We cut down our sunflowers today.
My mom always thought sunflowers looked like people lurking in the shadows and they kind of freaked her out, but when I was considering my garden this year, they seemed like just the right flower for the front of our little house.
I started the seeds for my flower garden up in our bedroom on a dresser that got a lot of light at the end of May and then about mid-June (a bit late) planted them in the ground. Sunflowers were not as easy to grow as I had been led to believe. On one side of our house they didn’t take at all, they burnt up in the sun or were eaten away by insects.
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| Here they are as delicate little babies about 3 weeks old. The least little thing, rain, wind will break the stalks at this stage and then the weeks of getting them to this stage would be for not. |
I was so nervous bringing them out from my bedroom at this fragile stage and planting them out in the wide world. It felt like they would never get big enough to actually flower. But bit by bit they got stronger with all of the other flowers in the garden. I don’t think I had much of any flowers, besides a few pansies and marigolds my husband bought already grown, till the end of July and yes there were moments I thought the garden wouldn’t bloom at all.
It really took an act of faith to wait while my neighbors and what felt like the whole state of Vermont had lush flowering beds. But eventually it came, the seedlings finally took hold and with the summer heat and sun, they flourished with character.
Even when all the sunflowers were spent they managed to make themselves useful. The huge stalks cut down and de-leafed became swords and lances for the boys to play with and we are drying the heads for seeds for next years garden and for eating 
All in all, it wasn’t so bad all that waiting for my garden to bloom. It was kind of like buying concert tickets 6 months out; there’s lots of great anticipation, and then in the end, there is of course, the concert to enjoy…
~Lisa
My boys love being read to. They can be running around screaming like banshees one moment and the next quietly wandering over to listen to someone reading aloud. In our household with 4 boys ranging from 8-2 years old, book jackets just do not survive. The books that have jackets always seem to slide off and get left around the house. I never want to put them back on just to come off again, so I recently decided to save them in my “school lunch note bin” (which is really just a random cardboard box with the flaps torn off). I now have a ready supply of gorgeous photos of things my boys like. I cut a snake out of the jacket in the photo above yesterday to feature on my older sons lunch note for Tuesday. He loves animals and gets a kick out of it when they talk to him through little thought bubbles
This idea also works with kids flash cards that have cool pictures, another item that tends to get strewn all over our house or the cardboard packaging from birthday gifts (I’ve collected some star wars boxes for future notes). Basically anything you really want to throw away, but has a photo your child might appreciate on it.
If you have any other ideas of things you can reuse for school lunch note ideas please use the comments on this post to share!
Warmly,
~Lisa
I have two older brother’s. That means I was my parents “little girl”. It also means that as a child my brothers mowed our lawn and I did the dishes… I gave my mom an ear full during my college “intro to feminism years” about that division of labor!
Anyway I never did mow a lawn till this summer. My husband hurt his back and couldn’t mow it himself, so I learned. First on a push mower (when our big mower was broken), then on the LAWN TRACTOR. It may sound silly to some but I was really scared to drive that thing. I was afraid of running over rocks, lots of things, a general gripping fear. But our grass kept growing and someone needed to do it. So I prayed, trusted, and hopped on. It was actually kind of fun once I got used to it. I had space from the kids and the din of the mower makes it hard to carry thoughts too far, so it was kind of peaceful and meditative. My husband was very brave letting me mow his garden, luckily I didn’t massacre any of his fruit trees/bushes.
Now that it is the end of summer and the growing season, mowing feels almost like old hat. It’s hard to remember how afraid I was and what I was so afraid of. It’s amazing how fear of the unknown can grow to make a task/circumstance seem unconquerable and how tiny those fears can become when we meet them head on.
It’s a lesson I have to learn again and again.
~Lisa
My son who is 8 said to me while looking at this drying bouquet of forget me knots and hydrangea flowers on our dining table “Oh mom, wouldn’t it be so great to paint these with metal clay and make them into silver?” I had discussed with my boys this possibile use of metal clay when I was in my full on research mode and had kind of forgotten about it when I started the process of actually using metal clay.
I was really glad he reminded me. Hydrangea flowers have great sentimental value for me. The first apartment my husband and I lived in together in Massachusetts had a courtyard flanked by 2 old white hydrangea trees that turned a beautiful shimmery pink in the fall that I loved, so on our 1st anniversary my husband gave me a potted hydrangea tree that we schlepped from home to home for 6 years till we made it to Vermont and finally planted it. I love the idea of using these particular flowers. It will give extra meaning to whatever finished piece I may create using them.
Here are the dried hydrangea blossoms I started with:
I added some water to the metal clay to make some slip and then took a paint brush and started coating the petals with washes of clay:
I spent about a week coating the petals. I’d take 15 minutes or so a couple of times a day to put on a fresh coat and then let them completely dry. I ended up putting on about 15 coats. I was going to fire them with the dried petals attached, but ended up carefully pulling them away from the dried clay and touching up some areas with a wet paintbrush to smooth out the connections between the petals.
I then fired them in my kiln at 1650 degrees for two hours. When they came out they were white as all the silver particles were on end, so I brushed them with a brass brush a sink of water to lay them down in. Below is the end result. I’m pretty happy with the detail.
Now I’m in the process of working on some pieces to use them in. I’ll let you know how it goes in another post when I am a little further on.
~Lisa
I am so not a “favorite” sort of person. I hate questions like “What is your favorite color, food, movie?” It’s too hard for me to choose, I like lots of colors, foods, & movies. But this morning I think I found favorite worthy of defining and sharing:
Today was the first day of school for my children. I got up super early packed lunches etc., got my 2 oldest sons on the bus and then took the 2 younger boys to the store to buy feed for our chickens. On the way back from the store I saw a little Terrier with it’s leash on by the side of the busy road I was driving on. It looked scared and as if it could get hit. Making the descision to do something, I quickly pulled over into a funeral home parking lot a few hundred feet ahead of where the dog was, parked our van, got out and called for it. She/he came running to me. I easily grasped the leash, let her smell me, felt thankful, and suprised at myself for being “that person”. See I’m not the sort of person that feels immediately connected to animals I don’t know. I’m a bit stand offish/hesitant I guess. So it felt so funny to have stopped for this dog and so rewarding that it felt safe enough to come to me (though I’m sure it would have come to most anyone).
My next thought was “What now?” as I was explaining to my boys what happened and wondering if I should put the dog in the car with the boys a woman drove past clearly frantic and caught sight of us, she was shaking and obviously the little puppies owner. I felt like such a hero giving her her dog and at the same time as if really I had done so little, I was at the right place at the right time. I shared her tremendous relief that the dog had not run off or been hit. Apparently it had jumped out the window of the car while she was driving down the road.
It’s so amazing how one moment life feels just so very normal and routine and then the next something utterly suprising happens.
Being perfectly able to help someone is one of my most favorite things.
~Lisa
