Weekly Wrap Up: Overwhelmed

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Miss 10’s gluten free Canada Day cake

In my life this week…

I feel overwhelmed. First Canada Day with cake and fireworks, then a concussion (Miss 10 bumped her head on the swing set), now a house full of girls, and through it all a garden that needs to be weeded, fruit that needs to be picked, and a house that needs its summer organization.  Everything except poor Miss 10’s head is good, though, and even she is improving, slowly.

In our homeschool …

With the holidays, the concussion, the garden, and the sleepover, not much of our summer learning got done.   But that’s OK.  Our main learning goal is to make sure no one forgets too much, and we’re meeting that goal.

Miss 10 is not allowed to do any strenuous brain work—or anything else for that matter.  She finally understood why when she tried help the dogs chase a deer out of our yard.  Her head was terribly sore after just a few steps and since then she has been content to lie down.

Miss 15 did some logic, and Miss 13 practiced her organ a bit.

Mr. 18 finished the final hurdle to get his adult driver’s licence.  No more driver testing for him until he’s an old, old man!  Due to a catastrophic hard drive failure, he is now planning to set up a server.  And, no, he is no longer homeschooled, but he keeps on learning for fun and it is such a joy to watch his excitement.

In our garden…

We’re weeding.  Or at least I am, while Miss 13 and Miss 15 pick currants and service berries, Miss 10 lies around, and Mr. 18 does heavy yard work or goes to his job.

We are eating herbs, Japanese greens, snap peas, snow peas, radish seed pods, spinach, salad greens, rhubarb, red currants, and downy serviceberries (the eastern version of Saskatoon berries).  The bugs are eating broccoli, cabbage, kale, carrots, beans, and turnips, and we’re planning to reseed today.  When the chickens get out, they scratch up the peas and the watermelons.  We could be eating elderberry blossoms, but we prefer the fruit later in the year.

Our apple trees, which were covered with hundreds of tiny apples, presented a problem:  I was afraid the weight of all that fruit would break the branches, a problem we had with our cherry plums a few years ago.  However, many of the tiny apples are falling off on their own, which is probably a problem in itself but which is very helpful this year.

Our primroses, roses, peonies, day lilies, and poppies are beautiful.   We have the standard red poppies as well as flouncy apricot-colored double poppies from my mother’s garden.  The yard has been mowed and edged and it looks very nice.  We planted flowers in some new areas this year and I really need to buy fertilizer because the soil is terrible.  Compost would work, but I like to save it for the vegetable garden, and besides, it’s easier to put fertilizer between plants than to get compost in there.

The wildflowers are at their best right now.  Brilliant spikes of blue viper bugloss are everywhere, surrounded by daisies, white wild pinks, yellow butter and eggs, and other shades of yellow and green.

In the kitchen… Canada Day cake, made by Miss 10 before she hurt herself.  Salads.  Sausages.  Poutine.  Pizza. Ice cream. Chocolate chip cookies.  Chicken with sweet potatoes and sautéed fresh spinach.  Slow-cooked pork roast.  And I’m freezing currants and service berries.  As usual, it was all gluten-free, although I felt so terribly awful last weekend that I may have made a gluten mistake then.

Some of my favorite things were…

• Miss 10’s Canada Day cake.
• Fireworks.
• Eating handfuls of red currants.
• Going to bed at 8PM with Miss 10 because her head  was too sore for her to fall asleep without a good snuggle.  I was so tired and it was so peaceful that I fell asleep before she did.
• Reading Cooked by Pollan.  I’m savoring every page of this wonderful book.

Questions/thoughts I have…  So many things could go wrong every day, and most of them don’t.   It’s easy to take that for granted until something does go wrong, like Miss 10’s concussion.

Fitness… Gardening, walking, housework, swimming.  My steps averaged almost 10,000 a day once I felt OK again, and 7500 before that.  Life has been too chaotic for me to make yoghurt.

Things I’ve been working on…

• Weeding the garden.
• Getting together a box for our homeschool  consignment store.
• Finding out-of-the-way shelf space for last year’s homeschooling books.
• Preparing for a family reunion.
• Planning, overseeing, and doing the garden and orchard work.
• Exploring Pinterest.
• Beginning a mini-version of my annual summer home-organization project.  It’s very ‘mini’ this year, but ‘housework done imperfectly still blesses the family’ as Fly Lady says.
• Some writing and editing.

We’re watching…

Miss 10 has watched hours of Edwardian Farms, a very relaxing BBC mini-series, great for recovering from a concussion.  Miss 13’s sister-care duties involved watching it with her.  The older girls watched some action movies with their friends.  I don’t like these movies at all, but my husband says they are OK, although he does not want Miss 13 to watch certain ones yet.

I’m reading… Psalms.  I finished Winter Solstice for the umpteenth time.  It’s a book I love to read when I’m feeling very tired.  Now I’m enjoying Cooked, Fighting Fatigue, and Mathematics: Is God Silent? but there has not been much time for reading.  Soon I hope to begin Saving Leonardo and Captivating.

Reading Aloud… We’re reading 2 Chronicles but with one thing and another we’ve done no other reading aloud this week.

When my husband is home for meals we’re still reading Matthew.

I’m grateful for …. Warmth.  Happy kids.  Gluten-free, yeast-free pizza.

Quote or link to share….     For pure beauty, visit the Pinterest boards of Jane of Prairie Hill Farm.

This post is linked to Kris’s Weekly Wrap Up .