It’s been so long since I’ve blogged, I ran into someone this weekend who thought something was wrong with her Facebook feed because she wasn’t getting my blog updates anymore. I’m so sorry about that! Thank you to those faithful readers for sticking with me while I go through bouts of needing to write and bouts of needing to be silent. And bouts of wondering how much is too much to share here. It’s SUCH a tricky balance. All the while our children are watching….while we try to set examples of doing life with limited screen time.
Natural play is easy to do this time of the year. Outside is the only place we want to be right now – when I’m not sneezing from the 24 dogwood trees blooming at our house! We’ve been doing so much outdoor creating, digging, planting, and finding joy in our own backyard that it makes me want to share here, along with some stories I want to document and remember for my own mothering files. So I’m now in one of the bouts where blogging feels natural, and inspiration comes like a spring rain shower.
So that just might be how it works here from now on – a blog here or there and in spurts of when it feels right to spend time on the computer and when it feels right to abandon technology and just live in real time with my family. Being 100 percent, absolutely present for them and trying to keep everything else running in tiptop shape around here. Which sometimes just means putting all my energy into slowing down and keeping our little world on a peaceful axis.
Here’s a few snapshots of how we’ve been playing outside this spring, while we abandon some of life’s indoor to-do piles until fall.
These are my greens I planted last month. They are much bigger now. I’ll be cutting into them to make a salad very soon.
Planting greens inspired a trip to our local herb farm where fairy garden supplies were 50 percent off. Which inspired this… which keeps inspiring more and more play. Mostly by my oldest girl, as all the old fairy play items get dug out of the basement to be seen in a different the light – literally. 
The “bonfire” is a candle dug into the ground. So much of this stuff is a pleasant reminder that keeping old stuff sometimes pays off. 
This is my new herb garden. Lots of herbs didn’t make it back from our unusually cold winter this year and new landscaping displaced some of my old herbs from our backdoor garden. So across from the fairy garden, is my herb garden. 
I’m volunteering at our CSA farm now and a stop by the local farmer’s co-op led to us planting beets, carrots, onions and potatoes. Gardening requires tiaras here. And gardening usually means digging for more worms than gardening, while wearing the tiara. And like always, this attracts neighbors in tutus who want to squish their toes in the dirt too. 
One of my best gardening tricks for seed planting is using a knife sharpener to poke holes in the ground. I joke – this is what a vegetarian does with a set of steak knives that was a wedding present almost FIFTEEN years ago. But it’s SO true. Those knives cut a lot of vegetable and no steaks. And the sharpener has planted a lot of vegetable seeds.
When my oldest girl decided she’s not a dirt gal and gardening is not her thing, I found just the perfect job for her mapping out the vegetable beds and recording what we are planting where. She took it very seriously! Every seed is documented on her hand drawn graph paper as we wait for those 15 rows of carrots to grow.
We started a few more planting jobs this past weekend. And it just so happened my youngest was wearing the same favorite outfit. I love it too! You might notice her hair is much shorter here. But more on that later…. 🙁 A bittersweet story.
These hanging planters were something the girls painted a few years back and I sell love them SO much. They make me smile.
We converted our play dome to a big play tent this weekend. The cat likes it best. Oh that cat – Fruit Punch!
This will be part of a next sewing project. But you’ll have to wait for that too. For now it makes a lovely photo. 
