Rain in the garden

(holiday) weekend warriors

Since moving into our house, when we started by regrading the lawn and putting in one small garden, we have spent most of our holiday weekends working up a sweat in the yard. The projects have varied in type and size over the years, but as long as we were in town on a long weekend, we were working in the yard, usually with help from extended family.

Over six years this has meant a lot of change. When we moved in we had exactly one tree and the only garden was the builder's landscaping in front—everything else was grass, grass, grass. Grass that you have to water, weed, and mow. Now the house is lined with plantings and the yard bordered in flower garden; we have a total of nine trees, three raised vegetable garden beds, and one very large native plant butterfly and hummingbird garden; there are two dry rock rivers to divert the sump pumps that drain in our yard and a fire pit; and now, after this Memorial Day weekend, we now have a patio. There is still a bit of finishing work to do around it, but now we have a great new place to sit and enjoy our gardens and

April, just a blur

As fast as March went past, I think April went faster. It was a blur of warm days mixed with a still bitter chill while we tried to get back outside and back on our feet. Calvin was in rehearsals twice a week for the Wild Swan production of The Wizard of Oz in early May and had practice twice a week for Science Olympiad, also in early May. Add to that the usual homeschool meetings and it felt like we were always on the move.

Festifools parade in Ann Arbor

testing the garden soil

playing with garden soil

chalk on a warmer evening

tracks left by the deer that walked through our garden and nudged over all our solar lights.

spring in the butterfly garden

math on the floor

o_o

Soaking up the sun

We did battle with the house sparrows that wanted to move into the bluebirds' digs

game playing on a warmer day

petting a skunk on a field trip with our homeschooling group

Spring egg dying

first signs of life

Broadway in Grand Rapids

bird watching (practicing for Science Olympiad)

first day of nature camp

Buzzing

Playing catch up

The problem with falling behind on a journal of any kind, is a reluctance to go forward before catching up on the past. Unfortunately, that means that the more behind one falls, the less likely one is to get caught up, the less likely one is to ever start again. Over the past week-plus of my blog hibernation that something exciting has happened I've thought "Great! I now have something to write about and pictures to share!" quickly followed by "Oh, but I have to catch up first." So how about a quick catch-up post—everything that has happened, or at least everything that I have pictures of (pics or it didn't happen!), and then we'll move on from there.

Journaling the trip

Climbing at the park with HAA (our homeschooling group that meets once a week)

I found this word fun on the floor one morning.

On the first day of September we drove to a Lake Michigan beach to visit with family and soak up some final  joys of summer.

We had science over for dinner.

And we partyied in our garden, finding the first signs of fall and ridding the beds of weeds.

And I'm calling that caught up. Tomorrow is the first day of school for many, just another day for us, but I'm sure it will be a great day.