Dirt, glorious dirt!!

 I had forgotten that the new dirt was finally going to be delivered this week; what a great way to start the morning! We ended up using 12 yards to fill in this area level with the terrace and then refill the 3 raised planter boxes. This is totally the East button to have it blown in rather than endless wheelbarrow loads. Plus they use a leaf blower to make it look all tidy afterward. 

The view from the new retaining wall we assembled from rocks already onsite. Of course the kids came out and stepped in it almost immediately so it did not remain pristine looking for long. 

And the raised beds. Now I need to transplant Back into the beds the few things I was able to save earlier. I think Little Miss and I will go shop for some vegetable starts to catch us back up this season. I signed up for a virtual workshop for fall planting so we’ll try some seeds too. 

This morning I also tried out coddled eggs. A friend has given me one when we were housemates I. Our early 20s and I tried it once or twice unsuccessfully. I came across a recipe for them in the Outlander cookbook Mr. W bought me when I made bangers and mash on the day the Portland Highland Games would have been held last month.

 I didn’t get the timing quite perfect. I ought to have had everything else ready and served immediately because I think they keep cooking in the coddler. But still delicious. Mr. W and I had a little breakfast on the deck admiring our new dirt.

St. Mary Magdalene Day

I feel like it has been a long time since I have done anything for my patron saint’s day. I tried to make it a priority this year, but it ended up only going half way. I did manage to make the Magdalenbokt, or Magdalene fingers which O made the very first time Zi celebrated this back when we lived at the Laburnum Bungalow. (I managed to have white sanding sugar on hand this time instead of pink. 😆) I’m always saving recipes for different madeleines, and yet I never remember this idea and default to my copy of Cooking With the Saints which has two almond themed desserts in it. Maybe I’ll remember next summer? Or maybe I’ll try the pumpkin ones this fall and that will trigger me doing it properly next July.



In any event I did get the cookies made and set out a humble tea table outside.



I did not have the memory or energy to get the little Magdalene icon I bought this Lent in advance of Easter. 

My mom happened to be dropping by with some birdseed at about the same time so she socially distanced a cookie for herself. Little Miss was
 not at all interested in having her picture taken. But look at how long her hair is getting!

My Mary Magdalene rose is also in bloom which is nice. It was my intention to have a little bouquet of these for our tea, but I didn’t manage to get that together either.

St. Peter’s Day

Ever since I learned there is a St. Peter’s fish I have tried to get ahold of some or prepare another white fish for St. Peter’s Day. It is often hot this time of year and fish doesn’t require that much time in the oven so it seems like a good plan. With the quarantine this year we have been totally cooped up and feeling a bit stir crazy. One of Deuce’s Bffs has a family beach house and they were able to shelter in place there for a few months. They are back in town now and I casually mentioned that if they ever have any midweek cancellations that we would live to rent it. I went a couple years ago with my grade school girlfriends and have been wanting to take Mr. W there. Lucky for us they did have a cancellation so we were able to spend 4 nights here.

I had already picked out my recipes for St. Peter’s Day so I decided that we could just prepare it at the coast instead, fresh fish is always appropriate when you are so close to the ocean. The pickings were a little slim in Manzanita as well as a couple other fish markets in nearby towns so we substituted halibut instead. We made this fish and I found this tahini sauce to accompany it. It was my first time making the sauce and it was SO good! Little Miss helped to make the sauce.

We also made an orzo salad to go with the fish and fresh fruit since we knew the kids wouldn’t eat the 

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We also bought a marionberry pie from the local bakery.



In nearby Arch Cape there is the St. Peter the Fisherman parish. T-Bone and I have been there before for Mass on another vacation. I did not get the kids up early enough to go to daily Mass, but we did drive by and enjoyed the artwork outside.

There is so much wildlife to enjoy at our friends’ house. We’ve been seeing tons of humming birds, some bunnies and chipmunks, and today I went to sit in a quiet corner to take a zoom call and discovered a pair of deer right outside!

Glue and salt Pysanky art project

There is a craft project that has passed through my fb feed a half dozen times in which one uses glue to make a design, then sprinkles the glue with salt, then decorate with watercolor paint after it dries.  At the beginning of the homeschool year I had been wanting to plan a field trip up to Seattle to visit Mr. W's friends the Hs so Mrs. H could teach us how to do Ukrainian eggs as a homeschool art project. Now that we have to shelter in place, not to mention how hard hit the Seattle area has been with the corona virus, I needed to modify my egg decorating plan. I decided that we could try out the glue/salt/watercolor project with traditional Easter egg patterns.

I found some Pysanky coloring sheets to use as a guide and paper clipped them to half sheets of watercolor paper so the children could trace the pattern. Then they copied over those lines with the glue. I'm not sure what type of salt was recommended in the fb post, but we were all out of kosher salt (thanks, pandemic) and resorted to iodized salt. We had to let that all dry overnight. Then we set up watercolor paints today and did the dabbing technique shown in the video which results in the color bleeding out through the salt.

The dabbing was a little tedious for one child so he asked for another sheet of watercolor paper and painted a rainbow instead.

While they were painting I read to them from Jesus Speaks to Me About Easter by Angela M. Burrin and This Was The Day! by Ann Kmit. The latter was one I picked up at the Polish fest in the fall along with a red egg.

Easter Egg Tree

My mother has a table top Easter egg tree to display her collection of hanging eggs. I was inspired to maybe start a collection myself and during the 5th week of Lent I decided to look into purchasing a little tree. But then I found this article about Ostereierbaum, outdoor German Easter egg trees. I decided that our young cascara tree would be a good place to start. Another part of my inspiration was the little tin eggs that were offered in the Emma Bridgewater Easter line, so cute!

When I saw the pictures of live trees  covered with eggs I figured it was a good way to use up the bag of plastic eggs I have in the attic. I prefer to do egg hunts with real, hardboiled, decorated eggs and yet I have accumulated all these eggs from church egg hunts and it was the preference of my cousin for Easter Sunday. Too difficult to have my kids sit out just because I think it is too much candy. This is a good way to fill out the tree with eggs since I can only afford a few of the EB eggs. :D

I decided to use ribbon that I threaded through the two holes in the plastic eggs with the center of the ribbon inside the egg so that there were the two loose ends outside which I could use to tie around the branch. This cascara is already leafing out so I knew I could not rely on slipping a loop of ribbon over the baby leaves without damaging them, or worst yet being able to remove them later once the leaves have really filled in.  I used the thinnest ribbon I could find in my ribbon stash and used a wooden skewer to finesse them through the little holes. I started with a small quality of eggs this year as a test run.

I woke up early and was able to get out an hang them while they were all still sleeping. Now I wait for them to wake up so we can bring in the new little chickies for our Easter surprise!

When you’ve been in quarantine too long

I bought chickens.

Technically I have been considering this for a few years. There is some degree of overlap with rabbits  that I was exposed to when I was doing all my bunny prep research. And we do go through a fair amount of eggs. Mr. W was not totally keen on the idea and I was content to see how things went with the rabbits. But a couple of times when we’ve been in farm stores in early spring we have heard the siren song of the peep peep peep and the children and I have contemplated life with chicks. But I read that due to salmonella concerns that it isn’t advised to have children younger than 5 handle chickens. That might not be applied by rural, homesteading families, but for a city dweller it seemed reasonable enough and a good reason to hold off ‘til your youngest is older.

Little Miss is 6 now. And we’re under quarantine. There are mad rushes on toilet paper and yeast. Could eggs be next? During the early days of the pandemic when the schools first closed we had a morning meeting welcoming our returning and new homeschool students to our class. We forecasted what we would like to do during the remainder of our homeschool year; in addition to planting our vegetable garden, raising chickens came up. I totally support that idea and we brainstormed what we would need to undertake and be responsible for so that Principal Daddy would agree to our proposal. And he was open to the idea!! The corona fears were getting to him too.

I love a good surprise for my children. I dreamed of storybook and movie quality surprises as a child and that was just not my parents’ thing. Since the shelter in place orders were happening during Lent it just seemed a given to gift chicks to the children on Easter Sunday. We are allowed 3 city chickens, and we have 3 children so that is where we will start. I picked them up on Good Friday, which might be when I picked up the bunnies from a 4H family 3 years ago, and then had to keep them hidden in the garage for a day and a half. Because we made the final commitment this week we had slim pickings for what varieties of chicks were available for pick up. I did want a variety so that each child's pet looked different and it is easier for me to tell them apart. The varieties we ended up with are a Barred Rock, a Blue Hamburgs, and a Cream Brabanters. Ultimately I think that will be a good mix looks wise, hopefully temperamentally too. I'm excited to see which child picks which chick and what they will choose to name them.

Meanwhile I'm stealthily sneaking out to the garage frequently so that I can snuggle them. I cannot wait until Easter Sunday to see their little faces!

Quarantine Good Friday and Tomie dePaola Tea

What a week! A second full one of trying to homeschool three children of three different grade levels, two of whom have distance learning parameters, one of which has special needs, another or which is a grumpy tween, and it is Holy Week. Whew! I'm tired! Fridays have mostly been a day for field trips, special projects, and such for us  this home school year. Today my goal was to make both Lenten pretzels for the last time of the season and hot cross buns for our tea time snack. The pretzels were supposed to go with a vegetable cheese soup at dinner time, but the way things worked out we just had tea time with both and skipped dinner entirely.

We always do some of the pretzels to look like arms crossed in prayer, but it is also an opportunity for the kids to get creative. Deuce likes to cut them into pretzel bites. T-Bone decided to make a pretzel man, which was fine until I I got to the step where I need to boil them for 30 seconds. I felt a bit guilty. While they were rolling out and shaping their creations I read Brother Giovanni's Little Reward by Anna Egan Smucker like I always do.

In between the mixing of the dough and waiting for it to rise I did some reading from Minecraft Holy Bible and Catechism of the Seven Sacraments by Kevin and Mary O'Neill in which the illustrations are all lego pieces while the children did coloring sheets. We did this yesterday for Holy Thursday too although I didn't mention it. The boys were remembering all the plagues that they learned about earlier in the year when we were studying Egypt and Moses. This format does a good job of keeping their interest to illustrate the stories.

And today we finally had our Goodbye, Mr. dePaola Tea. The children helped to set the table. Little Miss brought down her crucifix she scored while antiquing, Deuce arranged the two crystal crosses.

And I assembled a stack of all my copes of his books including the two new ones I ordered Quiet and The Birds of Bethlehem. We went through the stack and everyone said which ones were their favorites. We ended up reading from The Knight and The Dragon, The Legend of BlueBonnet, St. Patrick, and the Good Friday pages from Bible Stories.

Deuce made some tiny pretzels and Little Miss thought they were perfect for American Girl dolls so Mary got to join our tea party. So cute!

Deuce's pretzel bites that he topped with cinnamon and sugar.

I just like my pretzels as original recipe with salt and the basic shape.

And the tulips I planted last fall have bloomed in our front triangle. So cheery. I love the ones that have the more traditional Turkish shape.

Quarantine Holy Thursday

I have mostly been staying at home in part because I was so sick at the beginning of the shelter in place order. Mr. W got into the habit of running the family errands and since I am more of a homebody than him we have just kept that arrangement. But as I have been doing my spring weeding and pruning I realized that the best solution around the pond is to dig out the dirt that is full on endless weeds, add new soil, and then top with bark dust. This meant that I needed to go to the plant nursery. Mr. W had thought about going on the weekend, but he said the line was crazy long that he did not want to attempt. It was strange; we had to wait in line in the parking lot on little paint marks and get a pep talk/lesson on how to shop. There were signs everywhere about the social distancing and everyone was wearing masks. So creepy, yet so necessary.

All I needed was the dirt and bark dust, so I could have gone straight to the register line, but I wanted to add some yellow-eyed grass for the spot in front of the pond. I have planted two clumps of it in the past, but when I was weeding I only found one had returned. I don't think my passionflower made it through the fall and winter either, but really did not want to spend time browsing during quarantine so I went straight to the native plant section, grabbed the very last yellow-eyed grass and returned to the check out line.

Look how nicely the camas is self seeding in the native hedgerow around the fig tree.
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My dinner plans were very simple this week and I had planned for grilled cheese sandwiches, tomato soup, and dandelion salad. We didn't end up having any lettuce in the house though so instead Mr. W used the recipe for sautéed dandelions with onions. I think the trick is to chop it up nice and small, last year I had a hard time chewing the pieces because they were so stringy. Also I think he used a lot of butter, which makes everything delicious.
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We were so behind in our scheduled that we missed the live stream of Mass. Instead we washed each other's feet. The kids thought it was weird, and commented on not wanting to be each other's slaves, but we tried to direct the conversation toward humbling ourselves before each other and showing each other how much we love we share by this act. Little Miss really enjoyed doing it and asked to wash her dad's other foot. And the boys both enjoyed the feeling of the foot washing so each of them washed their own second foot. 
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Quarantine Palm Sunday

As the pandemic persists we are still being asked to shelter at home, the governor has closed the schools and the archbishop has cancelled all the Masses. I was so heartbroken when I learned that Easter was essentially cancelled this year. This has truly been the lentiest Lent that ever lented. But it has been an opportunity for people to get creative so that we can continue to lead our lives and celebrate our traditions with those with whom we live.

Many Catholics around the country suggested marking our doors with palms or whatever branches we have on hand to celebrate Palm Sunday. My parish additionally recommended to tie those branches with a red ribbon since it is the liturgical color of Palm Sunday. What do I have a lot of that I can spare? English laurel. Our parish also emailed out a worship aid for how we could begin to worship before we live streamed the Mass. I was very pleased when T-Bone offered to be the lead reader. There were opportunities for everyone to have a reading part.

I had started pruning the perennial bed yesterday so we used some lavender cuttings for our individual 'palms' for before and during the Mass. AS much as they whip their palms around normally I felt like if nothing else at least the family room will smell nice.

He also was pretending to be one of the dads we see regularly at Mass who had a baby recently. He's bouncing and rocking his bunny like a baby.

Mr. W was totally sweet and had done a little research a couple days earlier and looked up some recipes for Palm Sunday. I don't actually have any ear marked for this day so I was so thrilled and flattered. He started with a hearts of palm salad which was really good. He also made chicken with roasted grapes. Little Miss really loved those roasted grapes.