The "What's That?" Hall of Fame

Gall on oak tree

I've discovered that I say "I don't know" quite a bit these days. What does a toucan eat? I don't know. Why do owls have yellow eyes? I don't know. And nowhere do I say it more than on our walks. It's there, outdoors, that the kids find the most confounding objects -- things that I have later come to identify, by many hours spent with guidebooks and using Google -- as various flowers, nuts, birds and insects.

The problem is I forget these quickly. One day leads into the next and suddenly we're staring again at a bug we saw last week and I'm trying to remember if that's a centipede or a millipede. So this year I've embarked upon cataloging everything we find with pictures. Here are our initial entries into the "What's That?" Hall of Fame. Pictures are below.

Used gall (I guess!)

1. Galls on an oak tree. Galls, I've learned, are the protective coverings of insect larvae, usually of small wasps. They are harmless to trees and can grow in leaves, twigs and branches. Once we figured out what these little reddish balls were we went in search of more on oaks around our street and found another gem: a used-up gall! You could see the individual larval pods (I have no idea if that's what they are actually called!) and the holes where the insects emerged. Cool.

2. Millipede. Repeat to self: Not a centipede. Not a centipede.

3. An orbweaver spider. This little guy (or girl?) has a neat spiral-weaved web attached to our house. I've watched him have a few meals, and what's really cool is that when he's nice and full his sac gets all puffed up.

4. Wasps. I don't know exactly what kind, but I suspect they are Bald-faced Hornet Wasps. They are working on a nest between our storm window and the pane (inaccessible to us, thankfully). I'm keeping track of their progression. At any given time there are two or three little worker wasps building.

Our resident wasps making their hive

Millipede (and a pillbug, for good measure!)

Orbweaver spider

Tuesday Night Lights

MM started swim team this year, and it occurred to me that I have now been on all three sides of the swim team triangle: I've been a swimmer, a coach, and a parent. Let me state for the record that the least fun side is the parental one; you stand around for a while, explain to your sons why they can't swim, stand around some more, chase a son or two, explain again why only swim team members are allowed to swim, and finally give up and buy all the hot dogs your kids can eat.

Incidentally, thanks, Mom and Dad, for sacrificing so many Tuesday nights of our youth to stand poolside. And for the hot dogs.

Anyway, MM was super excited about time trials and her fifteen yards of fame. She is decent at freestyle, although breaststroke and backstroke are unrecognizable. Her dad and I really built up the idea that this was for fun and that winning did not matter. And even though MM is the type of kid who wants to do everything perfect the first time around (she can't paint a sunflower without comparing herself to van Gogh) she seemed to buy into it.

Let me confess that although I spouted the party line of "Have fun! Who cares about winning?" I held in my prideful parental heart high hopes that she would cut through the water and soar to the finish line ahead of her competitors. What parent doesn't secretly want his or her child to excel?

So when they called Six & Unders I walked her over to the Clerk of Course and sat her on the miniature green benches with all the other swim-capped goggled girls. She grinned up at me. "Just have fun," I told her.

"I know. And it doesn't matter if I win."

"Not one bit."

Seconds later she climbed onto the block like a little spider, all gangly appendages and bobbing head. She crouched (she jumps, not dives) and when the buzzer went off she looked at me. "Should I go now?"

"Go!" And win! 

But the second she cannonballed into the water something strange happened; I wanted to laugh and cry at once. She wasn't just lunging off the block; she was lunging into the world of competition, a world that will become more and more her home as she ages. Until now she has been our baby, number one in everything. But now she is out there, in some ways alone, and she will not always win. She will learn that in everything there are winners and losers, that sometimes a race or a game is painful. She will understand that as you stand aloft victorious there is pain for others; you cannot win without making others lose.

It was over quickly. Her strokes were strong. To breathe she had to interrupt her windmilling arms and doggie-paddle as she gasped for air. Then the catcher reached for my little girl and I could read his lips as he told her "Great job!" and I knew by Catherine's look of delight that she believed him. Then he carted her to the other side of the pool, far away from me.

I found her accepting accolades from her adoring fans (Daddy, Grandma and her brothers). With her cap and goggles still in place, cocooned in a hot pink towel, she turned to me. "Did I win?" she asked, but the words were delivered with a child's curiosity, not with angst or expectation.

I thought back to the race. I had watched only her; somehow, in a flurry of splashes, I had forgotten about her competitors. "I don't know," I answered, but I don't think she even heard me because already Daddy had picked her up and she was giggling. I realized then, as the starting buzzer trilled yet again, that for one of the last times, winning truly did not matter. Not to my daughter, and not to me.

We were too busy having fun.

IHC: Kale chips

Kale, kale, kale. What to do? It's bitter. Really bitter. My general solution to anything bitter (well, to anything, really) is to add lots of salt and oil. They make everything all better.

So try this with that beautiful bunch of kale you bought on impulse because it's soooooo healthy and you really should be eating more of it: Wash and dry it, douse it brush it with olive oil, and heap sprinkle about two teaspoons of salt all over it on a baking sheet. Bake at 350 for 20-25 minutes until it looks crispy and a little brown.


Then, tell the kids they're having green potato chips for snacktime.

Adventures in canning

From this...

Canning fresh produce like strawberries and tomatoes has long been toward the top of my bucket list. Every spring I would think, "This'll be the year," and then after a quick Google search I'd become cross-eyed from discourses on acidity and pressure. I mean, there's a reason I'm not a physicist.

But this year I resolved that I would indeed make and preserve strawberry jam. The impetus is our subscription to a produce-delivery-service which brings all kinds of cool veggies, like kale and bok choy (actually, the kids love kale chips as long as I refer to them as "green potato chips." Bok choy -- not so much). But we also get strawberries -- fresh ones, picked the day before. Between the delivery and picking them ourselves at local farms, yesterday our fridge was sagging under seven pounds of berries. Can or rot!

...to this.

So I kicked the kids out of the kitchen for safety issues (lots and lots of boiling water), put Dominic down for a nap, read through the recipe about a dozen times, took a deep breath... and an hour later I had four pints of beautiful red strawberry jam cooling in cute Mason jars. Unbelievable.

And yes, I am totally going to make dorky red-checkered labels for the jars.

This Old Stump

Our yard is little, but I suppose that to insects it's pretty dang big. Recently we spent an afternoon turning over rocks, riffling through damp ivy, and checking the undersides of flowerpots for insects -- all in the pursuit of education, and not just because it was a heck of a lot of fun.

Okay, maybe it was the latter.

One of the greatest bug habitats we found was a tarp that had been cast on the ground overnight. When we pulled it up, the whole underside was covered with slugs. Delight all around.

But the piece de resistance was the old stump. About ten years ago a hurricane polished off a bunch of pine trees in our yard, and we were left with their stumps. Rather than pay to have them dug out, I figured they would decompose sooner or later. I was right! They were mushy and rotted, and -- score! -- home to all sorts of insects. The kids used butter knives and plastic spoons to chip away layers of bark. They found ants and termite larvae (kill! kill! kill!) and a bunch of other creepy crawlies, and we even kept some of them in a plastic container for the afternoon. Luckily the kids bored of "playing" with them quickly, and we ceremonially released them to return to their mommies and daddies (except the termite larvae).

And sure, I'm still missing a couple butter knives, and now instead of ugly stumps we have decimated wood chunks on which children or small animals could easily impale themselves, but was it worth it from an educational perspective?

You bet.

Herbfest: Not as boring as it sounds

The Butterfly Princess becomes a clown

Last season on one of the Food Network's competitions the contestants were tasked with naming their own cooking shows. A chef named Herb came up with the incredibly creative moniker HerbTV. You could tell by the judges' faces that the second he said it he was GONE.

Cut to our town's annual Herbfest on the grounds of the historic Page-Walker Hotel. We were accidental visitors last year and had a great time, so this year I attempted to round up a group of homeschooling friends for a field trip. No luck. Most reactions were along the lines of Herbfest? Is that as boring as it sounds? 


The town needs to add a tag line to reflect that you don't just stand around admiring lavender and thyme. There are booths showcasing and selling nature photography, wool skeins, old-timey crafts, plants, natural foods, birdhouses and goat soap (that's soap from goat's milk, not soap to wash the goats living in your garage).

Or the town could just mention that the Great Harvest Bread Company gives away free samples of its blueberry-lemon bread.

There is just as much for the kids as for the adults. My three walked out with flowerpots decorated for Mother's Day and dinosaurs and flowers painted on their cheeks by members of the Cary Teen Council. V-Man finally saw inside his beloved smokehouse (see the Smokehouse Birdhouse post) and while he was disappointed that there wasn't meat hanging from the nails, he did see a drying cotton plant for the first time.

Sometimes holding a butterfly sounds better in theory

The best part, according to the kids, was the Butterfly Lady. She was in a corner booth surrounded by... wait for it... butterflies. And caterpillars, and eggs, and little tiny squiggles crawling around plastic containers that were freshly-hatched caterpillars. And she didn't mind one bit when 18-month-old Captain D pile-drived her mesh butterfly house full of monarchs. In fact, she asked if MM would help her release the butterflies by dressing up as one.

Fulfilling a lifelong desire to morph into a butterfly princess, MM uttered a breathless YES. A few minutes later, the crowd gathered around the Butterfly Lady for the release and MM bounced up to the crowd's front, awaiting her moment of fame. MM pranced around when the Butterfly Lady strapped wings on her back. Then the Butterfly Lady explained how well butterflies can hear and took giant ears out of her bag. The Butterfly Princess looked rather nonplussed as she added the over-sized ears to her couture. Then the Butterfly Lady covered MM's feet in pink felt (I forget why, as I was too busy snickering at the Butterfly Princess' quick transformation into a clown) and plopped antennae on her head. By the time the goofy giant yellow sunglasses made an appearance MM wanted to quit. But she suffered through the indignity and even took a bow for the crowd, and then removed her extra appendages much more quickly than she ever manages to remove her clothes at bedtime.

Captain D contemplating the smokehouse

At the release, the monarchs fluttered around, landing on arms and feet and heads. Captain D did his best to bat them out of the air, and V-Man patiently held out his finger and called, "Here, butterflies, land on me" -- and then promptly screamed when one did.

So seriously, the town needs to add a tag line so that families realize that Herbfest is a fun way to spend a Saturday morning. Something like...   

Hey, I've got one. Herbfest: Not as boring as it sounds.

Swallowtail Butterfly

Found this beautiful freshly-dead swallowtail out running with the kids at a lake. We took it to the park ranger, who delightedly added it to her collection.

Beauty is all around us.