Our weekend at home

It feels good to get things done around the house. Unfortunately, it's not something I get to feel very often, but this weekend was great. B and I weeded our garden out back. It was a huge mess. Some crabgrass has to stay behind because flowers planted as seed had grown right along with it, and to pull it out would have damaged all the good roots too. Hey, it was that much less to do.

I have to say that I really find that many weeds are actually quite lovely. We have lots of chamomile out there, which I left behind, since they are pretty flowers worth cutting. And since they are growing in what was an organic vegetable garden for the last many years, they will probably taste good too.

We also have a lot of crabgrass, which I really don't mind since it's so easy to pull. I did notice a giant one growing out of the compost pile, and it really does have lovely flowers on the top of it. (Flowers? Just what are those seed pods called? Sorry, no time to look it up, maybe tomorrow.) If we lived further away from our neighbors I would just let the stuff grow all over the lawn. It's only about a foot tall, and it really is quite nice. However, we don't live far away from our neighbors, and I do plan on living here for the next 15 years or so, therefore the seeds have to be prevented.

We have another horrible weed which I actually learned about from an exhibit at one of Yale's free art museums, in New Haven, along the way. I forget what it's called, but the exhibit was specifically about invasive imports, and boy I identified it very quickly. It was brought here from Japan and its stem gets incredibly thick, while reaching very far down into the depths of the soil. Unfortunately, I didn't learn this until after all mine had gone to seed last year (the birds loved all those giant berries,) so I am determinedly staying on top of it this year.

The last kind of weed we have (that I care about at least) hurts when you touch it. Or back your butt into it while you are weeding in front of it. The leaves are all prickly. I get those the moment I see them, but they go really deep too, and are tough to get. Okay, enough rambling about weeds.

I also really enjoyed looking at bugs. We sure have a lot of different kinds of them. Here's a beautiful spider guarding her egg sack. Boy, she was all over that thing.

We also all enjoyed watching the ant colony under a plaque I keep propped up on one of my rows. The tunnels were way cool. E took a ton of pictures.

I picked some flowers from my cutting garden. The daisies look so fresh in my bathroom.

The other vase contains a Zinnia and some Cosmos from seed, a Dahlia and some Calla Lilies from bulbs, and even some teeny white flowers that came from the tops of all that cilantro which reseeded last year. That Zinnia popping out of the top is quite fine; sturdy and strong. It will last in the vase for a long time. The Dahlias are looking good too, however I wish their stems were longer. Cosmos are so mushy and only last a day or two. They are so easy to grow though, it's hard to give them up. Calla Lillies are too short for cutting and will get planted in the front next year.

I can't believe almost everything which came up at the same time went together color-wise. Only a lonely orange Dahlia, and a simply gorgeous small-sized sunflower remain out there now. I have to get myself a few bud vases. I am so loving having flowers in my house!

E has really learned to play well by himself. He is always in another world with his knights and cars inside, or his roads for cars in the sandpit outside. R on the other hand, still thinks about the kids in the neighborhood. They have been mean to him and he has decided he has too much integrity to allow them to treat him the way they do. But he really misses when they were nice and he had someone to play with. I feel so bad for him, I remember vividly how it was to be on the receiving end of mean kids. I am glad he made the decision to stay away from them himself. My story about Roseanne helped, I think. But in the meantime, he does get caught up in the "I don't have anyone to play with" thing when he gets tired of playing with E.

We had a movie night and ate dinner in front of the TV watching the second half of Those Magnificent Men and Their Flying Machines. I could remember seeing it when I was a kid and figured the boys would enjoy it. It is filled with cultural stereotypes, but it's funny. The boys loved it.

B and I watched The Libertine after the boys went to bed. As Roger Ebert puts it "The film doesn't follow the earl's rise and fall so much as his fall and fall." It would have been better if it followed the rise too, and showed a little less of the fall. However, it was Johnny Depp, and he is always great to watch, even when he has no nose because he has VD. As Ebert aptly puts it "You will not like the Second Earl of Rochester. But you will not be able to take your eyes from him."

Today was more laid back. I spent most of it on my computer, trying my best to catch up on CT Homeschool Network stuff, and answering some email. The boys all went blueberry picking, then enjoyed the afternoon watching the Soccer World Cup. Then we had dinner at Senor Panchos with some friends. And here I am back on my computer.

It's a busy week for us, so I may not get here every evening. Sign up on this page, under all the links on the right, to have an email sent to you when I update the page. It's cool, and it works. This way you don't have to check in every day, unless you get an email!