Sprite, luna moth, brilliant color

I tore myself away from November Hill yesterday to drive north to my favorite writing retreat location. It was like removing a pot-bound plant from a plastic pot, and for a few hours I wasn’t sure I was going to make it off the farm.

When I got here I was greeted by a sprite:

A gorgeous luna moth:

And gorgeous color brilliant in the late afternoon sun:

If anyone needs me, I’ll be at the desk. :)

Pollinator garden shots, lots going on in August

The first few monarda punctata blooms are coming out. The bees love this plant and it’s my personal favorite.

The butterflies are loving the milkweed and I’m happy it’s going so strong! 

5 Things You Can Do Instead Of Shaming Your Kids

I went to bed last night after reading about the horrific massacre in El Paso, woke up this morning to read of another massacre in Dayton, then needing a bit of lighter fare, read a post from a mom blogger about her daughters’ messy bedrooms full of dirty laundry. She made them gather all the clothing in their rooms and took them to a laundromat to sort, wash, and dispose of everything they didn’t need.

There’s nothing wrong with that, and I don’t know how she actually behaved to them while this was happening, but what she wrote about it, with photos of her girls and the various items of clothing she posted were aimed at shaming them for their behavior. It made me feel very very sad.

I plan to write to every single one of my representatives, starting with the local ones and going all the way up to my senators, to ask what they are doing to address the level of gun violence in our country. Any person in any government role who has been voted into office should be addressing this in some way or other, because it could happen anywhere. It is already happening anywhere.

For the moms who are horrified by your children’s messy lives and rooms, I offer a few things to do instead of shaming them.

1. Model the behavior you want to see. Ask if you can help them organize their space. Make it into a fun thing. “Let’s get your room organized before school starts and then celebrate by going out for dinner!” Helping means just that. Not preaching, not barking, not shaming. Put on some music and dance your way through the clean up effort. Make it a bonding experience, not a shaming one.

2. Remember that creativity is generally messy. If you find clothing that has been cut up, dyed, drawn on, decorated with glitter, or otherwise changed from the way you think it should be, consider that you have a creative child. This is a good thing. Find ways to help them channel it. Please don’t try to shut it down.

3. Give yourself permission to freak out, but do it privately. I like things to be neat and orderly. I love seeing a room that looks tidy. Most of this is my own personality and way of being in the world. Some of it is because my mother was that way. Our house was clean and organized. Mostly because my mother hired someone to keep it clean and organized. My children did not have the ability to hire someone to do that for them.

4. Regarding the impulse to shame: if you are shaming your child it means you feel shame inside. For something. If you don’t know what it is, you can figure it out. You shaming your child is a Big Red Flag that you have work to do on your Self. It doesn’t make you a horrible person or a terrible parent. It just means your children are bringing up in you the things you need to work on as a human. Do it for them. But more than that, do it for YOU.

5. Most of the time our children grow up and move on to other homes. If yours haven’t yet, I bet when they do you’ll miss the messes. If not, no problem, enjoy your newfound clean and tidy home! If, like me, you do miss the creative piles, the projects, the crazy, fun, sometimes disgusting things you unearth, you’ll have to find ways to channel this. Like having cats, dogs, horses, donkeys, a pony, honey bees, gardens, and a ton of other stuff to keep you occupied. Enjoy it all. Life is short. Our children are who they are because of genetics and the way we treat them and how we act in front of them. When we see behavior we don’t like, we have to look first to ourselves, then to our extended families, and we have to make peace with all of it. In the end, if we do this, we can thank our children for helping us become more compassionate and loving.

Ocean Conservancy photo contest 2019, Honorable Mention!

I’m very proud of my daughter, who, in addition to studying neuroscience, doing research with lemurs, training a service dog, and managing a medical issue for the past year or so, continues to take gorgeous wildlife photos.

Last year she won first place in the Human Impact category, and this year she won Honorable Mention overall with this photo:

Congratulations to her and I’m looking forward to seeing what photos come from the next year’s travels and observations of our animal friends both domestic and in the wild.

November Hill farm journal, 81

Busy week here. Our water pressure was getting spotty over the past week so we called the new well service that came highly recommended from a local horse farm friend. I was shocked that they came out so quickly for a non-emergency and am extremely happy with the work they did and the way they involved me in the process, explaining everything step by step and showing me the issues they found.

Our well and all its parts are as old as this house is - going on 25 years of age. The water tank bladder had been punctured by rust debris and become waterlogged, the switch was turning on and off almost constantly, and the old water pump had become worn out as a result of age and the other issues.

We decided to go ahead and have everything replaced with new, better elements. Commercial-grade pump and tank, new switch, new seal, and added a two-filter system as a new update. Our water is very clean and tests well but we wanted to avoid any sediment from having the pump pulled getting into our water lines. It was fascinating to see them pull the pump and stretch it all the way to the front gate! Our well is a little over 300 feet deep.

The highlight of this repair and update is that they have ordered a hand pump for the well so that when we lose power I can pump water by hand into buckets! I’m beyond excited about this - it’s been on my list for several years. These pumps are slow to ship right now so it will likely be another couple of months before we get it, but that will put us squarely in hurricane season - just in time.

We are in a much nicer weather pattern at the moment - highs in the 80s and lows in the 60s - pretty perfect summer weather, in my opinion. We also had a very good rain this past week, which gave everything a needed deep drink after the high heat we’d been having.

In other news, my farm helper is coming two days a week again and as a result is able to get to some tasks that were on the back burner. Every day when I go out I’m finding things he’s done which would never make it to the top of the list but are so nice to see. I’m grateful for his attention and his hard work.

The pollinator beds are going strong. I’ve identified a few things I’ll move in the fall mostly because of the height factor, and I’ve decided that this fall we’ll also go ahead and remove the two remaining rose bushes that I left because of sentimental reasons. They were in these beds when we bought the farm, and while I do enjoy the roses when they bloom, these roses are targets for Japanese beetles and other pests and do nothing for the pollinators, so they’re taking up valuable growing space. I’m thinking more and more about native plantings and how well they perform in the gardens. And now that Arcadia is populated with the honeybee hives,  I need to insure they have a variety of forage year round.

Tomorrow my husband and I are going to watch a friend from bee school inspect her hives. She got her bees the spring after we completed the bee school and has become a certified beekeeper as well as certified in “naturally grown” beekeeping practices. I’ve seen photos of her working her bees and she’s gentle, effective, and shares my beekeeping philosophy, so I’m really excited to get this chance to see her in action, in person.

With the well expense this week, I’m back to my “no new projects” mode until the fall. Already in process is having two broken windows replaced and getting a new/larger dog door installed, but other than that, I’m going to be focusing on implementing things already in progress or on hand. Whew!

I’ve got writing tasks and projects in process also, and this is more than enough to keep me busy. That it’s almost August is amazing to me. How has this year gone by so quickly?