june. making, growing, reading...

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Greens awaiting transplanting. Kale, chard, collards. I love them all. But sometimes I think collards may be my favorite. Especially when I am starting greens in the hot summer and the collards are loving it very much.

Hopefully in the next week or so we will be getting all of our potatoes in to the ground, followed by carrots and beets. Late June, really summer just beginning, and we are looking towards our fall storage crops.

June has felt so completely summer already that for the solstice and since then we have been having rather quiet days. Jason took the girls to the library a few mornings ago and it seems like they have been mostly reading, writing, and drawing since then. Occasional visits out to the garden, watering, nice and cool in the evenings.

Oh, and there has been lots of watercolor painting happening too. We have mostly always done the wet on wet watercolor method (waldorf) but lately the girls have been enjoying free painting time with the regular watercolors in trays, nice Lyra ones, such beautiful colors, and so many pretty paintings created.

Sleeping summer babies. Warm afternoon naps.

More making from the girls...
A wool needlefelt family portrait.
Lots of little knitted kitties. I didn't even try to get a good photo, you can't see how sweet they really are.
Doll making. Little dolls. Doll making dreams.

I started a teething doll for Elsa but need to get back to it.
Knitting some longies/pants (elizabeth zimmerman) and that sure is going slow, finally dividing for the legs, and then I think I will become more motivated to finish.
Sewing a sunbonnet. Almost done. Maybe I can finish that today.
And more birthday sewing to be done. Birthday dress for a 13 year old!!!

And finally you can see a bit of Chessa's birthday dress. The blue fabrics I have had for many years, this post here shows a skirt that I made Chloe long ago with the same four prints. Whenever Chloe would wear that skirt I would think "chloe in blueberry land" (elsa beskow!) and now Chessa has her very own blueberry dress. (The skirt is still being occasionally worn, but getting quite tattered after 2 sisters and 8 years worth of wear!)
Well hopefully I can share better dress pics sometime, and hopefully I will get it's missing button sewn on soon too (didn't quite have time to sew on the button on birthday morning, now I keep forgetting it still needs to be done. The dress is worn all the time anyhow...)

So now on to the day. There will be more making, home chores, tending little seedlings and watering garden beds, bread baking, books...

I have been putting a lot of thought into next years homeschooling. I will have a 3rd grader and a 7th grader! So the homeschool papers, books, folders are in a big stack on the living room floor, my head is full of ideas, and I better start writing down some of these thoughts and ideas soon!

(This Waldorf bookstore is having a sale this week, including some titles by Jakob Streit. He is one of our favorite authors, we have some of his sweet gnome stories, animal stories, Saints stories, Old Testament stories. There are some of his books that will be good for our Middle Ages block next year. Oh yes, a definite favorite Waldorf author!)


(joining friends Ginny and Nicole...)


Oh, and also, Happy Happy Summer (or winter??) to all!!!


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creek moments

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We sometimes go into the forest behind our house,
in the back of our neighborhood.

This summer we have a new forest to explore,
just minutes along the dirt road from our new land,
behind our new neighborhood.

Because I guess now we have two homes.
What a thing to be grateful for.

And this land, this is our "home" like no place before has ever been.

And this forest behind our land...
it really was like just a moment, just taking a first look.
Lupines blooming, flowers of serviceberry and hawthorne with a white perfectness against dark green leaves. Firs with their soft tips of fresh spring growth.

Three sisters by the creek. One littlest sister meeting her very first creek.
Oh yeah, there is a creek!!!
(Well we already knew it was there from maps, and then Jason checked it out once a few weeks ago, but we had not yet all been back there.)
So there are of course many more days of cool creek waterside and happy forest exploring days ahead for us!!!


I hope your first week of June has been full of goodness. Maybe it's hot everywhere, just like here. Really it was just one day of creek play, other than that it's been lots of summer busy-ness, the good hard work of summer kind of stuff. Seeds, gardens, horses. Land. Even a visit soon from family. Then other visits from old friends.
And already I am talking like it is summer, cause really it just feels so like it, and there certainly is no more waiting around for it, lots to be done and we need to get going...
Oh, and you have no idea how dirty these girls are!!
(But not really the baby...)
Wishing you all wonderful days ahead!!!


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may birthday

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~ remembering her littleness ~



She had a special before birthday campout, just her and her daddy.
She lost a tooth on her last day of being 8.
And she lost a tooth on her first day of being 9.
I listened to her play that morning.
That hushed, absorbed play, soft little voice talking to herself, her little dolls.
Just like a child of much younger years.
More of a song really.
Always she has been my little sing-song girl.


And another campout for her birthday.
First birthday at the land!
We travelled with cake.
Cake with strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, lemon glaze, and whipped cream.
But we forgot the raspberries and blueberries.
We forgot the birthday candles.
But wishes by the campfire are special too.
(And an extra piece of cake the next day at the house with extra berries and candle on top.)


We took hardly any pictures. And they are mostly blurry.
We never made it to our early morning lake picnic.
Her sister got a headache (migraine?) the next day at the land. She even threw up.
We had to head back to the house earlier than we had planned.
But still there was time for a birthday girl horse ride (lead) on Sage.

She received some carefully chosen books, little wooden trucks, a little dish set, a diary, and a dress.

Her big sister got her first diary when she turned 9, so she thought she might get hers this year too. And if she did get it she was of course going to write in it right away. Which she did. (She has amazing phonetic spelling abilities.)

Handmade by big sister gifts of a doll apron and a little knitted cat. And a promise to teach her how to knit her own kittens. This gift was so loved, she sat speechless for several moments.

She has such a deep tenderness in her. So sweet. So quiet.
Sometimes so loud!
Fragile and tough.
Timid and courageous.

Oh, and the dress. Little blue dress. Blueberry dress. Every last bit of blue dress.
I really love the dress.
(So very soon we shall have to talk about the dress...)

And I love her feet. The way she curls her toes. Her way of skipping about when she is just happy as can be.

Our dear sweet bursting with love 9 year old child! We love her so!!!


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visiting the flowers...

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I mentioned last time that we had a visit with our old friend/neighbor/neighborhood. And the flowers. The girls always look forward to visiting our friend and her flowers.



~ I cannot help but notice that one child is dressed for a chilly spring morning and the other is wearing a sundress. A sundress that I made for her when she was maybe 3 or 4. She is wishing it would fit her forever...

I also notice she has no socks on.

Which reminds me of a conversation on the way to the land the other day...

"Chessa, did you remember socks?
"Yep. One's clean and the other one's dirty, but they match, and they're both wool."
"Oh." ("Ha ha ha!") "Good."



Behind that wooden fence is where the house that Chloe was born in used to be.

(Burned down in a huge area forest fire, I think it was about 11 years ago, we had just moved out of the house 2 months before. Several other houses on the road burned down, our dear neighbor was fortunately spared...)

Behind the more open part of the fence, where the girls are looking back towards, is where we had our garden.

I see the little dirt road where I walked so often with little baby Chloe.


And now I hear little baby Elsa waking in bed.

Last night I had a slumber party with my eldest and youngest.
The youngest just slept. Eldest and I had a sewing night.

Sweet middle child and her daddy had a special campout at the land.

Cause sweet middle child has only a couple more days of being 8 years old.

Oh my!

Better get finished with the morning chores so I can get back to birthday dress sewing!


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gratitude for motherhood, and old photographs...

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~Nearly 13 years ago, the first days of her life, my first days as a mother.

~A few weeks before she was born. We had just moved into a little A-frame in the forest. 
(We are not nearly as young as you might be thinking we look...) (25 and 27...)

~ See, my yellow-y gold flowery vintage-y sheet! I said before that it is always out at homebirth time...

~And today... (No one was sure if the camera was working...)
(Nursing baby...)

~ Visiting an old friend/neighbor, right next door to where our first child was born...)

Seriously absolutely definitely the best thing that ever happened to me. Becoming a mother. It was like I instantly felt completely me. Life was just exactly as it was supposed to be. And now I am the mother of three girls. Three girls!!! (Kinda makes me wonder how I could have thought this baby was going to be a boy. Because three girls, it was something I always seemed to know. I'm not saying only three girls, but yes, definitely, three girls.)

I think this work of creating families and raising children is oh so very important. I am so incredibly grateful to be a mother to these children. And I am honored to share friendship with so many wonderful mothers. 

Wishing you all a happy mothering heart full of peace. 

With love, Renee

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