Love light the way

I'd like to respectfully ask that visitors to this space (if any remain) keep Lisa Worthington-Brown in their intentions and prayers.  Lisa was the first CF spouse I "met" (on-line) and she always and generously reached out to me and so many others, spouses and CF-suffers alike.  Her husband Gessner preceded Will in death by not much more than a month. 

Shortly after all that, she was dx with aggressive breast cancer, which did not respond well to treatment and metastasized.  She is making her final journey now and, according to her beliefs, will be reunited with her husband soon. 

There's nothing to do but accept the reminder of the fragility and transience of life, and pray for rest for her tired body; a peaceful and easy journey for her spirit.  So much love goes with her; so much love that she sowed remains behind.

Collecting creatures

"Hi Liam & Mom.

The crabs had a good sleepover in their habitat. All five went right into the water this morning. 

Love Grandma"

Liam has become obsessed with collecting creatures.  This is completely and totally annoying to me, but I try to roll with it.  The main difficulty, besides the annoyance, is the fact that very few of the creatures survive collection or captivity, and I'm not comfortable with the message that seems to send.  Some version of: "Sure, scoop up these bugs/moths/worms/snails/whatever and squish them into jars/tupperware/ziplock bags/your pocket/whatever, it doesn't matter if they live or not."

So, we've been working on some values (not okay to kill things) and some procedures (you can have two jars for bugs and one jar at the ready in case you catch a butterfly. . .one kind of bug in each jar. . . .you can keep the bugs overnight but you have to release them the next day. . ..)  We've had some limited success with this.  Mostly I just hope the phase passes soon.

On the 4th of July he ventured a trip to the beach and collected some little beach crabs which he put in a bucket with some rocks, shells, and salt water.  My mother returned them to the Sound the next morning.

Did I mention that one of his obsessions is he wants to take pictures of all the creatures he collects?  "Mommy I just love them so much. . .please can we take a picture." Really ready for this to be over.

Hello, gee, sit down; been awhile

And, rather than any particular substance, this is mostly a post to say that after some reflection I think I've decided not to retire this habit after all.   In the future, I hope to tell you about Liam turning 5 and hosting his first kid birthday party.  And his last day of school for the year.  And Auntie Chris' visit.  And our new chicken, Daisy.

I might talk about how much I am enjoying eating baby artichokes these days, steamed and dipped in a mixture of (don't cringe) olive oil, tamari, and food yeast.  And my total failure to at the one crop I really wanted to grow this year -- green beans.  I'm on my third planting.  Damn slugs.  Of course, we're still harvesting peas since it was all mist and highs in the 40s until just two days ago when it decided to stop all that and turn on summer full force.   Or how I paid more than I ever dreamed for two espaliered apple trees to plant along the front fence, and how much I hope they will thrive even though I am unreliable at watering plants, it just is the way it is.  Or how the chickens have managed to destroy even the "chicken resistant" plant suggestions and natives.  Damn chickens.

I might talk about how I've been cooking my way through the Homemade Pantry and loving it so very much.  And how I have an ambitious and somewhat complicated schedule of canning and preserving planned, except I have yet to get anything in jars yet this year, I just keep slipping my "deadlines" forward.  At this rate I'll be making the strawberry jam from frozen berries alongside the apple sauce in September.  All good.

In the meantime, one of the things that has been happening around here is that Liam has been borrowing the camera.  Here's a sample of what shows up after a day of shooting on his part.

The cat one I really just love to death; I had a roommate in college who, except for the finger in front of the lens (which just makes this photo for me) used to take pictures with exactly this type of random subject matter and exactly this nutty depth of field.   She was/is/remains a super-talented artist, so, who knows where Liam's exploration will lead.  The first one, well, what can I say?  If I weren't wearing my typical baggy tee shirt I would think it had been taken by a teenage boy instead of a 5 year old.