january – Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs..

Hi everyone!! It’s been a fun reading month, full of wolves and snow and adorable woodland creatures! We hit up our library at least twice a week, so I am not sharing all of the books that we read together, but I am sharing some of our favorites. I am also back to buying more books than I had been so some of these are from Wyatt’s own personal home library.

This post does contain Amazon Affiliate links. If you were to purchase a book using a link, I would make a small commission at no extra cost to you.

A Thing Called Snow was pretty loved universally around here, by the whole family. Zommer’s books are oversized and just beautiful. In this one a fox and a hare, born in the spring and about to experience their first winter, are on the lookout for snow. My Winter City was more my favorite, not Wyatt’s. I just loved this look at what winter looks and feels like, all the little details from frost in the dad’s beard to slushy bus rides. Noisy Night was all Wyatt. This one was pretty cool because you feel like you are going up a floor in the building with every page because the residents all complain about the noise above them, until we get to the very top. It was pretty cute. And finally, probably the favorite book of the entire month, No Fuzzball! Any cat lover will be delighted by this one, and how Queen Fuzzball adjusts to a new little kitten face in her kingdom. It is absolutely adorable and also, made us chuckle. Definitely a keeper.

Wyatt loved Wolfboy. I knew he would – he considers himself a wolfboy half the time. And I could certainly relate to the grumpy feelings of being hangry!

We finally got some snow around here the other day, so Wednesday afternoon, after playing in the snow, we came in, had hot chocolate, and read a stack of snowy picture books. When It Starts to Snow and Blizzard were two of our favorites! When It Starts to Snow is a book that feels slightly poetic, with how it keeps asking the questions “What if it starts to snow? What do you do? Where do you go? These questions are answered by all of the little woodland animals and made us feel all cozy, because we knew what we were doing on our snowy day. Blizzard was fantastic- we both loved it! The author John Rocco tells his story about the blizzard of 1978, and the part he played in helping his neighbors and community, along with his memories of that time. We both really enjoyed it! It probably was our favorite right after No Fuzzball.

I Love Books in the Otter series is one of Wyatt’s go to grabs right now. He loves it because he too, loves books, just like Otter, and going to the library.

As for longer read alouds, we read the second in the Heartwood Hotel series, The Greatest Gift. Wyatt loves these books about the animals who work and live and stay at the Heartwood Hotel. After we finished up The Greatest Gift we moved on to Fantastic Mr. Fox – we are still reading this one and while things seem grim for the foxes right now, we have faith that Mr. Fox will come up with something to save his family!

Have you read any of these?

My January seed order has always been such a big tradition in my life, and this year had a little bit more sentimentality. I did this for years and years with my uncle; we would gather around his table, coffee and pastries around us while my aunt fussed about around us. We planned our gardens, planted them together when they arrived, discussed our harvests.. it was our thing. And now they are both gone, my uncle and my aunt. Big memories around this one tradition.

Last year, my uncle had “retired” from gardening and I had a fun garden and seed planning morning with my sister-in-law Chrissy and my niece. This year, though, we couldn’t get together. We tried to find a safe way, but with the weather we decided to forgo it.

But my husband and son came to the rescue! Billy knew I was feeling sad about it this year, and he and Wyatt gallantly stepped in.

We made it a pastry picnic! We spread out a cheery quilt, and all piled on top surrounded by seeds and books and pastries and pencils, and dug in. We looked over the seeds we had left from last year and the year before, made a list of what we still needed (emphasis on need not want, since we just don’t have space in our house for starting all the seeds we want lol), and Billy threw together a quick sketch of a garden plan. We didn’t need to order too many vegetables, as we are good on those still, and Billy has been wanting to start a cut garden, so it all worked out. We picked out flower seeds, which was really fun – neither of us really know too much about flowers so we just chose based on what sounded and looked pretty! I enjoyed the planning with my guys. My uncle would have been happy to see it.

Then, I actually got to the ordering! I went to the quiet basement office, took a glass of wine and my laptop, and started the process. And discovered it wasn’t as easy as previous years! Some seed companies are a month behind processing orders due to COVID, others were not taking orders from non-commercial growers (and I understand that), and other companies were sold out of a lot of seeds already! So if you are sitting on a seed order or wish list, you may want to put it in now. I made adjustments and swaps, and still ordered what we needed plus flowers for Billy’s flower gardens, it just took a bit longer, but that was ok. And I ordered something special as well: a lemon tree in honor of my uncle. My uncle grew a lemon tree from a single seed from a lemon he had used cooking, and he was understandably so proud of it. It is one of the plants I think of when I think of gardening with my uncle. I have to wait until spring for it to arrive, which makes sense with the cold temperatures and shipping right now, but I am so excited to get it. It is definitely something to look forward to!

This year we will also have another new addition to our yard – elderberry bushes. Billy has wanted these for years and finally ordered them. The cuttings arrived and are happily sitting in the window, awaiting their time to be planted outside. It will be here sooner than we think!

All of my seeds have now shipped and I will be checking the front porch a million times a day to see if they have arrived, until they get here. Until then, we can dream of gardens and flowers and color and vegetables from inside our cozy house, eating soup and homemade bread and finding what flowers we can to get us to spring.