This Just Writes Itself

Well, today's blog post is as easy as they come. I had some thoughts about what I should do for today, but then I started seeing class photos showing up on the Facebook profiles of local friends and I got excited. Could we finally be getting Darcy's pictures?? And yes, we did!

The folks who do all the class pictures around here offer multiple backdrops featuring local scenery. Darcy kept changing her mind when in the week before pictures were taken, but the day before, I had to make a decision and put it on the order form. I chose the redwoods. She was going back and forth between that and the lighthouse, but the lighthouse background seemed weird, so redwoods it is!

There was NO hesitation about what to wear. Darcy believes that her halter-top dress (very specifically requested because Rosetta-the-garden-fairy wears on) is the most beautiful piece of clothing she or anyone else has ever owned. I was good with it because the color would pop against the redwoods. I don't know how they got her to pose and smile, but I'm so glad they did! Here's our beautiful girl:

Angela Works Sometimes

I mostly stick to non-work stuff for this blog, but I thought I'd use a few days this month to let you all know about the work side of our lives. One of the things I get to do at my job is community gardening. This year, we started two large new community gardens that are thriving. One of them has been in the works since before we moved to Crescent City two years ago. The Elk Valley Community Garden serves our local Hmong community, many of whom were farmers before coming to the United States as refugees during and after the Viet Nam War. This garden is amazing, as the following series of photos will demonstrate:

Elk Valley Garden site, mid-March, 2011

We had a break in the rain early spring this year and we were able to get one of our volunteers to go to the site and till the sod. Unfortunately, he discovered that there was a lot of debris (large rocks, rusted metal, glass) that needed to be removed before he could till deeply, so he left the site looking like this:



About a month after that, the Hmong gardeners came out and combed the site, pulling out everything that could destroy a tiller.

 By the time all that was done and the site was tilled, it was late May. We went out and measured and marked the beds (each family has a 10' by 30' plot) and within two weeks, a blush of green was covering most of the plots:

The eagerness of our Hmong gardeners is overwhelming sometimes. When we marked the second half of the beds, gardeners were working within AN HOUR. By the end of the summer, the garden was so lush with plants at every stage of development (new seedlings that had replaced earlier plantings, plants ready for harvest, and plants going to seed because most of our gardeners are seed savers) that it was very difficult to remember that it had existed for less than four months:

This garden makes me happy. It's feeding well over a hundred people, many of them harvesting every day for their family meals. Twenty-four families are gardening here and it's common to see three generations working together on the same bed. There's a waiting list for space and we're hoping that the land-owner might allow us to fence more space next year and add 10 to 15 additional plots. Even that will not fill the demand for long, but it's a start. 

This is one of the most rewarding parts of my job, but there are others, too. We just did an interview with a local reporter this morning about our community gleaning project. In our first year, we gathered over 4,500 hundred pounds of locally-produced veggies and other food from farmers and backyard gardeners to distribute through our food bank. A week and a half ago, we officially elected 14 people to our Community Food Council, which was just a dream 12 months ago when we were planning the very first outreach meeting. Slowly, but surely, we're changing the face of food in our community. The need is great and there's still a lot to do, but we make a little bit of progress day by day.

In a shout-out to my wonderful husband, he helped bring about a system change in the school food system last month. There were several menu items on October's menu that were ambiguous as to their vegetarian status and Darcy is very keen on being able to have hot lunch every once in a while. Michael exchanged several emails with the head of food services for the district and this is the result:

Note the first Monday box on the lunch menu. No more ambiguity! And they even changed the names of some of the entrees. The "whole grain cheese pizza" was called "whole grain piazza pizza" last month. Yay, Michael!

GO!

Well, it's that time of year again! The time when I drive myself crazy by coming up with a blog post Every Single Day In November. The time when you flock to my blog by the tens to check for the newest post. The time when I catch up with all kinds of stuff I should have posted months ago. Yes, it's NaBloPoMo: National Blog Posting Month! I will provide a link in the next few days, but it's quite a confusing time for NaBloPoMo as they've just officially switched from an independent site to BlogHer.

But enough of that. I signed up for the torture all by myself, so I'll live through it. I did last year, anyway. Here's a cute picture of Darcy-as-fairy for Halloween. She is fueling up on quesadilla and cucumbers before hitting the candy and the trick or treating:

Stay tuned for more scenes for our life in and around the National Parks all month long!

Get Set!

In just a week, it will be NaBloPoMo -- that means a new post every day. It's hectic for me, but fun for you! Here's Darcy and her friend playing pioneer at the edge of the corn maze when we went to the pumpkin patch two weekends ago. I'm going to try hard to figure out how to post video on the blog. Last time I tried, it didn't go so well, but we have some great videos we'd like to share.

(Darcy now reads and answers email. If you would like to correspond with her, let us know and we'll send you her address. Just be warned: You might write three paragraphs, but as typing on the QWERTY keyboard is very frustrating for her, her responses are generally one or two sentences.)

Get Ready!

It's almost November and I have agreed to keep Auntie Best company in National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo) again this year! Every day in November, you can look forward to a new post. Pictures! News! Fun links! They're all coming your way!

"Special Day For Me!"

And so it is. The first day of kindergarten. A very special day for Darcy and she woke up chanting softly, "Special day for me! Special day for me!" I think she might have been a little excited about starting school today. Above, getting ready to climb into the truck to go to school. Below, outside her classroom itching to get inside and start being in elementary school. She knows at least one other person in her class AND in the after-school program, which she's also completely excited about. She is in a K/1 composite class and looks very, very small compared to the rest of the kids. We'll have a report about the first day later. Now I need to get started with a very busy week of work.

August Vacation Part I

It is September. Darcy is no longer a preschooler. Yesterday was her last day of preschool and she starts kindergarten on Tuesday. Our August vacation was wonderful and revived us all to enjoy the last bits of summer in Del Norte. I'll be posting some pictures over the next few days. Here is a taste of the joy that being cousins together can bring.

Darcy and Liana celebrate matching outfits sent by grandma (Kathy) ten minutes after arriving at the house from the airport.
They insist on wearing the matching outfits again the next day (and, I believe, the next day, too) while being a great cheering section for my swim in the triathlon.

While I wait for my team mates to finish the ride and run segments of the triathlon, the girls sport their skirts on the surfboard outside Ocean World, our local aquarium. They had a great time and then came to see me get medals -- and promptly claim one each to wear.
The skirts came off for sprinkler time in the yard. Michael was giving our lawn and fruit trees a good drink before we abandoned them for ten days in Bend. It's the dry time and now we have a carpet of redwood leaves from our unwatered redwood fairy ring.

Proudly showing off their wetness once the sprinklers went off.

This is the 200th post for this blog. Not bad, but I've definitely been less prolific about writing in the past few months. I'll try to do better because I know Darcy has a lot of fans out there who are missing out on seeing all the different stages she's passing through. I don't have anything profound to say today. Michael is off golfing, Darcy and I are about to go to the farmers market and we have vague plans to go enjoy the beauty of the Smith River this afternoon. Del Norte is entering what should be two months of glorious weather and I hope we're able to take advantage of a lot of it before the rains start again.

I've been reading one of my favorite blogs a lot recently (Simple, Green, Frugal Co-op) and thinking a lot about getting rid of a lot of the stuff that we've accumulated over the years. I have made some small starts, but I know there are many boxes lurking in the garage that we've barely opened. Life is too short to be taken over by stuff. I learned recently that books can be recycled in our mixed-stream bin, so I'll be tossing a lot of old editions of textbooks that absolutely nobody wants any more. It's going to feel good.

Enjoy the last days or weeks of summer wherever you live. We're busy treasuring every sunny morning.