autumn nature table, harvest stew, and snowy days!

..

Last week it rained and rained and rained. We knew that up next was going to be some very cold days, temperatures dropping below freezing, so we had no choice but to go out into the downpour and do lots and lots of garden harvesting. It was cold and wet but fun nevertheless.


By Thursday the rained turned to snow. Snow! It snowed all day long, and much of the next day too. It was beautiful, and exciting, but kind of concerning too. This year we had snow even in June so wow, 3 months only without snowfall!


We are so grateful for our bountiful garden harvest! This stew had a little bit of everything we had harvested in recent days... onions, carrots, yellow summer squash and zucchini, potatoes, beets, beet greens, collards, kale, and swiss chard. I threw in a handful of millet but other than that it was a completely homegrown stew. And it was so so yummy!

Autumn days are feeling good!


Michaelmas pictures drawn by the girls...

Michael has chased the dragon back into his cave, that's the dragons tail sticking out. I like the stars shooting across the sky.


Harvest day picture in progress. The little girl is munching a carrot. The girls had to carve out a bit of drawing space amongst all the winter squash covering the table.


The other day Chloe found this picture she had drawn when she was in 1st grade. The women seem to me to be dancing with their brooms. And I love the pumpkin border.


Pumpkins make me very happy! I have always wanted to grow an entire pumpkin patch, and someday we will. This year we planted just one hill, because I wasn't sure if they would even have time to mature or not. But they did (mostly, close enough) and so now we have four of our very own homegrown pumpkins.


I have been having a nature table dilemma. Due to the fact that we have a new kitty who is quite mischievous! That little rascal gets into everything! I was too scared to put anything handmade out on the nature table. Leaves, grasses, flowers, nothing would be safe. So I did a bit of bookshelf rearranging and am hoping that kitty will let it be.

The girls have been bundling grasses and gathering acorns. Rosehips and fallen leaves have since been added to the shelf.


My first needlefelted figure made a couple years ago, and a knitted pumpkin that took me so so long to make, I think this year I have knit almost an entire sweater in the same amount of time.



I still have our original nature table set up, I am too attached to it to let it go. Wooden trees are safe from kitty. A favorite autumn print and the leaf garland the girls and I made last year keep it simple yet festive I think.

Thankfully the snow has passed for now, but I think the chill is here to stay.
We are all feeling so excited for all that this season has to offer!


...

autumn

..





On the equinox I really felt the need to go be in the aspens. And so that's exactly what we did.

















We decided to have an evening picnic at the lake.



It was actually quite warm and the girls were able to spend hours playing in the sand and beside the water.





We walked up the river after dinner. The lake was very low.







Chessa of course walked in the river, my little water child.





And she can never resist digging into that soft cool sand.



Here she was a raccoon. She would run off just a bit further and then drop down and start digging again.



Joined by Chloe, digging a little more tentatively.




It was the perfect way to spend the first day of our beloved autumn.



Wishing you all a beautiful new season!


...

botany, cardigans, and golden...

..


First pages from Chloe's botany main lesson book.


She is feeling like she can't draw or write well enough with her hand injury but I think she did beautifully. For this reason though we are taking it a little bit slow.

Rather than Charles Kovacs Botany book we are mostly using The Living World of the Plants by Dr. Gerbert Grohman. I really like the Kovacs book, but I really love The Living World of the Plants. And Chloe agrees, so that is our focus. I also have the Christopherus Botany lesson guide, which we are not exactly following but provides good inspiration for my lesson planning.

And please excuse my not great photos. Jason has been taking the camera with him most days, he has been out bow hunting this month... (Yep, from 17 years as vegans, to not even vegetarians and hunting!) So I tried to take a few quick pictures before he left today, with very poor lighting...

Some Tasha Tudor book love. Goodness she makes me happy.
I was recently gifted two vintage books illustrated by Tasha Tudor, maybe I can share pics of them soon...

One of my favorite trees at the moment...

And the cardigan! So close to finished! So not perfect, but so perfectly fine to me. I feel like I have learned so much knitting this first sweater. I intend to go finish that other sleeve right now (yes Melanie, I know I have been saying that for a few days now...) and hopefully by the end of the week I will be casting on the next cardigan for Chessa.

With the days turning cooler I have been wishing I could just sit and knit all day long, perhaps outside beneath some of those beautiful golden trees...


...

all kinds of good things...

..

First of all I need to say, dear friends, I'm so very sorry that I caused any of you worry. And I apologize for my weirdness and defensiveness regarding the deleted post. Chloe is fine, she will heal, she is strong. And I will try to not overreact in such a way again...


So, on to the good things...

These photos were taken about a week after Chessa turned 7 in May. She asked me if I would teach her to play flute. Cause she sure was waiting to turn 7 years old so that she could be a first grader!

And so we began.

This past week we began our new homeschool year. My sweet little first grader and my big girl fifth grader! I decided to start with a week of form drawing for both girls. Next week Chessa will be continuing with form drawing and Chloe will begin a first botany block.


Circle time included many of our favorite apple verses and songs as we traveled off to the orchard...

And all that apple singing must have brought us good luck. Because when we stopped to check on a wild apple tree that we have had our eyes on we discovered that the apples were absolutely perfectly ripe! Big, red, rosy apples, so juicy and sweet. We gathered two bushels that day, and Jason and the girls returned on Sunday and harvested another two.

I found it so funny on that first harvest day... we had only one bag with us since we weren't expecting to be picking apples yet. The bag was actually full of veggies from the garden but we just set those in the bag of the car so it could be filled with apples. Then Jason layed out his flannel shirt and we filled that. Then, since I was wearing my usual cooler weather ensemble of long skirt over pants, I took off my skirt, tied up the top, and we used it as a big apple sack! Now you may think I am strange for always wearing skirts over my pants (or pants under my skirts) but it sure had a practical purpose that day!

And we found plums! How excited everyone is about that! When I came up the stairs this morning the smell of those plums greeted me, and I spent the first part of my day in the kitchen getting lots of them pitted and into the freezer. I would like to make some plum jam too, but I am waiting for the canning jar lids that I ordered to arrive (the reusable bpa free ones) and these plums are not going to wait, so into the freezer they went.

Not all of our house smells sweet and fruity though. Sometimes the smell of sauerkraut overwhelms us instead. I have nearly two gallons fermenting, this is my first attempt at it and it seems to be going well so far. Goodness we grew some huge cabbages this year. I just had to weigh one before I started slicing it and it weighed 17 pounds!
(And on a kind of scary note, one of our cats does weigh more than the cabbage! Oh Taddy Orangeo, we know you cannot help being so big. You have a big name, and huge double paws, and you used to have a big meow, but you seemed to have lost that...)

So, homeschool, apples, plums, sauerkraut. It really doesn't take much to make us happy.
Oh, and we have pumpkins growing quite big in the garden!
And I baked plum crisp, and it came out so so beautifully pink!
And it is September, a wonderful month that holds such promise of the beautiful autumn season to come.
I hope you all have been enjoying beautiful happy days too!


...

pretty pictures only...

..






















If you happen to have noticed, yes I have deleted my last post. To those of you who shared such kind and supportive words, I thank you very much...


...