Thursday Friday

Friday
9.30a    - electric company ep 437
9.45a    - outside PE (5x 500ft laps)
10a    - puppy training
10.15a    - pbskids
10.30a    - dragonbox app (algebra prep)
11.15a    - cooking and nutrition discussion
11.30a    - break

12.30p    - copywork
1.30p    - timed copywork, discussion of paying attention
2p    - break

4.30p    - showing mom dragonbox app
4.45p    - break
5:15    - plant care and maintenance
5:30    - done

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Thursday

9a    - pbskids
9.30a    - kite building and flying
10.15a    - PE (5x 500ft laps)
10.30a    - break

11a    - dragonbox algebra app
11.45a    - pbskids
12.30p    - Electric Company, ep 386 & 391
1.30p    - done



//She wants to build more kites, told her we need to buy some more dowels and have a good windy day.  We also have to try to give the other puppies away...I have the weekend off.

Finished book two of the Rain Wilds trilogy by Robin Hobb.. on to book three soon.
Need to go back and read the Liveship trilogy.

Really glad for a weekend.

Wednesday

8.30a    - minecraft
9a    - "looming" (weaving)
10a    - break

11.30a    - gardening
11.45a    - copywork
1p    - outside PE
1.30p    - break

4.45p    - mathific
5.15p    - done

She was watching the Canterbury Tales and Frankenstein from her classic cartoons collection.
She showed me her weaving work, which was a good progress from yesterday.
Then, she planned to tape feathers on the back of fabric or paper wings and put her arms in them and fly.  We made it to her plan..and then it became a costume.  She was making a mask for it while I am typing.




I have the second toy plane to finish and hope to send them out tomorrow morning.  She has picked out bits for her own plane, too.

bits of January (dry beans)

 This is my produce of dry beans from 2014.

I'm still keeping some of the varieties alive..still surprised by others.

We used all the string beans we needed out of the Shackamaxons and Providers while they grew, and I saved the rest of them for dry seed.

The ones I know for certain:

Kenearly Yellow Eye (Steuben yellow Eye) --bush - supposed good for soup beans, still working on growing out enough that survives our land.

Ireland Creek Annie --bush -- new grow out last year, got a half-pint jar grown out from a short row.. very nice.  Will grow them again if we have room.

Jackson Wonder Lima Bean --bush  Mainly grow these for pretty.. didn't eat any.

Provider bush beans - our best provider for green beans.. we always have too many!

Blue Black Shackamaxon beans -- backup longer provider for beans, didn't eat as many last year as usually, made less soups because of less zucchini to go with it.. but they did not fail to produce lots of dry beans.

Tongues of Fire (Lingua de Fuoco beans or Taylor Dwarf Horticultural?) --bush -- these look like a cranberry bean to me, will continue to grow out.

Florida Speckled Butter Peas --climber -- decorative, grew out very well, will continue

Rattlesnake beans --climber -- didn't eat many, they grew okay, didn't save many dry

Bosnian beans -- climber  Nice string bean, green pod with white flowers.   Even as a dry bean the shape, color and the white spot that stays white as the rest of the bean gets orange and black is a telling sign of which is this breed and which are not among the other 'speckles'.

Hyacinth beans (decorative climber) in the cup below, not edible, but pretty purple flowers

Brown speckled Whipporwill cowpeas  climber : I did cook some of the older beans last year, not bad.. very unlike the canned 'field peas' in taste.. very much like them in look, though.  I would prefer the from dry to the canned ones anyday. 

Cherokee wax beans --bush

and three I'm not so sure of:

White climbers - they stay pure white long after they dry...I didn't plant any last year and I still got some...not sure.  They tend to be small and flat, and very confusing which thing they are popping up out of.

White speckled climbers :  These are roundish beans -and have been consistent to form when I plant them (except see above).  They develop a golden yellow to dull brown 'coat' around the back opposite the helium.  I need to plant these again in a place by themselves so I can really see the differences and if there is anything else popping up when I plant these.

Tennessee greasy variant - black and white speckled large beans similar to the Bosnian, but without the white spot or the same shape..they are more flat like the Rattlesnake beans.  They turn dark orange the longer they dry..keeping their speckles under the orange.  They are purple and mottled as string beans - very waxy, with a thick string.  They are fairly good as small string beans, but they are very very late to produce and get thick quickly.  I did not like them as shelly beans (but maybe didn't cook them long enough) and have not tried the dried beans in anything.

I tried to keep the Providers, the black-seeded waxes and the decorative one separate just to make sure...

Tuesday

We said goodbye to our Blaze dog (the largest Great Dane), 11 years old, today...who had died in her sleep. Esme took it as well as she could, lots of questions, tears and discussion.  We had lost a few dogs before in her life, but not something she saw and connected so deeply with. We had waited until after the flea market to really tell her - partially because we needed to do maintenance on the tractor, and also because we didn't want Esme to become terribly upset where we couldn't handle it well and she didn't have something else to focus on.  And then she wanted to see...which was hard, but it made it real.  The last dog was Astro, the stray that the neighbor was scared of but we had befriended..she didn't see any of that...but has felt the sting and the loss since.  Blaze being a natural death scared her some, too...as I said, lots of questions about when she was coming back - what it all meant, if anybody ever came back etc.  She did understand, finally.. she's just been hoping it wasn't true and maybe it would work, she said.  She insisted we had to make a headstone. We buried her in a deep hole made with the tractor on the edge of our property - and put cedar logs on top... but Esme said it wasn't good enough...so we let her choose a board for me to chisel Blaze's name into and put it up there.

7:30 flea market, getting ready, setting up etc, math, exercises
-----Power Pack (begin reading vol 1. issue 44)
We bought some tomatoes and planned to make sandwiches later

8:30 packing up, break, stopping for food
home

10:15 Minecraft exploration, nether castles, portals
----(Daddy was doing the tractor maintenance to get it started and the hole dug)
11:00 burial of Blaze dog - making headstone memorial
-----discussion
11:30 break

12:15p - More Minecraft exploration
12:30p - finish reading Power Pack together
12:45p -  greenhouse operations
---planted marigolds, plant maintenance, the kale had come up
1:00p - Minecraft building throneroom

 

Far from this castle she had taken over in the Nether, she had made a gravestone for Blaze there, as well.

2:00 -  weaving loom, tomato sandwiches
2:30 - done

Monday business day

2015-1-26
9:30 - greenhouse operations,
---plant maintenance - the parsley is up!
---discussion of what someone would be able to buy her plants for
9:45 - discussion of making toys, materials, discussion of patterns, shops, 'make to order' and so forth
---math about supplies and prices
10a  - break to go to town

11:30a - Lowes, making calls, getting card signed for friend who is leaving our store, conversations with coworkers about homeschooling, what Esme likes and doesn't, her new shoes, plans, drawing etc etc...

One lady customer walking by said 'Sick, are we, home sick from school today?'...  We said, no homeschool - this is a field trip to talk to people, ask questions, listen to me make some calls and then go home and do our other things.  She said 'Oh'.. shot her husband a 'really now, would you look at that...' look, but walked on.

-----reading and using the vending machine by herself, 'breaktime'  I offered to pay for chips to split, but she really wanted a drink, found one she could afford (by reading the signs) and paid for it out of her own purse.

-----hard lesson (offer to pay for piece of brass fitting)  She didn't know what it was, and didn't know why she couldn't have it because it was lying on a shelf behind a display in a dust pile.. but STILL...and she tried to lie about not having anything in her pocket, so I pressed the morality of it.  I asked the store manager to price it for her, and made her pay for it.

         Even if it is trash, even if you don't know what it is.. if it's in a store and not yours, don't take it unless you ask or offer to pay for it.  That is stealing, and it is wrong. 

12:30 break to get back in car and go uptown

1p - supplies @ Dollar Tree and WalMart, post office

2p - lunch and association word game (her choice)
-----She would say a word, then I would say a word to go 'with' it, and we would decide if it was funny, a good match or a bad match for the word.  I was impressed by her choice and she had a lot of good ones.
2:30 break

3p - feeding chickens and puppy vaccinations (disc. watching Daddy give them to the puppies)
-----opening comic books that came in the mail, reading Power Pack 1985 with help
4p - break

//She also helped Daddy open a package of ground beef and split it up into six sections and deliver one section of it into a pot for him, which will be our dinner tonight (sloppy cheeseburger). We discussed the hard lesson with Daddy, as well.

She does feel very accomplished for the day, and has put her comic books (with my urging) into a fold-a-file so dogs and cats and other things can't get to them but she can have them by her TV to read.  I really hope this encourages her to read more and want to read about what happens to the four kids in the Power Pack.  We had gotten one issue at a flea market stand last year and she has read and re-read it so many times, amazed at the kids having powers and being siblings.

I have some planes to make tonight!  And we have flea market in the morning.

New items in the KnitOwl shop

At the KnitOwl shop for 2015 at mariemeyer.etsy.com

It's the time of year I am buying seeds for our garden, and Esme's greenhouse endeavors now, and also getting other items ready for the flea market we go to throughout the year.  Our Blue Black Shackamaxon beans did very well this year, and we will be selling packets of them with some free surprises of other varieties I have been growing.  And the Alien Monster Dolls are back up for sale with the octopi and the planes.  These are made to order toys and I will have to fit them into our schedule to sit down at the machine and make a few here and there.

Seeds:

Florida Speckled Lima Beans (Butter Peas)

Blue Black Shackamaxon pole beans

Brown speckled Whipporwill cowpeas 

and limited supplies of White climbers, White speckled climbers, Ireland Creek Annie, Tongues of Fire, Kenearly Yellow Eye and Tennessee Greasy beans.

What are we planning for the garden this year? 

I have decided to forgo all curcubits and other zucchini other than Tromboncino squash, which I've *heard* the squash bugs don't like.. in hopes of cutting down their numbers.  We will be going forth with the Principe Borghese tomatoes and Black Prince.  And of course.. I can't put myself into a box yet on the beans -- there will be some planted, probably many.. but it is to be determined.