Am I the only mother who feels it? The strong melancholy that ribbons every milestone, it’s present at every celebration, triumph, report card. People go on about “happy tears” but I really don’t think that’s what is going on here. It feels more like longing. The Shakespearean longing of a character who inwardly knows that something good has passed, never to return and all the hope in the universe does not guarantee a particular outcome.
My children are growing up. The end of another school year has come, my oldest has her first crush and my youngest lost his first tooth. Those firsts will never happen again. My daughter will never hand me another 9th grade report card and my son will never put his first tooth under his pillow again. Of course, I celebrate these times with them but they are so mingled with loss, and I don’t know what to do with it. I need to accept it, I think “bittersweet” is a word I understand now, now that I’m a mother of growing children. I need to accept it the way I accept gum on the sidewalks of a beautiful city. Bittersweet is knocking daily on my door. I need to accept it the way I accept mud with the rain. Melancholy rolls in like a storm while I’m photographing flowers. I need to accept it. I need to accept it.
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We have a lot of good days at home. But the best days to me, are the days we get to enjoy it in a cleanish state, when we’ve accomplished some outside chores, and when I’ve got something really tasty planned for dinner. This day, many plants were put in the ground. Cucumbers, melons, tomatoes and flowers. The house was made cleanish. And we feasted. It was a good day.
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We are still getting some chilly weather, so using my plastic cups and bottles as mini-greenhouses helps keep the temp stable around my spoutlings.
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This is my seed vault. I saw this great way to organize and protect my seeds from Throwback Road, please stop by this lovely blog, it is one of my favorites! I’ve planted all my veggies from seed this year, and since I was starting over in life (since moving from SoCal to TN), I wanted to the garden to reflect our choices too. No GMO, no frankenfoods, for this house. No pesticides or chemical foods either. All natural baby! If I can start drinking raw milk and making my own kefir and butter, then I can certainly make more traditional, natural and healthy choices in the garden as well.
My marigolds are only part of the garden that I’m planting along side my veggies to ward off evil bugs. I’m hoping to keep some thriving flowers mixed in with all the veggies, not only because it will be pretty, but because the flowers will serve as a miniature jungle home for the bug soldiers (lovely carnivorous bugs that will eat the nasty bugs that eat my plants). Come on bugs, work with me on this one…
We are renting this home and property and this is our first Spring here. It is fun to see what is coming alive all over the property. Off the front porch, we discovered a neglected strawberry bed. We spend a good deal of time weeding, adding compost and watering it and it is already thankful.
Here’s one of the finishing touches on the teepee that my Lumberjack built for the kids.
Here’s the view from the inside, hopefully, the green will start growing faster in the warm weather and the “walls” of the teepee with fill in.
She thinks she’s helping.
We gathered these stones from the field next to the house for the ‘entrance’ to the teepee. The ground is entirely stones under the topsoil. I don’t even know why the DIY Home Stores sell pavers here, they occur naturally every few feet.
This is one of the beans, a Scarlet Runner, we planted at the base of the teepee poles. The beans, and flowers, will make such a fun make-believe playhouse for the kids. I think the teenager will even enjoy this one. We chose Scarlet Runners because that is what Thomas Jefferson planted on his garden teepees to display their beauty. Since visiting Monticello is a dream of mine, I wanted to start dreaming in my own backyard.
Then we finished the day with Teriyaki glazed baby back ribs. I made baked red beans, potato salad and steamed corn on the cob to go with it and it was so tasty after an entire day working outside. Another good day at home.
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Posted in At Home, best days, Blog, country life, Flora, Food, PhotographyTags: cat, dear skull, garden, heirloom, oustide, plants, pole beans, ribs, Scarlet Runner beans, seed vault, seeds, sprouts, strawberries, teepee
Each card contains the brand, color and weight of yarn. The yarn is just wrapped around and knotted on the back side. No tape or glue was used.
When I go to a yarn store, any yarn store, I make my decisions on color above all else. For some it’s the fibers, weight, sheen, ply, fuzziness, softness, etc, etc.. (Softness is my second favorite attribute of yarn). But overall, it’s color that will control my choice. And honestly, I think it was the rainbow in a yarn isle that convinced me as a little girl, I needed to learn to crochet like Mom and Auntie.
Over the years of buying yarn and being given yarn, I’ve collected quite a bit of variety, in every attribute, but when it comes to making a project, I stand in front of my own stash and say “What colors shall I combine today?”. As many of you know, my favorite yarn is Caron Simply Soft and I just did a personal inventory… I’ve got 37 colors (out of the 56 in the line) and though some are partial skeins, I will just replenish when I run out. As you know, the stores never carry a full line of any one yarn, so we consumers never really know what we are missing out on. My advice? Get online and look around, you’d be surprised at how expansive some of these yarn brands really are.
This in store limitation has driven me to do crazy things. The last time I wanted to bulk up my stash so that I really had a “rainbow” option, I compromised. I bought great colors, but from a variety of yarns (some not very soft) just to fill in the gaps of color. I made lots of small projects and flowers with these yarns but never really hit a stride, and many of them just don’t work together. They say they are all “4″ weight, but some are considerably thicker than others which makes them difficult to use in a pattern together. Darn!
What’s a girl to do? Make a scrap blanket, choose a pattern and stitch that will not highlight the weight differences and move on. That is precisely how the Mad Rainbows and Fiction blanket was born… But since I made it, I’ve had tons of requests for a list of the yarns and colors used and I’m sorry to say, I cannot provide that since this truly was a scrap blanket, partial skeins only and from a variety of different manufacturers. So here’s my solution… I’m going to make it again, using nothing but Caron Simply Soft yarns. I’m figuring out which would be the best substitute colors (many of the colors were Caron SS in the first place, so I’m only replacing about 1/2 of them). And I’m working on a pattern with photos about the Bavarian/Wool Eater stitch. It should be glorious when it’s done, but with so much yarn to weed through, I got lost in my own stash. I decided to make a color sampler of Caron SS so that I could plan this project and all future projects to a perfect tee. No more guessing what matches what or standing in the store trying to remember just the shade of yellow I used last time. Kiss those days goodbye!
Here’s the new helper I created, it’s a yarn sampler with all the colors I have of Caron SS. And as I get more, I’ll add more cards until I really know what they have to offer. I used a set of prepunched “memory” flash cards from the school supply section of a department store. They came prepunched and on a small ring. I’m going to make another ring that holds samples from other favorites. This will make planning projects and designing patterns a joy! (and I’ll save a lot of time so I’ll have more to waste doing something else…).
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Posted in Blog, Craft, Crochet, Crochet Patterns & Tutorials, Stash, TutorialTags: caron simply soft, color, color block, hues, ordering, organize, pattern planning, plan, rainbow, sampler, stash, tutorial, yarn
Being new here, I cannot identify most of what I’m looking at. Being new here, it’s all so fascinating that I take pictures now, hoping to understand what I’ve captured later. Enjoy!
This is the swing at a friend’s house here in TN. The trees here are old and barns here are older. You can see part of a barn that’s about 200 years old in the background.
This is a weed. Yes, a weed. It is the most beautiful flower I have seen in TN so far. Gold star Tennessee!
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Posted in Beautiful, Blog, Flora, PhotographyTags: azalea, colorful, colors, flora, flowers, madmadme, photography, thistle, tire swing, tree, weeds
I get lost, a lot. Almost every time I leave the house in fact. I firmly believe Bilbo Baggins when he said “It’s a dangerous business…, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.” I wouldn’t have the first inkling what it would be like to go directly from point A to point B. And I kinda like it that way. I “find” many things this way, and I usually end up hunting those found things down again so I can share them with my Lovelies. This kind of getting lost, is wonderful. The lost that leads to something uncovered, undiscovered. We could all use more of this.
Then there’s the getting lost in my mind, my tasks, my plans. I do this quite often too. But the strange difference is that the aforementioned getting lost is freeing. It appeals to my inner gypsy, to that explorer who is too often feeling tethered by responsibility. But the getting lost that can happen in my own mind, in my own home is terrifying and imprisoning. I can sit down to do something (any small task or project) and suddenly be gripped with anxiety and fear, lost. When I think of Bilbo’s warning, I think it applies more truly to the flooding river of my mind than my front door. And I’m left with only one option, to pray. When I appeal to God in these moments, His comfort and peace come to me and I am humbled and grateful. But my prayer should really be about being spared from that kind of lost. God, please keep me found, let my mind not have the power to make me lost in it, swept away by all that there is to do, and plan. Amen.
Then yesterday, in all of the doing and busyness, my son lost his first tooth. He was traumatized for 15 minutes. The blood, the pain, the sound. It really freaked him out. When he recovered, he wanted to examine his tooth. And while he was looking at it, he dropped it in the car! The car!!! We had all just piled into the car after a day of swimming at the park, the car was a wreck. It was full of towels, wet things, dry things, drink cups, shoes, school bags and detritus. And he lost his tooth in all of this. What is a mother to do? Pull over, gently remove every article, one at a time, out of the way. Lifting, shaking, jostling in the hope of finding a baby tooth in the mess. Talk about a needle in a haystack! But I found it. Somehow, 3 feet away from his chair, underneath a towel and a shoe. And I just about bawled. Of course I was relieved to find the tooth, but I was relieved to think that if I (not all knowing and all powerful) could find that tiny little tooth in this mess, then God would never have trouble finding me in the ocean of my mind. I will pray that God keeps me from getting lost in here, but when I do, I know that my God will find me, gently and sweetly and He will restore me and rescue me over and over again. I think it’s so strange the way God teaches us what we need to learn. Thank you Lord for letting The Boy lose his tooth, then lose it again, so that it could be found.
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Hello. I am the proud mother of 3 creative children and married to an adorable man who loves me more than coffee. I love making things with my hands, photography, beading, crochet, cooking, gardening, and so many other hands on things. My blog is filled with the Madness of our home, our lives, our hands, and our Love for each other. All toil is for my family, whom I love more than chocolate. To read more about why I created this blog, please visit my 
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Hi Charissa; I know just what you mean… My 2 daughters are now 20 and 23 and quite recently I experienced the most extraordinary thing. I recently looked after a friends little boy who is 4 for a couple of nights; he’s a lovely little boy who is very affectionate and giving his little body a hug took me right back to doing this with my darling daughters when they were small. But what I wasn’t expecting was the longing to hug my young daughters again with the warmth, smells, interactions etc and the fact that I can’t feels a little bit like a bereavement… I actually got a bit upset; obviously I still have my daughters and I can and do hug them anytime… Maybe I need a grandchild! Make the most of your beautiful family.
best wishes
Karen
xx
*Sigh* – that is all. Because dwelling would be navel gazing.
AH, you’re not the only one! I know exactly how you feel. I remember telling my oldest that one day he wouldn’t want hugs from his mommy anymore, that he’d be too “old” (a teen, of course) and now he’s 13, and I was right. So I make sure to hug my youngest, who’s 6, every chance I get. I’m so proud so see them grow into strong, positive, intelligent men, but wistful at the same time. Yes, the bittersweetness of motherhood!
Karen, so funny! I am hoping that by the time my youngest is too grown to be a ‘kid’ I’ll have grandbabies on the way. It’s just so hard to believe that a season so amazing, can really have an end.
It’s so fleeting, and it is completely mixed with joy and pride. I hug my 6 year old all the time too, the poor little guy probably thinks Mommy needs a Teddy Bear.
I know exactly how you feel! My husband always laughs at me, but on my children’s birthdays, I always cry. Not a huge big cry, but a quick sad cry that that milestone is over and my baby is that much bigger. My kids are still young (3 1/2, 2, and 6 months), but it still happens to me. I don’t even know what I am going to do with myself when they start hitting the big milestones of school and crushes…yikes! Its good to know I am not the only one who gets a little sad during those happy moments!
Very well put. I was reminded of my son’s last soccer game. We always had two or three folding chairs, and couple of umbrellas, maybe an old blanket in the back of the car for probably 13 years. I cried like crazy when I cleaned them out of the car. Well, to be truthful I had my husband take them out. That was 6 years ago, and I still feel a tug on my heartstring when I think about it.