New Summer Dress (hooray for the thrift store!)

Only a few more months to be five. This is a common facial expression for a five-year-old. Alert and nosy, trying to figure out what the person you're looking at is doing, and if this might be a good time to try to make them laugh.

It's always a good time.

Last Day of Kindergarten!

It was fun to watch her change her uniform for a swimsuit and run through the sprinklers. No more uniform for two and a half months. Her Dad is measuring the porch railings. He's rebuilding them from the balusters on up.



Happy summer!

Katie's Bowl

My generous college friend Katarina gave us this bowl for a wedding present. It is the most lovely and satisfying thing. It glows like a fat red pepper, has a delicate but substantial heft in your hands, and elevates anything you put in it or near it. I read yesterday that Michelle Obama closes a lot of doors to keep their new dog out of mischief: "We try to set him up for success." That made me laugh, because not to equate raising kids with training dogs, but that's what I do with the red bowl. It stays on a high shelf and only comes down with close supervision, because I would be broken-hearted if anything happened to it. You set them up for success, you see.

Tonight we picked spinach mustard leaves from the garden, and they deserved the red bowl. I rolled them up into cigar shapes and then cut them crosswise into strips, and sauteed them with garlic and olive oil. Sea salt and red wine vinegar and red pepper flakes just at the end. Just-picked greens taste so fresh and mineral-y and grassy. There is a salty, earthy quality that goes away when they're kept and stored.

Another surprise, our first spring in this house--there are spirea everywhere. My neighbor told me they are called bridal veil because brides used to make bridal crowns from them. I remember spirea in our house in Albuquerque when I was little. The white blossoms make perfect miniature doll bouquets.

R drew this picture today. She says it's "Daddy, Mommy, me, and the dog we are going to get some day soon. It's raining, because I love the rain and running outside to play in it." The red shape on the far right is "a mouse house. You know, a house for mouses." Behind her are all the pepper and tomato plants, hardening off before planting.

The forecast says possible hail later today, so I'll put off the tomatoes and peppers and maybe only transplant the pumpkins. They are huge in their pots, I don't think hail will bother them. D dug out a big sunny strip behind the sheds and cleared the weeds and thistles. Perfect for pumpkins and melons to grow up the fence and sprawl behind the sheds. It was so nice to wake up this morning to a cool, overcast day and D home on a Monday. He made pancakes and let me sleep in.

May 18

Hylie and Flower

Last week, R walked into the house cradling a stuffed animal. I was distractedly thinking "Which toy is that? It looks so lifelike." Something about R's mesmerized facial expression made me look more closely. Then the toy's ears twitched.

That's how we found out we have baby bunnies living in our backyard. My heart was pounding out of my chest as I helped R get it safely back into its burrow without hurting it, and we invoked every dire consequence we could think of to make sure she never touches one again. Still, they're her little friends. She lays out trails of carrots and lettuce leaves for them. She studies where they go and leaves cups of water where they are likely to need them. She picks grape hyacinths and honeysuckle and leaves them by the entrance to the burrow "so their house will be beautiful." She will lie on her stomach in the grass for an hour, watching them hop out of the burrow, eat some grass, and hop back in. So far it looks like there are only two babies. She named them Hylie and Flower.

Every morning before R wakes up, I check the back yard for the mother rabbit. I always see her hopping around, so I know the babies are ok for another day. And every night before she goes to sleep, she whispers, "Mommy, that baby bunny was so soft. The softest thing I've ever felt."

Waiting for June 1

It's not really warm enough for peppers, cucumbers, melons and tomatoes in Colorado until early June. So while we're waiting to plant the front yard garden, we made one more lasagna bed today in the back. Probably for zucchini and summer squash.

I hope R never outgrows her love of raking dirt, because it comes in handy.

The salad garden is really taking off.


Looking north from the back fence, through the lilacs.

Watering in the garden apron the Easter Bunny gave her.

I am so excited for these peonies to open all the way. I love them against the silvery blue-green artemisia.

The first radish harvest!

Dirt and Manure, So Excited

We got the manure-covered newspapers all ready on Wednesday evening.D has all the lumber to reconstruct the balusters and railings on the porch, but he can't ever get to it because every week I have garden projects for him. I hope that his part of my garden projects is almost finished.

D took off work Thursday and Friday, and on Thursday morning, two tons of soil were delivered and dumped on the front lawn. Peat, compost and topsoil mix.

There was a lot of shoveling and leveling and raking. I took a break from shoveling compost long enough to get dressed up for the mother daughter tea, and then came home and started right back in again.

Then Friday morning, D built the fence. R was off school and helped a lot.

Here is the fence, almost finished. I am imagining how it will look with beans and tomatoes and cucumbers bursting out of it.