Island Mama

I’ve been working on creating a sandbox for the boys for the last few weeks. Digging, by hand, an 8′ x 8′ pit, one foot deep.

I worked on it a little bit at a time, a day here, a day there. With helpers, of course. Made a nice big hole in the ground.

Then we built a low wooden frame for it. Corner posts over which we can loop some sort of netting to prevent the cat from getting in.

And THEN!! Finally!! Yesterday, we were ready for sand.

We had a dump truck! In our driveway!

TRUCK!

Spectators watch the dump truck approach the forest.

The dump truck managed to get through our half-acre woods, between garden beds and raspberries, and down the yard to where the hole was ready and waiting.

And then there was 4 cubic yards of sand. Just like that.

The truck hadn’t even turned to leave before there was a boy on top of that mountain of sand.

And many hours worth of fun followed.

First, we made a cross with two posts. We put the shirt on the cross post first, then tied the two pieces together. (That’s Tim wearing the scarecrow’s hat, which is really actually a wicker plant pot holder thing, on the other side of the straw bale.)

We stuffed the arms with straw.

We made the head out of a pillowcase stuffed with straw and tied it around the neck. Then we stuffed the body with straw.

We added his overalls and stuffed his legs, drew his face and attached his hat.

Then we lay down on top of him and gave him a good talking to about his duties. Well, one of us did.

And ta-da!! We have a scarecrow!

He’s been on duty for a couple of weeks now, and I think he works. He works for me, at least. Every time I catch a glimpse of him from the far end of the garden, I have to look twice because I think “Hey, who’s that in my yard?”

This is Timothy inside the bean teepee I constructed from branches of an alder tree we cut down. The beans are really starting to come up now, finally, after a few very hot days. In a month or two, this whole thing should be covered in growth and provide quite the kids’ hideout.

The peas are already taller than him, he looks like he’s lost in the jungle when he tries to walk between them and the pototoes.

They’re just about ready to start harvesting, the snap variety at least. The shelling ones need to get a little bigger.

I finally figured out a way to make a swing using two of our trees and some rope. The hammocks are holding up well that way, so I sort of started looping and tying and with no real plan, wound up with a rope swing. It needed a seat so I stole a log from the firewood pile….

And hey, it seems to be working well enough!

Now if he could just learn to swing himself without needing pushed…

The excitement of watching out the window: “Plane! Plane!”

This was on our recent trip to Iowa, which has taken me a while to catch up and recover from. Six hours after these photos were taken, all four of us were throwing up in the first hotel we could find an hour into our planned four hour drive. We recovered, gradually, over the course of the week.

We’ve been back for over two weeks, but between the sickness of the trip and lingering blahs, and the must-plant-vegetable-seeds vibe going on since we got back, I’ve just not been on the computer much. There’ll be some more photos from the trip interspersed with more current stuff over the next week or two, I hope.