Sebi & Tigger

the garden store cat that we're in love with 

These two beasts are Galeaux D'esyines pumpkins I started from seed a month or two ago. Apparently our house has enough natural light to start seedlings just fine. They're almost outgrowing their one gallon pots and starting to flower... Trouble is that squash can't go outside on the West Coat until late May or June. They've been living on our kitchen windowsill, but they're getting a little jungle-big for the house. 

So, I'm doing a pumpkin experiment. I put one of the three in the ground yesterday. It's in a raised rock bed, the soil feels pretty warm and I put this plastic around it to further warm up the soil. Add some cedar branches and some fleece cloche and voila... 

A very ugly tent. 

Well, what can you do. So far, it seems perfectly happy despite the low temp last night. This could revolutionize our squash growing. I've had lots of pumpkin nay-sayers giving me advice these days, but I think we'll show them. 

Bike

These videos amuse me. They might actually be really boring, but I think they're funny. Sebastian's second day on the push bike proved he's braver than we thought. I wish I could have gotten his first trip down this ramp on camera. He bombed down with no fear. I had to remind him to be careful, and after that he rode more cautiously. It kind of reminded me of watching my little brother learn to snowboard when he was three or four. He just angled his board down the hill and took off. Come to think of it, my parents had a little ski leash for me when I was two or three and skiing for the first time. 

Oh, to have no fear. 

The suspense was killing us!

A cautious but brave little descent

Earth Day in the Creek

Little Hands Art Class

I've posted about Little Hands off and on since Sebastian started going, but I've never really shared any photos of the space and action. Little Hands is pretty much the greatest thing to happen to our kid drop-in days. Drop-ins can be really cheesy or full of stand-offish people or just kind of crazy and chaotic. Sebastian and I have met a lot of awesome people through the program, and it's as much a social time for him as it is for me. After the class is over, the kids can often be seen fleeing through the grassy hills surrounding the buildings, sitting on the rocks in the middle of the duck pond (where no grown up can go) or climbing trees. They're kind of like a wild art gang. Today was a good day.

Art Building: somehow, this used to be our town library

 These motorbikes on the sidewalk are getting out of hand

Uma&Seb

Before, obviously... 

Beach glass collections

Fish on a wire

"Pretend I'm the dad and we're making pinecone soup!!"

Box monster aka drier lint mache 

"Baby" Alva

This is Sebastian's "yogicopter." Yup, a yoga mat helicopter. 

Dude looks like a lady

Our garden salads are not for the faint of heart. In attempt to year-round from the garden, our nightly salads looks something like this: mixed lettuce, arugula, chard, kale, wild fennel, and leafy dandelions. We almost weedwacked our luscious patch of dandelions, but kept them to feed the rabbit. Then, we decided to try them ourselves. They're super nutritious, hardy, abundant, and of course an acquired taste. Sebastian ate a heaping plate of this salad tonight with no complaints. The consensus is in: dandelion greens taste like.... dandelions. 

Redneckin' in the driveway aka Simon's new boat

Sebi's "Motorcycle"

At the pace of a tumbleweed, Sebastian braved his first jaunt on the pushbike. We took it into town, because our neighbourhood seems to be comprised of ninety degree angles. He's pretty cautious, but also a potential delinquent on this thing. He calls it his motorcycle. We'll just have to wait and see how comfortable he gets. 

Violin

Someone offered me a violin this winter, and I finally got my hands on it last week. They came over and set me up, showed me a few things. This woman also brought her three year old granddaughter and her one sixteenth violin and once Sebastian laid eyes on that thing, well. Let's just say this woman came back the other day with one for him. She has a closest full of violins, apparently, and luckily we're on the receiving end. I've wanted to learn the violin for a while now. It's not the sexiest instrument. It sounds pretty excruciating most of the time, and it's tricky. I've already formed all sorts of bad habits. But I also taught myself some scales, and one of my only redeeming musical qualities is that I can read music, so I also taught myself an old folk song. Don't think it doesn't sound awful, because it does! But it's really fun, and I think it's gotten me through some of the stress of these last few weeks of grad school. You can't take anything seriously when you sound like a cat being shaved. And there's no room in your head for anything but where to place your fingers when you're playing the violin. If you're off by a millimetre or less, you're often playing a completely wrong note. So the challenge has been productive, if also annoying for all my loved ones. 

But enough about me, the real treat is Sebastian's interpretation of the old folk song "Shady Grove." His companion piece seems to be called "Shady Grove, Going Down THAT Hill!" Unfortunately for everyone, I can't figure our how to rotate this video with my limited skills. 

Beans

This is Sebastian's fava bean. It's some sort of experiment he and my mum started a month ago. There are beans growing in jars in the cupboards, beans on the windowsills. This one is now in the garden. It was transplanted a couple of times until I put it outside. Poppy ate part of it while we weren't looking, but I think it's making a comeback. 

Our house is beautiful and intelligently designed, except for this one plaguing flaw. The stairs that lead from the living room to our bedroom are open, leaving a seven or eight foot drop to hardwood (and one small ten foot drop). We had a couch there for a while, but I still found the vertical design never-wracking, especially because Sebastian wakes up first every morning and climbs up to our room while we're sleeping. I think every single morning for the last year, I've been heard half-asleep, "Close to wall! Close to the wall!!" There was also the dramatic fall I had in the winter, which luckily involved slipping down the flight of stairs instead of falling off the edge. There was a lot of blood and I went into shock, and am still waiting for little pieces of glass to grow out of my hand. Of course I've imagined similar fates for Sebastian. Our landlords are hands-off and don't seem to think there's an issue with an illegal staircase with renters, not to mention a toddler, so we had to figure something out for ourselves. We had a couch there for a while, then sold it. For a few months it's been left open. Finally, a friend of ours hand-milled us some red cedar and Alex went to work building a barricade bookcase. We were half-expecting it to look awful there, but I'm happy to report it's beautiful and might just save us all from broken necks, or at the very least mom-stress. 

Easter

We were blessed with a beautiful long weekend this month; blue skies and temperature in the twenties. We spent the whole weekend in the garden for some much needed outdoor time. On Easter Sunday, Sebastian woke up to find Poppy, that resourceful bunny of ours, had been up all night hiding easter eggs in the yard. So we all took a walk around the garden together and found the treats. The thing about rabbits is that they can't go to the grocery store, so the eggs were filled with things from the kitchen: raw cashews, cranberries, apricots and chocolate chips. A suspicious resemblance to lazy parents! Still makes me laugh.