Yesterday Annabelle and I visited our new doctor’s office.  Since I thought we’d spend a fair amount of time in the waiting room, I suggested that she and I put together our “Art on the Go” Bag, which I’d read about in Amanda Soule’s The Creative Family.

While I’m not so crafty as Amanda and thus didn’t sew our bag, I did put a few fun art materials together (in a canvas bag) for Annabelle and me to play with whenever we’re in places, like doctors’ offices, and we need something to do.  For our purposes, I included: several blank sketch pads, colored pencils, real drawing pencils (and charcoal too), a sharpener, crayons, stickers, a gardener’s coloring book (something I picked up for myself in my pre-kid days . . . well okay, I suppose I’ve long been a kid at heart), and a gardener’s house plant guide.

Here’s how our first sit down with our “Art on the Go” Bag went:

The first items that Annabelle noticed in the bag were the fine drawing pencils, something I’d picked up for myself a few months back, never really used, and after reading Soule, decided would be put to much better use as good art materials for my toddler.

She was fascinated by the pencil sharpener, though at first, she didn’t quite know what to do with it . . .

at this point, I asked her whether she wanted me to show her how to sharpen a pencil.  She did, so I went ahead and pulled out a color that needed sharpening; this captured her interest and from there, she wanted to sharpen all the pencils in the kit . . . every single one.

So we spent several minutes, our entire wait in fact, sharpening our pencils, which really isn’t such a bad way to pass time waiting at the doctor’s office.

When at last my name was called to meet the doctor, we packed up our supplies and made our way back to the exam room.  On the way there, Annabelle told me, “I don’t want to get any shots, okay?”  Actually, it sounded more like this: “I no want to get any shots today, k?”  I assured her that there were no shots to be had today and that we were simply going to meet her brother’s doctor (since our appointment dealt mostly with his coming birth). Annabelle responded, “My brother get shots, okay?”  and then she laughed a devious little laugh.  I shook my head and told her that it wasn’t very nice to wish shots on anyone but that yes, at some point, her brother would get his shots from this doctor.  She seemed okay with my answer and once we walked inside the exam room, this is how she looked:

We then met with our new doctor (can I just say how surprised I am by how nice he is?  Isn’t it terrible but I thought it was weird that a doctor was being so personable . . . the last time I experienced something like this was when I lived in New England and saw an old Czech doctor who once told my father he was too sweet when diagnosing him with diabetes).  Annabelle shyed away at first but by the end of the appointment she felt comfortable enough to wave at the doctor (she usually screams with panic around them) and whisper a quiet goodbye.

So, how can I wrap up this story?  Well, I could draw a couple of conclusions: 1) An “Art on the Go” bag is a wonderful outlet and distraction for children (and their moms and dads too) while waiting in waiting places, 2) Annabelle is already acting like a big sister and wishing shots on her little brother, and 3) we met a genuinely nice man who happens to be a doctor and who doesn’t scare the bejesus out of my daughter.  All and all, it was a great morning.

Thanks Amanda Soule,

Water painting is a pretty straightforward undertaking.  All you need is water, paint brushes, maybe some sponges, a cup or bucket, and well, yourselves.  To get busy painting with water, Annabelle and I sat down on a sidewalk alongside our town’s fountain.

At first, water painting was serious business.  Annabelle would dip her brush in her black plastic bucket and really think about what it was that she wanted to paint: In the words of Picasso, “I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them.”

And in the words of Pollock, “The painting has a life of its own.  I try to let it come through.”   I wonder whether Pollock would’ve enjoyed splattering water on a hot dry sidewalk . . .

because in a couple of seconds, the painting evaporates to the sky.  Luckily, Annabelle didn’t seem to mind collecting more water . . .

especially since wet feet and wet hands make for great sidewalk painting . . .

Picasso tells us that “painting is just another way of keeping a diary” . . .

could it also be that painting is just another way to make friends?

But perhaps Henry Ward Beecher said it best: ” Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.”

What water painting brings to (my) mind is just how transitory beauty and life can be.  In one moment, we are painting suns, star fish, hand and feet prints, trees and houses, and dogs too, and the next, our paintings are gone, we are drying off with a towel, and one more day, one more moment we will treasure, has passed.

It kind of makes me grateful for photography . . .

To care for the earth, Annabelle and I grabbed gloves, a biodegradable trash bag, and my camera . . . I figure I better catch her on film now–while she’s still young and enthusiastic about picking up garbage in our neighborhood and park.  First we made our way up to the neighborhood park where to my delight and surprise, we saw little garbage.  We then trekked across a large field and out to the road where, along the sidewalk, much debris was to be found.

Annabelle insisted on carrying the bag.

Then she needed to figure out how to keep her gloves on . . .

still working on the gloves . . .

Gloves on!  Now to find some trash . . .

Found some!  In the bag it goes . . .

And that was how we spent our morning caring for the earth.  Annabelle was so excited to have picked up trash that when her dad came home, she told him all about it, and then, later that evening, while on the phone with her grandma, she proudly exclaimed, “I picked up garbage today!”  I can only imagine what my husband’s mom thinks when she hears I have my 2 year old working outside on summer days, searching for trash.  But honestly, she loves it!  Not only did she insist on holding the bag but she insisted on picking up each piece of debris we found (though I stepped in when it came to glass and cigarette butts).

I’m kind of thinking that picking up trash, which is a favorite past time of mine, could become our new thing . . . sort of like a scavenger hunt where the treasure is a cleaned up earth.  Now that’s my idea of good fun.

To experience blue, yellow, and their secondary color, green, Annabelle, her dad and I tromped outside with a butcher roll of paper, blue and yellow paint, paintbrushes, and our selves.  Here’s what our paint session looked like:

After we painted, it was time to clean up, which I think was Annabelle’s favorite part of mixing colors.  Cleaning up after painting outside means lots and lots of water.  In other words, it’s a good reason to get wet:

Annabelle wasn’t the only one to get wet . . .

So that was blue, yellow, and green.  I wonder what fun we’ll have with yellow, red, and orange, and then blue, red, and purple . . .

Day by day, as I move closer to my due date and Annabelle takes one step closer to meeting her baby brother, I hope that we’ll enjoy a beautiful and creative summer.  As part of this desire, I’ve decided to document the next 30 days as 30 days of You and Me, a month of posts dedicated to my daughter Annabelle.  Initially, my idea for this post was inspired by a few books I found at the Goodwill; the way my idea evolved though, was influenced a great deal by finally  having read this book by Amanda Soule, which I had (rightfully so) heard great things about.

Organizing my ideas and making it something doable (for both myself and for Annabelle too) was made possible, though, by these ideas shared by Jean over at the Artful Parent.   Setting up our chalkboard and keeping the ideas and plans for each activity were inspired even more by this idea that Jean’s friend Jennie shared with her and which is entitled “Doorway into Summer.”

Because we’re already in the midst of summer (or at least it’s felt that way here in Virginia anyway), and because my days of being one-on-one with Annabelle are coming to an end, I’ve decided to think of the following activities that I am about to share with you as “30 Days of You and Me.” Beginning on Sunday, Annabelle and I have selected one of the following activity cards (that are a border around our chalkboard) to inspire us to do something creative together; while I realize many of the ideas put together here are things that children may want to do daily, I’ve purposefully collected them together to remind us to try new things and to make it purposeful for us . . . meaningful for mom and daughter (and dad too) as we close in on baby brother’s due date and the coming time that will be our family of four.   So, here’s what our board looks like:

Activities included among our 30 Days of You and Me include:

from Amanda Soule’s The Creative Family

Art on the Go Bag!

Nature Spot (finding our centers, finding a place of quiet and connecting with Mother Nature)

Hiking and Bug Watch (because it’s summer and we live in Reston)

Daily (Family) Drawing

Dress Up

Garden Observations (either drawing, photographing, or listening in the garden)

Weather Record

Poetry (reading, listening, and making it up)

Gratitude (making an effort to notice and share what we are thankful for, especially at meal times)

Fire (a neat tradition for the sharing and ridding of fears  . . . yes, we’ll light a real fire for this one)

Earth Care (we’ll trek over to our park for cleanup)

Banging Wall

Baking

*****************************************

from the Goodwill’s treasure of books entitled:  Science Experiences for Young Children: Pets, Colors, and Water by Rosemary Althouse and Cecil Main

Care of Fish Bowl Log (similar to our weather record, we’ll create a chart together to document the feeding and care of our fish)

Primary Colors (mixing the primary colors, one pair on each day–this one will take a few days–to create our secondary colors)

Pet Art (using a variety of mediums to create representations of our family pets)

Pet Drama (a day of mask making, drama, and animal sounds . . . I can’t wait to do this one!)

Observe and Compare (our) Pets

“I Spy” Magazine Color Clipping Game

Water Painting (artfully creating with water on a dry surface and observing the evaporating properties of water)

Color-a-day Snack (making a snack together that matches up with whatever color Annabelle chooses . . . I’m thinking carrots or melon for an orange day and strawberries and punch for a red day)

Doll Bath and Clothes Washing (we’re going to set up bath and shop outside, wash our dolls, wash their clothes, and then let them all catch a few rays to dry off)

Ice (observe the properties of ice versus water)

Floats in Water

Soaks up Water

and a few more activites I’d like to do:

Thrifting (a great favorite of mine . . . I can’t wait to search for neat dress up clothes, pots and pans, books and fabric, and other odds and ends.  And it warms my heart that Annabelle seems to enjoy rummaging through old treasures at the thrift shops too).

Sunflower Pot (we’re going to try try again and plant a few sunflower seeds in an empty pot that is just waiting to be filled up with dirt for some pretty yellow and pretty tall sunflowers).

Flower Arranging (a Montessori practical living activity that I’ve long wanted to try with Annabelle)

And so, I hope you’ll join Annabelle and me as we make our way through the coming 30 days.  It should be fun,

Jessica

It’s been several months now that I’ve been participating in Aisling’s Sunday Stroll carnival, and I have to say, not only has it been neat to have a photograph theme to look forward to each week, but it’s been great fun learning about my garden and getting to know other gardeners and photographers through the carnival.  Thanks Aisling for hosting Sunday Stroll each and every week!

This week in my garden, I worked hard.  Maybe too hard.  I know, I know.  I’m 33 weeks pregnant and I probably should not be breaking my back and sweating it out among dirt and leaves, but I have to tell you that as much work as it is, I like doing it: my garden is a little piece of happiness and pride for me.  This is what I did:

1. Annabelle and I made at least 3 visits to the hardware store to purchase mulch, bricks, and other materials for the garden.  Visits to the hardware store, while not necessarily painful, require some planning, entertainment, and patience: have you ever let your 2 year old push a wide garden cart down narrow aisles and around the corners of a store?  I have, and let me tell you, it makes you start to think about what the visit could potentially cost you should a display come crashing down (or worse, come crashing down on an unsuspecting patron).  A better option?  Wait to make trips to the hardware store for when Dad is home and your 2 year old can be gainfully entertained (and you can go in and out of the store in a blink . . . how often does that happen though?)

2.  Weeded my liriope.  Yikes!  The liriope in my yard is lush and growing strong . . . and spreading so fast that I’ve lost track of what is growing among it.  My husband, who prefers a tidy garden, will now and again crouch down and pick through the liriope to pull the weeds and wandering sweet woodruff (as much as I love the look and smell of s.w., it will happily move among other plants and claim the dirt as its own territory).  In something of a contrast, I don’t mind a wild garden look, but for some reason, and yes, it probably has to do with nesting, I wanted to thin the liriope and remove the wandering woodruff.  Rewarding?  Yes.  Backbreaking.  Uh-huh.

3. Dug out 3 plots and replaced clay based dirt with gardening soil.  For some reason, and I am now suspecting slugs and other pests, the flowers that grow in the upper 2 plots beside my front door are short lived plants.  The only flowers to do well there have been my petunias and hanging baskets.  Because the hanging baskets were thriving, I initially suspected the quality of the dirt and so replaced it; then at dinner last night, I told friends how I grieved the unintentional death of a slug (I accidentally killed one and being the animal lover that I am, I naturally cried over the slug’s death in my kitchen sink), and they laughed saying that slugs may indeed be the reason my flowers’ leaves get eaten up and my flowers dry up and die.  Anyone else have an explanation for why my flowers are drying up in these plots?  For now, I replaced the dirt, remulched, and transplanted the alive but faded zinnia to a lower and sunnier plot.  In the new plot, the zinnia have re-opened (within just a day!), so there is definitely something going on in the other 2 plots.  I’d love some possible suggestions!  Any ideas?

4.  We found a turtle.  Okay, I realize that finding a turtle is not work (in fact, it’s lots of fun to find different creatures living among my plants), but what is interesting is that I believe this turtle, who was hiding out in the liriope has been living in my garden all summer long.  Earlier this summer, we found him in the back garden among my ivy and now he seems to have wandered to the front (this guy just loves ground cover).  While I can’t know for sure whether it’s the same turtle, I’m pretty certain it is (looks to be the same orange and grey guy).  What’s great about having a garden turtle is that he or she is something of a free pet from the universe that we don’t have to “take care of” because he/she is doing just fine, all on its own, out in the garden.

5.  I built small retaining walls with scalloped brick.  Reason?  I don’t want to lose any more dirt and mulch.  With all the rain that’s been dumping all over my garden (which is great in that I don’t have to water the garden so often), the dirt and mulch just wash away . . . and well, the loss adds up (and most certainly affects the plants too, yes?).

Below are 2 photos of the front of my house where I grow many of the flowers I share for Sunday Stroll:

At the bottom of the garden: 2 scalloped brick walls keep the new mulch and dirt inside the lower 2 plots.  I planted new orange zinnia and transplanted the old pink zinnia to the lower left side after replacing the dirt there.

Just another shot of the front of our townhouse.

This photo was taken 2 doors down in the English garden maintained by my nature loving neighbor.  She is so amazing with her garden and yet so carefree about growing too.  I so envy her green thumb, :-)  Oh, anyone know what this one is?

These too are from her garden.  Remember the unopned Asclepias from last week’s post?  Thank you to Tabbie for identifying them.  Aren’t they just gorgeous now that they’re open too?

the new zinnia in my bottom garden;

more zinnia

the stonecrop in the lower plot, growing nicely with the zinnia;

opening echinacea in my other neighbor’s desert garden . . . I really do need to “borrow” these from her;

my tomatoes are getting larger everyday . . . I can’t wait for them to ripen!  Yum!

a cucumber;

pretty yellow cucumber flower;

and last, but certainly not least, a sweet little cucumber that is making its way from my garden to the kitchen table.  I can’t wait!

What’s growing on in your garden?  To see others who are strolling this week, hop on over to the Quiet Country House.

Cheers,
Jessica

Then followed that beautiful season… Summer….
Filled was the air with a dreamy and magical light; and the landscape
Lay as if new created in all the freshness of childhood.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Saturday morning edit: After visiting sunndaytodaymama and learning about Folding Laundry’s You Capture’s Summer carnival, I decided it would be fun to participate with this post.

On hot June mornings, Annabelle and I wander over to Reston’s Lake Anne to see what’s happening.  It’s often hot, always fun, and never without a bit of magic.

It’s official.  I am, hereby, declaring myself a hula hooping hippie.  Yes honey, you were right about me,

And in case you were wondering, this is me, pregnant, at 32 weeks, participating in our town’s family fun night hula hooping.  I won a pencil,

On Saturday, amidst the heavy falling rains, we ventured out to the local pet shop to buy 2 goldfish and a snail.  Annabelle respectively named them: Berry (as in Blueberry), Silvia, and Oscar (who we refer to as Oscar the Snail so as to distinguish him, or her (I wonder), from Oscar the Grouch, another popular character in our house).

The idea to seek out 2 goldfish and snail came from the “Pets” edition of these old Columbia University preschool books on science experimentation for young children.  Apparently, and I suppose this makes sense, owning a pet, like a fish, gerbil, turtle, ferret, cat, or dog, is a way for children to learn about the care of a living being.   I paged through these books as I sat on the bottom steps of our stairwell trying to determine how our family should spend the morning, which I’d hoped would be outside at the farmers’ market and our town’s children’s fountain.  To my surprise, when I offered up the suggestion to my husband, who seemed determined to spend his rainy day in the rainy day fashion of doing nothing, he eagerly agreed, and so, the 3 of us set out into the rain for a short drive to the pet shop.

Annabelle and the young girl working at the store selected the fish, and as an after thought, I asked whether a snail would do well in the same bowl with them; the sales person seemed to think so, and that’s how Oscar came to join us.  I’m thinking he’s a functional additional (a natural water filter and grime eater), as well as being pretty to look at.  Mostly, Oscar just hangs out, suctioned onto the side of the bowl.

At home, Annabelle colored and pasted the following fish bowl and fish, which I found and printed out from the net, while I read a bit more about the care of goldfish.

What I learned surprised me: a single goldfish thrives in a minimum of 10 gallons of water, while adding just one more fish can require up to 50 gallons of water . . . caring for goldfish turns out to be more of a responsibility than we’d anticipated.  So, I think that over the next couple of weeks, we’ll search for a larger fish bowl, add some plants (so the goldfish can hide now and then and won’t feel stressed out), and we may even need to look into purchasing a real filter since goldfish apparently produce a great deal of waste.

But, I say that Berry, Silvia, and Oscar are well worth the care they require. Each morning when she wakes up and each time we walk into our house, Annabelle tells us that she needs to go and visit with Berry, Silvia, and Oscar; she climbs up a small step stool that we’ve set up beside the table top that holds their fish bowl, feeds them every other day, and daily talks with them about her goings on and their swimming (which is what they do).

And so, Berry, Silvia, and Oscar have come to live in the Monte house.

I have to admit that as much as I love my camera and playing with my new macro lens, it’s been a bit neglected these past weeks as my head has been buried in books on birthing and babies. One afternoon this week though, when it wasn’t raining, Annabelle and I headed outside so that she could ride her tricycle (she’s finally able to pedal uphill, no small accomplishment for my 2 year old) and I could squat, crawl, and do my best (managing my very large belly) to get at the level of amazing macro subjects. This week, I crawled through my neighbors’ gardens; in my one neighbor’s garden, she landscaped with a low maintenance desert scheme: there are many ferns, wildflowers, and small cactuses, whereas my other neighbor’s English garden, which I’ve mentioned here before, is full of native and random plants growing wide and lush. The macro photos shown here are my best attempts at “capturing” their gardens and the critters who call these gardens home. I used a smaller aperture and experimented with breath techniques that Melody recommended in a previous macro post.

Additionally, this week I’d like to offer a free print of one of the macro photos shown here or one that is available in my Starr Mountain Etsy shop.   Simply leave a comment in this post specifying which photo you would like, and next week, I’ll have my macro assistant, Annabelle , select a winner.  Ah, and if anyone knows what the names of the plants shown here, I’d love to know so that I may catalog my photos with the proper titles.  Thanks!

Oh, one last thing: Happy Father’s Day!