Blue Yonder

"Now That's a Peach"

(If you will indulge me in just one more produce post, I will promise to move on...) 

"Now that's a peach!" That's what my James said, juice running down his arm, as he hung from a branch, sampling the farmer's wares. 

My little fruit lover has been longing for that sweetness ever since he asked me to buy peaches a few weeks back at the grocery store, which turned out to taste "exactly like nothing would taste if nothing could taste," in his estimation.

 So, of course, it was with the highest of hopes, that he carried his basket down the dusty trail.  

You might imagine then, that when my man discovered that these peaches were REAL peaches, peaches that taste exactly how the summer sunset would taste if the summer sunset could taste, he picked himself silly. 

We all did. 

 

When every basket in a 10 mile radius had been filled, he wiped his brow, cursed the creation of biting insects, declared that farming was for the birds, and that he's moving to Canada where it is not 100 degrees

.  

This, precisely 2.3 seconds before he said, "Do you think we could pick some blackberries too? There's only a few left in the whole summer!" 

 

Even a small farmer can understand, you see, that this time, this gathering time, is as fleetingly precious as it is laborious, and that when the shoes are kicked off, when the ice cream has been scooped, the fruits of one's labor are sweet indeed. 

Rain

"Blessed relief," says a low and rumbling whisper, a long way off. 

We try not to listen to that siren song - not to allow ourselves the misspent luxury of hope.

We know those clouds. We know their beguiling charms, their empty promises. 

Against our better judgement though, when the whispers have turned to roars that rattle our chests, and our resolve, we begin to think, "maybe, just maybe."   

We don't say it out loud. 

The cicadas say it for us - scream it for us. They, in their leafy lookouts are at a fever pitch, a frenzy wrought in summer's forge. 

The air above the black top dances, oily and hypnotic, but we will not be persuaded to think it - that it smells like rain. 

A sky rippling crack sounds, and the cicadas cease their sputtering petition. 

We too hold our breath, and cannot help but smile over 

one 

small 

drop 

on sun-baked skin. 

We half expect it to sizzle. 

Each pair of eyes looks up, pleading now, without pretense. 

And then it comes, the rain, this reigning moment of purest pleasure.

Let every living thing rejoice. 

The Sugar I Hope to Be

So um, not to pressure or rush my kids or anything, but I really am looking forward to being a grandmother someday. I think it's kind of the dessert course of life... all of the sweetness of being absolutely essential to a little life, with none of (or at least a good deal less of) the go-to-bed-on-time, eat-your-vegetables, dear-God-let-me-not-mess-up-this-enormous-blessing/responsibility-called-parenting stuff. 

I even have my name picked out. I want to be "Sugar." 

My sweet man wants to be "Pop." 

Together, we'll sound kind of like breakfast cereal, "Sugar and Pop," but I'm cool with that.

 I like to entertain myself with visions of the kind of Sugar I'll be. I see myself in a rambling limestone house, with a big cedar door and cedar shutters, surrounded by a wildish cottage garden, chickens and an orchard. I imagine that house always smelling of pie, and there always being sweet tea in the fridge. I don't even drink tea, but I plan to, as a granny. 

A person should have goals and aspirations. Tea drinking is one of mine, but there are so many more - so many things I'd like to do and be as a grandmother. 

In all of my visions, I possess a great deal of knowledge about the proper names of every winged thing, all the medicinal properties of my unruly plants, and the secrets of the unseen creatures that live among them. I envision my study, for I will have a study, of course, full of crackling tomes that hold the oldest and dearest of stories. There will be specimens and curiosities, collections of all sorts and stacks of handwritten journals. There will be feather pens, real ink and wax seals. There will be quilts and creaky, fluffy beds and never empty jars of cookies. My pantry will be full of every sort of jam which we will eat with spoons, by candlelight, with country music on the radio, my grandbabies and I. They will say, "Sugar, tell us a story," and I will say, "once upon a time..." 

I feel too, that once I am Sugar, my medicine cabinet should be full of odd and delightful little jars and vials of things called "tinctures" and "salves" - mysterious and powerful things, magical fairy things that heal and hearten little ones with skinned knees and stuffy noses. 

So you see, I have a lot of preparing to do, a lot of knowledge to acquire. 

First, I'm going to have to figure out how to keep something more than basil alive in my garden. Everything else has flopped fully and completely this year. 

Although, if I must have only one plant, I suppose basil isn't a half bad one to have. There's the pesto, of course, which we can also eat with spoons of need be, though I prefer to eat it with torn bits of warm, chewy bread. And, it turns out that basil has another wondrous quality, one that fits quite nicely into my grandmotherly plans... It has healing properties! 

I discovered this fact while looking for antiseptic essential oils for use in homemade cleansers and decided to try my hand at making a little balm that would be good for the many itchy ant and "skeetie bites," cuts and scrapes that make their way into the lives of my guys. Here's what I came up with:  

In a microwaveable bowl, put 2 TBSP Shae Butter, 1 TBSP Cocoa Butter, 1TBSP Bees Wax, 1 TBSP Baking Soda.  

Microwave for 30 seconds. Stir and continue cooking in microwave at 20 second intervals until it's all melted. 

Add in 2 tsp sweet almond oil and 3-4 drops basil essential oil. 

Stir, then pour into a small jar. Allow to set. 

One of these days I'd like to figure out how to use actual basil off of the actual plant, but for the moment, I'm quite pleased with the recipe as it is. 

Given the ammount of running about that goes on around here, we invariably get a few "skeetie bites" on any given day.

  

So, we got to test our balm right away, on both the boys and the mama. We all agreed that it was truly a magnificent goo! 

Within a couple of minutes of application, the redness had decreased and the itch was gone. 

So, my men smell all earthy in their beds, where they lie comfortably, with no itchies, and I am one little balm farther down the path to becoming the Sugar of my dreams. 

Ah, the sweet basil-y smell of success.

The Livin's Easy

You can see the signs everywhere.

Summer is right around the corner.

For us Texans, spring is glorious. It comes early, it paints our roadsides with wildflowers, it makes us proud to be right where and when we are... but it doesn't last long. Maybe that's part of the wonder of it all - the knowledge that it is a fleeting whisper of a thing.

Before long we will be in the midst of summer's skin crackling, snapping turtle grip.

The turtle let's go when it thunders. The summer sun doesn't let go until a cool wind blows - around about October, when we are weak and withered, gasping for air.

It isn't that I don't like summer. I do.

Berries and watermelon. Swimming and picnics. Sandcastles and shells. Children who wear swimsuits for months on end, fireflies. Oh fireflies!

We've had two in a jar by the bedside already this year. My Ryder, upon seeing the first of the season said, "Did you know about this?" He was astonished that somehow, someway, he had missed the existence of light up bugs! (Though I know he saw them last year.)

He kept saying, "They light up! Bugs that light up!" The way his mouth hung open over it, I was a little worried that he'd come to know how they tasted as well.

There has been sprinkler play, while just inside, mama's sewing machine whirs, spinning out a steady stream of bandana pants for boys and new summer shirts for herself.

There have been shirts shed across the yard and bare feet coated in sidewalk chalk.

Most of our meals have been eaten outside, with bits of crust carried off to the chickens - fluid meals eaten between laps around the grass, bird spottings and squirrel dinner theater.

So yes, I do love this new season, but I love it the way you love the relatives who come to stay. You plan for them, enjoy them, celebrate them, revel in the gifts and stories and embraces that they bring, but then after a while you think they better go on down the road before tensions rise and love is lost.

Summer is our crazy, fun loving, but often free loading uncle. He doesn't know when to leave, and so we are bracing ourselves, half excited, half dreading his visit.

It's Hot and There's Bugs!

My oldest was just over a year old when we first took him to Sweet Berry Farm. We have been every year since, and every year it's the same... red fingers and faces, sweaty brows and grubby legs, sore backs and thighs, mental notes of things to remember next year (note to self: sun screen, bottled water, a cooler for the berries' long ride home, cold wet rags for cooling necks and faces), and the same refrain, "It's hot, and there's bugs!"

My children (with gobs full of berries, mind you) like to make it known how miserable they are, how cruel I am to make them work so hard, how much they despise farm life.

Ryder told me, in the field, that this was his "worst day ever!" He promptly took off his camouflage crocks and hurled them across rows of berries - his version of a labor strike. It took five people FOREVER to find one of those shoes. (Another note to self: never buy camo shoes again, red, or blue, but not camo!). Nana even resorted to offering up a cash prize to the boy who found Ryder's shoe. Unfortunately for them, she was the one who found it.

When we filled all our berry buckets, and I suggested we do something new and exciting - dig potatoes - they all moaned and groaned and followed me down the row as though I were leading them to certain death.

But they dug, and they were earnestly impressed with real live produce under the dirt - for a few seconds they were impressed, before the bellyaching began anew. "You're going to wash them before we eat them, right? Do we HAVE to eat them?"

For all that complaining though, after we got home, and cooled off, drank a gallon a piece of water, peeled off sweaty clothes and stood under cool showers for far too long, do you know what I heard?

"When will the blackberries be ready for picking Mama?"

"Yeah Mama, and when will the peaches and blueberries be ready?"

They can't wait to go back.

They talk endlessly over the dinner table about how "we dug those potatoes Daddy! Right out of the dirt! They're really good, huh?"

They've been playing "farmer", discussing just what they would plant and who would do the picking. Both of these things are under ongoing negotiation, but one fact is clear - the chickens are relegated to "bug patrol".

When my guys, in all their farm planning, need a snack, they run in and out of the kitchen for handfuls of berries to carry outside, hollering as they run off "Aren't these the sweetest berries ever?"

And it's true, they are. We bought a basket of California berries at the store today, just to do a taste test, and while those were bigger and prettier than ours, our little berries packed WAY more taste.

That's kind of the moral of the story I guess - you have to endure a little ugly, to get to the sweet.

Night Songs

I hear an owl calling "who?", outside my window tonight, for the first time since,
I don't know, a very long time... since I was walking the floor, months ago with a sleepless toddler.

Where has he been, this owl? Did he fly south for the winter? Or has he been here all the while, as that toddler grew into a boy? Was he standing still and silent, composing his night aria, waiting for the flowering time, the moment for singing?

Does he feel now a fluttering in his chest, a new spring upon him? Did he feel the time had come? Or does he sing only to let me know that this square of land is his, his mother's before him, and hers before that?

I hear a train too. Far off, but not so far. Some call this a lonely sound, but it does not seem so to me, more like a mother come swiftly to kiss a brow, damp with unkind dreams, and whisper, "I'm here. I'm here."

But then, I suppose that sound has carried too many loves too far from home, the whispers changing - "You're gone. You're gone."

Lonely. Yes, I hear it now.

I hear a creaking metal bed down the hall. A little one, turning in his sleep and pulling the covers more tightly around him, he cares not where the train goes or why the owl sings, but only what tomorrow brings.

And I hear prayers lifted up, my own,

"Train don't take him too far.

Owl sing him into many springs.

Little boy, may your sleep always be so peaceful as it is this night."

Don't Blink!

Remember this little ball of fluff?

Well look at her now:

My Luke keeps asking, "Can you believe how fast they are growing up?"

I tell him that I feel the same way about him.

Our chicks are getting their big girl feathers and beginning to act like real chickens, pecking around, flapping their big wings and fussing at each other.

My poor little chicken Papas are getting a quick course on the joys and pains of parenthood. They are so excited to see their girls getting big, but they are also a little sad and a lot scared to LET them be big!

Their babies used to snuggle in when they held them, now, like all big kids, they squirm and fuss if you hold on too long. They have things to do, place to go, bugs to catch! They've got no time for snuggling! So, my fellas have had to learn to sit still in the pen, to not chase the chicks, but wait for them to come over on their own terms for a snuggle. And they do, but it is hard to wait. Very very hard.

I understand this feeling.

Also, like all good daddies, my guys just ached with worry the first time their little ones ventured into the world on their own.

The chickens were outgrowing their indoor box, so we put up a pen in the backyard, and moved their box into it.

We close up the box at night, but in the day time, they can run around the pen, scratching in the grass and spreading their new wings. My guys spent a good part of the first day in there with the chickens! I drew the line at delivering my children's dinner to them in their cage.

So the first day was a lot of fun, that first night though, it took my guys FOREVER to go to sleep with their babies all alone in the backyard. The boys were so worried that a cat or a snake, or a crocodile or a rogue hippo would come and devour their girls.

I told them I understood this too. I felt just that same way when I left them in the nursery at church for the first time.

Parenthood is rough.

Remember that thing in high school, where they give you an egg and see if you can keep it safe? It's supposed to simulate parenthood, but I think they would have come closer to the bittersweet truth of raising little ones if they had passed out fluffy little chicks!

By the way, they made it through the night just fine, which called for celebratory sugar cereal on the deck, of course :-)

Just Because...

Because the weatherman says upper seventies all week,

Because things are blooming,

Because it's a lot more fun than laundry and grocery lists,

Because husband said, "how about it?"

Because kids have been asking for weeks,

Because all of nature is begging us to come out and play,

Because life is too short,

Because we can,

...we've decided today to head out in the morning for an impromptu camping adventure.

We'll be back Thursday evening, hopefully grubby, sun-kissed, and with new stories to share.

Until then, I hope your week is full of sunshine and promise too!

Day At the Ranch

The short version is this: My dad manages a commercial landscape company. Recently, he bought a 9 acre place where he could store all the equipment, supplies, whatever. My brother, who works with him, now lives on the property with his wife. (And this is where I try to focus on being happy for them and not turning 20,000 shades of green because living on wild acres where turkeys and deer roam and I can hang my sheets to dry on the line, and have a large greenhouse and garden and chickens and goats and let my kids run and get dirty and not worry that some perv driving down the street is going to snatch them up, well that's MY dream damn it. Yes. I swore, and I'm not one bit sorry, either.) Really, I am happy for them. it's SO my brother, and such a nice place for them to start their life together. 

 I'm just saying... I wouldn't mind if there just so happened to be another 9 acres that had MY name on them! The good news is, it's not too far from us, maybe a 15 or 20 minute drive. So, it's kind of turning into a sort of communal farm. The boys and I spent a good bit of the day there today with Nana, planting. My sister-in-law and her mother took a few beds, and we took the others. Between us, if all goes well, we should have tomatoes, lots of varieties of peppers, beans, edamame, okra, strawberries, pumpkin, onions, lots of herbs and a whole slew of cutting flowers. Add to that the beautiful heirloom roses in about 8 different varieties that were already on the property, and I think we'll be sitting pretty in a couple of months. We also brought in some new livestock. Blue Yonder Ranch is now home to 1500 head of ladybug. Do I have to tell you that my boys were in heaven? They came home tired, covered in dirt, and famished. They wolfed down every bit of their dinner (+ seconds, then thirds, followed by peach cobbler and ice cream), took a bath and were all three passed out cold not two minutes after their still wet heads hit their pillows. Oh that's good stuff. Very very good stuff.

If - You Have a Young Entomologist

... it helps if he also likes to eat a lot of peanut butter.

The empty plastic jars make really nice "bug observation stations."

I don't think any amount of peanut butter eating can keep up with this fella though.

(click on the photo to see the notes about the inhabitants of his jars)