Mid-summer reflections...

Sweet (and sad) Goodbyes---Last day of Daycare with our much loved Nina---What a milestone! Josie spent five years being loved and cared for by Emily. She'll always be very special to us.

Caring for our Vegetable Garden

Climbing trees and rocks in Grant's Grove

Swimming as much as possible to stay cool

Camping at Gagg's Camp with the Satre Family

First time Bowling

Playing on the beach & watching the sunset with special friends.

Josie's Self Portraits: Feet

We spent Monday at the beach with the Durhams---a glorious break from Fresno's bad air and high temps. Josie asked to use my camera to create these lovely portraits. She came up with the titles once we came home and downloaded the pictures.

"My Sandy Feet"

"My Feet Make a Tower"

A Garden Grows Up

I've decided that I want to be a vegetable gardener. This whole thing started because I wanted to have fresh veggies for Josie and me to eat but in my past attempts at creating a garden, I thought I didn't have the natural talent to become a gardener. I could show you my Ugly Flower Beds as evidence for that assumption but I'd be too embarrassed.

Sometime near the middle of spring, Gudrun and I started discussing the idea that we should share a 'membership' to a local organic farm so that we could have fresh, in-season fruits and vegetables throughout the year. It didn't take long for us to decide that we might as well try creating our own garden that we could share.

On May 3, we started measuring and digging.

We borrowed Ray's truck to haul our retaining wall blocks and only had one "do over"----can't tell you how proud we were to figure it out on our own!


By the end of the day on May 4th, we had our garden leveled and framed, rocks cut (with help from David's rock-cutting expertise), and the beautiful, rich potting soil hauled and water-packed in our raised vegetable bed. The fact that we had designed it and implemented it almost completely on our own was part of the pride in our accomplishment.

On May 5th Josie, Maya & Sage helped us select our plants and a few flowers and we set to work planting our garden. I wish I could make this a Scratch & Sniff so you could smell the aroma of the rich soil, amend, and herbs, and flowers just as my brain remembers it. Paw prints and muddy snouts were the clear-cut pieces of evidence that we would need fencing reinforcements.

Here we are, 70 days later with mouths watering as we await another day's harvest.

I can tell you that our cucumbers are crunchy, the patty pan squash sweet, cherry tomatoes are delicious, our abundance of basil creates a fine pesto, and our Sweet 100's are nearly perfect. You can see that our eggplant is almost ready to pick---that deep purple is a gorgeous addition to our lush garden! So far, the only death has been our cilantro...I suspect our Fresno heat was just too much to handle.

Does anyone out there have a favorite eggplant recipe to share?

The Sead

I attempted a blog about a year ago but was worried about lurkers and safety issues so I abandoned the entire idea. However, after being prodded by friends to start a blog and share my mundane stories, I decided to try again. Hence, the 'sead' has been planted once again.

Josie's vocabulary is often lagging behind her emerging ideas which is probably due to genetics. She told me recently after a trip to the coast, "I'd like to live near the sead so that I can play in the sand and run in the waves and see whales and find seashells every day. But, Mommy, I also want the mountains to be by the sead so I can find good sticks and climb trees and rocks while I listen to the sead." After a deep sigh, she wisely said, "I guess we can just do that tomorrow."


I often struggle with the idea that I want my life to be simple and honest but then I look around and quickly get caught up in comparing myself to others. In those moments, I wish for more financial security, or to live in the midwest, or to drive a car with 4 doors, or to have a larger vegetable garden, or to be thin and physically fit, or to have a successful marriage, or to live where the air is clean, or have clothing that's less than seven years old. Since all of those currently seem like 'pipe dreams' I quickly turn my eyes to see what I DO have: a healthy & lively daughter, emotional independence, a simple appreciation for the people I love and the things I enjoy, and TIME to think and reflect and to realize how fortunate I am. Like Josie, I can have all those other things 'tomorrow'...but for today, I'm just going to enjoy being Josie's mom and having the time to cherish our life as it is.