Our Oven

We built a pizza oven! It has long been a dream to have an outdoor oven of our own, but we spent a lot more time dreaming than actually planning and researching. This imbalance was, mostly, righted by a willingness to work hard to make […]

Read more

Summer’s Last

The crab grass and other weeds hiding among the plants are going to seed. The tomato plants hang loosely, much of their potential already harvested and piled on the kitchen counter ready to be canned. I finally cleared some of the onion harvest off my […]

Read more

Magic All Around

The crab apples are blossoming magenta, several shades bright-pinker than their garnet leaves. The apple tree, the one that was here before us, not the tiny saplings I planted last month, will soon bloom in a pale pink shade; we haven’t seen it flower since […]

Read more

Over and Over

I recently bought a wooden, waldorf-style, calendar for the kids, A little splurge for something beautiful and fun to give them a better sense of how to conceptualize or measure the passage of days and months. For most of my life, I’ve imagined time and […]

Read more

Flower Dreams

Fall really does creep in. It takes less than a month for summer to bow out, warm days turning more consistently cloudy and cool. Fortunately, autumn presents us with those sparklingly clear days, meant to be enjoyed with little agenda beyond appreciating the greens, blues, […]

Read more

Indigo

I didn’t know if it would work. I messed up the recipe, told myself it would be okay, and then doubted. Most of my projects these days, from the garden to baking are done in the midst of helping Amos and Eowyn find rocks or […]

Read more

Spring all around

Even when Spring was still unsure and far too tentative for those of us who lived through this winter, the fever struck and I couldn’t stop myself from moving compost and loam, two five gallon buckets at a time, to build garden beds. On a […]

Read more

Tending

Our house is filled with so much more sunlight in the morning and the afternoon, hinting at spring, though winter is no where near over. After a long slow first month of the year, the calendar shows Ray’s busy travel season approaching, then spring and […]

Read more