The sun is rising without you

Haley and I are in Thomasville today for her birthday. I’m currently at Grassroots coffee house while she helps with Nutcracker tryouts for a few hours. Downtown Thomasville is awesome. Here is where I am:

I brought my pipe but didn’t have any tobacco. Fortunately I found a smoke/taxidermy shop. Seriously. If you want tobacco you have to walk through the front which is the taxidermy show room, then through the workshop filled with skulls, skins, drills, weird eyes, etc. and then finally around to the little room with smoking stuff. They have their tobacco in big glass jars, all guarded by a terrifying stuffed baboon and a mounted turkey skeleton. They weigh the tobacco (The shop keep, not the baboon or turkey) for you on a rickety old brass scale sitting on the counter next to a taxidermy scene of squirrels playing on a branch. Also, there was a random monkey arm sticking out of the wall holding a fake banana. I am not making this up. Here is Haley out front.

“I had rather be shut up in a very modest cottage with my books, my family and a few old friends, dining on simple bacon, and letting the world roll on as it liked, than to occupy the most splendid post, which any human power can give.”

-Thomas Jefferson. Yeah, I know about Sally Hemings. But I still think Jefferson is my favorite president.

The Dissimilarity of Ancient Irish Magic from That of the Anglo-Saxons

Best things of today:

-Coming home to find Benjamin wearing only a diaper and his dinosaur slippers.

-Foolishly handing Benjamin my old recorder and finding that he could play it about as well as I ever could. What a terrible parent-torturing device.

-Listening to Benjamin’s song about quinoa. Then not having to clean up after Benjamin’s quinoa feast.

-Watching Benjamin dance to I’m From Barcelona – We’re From Barcelona (Raise your hand if you remember the best party of your life, Pumpkin Jam ’07!)

-Sleepy reading time with our family.

I think most of my squash is dying. And some beans. Oh well. I’ll plant some more stuff on Tuesday. Eat it!

I don’t care what you say. I love this.

Tossed aside, the weary

I planted pumpkins. Some kinda fancy French pumpkins (Rouge Vif D’Étampes), in raised beds I made last week. Beans and summer squash and black-eyed peas, too. It’s pretty hot right now but I think it’ll all make it. Florida heat is not nearly as oppressive as Texas Heat. Don’t be mad, I’m just sayin. Here’s that pumpkin in the future:

I also started brewing my first batch of beer, Ox and Dove English Ale. I’m pretty excited. It’s starting to smell good. At the beginning it smelled like molasses covered raccoon. But now it smells like a fuller bodied Newcastle.

This is a song Benjamin and I like to dance to. Matt & Kim- Daylight. We also like to go to the Tallahassee Museum. They have some North Florida history stuff like a farm and general store. They also have lots of native animals. Benjamin is not afraid of the bears, wolves, snakes, panthers, or bobcats. But he is afraid of the turkeys. Whenever they gobble he gets a little panicky.

Speaking of fowl, did you know it’s illegal in Tallahassee to keep chickens in your yard? I’m pretty sure it is. Who can I talk to about this? Who is in charge of Tallahassee these days? Should I just write a letter to Bobby Bowden?

Here’s a picture of Benjamin. On a boat.

We looked like giants

Benjamin likes to work. I don’t think he has a complete grasp of what is work and what isn’t, but he certainly has some idea. He likes to help clean up and put trash in the garbage can. He also thinks mowing the lawn is the best thing ever.

This is serious. On Sunday he helped his Granddaddy put birdseed into their feeder.

I think by next year he might be ready to help me in the garden. Speaking of, I’m going to start some pumpkins soon. That’ll be nice.

Til the river is in the sea

Well. Sorry. We kinda moved. And then I was busy. And then I didn’t have the internet.

Also, don’t be mad. But I don’t have a lot of pictures. We haven’t unpacked all the way yet and I don’t know where the cord is that connects the camera to the computer. But I have been taking pictures and will have some soon. Here’s one that Marmee took of Benjamin picking up a turtle.

Benjamin is talking a lot more these days. He repeats EVERYTHING. He’s also starting to form sentences. My favorites so far have been “Backhoes more please” and “Daddy daddy my daddy.” He loves backhoes. And bicycles. Which he calls “Bye-co-co.”

I got a job. Taking care of crazy people. Well.

Being here with family is awesome. Here is Benjamin in the bath at his grandparents’ house.

He thinks making that face is hilarious. I guess he’s right.

Here’s a song by The National- Bloodbuzz Ohio.

I still miss you.

The letters that you left behind.

In an effort to be true to the blog’s name, here’s a little story. Right after I planted a lot of our seeds we had a huge rain that washed many of them away. But they decided to come up anyway, even if not in quite the proper place. These little seedlings are daikon radishes that are now growing quite nicely in the space between rows. Disaster averted.

Now we are starting to eat things from the garden which is nice. Our greens are wonderful. I really like our Austrian Forellenschluss lettuce which you can see in the post below. It means “speckled trout,” probably because of the pretty red spots on the leaves and not any unusual fish taste.

I like this guy. Johnny Flynn- The Wrote and the Writ.

She asked to dance, I said it’s fine

So. Gardening. I got things in a little late. Because I’m lazy. And we’re moving at the end of May so there wasn’t a whole lot that we could get in the ground and actually harvest in time. We planted sweet onions, green onions, leeks, carrots, spinach, Swiss chard, turnips, beets, daikon radish, broccoli, leaf lettuce, head lettuce, and cilantro.  Here is a picture of some beautiful lettuce.

One of the best things Benjamin does now is read his books to himself. He turns the pages slowly, tells the story out loud, and points to different objects in the pictures. Here he is reading Autumn Walk.

Also, spring.

I found a blog called Animal Review. The writer “reviews” animals as if they were books or restaurants. He gave pandas an F. Which seems reasonable to me.