Looks like summer

Again I have not much more to share than pictures. We've spent two days working in the gardens again, plus some reading and some games and some usual, usual stuff. In the garden we raised our vegetable gardens further, added more dirt, marked them off by the square foot, and planted them. That took some of yesterday and much of this afternoon. In other news I worked the book sale this morning (and came home with nothing remarkable) and we went to the Dexter Ice Cream Social after, where Calvin enjoyed the bounce house, the ponies, the ice cream, and we all enjoyed a hay ride. I love our little village. And we have a new vintage/antiques store. We stopped in on our way to the car after the social (and before we got home and gardened in the 90 degree heat) and Calvin was having such a great time admiring all the stuff (where did he learn to do that???) that the owner told us to be sure and bring him back because "he might have the gene," by which I assume he is referring to a retro-loving gene, but I'm not entirely sure.

There wasn't much else to the day, but the evening held a visit from gram and grandpa (who seem to know automatically when we will be exhausted from yard/house work and need not only food but also good company) and an inaugural run for the fire pit. It works. It even makes s'mores.

Beware the s'more monster. He has a chocolate face and beady eyes and because we're up late he's not getting enough sleep. That, after all, is what summer is for.

And the garden is almost done, although we still have more room. We are still on a squash and broad leaf planting break thanks to the squash bugs that got us two years ago (everything I've read said wait three years before trying again), but we've filled our plots with a variety of tomatoes, some peppers (purple peppers!), broccoli, cauliflower, chard, eggplant, and beans. Tomorrow we're headed out to chose other (or more of the same) for the remaining plots. This is our first year with square foot gardening, which you can see we are not following squarely, since you are not supposed to have the same food in abutting squares and our tomatoes are abutting all over the place, but it's a learning process, and we're going to learn this year just how important that spacing really is (although the trial and error method is a bad one here since results depend on other outside variables). Here's hoping for good crops this year.

Dinosaurs at our zoo

First we had to get past the volcano, which, with our little volcanologist aboard, was not an easy task.

Then wow! Dinosaurs.

Would you take a look at that guy?

There were a lot of grinning dinosaurs. Really happy, grinning dinosaurs.

Like this guy. Man is he happy.

This one is so happy he's gone stupid silly!

And look at this one...he even has his party hat on.

Talk about party hats!

Calvin thought this one looked sweet (as in "awwwww, isn't he sweet?")

But not as sweet as this one, and his whole nest of siblings

This one wants a dental checkup. Say ahhhhh...

We did not get eaten, and we avoided being spit upon as well...

And we even got a little friendly with the natives.

Very friendly.

Perhaps too friendly (has he been eaten???)

But we lived to see the rest of the zoo anyhow.

Till next time, zoo.

He'll be in Africa if you need him

Imagination is a brilliant, beautiful, colorful thing, full of life and joy and laughter. Calvin has become enamored with the Magic Tree House book series: kids traveling in time and place via tree house (magic, of course) and watched over by the kindly Morgan Le Fey (I thought Morgan Le Fey was evil in Arthurian legend?). This weekend he had the fantastic idea of building a tree house in which to act out or pretend-play some of these scenarios himself. He had it all worked out, except for the part where we don't have big trees. No problem, we already had a play house, thanks to some neighbors with bigger kids, and a deck that is a half story off the ground. Instant tree house. This morning he was in ancient Africa, and then later in ancient Rome. Tomorrow I suspect he'll be visiting the dinosaurs (but that's because we are planning a trip to the zoo to see the newly reopened dino exhibit).

So, next time, stop me before the cliche

The day is as hot as the cat is long...

...and it was a hot, hot day. Temperatures in the low nineties, heat index topping one hundred. That's thanks to ground saturation and the amount of water in the air—it's wet here. I'm loving the heat. The house is open and the breeze, because thankfully it was also a windy day, is blowing right through. With each dry day I gain hope for our new trees, though only time will tell.

Speaking of the passage of time, If you've ever wondered what has become of Calvin, now 26 years later (think: Calvin and Hobbes), I came across a pretty spiffy npr post today that pointed in the direction of that answer...on a blog by the name of Pants Are Overrated. Krulwich at npr wasn't thrilled, but I enjoyed the updates. Calvin marries Susie after all! Although I think naming the little girl Francis instead of Bacon would have been equally as meaningful, and would have kept them miles clear of the whole internet bacon meme, which I can't believe Calvin would have fallen for. Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster maybe, but not bacon.

My own Calvin is four, with five coming on in just over another week. Sometimes I catch myself saying things like "look how big he is" or "I can't believe it's been five years" but I'm not sure I mean those things. They are clichés, things I'm expected to say, things I expect to hear from myself, but I'm pretty sure it feels like it has been five years and I know exactly how those years were spent. I had all the baby clothes up here this weekend, the ones that didn't sell at the garage sale last year, and I could smell the past in them, the sweetness of babyhood and the preciousness of growth, but these did not evoke in me anything more than memory; no nostalgia, no yearning for baby skin, or baby diapers, or baby sneezes, or baby sleepless nights. I don't even miss naps. I have enjoyed every new step and have carefully put away the ones behind me for later reference, but not later tears.

We had a pretty normal day today. He had swim lessons this morning...and jumped into the pool all by himself, something he wouldn't have done even a month ago. Then we went to the library while I sorted books for an hour and he read books to himself the whole time, something he couldn't have done four months ago. On our way out we checked out a book we'd had on hold—The Royal Book of Oz—and he read the title and explained the whole series he's read to the astonished librarian, then read part of the first chapter in the car on the way home. Time, you see, is passing.

We spent the afternoon in the little pool at home (because, as I mentioned, it was HOT), Calvin often with his head entirely under, blowing bubbles, something he wouldn't have done last week. He rode his big bike to the park after dinner and practically flew down the slide.

His feet touch at the bottom now. I don't remember when that happened.

These pictures seem so very boy to me. He looks so very boy to me. Not like a gender thing (I don't go for that) but like an age thing. Boy as opposed to toddler. I'm good with that.

The next size up

It's a holiday weekend, and we can't survive those without some amount of work, some project to do, so today we cleaned out the garage. Maybe the title of this post is referring to the amount of stuff in our garage, and that we really need the next size up to fit it all. But we cleaned up and cleared out, and I've mentioned Freecycle before, but I'll mention it again. We might have had garbage bag after garbage bag to throw away or drop off somewhere, but between Craig's List and Freecycle absolutely everything we were done with is now at a new home with a new family. That's far better than now residing at the dump. Because the other thing to which the above title might refer is toddlers becoming little boys, and needing bigger toys. Bigger play sets, bigger balls, bigger gardening tools, bigger bikes...and now there are a few happy families with smaller children out there. And we can move in our garage.

To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. And so out with the smaller and in with the next size up. That is the reference I was making above. In many cases we already had the next size or the next stage up and just got rid of duplicates, but we've been waiting for good weather to replace the clown bike and decided today that if we didn't just go we could find ourselves waiting forever. When I was growing up my grandparents traditionally bought all the grandkids' bikes. It was a moment of pride, a rite of childhood, to go pick out the new bike. I remember a pink bike with a banana seat, and another bike with a white basket. Later it was a rose colored 12 (not 10!) speed that I loved for years.

My parents wanted to continue that tradition and today we all went to pick out Calvin's new bike in the next size up. I can't say the weather was good, or that the sun was shining, but I can say that Calvin quickly and easily zeroed in on the bike for him. We brought it home. Calvin, dad, and grampa assembled it. When he tried it out he looked alarmingly grown up to me. And that's when the tornado sirens went off. Like I said, these days, if we waited for good weather to do anything we'd be waiting an awfully long time.