splish splash

After the "last day of pottery" party, Jamie showed us the way to a nearby river through the farm land. She keeps tubes handy, so the kids had a blast walking upriver a little, hopping on, and sailing down past the moms.




After swimming/tubing, Dante and River wandered up the other branch of the river, seeking huge crawfish. Dante found one with a softer than usual shell, and River found a huge one.





We found a black raspberry bush coming ripe along the way. Dante censors his face with "the best skimming rock ever".

pottery barn

Dante has been taking a new pottery class in Andover. Jamie's studio is in an old dairy barn, that's chock full of hay and other farm equipment. She's carved out a little niche and has a couple of wheels, counters and tables for the kids to work out. His first class was at the table on the lawn on a breezy summer afternoon.

Jamie talks to the kids about their pieces, which they're seeing glazed for the first time.

hatching fever

Luna is sitting in the flock's favorite nest box for four days now on a little clutch of eight eggs. Everyone was ignoring this fact and piling in to lay, so I blocked their access to it. Not counting our chickens or anything, but hopefully she'll stay in the "zone" long enough to hatch the eggs!

successful hatch!

on the verge

Last week, we were checking on some seedlings near the butterfly garden, and Lucia spotted a monarch caterpillar on the hose. We could see the leaves that it had munched, so perhaps it fell off to the ground and was working it's way back up.

Dante found a big plastic jar, loaded it up with milkweed leaves and we watched it eat and eat until it climbed to the top of one leaf, shimmied out of it's skin and made a chrysalis. Last year we'd taken one of these with us to Lake George so it wouldn't hatch while we weren't around to release it, but I think all the movement of travel had an adverse effect on the creature and it didn't ever hatch. This time we've been careful not to move the jar, and while the chrysalis has been green with the beautiful band of gold dots, tonight it has begun to be to transparent and we can see the butterfly within! So exciting! Somewhere I have a link to a site that has a blow-by-blow pictorial of the monarch's transformation so you can see more stages. But for now, I offer this blurry evidence:

Bullseye!

After the trip to the doctor's office to procure some antibiotics for his very obvious case of Lyme disease, Dante and I took some time to hit Belltown Hills Orchards for some cherry picking. Along the way, we stopped at Claire's to check in on her ducks -- who are all grown up already and beautiful, tho the long shot doesn't do them justice. They're very happy, staying together as a tight flock, in their stream.



Dante spotted and snapped this turkey by the side of the road as we made our way home.

the herb farm

Dante has been taking a new pottery class in Andover, which is just a hop, skip and a jump from Caprilands Herb Farm in Coventry. So we headed over to check it out while he was in class. The grounds are beautiful, tho in need of some care.

The scottish blackface sheep are a little overdue for a haircut. But so excited to get some grain they were leaping with joy (or surprise at our presence) as they passed by.

Lulu, delighted to be holding this 3 day old lamb!

The lamb had gotten separated from it's mother (who was fortunate to have gotten sheared), and we watched them calling for each other until the mother came running over to where the baby was. When the lamb nurses and is latched on and getting milk, the little tail waggles adorably.