Our garden has been a monarch haven this year.  We have been enjoying studying them so much as we pull weeds and tuck more lettuce and spinach in where there's space.  Nora especially has been keeping track of where they are (the garden is full of scattered milkweed plants) and how they've grown.  At the moment we don't have any caterpillars out there that we know of (though we do have some eggs) but at one point we counted 12 of them.  But inside our butterfly "house" is hanging in up in the window with three monarch chrysalises inside.



It seems that new life is bursting from every corner of our little "farm" right now, albeit in very tiny forms.  We have three orange cones surrounding the buried turtle eggs outside our back door.  Inside there is a bean in a glass jar of soil in our kitchen window, just beginning to sprout (an experiment of Nora's).  In the garden the strawberries are producing the best crop of strawberries we have ever had.  Aside from all the ones we eat while gardening we are bringing in an overflowing bowl like this and then some everyday.



While I was out working in the yard today I found the tiniest toad, no bigger than my pinky fingernail.  Iyla and Nora were so enamored with it.  Such a magical time of year.

Iyla Update

My two favorite things Iyla says right now are-

(After picking up anything slightly resembling a phone or a camera) "I'm going to take a smile" which is her way of telling you she's going to take your picture.

AND

When she wants to know if it's okay to take her shoes off she asks
"Can I go barefooting?"

She is obsessed with eating strawberries out of the garden right now. But she's also learned that asking "should we go out in the garden?" Or "can we go out to the garden?" Is a great way to trick me into going outside. Often times the minute we get to the garden gate she turns around and beelines it to her true destination.

She loves anything to do with water. Taking a bath of course but also washing her hands (which she then usually begs to also wash her feet), "swimming", stomping in puddles, playing in the sink, and even just drinking water from a cup.

She says "actually" a lot and uses correctly in a sentence.

She loves books so much.  Especially books that rhyme.  Some of her current favorites are anything by Dr. Seuss but most recently Cat in the Hat, Bear Snores On, Seven Silly Eaters and I Love you Stinky Face.

She really likes putting on her own clothes (and other people's clothes) which sometimes results in her wearing several random layers of clothes- pajama pants with a swimsuit over the top of that with one of Nora's shirts over the top of both of those.

She brings so much joy to our family.  Her big siblings still fight to go up and get her after she wakes up from a nap.

Summer Solstice

I've had a hard couple days.  After getting a very violent stomach flu virus on Wednesday night, I spend Thursday night helping Nora get through the same virus (except that she had it worse than me and was up throwing up every half hour all night long).  Yesterday when I woke up I still didn't feel better.  I spent the day trying to get things done with a queasy stomach in between a lot of sitting.  Aside from feeling sick, it was more than a little depressing.  It was beautiful outside and the garden was calling me.  But since walking more than a few steps made me nauseous I was trapped indoors.

But then by late afternoon (after a long nap) I suddenly started to feel better.  Ryan made us an amazing dinner and I was able to eat for the first time in two days.  After dinner, I read Nora and Jackson some of our read aloud (the last book in the Heartwood series that we just adore) and we got Nora to bed early.  Then later downstairs, I had this really great moment.  Jackson and Ryan were watching the baseball game, Grace was reading in the window seat, Nora was on the mend and asleep upstairs, and I was reading Iyla a stack of books- and I just had an overwhelmingly happy moment of clarity- life is so good.

Which leads me to today, one of my favorite days ever.  It began with a little time reading my book "Notes to Self", followed by time a quiet morning in the garden.  Then we all decided to play a game of baseball, which was silly and chaotic and so much fun I didn't want to stop.





Later Ryan started working on the new porch.  And I went back out to the garden.  Iyla is so in love with out there right now because there are monarch caterpillars everywhere to find and red ripe strawberries to eat.  I weeded and planted and watered and enjoyed every minute.

Meanwhile Grace was inside making this amazing cake for our Summer Solstice party we decided to have (even though it was a day late).  We were all feeling better and it was a beautiful summer day so we decided a party was in order.  The cake was so beautiful and she topped it with our strawberries. It was absolutely delicious! Iyla couldn't stop asking for more.






{she used this recipe  but used wheat flour instead of white, with my mom's Christmas cookie frosting recipe which she added strawberries too.}

Aside from strawberry cake, we had homemade pizzas for dinner with garden toppings.  I tried a combo of arugula, oregano, chives, basil, and sausage which was SO good.  After dinner Jackson talked us into doing a small fireworks show for us.  Iyla thought they were great as long as they weren't too loud.







We ended the night in the field chasing fireflies.  Truly the perfect summer day.  We will for sure make this a new tradition.

What was most fascinating to me at the end of the day was realizing that our impromptu Solstice party never would have happened had we not gotten sick.  This really amazing day just never would have materialized.  I'm still thinking about that and how life is always taking me on little surprise journeys that I hadn't anticipated.

Right now all my mornings begin with me sneaking outside for a few minutes (usually after I nurse Iyla) to pick a bowl full of black raspberries for our breakfast.  Today as I was doing that I started thinking about how many memories of black raspberries are woven through our lives from the 11 years we've lived here, beginning the very first summer we were here and "discovered" them. A baby Jackson shoving fistfuls into his mouth (nothing has changed there), making jam with Ryan one night after the kids were asleep, making muffins with the kids, cleaning berry stains out of the rug (already have some new ones this year), adding them to pancakes, making syrup for Scott's homemade ice cream on the 4th of July, Ryan covered in head to toe bug netting spending hours picking them by the bucketful, topping them on yogurt with granola, black raspberry pie, stained fingers and lips- so many of my mothering memories are tied to our black raspberries.  I'm thinking once my kids are grown they will find it hard pressed to fight the urge to find some sort of berry to pick come June.