Sweetness

The girls are practicing their list of words randomly throughout the day now.  They're like little parrots, copying and mimicing what we do.  Their favorite words are - no, Papa, thank you, sock, shoosha, shoe, and we're working on boot.  Once the girls figure out that we are heading outside, all I have to do is ask them to sit, and I only need to ask once, and they'll drop to the floor on their wee bums with hands clasped in their laps and wait patiently for me to help them pull on their boots.  Makes me remember Hugo and his first camo boots, oh how he loved them.  This also reminds me of our hurry up so we're not late for school, out the door routine this morning.  The children were sitting together, three on a step.  I helped Hugo to pull on his high tops and tied his laces in double knots while the girls watched.  Then I turned to the next child on the step, who happened to be Marlo, I pulled on her boots.  I slid to the right again to assist Sabine by pulling on her boots.  From behind me pops out sweet Marlo, who was holding both of my green garden shoes out for me.  She realized that I did not have my shoes on and she wanted to help.  Filled my heart with love, she did.

I weeded the upper and lower parts of our driveway, took me two days.  I also baked garlic bread for dinner.  It was yummy!

Garden Time

The flower garden is coming along beautifully. It fills me with real joy as I spend time pruning and weeding within it. I can remember the days when my Mother would announce from somewhere near the back door that she was going out to the garden and requesting volunteers. Once we heard her words we would all vanish from site as quickly as possible not wanting to get stuck weeding all afternoon. Now I think she made her announcement as loud and vague as she did knowing that it would buy her some much needed alone time away in her weeding paradise.

Hugo is getting the hang of the stone paths finally. I think it helps that the plants are becoming taller and filling out, he is understanding their boundaries. Although today, he ran right through the echineacea patch and giggled at me while doing so. We just planted salad greens, radish, carrots, green beans, peas, butternut squash, cabbage, zucchini and cucumbers today. With our rabbit and chipmunk population skyrocketing this spring I am somewhat nervous of what kind of harvest we will end up with. I suppose the main idea is that Hugo and I are having fun. I don't mean to wish away any of my toddler days with him but I am looking forward to next summer. I imagine he might begin to really get the whole garden thing and be just as excited as I am to see the plants sprout from the earth we worked together. Maybe next year the echineacea patch will be safe from his little camo boots.

Choices

We love our yard. It has a very unique shape so that it has many different areas within it. This can be interesting and beautiful. It is also a lot of work. I still enjoy working in the yard, don't get me wrong. It's just that around 3pm today as I surveyed the tasks that I had completed it wasn't so impressive. I've been working my tail off outside and I'm not sure anyone would have a clue as to what I've done. There is no end to the amount of work needed to keep our jungle of a property in line. My house needs a complete spring cleaning on the inside. I feel torn between continuing with the yard work and my spring cleaning chores. The yard is winning the battle at the moment. I am dividing beds of flowers and plants which must be done now. They seem to be growing an inch or two each evening and soon it will be too late to divide them. I also want to put in some seeds for salad greens and other summer vegetables.

Hugo is an outside boy. In the morning, once I tell him we need to hurry and get dressed so that we can go outside, he comes running. Before going out the door we sit on the steps and pull on our boots. He loves, loves his boots. They are by far his favorite article of clothing. He can now say "boot" and "pull". He doesn't yet get that there are rocks in the garden for walking on. He sorta makes his own paths. Zig zags this way and that as I quietly freak out over my baby plants being trampled by his camo boots. I've tried over and over to explain how fun it can be to hop from rock to rock. Hugo has translated this to mean from plant to plant.