Category Family

Season of Sprouts: Family Children

This is perhaps the most memorable quote of the summer–so far. Overheard from the back seat on the 800 mile trip from home to Goose Creek, the four year old offers this bit of wisdom to no one in particular.…

Joy for Free

6 year old joy playing in summer sprinkler

Watching our grand daughter frolic in the sprinkler, I remembered the utter joy the first day we were allowed to go barefoot–in the zoysia grass, under the mimosas, only to get “stung on a bee” as one of us lamented…

Tupperware Party

Busy busy morning. So much to do. So many cabinets to explore. Places to hide. Things to put on your head; And Dumpa’s. No telling what else we’ll find to get into today, but for certain, little Ollie (Henry’s sib)…

Battle Buckets

Only small homeotherms with hummingbird metabolism could survive repeated dousings of creek water and enjoy it. The picture was taken about 11 yesterday morning. By 2, without being commanded to do so for the sake of their exhausted adult supervisors,…

Rainy Day Crazies: Averted!

Oh joy. When you’re in charge of activities for two little girls and a dog on speed you dread the prospects of being rained indoors. Not that we would have been, completely, had the forecast continued to call for 80%…

Prelude to Winter

Excerpted from “November” in the Floyd County Almanac (unpublished first draft.) …A seriousness settles upon us by mid-November, mornings not light enough to cross the creek to tend the cussed birds until after seven. The board-bridge across Goose Creek is treacherous,…

There And Back Again

After some 1800 miles of car travel since last Wednesday, we are finally home again. I found it was just too much trouble to try to blog from the road with one hand and the iPad or the phone, so…

Be It Ever So Jumbled

My desk, as usual, to an outside observer, is a mess. But it’s my mess. It does not require freshening up by housekeeping. It does not have to be returned to a rental warehouse across town. My desk is my…