Pictures

A couple pictures from our week:

I'm not a food photographer. I just thought it was pretty awesome that everything but the ham in this picture was grown on our property: eggs, potatoes, green beans, snap peas, cherry tomatoes, and okra.

Here is James showing off the enormous pokeweed he took down with my newest, sharpest gardening tool. Deeeeeeeeelighted. He's also enjoyed using that pointy sharp thing to safely harvest okra, trim an unruly tomatillo shrub, snip back strawberry runners, and clean up some white onions for curing.

School Thoughts

Sending my kids back to school has typically been a time of chaos and relief and adapting to new routines. This year looks to be a little more chaotic than usual. I'm using this space to write it all out so I can get a better grip in my mind. You may find this terribly boring.

All three boys will be attending the same elementary school (K, 2nd, and 5th grade). That's the easy part. They will attend school in person for 5 hours on Mondays and Thursdays of each week, and receive 4 hours of online instruction and 1 hour of "homework" the other 3 days of the week. In other words:

Monday--at school 8am-1pm

Tuesday--on computer at home 8am-12pm + 1 hour homework

Wednesday--on computer at home 8am-12pm + 1 hour homework

Thursday--at school 8am-1pm

Friday--on computer at home 8am-12pm + 1 hour homework

Their experience at school will be unlike anything they've seen before:

Temperature checks to enter the building

12 kids per classroom

Desks 6 feet apart

Kids and adults wearing masks at all times

Meals eaten in the classroom at their desks

Windows open to allow fresh/more air circulation

Limited bathroom access

No recess

At any moment, for any number of reasons, this plan could change to at-home-school full time.

We will also take steps to protect my sister from our newfound wellspring of germs :) Here's the plan: we will stop close contact with her for 2-3 weeks after school begins. If none of us have developed Covid symptoms, then we'll all get tested for the virus. If we're in the clear, we can start spending time with Erin again...using masks, sanitizing surfaces, limiting visits to a few hours (no sleepovers). And that will be the holding pattern until...until...when? A vaccine? Until we've all recovered from infection? Both?

Alice and Robert are eager to get back to school, even with all of the changes. James wishes he could have school at home all the time (he's remembering school-at-home last spring a heck of a lot different from how Bobby and I are remembering it!!), but he's satisfied with 3 days a week. Matthew misses preschool. School at home and school at school will both be worlds apart from his preschool experience. He may be missing preschool for the next few years.

Alice's middle school schedule is a hybrid model, too, with all the same changes in the classroom, but she'll have a lot more time at school. Three full days at school, two at home:

Monday--at school 8am-3pm

Tuesday--work from from

Wednesday--at school 8am-3pm

Thursday--at school 8am-3pm

Friday--work from home

Alice proved herself capable, efficient, and responsible enough to manage her own online schoolwork last spring. I'm not worried about her academically. She's thrilled to get back together with peers!

I got lucky that Alice and the boys will be at school on the same days. That gives me a breather at home without interruption a couple mornings a week. How will I use that time? Or squander it? I don't allow myself to count on that time as a sure thing, though, because things can change quickly. I'd like to use some of the time for the farm and other volunteer work. Some for chores. Some for cycling (my team has made it 820 miles so far!!). Some for quiet reflection. We'll see how it turns out :)

Hail and darkness and music and cousins and bunnies

We had a pretty big storm last weekend. The Evans cousins were staying the night with us while their parents were checking out the real estate scene up north. The storm's lightning and rain weren't out of the ordinary, but then it started to hail:

Robert was completely agog, "This is the first time I've ever really seen hail, and it's this big!"

We lost power that afternoon. The kids were wandering around bored and getting a little worried about how long we would be without power. Night would be coming soon. I don't remember exactly why, but I pulled out my acoustic guitar and just started strumming some minor chords. I improvised a dark, minor version of You Are My Sunshine.  Alice loved it so much that she pulled out Erin's guitar and begged me to teach her the chords. We worked on that together for a while. Bobby got a video:

The lights came on just as it was time to put the kids to bed. Then we lost them again until 3am :(

The kids loved having cousins to play with all day. They kept busy with Duplo, Magnatiles, trampolines, video games, books, sketch comedy, and lots of story swapping. Alice and her cousin whipped up some super garlic cheesy biscuits. Half the cousins even slept outside in the club house!

While this was happening, we were bunny-sitting for some friends. I'm sure I've mentioned these bunnies on the blog before: Pip and Thunder. Alice swore she wouldn't touch them this time. James couldn't stop touching them. Robert and Matthew were somewhere in between:

Stone Soup Garden

I was puttering around my kitchen trying to think of which garden produce I could donate this week. I couldn't think of ANYTHING! We had just finished up the snap peas (Matthew's favorite), the first round of green beans was slowing down (Alice's favorite), the cukes weren't producing yet (James' favorite), and I didn't grow enough big carrots (Robert's favorite) to share...they were kinda scrawny. We are still a couple weeks from getting tomatoes and peppers.

But I wanted to donate something.

I went outside and looked around. Oh! There's Swiss chard! And herbs! Aaaaaaand I could harvest a few of those onions early. I poked and peeked and discovered a large sack of ready-to-donate produce: Swiss chard, onions, potatoes, zucchini, oregano, cutting celery (herb, not a vegetable), thyme, a head of cabbage, and green beans. It felt like food coming out of nowhere. I should have taken a picture of it to remind myself of this later.

Susan snapshot

A few of my pans in the fire...

I recently joined a local initiative called Solidarity Gardens of Champaign-Urbana which is focused on getting regular people to grow food for themselves, their neighbors, and their community. They provide everything for anyone interested in growing food, whatever their experience level. They're also a middle man for gardeners looking to donate extra produce to hungry families. It's perfect! I'll get to donate food from my garden AND spend some weekly hours in a Solidarity Gardens garden nearby. I know, I know. Shouldn't Sola Gratia and my own garden be enough gardening for one person?! Not this year. I'm feeling a greater pull to 1) help others in need and 2) interact with other adults that share some of my interests.

I also recently put together a virtual cycling team racing in the Great American Ride to bike across the US in two months. Virtually. We track our cycling miles and see how close we get to the 3700-mile goal. It's providing just the right blend of social interaction and accountability to get me out of bed and on my bike at 6am a few times a week.

I found an introverted and honest way to get more people involved in the democratic process. I think I have, anyway. A friend told me about Postcards to Voters. Statistically, people who are personally encouraged/contacted 3 or more times to vote are much more likely to do so. Volunteers hand-write postcards and send them to voters in tightly contested districts to encourage them to vote. So far, it appears to be something only the democratic party has tried (what?!). I couldn't find anything like this on the republican side. I wish they did. I would send cards to people on both sides, because the more people we have in the democratic process, the better.

Back-to-School during an epidemic...a lot of mixed feelings about this. Our district is taking a hybrid approach: each child will be in the classroom two days a week and online/virtual learning three days a week. Shortened school days. Everyone wearing masks. Everyone's temps measured before entering the building. Desks six feet apart. Extra sanitation measures before, during, and after school. Kids don't leave their classrooms. I'm not sure if they'll even be allowed to leave their desks for lunch or recess :( It sounds like a grim introduction to kindergarten (poor Matthew), but I'm betting infection rates grow dangerous again by the third week and we'll be fully online again after three weeks. I don't allow myself to complain because we're one of the lucky ones with a job that 1) can be done from home AND 2) happens to support another at-home parent.

But I can be sad. My therapist tells me so, anyway ;) I had my first online therapy session this week. It was different, but still effective. We figured out that the deep well of sadness I've been avoiding appears to be grief. I miss my life before Covid. This life now is better in its own way, and harder, and a different kind of stress. It's exposed several painful, deep, and infected wounds in our society that I've been able to ignore before now. I haven't taken any time to grieve any of this. That's my goal in the near future: to allow myself to feel the grief for a period. Hopefully that will relieve some of the pressure.