weekend adventuremom
the weekend’s accomplishments after the conference are many and varied for every member of the family. with march came the bright, crisp sunshine, birds, and blossoming everything in the desert. our backyard is turning into a little wonderland with pecan trees, a grape trellis, agave and aloe vera, cactus, and now our vegetable garden plots. though david described them as graves for giants, they do look like that, we awoke early sunday to dig, add compost, and eventually sculpt two large modified biointensive plots to start our early seeds. no expert by vegetable variety, i simply went with what i seem to know does well ‘early’ in the season and will force myself not to plant baby tomato plants until a tiny bit warmer despite my eagerness to plop down on the soil and devour any and every variety of tomato directly off the plant. sigh. have to wait on the garlic, too. it’s been years since i’ve had my own little piece of earth to work, what with all the traveling and living in seattle where the growing season is about a week long. okay, that’s an exaggeration as i fall folly to occasionally, but there is a big difference and now this place is so much more semi-permanent than my previous wandering ways. right! the list - what did we put into the ground? two cucumber varieties, one japanese vining type from saved seed and one heartier pickling type, purple haze carrots because i still love the look on grace’s face when she bites into a purple one, sorrel, watercress, peas, long beans, and an early variety of a desert yellow squash. some giant sunflowers from saved, marigolds from my mother’s old garden, and some early corn that i just kind of tossed out there because it’s old and i’m not really sure it’s good anymore. we will be happily surprised, i’m sure. one thing i did not do is test the soil because i am lazy so i just added local compost and lots of love. david was a tiny bit hesitant to really dig in and get dirty but once he did he told me he felt a reconnection to the mother. and that our plots look like graves.
grace, meanwhile, another human who doesn’t like dirt but loves what it produces, was inside putting on a silent practice performance to ten songs from the Coraline soundtrack (http://coraline.com/) which she purchased on itunes just immediately after seeing the movie in 3D - david said it was the best writing he had ever seen, i recalled the NPR interview with the author that was sweet and courageous, and grace just loved the film and music. she wore david’s fedora, a black sports bra, some “skinny” levi’s and high platform shoes and made up contemporary dance pieces to the songs that struck her most. mainly bruno coulais and the hungarian symphony orchestra, the tunes are haunting and melodic and character driven. we made spinach feta eggs and watched her performance for brunch after our graves were dug and planted. she also skyped papi, my dad, and chatted with video for a while.
david was inspired to pull out the indigo ink and acrylic pencils and threw a pastel board up on the easel to capture his new connection to the desert landscape. he’s such a wonderful painter - i’ll have to post this one as soon as it is finished - cactus woman on rocky landscape.
i laid out a new internship curriculum for the people all over the planet who want to come volunteer for our organization. made yummy veggie fajita tacos and calabazitas for dinner and deeply desired to take in the next episode of deadwood, i’m addicted even though i don’t really like the way calamity jane is represented - was she really THAT emotional? - but instead turned in at a reasonable hour given all of our blessings and wonderful weekend adventures. oh, and my girlfriend and son might visit for spring break which makes us all happy with anticipation.
in solidarity and creativity…
