fun Thursday!

We had a really wonderful day!
The kids made salt dough projects earlier this week, and wanted to paint their projects this morning...




We spent a fun afternoon exploring the creek with some of our favorite friends...





And this evening during gardening time, the kids discovered the first ripe red raspberries of the season!! Yum! They saved this one just for me...

first harvest

Clover's little garden patch was the first to produce food this year! She proudly plucked radishes yesterday after Indigo and Willow excitedly pointed out that the radishes were ready!


I have been telling Clover a bedtime story about Poke (a faery) and Nutkin (a squirrel) for about three years now. Last Spring, I added a little "radish pixie" named Honey. So, when the first radishes were picked, I told a story about Honey's birthday tea party. This morning, we decided to have a tea party of our own. Clover made radish sandwiches on homemade bread and chamomile tea with honey. She also cut the green tops off of a bunch of strawberries and put them on a plate. We had a lovely time.

melons & pumpkins

We planted giant pumpkins, pie pumpkins, jack-o-lantern pumpkins, bushel gourds, white pumpkins, watermelons, sun and moon watermelons, and cantelopes. Willow is always in charge of the watermelon patch, so he was especially happy that we finally got around to the melon patch. And everyone is excited about the giant pumpkins. Hopefully they will survive this year.

The kids had a great time moving buckets of dirt to the garden patch for making seed mounds. We had giant rain clouds looming above the whole time, and got sprinkled off and on. It felt great!



Patting the seeds into the Earth and saying little blessings is such an amazing thing for children. What a miracle to see Life unfold from such a tiny thing as a seed.



Indigo was having a good time watering the seeds when Clover spotted a rainbow! It was so beautiful arching over our whole house, and showering rainbow blessings on our gardens...

spider lilies

Despite the fairly high chance of rain, we decided to venture out to one of our local state parks for a hike. The beautiful and very rare Rocky Shoal Spider Lilies are in bloom right now, and they are so amazing. The hike is very easy and kid-friendly, and we only got a few raindrops on the trail.




These pictures cannot do justice to the amazing sight of the spider lilies. Times like these make me wish that I had a much more professional camera with a really good "zoom" function. Maybe the look of Nova's face peeking over the rails of the observation deck will be enough to show how much we love these flowers!!




On the way back up the trail, we stopped at our favorite spot for splashing and wading. Indigo picked up several beautiful river rocks which are now on the nature table. Clover scared a water snake, and played with her friend Lela. Our friends Carrie & Mike and their kids added to the fun of the trail and the river play.




We are one river-loving family. Every time, we visit that state park, Willow talks about how we should build our home on the "island" in the middle of the river. Then we could just walk out the front door and play all day every day!



Even the soaking wet walk back to the van was lots of fun!

carpentry

The kids had a chance to work in Tim's wood shop today. We had a birthday party to attend this afternoon, and the kids helped with finishing up some block stilts. These are some favorites of my kids, and usually a big hit with anyone over the age of four - a great birthday gift.


When we got home from the party, Nova enjoyed some quality time with the screw gun while Willow, Clover, and Indigo helped Tim with building a fence around the flower beds. Now the dogs can't get in to trample the sunflowers, and hopefully we will have better luck keeping our precious little sprouts safe.

this picture makes me happy!

Nova loves honeysuckle.

strawberries (again)

This afternoon, we decided to pick strawberries at a local farm. We planned on picking three gallons, but ended up with two.



Indigo took some beautiful pictures of strawberries and a spider web and Clover with a big beautiful strawberry that she picked!



This was probably our last strawberry picking of the season! Now we're looking forward to blackberries, blueberries, and especially raspberries! Hurray for berry season!!!