Dissent Among the Ranks

Don't you LOVE this sort of reaction to your "What are we having for lunch? Hmm, let's see. How about..."

My witty, witty son. Harumph. I've made some killer soups, too, all thanks to Jerry Traunfeld's The Herbfarm Cookbook (his lemon verbena sorbet is the sole reason I grow lemon verbena year after year).

I had a good mind to be mildly miffed, but decided that since everyone else (under the age of 6, that is) found his bon mots absolutely HILARIOUS, I would simply serve the soup and let IT be my dignified retort (not that there IS much dignity in chicken noodle soup). Fortunately, no one gagged or spat or moaned. There weren't even any left-overs. Tomorrow I am planning a nice goulash, and I've hidden all the vowels...

How not to rescue a caterpillar

Why, you ask? Because they don't need rescuing! (har har har, SO funny, I hear you say)

No, really, unless your caterpillar is dangling from the mouth of some bird, it's probably just fine. And it probably knows best where it should be and what it should be doing. I know this because I spent a good deal of my afternoon today trying to 'rescue' this guy here, also known as Smerinthus cerisyi, from a) getting squished by Dominic's scooter, b) getting squished by Max's scooter, c) falling out of a window box, and, finally d) getting squished by my camera (Katie leapt on my back in a fit of fondness and I almost fell over while photographing little Smerinthus). Poor Smerinthus. We should have just left him where we found him, but think what we would have missed!

Max found him wandering around the willow tree in the back yard. He was hard not to miss, being about 4 inches long and an extremely arresting green. We took him to the front yard, where we had hopes of both photographing him AND putting him someplace where we could watch him pupate. But he resisted attempts at settling into the various pots on the front porch, so eventually I placed him gently in between the sea glass stepping stone Max made and the Monet's Palette sunflowers. We all went on to other things: the boys playing Attack of the Lego Men, their sister scootering casually up and down the drive, hoping Cotton the Cat would come visit, and me taking yet more photos, this time of my dahlia flowers. (this year I'm taking pictures of them, to attach to the tubers so I won't forget which one is 5' tall and which one is 12 inches tall) About 10 minutes later I parted the plants to see if he had gone, and if you look below, you'll see just what I saw. In case you can't quite see what I saw: little Smerinthus dug himself into the ground, that's his back end you see poking out.

Ode to a Fennel Seed

Have you ever eaten fresh fennel seeds? Then you have missed an amazing taste sensation (ooh, I should be writing cheesy food commercials, shouldn't I). But I am feeling quite worshipful about these little seeds today. I'm even plotting to expand the herb garden next year. More fennel.

It started when we noticed the action on the fennel plants. Bees, butterflies, wasps, ladybugs, birds, you name it, they'd been all over the fennel plants throughout the summer. Some days the herb garden was TEEMING. I wish now that I'd taken a picture of the tiny brown skippers that lived on them for a few weeks. Flirty little things. We counted 25 one time on one plant alone. But by last week the small insects had pretty much disappeared and the plants were left to the birds.

When we looked out the other day, sparrows and chickadees were balancing as well as they could to the sides of the fronds, which really meant that they were swinging around wildly while pecking at the tips. Never one to miss a Learning Opportunity (especially when the alternative was housework and math), out we went to examine the plants further. Turned out that the birds were eating the seed tips at the ends of the fronds. So we tried them. Sharp licorice filled our mouths, and I mean sharp. It was almost ecstatic, that taste (well, I thought so, but my kids are a good deal more restrained than their mother and they restricted themselves to "Mmm, these are pretty good"). We pulled off more, then more, then more. They popped in our mouths, they were so tender. Later that day I went out and cut off most of the seed heads, and have them sitting in a bowl to dry. When dried they are a good deal tougher, but still amazing in curries and Thai-style soups. I might even make bread with them, or marinate them in salad dressings.

What are the sparrows and chickadees eating, now that I've removed the seeds, you ask? Oh, I put out a seed feeder for them. And I left them the bronze fennel.

Lego Men sail the Nile

When I first started homeschooling, my first experiment - err child - was 7 and homeschooling was a whole new (and slightly alarming) arena. I was game, but apprehensive. My background had been all about living A Wild Life, not the stay-at-home-and-even-homeschool-everyone life, so the idea of spending hours of time each day voluntarily doing the school thing with my kids was, to be perfectly honest, not something I saw myself enjoying. But we're still doing it, so either my kids have very low expectations of their hapless mother, or we're having a good time.

Anyhow, this year the twins are having their first year doing the homeschooling gig, and with 3 years under my belt, I've come to have a far deeper appreciation of fun as a learning tool than I used to. Not that I'm boring, but books like Great Ancient Egypt Projects You Can Build Yourself, Ancient Egyptians and their Neighbours; An Activity Guide with Assyrians, Hittites and Nubians too!, or even Junior BOOM! Academy, were SO not on my radar. Now they are. And boy, do we look forward to them. Thus the above photo: Lego Men navigating the Nile in their papyrus crafts (sure, those boats look like they were made out of straws but that just shows how little we all know about papyrus). Unfortunately the Lego men got a little carried away with their navigational abilities and almost ended up in the toilet, but it was fun while it lasted.

Salve Time

It's that time again - the time when I duck under the stairs and haul out the jars of oils I've left to steep all summer. Oddball containers of St John's Wort flowers in oil (yellow flowers that turn a wonderful rusty red), jars of plantain and comfrey leaves smashed up in oil, chunks of beeswax (one of the best smells in the world), dried marigold and calendula flowers, dried cayenne peppers, lavender buds, and all our used Marmite jars.

We eat a LOT of Marmite (sorry to hear about your recent troubles with the Marmite advertisers, Paddington, but I remain a loyal Marmite fan). We eat an inordinate amount, if I may say so. More than anyone else we know, although everyone else we know hates the stuff, so that's not saying much. But the jars are PERFECT for storing herbs, spices, and my salve. They are short, roundish, wide-mouthed, and impenetrable by bright light: ideal for storing something that has a tendency to go stale. They also look spiffy with a Sheila's Magic Salve label on them (and yes, the label really DOES say that).

I've been making this salve for about 20 years, which seems hard to believe (when did I get so old?). The first times I made salve, I was living on a beach in the Kootenays after tree-planting gigs and wanting to emulate a hero of mine: Jeanne Rose. A friend had given me Jeanne Rose's Body Book and I wanted to be just like her. I wanted that Santa Cruz sunshine, that long peasant skirt, that herbal knowledge, and a life on a kibbutz/commune/beach. Not necessarily in that order, of course. I started with her salve recipe, because it seemed the most easily attainable, and I was already living in a beach commune. The instructions seemed relatively simple: Warm some oil, add some herbs, beeswax, essential oils, then bottle. My first few attempts yielded a rock-solid but fragrant mass: way too much beeswax. A few times I had some fierce geranium wafts following me everywhere. Eventually I got the hang of it, found my favourite plant and oil additions, and the rest is salve history. It's amazing for dry skin, cuts, burns, rashes, worrying skin ailments, and it's a lovely after-bath skin moisturizer. The first few batches left weird colours on my dressing gown cuffs, but a little less cayenne and the orange effect disappeared.

What is most fun these days is growing the plants I like to use in the salve. St John's Wort by the apple trees, marigolds against the basil and tomatoes, calendula anywhere it wants (calendula's like that), lavender on the sunny, dry slope, comfrey and plantain in the shade of the huckleberry bushes. All through the summer I groom them. I prune and stake. Some I clip and dunk in oil for steeping; others I dry in the dark corners of the house. Then, around this time, they get turned into something wonderful.

I'm a House Slut

(No photo for obvious reasons)

This morning I woke up to an unusual chill in the air. Or should I say unaccustomed? Whatever it was, it was cold. I had to haul out my long and by now horribly unbecoming dressing gown, the sort of item I would SO not have been caught dead in when I first met my husband. Back then I used to twirl around in as little as possible. Now, body racked by the various aspects of my life (age & children), I wear my dressing gown around the house without so much as a passing wince at the shabby cloth, stained by salve, jammy but loving mouths, and latté foam. Sometimes I even have my wet hair in a towel, turban style (gasp!). And yes, before you ask, I DO look like a slob. And what's worse, I even joke about it with my friends; I call us House Sluts, a term I like because it brings to mind a certain Rogue Housewife element, something I am sorely lacking at times. Some days my life is so consumed with the mundane details brought by unexciting interruptions like food preparation ("What? You just ate 4 hours ago"), hostage negotiation ("Max, stop stashing the Lego."), conflict negotiation ("Just stop talking, right now, all of you!"), and finally, rampant consumerism ("No, you can NOT go to the Dollar Store just because"). My House Sluttishness manifests itself primarily in my distressingly dull morning attire, but an Attitude can speak a thousand words. Don't worry, I won't break out into a Helen Reddy song or anything. I'm content with my dressing gown. For now...

For fans of Dr. Who...

Had one of those funny, funny moments yesterday when we were reading about the Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt (nothing like a nice, lengthy intro now, is there?).

We're reading about the various gods, their "signs" and related artwork when we come across the Eye of Horus. Linear, black, somewhat sinister. A protection device for the pharoah. We paint (with blackberry juice) our own eyes of Horus onto the parchment we "made," using flour and textured paper. They look very atmospheric and we all admire them. As we're admiring, Max freezes, then blurts out, rather worriedly, "Is the Eye of Horus related to the Face of Bo?"

I tell you, it was a moment to make a mother proud.