fairies in the garden

 In the Summertime there's a lot of fairie activity in our garden.  They return from wherever it is that they winter right around May Day and spend the warm months frolicking and holding festivals under the ferns and arborvitae in our back yard.  We rarely actually see them but their presence is obvious.

This year on May Day they put up a Maypole and the Fairie Queen left Naiya a gift in a little wooden box on our back doorstep.  Since that time, she and Naiya have passed the box back and forth exchanging little treasures at random intervals. (Usually this happens overnight and when we waken we are surprised to discover that the Queen has taken what we've left for her or bestowed a little something in return.)

 Many of the received treasures have been gifted to friends and family but various carved stones, beads, fairie handcrafts and shells are kept by our dear daughter in a special little basket on her Nature Table.

 Our spritely friends don't seem to be there all the time.  In the mornings we sometimes see that they've had pretty spirited parties but other times they're gone for days on end.

  Often on nights when they return, they'll bring something to expand their ever-growing village and in the morning Naiya will delight in the new additions. 

 Recently we helped them out a bit by erecting this teepee (similar to the one we made for ourselves) for any visitors who might stop by.  Naiya has been sewing and stitched the little floor blanket herself.  The next morning we discovered that the fairies had once more hosted a gathering and had left the remnants of a small bonfire! Perhaps there was tiny marshmallow roasting?  Who can say...

chickens in a box

Sometimes a good idea is had by two friends at the very same time.

(These are our two lovely girls Jak and Juniper.)

laurel hedge

My dad is a Master Gardener and sometimes gets invited to special events around the Portland Metro area.  Last week Naiya and I joined him and my mother on a tour of Laurel Hedge in Estacada.  I like to post about places like this to highlight things to do in our local area (this private garden is open for viewing on Saturdays from 10-5) but also, there were so many interesting gardening ideas here that I thought all you folks far, far away might enjoy a virtual tour for your own outdoor inspiration.

Ten years ago this two acre property was a Christmas tree farm with nothing on it but rolling hills of rows of trees and an old farmhouse.  In just a decade two guys (with no one else's assistance) turned the property into the sometimes quirky, ever so creative, gorgeous garden seen here.

 These guys are also landscape designers.  It seems this garden (which surrounds the updated farmhouse where they now live) is more a hobby and labor of love than anything else. 

 They use a lot of found objects to create fun and magical spaces.  I think the glass doohickies on top of the rebar are antique utility pole insulators.

 In several places there is interesting use of pressed metal scrap.

 This sweet little "cottage" is a working outhouse complete with chandelier and running water.

 Remembering that just two people converted all this land, a pond this size is quite impressive.

 There are cool unorthodox elements like this up-cycled door archway throughout the garden.

 I like the stacking of stones.  The large galvanized tub is one of many water features spread throughout the grounds.

 And, of course, I had to get a shot of my lovely girl enjoying it all.  She's something of a outdoor tour aficionado with all the garden and farm visits we do throughout the year.

the people have legs

Since part of what I do here in blogland is just keep a record of my lovely daughter as she does what she does and grows and changes each day, sometimes I like to record what's happening in her art.  Oddly, she's not in the past gotten very excited about drawing or painting.  I say oddly because I have presented an active opportunity for these things nearly every day since she was quite young and there are passive permanent areas in our home where she can color and draw any time she'd like.  Until a few moths ago, she mostly hadn't.

We did recently move the playroom and this new space has a kind of built-in desk where, right next to her chalk board, we set up her crayons and an array of papers and colored pencils in a more organized and inviting way.  Since then, she has embraced chalk drawing and coloring more frequently.  I don't know if I'd label her an art enthusiast just yet but I'd say we're moving in that direction.  Where she used to tire of these sorts of activities in less than three minutes, now she enters into them in her free play time and will sit with crayon or chalk for sometimes ten or twenty minutes before she excitedly comes to share her latest masterpiece.

What I never have done much of is instruct.  I draw and paint alongside her but I don't mandate or advise her on her work.  I also try to generally stay away from coloring books and pre-made pictures.  From the beginning, it has been fascinating to me just to see what she'll do on her own; for her to explore color and form from her own hand, through her own movement, thought and imagination. 

Likely these pictures she draws are of little interest to anyone but me.  (Although maybe one day some psychologist will infer interesting insights about her childhood experience through them.  Yeah..., probably not.) 

(This one is the three of us, grape vines, a house and fallen fruit.)

Anyhow, recently in her figure drawings, The People Have Legs.  This one is Naiya and her daddy.  (They used to look like this.)  It's new and I don't know what this really means developmentally.  There's probably a book out there somewhere that explains exactly what is happening in the child's consciousness, development and perception of the world when this remarkable transition takes place.  Who am I kidding?  There are probably several such books.

To me it's just enchanting and I'm endlessly intrigued by what her little hands, heart and mind produce.

making sand candles

When I was a girl we often went to the Renaissance Faire in Southern California.  It was the 70's and they usually had some cool crafts to create for children and adults alike.  (This was before the faire moved out of the beautiful foothills of Agoura and was forever altered by the sponsorship of Budweiser or some other such major manufacturer.)
Anyhow, I remember once making a huge multi-wicked sand candle with blue wax when I was very young.  I got to carve a shape in a big box of sand, help put in the wicks and pick the color wax I wanted.  I had that candle for years and would never light it because I wanted it to last forever.

When I was trying to think up crafts suitable for Summer this recollection came to me.  I figured working with sand was seasonally appropriate and thought Naiya and I could do this one together.  We started small.  The candle seen here that we made was much less funky and tiny compared to the one I recall.  Partly this was due to not being overly familiar with candle making.  Mostly though, we kept it small and simple because we didn't have very much wax to work with.  When I get my hands on another block of beeswax we'll go for a larger, hand sculpted, more elaborate design.

We began by filling a bowl with sand and moistening it slightly.  The water keeps the shape from falling in on itself but the more water used, the less sand will stick to the wax.   (Naiya had the spray bottle and got the sand much wetter than it ought to have been so, in the end, our sand candle was not very sandy at all.  Keep this in mind if you'd prefer a thicker exterior wall.)

We then used a small vase to make our candle shape.  One could use just about any object to form the basic shape or, as I did as a child, sculpt the area by hand to create a more organic form.

Because I thought it might be cool to have a little peg bottom we put a few indentations in using a pen tip.  (Again, one could use any object or fingers to do something like this and create as many impressions as one found pleasing.)

After our mold was ready, we began preparation of the wax.  Of course, one can recycle old candles for this step of the process or, as we did, use a block of beeswax.  I don't know if it was necessary to grate the block into smaller shavings but it certainly cuts down on the melting time.

To figure out how much wax we'd need, we poured water in the vase we used to make the mold and then got an approximate volume by pouring that water into a measuring cup.  This was about a 4 ounce candle.

I placed about double that amount of shavings into a double boiler (because the shavings dissolve into an smaller volume) and heated the wax until it had melted.

(Safety note: Beeswax has a melting point of about 145° F.  It can ignite if heated past this point, so don't put it in the microwave as temperatures there can be unpredictable.  Remove it from the heat source once it has dissolved.)

I had wick and wick button ready to go and dipped them into the melted wax and then into cold water.  Then I used my fingers to straighten the string.  If the wick is still wiggly, this process can be repeated until some stiffness is established.

This step can be skipped and the wick button isn't completely necessary.  I just find that creating some stability in the wick makes for an easier time in the following steps.

We then placed the wick in the center of our mold and attached it with tape to a ruler (any stiff object that spans the container would do) to hold it in place.

 
We carefully and slowly poured in our wax.  (If the container in which you're heating wax does not have a spout, I would recommend ladling the hot wax, rather than pouring it, into the mold.  On another project, we made a huge waxy mess that ran across the top of the sand and down the insides of the bowl when we tried to pour it from a regular un-spouted pot.)

(To save excessive cleaning of the melting vessel, wipe it clean with paper towels immediately after emptying it of its contents.)

That's pretty much it until the candle solidifies.   This tiny one took less than an hour.  Naiya was thrilled to pull it out of the mold and even used her own scissors to trim the wick (leaving 1/4" - 1/2" sticking out). 

We'll use this as our story-time candle and hope to find some tales of sand and sea to accompany our beachy creation.

summer reading

In the Spring I did a book post that a few folks found useful so I thought I'd share a list of our Summer stories as well.  Most of these are standard fare in the Waldorf community.  If that's where you reside, there are likely few surprises that follow.  Of all the seasons I have found that, oddly, our Summer collection is the smallest.  If you have favorites of your own, please share them in the comments.  I'd love to hear your suggestions and expand our current repertoire.

Since the season is just upon us, we're especially enjoying these first two books .  Peter in Blueberry Land by Elsa Beskow is a century old classic wherein Peter goes out looking for blueberries for his mother's birthday and falls into a magical miniature adventure with the help of the King of Blueberry Land.  As with all of Elsa Beskow's books, the story and the telling are comfortingly gentle and sweet and the illustrations are, like the tale, magical with their soft, beautiful watercolors in the art nouveau style.

Blueberries for Sal by Robert McCloskey is a somewhat more modern but still classic Caldecott story of Sal and her mother going gathering on Blueberry Hill.  Just as they begin their picking, Little Bear and his mother come to fill their tummies with berries as well.  Of course there is no gruesome encounter of the pairs but just a sweet crossing of paths.  What Naiya and I especially enjoy in this one are the opening and closing block print illustrations of Sal and her mother canning their delicious cache in their classic 1950's kitchen.

The Story of the Wind Children by Sibylle von Olfers is a late Summer tale that transfers in September to our Autumn basket as well.  In it little George is playing with his boats by the lakeside but despairs when no wind comes to make them sail.  He and his vessels are saved by a wind sprite who blows them across the lake and then proceeds to take George on a number of playful adventures.  Since reading this one, Naiya has begun calling dandelions by the delightful name of "fairy clocks".  So sweet.

Flower Fairies of the Summer is one of a series of books by Cicely Mary Barker that I have mentioned before.  It's a collection of poems and strikingly accurate illustrations of about twenty common summer flowers.  Although Ms. Barker was English and so penned what was typical and familiar in her part of the world, we here in the Pacific Northwest reside at a similar latitude and enjoy nearly the same climate as her merry old country and so luckily find similar foliage in our gardens and natural spaces.  In addition to loving the rhymes and fairy pictures, we often use these books for identification purposes.

Summer is another in a compendium of six books from Wynstones Press.  It contains a variety of songs, poems and stories of the season collected from various authors.  We like to use its tales and verses as inspiration for our daily puppet shows and play at our Nature Table.  It even contains special, hard to find narratives for Whitsun and the Day of St. John.

A Kiss for Little Bear by Else Holmelund Minarik with illustrations by Maurice Sendak isn't really a Summer story at all but it is one of a series of books we're currently enjoying that we only recently discovered (so I thought I'd share it anyway).  It's a really sweet tale of a kiss being passed from one animal friend to another as it makes its journey between Little Bear and his Grandmother.  We've turned this one into a staple at puppet show time and Naiya especially likes to gather up all her animals and act out the passing of the kiss from one to another before the festive wedding arrives at the end to finish the fun.




If you've got any seasonal favorites, won't you let us know about them?...

needle felted bees - a great beginners needling project

In the Summertime we tend to engage in much more outdoor play than craft creation but in the evenings I do sometimes manage to put together a few small projects.  This week Naiya and I were noticing the bees and spiders flourishing in the gardens and farms and while laying on our backs in the playroom one afternoon, we talked about bees coming to harvest nectar from the wreath of flowers hanging around the ceiling silks.  While she was sleeping one night I assembled seven buzzing little critters while listening to my favorite hot weather tunes.  They took about ten minutes each and are a great first time project for those who have yet to try a hand at needle felting.  

For these very simple bugs one will need some small tufts of black, yellow and white wool, a felting needle and felting pad.  (All of which can probably be purchased from your local craft store.)

Begin by tying a three to four inch length of the yellow wool into a knot and then wrapping the excess around that knot to form an elongated ball.

Using the felting needle, poke at the ball until the loose bits of wool are held into place.







Take some small wisps of black wool and roll them into a thin strands with the heels of your hands to create two three to four inch lengths for the stripes of the bee.

Wrap these stripes around your yellow bee ball and needle them into place.  (It's best to do this with the project on the felting pad to avoid poking yourself with the very sharp, barbed needle.)

Roll another fluff of black wool with the heels of your hands into a small ball to create the "face" of the bee.











Needle that ball until flattened onto one end of the bee.

Take a thick quarter sized bit of white wool and again rub it into its basic wing shape using the warm heels of your hands before then placing it onto the felting pad.

On the pad, needle the wings until that they become somewhat flat.  The wool will be stuck to the pad a bit.  Gently pry it up, turn it over and needle the other side.

The wings will be a bit fuzzy having been stuck to the pad.  This adds to the soft and dreamy nature of all things felted I think and is perfectly alright.

Being careful not to poke yourself, needle the wings onto the bee.  (I did this from underneath and sort of sculpted the angle so that the front end of the wings were slightly closer together than the back.)

To make the little critters more personable I also needled on tiny eyes. 

I hung them from threads and the swarm took off around the flowers hanging in the playroom from the ceiling silks. 

I think they'd also be a great edition to a Summer Nature Table...