We're Still Here!

Hi! We still exist, we're not in the witness protection program, and I haven't stopped blogging. I don't know how all these bloggers blog from the road! Next time I will definitely take a cue from some of the big planners and have pre-written posts ready to go.

The chickies and I drove to Michigan--the place of my birth, where I grew up, and where I went to college. Most of my family is here, as is most of the family on my chickies' father's side. My best friend is also in town, so we have lots of visiting to do! I've been taking photos and we've done lots of things, and as soon as I have a second, I'll be back with something fun!

We're on the Road!

The chicks and I are leaving for two weeks this afternoon. I'll continue to blog from our trip (and catch up with my Self-Portrait within a day or two--I refuse to miss a week, even if it's not on the right day!)

Happy Late Summer Solstice! We'll be in touch soon!

The Trolley Garden: Our New Natural Playscape

The chicks and I have the pleasure of living above the most amazing neighbors who have become our very close friends. They are the parents of two sweet kids, aged three and five, who play with my chickies almost every day, often more than once a day. Honestly, they are more like cousins than friends.

Last fall, we decided together that we wanted to turn the lower half of the backyard into a natural playscape. We had no experience in this realm but had some ideas of what we wanted, so we spent the winter brainstorming and researching options.

The lower (back) half of the yard is about three feet lower than the front half. We learned from neighbors who had been here for ages that the lower half used to be an alley, and before that, it was part of the trolley track for the trolley system in Montreal. At some point, they removed the track and turned it into an alley for buses, and then eventually they filled it in and expanded the backyards.

We decided to explore the "trolley" theme in the garden. We did some research on the trolley system in Montreal--when it ran, what the trolleys looked like, etc. We named the playscape "The Trolley Garden" and have incorporated trolleys into the garden a little bit so far, though we have more things planned for next summer. We even recently took a trip to Expo Rail, a huge Canadian railway museum near Montreal. The kids loved it. They have tons of cool old trains and trolleys, and they got to see and go inside the kinds of trolleys that used to run through what is now our Trolley Garden.

We spent our spring revamping the entire yard. I did not contribute nearly as much effort as my lovely neighbors, but I did as much as I could given my situation. Much of what is in the garden was either salvaged/repurposed or made from salvaged wood, etc., though several things (like sod and sand) were purchased. Almost every single plant in the garden was already in the yard; we just transplanted them to strategic areas. We did bring in some ornamental grasses from a nursery.

And now, onto the real fun--the photos! I took "before" photos in April, and I just took "after" photos today. I'll try my best to match them up properly. It's not fully "after" yet as a lot of what we planted still needs a lot of time to grow, but it's "after" in the sense that we're pretty much done with what we're going to do with it this year. Also, the "before" photos are slightly inaccurate in that I took them after we had been working on it for a couple of weeks. I wish I would have gotten true "before" photos, but these will have to suffice.

Let's begin with the entrance to the garden. Formerly, this was simply a three foot drop-off (and the original entrance was elsewhere):You can see a white wooden structure in the above photos. My neighbor built it from scrap wood in the garage to serve as a base for the hill we were going to build. We then had fill dirt delivered and made a hill out of branches, wood scraps, and dirt. We placed cement patio blocks for stairs, and we built in a slide. We initially looked at slides designed for natural playscapes like this, but they were insanely expensive. So instead, we went to ToysRUs and bought a standard plastic slide, removed the steps, and built the hill around it as we went along. Then my neighbor covered the hill with sod. Now we have a fun entrance for the kids that includes stairs, a hill for climbing, and a slide:
Here is the "before" view of the entrance from inside the garden: And here is the "after" of the entrance from inside the garden: Here's the "before" of the end of the end of the garden nearest the entrance:And here are some "after" shots, beginning with the bench (which my neighbors already had and which, I believe, they had gotten for free):A closeup of one of the beautiful hanging plant arrangements (which my neighbor made using old plant hangers from the garage, dried moss, and plants uprooted from the front yard):Stumps (found for free) for sitting/having tea parties. Eventually we'll have a taller, wider stump in the middle:Here's the "before" of the area to the right of the new entrance. That horrible cement stump was the original step down into the garden!:And here are some photos of what it looks like now. A row of pots along the top (with a flower garden behind it that I forgot to take "after" photos of):The corn and sunflower garden, including the beer traps to kill the slugs. We chose "corn and sunflowers" for one of the themes for our weekly playgroup, and as the activity for the day, the kids planted the seeds for these plants. They're still pretty small, but now that we're killing the slugs, they seem a little happier:Our bamboo pole bean and pea teepee. The beans just started to wind themselves around the bottom bits of twine today after the sun came out from behind the clouds:Here is the "before" of the end of the garden with the sandbox (opposite the end with the bench):Here are Ninna, my neighbor, and his two kids pouring the ceremonial first bag of sand. He built the sandbox from scrap wood in the garage and lined it with landscaping fabric:Here's that end after. First, the entrance to the path the kids walk down to get to the sandbox. It's like a jungle! It's just to the right of the teepee; you can see a popsicle stick labeled "peas" in the bottom left corner:The sandbox itself:Cute basket of impatiens hung at the kids' level next to the sandbox (basket salvaged from the side of the road, impatiens given away free by our borough as a neighborhood beautification effort):
Then, along the back wall, there's a path that begins at the sandbox (here's the entrance)...:...and ends at the gravel pit! This is one of my favorite things about the garden:One of my other favorite parts of the garden (ok...they're all my favorite!) are "the trolley tracks." We wanted a balancing plank to go diagonally across the garden, underneath my neighbor's clothesline. In order to make this, we got plain boards from Home Depot, and then, during another playgroup session (this time appropriately themed "trolleys"), we had the kids paint the tracks. We gave them trays full of paint from our craft supply stashes and handed them brushes and let them go at it. We LOVED the final result. Then my neighbor painted black "tracks" on the edges and varnished them with a waterproof varnish so they were appropriate for the outdoors:Whew! And there you have it, The Trolley Garden as of June 17th, 2010. I'll post an update late in the summer when (I hope) the corn and sunflowers are towering and the beans and peas are covering the teepee. And with that, I say "Good Night," as this post feels like the longest thing I've written outside of my master's thesis...

Blue Food Coloring in the Kitchen Sink

It's my new secret weapon that allows me to finish cooking dinner, and it works amazingly well. Some water, some food coloring, some cups and bowls--I can make an entire meal:

Five Reasons I Love our Community Garden

The chicks and I spend our Fridays volunteering at a community garden, and we LOVE it. There's a system of organic community gardens in Montreal that all operate though a single organization, and there happens to be one close to us that is designed for parents with small children. There's a main garden, which we work in each week, and the children are welcome to garden alongside their parents. There is also a children's play area with two mothers who are paid to help entertain and watch the kids. They also bring them to a playground up the road sometimes, and they've even taken them to plant flower beds at the playground and throw seed bombs into vacant lots. There are so many great things about this garden:

**Working in the community garden is an incredible learning opportunity. I can't tell you how much I've learned in the past two months about gardening. I already know so many things I will do differently in my own garden next year based on what I've learned. I'm a very hands-on learner to begin with, and gardening is truly one of those things you need to learn by doing. What I've learned in reading about gardening off and on over the past few years pales in comparison to what I've learned since late April in the garden.

**Working in the garden is a great opportunity to meet people. Everyone who comes to the garden is so nice and, given the activity, very civic-minded and interested in the environment. My opportunities to meet people as the mother of small children are different from what they were as a childless young adult, so I have to look in places other than where I might have once looked. The repetitive physical activities of gardening provide ample chatting time to get to know people.

**Working in the garden is great for the kids. My children have also met a lot of people at the garden, and it has expanded their social network. They play with lots of kids every Friday whom they would otherwise never have met. I love that we can go to a place where they can see mama working with other adults, and that they can join in if they choose. Ninna, being older, has also learned a bit about gardening (and insects) from our Friday adventures.

**We literally reap what we sow! Every week, the harvest is weighed, recorded, and divided among the participants. As the season goes on, it's not a pittance--we came home with a huge amount of beautiful produce this last week, including turnip greens, mustard greens, carrot greens, red radishes, white radishes, zucchini flowers, lemon balm, oregano, and chives: **We're learning to eat and cook new (to us) veggies. I have to be honest and say that I have never bought much of what we took home from the garden last week. I'm not always as adventurous in the produce aisle as I wish I was, but bringing home a harvest from the garden is expanding our horizons.

If you've never tried a community garden, and you have the time, I highly suggest you consider it. I'm so happy we made the decision to join, and I anticipate we'll be doing this for years to come.

Self Portrait Saturday #7, June 12th, 2010

Ridiculous photo? I know. I almost forgot to take one at all; it's going to be a miracle if I make it a full year, which is my hope. Bojey had already gone to bed and Ninna, because she napped earlier in the day, was up later with me tending to the balcony garden. The sun was setting, and I refuse to use my flash even though I can't remember a thing about how to handle low light in photos. We tried ten shots, and this was the best one:

Skirt from Recycled T-shirts for the "Sew What!" Sew-Along

A couple of weeks ago I signed up for the "Sew What!" sew-along, hosted by Until Wednesday Calls and Confessions of a Sewing Dork. The rules stipulate that you must use the same fabric for every project. There's a different sewing challenge each week, beginning with last week's--to make a skirt from your chosen fabric.

I chose recycled knit (from old t-shirts, etc.), mainly because I wanted to learn more about sewing with it. I'm extraordinarily late on this (the second challenge is almost done!), but I still want to play along. I sewed this skirt for Bojey today:

It's greatly flawed and not very fancy, but I've already learned a heck of a lot about sewing with knit just from this single project. I pulled out my sewing books and looked up what stitches to use, how to set the tension, etc. I did this with two "helpers," and it still only took about 25 minutes, max. I needed a quick project since I still have one more thing to sew until I'm caught up...

The striped fabric was from an old H & M t-shirt I was given for free for this purpose, and the plain purple fabric at the bottom was from one of my old American Apparel tank tops that was falling apart. I'm not satisfied with the skirt as a final product, but I'm really excited that I'm starting to learn to sew with knit!

Preschoolers and Maps

The chicks' dad left for a trip to Greece yesterday. They don't know exactly what this means except that he got on a plane and left and will come back to Montreal on another plane in ten days.

In order to give a little more meaning to his leaving, I decided to make use of our laminated wall map. We keep this map up in the common area at all times (in fact, I'm pretty sure it has shown up in the background in photos on this blog more than once). I took a wipe-off marker and very crudely drew arrows from Montreal to Greece:
Here is Ninna examining the data:
I haven't done this before, but I'm planning to do it from now on either when we're planning a trip, when someone is coming to visit, or when their dad is leaving town for a trip. Maps seem to have caught Ninna's interest, and we've used them quite a lot. Here are some ideas for using maps with preschoolers:

**Keep a wall map up at all times and refer to it when relevant. I love this laminated map we have. Santa bought it at the dollar store for a whole dollar and put it in Ninna's Christmas stocking. I'm on the lookout for laminated country maps of Canada and the US. We had previously just circled places where people we know live, etc., but Ninna was very interested in seeing the distance this time.

**Keep a map in the car for the kids to look at. Ninna will sometimes look at a map in the car while I'm driving. She is certain she is reading it properly and telling me where to go. On the one hand, it's true that she has no clue what she's talking about. On the other hand, I think it's great that she's making the association between what's on the page and the lay of the land--she gets that the map is a representation of where we're driving. It's also just another opportunity for imaginative play.

**Keep a simple atlas with the kids' books. We have a simple, colorful world atlas on the shelf with the kids' reference books. Sometimes the chicks will thumb through it themselves, but other times, we'll look for a country that happens to come up in a story or in conversation.

**Draw maps. There are lots of fun opportunities here. Ninna has drawn her own "maps" before of real and imaginary places. I once meticulously drew a map of our home, and Ninna was in awe. This can be used for treasure hunts, for coloring and drawing on, and more. You can keep a hand-drawn map of your home or neighborhood inside a plastic page protector and use wipe-off markers to write on it (and then erase it).

**Use tourist maps of your city. If you live in a medium or large city, there are likely loads of free tourist maps in circulation. When we moved to Montreal two years ago, I grabbed a ton of them because I had never been to the city before. Now that we've been here awhile, Ninna is familiar with many of the landmarks, and she likes to look at the tourist maps to see where we live in relation to these famous places.

What are your suggestions for using maps with small children? I'd love to do more, and one day soon I hope to find us a globe to have fun with.

Self Portrait Saturday #6, June 5th, 2010

Here are Bojey and I after the spring festival at the Waldorf school this afternoon. This was her first time having her face painted, and I realized while watching her that she was exactly the same age as Ninna the first time she had her face painted--just about a month shy of her second birthday.

Perspective is a funny thing. I distinctly remember Ninna at this age, and I thought she was so old and mature. Yet today at the festival I almost didn't have Bojey's face painted because I was thinking "oh, she's so young--maybe she's not ready yet." Is this a first child versus second child thing? It must be. All I know is that I had a major jolt into reality when I realized how old my baby is:And just for fun, here is Ninna with me after having her face painted for the first time, just two weeks older than Bojey is now. Bojey is in this photo too, in my belly--I was six months pregnant with her: As always--feel free to join in and link up!

Enjoy your weekend!
--The chicks and the hen

Rainy Day Fun

This was yesterday's excitement:
Do you recognize this man?It's Han Solo wearing storm trooper armor. The chicks don't know that, but I do. It's like my own little private joke every time he comes to join the play setup. Just in case we were sitting on a goldmine, I just googled him. Apparently if he were in his original packaging, he might have the hope of fetching a whopping $7.99 on Ebay.