Nature Walks

Our kids adore being outside, and we are all grateful that warm weather is upon us.  Watering the plants, playing in dirt, bike riding, climbing and running are all enjoyable summer activities here.  Another favorite is our nature walks, where we identify all sorts of "treasures."  We made several forays into the wilderness around the cabin last weekend, and the kids were thrilled by several new discoveries.  Annabel spent hours scouring the shallows of the little pond and found freshwater snails and shells.  Logically, my anal retentive daughter took great care in bringing them home and placing them in a systematic row on some egg crate foam.

Meanwhile, Thane pointed out a little den at the base of a tree where a squirrel wintered.  The ground around the hole was littered with thousands of pieces of pine cones that this furry critter must have used to fortify itself over the long, cold winter months.  (Did you know that there is a tiny, edible seed inside each pine cone petal?  I didn't!)

Thane was also fascinated with the moose antlers we hung on the outside of the cabin.  Confession time: we found the antlers stuffed in the back of an old root cellar - but they still are really cool (and a part of nature - or at least they were at one time!).

Lastly, we were especially delighted to chance upon a precious robin's nest in a pine tree.  LOVE!

Treasure Hunting

I used to think that yard saling was a happy little excursion where one idly spent one's weekend mornings wandering about hill and dale, poking through the remnants of a stranger's life in an effort to discover treasures on the cheap.

Well it's not - at least it isn't around here anyway.  Seriously, who knew that yard saling was a contact sport?

As in other parts of the country, normally rational housewives around here go on spring cleaning rampages, ruthlessly tossing the unused, broken, outgrown or other irrelevant pieces of their lives onto the curb (or into the garage or onto tables in their front yard).  They advertise in the local paper, litter the streets with posterboard/cardboard/whiteboard signs and wait for the masses to swarm upon them (usually between 7:30am - 8:00am on Friday morning). 

And the funny thing is, swarm we do, taunted by the illusion (or is that delusion?) of scoring big and paying little.  Harmless enough, right?  WRONG!  The sticky part is when the "professionals" arrive.  You know the type - pickers with skinny hearts and fat wallets.  They descend from their fancy new trucks in pairs with greedy glints in their eyes.  Utilizing eye contact and cryptic hand signals, they spread out in well choreographed movements and snatch up all the good stuff in mere seconds.  Ya, ya - I get it:  finders keepers, losers weepers...  The problem is that these successful stuff snatchers (aka thieves) arrive early, shove potential competitors aside, place hold tags on anything that looks good (whether they plan to buy the item or not), and then haul off the good stuff to their stores where they double or triple the price - all in the time that it takes me to get the kids unbuckled and out of their car seats.

Well, this momma had had enough.  So, on a cold Friday morning last week, I snatched my groggy children away from their warm breakfast and sped off to a promising sale about 4 miles north of town.  Oh ya, "those" girls were there, but I wasn't going to let them carry off all of the goodies.  I had a strategy:  while they went off in search of the big stuff (furniture, antiques, etc.), I scanned the area for diamonds in the rough.  Score!  The kids and I each found one thing with which we fell in love.  Thane found an old wooden truck, and Annabel discovered a purple prairie dress with lots of frills and bows for her dress-up box.

And me?  I found a very cool cobalt blue enamelware wash basin decorated with a chicken wire design.  It's the perfect thing for our Swedish-country cabin.  What's more, it's useful and I got it for a bargain.  Eat your hearts out, pro girls!

 

Yard Work

We've done a lot of outdoor work in the last few weeks.  We put in a gravel road down to the bottom of the hill where the barn will be built, and then Jordan lined the road with rocks from a neighbor's farm.  He also widened and smoothed out the area where we park our cars.  We've even planted more aspens, willow bushes and lilacs.  That is the extent of our landscaping this year, as putting in a deer fence, installing an irrigation system and constructing the barn will take priority.

In the meantime, several of the saplings in our little orchard are in bloom!  We got apples last year, and are hoping for more, along with some pears and plums.  Our strawberry, currant, raspberry and blueberry plants look promising as well. 

 As we have decided to focus on our big farm projects this year, we will only have a small garden.  Annabel and Thane were more than happy to lend a helping hand with the potato planting.  I dug a trough and prepped the spuds, while the kids planted, watered and heaped dirt back over the potatoes.  Annabel was very methodical and placed each vegetable in a neat row, followed immediately by a gentle watering session.  Thane, on the other hand, quickly tired of the tediousness of gardening work and decided to throw his taters into a couple of big piles.  As you can see, he had even less patience with watering.

Perhaps he'll be a preacher when he grows up - he sure does seem to have that baptism ritual down pat!

Just watch - Thane's row of potatoes will probably produce more than than the rest of ours.  He always seems to get the last laugh!

Potty Training... Or Not

A couple of weeks ago, Thane starting taking off his pants, dragging us to the toilet and yelling "Pee!"  We all thought he was being his goofy self, until we indulged him one day, sat him on the toilet and were dumbfounded to see that he was actually using the toilet to go to the bathroom!  Since then, he's had several accidents and could care less about using the bathroom some days.  But he has remained interested enough that I decided to get him some big boy undies.  As I unwrapped the first pair, he seemed to know exactly what the underwear was for.  I ran out of the room to take a phone call, and found on my return that perhaps we've jumped the gun just a bit:

 

Ya, um, maybe we won't get too excited just yet...