Chris (13 yrs) made me a wonderful soft sculpture of Heen for my birthday. It’s a character from Miyazaki’s animated movie “Howl’s Moving Castle.”
Heen (click for larger image)
The young artist himself
Last year we made the decision to homeschool our youngest son (13). We have homeschooled in the past when the boys were much younger. However, this time we are choosing to try a different way. In our first round we followed the recommended state standards very closely, expecting to at some point put them in the public school system. It was a fine method and fit our needs at the time, but this time we are not expecting to put him in institutional learning again until college. That’s not to say that he won’t be taking classes here and there to round out his education at home. This is allowing us to focus on the major benefit that homeschooling has; the freedom to focus heavily on what subjects are interesting to us at the time, using curriculum that we find best suits Chris’ learning style. For example, The Corvallis School District has invested in Saxon for its math program. It’s a hideous system that many teachers detest. We are going with Key Curriculum Press, which is much more straight forward with simple explanations and in a format that makes sense. It’s not shiny like Saxon, and it doesn’t have online support. But, the books are so well written that we don’t need it. What used to take an hour and a half for him to understand in the classroom (many times not fully getting it until he came home and we worked with him) is now taking 20-30 minutes a day. For science we are delving into the world of electronics using the basic electronics book from Make Magazine http://www.amazon.com/MAKE-Electronics-Discovery-Charles-Platt/dp/0596153740/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1263506817&sr=8-1 It’s an amazing book that takes you from licking batteries all the way to integrated circuits and programmable microcontrollers in a very hands on experimental format. I think that I’m enjoying it as much as Chris is. We are fortunate enough to have a very active homeschool community that meets weekly and breaks into small “study groups”. They are all at their own pace and it’s very loosely structured, but the kids are definitely building off of each other’s experiences. Next up we get to build a battery using lemons and our multimeter, ridiculously fun stuff.
Scott, our eldest, is technically homeschooling this year but he’s taking several classes at the local high school as well. Next semester he will only have to go into school for an hour and a half 3 times a week (not counting play practice). Our focus with him will be creative writing. I’m expecting some interesting things out of him, including a short film screenplay. He’s also going to be transforming his room into a library by building wall to wall bookshelves, complete with a rolling ladder. The boy loves his books.
In creature and garden news, my veggie garden space is still a weedy wreck. That and the goat shed are my February projects. My fuschias a officially dead, they just couldn’t deal with that insane 4 degree weather, even in the greenhouse. But, surprise surprise! I have big patches of daffodils coming up randomly in the middle of my front yard! The moss on the trees is glowing and the outdoors are amazingly green. The birds have discovered my birdfeeders and are running amock in the backyard and the deer are still munching on greenery in the woods. My silkies successfully hatched out 3 babies. All 3 girls are doting on the poor little chicks. Happy times.
A few weeks ago, during an insanely cold week, one of my sweet little grey silkies went broody. Not wanting to be left out, my two white ones joined in. I then had 3 out of 4 silkie pullets attempting to hatch out babies in 8 degree weather. Of course I had no choice but to give them eggs to hatch out, sad silkies are not a pretty sight. For 3 weeks I had 3 silkies sitting on 4 eggs. For the most part they were crammed in the same little nestbox. Poor Gus, our rooster, seemed a bit perplexed about the girls’ bizarre behavior.
At times the poor dears kept moving from box to box, one in one box 2 in another. A couple of days ago I went to clean out their coop, in preparation for the upcoming chicks, and noticed that all 3 broodies were in one nestbox with Gus and our other grey silkie perched on the edge.
As I moved Gus and a couple of the girls out of the way to put fresh bedding in the nestbox, I heard distinct chirping. There, in the box, was an egg mid hatch, and in my hands was a very angry chicken. When I checked on them in the morning, the cheeping was louder and moving around in the nestbox. I bravely rooted around in there and found an adorable silkie chick.
There are still 3 eggs left to hatch, one of which is in my incubator. The confused little chickens forgot it when they switched nests, again, this time with chick in tow. We will see how this little experiment works out. Can 3 silkies successfully hatch out and subsequently raise 4 chicks together? It’s a nontraditional family, but heck, they can certainly give it a shot!
Late last July we took the enormous step of buying our own little house in the woods. There was one house in particular that we kept going back to. It was a forclosure, dirty, in need of some basic maintenance and with no real landscaping to speak of. We love it. The house sits on almost 2 1/2 acres, which is about right for us. Over the next year, I will be adding in a large deer fenced vegetable garden on the eastern slope, as well as landscaping the front of the house with a perennial garden featuring many of our Pacific NW natives. The greenhouse is almost done. We will also be building an enclosure for a couple of dairy goats, who will be added during kidding season next spring.
We moved both chicken coops from our rental house in town, an adventure that I never want to relive. It involved a garden cart, some serious swearing, and the help of kind neighbors. It took us 3 trips with a U-Haul truck to get them moved. But, it was worth it.
Now I fall asleep to the sound of our resident great horned owls hoo-ing in the woods behind our house. I can sit in my front yard and see an amazing array of birds, including some resident acorn woodpeckers and an occasional pileated woodpecker. The view surrounding my home takes my breath away on a daily basis.
The past few months have been a roller coaster ride. In addition to the normal stresses of moving, we lost our beloved cat, Charlie, a couple of months ago. The grief was incredible. In my mind I knew that he was just a cat, but I found myself mourning his loss as I would a dear friend. There are still times when I feel a sudden unexpected pang of loss, maybe there always will be. Sometimes we are fortunate enough in life to have an animal that we connect with beyond what we feel for other pets. Before Charlie, I never understood people who would carry on endlessly about their pets. After him, I got it. We have added a new cat into our home, Romeo. He’s sweet, affectionate and a complete hellion. I’m hoping that he calms down a bit with age. The decision about when to adopt a new pet after a major loss is different for everyone. For us, we needed the comfort that an animal brings in order to cope with the loss of Charlie. Romeo is working out very well.
Playing in traffic
After losing all our online files to a mysterious domain host vanishing act, we’re starting our personal site and blog from scratch. In the mean time here are a few related links:
- Puppets and critters by Chris
- Andy’s photos on Flickr
