Cold one

Low twenties tonight. Feeling the feb in RVA. Les and boys just got back from an owl prowl with her ornithology class. I got back a bit before with pizza to start a fire. Spent my last hour and a half of the day finishing a proposal at a local brewery (with which I have arranged a deal to have them brew a beer in May to celebrate our programs 30th anniversary and the discovery of a dragonfly on the James river in Richmond that only exists in four other places in the world).  Warming up before some foosball. 

Big Snow

Man we got buried. It was so fun, then so messy, then so inconvenient (overzealous school closings and getting way behind on work). But months and years from

now we will only remember the fun part. 

Winter has arrived...

In earnest. Two mornings in the teens. 

Little helper project for today:

Wood!!

We are almost set for next winter, thanks to a major score from a single yard about two miles away. 

One of several hauls. 

Little Hike

We went for another hike yesterday for some unique snow fun in the forest.  So nothing looks familiar to the boys, I realized, due to the blanket of thick snow on everything.  They dont look up and around at surroundings as much as they are focused on things on the ground and at their eye level.  And, you can only tell the trail by the line of footsteps ahead of you.  But… is that really the trail?  We are just trusting the people before us.

I suggested we take a new route which turned out to go in a direction we didnt want to go, so we decided to go off trail.  Or, I decided.  The boys were a little nervous as this was totally new area, plus the snow cover unfamiliarity on top of that.  You really feel lost in broad daylight.  But, it was an opportunity to think differently about being in the woods, to think about the land and surroundings and not the visible trail.  We stopped, talked about what aspects of the forest there we do know: a stream.  Okay, then, how to we find a stream?  We walk downhill.  We did, and found a stream, and lots of animal tracks where something was looking for a good place to cross the stream.  But this wasnt our stream.  So maybe this stream meets up with the one we know.  The one we know is bigger… so what should we do?  Follow it more, downhill.  And so on… and it was so fun to see them in that moment of transition between when everything was unfamiliar and boom, here we are, at the stream we know, with the bridge and the boulders!  And look, here are the footprints again, so this must be the trail!

So fun to watch this happen.  All the while they were asking questions like " what if we can't find the car?", "do you have your phone so we can call a police officer?", "how much snacks do we have?" "Do you know where we are?" and so on…  They did not realize you could actually see houses from where we were.  Once they knew where we were, they wanted to have their snacks immediately.


Sitting, quiet, in that silence, on that white, under that blue, I noticed we were all watching a chickadee tumble around on a cluster of dead leaves, foraging. From nowhere Heath asked Alder what he thought God was.  Alder described a man, with a beard, who "is huuuge", up in the sky.  Alder returned the question to Heath and Heath described pretty much the same thing but added that God knows "all the magic".  We talked about how they both have similar pictures of God, both in some human form, larger than life, up above everything, controlling, strong, old, good.  Then more silence, I waited and then, yes, they asked me what I thought God looked like.  I have no idea.  I just like to think that bits of God are in everything - this snow, that beech bark, that chickadee, that blue sky, and you, and you.  And then Alder said - and I dont know what to make of this and in a way I sort of wish he wouldnt have said this, but he did - "Ah, I wish I would have said that".  I remember the big old man with a beard image too.  Where do we get this?

And then a border collie came by, so eager with its owner to have sticks thrown.  We talked to her, NOT asking about God, though that would have been so awesome to lay that on her.  We talked about a book we must have read the boys a thousand times: "Going on a bear hunt".  The dog in the book looked and acted just like the one we met.  We havent looked at that book in at least two years, but they were able to dredge it up from memory.

Nearly to the car, we noticed the oaks that Mommy likes to point out, looking like people upside down, stuck in the ground, legs sticking up.  But today, they were wearing underwear.   Alder wanted to talk about their butt, which was really big on one side.  Not sure what Heath is up to...

Little Heavy Things

This post deserves the self-title; we know sometimes the smallest of things can tell us much bigger things.

First of all,  Valentines Day every year, we think back to the day we moved to Richmond.  This one marked 8 years here for us!  There have been times, for various reasons, that I couldnt picture still being here.  But, it certainly feels like the best place to be right now.  We are so fortunate and so grateful.

So Grammy and PaPa were able to honor a spur of the moment request, and watch the boys for the weekend in NC.  This was to give Lesley and I the ability to focus on building a bunk bed for their room.  (Yes, we did also just simply have a nice weekend together.)   For better or worse, we had decided the best way to do it for the room was to build from scratch.  And, it was time; they are simply too big for sharing a double bed, especially considering the way Heath crawls all over the bed and Alder through the night.

Lots of cuts and sanding in sub-freezing temps and bitter windchill, but we did it.  They came home to a surprise and loved it.  Luckily we already knew that Heath prefered the lower cave, with more room, and that Alder wanted the top.  So that worked itself out.

The bunk beds, while a big effort, are sort of a small thing though, marking a big turning point.  We don't get to check in on these boys every night any more to untangle them from one anther and make sure they are covered and set for the night.  We will do the checking in of course but how we would find them was always a surprise.  Would they be sweetly cuddled?  What awkward position would Alder be in when he finally gave in and let sleep happen?  How would Alder be trying to keep warm since Heath took all the covers?  How much of the bed would Heath take up and how close the falling off the edge would Alder be?  How can we make sure and use our backs correctly as we bend over and move around these 55 pound sacks of dead weight in the dark?

Another small thing: notice who is reading to who, and who is having a hard time keeping eyes open!

Then, upon bringing the boys back, the snow was falling heavy.  By the next morning (yesterday), we had 8 or so inches of perfect sledding powder.  All school and work closed, on top of a long weekend.

We have a killer hill - "Dead Mans Hill" - in our neighborhood.  It's like watching a pilgrimage to see the kids and families walking from everywhere to get to it when we have good snow.  Everyone is happy.  

Heath wasn't so into it.  First run and he and I got covered in snow.  He was done.  Understandable.  

Alder on the other hand went down alone every time, loving it, hiking back up with no complaints, getting snow in the neck, waiting in line…  Just last year he could only take so much.  This year he was ready.  Heath will be too.

And we all went for a hike along the creek in the forest by our neighborhood.  We LOVE hiking in the snow, wildlife track and sign, how the snow and ice play on everything.  Everything is so peaceful and newly defined with that white blanket of windswept contour draped all over.

Snow day splurge

Rarely do we heat the sunroom in the winter but a snow day seems like the best time to do it.

They lasted for awhile outside before the overwhelming desire to make snow balls coupled with the  lack of substantial winter gloves sent them indoors again. We will try again later. Consuming snow is also an irresistible urge that I can remember well. 

Bring it on Fall Cankerworms!

We decided to use tanglefoot this year to give our oaks a break from another year of Fall cankerworms.  For the past three years, the oaks, and most other hardwoods in our neighborhood essentially have to leaf out twice due to the larvae ("inchworms") devouring tender new leaves.

In short the lifecycle is in winter the flightless/wingless, bizarre looking female moths ascend trees, climbing very very slowly.  Males are attracted by pheromones and they mate along the way.  Once the females reach upper branches, they lay eggs, LOTS of eggs.  Those eggs hatch into inchworms, timed perfectly with early spring leafout.  They eat LOTS and then metamorphose into adults.  And so on…  The crazy thing is that these tiny moths are doing their thing in the dead of winter. 

So we wrap our trees in a strip of flexible paper, spread tanglefoot on it and the females get stuck in that, never making it to the top of the tree.  Lifecycle is stopped, and we are thoroughly entertained, by the number of these things that are caught, and moreover, by the variety of other insects that are caught too!  Folks, everything is not dormant, hibernating, or dead in the winter.  Its been COLD, and these little things are making their living!

Having talked about it at work some, Lesley has offerred our yard as a residential setting study site for some cankerworm research at VCU. In addition to surveys of females and males caught (yes the males fly right up to the stuck females, and get themselves stuck as well), the researchers/students are now putting out cankerworm eggs to study the even smaller parasitoid wasps (This link is to a pic of a parasitiod of stinkbug eggs, which are larger) that lay their eggs on the cankerworm eggs. YES!  There are wasps, even tinier than the head-of-a-pin cankerworm eggs, that lay their eggs on the cankerworm eggs, so that their young use them for food.  You can barely barely see these wasps with the naked eye.  

Picnic at Hollywood Cemetery

We took the heart of the day today to walk around at Hollywood Cemetery.  We just meandered, reading headstones, wondering about how things were back then, overall, in Richmond, and for these people.  So many unique headstones and statues, many quite extravagant, some decorated by people or nature.  

We took a picnic with us to have that at the top, by Presidential Circle, and by President James Monroe's grave.  

We also let the boys have free reign on our cameras/phones so they could take pics, thinking we would post thir favorites.  But this time this idea wasnt as exciting as times before.  There was just already enough fun to be had just running and hiding, etc., with their little dart guns and stuffed animals.

This is an infant's grave where various toys and trinkets are left.

Lichens on the stone, and the massive trees everywhere are wonderful.

Holidays, 2014

This holiday was like a ribbon in a strong wind, about six weeks long.  Honestly the same analogy hits me about our lives altogeher these days, but this occurred to me over and over in a snippet of the past six weeks.  We never knew the next bend but all were right.  There was some work, some school, some transition out of that, a good bit of travel, lots of time with lots of family, sharing, fun, doing and seeing new things, re-doing and re-seeing old things that mark the holidays every year, shedding the routine, losing the schedule, decorating, creating, baking, cooking, eating, gift giving, treats, surprises, ease, sickness, wellness, time for self and time with others.  There is no way to recap, or describe it all, but the few pics that were captured will help to touch on some of the highlights.

Thanksgiving trip to the beach.

An annual solstice gathering at our house, where we strung lights all over, and hosted a stampede of children, ages 2 to 8, and parents.  This includes a potluck and a shadow puppet play that the kids each make a character for.

I got to spend an afternoon in Heath's class helping with a craft, the last day before we set off for Birmingham.  He absolutely loves school, his class, his friends, his teacher.  He is just bouncing the whole time he is in there, total love.  And he was so excited to get back on that school bus on the first day back.  He is devouring reading and writing right now.  He just has this in him right now.  

We stayed over in Knoxville on the way to Bham, showed the boys our old house and favorite places.  Dinner at Tomato Head.

Breakfast at the bagel and coffee joint Lesley and I used to spend so many mornings in.  They opened an hour early to let us in and set us up special.

A family pic after we all went to Mass.

One day in Birmingham, we went hiking at Red Mountain Park, which is the former site of a booming steel mining operation/small town and now set up for hiking and other outdoor adventures.  The cousins played pretty much nonstop for a week and so very well together.  What a fun place to explore...

Old building foundations to play on, and cool rocks and mining relict machinery and structures everywhere.  Since this has been repurposed now for an adventure course, there was lots of ziplining to watch overhead as we hiked around.

And Dad got to let loose and take lots of random pics of how vegetation was reclaiming the structures too.

Kids breaking for a snack.

Okay major fast forward here.  Lesley left for Panama on the 27th and the boys and I drove back the next day, staying over one night at a neat hotel ("Aloft") in Charlotte.  They got to eat yummy/unhealthy bar food and play lots of billiards.

And we got home to spend a solid week, just… at home.  I will say here we have greatly missed our Mommy, but we have done well.  I have made a point to let each day pretty much unfold naturally, with an idea or two of "things to do", some of which happened and some which didnt.  What did unfold was three days including hikes in the area.

One day we walked to the boys school and spent the afternoon in the woods behind it.  Heath showed us where he and his friends like to play in leaf piles

We found some salamanders in the creek down the hill behind the playground.

Found some cool rocks…  Another day we went for a hike with one of Heath's friend's family.  Our first time spending time with them altogether.  (No pics of that.)

And another day we met up with old friends we dont see enough anymore at some abandoned coal mines that have been redeveloped into parks, right by our house  This is the same spot Lesley and Alder went to look at Mergansers a few blog posts back.

And now… we are back to the routine again, bracing to watch 2015 flash by.