time, different parts resonate with me more than others. It’s even hard to say now why exactly this book appeals to me so much. I know that it is upsetting to some people, some people don’t like anthropomorphic characters, etc, but to me this book is about bravery, and friendship. About community and resilience. About breaking free to live the life you want. Perseverance. Adventure. And it is all wrapped up in a little story about rabbits, a story that Richard Adams never intended to write and publish, one that he just started making up and telling his children and they eventually encouraged him to put it on paper. I am so thankful that he did, because I have loved this story of brave, clever rabbits for thirty years.

Sometimes this time of year, I am yearning to get outside and in the garden. We had some plans for gardening this year, but Wyatt’s surgery has been scheduled – July 9th. So instead, Wyatt and I are going to start some pumpkin seeds today. They will grow through the spring and summer, and then, when Wyatt is hopefully through his recovery, the pumpkins will be ready as well. And that is the extent of what we are planning. Billy may throw down some wildflower seed, and let them flourish, I am hoping to maybe maybe make a small water feature on the deck so that Wyatt can see it and access it until his surgery. Maybe it will attract a frog or two.

I am thinking long term these days. Something we can start, that will take us through to fall, as we are going to have some rough months ahead. Something to hope through, look forward to.

Switching gears here – back to now, back to April. I have some really cool stuff planned for homeschool this month. I am very excited about it and I hope that Wyatt likes it and finds it fun. I have a whole concept for a sort of immersive type learning, for language arts and science. We are reading The Wheel on the School, which is new to me as well, and Wyatt will be learning about the Netherlands and habitat loss and restoration, windmills and renewable energy, dikes and climate change, among other things. We will talk about white storks, and eat Dutch babies, and stroopwaffel and try limburger cheese. We will learn about tulips and wooden shoes, about canalboats. I am very excited about this everyone! Can you tell?

I plan to post this week about our March homeschool too, which was also pretty fun but not as immersive or wide in scope.

I have some field trip days planned this month as well. The Detroit Institute of Arts, the zoo with a homeschool friend, member preview day at Greenfield Village. Maybe for that one we will take a blanket and throw it down somewhere, and enjoy a little picnic. Wyatt loves picnics -maybe because I read Wind in the Willows to him for the first time when he was 6 weeks old and just home from the hospital. He came home April 13th, after being in the NICU since March 2nd. The day he came home was rainy and cold and gloomy, but I always say he brought the sun because then it seemed like the days were sunny again, and I had open windows with warm breezes filling the house, and I would look out and see our apple tree in full glorious bloom. We haven’t seen it like that since that year, which sounds fanciful but it is the truth. Right now our tree has tiny buds on it, but no blooms yet.

And I will leave you with one of my favorite poems, a poem by Mary Oliver.

Why I Wake Early
by Mary Oliver

Hello, sun in my face.
Hello, you who make the morning
and spread it over the fields
and into the faces of the tulips
and the nodding morning glories,
and into the windows of, even, the
miserable and crotchety–

best preacher that ever was,
dear star, that just happens
to be where you are in the universe
to keep us from ever-darkness,
to ease us with warm touching,
to hold us in the great hands of light–
good morning, good morning, good morning.

Watch, now, how I start the day
in happiness, in kindness.

Whatever you do today, try to do something that makes you smile!

Hello everyone! I hope everyone is doing well! I was in a bit of a mood yesterday, and looking back it seems really common for me to be in a bit of a funk in August. In my blog last year I even quoted Sylvia Plath, and her reference to August as the “odd uneven time”. And who am I to argue with that, it feels so true. Today though, the sun is shining and I am feeling a bit more me, and less like the algae at the bottom of a pool during a long humid summer. (last night I was texting my friend Lisa and I was being super emo on purpose and referred to myself as the algae and she told me to write a poem, and I added on some worn out and dirty flip flop imagery. Just being silly. Lol)

We have been having a lot of fun though lately. We went to a Parisian-inspired brasserie for Billy’s birthday, and then the next day, which was way too hot and humid to actually be outside, we went for a drive to see what we could see.

Everyone was enjoying the lily pads, including that adorable young buck there. We hung out riverside for a bit, the breeze just idling past us as we sat in the back of the Subaru until we just could not do it any longer. Look at my poor little guy! He shows heat immediately!

Afterwards we were feeling peckish so we pulled in to an A&W. Are these just a Michigan thing, or are they all over? It’s just a drive up restaurant, like you see in all those 1950s movies, where you eat in your car. Billy ordered a root beer float for us all to share which was the perfect idea on such a hot day.

We also had a sad moment Saturday morning. Our beautiful Betta, Moon, had passed away in the night. Wyatt was upset over this, as was I. I could not figure out why either, which was more troubling. We took a sample of our water in to the aquarium store we go to, which only deals with fish and they are very knowledgeable, and the nice lady who always helps us, Sam, checked our water parameters and said our water was perfect. I showed her a picture of our set up to make sure I didn’t have to many plants, and nope that wasn’t it either. So we talked about some different things, trying to brainstorm what happened to our poor Moon – is the filter too fast, creating a current? No. Anything obviously wrong, like discoloration of the fins, etc? Nope. Then we got to feeding. I only fed him 3-4 pellets once a day, with a fasting day, which is what you are supposed to do. However, I do feed the snail in there as well, and we came to the conclusion that he was snacking on Sunny’s food too, and Betta’s will eat themselves to death. We decided as well that since I do have so many plants that I don’t need to give Sunny a wafer to supplement his food. We did end up getting another fish for Wyatt, which he has named New Moon. This one is a female Betta, and has the shorter fins. She is very pretty, petite, and very zippy. As a mother I am obsessed with keeping this fish alive for my kid; I told my Dad, of all the pets we have Wyatt decides he most loves the two fish, who are the most fragile. I am happy he loves them though.

We also went to a good old-fashioned block party on Saturday! The next block down was having a block party, with the street closed off and everything, and one of the families who we talk to here and there invited us down. We didn’t stay super long since it was so humid and hot, but we did go and hang out for a bit. It was nice to chat with them more than just the hi here and there small talk. And Wyatt had a blast!!! They had a ramp for bikes and of course, Billy took Wyatt up and down it. And his face! He also tried to go up it by himself when were chatting which gave me a heart attack. That kid, I swear. Lol.