This Week at Our House # 24

It has been a cool and rainy June. The state of the world continues to deteriorate. A friend in the UK was telling me about the riots there. She wrote:

"There is so much rioting, Diane, it is horrific. The blacks and whites are rioting together and against each other, the right wing "national front" are fighting against black people, statues are being torn down and no one is caring at all about the virus and socially distancing to keep the country safe. It is petrifying. Then I saw on the news today that one of our most popular department stores has opened its stores this morning, nationwide, for the first time in March and people were queuing since seven this morning to get in - and I don't understand that. I just don't understand how they can find shopping so important  "
Another friend in Australia said that there's rioting there. I know there's been some in Mexico too. I feel like the rioting is more contagious than the corona virus.


Luckily, it continues to be peaceful where we live, but it seems that could change at a moment's notice.


Again it rained a lot this week. Long and hard. One night, I woke up, worried for the kittens. John ran out in the rain and brought in the kittens and their mother. He grabbed a card board box for them, and then came back to bed.

We have not had a big rain since I fixed the drainage problems in my garden. A few weeks ago, my garden completely flooded. I've spent the last two weeks hilling up the plants and digging trenches to direct the flow of the water. My garden has mostly managed well with all f the rain.  All of the plants look healthier. than they did after the first flooding week.

I lost 12 tomato plants with that first flood,  but I have 6 very healthy plants in my kitchen garden. Those six have grown to the size of a large bush. I did some reading, and found that I can grow new tomato plants from clippings from older plants. I bought some root stimulating hormone and planted clippings from tomatoes, basil, rosemary, peppermint and mint. It's been 6 days and they are still alive. Now I will see if they can live through so much rain.

We went to the beach again on Monday. The water was beautiful. I took each of the middle kids out and gave them a swim lesson and told them how to get out of a rip tide. Rachel, Anya, and Joseph did very well. Josh was stiff and scared but interested. Arwen was scared but wanted to try it more.

Sam still won't go into the water at all. But he's a little more adventurous playing close to the shore. Gideon is afraid if we take him out into the water, but he likes to play where the water flows up over his feet.

One night after Arwen was sent to bed, she did not go to sleep and when asked she replied, "There is this dream that I hate and I stay awake from it. It even has my favorite animal in it and it's EVIL." We laughed. Her use of language is so unique. "I stay awake from it". We inquired further about the dream too. She said that on windows with no curtains eagles were attacking, flying through the glass and even attacking people. Eagles happen to be her favorite animals. She sleeps every night, though, and does not have night terrors.

Suzy's excited for her upcoming birthday. She knows the date. Knows that it is her grandma's birthday, and likes that she will be six.

I said to Rachel, "When you grow up to be small..." She stared me down and said, "Rachel likes being little."

And for one last thing. I got this funny email from Ruth last night:

At 2am Kate started really craving her chili with fries. Rachel
thought the idea was awesome so she said she would make them for Kate.
Kate said that would be too much work. Rachel then said that she would
only cut two potatoes so it would be quick, and quickly left for the
kitchen. Kate had an inward battle for about 2 minutes about whether
it was okay or not. I told Kate she had two options 1) go stop Rachel
or 2) go help Rachel, and if she helped her to add a third potato as a
peace offering to dad. Kate then realized fries took an hour to cook!
Unless fried. Anya went to tell Rachel about the time issue and
returned saying Johnny said he would play a video game with Rachel. Kate
worried if she would be up in an hour but she really wanted canned
chili and fries (the request got shrunk). Johnny came to ask if he had
to stay up with Rachel. We of course said no. Johnny suggested a
timer. Kate battled out again whether she would even be up in an hour,
if this was okay to do, but she really wanted fries (so much that she
never left her bed to even attempt to stop Rachel). Johnny solved the
issue by asking Dad if Rachel could make the fries and Dad put an end
to it.
Rachel then came back into the room eating something crunchy.
Kate worried said, "Rachel, you don't have to eat the raw potato."
Rachel proceeds to hold up an apple core.
She then tells Kate the sliced potatoes were on the counter and Kate
had her put the raw potatoes in the fridge.
Rachel's reason for doing this for Kate (Kate asked because she
genuinely thought Rachel might be tricking her): "It sounded
awesome!!! .... well I kinda wanted to."


"What if Rachel falls asleep?!"
"Then hopefully we won't have crisps in the morning."

I slept peacefully through all of this. And now, Monday morning, they're all still sleeping after 10am, and I am thankful it's summer vacation.

This Week at Our House #22 and #23

The year continues to fly by and the nation and the world continue to spin out of of control. Two weeks ago a black man was brutally murdered at the hands of three policemen. They stared proudly and defiantly into the cameras filming them. Riots rose from that, beginning in the Minneapolis, where the incident took place and spread like a deadly virus across the country. Stores were looted, buildings burned, cops were injured and cops injured more. All social distancing and corona virus rules were basically thrown out.

In our little part of the world, things have remained peaceful. The worst things taking place, are at a 2 hour drive from us. I think that is a nice thing about living in the country. The wars start in the city.

Riots, national guard, tanks rolling through neighborhoods, brutality from police, rioting and looting, and all sorts of behavior from others continued for another week. We have been lucky enough for things to be peaceful in our area and cities.

Memorial day, the local governments opened the beaches. That was the same day the police killed that man. But we had a lot more rain. My gardens were flooded. When the sun came out, I played in the water in the yard with the kids. One day, it rained four inches in less than an hour.

A week later, this past Monday, I took the kids to the beach for the first time. The water was nice, but the air and wind were cold. We stayed an hour. It was nice to be back. I will take the kids again this coming week.

Tuesday, Adam and I fixed the drainage problems in my garden. Many of my tomato plants died, but I have 6 that have grown into huge bushes and are out of room to expand. I am waiting for some root hormone to come and I will be able to take clippings from my healthy plants to replace the ones that died. I am looking forward to seeing how that comes out.

Our flowers are prettier this summer than they ever have been. The yard is such a blessing.

I got all the chickens outside and in the yard. We would expect the big hens to fight the little chicks, but the little chicks fight each other more. The kids have enjoyed playing out with all of the ducks and chicks.

Ruth is working on illustrating one of my books.

Kate has been drawing a lot of coloring pages for our girls. They LOVE them, so we are going to start a website and will have people pay a yearly fee to full access to all of Kate's coloring pages. I think that will take at least 6 months to get up and running.

Johnny is studying math and computer programming still. He is also now officially hired to do the formatting on some language arts homeschool high school curriculum I am writing. I am spending 3 hours a day, 6 days a week on that, and it will take me until mid-July to finish.

I have told Adam that he is now hired to start learning web developing with me to get Kate's website up and running. It will be a part of homeschool for him. I will not be able to get started on that right away anyway. Adam draws a ton now, all day long.

Rachel has been waking up early. This is a very new and nice thing. One morning Kate woke up because she thought something was wrong when she heard Rachel's voice earlier in the morning.

Anya is enjoying her summer vacation reading and playing as is Joseph.

Joshua lives and breathes for computer games. I can get any chore done if I let Josh play a computer game for an hour.

Arwen's so funny and goofy and she will object to me saying this, but she purposely does things to be funny.

Suzy is always wondering about the time and the day of the week. She has also started asking me about words and what they say, so I think she will be ready to learn how to read when we start school.

Sam loves the cats and kittens. He usually has one in his hand.

Gideon is about  a year ahead of most of my kids. He can do a lot, though he doesn't say much yet. He's not even a year and a half yet. Gideon loves to be outside. He spends most of his time outside or trying to get outside.

This Week at Our House #21

Time runs together right now. Though I keep very busy and often am not sure where that time went. It rained the whole week straight. It started last Saturday night and did not stop until Thursday. Thursday we had about 5 hours with no rain. Thursday night, we had huge thunderstorms that blew out a burner on the stop top. I'm guessing, we had a power surge. I was standing beside the stove when it happened. Friday, the sun came out, and I got the laundry mostly caught up on. Saturday, I spent four hours getting my gardens weeded, and the beans and the large tomato bushes staked up and off of the ground. Some of my garden is looking really good, and other parts, not so much. I need to change one section, so that it will drain better. I have been working very hard on this year's garden. We will definitely get a lot of herbs and a lot of

tomatoes. Some of the watermelon, some of the corn, and the butternut squash are looking the most promising. Some of the turnips are looking good too. The potatoes are harvested and did terribly. We had three frosts after they had sprouted. Ruth, Kate, Johnny, and Adam went about their own business all week. Kate did the grocery shopping with me. I think it may be a year or more before I can bring kids to the stores again. The grocery shopping always takes several hours with the driving, the shopping, the loading, the unloading, and the putting it all away. I wish we had a second fridge or at least a chest freezer.

While out, I bought Kate another parakeet. She loves her birds. Rachel has her little to do list that she is supposed to complete each day. She does not like growing up and being responsible. She would like to just play like Susan all day long now. Anya likes to draw all day long and does not like being interrupted from that. She told me on Friday that her choice of activity is completely legitimate and I need not bother her to do chores. Joseph spends a lot time on the computer drawing. I wish he would stay away from the computer more. Joshua has been building legos a lot. Arwen is my companion for animal care. I made a pen in the garage for the young chickens. It does not

have an easy in and out, so Arwen goes in to hand me their food dishes and to plug and unplug the heat lamp. In another month, these chickens should be able to join the rest of the flock. But, I think I will find a way to make the pen more permanent and more accessible as it will be a good place for mother ducks and hens to hatch eggs and any future baby chicks or ducks. Susan is very interested in dates, days, months, and time. She confused John when she asked if they could do the time-is thing. She was asking for him for the time of day.

Sam's finally talking a lot more. I have been a little worried about it. He's always understood well, but his pronunciation is horrible. He puts a 'b' in for pretty much any sound he can't say. So this is bis, and Gideon is Bideon, etc. Gideon's a little monster. I'm hoping that this precocious one year old will turn into an easy two year old, as he acts two now. He opens doors, climbs up things, works on figuring out locks, and watches where we put things so he can go back and get them when we're not looking.

On Thursday night,after Arwen, Susan, Sam, and Gideon were sent to bed, at their normal bedtime, they

This poor kitty had 3 dead premature kittens.

didn't go to sleep. When we went to check on what was keeping them awake, they had caught a frog and were sitting in the hall outside the bathroom.Gideon was in his crib, happily watching them. (Sometimes frogs come into the house through the plumbing. I think it is a country living thing.) They had filled a bucket and a cup with water and were moving the frog from the bucket to the cup. When Ruth found them, Susan had a toothbrush and soap and said she was going to clean the frog. Ruth safely moved back outside the house, but all the cats were sitting there, so who knows if that frog survived. Anya pointed out that we rarely have frogs on the back windows anymore and she believes that's the cats faults. The chickens eat frogs too.

This is my kitchen garden. It's growing by leaps and bounds

the beans and the tomatoes are really growing

this is about four weeks younger than the kitchen garden

this is my youngest garden planted 6 weeks after the first

This is the second garden. With some newer smaller watermelon plants

the potatoes are harvested, the butternut squash has some young buds. The corn goes to my knees

This is the 3rd garden. I hope to see a lot more growth in two weeks. You can see the food compost in the background. I'll dig that into the garden after all is harvested for next year.

We have 4 girls and 2 boys with these Pekins. We're excited to have 4 egg layers and hopefully future mothers