Terrible/Perfect

That's more like it.

Mange-tout

Salad greens with edible flowers, a few shaves of market gouda, a little Toby's, the raspberries that are just now coming on, baked tofu...this is serious plate-clearing stuff for the girls, I kid you not.

It's very hard to not be a little food obsessed in the summer. It's all fresh and immediate, a slightly obscene flush of abundance. I want everyone dressed in white, eating grapes (or apricots or whatever, it's still July), being flirtatiously saucy to one another and hopping about singing "Hey, Nonny, Nonny".

And then I think, "Whither Robert Sean Leonard?"

Everyone looks so young and beautiful here.

Dead Poets Society, Swing Kids, Much Ado About Nothing. Those were the days when Ethan Hawke was really hot, because you were still too young to see that his character in Reality Bites was a world-class a-hole. I had a huge crush on Mr. "Swing Heil" Sean Leonard, though.

The edible flowers are going like mad in this house.

Hey, nonny, nonny.

THE HARVEST

I always think of a movie trailer voice-over man speaking in capital letters when I see/hear/read the word "harvest". THE HARVEST IS COMING. Or THE HARVEST HAS COME. Or even better, IT'S HARVEST TIIIIIME. You understand, of course.

But when I say THE HARVEST right now, I'm not talking about killing people, like our friend the film trailer voice-over man would be (OBVIOUSLY), I'm talking about being a lawn farmer.

I love that people are growing food in their yards. I don't think it's weird at all, or self-righteous, or a waste of time. I think it's a fantastic use of space and that green growing things will always be good for people, unless we're talking about English ivy, morning glory, blackberries, kudzu or Spartina anglica. Invasives aside, fresh food is good, plants are good, clean outdoor air is good, dirt is good. Good things.

I am, as you would expect, a complete failure at lawn farming, mostly because I am very lazy. Also I have dogs who take enormous pleasure in laying waste to plant beds of all varieties, and children who ask "What's this, Mama?" while holding up a freshly plucked tomato sprout between their fingers.

But this spring, one of Mr. Terrible's coworkers gave him a packet of seeds with which to grow some kind of edible pea pods, which was very nice of her. I let them languish in a stupid, unguarded location for a while, until one of the kids said "What's this?" holding up a packet of edible pea pod seeds with its entire top half torn away. The peas sprayed all over the floor and rolled about like marbles. I rounded them up and took them all outside where I dumped them unceremoniously in the one lonely, empty vegetable bed we'd built from salvage wood two years back. 

"There," I thought. And "Bah."

What I didn't expect was that we would have had a spectacularly soggy spring that would unfold into a decidedly moist summer, alternating, however improbably, between not-to-hot sunny summer days and not-too-cool deluges. A springsummer.

You know who likes this? Not me.

The peas.   

I have accidental peas, the tenacious shooting sprouts of probably over a dozen plucky little germinators. I have done nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing to help these poor fellows-I didn't even bother to cover them with soil when I poured them out on the ground-and yet here they are growing in a verdant heap, tangled in and around one another, unsupported by a trellis or poles. They just lie there all day, rained on by the rain, sunned on by the sun, procreating.

Is there much in the world more beautiful than a pea blossom? Say it, too: pea blossom. 

Today I deigned to look closely at the pea jungle and, behold, there were thin ripe pods ready to eat. 

Each of us pulled one, the girls and I, and ate together: accidental undeserving lawn farmers sharing the warm crisp snapping crinkle of the taste of green.

Grumplestiltskin

Good heavens. Madness around here. Mad. Ness. I was doing reallyreallyreally good for a long time, being Captain Awesome Mom and then I think the madness just went on too long, and now I'm cranky. But less so, maybe, than I had used to be under such circumstances.

No real complaints, though. In my moments of fullest comprehension I realize that my main issue, whenever my kids get really, habitually crazy, is that I get really afraid. I become terrified that there is something wrong with them. That the big kid has ADHD, that the little one will never get out of the weird No Man's Land she's inhabiting between being a diaper-wearing baby and a consistently tinkling-in-the-toilet child. I worry that one or both of my kids is going to grow up into an adult that is hysterical, whining and obnoxious.

Most of us don't. I mean...some of us, obviously, are more high-strung than others. And whining and obnoxious, too. But most people grow up and gain a modicum of self-control. Most people become more or less an adult. I try to keep in mind what would be the most helpful thing for me, as a mother, to do when the kids' behavior gets particularly gnarly, and all I can come up with is to be the least high-strung, hysterical, whining and obnoxious version of my adult self that I can be.

I'm doing a lot of whispering these days. It seems very calming to them. They're like horses.

So.

One of the best, best things that I have ever done as a mom I did the other day. I told the big kid that I never wanted her to be sitting up at night by herself, feeling afraid. I did a lot of that as a child, because I had a very overactive imagination, and it was horrible. I remember being pretty old, under ten but too old to go crawling into my parents' bed, and just sitting up crying with the light on because of whatever I imagined was under the bed or in the closet or what have you. So I told her that no matter how old she is, if she becomes really afraid at night, that not only can she come to us for help, but that she should.

She meandered out into the living room last night sweaty and mumbling something about Monsters, Inc. She fell asleep lying on his chest, like a baby otter.

The Maul

I've spent a bit of time in, of all places, Liverpool, England, and one of my favorite Liverpool-isms is the pronounciation of the word "mall" as "ma-wull", with a short a, as in "cat". Mr. T, being the fuzzily cultured Anglo-American hybrid that he is, never heard it that way, but it was so distinct to me. They don't have malls there like we do in the States, and his family members that spent their holidays in Florida (very common for Brits; when we were in Disney World in April it was chockablock with British vacationers) made a point of visiting American malls to buy consumer goods for much cheaper than they could be had in the U.K.

"We love the ma-wulls there."

I always saw that written in my head as "maul", as in "Let's go to The Maul."

We don't often go to the mall, maul, ma-wull here, just because. It's not really our thing. The mall in our town is one of the worst ones I've ever been in; one of its anchor stores is a Forever 21. But a mall up north of us just opened an American Girl store, and we went this afternoon to check it out. It was the first weekend the store was open, and it was wild: they had tickets for time slots to enter the store, enormous lines to buy all of the fiddly little dolly things and scores of little girls with outfits to match their dolls'. Everyone seemed pleasant and happy, though. It was fun to just look. I liked the potty seat the best.

I let the big girl pick out something, so she made a nail-biting decision between ballet clothes for Addy and a little doll that goes with the other historical doll that she really likes. It's a little Nez Perce girl doll in a cradle board. Tiny and detailed. Kind of hard to resist.

We stopped into the children's shoe store to get the girls' feet measured (I need to do that more often) and confirmed my suspicion that the big girl was walking around in shoes one size too small. They were also falling apart, so it was time.

She picked out some Snow White shoes.

Really, literally Snow White shoes. My childhood self is insanely covetous of those pointy-toed, shiny red shoes with bows and little apple buckles. She says she wants to wear them forever, and I don't doubt it. They were a fantastic deal on clearance so I'm seriously considering buying a couple more pairs in bigger sizes for later. 

We sat down as a family and ate mall food and meandered in and out of shops. I bought her new things but no one exploded or imploded. Want and need met amicably and walked along the strand together, chucking stones into the waves. There were warm cookies and half pints of milk with straws.

When I asked her what her favorite part of her crazy-dolly-store-and-new-shoes day was, she said it was visiting her Great Grandma's house afterward. There was the Great Grandma and enormous sweet dogs and a bigger cousin and everyone admired the shoes. What's not to love?

One the way home she spotted a cloud that looked "like a hummingbird with no wings."

It did.

Ideal

A thrifty find: two and a half pints. Did you know that you can still can in these? Because you can still can in these. According to the United States gods of food safety and the prevention of botulism, BPA is safe as a liner in metallic jar lids, even in the high-heat, often high-acid environment of canning, but old school rubber rings and glass lids, despite being widely used in Europe, are a no-go. I find their advice suspect.

My long-term plan includes Weck jars, but in the meanwhile I'm buying wire bale glass jars whenever I see them. A few new jar rubbers and I'm making some all-natural vacuum seals.

Guess who has two thumbs and is going to be ready for the Zombie Apocalypse?

This guy.

Thursday

We're having longer and longer stretches during the day when we're all happily occupied, which is...oh man. Of course eventually someone pees on her sister's floor, but in the meanwhile, yes: productive, peaceful, and lovely.

In(ter)dependence

July 4th strawberry lemon marmalade, of which the two year-old says "Whassina jar? Whassin it? Iss strawberry lemonade!" Crazy tart and wonderful.

Now I'm trying to figure out exactly how many jars of summer we'll need for the (many) months when the small perfect strawberries of July are a distant memory. On toast, stirred into homemade yogurt, filling birthday cakes, shared with friends, um, eaten directly out of the jar (I'm looking at you, small children of mine)...hmm. I think we might be looking at two jars a week for the off season.

I'm looking forward to a summer of executing a whole host of delightfully excessive plans.

Happy fourth!