First Pick of the Season

On June 28th the boys and I wandered up to play with the chickens and realized that the berries were on!!
Everything seems to be ready a bit earlier this year and I remembered our wild black raspberries ready for picking around July 4th of last year.
So, to find them round and black and juicy and ready for our mouths made us all very happy!

I managed to pick a quart in between my and Otis' samplings (he was on my back and I would pass two or three back to him as I picked). Sam and Arlo each carried a berry basket, but at the end the baskets were empty and the only evidence of any berry picking was on their faces and hands!

After we had picked our fill, we played in the garden and I set Otis down. He hadn't had enough berries and wanted more. I gave him a small handful and then watched as he kept them in his hand for a bit before eating them. Enjoy this series of shots...a true summer experience and an afternoon I will never forget!

Slacker

I know, I have been a great blogging slacker in the last six months. I have no excuses, except that I do, and I am trying to change. I want to change. I love writing about our lives...our crazy, never at-home, running an urban homestead lives.

I am photographing everything and partially because I am a perfectionist when it comes to my images, I can't just post any old photo. I need to modify them, etc. and that takes time. I have been having some computer memory issues, too, so that is making it a little harder to get images out.

Never fear. We are in a 10 day stretch of "at homeness" and I will be feverishly working on the image issue and the writing issue...and enjoying the nice cool temps of my basement office!

Please keep checking back and have faith that at some point in the very near future there will be grand summer stories told and photos of our beautiful children, chickens, turkeys, garden, friends and lives....

Arlo's Surgery

On May 25th Arlo had his tonsils and adenoids removed and tubes put in both of his ears. I have been meaning to post about this since the surgery...but boy does time fly!

All in all he did as I expected... and it was intense. Coming out of the anesthesia was rough, though the time we were in the hospital was a bit sweet. He watched a lot of TV and I sat right next to him knitting. He loved having me right there with him and I liked it too. It was actually a bit relaxing.


For the first day he couldn't eat any solid foods, so by the next morning when he was able to order from the menu he went crazy! He ate little bites of each thing he ordered...but most of it went uneaten in the end.


The following two weeks at home were very hard. He had a bad reaction to the first pain medication he was on. We ended up in the ER one night after he woke screaming as if he was being killed. I ran into his room to find him with blood spraying from his mouth. It was horrible. After 5 hours in the ER, we returned home with a new medication and things went a bit smoother. Now, nearly 6 weeks later, he sleeps all night, the snoring is gone and he is generally in a much better mood!!