Susiej

When the leaves begin to turn in the Fall in 2008, I will be sending my third boy to first grade. Full-day, for the first time in our lives.

• Gone will be the long hours of play on the floor with his younger brother as they build their wooden train set.
• Gone will be the mindless conversations between brothers over lunch about which cereal bowl holds the most grains.
• Gone will be the friendly ballad, “You’ve Got A Friend in Me,” while both transform into either Buzz Lightyear or Woody.
• Gone will be cape crusaders quest as they fly up and down the stairs with their utility belt to capture the villainous Joker, Penguin, or Cat Woman, as they speed through the house in their imaginary Bat Mobile.

With Mother’s Day approaching, the boys already have a plan in action. They have the perfect gift in mind for Mom, as she assumes her new role as the primary play mate of the youngest brother. We’ll get her this:

Because, around here, everyday is Mother’s Day.

As part of their responsibility to the global community, Johnson’s has hand-selected dozens of charities around the world that mirror their deep commitment to caring for the health and well-being of mothers and children through Johnson’s Baby Cause - not just on Mother’s Day, but every day of the year. To learn more about this global charity work, check out PBN. Be sure to check out their celebrity e-Bay auction — a chance to win Matt Damon’s diaper bag.

Also, check out my post at Midwest Parents, on how to spot a fake smile.

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A story to pass on to the Grandchildren: So, Daddy was driving down an old country road, driving about 60 mph, (minus 55), and Mommy was looking out the window, and she yelled, “Stop, I see one!” Once the car stops, she jumps out of the car to retrieve her treasure.

You can’t see it? It’s right there! A wild snakehead mushroom. Never in my life, nor have I met anyone, who spotted a wild snakehead mushroom from the inside of a moving car. It’s almost as if a fairy told me where to look, and when.

Thinking we had hit the mother-load, we pulled over and started looking for the mushroom’s twin. (They always grow in pairs.) Earlier that morning Daddy found a morel (grey sponge) mushroom at the city park during lacrosse practice. With that one mushroom as our motivation, we headed out of town to the woods to find more.

Snakeheads are usually early, so there is probably still be more to come over the next few weeks. We need rain. (Do I sound like a farmer?)

It’s was almost as if the mushrooms heard us making so much noise, so they tucked back under ground.

I stood in one spot, saw fresh deer tracks, wild roses, earth moist from a creek, and a hill. Here, I had all of the trappings for a big mess of mushrooms. But not one was in sight. But I could smell them.

We found only a few more snakeheads, after a couple of hours searching in the woods. A disappointment, as my sons have now acquired a taste for this exotic delicacy, and there were just a few to share. (I only ate 1 before they were all snatched up!) We took a cell phone picture of our mushroom find for the day and sent it to my brother. His one-word text response was simply, “Where?”

See more Best Shot Monday’s at Mother May I.

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Filed under: Life, best shot, eat, memories by SusieJ - 23 Comments →

I tend to wrap myself so tight around decisions, trying my best to foresee every possible outcome of each side of the issue. This, of course, leads to paralysis… or indecisiveness. I look hard, I pray, I meditate, I think. Less than I should, I talk to other people. Even though talking seems to help the most, I rarely talk, as I am a bit isolated in my world of children now. Or maybe just because I’m thinking too hard to talk.

Some days, a decision I made three years ago about one of the boys will come barrelling down so hard on me today, that I realize now, was a big mistake. I am wounded when this happens. Worse, it makes the decisions that are facing me today seem all that more insurmountable. That mistake begins to weigh heavily on my future decisions.

Some people, wisely, I guess, use their blog as a forum to search for answers; to gather opinions from others as what they should do. The blog-sphere does, usually, respond generously with help, solutions, advice and support. The perfect “village that raises the child.” I like to come here, fresh to the page, with a solution perfectly in mind, undistracted, unfettered about what to do; whether or not I know yet if I’m right or wrong. (Please, by all means, feel free to give me advice anyway, as I am hopelessly indecisive, and your opinion could greatly turn the tide.)

This morning, rain was blessing our earth with its earthy smells, the wild noise of splashes, and trees brushing against the house as wind blew. The sounds meant that we wouldn’t be rushing a boy out at 7:40 this Saturday morning, in uniform, to lacrosse practice. We could all sleep, and get much needed rest, I thought. He woke anyway at 7, to work on homework. When the car pulled up at 7:40, and we were still blurry-eyed and in our jammies, (let me re-phrase that… my children have enlightened me that they are called b-jammes), I realized I had made another mistake. Apparently, there was lacrosse practice this morning, my son wasn’t ready, and this up-and-at-’em-Mom had driven out of her way to pick up my son. “Oh Hi. I’m sorry, I thought it was cancelled. He’s not ready… so just go ahead without him.”

He was working so intently on his homework, I wasn’t about to rush him around now and get him there. So, I stewed about the missed practice, not checking e-mails like I should have, my inability to be “up-and-at-’em” and of course, the Mom who had went out of her way.

Two hours later, I went to the computer, to dutifully check this time, to see if the 11′o clock practices were still on as well, as more rain came shooting down. Yes, they were still on… but what’s this? I see that the 8 a.m. lacrosse practice was cancelled, after-all. I was right. There was no lacrosse practice this morning.

Gratefully, as time passes, more information and irrelevant facts that were hidden are revealed, and the burnished brass begins to look more like gold. Bad decisions, miraculously sometimes turn out to be great ones. Even the ones that look wrong three years later can, with more time, begin to look like brilliant decisions. I’m not sure if we “grow around” those bad decisions like a tree will sometimes heal itself from injury, or that our path was clearly not meant for that choice.

I still can’t help but wish, everyday,  that the all-mighty creator, who is much wiser than me, would just step down and show me what is right for them, and we would gladly follow that dictum. A wise, kind minister told me, during a dark time, that the Bible promises to restore to us all that we’ve lost. I hope so. People are so full of faults, and we are prone to mistakes, naturally. We need something bigger than us, to hold everything together. That force that helps the tree grow around the injury, and to keep growing tall, despite the fault. What I hope for, and need, for my future, is that regardless of my mistakes, that there is an overriding power that will make everything turn out OK, after all.

He has his father’s grin. That confidence his Father has. “No worries. Everything will turn out OK.”

Sunday Scribbling asks, What is the future of the planet?

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It’s craft time, I say!

trace his body on paper.

This is not enough.

I pull out the stuff;

every Mother’s worst nightmare;

glittery sprinkles.

It’s OK, I think,

We’ll be outside! No messes.

Friends, I am so calm.

What is the big deal

when they cover the driveway

in sprays of sparkle?

My son said it best;

I think our driveway looks cool.

He’s right about this.

But things turn ugly,

“Take these glitter tubes inside!”

The laundry suffers.

Now, I must learn this

one rule about the glitter

It’s ALWAYS a mess.

So, no wonder this guy’s hiding…If you would like to see the mess they made, you how two little boys sabotaged a perfectly peaceful calm yoga morning, visit here. Happy Haiku Friday Everyone.

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Do your cucumbers wilt on the vine before they even start to grow? Do your tomatoes get big wormholes before you get a chance to put a slice on top of your freshly grilled hamburger? Then your veggies need some friends, or companions, as gardeners like to call them. Here you’ll find a list of 13 plants, with their beneficial combinations.

Why? When you combine certain combinations of plants, they attract beneficial insects and birds, which keep pests from eating your seedlings down to nubs. This is why planting chives around your roses keeps the roses from getting diseases.

As I began researching “happy” plant combinations, I soon realized I had opened a can of worms. Companion planting is really “enemy science,” and creating a garden plan this way is like creating seating arrangements for a forced holiday family dinner that includes two volatile guests that “must be separated.” To truly understand a plant’s companion, you also have to understand the plant’s enemy – not just bugs, but actual plants. For example, I learned that Dill repels the squash bug that has killed my pumpkins for the last five years. Yet, be careful where you plant it, as dill will attract the tomato hornworm. Here are a few more “beware” combinations:

• Mint and parsley are enemies.
• Keep onions away from peas.
• Keep potatoes and tomatoes apart as they both can get early and late blight contaminating each other.

Companion planting was beginning to sound more like the very bickering and sibling rivalry I had hoped that my future 20-foot green bean fort would help me avoid all summer. The seeds may be called, “Jack and the Beanstalk,” but there was no magic in the packet, so to ensure their vital growth, I’ve figured out my summer fort’s companions here. I will not be growing corn, but I’ve included it here, just in case you may want to try it – because it seems to be very important garden friend.

1. Beans: My prize plant; the foundation and roof of our fort. Beans help all the other plants by enriching the soil with nitrogen. There is a summer trio that makes a great combination: beans, sweet corn and melons. The three plants like the same conditions warmth, rich soil and plenty of moisture. Peas, and carrots, and Basil are also good companion plants. The herb summer savory is important to keep away bean beetles, while improving the growth and flavor of the beans. However, keep the onion, chives – all the alliums away from the beans. (See, I told you this was kind of complicated.)
2. Tomatoes: Basil is not only the perfect friend to your antipasto platter, but it’s also the perfect pest-deterrent herb to plant alongside your tomato plant. But, keep the corn away from the tomato plants.
3. Carrots: Plant with pole beans, radishes and onions and tomatoes. However, if you are planting the carrots with the beans, you must keep the onions away from the beans. Also, keep the dill away from the carrots.
4. Cucumbers: Plant with beans, cucumber, corn, nasturtiums but no strong herbs. Farmers will sometimes let the cucumbers grow up and over your corn plants, so they need no staking. Cukes also do well with peas, beets and carrots. Dill planted with cucumbers will attract beneficial predators. (But once, again, keep the Dill away from the carrots and the tomatoes!) Nasturtium improves growth and flavor. Keep Sage away from the cucumbers.
5. Chives: A workhouse in the garden that is known to prevent apple tree scab, and black spot on roses. (Give it 3 years to complete its work.) In the vegetable garden, chives will help carrot and tomatoes taste better, and will keep away aphids, Japanese beetles and carrot rust fly. Every year, my cucumbers are ruined by powdery mildew. This year, I’ll make a chive tea to prevent powdery mildew from taking over my cukes. (Cover chopped chives with boiling water. Cool, strain and put in a spray bottle and spray plants two or three times a week.)
6. Watermelon: Grow with corn, nasturtiums, peas, sunflowers, squash, cucumbers, pumpkins and radishes. Nasturtium deters bugs and beetles. Oregano provides general pest protection.
7. Dill: Dill repels the squash bug that will kill your pumpkin vine. You can always scatter dill leaves on your squash plants. However, dill does ATTRACT the tomato hornworm; so keep it far AWAY from your tomatoes.
8. Garlic: Garlic, like chives, is also the friend to the rose plant, as it repels aphids. The garlic plant accumulates sulfur, a naturally occurring fungicide that keeps your garden soil from preventing disease. Time-released garlic campuses, planted at the bases of fruit trees, supposedly kept deer away… so I may have to try this one for the garden.
9. Nasturtiums: An edible flower that is one of the best at attracting predatory insects. Expert gardeners plant nasturtiums as a barrier around tomatoes, radishes, cabbage, cucumbers, and under fruit trees. The leaves, flowers and seeds are all edible.
10. Petunias: I’m including this here, because this is my favorite summer annual, (I also love their smell) so I might as well put it to work. Petunias repel the asparagus beetle (nope, not growing it, but just thought I should know) and tomato worms. Apparently the Petunia also repels Mexican bean beetles, and the leaves can be used as a tea to make a potent bug spray.
11. Pumpkins: Pumpkin pals are corn, melon and squash. Marigold deters beetles. Nasturtium deters bugs, beetles. Oregano also provides general pest protection. As noted above, Dill can help me get rid of that squash bug… yet, once again; I have to make sure the pumpkins are far away from the tomatoes to do that.
12. Soybeans: They add nitrogen to the soil making them a good companion to corn. They repel chinch bugs and Japanese beetles. Plus, my kids love them!!!
13. Confuse the pests: I learned this from a wise gardening friend: Mix up your plants, flowers with the vegetables. The mingling scents will confuse the pests, and make the garden much nicer for you to look at.

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Roxanne’s forbidden after-school visits to her boyfriend’s house soon turned to overnight ones… even on school nights. How did she pull that off? She simply told her Mom she was spending the night at my house. So, what happened when Roxanne’s Mom called my Mom and asked to speak to Roxanne? More importantly, what would Rose Rock, Chris Rock’s Mom, who raised ten children and 17 foster children, have to say about Roxanne’s Mother’s parenting skills? Read more here.

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Inspired by this book.

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A true picture of Motherhood. My favorite jeans are now a casualty from crawling on the floor one too many times to retrieve lost puzzle and bionicle pieces, scrubbing stubborn stains on hands and knees, and the wear-and-tear from endless airplane rides. My son took this BSM picture.

An article in Wired (Peak Water, May 2008), says that the production of a single pair of jeans takes 2,866 gallons of water. (A single sheet of paper requires 3 gallons of water.) A friend of mine, who works for a clothing retailer, says sales stay high, even when they sell cheap-quality clothes. So no, it isn’t just you, you’re clothes really are wearing out faster. Retailers across the board are lowering quality (who cares, just buy new!) leading to quicker wear-and-tear, more purchases, and ultimately increasing the depletion of our most valuable resource, water.

The same water that existed in the world millions of years ago is the same water we have today. We learned that rule in fifth grade science class, and we used to joke that we were drinking the same water that George Washington drank. However, the perils of global warming are subtly altering that reliable cycle of evaporation and precipitation. We don’t know, yet, what the ultimate effects will be.

Add the burden of more businesses, more homes and more water-intensive products and processes, and you have the very recipe that is creating our world-wide water reservoir decline. There are 1.1 billion people today who do not have access to safe drinking water, and that number is expected to increase. During the drought in the summer of 2006, London’s water authorities considered towing icebergs down from the Arctic, according to Wired.

With Earth Day approaching, I also learned, from the book, True Green: 100 Everyday Ways you Can Contribute to a Healthier Planet, that cotton is our most chemical-intensive crop, requiring 10 to 18 applications of herbicides, insecticides and fungicides. One-quarter of global pesticide use is on cotton crops. It also requires 3,800 gallons of water, per pound of cotton produced.

Chemical-free organic cotton, linen, wool and hemp is the only solution. And, perhaps, maybe to stop giving so many airplane rides to your kids.

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It didn’t help that each and every one of the 1,000,000 dogwoods that grow in my old neighborhood were blooming today, as I drove through to drop off a check. A stupid, time-wasting errand that could have been avoided if I would have just put a stamp on the envelope and mailed it days ago. The houses, many stone, and wood, look luminescent under the filtered sunlight of the dogwood flowers. They do that; the flowers of the dogwoods cast a shimmer down on anything that stands beneath them, for that so brief time when they bloom. Rather than houses, they suddenly look like large-over-sized pillows, beckoning me to take a rest.

At our house here, we had an apple tree with a branch that swooped down low enough to leave you feeling that it was really a large arm about to pull you in for a big hug, but never could quite make it to becoming that real.

I begin to feel lucky for serendiptiously forgetting to mail that check at the precise time that the dogwoods are blooming. Still, I had completely forgotten how lucky we were to relish in this grass that is always lush and green because it’s always shaded, the dogwood blossoms, and the trees. The trees, and the woods that cluster in groups on ravines everywhere you turn. My four-year old was with me in the back seat. This is a world he’s never known, so I explained to him each and every landmark. I was really talking to myself, trying to draw out the memory that is etched within me, buried, under laundry, questions about what we’re having for snack today, and the refrains of will-you-buy-me-this.

Refusing to believe that Paradise is never really lost, I work hard at trying to remember the relaxed comfort of home I feel here as I drive past these houses where, I suddenly realize, I was living a much different life. I’m looking at the trees, but I’m really remembering pages of days, turning them one-by-one, as I try to reconstruct who I was when I was here. Of course, I believe, I was so much happier then. What is missing now, I wonder.

The roads curve, hiding the houses, so that you see more trees, before you see the next house. Certain neighbors must not see me today. As much as I will try to smile, and ask them how they’re doing, I might crack. If I let myself too close to that edge, I will fall apart like Humpty Dumpty and all the king’s horses won’t be able to put me together again. The egg holds the secret that I now realize I’m keeping, even from myself. I want to go back home. Then, they’ll spill those words they’ve been dying to say all along. Once back here, I won’t leave these trees again. But, I keep hearing those wise and true words in the back of my head, “you can never go home again.”

Still, Paradise is never lost, I tell myself. This is your new challenge. Create the happiness you’re remembering from this place within yourself now. As in the wise words of my yoga teacher, “make this your new normal.” Still, I can’t help but think, shallowly, “If I could live here again, I’d be happy all the time. This IS paradise.”

Up ahead, though I see a familiar car. Could it be he’s back? Or maybe, he just left it here for the school year. As I drive a little further, I see the familiar shape of our favorite babysitter walking his dog. The one who was once our neighbor. I can let my egg crack in front of him, I think, as I pull up beside him and roll down the window, smiling, to see him waving back. He’s here for just a short break, but will be coming back May 15 for the summer. Yes, he’d love to baby-sit. (Can I hold out until May 15, I wonder?) He got me up-to-date on a year’s worth of freshman transformation, the earthquake that hit his roommates this morning while he was here, and seeing that he’s still the same wonderful self. I realize now, I don’t need to compose myself, as I’m not going to crack, after all. We compare and contrast life here, versus life in my current neighborhood, where he worked as a lifeguard for a few years. He doles me out a compliment, collected from the other lifeguards, about being a cool, non-conforming Mom.

The thought of finally having regular scheduled kid-free time, washes a wave of relief over me, as I drive away, past more dogwood trees. I stop at my neighbor’s house to ring the doorbell to surprise her. She always lovingly calls me her long-lost daughter. Margie never lets me mope around or whine too much. She always draws me back in to raw practicality in an unfussy way. Sadly, it turns out they are not home today.

I turn to look behind me and point across the street. This used to be our house, I say to my son. The large lush lawn sprawls out in front, and I remember my oldest running through the sprinklers here. Now, this lawn needs the feet of four little boys to trample all over it, I selfishly think. I want to move here again, he says. I look at him, and see that the dogwood flowers are illuminating the sunlight that falls on his cheeks.

Sunday Scribbling Prompt: Compose

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I have a kid’s summer sneaker/sandal shoe review up for Vincent Shoes,™ here, which also gives you 20% off all full-price items through April 30. Just use this code, “SPRING-DEAL-8.” Plus, there’s free shipping on all orders over $75.

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