white apples . a blog

fly through my window

Our first Spring in this house, I put a birdhouse in our backyard. A silly little thing, decorated with ceramic chickadees, it hung right outside our sunroom window, not three feet above the ground. I assumed it would be decorative. What bird would build its nest right next to our busy birdfeeder, with a handful of garden gnomes keeping watch and deer tromping by every day? What bird would feel safe so low to the ground, with loud little-kid-hands busy in the garden all afternoon?

But within an hour, a black-capped chickadee settled right in. And it has been the same every April. Small, speckled white eggs. Mama bird coming and going. Juni can’t stay away. She is overflowing with curiosity about the mama and the babies. She wants to know what the nest looks like and the eggs. She is constantly peering into the tiny entrance. Following her lead, Owen grabs the birdhouse to get a better look. The whole thing swings wildly on its hook and I cringe to think of delicate eggs bumping around in there. I run up to grab little hands and admonish, to explain how helpless and fragile those eggs are when the mama is away.

Every afternoon, she lets them inspect her house and her babies. They peer and giggle and stand on tippy-toes, jostling and whispering their loud little-kid-whispers.

That is, until I walk up and she flies away.

If I were the poet I once thought I’d be, before I knew anything at all, I would write a poem for what this says about them and her and me, about trust and fear and motherhood.

Instead I take their hands and walk away slowly.

I explain to my girl that even though mama-bird has left, she is never far away. See how she always comes back.

I remind my boy to be gentle with the world and amazed.

I remind myself to keep noticing these things and remember. 

in the forest

On our way to school this morning, Juniper and I talked about all the things we did during Spring Break last week. We painted and picked strawberries and had picnics in the backyard. We hiked and stomped in mud and slept in late.

"Mama! I also ate lots and lots of candy and watched too many cartoons!"

Yeah, that too. Since I don't have photos of all the illicit sugar and TV, here are some shots of our hike in Eno River State Park.

The website described this trail as a gentle, 1.5 mile loop. In reality, it was a 3.5 mile loop. In the last mile, Juni kept stopping to whisper, "Mama... I think so maybe this is taking a little bit too long." She kept up though and fell asleep about three minutes after we reached the car. Trooper.

the storm

I love those moments, right before the storm begins, when the air is cool and sharp and electric and the wind whips around in every direction at once.

It had been one of those days - full of chaos and bottled-up energy (mostly theirs), short fuses and raised voices (mostly mine). One of those days when all my earnest intentions of mindful mothering go right out the window and I end up being the worst version of myself.

We abandoned the mess and the crumbs and the broken things and spilled outside to watch the dark clouds pile up and feel the first drops of rain on our faces. Juni chased leaves and danced with the wind. Owen laughed and laughed. I took deep, deep breaths of the cool, rain-heavy air and let go of all the tension and frenzy.

The storm, it washed everything clean and we began again with hot cocoa and long, slow stories and the sound of raindrops on the roof.

That dress? Still fits.

a walk in the woods

"I am having a great day!" she shouts. "I am such a good hiker."

And she is, indeed, a good hiker. Or rather, she is a good explorer. A good wanderer. A good little wood sprite, for she zigzags to and fro, up and over and around, with little regard to trail markers and such. If she had room enough in her pockets for every acorn in the forest, she would bring them all home. She stops and lingers, pokes and prods and gathers, and a two-hour hike turns into a whole afternoon adventure.

She reminds us to slow down and look around. That there is no real goal beyond the moment. That throwing rocks into a river is enough accomplishment for one day. That, when your "footies are tired", it is perfectly fine to sit right down in a pile of leaves and have a rest.

(photos from the Eno River State Park)

{this moment}

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

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inspired by Amanda Soule. join in on her blog.

 

Love and Light

Excerpts from Evidence of Things Unseen by Marianne Wiggins:

Maybe soon he'd have to face the fact that everything from here on in was going to make him think of Opal. He thought of her whenever he saw light at play. He though of her while he was seining paper for a capture in the fixative and he thought of her when he saw buttermilk-colored moths mirror-flashing through the bluegrass of an abandoned lot.

How can you identify what you don't know if you don't know it? The great Unknown is not a static. It is peopled. Scattered through with specificity. It's a havoc. Knowledge is at large, for taking, like the air. Still, she thought, there was so much she didn't know that seemed to be the common stuff of other peoples' lives. How to know which books to read. How to read for learning. How to write a letter or a sentence which described the world the way the Mr. Frost described a wood. Or Mr. Eliot the state of solitude.

seek some dewdrops here

My little barefoot garden sprite is perfectly at home puttering around the backyard these days, smelling the flowers, digging in the dirt, and waving to the geese overhead. We build fairy houses and search for gnomes and make "sand castles" in the garden beds. 

Earlier this Spring, she spent quite some time transfering dirt from the flower garden to the vegetable beds with her little spade. The fruits of her labor are evident amongst the veggies now. Zinnia seedings are popping up everywhere. She couldn't be more pleased.

The weather is hot and humid and, after a few big storms, the vegetable gardens are taking off (much more than in the photos below, which were taken several weeks ago). The tomato plants have gotten absurdly huge. Unwieldy. They are elbowing each other for space in our little bed and most certainly crowding out some Swiss chard and edamame that I planted nearby. Beets and carrots and sweet onions are plumping up. Herbs are begging to be used. The silly amount of peppers that I planted are fruiting. Juni and I visit the plants daily, marveling at how well they seem to be growing despite my lack of any kind of horticultural know-how. She reminds me that tomatoes don't taste good, but carrots do.

Juni's simple, peasant-style dress is a pattern I drafted based on a shirt that she already had. The fabric is an organic cotton print from Cloud9 fabrics. Loose and flowy and comfy, it is perfect for a day of garden play.

strawberry girl

We're in the process of cobbling together some vegetable beds and a few flower gardens, even though I am notorious for callously neglecting anything green under my care. We do have some strawberry plants on the back porch, however, that seem to be surviving. More than that, they actually produce about one brilliant red strawberry a day. Juniper has been dutifully watering and pruning and petting.  As soon as she spies a ripe berry, she plucks it and pops it straight into her mouth. According to her, they are sweet and "very goody." I'll have to take her word for it, since she hasn't offered me any yet. 

She reminds me every morning that we need to water the garden (or sometimes, "garden the water"). She walks along, watering and sniffing and naming, "That's a strawberry. That's a tomato. That's a rosemary. That's a fig tree." How simple it is, this kind of learning. Some dirt. A plant. The sun. Time enough to take it all in.

of buzzing and butterflies

Summer days in Durham are bright hot and unbearably heavy with humidity. Juniper loves every minute of it. She begs to go outside in the wilting heat of midday. Unfortunately for her, at 26 weeks, this pregnant mama wants nothing to do with Summer heat indices north of 100.

When we do indulge our little nature girl, she zig-zags around the back yard, gently smelling every flower and sinking her fingers into the clumpy clay dirt. She says "hi" to every butterfly and dragonfly. We sit and watch them dance from bud to branch. Young deer hover around the perimeter, waiting for their chance at the peach tree. Giant fuzzy bumblebees nestle in the zinnias. "Bees!" she yells, giggling with delight, unaware of stings and such things.

She mimics her daddy, inspecting the grass, pulling up weeds. She delights in any little breeze that might come our way. She wanders and explores.

Back inside, we watch the birds on the feeders - extravagant cardinals, impossibly tiny hummingbirds, noisy little finches. I think of all that she must be learning, every moment of the day - things I don't have to teach her, things she learns just by being in the world. It is humbling, dizzying. The swiftness of it all. And the simplicity.

a light exists in spring

Spring is definitely springing here in North Carolina. Days are warm and rainy. Trees are budding. Bulbs are blooming. Birds are nesting. Oh, Spring. Spring has never been my favorite season. It's too beautiful and tenuous. A riot of color and then it's gone. Spring is a heartbreaker. Give me rusty, blustery Fall or even the long, slow heat of Summer. Fickle Spring is not for me. However, this perfectly lovely weather means our days can spill outside once more after many long months spent cooped up inside.