Fruit Meme

I am SO making this up as I go along:

1 How much space do you have?
I think it's a little more than a fifth of an acre.

2 What fruit do you grow?
yellow and red raspberries
figs
2 kinds of strawberries
I started the season with 3 kinds of plums but lost 2 of them
pears
red and yellow cherries
bush cherries
pink currants
aronia
2 or 3 kinds of blueberries
crabapples
I think I'll count the watermelons, but not the tomatoes
passionfruit, but I haven't got even a flower yet

3 Which is your favorite?
Tough call, but I'd say the cherries.

4 What do you most want to grow, but can't?
Crazy, but true, I'd like to try pawpaws. I just can't find room for 2 more 60 foot trees. But they look like they'd taste so good! And they are the host plant for zebra swallowtails!!!!

I'm tagging Kate in NJ, cause I know she's a crazy gardener too. If you grow any fruit, or wish you did, join in!

Wild Kingdom of Zoom

Not sure why we've been seeing more wild life here lately (actual animals, I mean...).

We found this great frog in our slip and slide!! The Emperor said he hadn't seen a frog here since before 1983!!

Mxyl saw a hummingbird hovering around our (finally) reblooming roses (too fast for the camera).

We've been seeing rabbits all over the place. Mxyl actually petted a wild one some time ago. (I said he could pet it if he could catch one...)

We have had a mama squirrel trying to teach a teenage squirrel how to behave. (Will you please stop somersaulting around that stick! You are driving me NUTS!!) I am sure I will find it even more hilarious in a few years.

And of course, more butterflies! Whenever I look out, I see at least one tiger swallowtail. Since Klenda discovered at least 5 swallowtail caterpillars munching on the fennel, I'm guessing they aren't all the same one!

The fennel looks like tall yellow Queen Ann's lace here and you can just see the coneflowers below it. This morning I looked out and thought I saw a tiger swallowtail on a cone flower. Oops! Wrong phylum! It was a male goldfinch, also very yellow and black!

We also saw a rare zebra swallowtail! Enchantingly lovely!

In other garden news, the hibiscus has begun to unfurl an extravagance of blooms. They remind me of tree peony blossoms.
In other gardening news: We've dug the hole for our butterfly puddle, we're almost making progress! The cukes and tomatoes are really starting to bear. :) The watermelon vines are rambling. We have bouquets of my favorite basils. On the down side: my Italian plum tree fell over in a storm and after a few months of "stake out" I have to face facts... It is just not going to miraculously grow upright again. :( It finally was bearing fruit this year!!! :( On the plus side, what other fruit could I put there?? :)

Happy Birthday, Mxyl!

11 years old!!!
A scout!
Serving at Mass!
Finding the area of trapezoids!
Devouring every science fiction book in the house!
Building robots!
Teaching Oob to walk!
Doing crazy science experiments!
Building Bionicles in 10 seconds flat!
Telling crazy jokes!
You are growing up into such an interesting person!!!
We love you so much and we are amazed at who you are growing up to be!!!

Summer Reading

The second best thing about summer (besides having my sweetie home) is getting to read more. In an interesting crossover of these two, the Emperor took the kids to the library and brought me back a book I never would have picked up for myself: Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana by Anne Rice.

Two things made me balk at opening the book: first, I'm not a big fan of "this is what Jesus was really like" fiction, and second, I was not sure where Ms. Rice stood religiously. I mean, I admired her for chucking her truly fabulous career and following Christ, but I wasn't sure how far her conversion had taken her. I had read the Joshua books rather naively some years ago and had (to totally ruin the metaphor) gotten blindsided by the author's axe to grind.

I began reading with cautious foreboding. Hmm. Virgin birth? Check. Jesus' brothers? Step brothers. Fine. Hypostatic union? That's the tricky part, isn't it? Especially if you are going to do a biography from a first person perspective. How does it feel to be fully God and fully human? And, of course, the controversial: When did He know?

Ms Rice's answer is more than on the level, it's actually graceful! She gives Jesus the words,"I know what I need to know. I learn what I need to learn." She also answers the "When?" in a very nice way. (Do I need to give a spoiler alert? I mean, you know His life story, right?) Instead of siding with the "Knew it as a fetus!" camp or the "What a surprising thing to discover in the desert!"camp, she has Him realize (in the desert after His Baptism) that He has chosen not to remember that He is God. The temptation in the desert was also very well done, and she adds a detail which says something very meaningful about the nature of the devil. I don't want to spoil that even if you do know how it turns out!

I most appreciated the segments based on the actual Gospels. Ms. Rice brings her considerable talents as a novelist to bringing these passages to life and she succeeds fabulously. I was a bit less comfortable with the parts dealing with His family life and circumstances. They were marvelously written and plotted to bring the events at Cana to a focus and level of meaning that are nothing less than brilliant.

What they say about Jesus and His life are very true, yet I still couldn't read them without feeling a little put off. It is marvelously well researched guesswork. I think I dislike mixing fiction and non-fiction in the area of religion, probably because so many people view the Gospels themselves as fiction. That's not a criticism of the book, just a personal preference.

That being said, Ms. Rice strikes an excellent balance between showing that Jesus was, in fact, a man like us in all things except sin, and showing that He was, in fact, the God that created the universe. She also does a marvelous job anchoring Jesus securely in history: showing that Jesus came in a particular time to a particular place.

Despite my own minor issues with the book, I would recommend it, particularly to someone who has never quite felt that Jesus is real.

Choclo and Oob Have Been Feeling Their Oats...

I'm guessing about 25 pounds worth.

Painting the Bathroom

At long last I am pleased to announce that Mxyl and Klenda are old enough to do some of those chores I've been meaning to get to but just couldn't find the time.

I asked them to paint the bathroom and they did.

It is only fair to note that we have always called this bathroom the fishy bathroom: It has a fish themed rug, shower curtain, and...well...toilet seat.

About that toilet seat... It's worse than you think. It is one of those clear plastic ones with little plastic fish and real seashells in it. Let those of you who have never desperately wanted to potty train a child cast the first stone. But I digress.

I think Mxyl and Klenda did a splendid job so I thought I would post some of the highlights of their artistic triumph! The first picture is the back of the door. Unfortunately you can't see the shipwreck at the bottom.

In the second, note the beautiful squid, the punny catfish and the really creepy anemone. If you haven't already done so, try sayibg "The Enemy Anemone" 5 times fast.




Moving on to our third detail, note the realistic look of terror on the clown fish.









To counterbalance, they provide the detail of a school of fish terrorizing a shark. Also, please note the subtle pun linking the barnacles on the towel rack and the Bionicle floating around underwater.

Something seems fishy, indeed!

Since You are Entitled to My Opinion

The excellent Queen of Carrots has a thought provoking post here on What the Founding Fathers Would Do.

It also referenced the question (which I have always found amusing), What Would Jesus Drive? It really is remarkable how the answers to these sorts of questions mirror our own perspectives (although the Queen puts it better than I could). For example, I have known people who answered that question, "Jesus would have driven a tiny hybrid because He would care about the environment (having made it Himself)." I have also heard, "Jesus had 12 apostles to cart around, He would have driven an SUV!"

My personal answer? I think Jesus would have taken the bus and sat next to that bad smelling lady who is talking to herself. I'm not saying He wouldn't have borrowed an SUV or hybrid or whatever He needed (like He borrowed the donkey), but since He didn't have a house, I have a hard time picturing Him owning a vehicle.

The real question is: what does Jesus want me to do? That's (mostly) obvious in the original WWJD, but it gets lost in the knock off questions.

Personally, I do own a house and I drive a 12 passenger van (Hey, He could borrow Blue Streak!). Actually, in a way, He does borrow Blue Streak. In fact, it might be more proper to say I borrow Blue Streak. Blue Streak is a gift. Driving Blue Streak is one of the ways I use His gifts to care for the people He has sent me to take care of. I don't think it's what Jesus would do, I think it's what Jesus wants me to do.

An Idea for Princess

Kate in NJ, I can't find an e mail address for you! I want to snail mail you a small piece of Chesapeake beach for Princess to find shark teeth in. If you think this a good idea, e mail me at ericandwendyATearthlinkDOTnet

Today's Discovery

Oob likes jello.
A lot.
I have scrubbed the walls, floors, high chair, and baby.
It came off the walls and floor.

Butterflies!

Our butterfly garden has been doing very well lately: we just saw the first of the monarchs on our milkweed!

Last year Klenda and I planted a butterfly garden. We got the plants in 2 days before Oob arrived! If you are interested, the best place to get plants and advice is Butterfly Bushes.com although they can only ship to certain states. Based on the prices, I was sure the plants would be tiny, barely rooted slips, but they were actually husky fellows which took off with minimal attention (very good since Oob spent a while in the NICU!).

We tried to have a balance of host and nectar plants so that the butterflies would stay and lay eggs. We have rue, artemesia, fennel, and milkweed for host plants; and we have butterfly bushes, cone flowers, snapdragons, bee balm, hibiscus, and milkweed for nectar.

All that milkweed worked! We got monarchs! We watched the cycle from butterfly to egg to caterpillar to lovely chrysalis (monarch chrysalises are the color of jade studded with gold. I have no idea what compound a butterfly could make that would look quite so convincing, but it really looks like gold) to new butterfly. That was at the end of the season, so when "our" monarch flew off to the south, we knew he was heading for Mexico!

Today we visited Wings of Fancy again and came home with an idea for making a permanent puddle for the butterflies to drink (and form the bachelor "puddle club"), while not providing a spot for mosquito breeding. It basically involves digging a hole, pouring in concrete to make a shallow depression (hopefully making a mosaic around the edges) and then adding wet sand after the concrete dries. We shall see how it goes!

The trip should be its own post: Oob made "b-i!" (butterfly!) his sixth word. Choclo was entranced. Picture a large glass conservatory filled with low growing flowers, a few trees, a box of hatching chrysalises, and more than 1000 butterflies from 3 continents. They fly around at toddler level and like to land on your head. Come to think of it, we were all entranced! I do wish I had brought my camera! This butterfly was my favorite (picture from flickr): the Blue Clipper from Malaysia.

In case you are looking for butterflies in the garden picture, they took off while I was getting the camera...