Yesterday was Asher’s last day of preschool. My angel boy is moving on from StarBright Garden, where Ms. Pati has taken such good care of him and provided so many opportunities for growth and friendship. We will miss her very much, and will miss this glorious garden that was so nourishing and beautiful. This swing is where Asher has spent a great portion of every day.

These girls are some of Asher’s best friends. We are delighted that they live in our neighborhood, too. In this photo they are helping work on Asher’s Fairy House. He only wants to do crafts sometimes, but when the girls and Lucas and I got involved to help him with his Fairy House, he finally got into it for a while.

Here is Asher’s Fairy House up close. There is a bark house and a bark fence, with a glass cobbled pathway. It’s got pinecone “bushes” and dried flower “trees.”

Chip-chop, chippity chop. The kids cut up vegetables for their Friday soup. Having meaningful work to do as a group is so great for them. They feel like big kids when they are given responsibilities, especially those that involve using tools like knives. After two children at preschool I now realize that it’s perfectly normal for kids this age to be very helpful with chores and household tasks at school, while they are doing it alongside their friends, and to be resistant and uninterested in such tasks at home. I try not to take it personally.

This is one of Asher’s very best buddies. They’ve been at preschool together for two years now.

Snack time is outdoors at school on lovely summer days.

Table centerpiece: a Fairy House. The kids have been working on these all month.

They’ve eaten up all the cherries, but the plums are getting ripe now and the kids have been snacking on these beauties.

These lemons hang so heavy and low, if you’re not careful you might bonk your head on them.

The bunnies and chickens get all the veggie scraps. There are seven chicks this year. The beans are growing up long poles in the garden. And little S can often be found among the raspberries, picking and snacking.

Matches gets lots of love every day.

This beauty is the one Asher says he’s going to marry. Can you blame him?

We are hoping to have play dates with friends over the summertime. I haven’t shown all of our beloved friends here, just a few. I’m so pleased that he’s made good friends at StarBright, and has learned to socialize so well.

Some of these children will be in Asher’s kindergarten next year, and that will make for an easy transition. So much of what he’ll do next year is like the StarBright rhythm, soI expect it will be like slipping on a familiar hat: story time, circle time, snack, outdoors play, indoors play, cleanup, etc. They are beautiful days full of discovery and joy, rhythm and seasons. What a lucky boy he is!

I’m catching up from last month! I guess life has been pretty busy, and pretty good lately.

We went camping for my birthday in May to Wright’s Beach, which is where my family always went for vacation when I was a kid. I love this beach with my whole heart.

We spent two chilly nights there in Ian’s old family tent. We wandered on the beach, collected small seashells and pebbles, flew kites, and read books. Lucas did a lot of whittling with his new pocket knife, making arrows and spears and assorted sharp and pointy items. The boys bickered a lot, and unfortunately this beach isn’t terribly safe for playing chase with the waves. There are signs posted everywhere saying how Wright’s Beach is one of the deadliest beaches in California. Funny, I don’t remember that tidbit from my childhood, and while I do remember gettting knocked about by the waves, my brother and I always survived. When the ranger came around in her truck to tell us under no circumstances should we allow the boys to touch the water, well, we decided to play by the rules. Still, we had plenty of fun and Daddy’s delicious grilled steak, plus s’mores!

The next day we packed up early and drove five minutes down the coast to Duncan’s Cove, where the beach was more sheltered and the wind wasn’t so bad. We explored and found lots of wildflowers. Lucas found a great rock to jump from onto the sand below. It was quite a drop!

Here we did let Lucas get his feet wet. Asher didn’t let the waves get anywhere near him before he began running for the dry sand.

It was cold and windy up on the bluff. The views were amazing and so were the flowers. Asher enjoyed wearing his camelbak.

We picnicked on Portuguese Beach before beginning our drive home. A beach picnic with beautiful seagulls, sandwiches, champagne, and peach pie is tops in my book!

This is one of the fun things about Bodega Bay. The Lucas Warf sign photo.

We stopped at the candy and kites store. I enjoy all the flags and spinning things. Ian says I am allowed to be an old woman with flags someday, as long as we make them ourselves.

It was a great weekend and I’m glad I got to show my children this place that’s so special to me. Even if we never go there again, it was delightful to have all those fond childhood memories come flooding back.

And after we came home, I had some fun playing with my seagull photos. Tee hee!

How’s your summer going? Temps had been in the 100s around here last week, but they’ve dropped back into a totally livable zone. The cherries have been divine. These are from Asher’s preschool.

I got exactly one flower on my butterfly iris this year—this one is the neighbor’s. I think it’s time to feed all of my plants.

Although Asher is attending preschool until the end of this month, Lucas is thoroughly enjoying summer vacation. He’s spending days with his grandmothers and with friends, having friends over, practicing piano, doing a little skills maintenance in a summer workbook, painting, and reading. We’ve been reading some Harry Potter together, and last night we started Bunnicula.

Our lives are full of colors …

… and plenty of delicious flavors.

This was our Father’s Day dinner that I made. Ian cooks most of our evening meals. I never manage to take pictures of Ian’s delicious dinners, though. I’m too preoccupied by eating them to remember my camera. I’ll make a better effort.

Asher is the king of dress-up. He loves to accessorize and has fallen in love with Lucas’s old Spider-Man costume, to which he adds his own flair.

Lucas recently spent his own money on his first pack of Pokémon cards. He’s really into them now. The game is pretty complicated and he is fascinated by the mechanics of it. He’s still inventing his own creature-based cards, too.

We’re two weeks into Lucas’s summer break and life is good. He and I tried to go jogging yesterday. It was more walking than jogging, but I have hopes that he’ll get into it and run with me. We’ve been swimming, had play dates, and played bocce ball with friends in the park. A fine start to the summer, I think.

Faery Riders

When the moon is round and white

The Faery Riders shake the night

With song and laughter going by:

I love to hear the noise they make,

The pine trees hear it too, and wake;

It fills the room in which I lie.

I hear the trumpets long and loud,

I hear the voices of a crowd,

I hear the horses prancing by:

All night they pass, and pass, and pass,

But not one little blade of grass

Is trampled down or turned away.

If I could see their faces plain,

Or run beside the bridle rein

Of Mab the Queen, as she comes by:

I might know all the Faeries know,

And follow, follow where they go

Before the sun climbs up the sky.

But though I hurry might and main

To look out through the windowpane,

I never see them passing by.

Just when I reach the window sill

The music stops and all is still:

Only the wind is passing by.

—Ella Young

May and June are my happy garden months. There’s enough water and temps aren’t yet crazy hot—usually. This year, I’m enjoying some reseeded plants that have popped up all on their own. Since I enjoy their parent plants, these babies are making me happy.

Reseeded calendula is popping up all over this flower bed. I also have a bunch of baby dusty millers, too.

Summer is time for the hydrangeas to shine. I have six of these now and each is a different color.

I recently planted two delphinium plants. I’m reading that they can be somewhat fussy, but their blooms are spectacular, so I thought I’d try them. The star jasmine is blooming now and it makes the whole backyard smell sweet and wonderful.

I created these wish flags for a craft project and article I wrote for Little Acorn Learning’s June Enrichment Guide. I love them so much that I have made many, many more. I even opened it up to friends and asked if anyone had a wish they wanted me to add to my wishing tree. I’ve now got everything from general prayers for love, happiness, and abundance to specific wishes for healthy bedrest/birth and specific fall classes for friends. The flags are fabric rectangles with wished written on them. For the last few flags, I need to drag out the big ladder because I can’t reach the higher branches and the lower ones are pretty full!

This summer we are targeting for improvement this area near our patio. We have in years past planted our vegetable garden here with some success. But the trouble with that is that it’s an unattractive area for a good part of the year. So we’re putting in perennials with some spots of annuals for punch. The big area of pink poppies is one plant grown from seed—one of only two poppy seeds that took last year. But, I love it and it’s a showstopper. I’ve put in a couple of roses for some height, a golden coreopsis and an amazing peachy verbena (below). Still to go in are two types of salvia, some nemesia, a muticolored wallflower, and a rock rose. This should help make this part of the yard considerably prettier.

A Flickr friend thinks this bird is a female American Goldfinch. She is perching on a stalk of chard (left) that has bolted. This crazy plant has lived in my yard for two years now. We eat bits off it and leave the rest. As a result, I have tons of baby chards growing everywhere. I plan to eat those, too. It may be that the Goldfinch has similar designs on the chard.

Awesome, isn’t it? I’ve had purple and scarlet verbena before, but never this color. Charming.

I have all sorts of flower seeds in the ground, with some nice little seedlings coming up. Nasturtiums, morning glories, cosmos, and other goodies. In the veggie garden we have tomato plants growing, cantaloupe, beans, corn, pumpkins, butternut squash, basil, one zucchini, and one eggplant. (Most of this is Lucas’s garden. I only planted the stuff he’s not interested in eating.) My fingers are crossed!

Inspired by SouleMama {this moment} – A Friday ritual. A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

Here are a few more ideas of how to celebrate the summer solstice. Please feel free to check out the first installment here. I guess perhaps it was the very cold, very wet spring we had this year; somehow this year I’m extra motivated to bask in the sunshine. I’m so looking forward to the summer solstice. It feels right to go big this year.

Make a Sun Mask

The mask you see above is one that Lucas made in summer camp a couple of years ago. It’s very simple—just doubled paper plates painted with copper and gold metalic paints and decorated with a few sequins. It’s iconic and it speaks to me, so it’s still on display in my home office. Your sun mask could be more elaborate, if you like, but a project like this could be enjoyed by even the smallest members of your family and for little investment in materials.

Make a Sunshine Banner

For me, Father’s Day and the summer solstice are two sides of the same coin. (That’s not the case for everyone; in China and Japan, the summer solstice is when the divine feminine forces are celebrated.) I guess I always think of Mother Earth and Father Sun (or Father Sky). Anyway, here is a project that Lucas made a number of years ago with his summer camp teachers. The kids and I are going to do this again for the solstice this year, only this time, we’ll have both Lucas’s and Asher’s handprints to make our sunshine. We’ll only need some fabric, twine or ribbon, a twig or dowel, and some washable tempera paint. And soap!

Crochet Sun Medallion Necklaces

I wish I was good enough at crochet to write a proper tutorial for this, but I fear I’d get the vocabulary wrong. I’m just a beginner, you see. But I managed to work out how to create a flat circle that looks sunshiny. I think I used single and double crochet stitches and just felt my way along, endeavoring to keep the sun round. When it was approximately 2 inches in diameter, I started chaining a chain. The acrylic yarn is leftover from another project, and it’s stretchy enough to just pull over the head to make a necklace. I’ve made two of these for my boys, and promised two more to some friends. This worked up in about 30 minutes, so someone who actually knows what they’re doing with a crochet hook could probably quickly pound out these sun medallion necklaces. Wear them at your solstice party!

Find more of my solstice ideas (and tons more) in Little Acorn Learning’s June Enrichment Guide. Click the button to go there.

It’s the end of the school year. There are four more days of school left and then it’s twelve weeks of summer vacation for Lucas. Normally at this time of year I’d be panicking, wondering what the hell we are going to do during twelve weeks “off.”

OK, the truth is, part of my brain IS doing exactly that because I am both full-time mommy and full-time professional editor. Try as I might, I have yet to figure out how to be fully effective at doing two vastly different jobs at once.

Twelve weeks. Somehow the camp options are fewer this summer, and I just know that there are going to be yawning weeks of hot, drawn-out days. You’ve heard me sing this song before. That’s not why I’m writing now.

Just now. This is why I’m writing. This exact moment I’m so awestruck by my child. My 9-year-old has me feeling just boggled, and not for any one thing, but for all of him.

Today he brought home some of his third-grade schoolwork. Not reams of mimeographed math problem practice sheets, but his own watercolor paintings. His crocheted potholder. His hand-carded, handspun and plied yarn.

While Ian was preparing dinner, Lucas was out in the backyard, shooting homemade arrows at targets with his most recent handmade bow.

During dinner, Lucas told us the story of Moses and the Hebrew people wandering the in the desert. This was a treat for us because he doesn’t always want to talk about what’s going on at school. I marveled at how parts of the story were so well-crafted, as if he had absorbed whole phrases of the narrative word for word because the pictures in his mind responded to them. He also told us he got to shovel manure today—and that he’s aware he’ll be doing a lot of that sort of thing next year because the fourth grade does the animal chores on the school farm. We discussed how interesting the Norse myths will be next year.

After dinner tonight, he played for us a piano sonatina. It has three movements and is about six pages of music, with plenty of repeats and codas. His sonatina is not perfect. Some sections are played faster than others. There are rough patches that we hope he will iron out through practice before his next piano recital in a couple of weeks. But, damn! My kid just made music out of nothing but his knowledge and skill and feeling.

Who is this capable being standing before me?

I cannot promise to be the perfect, carefree mom all summer. I will not promise to keep him entertained through the dog days. All I can promise is to try to meet him where he is now, which is most certainly not where he was a year or a month ago. Now is new, and brave and capable and lovely.

Yes, I know it’s June 1 today but this post is full of May flowers that I’ve collected over the last few weeks. What’s crazy is that at this very moment, it’s hailing and pouring rain. This is not the sort of weather that summer roses are accustomed to around here. Yet perhaps I can conjure summer with these beauties. Above are “popcorn” roses at Mom and Dad’s house.

Bearded iris

Lilac dipping low over the swimming pool

Mom’s perfect calla lily

“Daybreak” rose

Zany gazania

Coastal California poppies and other wildflowers

Sunny ice plant

“The Earth laughs in flowers.”  —Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is not raining rain to me,
It’s raining daffodils;
In every dimpled drop I see
Wild flowers on the hills.

The clouds of gray engulf the day
And overwhelm the town;
It is not raining rain to me,
It’s raining roses down.

It is not raining rain to me,
But fields of clover bloom,
Where any buccaneering bee
Can find a bed and room.

A health unto the happy,
A fig for him who frets!
It is not raining rain to me,
It’s raining violets.

—Robert Loveman, “April Rain”