This week I am simply grateful for the cooler and rainy weather that has pushed in this weekend. I am thankful for this change in weather for three reasons:
WTF? (Where’s The Freon?)
First, our air conditioning went on the fritz as of yesterday, so we’ve been running fans and opening all the windows in the house. Since the storms came in last night, it brought in cooler weather and with keeping the curtains closed and windows open, the house has stayed cool, thankfully.
I hope it’s a simple fix, like adding some Freon, but we will find out tomorrow when I call our HVAC guy.
A Day Off…
Additionally, having the storms and the cooler weather has given me a day off of watering. That may sound insignificant, however between Millie’s flower garden, our new vegetables and strawberries and the cold crop garden, it takes about two hours to water. Two hours!
That’s a lot of time every day, but I know if I can get the flowers in Millie’s garden established, it will be worth it. It’s just that every time I say I’m done planting for the season, Chouchou brings home another flower or a friend sends another plant.
Her garden has become a collective place for our village to share and show their grief over our loss and their continued love and remembrance of Millie. I love how it is coming together like this, with the love and support of many, and am especially grateful to those who have come and dug holes, filled holes, watered plants, and weeded the garden alongside our family. The flipside to all the flowers and plants we’ve received, is the essential watering to help their roots get established.
We also just planted some asparagus and strawberry plants, that need constant watering in the recent heat, but once they are established, the asparagus will come back for up to another 20 years (!) and the strawberry plants could produce for up to three years.
Outdoor play
Lastly, we spend a lot of time outdoors, and we had a blast playing in the water table yesterday under the shade of a cedar tree in the 80 degree heat.
Today was a nice change with the overcast sky, occasional breeze, and early seventy temps. It was even a little cool and we had sweaters on this morning. This is the spring weather I love!
Mon Cœur (MC) also has a new place to adventure – a log cabin playhouse. It arrived yesterday evening right before bedtime, so we didn’t really have long to play and explore. We spent basically all day today in there, planning, decorating, playing, learning how to climb the loft ladder, and how to open the doors.
Many times I wanted to (and probably did a couple of times) just open the door for her or hold my hands up for her to jump down from the loft, but I knew how important it would be for her to be independent and be able to do these things herself. It required me to wait and be patient and find words to coach her through doing these things independently.
Instead of grabbing the door handle, I showed her once, and we practiced together. The door is a little tricky, but after a few times saying, “Put your hand through the handle and your thumb on top. Push your thumb down and push the door open,” she was able to open and close the door like a pro.
She proceeded to entertain herself (and me for that matter) for the next ten minutes running in and out of the cabin, opening and shutting the doors and yelling, “Hello? Anybody home?” after knocking on the door outside, and “Hello! Come in!” from the window inside.
She scaled the ladder going up to the loft, and only a couple of times asked me to get her down. I just spotted her and talked her through it, “Turn around, put your hand here, step down. Move your other foot down.” Once she got the rhythm, she was going up and down the ladder effortlessly, counting the rungs, plotting sleepovers, and telling stories.
This little log cabin will give us plenty of ways to get “outside” even if it is raining, and give us many projects to keep busy in the months to come! I see painting, floor cushions, and curtains in our future, among other things.
But first, we’ll trap some carpenter bees. For that, I am thankful first, to the industrious bee who showed himself this morning so I knew with certainty what wood devouring insect I was dealing with. Secondly to myfrugalhome.com for their informative post on building carpenter bee traps (I cheated and bought one of theirs instead of making one).
I hope that you have a wonderful week ahead and find many reasons to be grateful in the coming week. I can’t believe it’s almost Memorial Day, in some ways it’s like the year is flying by, even though the days seem like they will never end.
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