The Climb up Bald Knob
(or, how I spent my birthday.)
08/08/2009
Groton, NH

The clips are short...the climb was long.

Soft focus
Since school has ended for all of us, the rhythm of the home has transformed. One could say it slowed, but that would be incorrect; its energies have been re-focused. Where we once scrambled out of bed and rushed in our various directions and took or taught classes and tried to get our work done on time, we now sleep in just a few more minutes and begin our days with a little more graduation. We nap, too, in the afternoons, if we find it necessary. But this does not mean repose. No. For example, the Edible Peace Patch Garden was left to grow for a few more weeks. This was a fruitful time during which cucumbers and yellow squash, zucchini and pole beans, watermelon and sweet potato, and more tomatoes than anyone knew what to do with thrived and ripened and fed teachers and students and even us. But the time has come to close it down and so we four have been working two or three hours in the garden each morning, once we get moving. There we have pulled bolted lettuce and broccoli. We have remixed compost and turned soils. And we have begun covering the beds (to preserve the soil) for the summer.

The kids have taken to baseball, and so at least once a day, I am recruited as a pitcher for hotly disputed and often tearfully lost six inning (708 Field rules) games of real-pitch T-ball. Noah is tough to strike out anymore. Maxim too. They always want to play twelve or fourteen innings, but Marcela and I usually turn to some long-neglected yard task before too much time has passed. We have replanted many of the orphan vegetables from the school garden. Marcela has pulled most of the dead material from under the beach sunflower in the back garden. And we have been raking and composting the leaves, sticks, bark, and fruit lying about in our backyard. I hosed down the front porch and mopped the spring dust away, vacuuming the kids toys while I was at it. Marcela re-imagined the kids' room and yesterday we took down the bunk beds and created room configuration #3. I've posted photos of most of this at our Flickr page. This is not to mention the neighborhood kids who hang out for hours each day or the laundry that just keeps coming or the professional work that both Marcela and I are doing. Maxim points out that it doesn't include her piano practicing or the sketching she has been doing, either. She is correct.

We have decided to make a few repairs to our car and use it to get us north this summer. Some trepidation. But life has been giving us many gifts, one of them is the patience to let things happen as they do. To be at ease with the bigness and out-of-my-hands-ness of so many things. To look on that not as some kind of transcendental injustice, but as the very fundamental condition in which we float.

We miss our home soil with an empty longing that can overwhelm us sometimes. But we are finding our way toward peace upon this narrow heap of sand.

Memorial Day

We ate yummy traditional foods:


And the kids swam:

Happy Mother's Day

The children play:


Mother sleeps.


All is well.

"Duck and Panda and the Show-offs Go to New York
by Maxim and Noah

15 minutes of childhood fun!

Sunday at the Beach

It feels obligatory occasionally to celebrate the one nice thing about this town, its gorgeous beaches:

Saturday in St. Pete

Today Marcela took the kids to a local toy store so that they could cash in their birthday gift certificates.






The kids played swords in the street after that.






Maxim, however, eventually came up with games of her own.




Later Noah showed us how to use the new toy.




Marcela reflected on the day.

The Report

Maxim practiced her report the night before:

Maxim has a report due tomorrow. She is finishing the paperwork:



Noah was playing with Branner:

South St. Pete

NPR Driving:

"It's A Hard Knock Life for Us..."

In case my kids ever complain that they had it rough in Florida, here's my case against it:




Noah is getting bold and starting to do some off road cycling:

Days in St. Pete

We had several of Maxim's classmates for a sleepover.



The next day, Q, who couldn't swim during Maxim's party, came by and had a swim. Noah took the opportunity to make his first video:



Today, Saturday, Maxim caught us all hard at work:



But then we took a minute to practice a new song:

The Sugar Cycle

The sugar begins in one form and is distributed to the children:




Whereupon, the effects are quickly expressed in loco-motion:

Happy Birthday Maxim!

Maxim turns eight today. We let her design her own birthday cake. This is her design:



And here's where her art talent comes from:

Communication at the Estevez-Curtis household is always an adventure:



...but we usually get there.

Noah is relearning how to ride his bike since breaking his arm:

Backyard videos present:

We Go Camping

A Digital Short by Maxim and Noah



[NOTE: Written, Videoed and Performed by Maxim and Noah. Edited by Daddy.]

Friday Afternoon (a video montage)

My Backyard:


Introducing Demarco:


And Maxim:


And Noah:


And the riding up and down...

The New Tent

We're trying something new. We set this up tonight.

Birthday Party At Last
Noah turned six last month. February 24th, to be exact. But on February 24th, Noah had a blue plaster cast on his left arm. We thought it was better to wait to hold his party. He was a good sport about the cast on his arm and he has been a good sport about waiting to have a party. He is a good sport of a kid. The day finally came. Today, Sunday. This morning I tried to convince him to water the Peace Patch garden with me, but he didn't want to. He and his mother decorated the carport instead. We rolled out the linoleum, covered the new bureau in party paper, and tied another piece of paper over the plastic table. Balloons tied to rafters and other party favors hanging from the ceiling. Marcela made a list of games and I made an ice cream cake.
We had to make a second run for the pinata. At 2:00 pm all the kids showed up. We played red-light/green-light, which provokes an unusually high level of competition among 6-8 year olds. The kids ruthlessly sent back the flinchers and the fallers. Everyone tried their hardest to win. I called the game one time and have to admit to being a little bit afraid as all the kids began tearing in my direction. After the fifth round I had them stop for fear that someone might get hurt. We ate snacks (sandwiches and fruit) and then played a game where you get to unwrap a present being passed around a circle if (and only if) you are holding it when the music stops. I took control of the stereo and Marcela passed them a pre-wrapped box of gift pencils, with seven or eight layers of wrapping paper. The kids had fun with that game and everyone got a pencil. For each of the games, marcela had the kids go to the bureau where baskets of prizes were available. The kids got to build their gift bags. In between all the games, everyone got a turn on the tire swing. Truth be told, we could have had the kids in line waiting for turns on the tire swing for the full two hours. They liked it. But I might not have survived that much tire swing pushing. I might have gotten (ahem) tired. We had the parents drop the kids, which made everyone happy. Two of our friends stayed and enjoyed the warm afternoon.
Noah seemed to have a good time and was sufficently grumpy near bedtime just to prove his exhaustion.
Maxim's birthday is next.

The January yard.  Grasses is at it's peak brown, few things are growing, although the Spanish needles seem to thrive.  There is some grass greening up, but there just hasn't been the rain to support growth.  Last week I noticed that lots of little things were sprouting because of the heavy morning dew.  But that will be a few weeks or more before it starts to really show.  Marcela has begun her second semester of graduate school and I am underway with an organic garden project at the nearby elementary school.  We both have piles of work to do, but take a few hours each weekend to keep the yard clean and get some extra projects completed.  We raked the whole back yard Friday and Saturday.  No small task.  We take the piles by wheel barrow to the base of the eucalyptus tree where we pile it to break down.  Marcela pulled the three oleander trees that died in the transplant last spring or summer.  Something else is growing out there now, woody and oak-like, but not necessarily an oak.  Last year we put seeds from the beach sunflower and gaillarda in our native garden at school.  They have grown into quite a tangle of sunflowers and gaillarda blooms, as you can see.  I trimmed the sunflowers back to the brick face perimeter of
the garden we had laid out.  Three of the plants had volunteered in one of the empty pots next to the garden.  We put those in the ground in the front strip near the street.  At the back of the garden here are some red flowering plants whose name I forget.  These have grown very well.  We had to trim them back a little bit so that they did not fall under their own weight.  We also cut down a couple of oak frames to frame two paintings that the kids did last year.  Marcela bought a canvas and gave them a lesson and they went to work.  She wants them framed and hung on the wall.  Step one is almost completed.  The kids are happy to be back to school after three weeks away and a long drive around New England.  Maxim was allowed to play offense during her soccer game yesterday and managed to kick three goals.  Noah was on his usual tear.  We are visiting friends for dinner tonight, but both working on school work while the kids play quietly.  DeMarco, Noah best friend next door, is over and they play light sabers in the back yard.  Maxim has her animals set up on the floor of her bed room.  One day rest before school starts again.  The weather is delightful.