May your pockets be heavy and your heart light.
May good luck pursue you each morning and night.

Yesterday afternoon, on the eve of St. Patrick’s Day, we did some fun things to prepare for the coming of the Leprechauns. Asher and I made brownies together. We happen to know for a fact that Leprechauns LOVE to eat brownies, particularly if you cut them into shamrock shapes!

Then we set about finding natural materials in our yard from which to make a Leprechaun house. Is it hard to see there, up against the “rock” wall of our house? It has a flag on top of the roof.

We found some lovely squarish sections of bark that worked beautifully for walls. Then with short sticks and long pieces of bark found in our garden beds, we roofed the house. Lucas came home with Daddy just in time to help with the construction.

He carefully cleared an area for an outdoor picnic table, and gently placed small stones that Asher gathered to make a cobblestone pathway leading from the door of the Leprechaun house to the picnic area.

Asher especially enjoyed gathering items to use for our project. He gathered stones, spiky balls from our liquidambar tree, flower petals, and clover. He even found a small fairy jewel that we set into the cobblestone path. The spiky balls became a kind of garden fence.

Asher picked lots of “salad” clover for the Leprechauns to eat. We all thought the flower petals gave everything an attractive, magical ambience.

Isn’t that a handsome house? We thought it looked very cozy and perfect for little fairy folk.

This is the picnic area, complete with bark table and tablecloth, plenty of salad, and bark benches for sitting on.

Our Leprechaun house is right beside our “shamrock” plant and right where we always leave out treats for the Leprechauns. So we knew they would check that exact spot. We hoped that they’d enjoy the house and have a party there!

Then we feasted on a greenish dinner of sausage and egg wraps (green, spinach tortillas) with green (brown) rice and salad. The boys enjoyed the wraps a lot! Fortunately, the Leprechauns never eat all the brownies, so there were enough for us to enjoy for dessert.

We always give the Leprechauns milk, honey, and a brownie on the night before St. Patrick’s Day. Leprechauns can be so tricky, and we find that if we leave them yummy treats, they don’t pull pranks on us. Usually, they leave gifts in return.

We were pretty confident that they would be nice this year. Doesn’t that venue look inviting?

This morning, Lucas and Asher found GOLD NUGGETS on the cobblestone path. The milk and honey and brownie were all nibbled. Only crumbs and drops remained on the plate outside. But inside! The boys found Leprechaun dolls on their breakfast plates, with new notebooks for writing in! So I guess the Leprechauns liked our treats and the house we made for them. It seems, however, they couldn’t resist being a little bit tricksy after all. We found all of our shoes in a huge pile by the front door!

I figure we got off lucky, though. Leprechauns can cause all manner of mischief. In fact, Lucas was excited to get to school to see what naughty pranks the Leprechauns did there during the night! (I confess, I think they looked around in our messy house and figured, what’s the point? It already looks like a tornado hit this place!)

Tonight we’ll be having an Irish stew for dinner with some Irish deedly-deedly-dee music. We have some fun Leprechaun stories to enjoy after dinner, too. How will you celebrate? How will you invite magic and good luck into your home?

May good luck be with you wherever you go,
and your blessings outnumber the shamrocks that grow.

Our littlest chick, Firefly, hasn’t been well at all this week. She has been so weak and unable to stand since Sunday morning. Every evening for three days I said good night to her, fully expecting to find her dead in the morning (I even cried a bit).

It now seems Firefly may have other plans.

She has been standing a lot more today. When she’s resting, she seems to have her feet under her, as though she has better control of her legs. I thought before it was her left side that was weakest, but now I’m seeing weakness in her right leg, so maybe I was wrong before? She is eating a lot of food, and appears to me to be stronger for it. I’ve seen her stand when I put my hand toward her, but also when I’m not close by. She’s been on her feet rather a lot for a dying bird, I think. I held her for a while today and she perched on my hand and flapped her wings— something she hadn’t been strong enough to do in days. She’s even preening her feathers a little.

The fact that she seems to be improving has me wondering if the other, bigger chicks were keeping her from the food. I hear that chickens will do that sometimes to a little bird, and Firefly is definitely the “runt” of the flock. In fact, while they have grown tremendously, she remains tiny. Perhaps she was just being starved to death, and now that she’s eating she’s gaining back some strength. (If this was the case, I’m sorry I didn’t notice sooner!)

I wonder if she might make it. Then I wonder if we’ll end up with a hen that can’t be with the others and that needs lots of extra care. I have to admit, I’m rooting for her.

The other chicks are huge now. They seem nearly three times the size they were when we first brought them home. They look like proper BIRDS now, and act like them too. Pecking, scratching, flying, leaping, perching, jostling to be higher than the others—they do it all now. Their favorite game seems to be Jump on Your Head, in which one chick will literally jump on top of another. That chick in turn will jump on the head of the next chick, and so on. They make quite a racket doing this.

They still sleep in a pile, which is really funny and kind of sweet. And I thought human babies were light sleepers! The chicks take many naps during the day, but often the naps are only five or ten minutes long. And once one chick disturbs the pile, they all wake up and jostle about. I’ve watched the same chicks fall asleep and be awakened over and over again in just a short time.

Buttercup is eyeing me through the wire in this photo. They pay intense attention to me when I come near, which I do fairly often to feed them and check/freshen their water.

Three chicks stand out as the most active, most dominant of all: Chestnut, Sunshine, and Lightning. They are three different breeds and they each have a “sister” of the same breed who is more docile. I’m wondering if any of these three might end up being roosters. I sure hope not.

I’m taking this opportunity to crow a moment and say how pleased I was to be invited to contribute to the March Afterschool Enrichment Guide ebook, published by Little Acorn Learning. Publisher Eileen Foley Straiton creates marvelous ebooks that are perfect for homeschooling, preschool programs, and families. They are full of crafts, stories, poems, songs, activities, caregiver meditations, recipes, holiday celebration ideas, and more. Little Acorn Learning also publishes seasonal and festival ebooks, childcare menu guides, and lesson plan guides.

For this March Afterschool Enrichment Guide ebook, I created two original craft project tutorials and wrote an article on observing Lent and the concept of sacrifice.

I was surprised and happy to see that my little leprechaun is featured on the front “cover” of the ebook.

By all means, check out the Little Acorn Learning website and see the week-by-week activities; here is a brief list of the themes for March.

Week 1: Fairies and Dragons, Magic

Week 2: the Season of Lent, Sacrifice

Week 3: St. Patrick’s Day, Luck

Week 4: Spring’s Return, New Life

Week 5: Rainbows, Creating Color

You can also download a FREE 23-page ebook all about rainbows (from Week 5). Who doesn’t love rainbows? It’s a sample of what you’ll get if you buy the March Afterschool Enrichment Guide. It’s fun for the whole family!

It was tons of fun to work on these projects and I’m honored to have my work presented alongside that of so many talented, creative, wise women! Thank you, Eileen!

Last weekend we got to spend a beautiful day at our local Patriot Park with friends. It’s so local, we were able to walk there from our home. This park was an undeveloped field known as “Future Park” for the better part of 20 years. It’s pretty awesome now, although it was wonderful as a wild place, too.

The kiddos had a blast playing. Lucas showed us how he can do the monkey bars now! He has tried for so many years and now he can do it! Very exciting.

I got to take photos of my darlings under the almond trees, which I had been eyeing for a few days.

We got to clown about. Our darling Headra was visiting us!

We took some portraits of the delightful H kids …

and some of my handsome guys.

Lucas climbed a tree.

Asher tagged along after R, who is very sweet to him. The sky was very dramatic after the rainstorm of the night before. It felt so nice to be outdoors and surrounded by the scent of almond blossoms.

The walk home felt a little long for the kiddos, but the hot chocolate at the end proved to be a sufficient reward.

Our babies are here! We picked out ten wee chicks at the feed store on Thursday and it was a thrill. We got two chicks each of five different breeds in the hopes that this will help us to know them all as individuals even when they are grown.

Lucas picked them all out. They are sweet little handfuls of fluff.

They are completely “a-DOH-able,” as Asher says. Fuzzy and peepy and sleepy and ever so young! Just two or three days old now. For the next few weeks they will be living in our makeshift “brooder box” in my office, the warmest room in the house. We have learned that they need to be kept warm — really warm. You and I would call it hot. We have had to make adjustments of our plans and setup to accommodate this new info. (I expect to say that a lot during this chick-raising adventure, since this is our first time!) As they grow, they will become more comfortable with slightly lower temps. Nevertheless, we are all enchanted.

More later. I think I’ll go hold one and watch her fall asleep in my hands.

Lucas has been very busy for the last week and a half working on his major project for third grade. In the Waldorf schools, third graders study lots of practical things like cooking, measuring, building, and making clothing. They also study shelters—the various types of homes people made or make for themselves in different parts of the world throughout history. The students have to choose a people with a particular type of shelter, build a diorama of their shelter, and write a report about it.

This the first big homework project, and it synthesizes what the students are learning in school with all kinds of other awesome qualities of third graders: their practicality, their extensive experience of modeling, their creative thinking, and their love of measuring, using tools, and building. It also calls into use their developing writing skills, their recent study of grammar and parts of speech, their artistic ability, their awakening to the real world around them and awareness of others, and their blossoming love of realism.

Lucas wondered if he could make a house boat for his shelter project—after all, some people live on house boats. After some research, he and Ian hit upon a people indigenous to the Andaman Sea called the Moken, and we checked in with Lucas’s teacher to get her okay to proceed.

The Moken live on their handcrafted boats, called kabang, most of the year, and travel around the islands off the coast of Thailand. During the monsoon season, they live on land, but that’s only about three months of the year. They fish and trade fish for rice. Their kabang keels are dug-out logs that are passed down from father to son. “It can take a family four months to build a kabang. The traditional boats have sails and oars, but the new boats run on diesel engines” (from Lucas’s report).

Lucas used clay to make his kabang keel. Bamboo skewers were used as struts on which to weave the boat’s gunwales, which are traditionally made from zalacca wood. Lucas made his from garden twigs. He built the shelter on the deck of the kabang and thatched it with more twigs.

Lucas modeled two Moken people out of beeswax. (Whole families live on these kabang, and the boats travel in groups of six or more.)

Then Lucas wove a sail from raffia. The Moken use pandanus leaves to fashion their sails.

Here is the finished kabang shelter. Mr. Moken is standing in the sea, fishing with a spear. The kabang flies the Thai flag. The Moken people spend much of their time in the sea diving for shellfish, and studies show they’ve developed better underwater eyesight. “The sad thing is that there’s only about 1,000 Moken living on the sea today because the Burmese and Thai governments are trying to get them on land.”

“I want to go there and help them out. I also want to build a kabang with a Moken,” Lucas concluded.

This was a tough project, but one that was very rewarding, I think. Making something with his hands helped Lucas engage with the material, much more so than simply writing a report would have done.  It was also great to see Lucas work so hard over so many days, with his dad’s careful support and supervision.

Lucas and his classmates will also present their shelters to their class and talk about them. They will answer questions from the teacher and classmates as well. I’m proud of all of these kids for accomplishing something that took two weeks or so to make; perseverance is an important trait to develop.

Happy Valentine’s Day from our family to yours!

May you be filled with the love that surrounds you, take it into yourself, and let it inspire you.

May you love deeply and truly, with honesty, courage, and compassion.

May you enjoy life, take big bites, and savor small pleasures and everyday delights.

May you see and appreciate the beauty in the world and in people everywhere.

May you cultivate your creativity and capacity to love, for whomever you love, every day.

Blessed be!

“Not one day in anyone’s life is an uneventful day, no day without profound meaning, no matter how dull and boring it might seem, no matter whether you are a seamstress or a queen, a shoeshine boy, or a movie star, a renowned philosopher or a Down’s-syndrome child. Because in every day of your life, there are opportunities to perform little kindnesses for others, both by conscious acts of will and unconscious example. Each smallest act of kindness—even just words of hope when they are needed, the remembrance of a birthday, a compliment that engenders a smile—reverberates across great distances and spans of time, affecting lives unknown to the one whose generous spirit was the source of this good echo, because kindness is passed on and grows each time it’s passed, until a simple courtesy becomes an act of selfless courage years later and far away. Likewise, each small meanness, each thoughtless expression of hatred, each envious and bitter act, regardless of how petty, can inspire others, and is therefore the seed that ultimately produces evil fruit, poisoning people whom you have never met and never will. All human lives are so profoundly and intricately entwined—those dead, those living, those generations yet to come—that the fate of all is the fate of each, and the hope of humanity rests in every heart and in every pair of hands. Therefore, after every failure, we are obliged to strive again for success, and when faced with the end of one thing, we must build something new and better in the ashes, just as from pain and grief, we must weave hope, for each of us is a thread critical to the strength—to the very survival of the human tapestry. Every hour in every life contains such often-unrecognized potential to affect the world that the great days and thrilling possibilities are combined always in this momentous day.” —Dean Koontz (From the Corner of His Eye)

73 degrees on February 6? I love California! Many thanks to my favorite rock stacker and my favorite acorn planter for showing me this beautiful, local hike to Goose Flat. It was nourishing for my soul and I can’t wait to bring my family here.

(Last year’s candles)

Today is Imbolc, or Candlemas, if you prefer. Some call it Oimelc; some call it the Feast of Saint Brigid. In the U.S. it’s most commonly called Groundhog Day. Today marks the halfway point between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox. Today it’s a good day to divine the weather, a la Punxsutawney Phil, but this little fellow isn’t the first, by far, to do so.

“If Candlemas Day be fair and bright, Winter will take another flight. If Candlemas Day be cloud and rain, Winter is gone and will not come again.”

Today is a great day to make or buy candles. Gather all of your candle stubs and bits and pieces and melt them down to make new candles by dipping or pouring into special candle molds. Winter has a good six weeks left to blow in most places in the Northern Hemisphere and that’s plenty of dark nights to light up.

(Photo from candle dipping at Sacramento Waldorf School last fall)

I have a small candle-oriented celebration planned for our family for tonight. Last year’s was simple, too. We’re going be decorating a “family candle” tonight, if I can get everyone to cooperate. I have in mind a beeswax candle decorated with more (colored) beeswax, with each of us adding pieces to it so that it becomes a representation of our family, our home, and our hopes. It’s my intention that we’ll keep lighting this family candle throughout the rest of the winter.

(Colorful beeswax bits like these can be molded by hand to make shapes, people, and other decorations, and will stick onto the side of a candle.)

In doing a bit of research, I’ve come to understand there’s a significant parallel between Brigid and Hestia, which infuses even more meaning for me into this winter festival. In the dark of winter, and even halfway through it, we must tend to our hearth fires and keep the lamps lighted. We must live, together, in close proximity and in peace as much as we are able. We need such unifying rituals to hold us and keep us safe together.

Today is a great day for a purge or cleaning—of things, of negative feelings, of anything that is needing letting go. Today is a great day to stoke your own inner light, so you may keep it burning brightly as we march toward Spring.

Here are two lovely discussions of this holiday. I hope you enjoy them.

Celebrating the Wheel: Oimelc Overview

Little Acorn Learning: Celebrating Candlemas (with Guest Blogger Marsha Johnson)