Layli and I were also a very good team on this trip, sharing all the child care chores. I think I may finally be getting good enough at cleaning up regularly that I can live up to the standards that are in operation at their house. Part of that is due to my kids being older and part of it is me growing up a little bit more. It's a long process for me, growing this cleaning habit. I have more to say about that, but it will have to wait. Georgia decided that she was going to play Baha'i school today and wants some lesson planning advice.

I'm playing with the collage feature of Picasa2 so I can catch up with all the pictures that I've taken since the big computer died. Here we go! These are a few pictures from our last visit to the Nana/Layli house. We called it Aunt Camp and did great things like visit the botanic gardens and make life size drawings of ourselves (though I never did get to making mine since Teresa rebelled against the whole exercise and I was on damage control most of the time). You can see Layli's and Lucy's self-portraits on the bottom row there. I just love them!

Here's a collage of the best of June. We've got Maya's 6th birthday, complete with requested doll that pees and poops (REALLY not as fun as it sounds, turns out. Who knew?), my standard sending-my-child-off-to-school-for-the-first-time-how-will-they-cope?!? homemade heart necklace, dispensed to each child at their 6th birthday, and the requested cake made to look like a swimming pool. With blueberry bubbles, of course. (She's pretty easy to please.) OK, and then there's one of the stepping stones Amy got me for my birthday and some flowers that bloomed for my birthday too. Ooo, and a goldfich that visits us almost every day now that we have yummy coreopsis seeds for it to munch on. The bottom right corner is Georgia wearing a grass skirt for a wig.

These are people pictures from our trip to Lake Superior. We've got Grandpa Jim burying Teresa and Maya, the Guyot Gitcheegumee grand palace- built by Grandpa Jim's parents, Teresa's first experience on a rowboat (also my first time rowing a rowboat- we were crossing a river to get to a little island where we could get a good look at Tequamenon Falls), Teresa's second experience on a rowboat- being poled along by Grandma Dottie with older cousins being the motor, kicking in the water at the back of the boat, and there's even a picture of the four elements (if you count Mariah as the wind, which I think is fair). Not pictured in this set are Grandma Patty and Uncle Mark that we got to visit briefly on the way up. I'm very happy that the kids are old enough to make the trip to their neighborhood so we can do it again!

And here's one with some representatives of the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms from the same trip. We've got one of the Tequamenon falls (Teresa said it was maple syrup, I said apple cider. Either way, looks really yummy, though it's really just dark from leaves rotting in it. Hmm..), there's a shy blueberry peeking out (we were there just before they really came into season), a turtle hurrying back into the lake, some tadpoles from a pond, and one imaginary whale. I did not photograph the many attack flies and moose-draining mosquitoes I found there. I also saw some loons on the lake, which was a beautiful experience first-hand, but just a little black blur in my picture.

One last one! I'm having way too much collage fun here, I know. These are all post-gitcheegumee pictures. On the way home we visited dear Ann and Rich and went to COSI which stands for the children's science museum in Columbus, somehow. Maya built her name from big erector set, she and Georgia lifted a car (with the help of a very big lever), Billy rolled a granite ball around (with the help of water jets underneath, etc etc. Then back home and there's Georgia's fruit face creation that she says has a propeller hat on. And finally, the Children's Unity Garden is possessed by giant squid tomato plants trying to make it to the next raised bed to continue their plan of world domination and a shrubbery that's sprouted legs!

Georgia- Missing school (when asked, she says she misses having something to do and misses learning there) and looking forward to third grade. Read the first 2 Harry Potter books in two weeks, motivated by the promise of seeing the corresponding movies upon completion. We cut her off after that because it was starting to get a little too violent for her to be reading for fun. If she needed to know about some actual violence in the world for justice or safety purposes that would be one thing, but dementors and things like that are not something she really needs to watch out for. Also really impressing me with her gymnastics skills: handstands and splits and all and leading us all in gymnastics stretches when she can get us to cooperate.

Teresa- Always the first one to get all the way into the water at the pool, getting more and more outgoing with kids she meets there, and she wears these cute blue sunglasses there that make her look super cool. The last few mornings the first thing out of her mouth was that she needed to practise her play. This consists of multiple costume changes, the accumulation of props, and the making up of little songs, but no plot or lines to be said. Sounds like fun when I describe it here, but I'm rarely ready to get into the spirit of it in the first moments after I wake up. Big surprise there. She also likes to use the biggest words she knows and if she doesn't have one to fit what she wants to say, she just makes one up. It adds poetry to the day.

Bahiyyih- Out of sorts technologically since our big computer (with all the pictures on it) has been broken for like a month now. Out of sorts socially because my book club is pretty much over, the two friends I've made this summer are moving away in the next couple weeks, and (as Husayn pointed out recently) it can be really lonely being a parent. My strategy for dealing with this: look for and expect good things to happen and people to meet. I'm on it. Also: things to look forward to- my cousin Lucy visiting the states next month, 10th wedding anniversary coming up this fall, yeah Billy!

I've been looking around online for info about Ojibwe culture and history from that region and have found a few things, but only enough to give me a taste for more. Who's got a link for me?

In other news, blueberry picking season has started here in Zone 5. Yeah! The girls and I had a very good time picking today and having the whole farm experience. All you city folks, time to get out here on the farm and pick your own food! Come on over!

Mmm, mm. Love those colors. I've been posting the best of my flower pictures this year on my facebook page, as an experiment, to see what facebook can do. So far the results are mixed. I like being able to easily get in touch with people, but some of the things you can do on facebook seem like time suckers for their own sake or weird ego boosters, not actually helping you connect with people. That's probably harsher than it needs to be, sorry facebook. It's weird, but facebook makes weblogging seem old fashioned. I'm partial to the weblog format, though. It's got a big chunk of character and room to work out thoughts. It's also a lot more coherent.

I just spent a big chunk of this past week reading Middlemarch (or I should really say skimming, as it's 792 pages long) written by George Eliot, although that's not HER real name. My favorite character was Mary Garth. She was the sensible, 'plain' girl that kept rebuffing the childish scalawag until he got his act together and grew up a bit. I also liked Dorothea sometimes (she's probably the main character) because she was extremely forthright and cut through the crap that everyone else was bound up in so she could follow her own conscience. The book was mostly about three interlocking stories of couples and their problems. I liked how I could see the beginning of problems in a marriage and then the middle of the problem, and what the end result was, all in detail. A lot of good social satire there. There was a lot of abstruse pontificating in the book though that took up quite a few pages, hence the skimming.

Pool season has begun, so we're over there every afternoon that the girls can get me to agree to it. I'm trying hard not to get cancer of the skin or any other part though, and have so far been able to hide from the sun pretty well with sunglasses, sunscreen, a shady spot to sit and a large cover-up type garment over my swimsuit. Everything but the suncreeen prevents me from actually swimming though. We'll see what happens when it's too hot to sit on the sidelines. The girls have t-shirt type swimsuits and lots of sunscreen too, but that's all I've figured out so far since they actually want to be IN the water. Weird.

The girls and I are going to stay with Layli next week to take care of Lucy a little and hang out a lot. Any of you in the Chicago area want to get together? Maybe hit the beach or botanic gardens?

me: 35! That's old! You're over the hill now. Middle age-ed.
Me: Maybe people on the phone will stop asking, "Is your daddy home?" That could be a serious plus.
me: Tha't funny, but I'm totally not convinced. This sucks.
Me: This is prime time. Feeling your power. Getting your life's work done. Look at this great family you're making, every day.
me: But I want to be out there, doing my ESL work, interacting with grown-ups more. My life is so unbalanced from 9 years at home with kids. I'm so stuck. And time is just slipping past me.
Me: Give me a break! You're so young! Everyone that's older than you says so!
me: Ha. ha. I don't want to be 35. I wish I was ageless. Why do we have to have ages and birthdays anyways.
Me: So we can honor our lives and let people love us, and thank God for the good life we have. OK? Can you get happy about this? Just a little?
me: Alright. Fine. I'll help the girls make me a party. How's that?
Me: That's a start. And cheer up, okay? Go play speed scrabble with Khalil.
me: OK.

1. This came a little before Mother's Day (someone up there knows I like to celebrate early and often): I was reading a gorgeously illustrated children's book (it was a Toot and Puddle book by Holly Hobbie) with delicious watercolors to the girls on a sunny afternoon. Maya and Teresa were peacefully cuddled up on either side of me and Georgia was sitting on the back of the couch, french braiding my hair. We were just a big pile of girl.

2. This one came today right after I decided that what I wanted for my upcoming birthday was beauty to suround me in some way. I walked into my bedroom after I had just cleaned it and finished praying. There I saw a clean room (rare in my house) with my favorite pictures on the walls and a perfect spring light making it look all buttery in there. The curtains were moving just a little with a gentle breeze and it was really quiet because Billy took all the girls to a birthday party for Mariah. Taken all together, it was beauty and peace. It was a birthday wish granted with a message from my spirit: You want beauty? Just look around you. It's everywhere.

Children planting an organic neighborhood garden, complete with welcome sign and new friends. Somewhere in my mind that's always been the ultimate in motherhood job satisfaction for me. It was great fun to be a part of it all Sunday in the park. A beautiful beginning, making me look forward to the rewards and challenges of a summer full of gardens and kids. I dedicated that day in my mind to our friend Kay who passed away recently from cancer and was a very sincere and loving Baha'i school teacher for Georgia one summer and good friend to our extended family.

It's also really satisfying for me to be 'out there' as a Baha'i when Baha'is in Iran are being so horribly persecuted, as they are right now. It's a small token, but it's what I've got.

Update: So far, I'm glad we reposted the video because now there's actually a debate going on in the comments that has come up out of the gutter and is more on topic, if heated and full of misinformation. SO much easier to handle. And the best part is that there is a young woman from New Zealand who is defending the Faith with vehemence and intelligence in the comments. It's pretty exciting.

The next time I tried to make one was about 10 years later at my first apartment in Champaign. This time I was armed with a book that my aunt had illustrated and sent a copy to me, Greening the Garden, by Dan Jason. Fun compost pictures made it seem easy and fun, but again all I had to start it were sod pieces from clearing a little space at the back of the yard for a garden patch and a few weeds I had pulled here and there. Again I couldn't be bothered to turn it and never saw it become compost. I got discouraged by groundhogs who ate all my carefully tended bean plants and moved soon after.

Attempt number three was seven years later, with a few issues of Organic Gardening magazine pored over, and a clearer understanding of green matter and brown matter needing to be in some kind of ratio. I talked my brother-in-law into building me a compost bin out of old pallets that I had scavenged. It even had two compartments for turning. Unfortunately, no doors for easy access so the thing could actually be turned. I think I mostly put leaves in it, and a few kitchen scraps. It didn't do much but be a pile of leaves, as far as I could see. But there was a breakthrough. When we were getting ready to move, there was a big pile of leaves on the driveway that had sat there over the winter and gotten all mushy. We paid a neighbor kid to haul it away in his wagon to add to his compost pile and I was amazed to see what had happened to the bottom layer of that mess, once the top was peeled away. It actually looked like mushy dirt! Compost! It was true! I saw it with my own eyes! A crazy theory no longer! But then it was gone.

Fast forward to now, and the lovely compost bin Billy made. I saved up greens and browns for a year to put in this thing. When I transfered all of it into the bin, I noticed some beautiful compost at the very bottom of the pile and immediately spread it around on all my beds. A very satisfying act, let me tell you. But then, after it had been in the bin just a week, Billy and I pulled the bin off (with it's handy handles) and set it next to the pile to turn it for the first time. I sat down to check out how it was doing and started picking at it. It was looking good, some good decomposition and worms crawling around in it. Then I pulled out a chunk, and something strange happend. Through my gardening gloves, I felt warmth! I put my hand up to the pile where I had pulled the chunk out and sure enough, the durn thing was hot! We finally did it! We made a hot compost pile! For a compost pile, hot is THE thing to be. It felt like such a huge accomplishment that in that moment I felt completely satisfied with my time on this earth. I had taken crap and scraps and made food for plants that would make food for me. I was being a good steward of my little piece of the planet. That was a good day.

Still, compost doesn't have to be this difficult or dramatic. A little more knowledge and help at the beginning would have made it all much simpler. I would advise anyone starting a compost pile to just keep it simple and ask someone you know who gardens to come help you get started. I've never met a gardener who didn't love to be asked.

Once upon a time their were thousands of keeshbukahs on a sheet. Many ladybugs and rabbits lived upon them. A spiny pine got on the sheet. But the spiny pine was the sheet. A flower petal was on the spiny pine. And there was a 'Z' on the petal. The petal and the 'Z' were both made of gold. Then the keeshbukahs ran into a fire and a star came into the fire with all of them, and swoosh!, it kept away. Georgia and Maya and Teresa opened a sock and put the keeshbukahs into it so it could be a pinata. They were a circle and there was a button on them and another keeshbukah and forty with them! And everyone said, Wow! Lots of eyes were on them. And there were two keeshbukahs that went to a singing wolf and a hole disappeared and out came the keeshbukahs and the thousands were gone and everyone said, Woo! They're cleaned up! The End.

This is my solace for the irritatingly cold weather we have on this otherwise perfectly gardenable Saturday.

Oo! Oo! And Billy finished making our compost bin! Yeah Billy! The front slides up and down and it even has handles. In case you ever need to, you know, move your compost pile.