born imaginative.

Easter 2023

Breakfast feast at our church, church service, gifts, chocolates, tournaments with said gift (my BIGGEST kid was mighty competitive),

time in the great outdoors (Adrian mostly rode his bike and the girls got allllll the things out of my kitchen to do some outdoor cooking), an Easter meal, books and bed.

I think my crew would say it was a 10/10 day, but I could use a rest from the holiday. No rest for the weary, as I pack up my five travel sewing machines for 4-H tomorrow. It takes a great deal of mama power so they can live their best childhood!

Signs of Spring

No coats.

Eggs.

More eggs.

Books outside.

And seedlings. This is my foil lined box with grow lights experiment. In it are soil blocked seedlings in old salad containers. Our house is cold, this is keeping things toasty so far.

Dates and homemade

Carved a wee bit of solo time with just one. We took a little drive to drop off library books and decided to swing by the beach to sit and talk for a bit.

I also helped her finish this lovely apron she started. She made it for me, but I suspect it will end up in her old fashioned clothing pile, which is just fine with me. At this age/in this season there are so many ups and downs during the week. We're all thankful when a day starts and finishes well. Isn't she lovely in this apron?

Spring!

There are SO many crocuses that pop up here, and they just keep coming the more we clear. I absolutely am pulling them in so I can savor the short lived beauty inside.

My little flower lover

She's getting a few more days out of that mama made woolen dress I made her.

Whenever the crocuses come, it feels like spring has officially sprung!

Grafting

Motivation from our homemakers group got me (finally) pruning the orchard. Collected scion to get started on grafting. I've been wanting to graft for years. Decided this is the year.

I didn't realize when I ordered rootstock that I ordered 20. TWENTY. The orchard I planted is 17 trees strong. This more than doubles what we have. WHAT WAS I THINKING? I don't know. Hopefully one day we'll have apples to share!

I grafted half of them. Sort of labeled them. Only one is named "Kim" from my friend who gave me scion. (Thanks Kim). She since has told me that I grafted Westfield Seek No Further, a fall apple. The other ones are labeled with trees that are numbered, but I don't really remember which tree goes with what. I did find an old blog post that the four original apples I planted in 2013 were: Jonathan, Cortland, McIntosh and Fugi. I only took scion from the most established ones, so I am guessing I grafted some of these. What the other ones are I don't even remember. Must keep better records. I have ten more rootstock to go and then I'm going to try my hand at grafting some good scion into some established full grown apple trees here.