Two more days until the Adventure Club meeting here. Tony and I have been spending extra hours cleaning up the garden beds in preparation for the fall planting and I have been in the school organizing the countless boxes of books, supplies and everything else you can think of. I have about 8 more boxes to go and am hoping to get that done tomorrow but I am pretty sure that is a pipe dream.
Tony tore the carpet out of Elder's new room today. We are all suffering from allergies and we both have an aversion to wall-to-wall carpet. So, out it goes! Tony's office is finally completely moved to the school building and so now we have lots of extra work to do around the house getting the kids into their own rooms. I can't wait until we can tear the carpet out of the rest of the house.

More sick and more work

Well, it appears that I didn't get off scott-free with illness. I just spent the last 40 hours in bed with a fever and all that goes with it. I'm still aching but need to be vertical for a while. Too much blood seemed to be stagnating in my brain.
Tony stayed home from work yesterday to keep an eye on the kids for me. He knows me well enough now that he didn't trust me to even lay down if I was the only adult around - not that I think that would have been possible! In the meantime, he managed to get to a grande amount of garden work that I have been unable to attend to. What a great guy! The place definitely looks like two kids have been playing with the tools and equipment from the back of Dad's truck, but the plant life is way more tame and looking like new life has been breathed into it.
I'm going to attempt to get my butt out the door to feed animals this morning before he gets up. It's after 7:00am now, so it looks like he doesn't trust me to be on my own with the kids just yet. Maybe I can get him to fix the toilet in the school today! Have I mentioned how much I love my man?...and not just 'cause he can fix stuff.

sickness and tractors

Wow - a whirlwind of a week ending up with one very sick Elder. The much awaited sleepover swap ocurred finally last Thursday evening with Lily going to spend time with the Jones girls doing girly stuff and Gabe coming here to do guy stuff. The boys had a good time and did a lot. Both of them crawled into bed at 10:30pm of their own accord and didn't stir again until 7:00am.

Elder started to cough quite a bit on Friday and by the evening had developed a low grade fever. As of Saturday morning it was 103 and the poor kid was incoherent. This evening he seems to be back to being fairly normal...just a little lower key than usual. He has been getting several nose bleeds lately due to the dryness on top of the illness, so I went and entered to dreaded Walmart to purchase a humidifier today. Because it is Sunday, there is virtually no other place within 70 miles that sells them and is open today. I am hoping that this will stop the bleeding episodes.

Forrest (Grandpa) has spent the last few days on a bulldozer making the tanks bigger for irrigation water storage, smoothed out a field and knocked down a few giant piles of wood chips up in the compost zone. We all hate it when a big tractor is here because of the dust and noise, and in Forrest's case, the sore body but when it is all done, the results are great. I can't tell you how much I appreciate having 2 tractor operators on the land...Tony and his dad. I did some really minimal bobcat work one day with them and will leave it to those guys if I can at all help it. It's really fun, but you can sure tear things up quickly if your not careful. It may not be as fast, and it sure does hurt a lot more the next day, but I still feel way more confident with a shovel.

All of the public school kids are returning to school this week, so things ought to be a bit more quiet around town. We will be back to people giving us weird looks when out and about during school hours. Lily hates it (and so do I) when people quiz her to find out if she actually knows things. Elder just clams up and hides behind me still. I think that we are going to self impose a school hours curfew on the days that we don't have other classes or field trips in order to minimize some of the discomfort for the kids...atleast until they get a little older and Lily's sass level is a little higher! I have a feeling that Elder will always be silent when around complete strangers.

What else is new...Oh yes! We seem to have a new colony of mice that have moved in under the house. I have set traps under my kitchen sink for 5 days now and have caught 4 mice. I sure do hope that I've gotten them all but we shall see. I have 3 traps set tonight.

The neighbor told me he found a copperhead snake in his house a few days ago. I'm not sure whether he identified it correctly but there are sure a lot of snakes around. I have never seen that variety here - I thought that they prefered it where it is a bit dryer...like across the street! We have the dogs and cats hanging around here and I think they deter snakes - hopefully. I have found 2 scorpions in the house in the last month. The first one stung me. It wasn't as bad as a bee sting. I was expecting far worse. And... the spiders are multiplying. I haven't seen any black widows or brown recluses this year yet. I think we have finally established too much of a presence right up near the house and school and they prefer it in the back of the property where there is a lot less human and animal action.

Well, we shall see if I manage to post something again within a week. It seems that I only manage to get to the blog on weekend night. I guess that is ok for a start.

Have a great week folks. See you around the farm.

Electricity in the school! and Planting Society Garlic with the class

the first class in the new school house

Another week has gone by with no blogging - sorry folks. I have been experiencing very sporatic wireless service in the past week or so. I have been told by one downloaded program that I need to update no less than 23 drivers...but I have to pay to do it and that ain't happnin at the moment.
It was a packed week...Let me give you the rundown. The forseen future appears to be pretty filled up too.

Monday - farm chores, music class, art class, yoga, more farm chores, electric installed in school.
Tuesday - farm chores, reading and math, school floor repaired, cleanup of school and prep for class, meeting with Jen re: adventure club, farm chores
Wednesday - more school cleaning, breakfast, farm chores with class, book club, gardening class, cleanup in school, finish planting garlic, farm chores
Thursday - farm chores, Elder's Birthday! Played with Leggo's all morning, went to movie with kids and Tony, swimming in Lake LBJ, dinner at Taco Bell, farm chores
Friday - house cleaning, reading, Nana came and hung out with Lily, Elder and I went to work cleaning a house, BBQ with Granny, Eric, Nana, Grandpa and us. Kids left with Granny.
Saturday - today! I have been cleaning up some computer files, feeling blue a bit about the lack of community (again/still), and organizing more in the office in the school - lots of giveaway stuff.
Tomorrow begins the whole weekly process again with the added gymnastics class and more academics due to the school being put together. Hopefully I will get some of the kid's furniture painted too. It has been sitting in various states of prep for about a month now.
I am having trouble downloading photos lately, but I will try again. Have a good week everyone!

Native animals here

I was just reminded by another homeschool mom about the Perseid meteor showers happening Tuesday and Wednesday of this week after midnight. This is a great spot still for star viewing as we have no overhead lights on our entire 7 acres and most of the neighborhood lights are blocked by heavy foliage this time of year especially. I am going to have to wake up and drag the kids out to the trampoline to see some of them. The tramp is the optimum viewing spot and if it isn't buggy, then it is a perfect place to crash until morning.

One of the other things that I keep meaning to address is the diversity of animal life on this property. There are fewer places for animals to go along this watershed that we live on than ever before. Because we have 3 tanks and plenty of big trees, we tend to have a large array of critters visiting or living here. I must comment on the decided lack of deer however. For some reason...probably the high local dog population...there were NO deer here this year. Last year and the year before, there were only prints of one large buck up by our back irrigation tank.
We do have lots and lots of birds: blue herons, golden eagles, red tail hawks, road runners, painted buntings, cardinals, white wing dove, cormorants, egrets, ducks (wood and mallards and another black and white I haven't identified yet), barn owls, yellow finch, hummingbirds, mockingbirds, sparrows and several others that I can't name or don't recall at the moment.

As far as grounded mammals are concerned, we have several kinds of rodent...jack rabbit, cotton tail, gophers, voles, field mice - never seen a rat though. The dogs manage to face off with racoons and skunks all the time. One of my dogs loves getting sprayed by skunk - must be her cologne. We have bats in the evening over the tanks mostly and tons varieties of lizards and geckos, frogs, toads, turtles and snakes. Our insects population is enormous - both beneficial and otherwise. I miss the chickens being truly free- range all the time because they cut the grasshopper population down considerably but they also ravaged some of the plants we grow in our stock. Our butterfly garden is in it's second year and finally has some plants reaching maturity. Today I counted 5 varieties of butterfly - by the end of the month it will be even more. We also have honey bees and mud daubers. They don't much bother us and we are happy to have them here to pollinate. Tony had one of his workers get rid of a giant patch of native sunflowers a few days ago that made them a bit unhappy but there are insane numbers of those flowers elsewhere and not to far away. I will have to unearth some of the photos that I have taken in the last couple of years to show everyone, but here is one of my favorites of a Blue Heron in my favorite tree at sunrise 2 winters ago. This guy comes back every winter and cleans out the fish in the tank. He even talks to me sometimes when I am out feeding the animals in the morning. Crazy country living, I tell you.

Slow Saturday

I managed to organize the new office a bit further in the school house. In doing so, I managed to find several things that I was looking for and discovered some things that I forgot needed dealing with. But....there is, of course, that one thing that I am actually looking for and have yet to find. Oh well. I will get on it again a little later or perhaps tomorrow and hopefully come across what I need.
Today was a day of chores and saying goodbye, finally, to the travel trailer that brought all of our possessions from California - the end of an era, so to speak. The trailer is now going to be the home for someone that is in need of such, so it is good to see it go. Now that we have the supply room/school office in the school building, there isn't a need for the trailer anymore. For the last 2 years it has simply been overflow from the house and a place to feed the cats. The cats are now relegated to the shed and the excess has been discarded or new homes found for it - YAY!
The poor kids are bored after spending 3 whole days in a row at home. They are begging to go somewhere...anywhere. This is from kids that begged me not to leave home just 2 days ago. If only the schedule managed to fit their mood at any given moment. As a result of this boredom, Elder managed to break the glass portion of the screen door with the sling shot. He won't be dealing with projectiles for a while and spent 2 hours in time out and then got the obligatory lecture...we shall see how worthwhile that was shortly I imagine.
OK - looks like a trip for groceries is in order now - maybe the kids will think that is an exciting outing.

First week of August

Here we are in August and still more triple digit temperatures. This last weekend was my birthday and the best gift I got was a thunderstorm - thanks! We went to a great place called Krause Springs in Spicewood and enjoyed 68 degree water, shade from enormous Cypress trees, and a fairly peaceful campsite. Although I am feeling really tired lately and it was a big effort to get it together and go camping, I really enjoyed not looking at all of the work projects that need to happen around here. While I have extremely brief moments of feeling relaxed and realizing accomplishment with this hunk of land etc., I am most often cataloging projects in my head and constantly updating the many lists floating around my office.

Yesterday we took Elder in for his eye exam with the opthalmologist after patching his eyes alternatively for 3 months to see if his wanderer would get it's act together and focus. Although we saw some improvement, his test results were the same and he is facing surgery next month. So...we will be living really close to the bone in our uninsured state so that we can give him what he desperately needs. Some of the work projects around here are now being put on hold (eg. electricity in the school building) due to a lack of funding. Oh well, another step back but not a huge one. We can still use the school - just not during the heat of the day.

Lily, is doing really well. She is reading up a storm without me having to force her nose into a book. Granny donated many, many books (along with many other items)to the school and she is excited about having fresh material. I can't thank Shirley enough for providing most of the furniture and school supplies in the school building. There are lots of folks to thank - Nana, who made the curtains and provided many a workbook in the past few years as well as making herself available to be with the kids frequently. The Jones clan for everything from office furniture to their friendship and infectious excitement. I also have a great guy, Tony who is able to do a bunch of work on yet another project to further our vision. I am truly blessed.

Lastly, I am going to post some pics of the process for inoculating fresh substraite for the Shitake mushrooms that the Jones family grew these last couple of months. We documented the whole process, so if you are interested, I will send along the whole set of pics. Let me know. Hope everyone is still enjoying summer.

Directions to Weaver's Bottom

To get here from Marble Falls area...
Drive up to Kingsland on 1431 through most of the town. When you see B&J Septics sign and porta-john on a pole, slow down and turn LEFT onto Skyline Drive. Take your second RIGHT onto Nina Lane. Take your second RIGHT onto Nora Lane. Weaver's Bottom is 1231 Nora Lane and the 5th driveway on the right.

To get here from Buchanan Dam or anywhere off of Hwy 29...
Drive down 1431 past the flashing yellow light. Turn RIGHT onto Skyline Drive (the first main road after the yellow flashing light). Take your second RIGHT onto Nina Lane. Take your second RIGJT onto Nora Lane. Weaver's Bottom is 1231 Nora Lane and the 5th driveway on the right.

If you are coming from a greater distance and need directions, please feel free to call me:
512-755-4423.