Wednesday, February 09, 2005

Not a lot has been happening here recently. Which is just fine with me! Yesterday I worked at Andy's school and, as always, it was fun. As I was looking at the children in Andy's grade yesterday, I couldn't help but noticing how very grown-up they are all becoming. I have seen these children in the school since Andy was in kindergarten, and they look so different now. Gone are the chubby cheeks and missing teeth. They are truly starting to look like middle-schoolers. I will miss being involved in the school next year. I will, however, be thoroughly enjoying homeschooling! We have pretty much gotten his curriculum together. We are doing a modified Charlotte Mason approach which is based on living books. Living books are books that have a story to them, whether true or fiction. They differ from textbooks in that they don't just teach dry facts and figures - the people in living books are real and have real-life situations and problems. Hence, the name living books. For instance, instead of just reading about World War II in a history book, we will read The Diary of Anne Frank, A Boy At War, and others like that, and then study the countries involved, etc. I have chosen Math-U-See for his math because I really like it. It's not based on grade level skills. I know some fifth graders who have trouble with addition! The sequence of the Math-U-See curriculum is according to skills - not grade level, so you don't advance to the next set of skills until you master the necessary ones that come before that. I also like the fact that once you get to the high school tricky math, it comes with a DVD that teaches it so parents can learn too! (A must in my case!). It goes up through calculus and trigonometry if you want to go that far. We'll have to see about that when the time comes! I'm not too worried about language and grammar. I feel that if you are reading well-written books, you will pick up on grammar and language usage just as well as using a textbook. Andy is already correcting my grammar! Just this morning before school I reminded him to "brush your teeth good". He said, "Well. Brush them well." Wiseacre.

We had kind of a homemade dinner the other night. I didn't realize it until I was loading canning jars into the dishwasher afterwards, though. I had cooked a pork roast in the crock-pot and had poured a jar of applesauce (that I had made) over it while it was cooking. Then at dinner we had beets that I had canned (jarred?) this summer, and green beans that I had also canned. I managed to can quite a bit this past summer, but we didn't grow all of it. Jerry's mom lives next to people who grow lots of vegetables and they are very generous. When we were there visiting and they found out that I canned things, they loaded me up with beets, squash, green beans, cucumbers and onions. I pickled some of the beets and canned them, and the rest of them were canned plain. Jerry doesn't eat pickled beets, but I sure do! I froze the squash, and canned the green beans. The cucumbers were made into bread and butter pickles, and we tried to make dills for the first time, but they were terribly soft and soggy. Yuck! I braided the onions and hung them to cure. There is something very peaceful about seeing jars lined up and a braid of onions hanging! I managed to grow tomatoes, green peppers and banana peppers this year, which we really enjoyed during the summer. When the weather became chilly and the first frost was called for, I still had quite a few things on the vines, so I picked everything and made a bunch of chow-chow with the green tomatoes and the different peppers. I followed the recipe as I had never made it before, but it was very tart! The kind of tart that gives you jaw cramps! Whenever we open a jar we add sugar to it and it's delicious. I especially like it on my tuna sandwiches. Tom eats it all by itself in chow-chow sandwiches. Next time I'll just add more sugar right from the start! I would love to have a huge garden, but it's very hard to do here. We have telephone lines and a water line in the front yard, and cable and electric in the back! My tiny tomato and pepper patch was on the side, and that's about all that will fit there. I have managed over the years to stick things in wherever I can fit them, though. I have about 50 strawberry plants on the hill in the back yard. There are grape vines there, too. This past summer I found raspberries and blackberries growing on the side of the ravine in the yard. I marked the plants with pieces of fabric so that I could transplant them into the yard in November, but then realized I really had no place to put them, so I figured I'd leave them where they were and brave the mud to pick the berries. I started a small rose garden. My original intention was to plant a rose bush for each family member. I was going to start with my family, and then expand out each year, adding a rose bush for each extended family member. Tom thought this was a hilarious idea - he said if you're mad at someone you can go pour gasoline on their bush. I found that less amusing than he did. Anyway, I decided not to do that as I just didn't have space for it. I managed to get six rose bushes in. I guess I'm glad I didn't plant them for specific family members this time - a few of them got diseased and had to be treated! I would have hated to have had "diseased" family members! One day when I have the space I would also like an herb garden. For the past three years I have had a small one in a pot that I kept on my front porch. The chives come back each year. I love to go out and snip some to use on baked potatoes or put in food. I grew dill which we used in the pickles we made, and sage. I really should have tried to dry the sage, but it got away from me and I didn't get to it before it got too strong. I planted mint and catnip on the bank of the ravine in the back yard. I like to pick mint leaves and chew on them while I'm "touring the estate"! (Takes all of five minutes!). It's interesting that the catnip doesn't have an enticing smell until you crush the leaves, so the cats (mine and the strays in the neighborhood) leave the plants alone. I pick leaves and tear them for the cats who will claw them out of your hands once they smell it, if you're too slow giving it to them!

I suppose it's a good thing that not a lot has been happening, or today's blog would have been a novel!

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