Lawn mowers

At this time of year, the grass at low elevations and in clearings has greened up, but the snow and shadow in the forest up in the mountains mean that there's no food there for the deer. So after a long snowy winter, the deer are hungry, and they're down on lawns where people live.

This fellow and his friends spent all day mowing our lawn. Look how skeletal he is. He can certainly use the meal. And look at how full his belly is. He certainly enjoyed himself!

I hope they'll be back to eat their fill for a couple of weeks at least -- for their good and ours. We certainly don't need to be firing up the mower tractor any time soon, the snow having only recently receded, but it will nice if the deer help delay the start of lawnmowing season by a few days. Though I must repair the fence around the garden soon!

Someday I'd like to have a couple of llamas to picket out on the lawn. Until then the deer will be more than welcome.

Today we saw the first western tanagers of the year. It's very much spring.

Hmmm....

Looks like she is indeed feeling brave and adventurous. Time to starting vaccinating and applying for a passport. And getting my head wrapped around the idea that my introverted homebody who has only rarely been away even overnight is in fact eager to head out and see the far reaches of the world for a month or two.

Morning roast

It's quite enjoyable these days, roasting a pan of coffee. I need to do this outside, due to the smoke it gives off. Now the mornings are warm enough that I don't need mittens and a hat, just a warm jacket. There's something about standing outside our forest-nestled house idly stirring a couple of pans of beans for twenty or thirty minutes, long before the rest of the household is up, that makes for a lovely beginning to a day. The songbirds are back and I can pick out the sound of Oregon juncos, robins, varied thrush and the metallic harshness of the Stellar's jays. The chickens are up and clucking about. Sometimes there are deer nearby.

Now we have enough roast beans for week or two. The next roasting will probably not even require a winter jacket. I predict warmer temperatures and the trees beginning to leaf out. Chuck took the snowplow blade off the lawn tractor today. Have we turned the corner for good now? Let's hope.

Bovine theatre

We don't exactly live in an agricultural area. It's mountains and forest here. And snow. We are in an area defined by rural do-it-yourself self-sufficiency, and lots of people eke out little gardens here or there, cheating the short growing season with plastic and glass. But there are no fields of wheat or corn, and farms in the area tend are few and far between, often limited to just a few animals on a small acreage for family use.

Our unschooling friends and neighbours live just outside village limits, on a small bench of land just before the road heads up towards our place and on to the pass. And on that sunny bench of just under three acres, they're entertaining a stab at self-sufficiency. A year ago they installed temporary shelter for themselves, moved to the land and began planting a garden. They fenced a meadow and began accumulating livestock. They're outgoing community-minded people on a piece of land that is highly visible, so lots of folk have taken a benevolent interest in what they're trying to do. They now have dogs, cats, goats, sheep, rabbits, chickens and a dairy cow. Their vast beds of garlic and onions are sprouting already. Everyone is interested in what's new at the new little farm.

So when their dairy cow went into labour yesterday, it was a bit of a community event. It was a lovely warm afternoon; the sun was out and the timing was good for a lot of people, including our family. At peak count there were twenty-seven people sitting on the 'bleachers' (a stack of logs) in the corner of the meadow watching the cow. It really was the social event of the week.

Barb-Rose the cow is the proud mom of a little male calf.

Branching outwards

There were days when she was five or six and wouldn't talk to anyone, and wouldn't peek out from behind my leg in public, when I wondered if I was doing the right thing. I knew she could cope if torn apart from me -- and she didn't wail and carry on, but just endured stoically. But she clearly wanted to stay home and comfortable and with family. Gradually she was able to join classes, to venture out away from home. Eventually she even started to talk a bit. But still she preferred an unadventurous life close to home and family. She liked our cozy safe little rural village where things were predictable and well-known.

Things are changing. Tomorrow she's heading off for the day to Nelson with an adult friend of the family and a couple of 18-year-old members of the community choir. She'll hang out, probably go for coffee, shop a bit, and then head to the church where she'll sing her heart out, and do a great job of her solo.

This summer she'll be heading to Edmonton, and then Montreal, flying without her parents, for a week in each location, being billeted, taking part in an advanced chamber music program with a bunch of teens she's never met. And she's thrilled to have been accepted (it was her first audition).

And next winter, she's considering taking two of her adult friends from choir up on an offer to accompany them on an 'in the rough' trip to southeast Asia for two months. I'm not sure she's feeling quite brave enough for that one, but she's at least seriously considering it.

In my heart of hearts I've always believed that filling kids' needs for attachment unquestioningly when they're young is what gives them the sense of security that is necessary when it comes time to be truly brave out in the real world as they forge lives for themselves. It gives them confidence in who they are and a touchstone they can hold onto as they venture forth.

Pod love

I'd fallen in love with podcasts. "This American Life", "Vinyl Café," BBC documentaries, audiodharma, radio plays, zencasts, language-learning lessons and the like. Thanks to an Audible.com subscription a few years ago I have a couple of dozen audiobooks in electronic format. And of course there's the addictive lure of all those music tracks just a few clicks away. Want four recordings of the first movement of Schubert's "Death and the Maiden" quartet? Clickety-click.

Except that I had nothing with which to carry all this content around with me. Sophie and Erin own Nanos that they bought with their own money. I was gradually developing iPod envy. So one morning I wondered to myself how much a little iPod shuffle would cost me. I started looking at prices. Not as good as I had hoped.

I decided to take a peek on eBay. I'm a pretty restrained eBay user. I do my research, I don't get caught up in bidding wars and I have the restraint necessary to step back from something I've got my heart set on if the price isn't right. So I put in my search criteria. I wanted cheap, I didn't care if I got a cord or earbuds or any of the peripherals. I didn't need a lot of capacity. I clicked search and started browsing at the top of the list. By the time I realized that the unit at the top of the list was the perfect condition, capacity, price and location, there was a scant 53 seconds left in the auction. With my speediest eBay skills I checked the seller's feedback, read the fine print and assured myself that it was what I wanted. I bid with 4 seconds left and won it for thirty bucks and change. I think about three and a half minutes had elapsed between when I'd said "I wonder how much a little Shuffle would cost?" and when I had bought myself a 2 MB first-gen. Nano. I'm particularly thrilled that I got it used, my anti-consumerism values being what they are these days.

It arrived 4 days later. I've had it about 3 weeks now and I am so happy. Even folding laundry has a certain attraction to it now, provided my iPod is charged up.

The final onslaught

The good news is that it'll all be over on May 11th. We are in the final rush of preparation and rehearsing for a number of concerts which involve a variety of children and ensembles.

On May 4th we have our regional Suzuki Celebration concert. We have some general "en masse" Suzuki repertoire to prepare, the Summit Strings are playing a couple of numbers, and our entire complement of local Suzuki kids are playing three ensemble numbers. On May 10th Erin sings in the community choir concert. (They also perform out of town this weekend.) The Summit Strings will be contributing a 'set' to this concert, and Erin and her friend J. will be performing a 2-violin duet. And on May 11th, our community orchestra (photo left) will be presenting its annual concert. Also on that concert will be an ensemble contribution by the local Suzuki student members of the orchestra, a performance by Noah's quartet and a performance by Erin's quartet -- all requiring their own separate rehearsals. So while there are just 3 concerts, there are 9 different combinations of musicians involved, all needing a last two or three rehearsals to ensure that everything is fully polished to performance standard.

Add in soccer, Aikido, art classes and a trip to Calgary, plus an imminent web-publishing deadline, and you would be hard-pressed to believe that I have made good progress in cutting back on my commitments this spring. I do not enjoy being this busy, nor do the kids, but it's only once a year -- and it's been worse in the past. And actually, our trip to Calgary, with its long drive and comfy predictable hours in the motel, serves as a sort of retreat from the mayhem of our at-home responsibilities.

While the snow melts

It may still be too cold and snowy to get outside and kick the ball around, but the girls have their soccer uniforms and therefore all's right with the world. This is Fiona's first year in soccer. She's the tiniest member of her 5-to-7-year-old team. Our local teams don't usually win very many games. But they have a lot of fun, and they wear the nicest uniforms by far.

Since I do all the official team and individual photos, I appreciate the aesthetic value of a nice uniform, especially one that looks good against the deep green of the soccer field. Grass that we will, I believe, eventually get this spring.

Melting

Gradually we're losing our snow. As you can see the sun has come out and we are down to a thin blanket of snow, maybe half as much as fell. Last night was clear and cold but the sun will probably make quick work of the remaining snow over the early part of this week. Look at Fiona's poor bike parked on the left by the doghouse. It wants to come out and play.

Yesterday I couldn't get up the driveway to get the kids to Aikido. My "all-season" (i.e. summer) tires, which are brand new and went on three weeks ago, would do nothing in the snow. The day before I'd got Chuck to give me rides to rehearsals and performances in his 4WD truck, but Aikido is out of town and that doesn't work when he's on call. I got the chains out. They don't really fit on the summer tires. After a frustrating 15 minutes of becoming one with the wheel wells of the minivan (and the accompanying muck and slush) we managed to limp to the top of the driveway. The highways were at least dry by then.

Snow tires or not for this week's Calgary trip, that is the question.

Elevated reading

It's now open season on the chin-up bar. We had to take it down to prevent our string players from wrecking their arms and shoulders before the music festival. But after the festival it went back up. It's been used a million and one ways.

Here's the most recent one. Four cushions and a quilt apparently make the bar comfy enough to use as a reading nook. Yes she's actually lying on a bar in the doorway, five feet off the floor.

Here's the kicker. Guess what she's reading?

Kenneth Oppel's ultra-cool pseudo-historical fantasy novel "Airborn."

Purely a coincidence, it turns out.

Library art

With the sudden heavy snowfall we almost expected a power failure. When it came it was in the middle of a standing-room-only memorial service at our community hall. "Thanks be to God, who gives us life ... " said the pastor. The lights went out. Silence.

"Did she say 'God who gives us light?'" quipped someone from the middle of the crowd. People laughed.

In a minute a flashlight showed up. "Thanks be to God, who gives us life ... and light, we hope, soon," continued the pastor. The crowd chuckled.

Within 20 minutes the local dentist had showed up with a generator. Our cool MPP went out into the snow to help us heft equipment around and hook up a make-shift electrical supply. The handful of plugs were used to power a halogen utility light, the powerpoint slideshow apparatus, the electronic piano and the giant coffee percolator. All was good again.

The kids were home alone during the service. It shouldn't surprise me any more that my computer addicts somehow found opportunity in the power failure. Among other things they held a screaming contest, attempted to pop corn on the woodstove, sneaked a snowball into their mother's winter boot which had been left outside the front door. And they re-arranged the chaotic living room bookshelves. "Look!" Sophie pointed gleefully when I got home.

Well, I don't think a career in Library and Information Science is awaiting them any time soon. Fully cognisant of the quirky nature of their approach, they had arranged the books according to colour. It was weird. I took a picture. We speculated about someone coming into a library asking for a book "in a nice off-white, with pink lettering, please." In a library like ours that would be a simple request.

But the crowning moment was half an hour later. I'd had bread ready to go into the [electric] oven when I'd left for the memorial service and it had languished in doughy repose on the kitchen counter. We were speculating on whether it would be possible to bake our now-terribly-overproofed bread loaves inside the wood heatstove. I was wondering aloud how long they'd take to cook at whatever infernal temperature the woodstove was at. Recalling the book I'd bought a few years ago about cooking in adobe ovens, I said "now where the heck is my earth oven book?"

"Well," said Erin, "I'm not sure, but I know it's red!"

And then she proceeded to pull it off the shelf in half an instant. Oh my gosh, we laughed. What a fortuitous filing system.

We baked the bread too. The outer 5 mm was black, but once we carved that off it was quite delicious.

Power came back on a few minutes ago, meaning it was out for about 7 hours. We had Noah's quartet rehearsal in the dark again. We're getting quite used to that.

Soccer cancelled

Sophie's soccer game was cancelled. They couldn't find the field beneath the blanket of snow.

My snow tires have been off for three weeks. Hopefully I can get up the driveway as I have a memorial service to play violin at this afternoon and a quartet rehearsal to coach this evening.

If the snow is still here this evening the kids have vowed to hang Christmas stockings. I think I will play along.

And still more snow

Yarghh. Just this morning I was going to post that most of the snow was now gone from our lawn. But I didn't get out for a photo soon enough. Here's what started about half an hour ago. Sophie is supposed to play a soccer game tomorrow in shorts and a T-shirt. Hmmm.

I think we'll start referring to global warming as Global Weirding instead. Snow in April isn't unheard of here, but snow week after week after week in April is certainly bizarre.

Soccer days again

It's that time of year again. Soccer has struck. Do we really need this on top of three big group string performances, on top of Aikido, on top of a Calgary trip, on top of the music festival honours concert, on top of violin and piano and viola lessons? Not at all.

But for Sophie and Fiona, spring is soccer and that's all there is to it. The Community Soccer association runs two teams, one for ages 5-7 and one for ages 8-10. Fiona has been looking forward to being old enough since she was 2 or 3. Finally, having passed her landmark 5th birthday, she's soccer material. This is Sophie's third season of soccer. Fortunately both teams practice and play games in adjacent fields at adjacent times. Previous years have been a logistical nightmare for multi-kid families, but the schedule works pretty well this year.

The photo is from a couple of years ago. The grass isn't this green yet, not even in town. I must take my camera to one of Fiona's practices. She is so tiny, so sweet, so intent. I don't think she has much clue about game play, let alone strategy, but that's pretty typical for the 5-to-6-year-olds. She's certainly having fun -- that's all that counts.

Lamb morning

This morning the phone rang a little early. It was our neighbours down the road saying one of their sheep was labouring and did we want to come watch? I had two takers, my younger two girls. The older two kids were still mostly sick with a head cold, and extra tired, so I left them in bed. I dosed myself with a coffee and then Fiona, Sophie and I headed down the road.

Little Lilac was having her first lamb. She was rather bewildered by the whole process, and by the end was getting pretty exhausted. The helpful small hand of one of the neighbour kids was called for and soon the forelegs had been well-grasped and gently pulled free. Lamb followed easily after that. Doesn't Lilac look relieved?

My kids were thrilled to have been there. The lamb was soon up on his feet, searching for that teat while mom obsessively licked him clean. We left them to bond and enjoy each other.

More lambs are expected soon, as is a calf. One of the lovely treats of spring in the country.

Viola magnetism

There's always been something about this boy that has attracted people to him. Not in a brash way. He's the kid you notice after you've noticed the more 'out there' kids in a group, the one that piques your curiosity and makes you wonder what's going on inside him. He comes across as intelligent, sensitive and kind, and you worry that maybe he's a little vulnerable. Despite being introverted he doesn't carry a wall of ego-protectiveness around with him like some of his other family members do. I'm not sure that he is particularly vulnerable -- he's a strong kid with a pretty solid sense of who he is and what's important (and, as a corollary, what's not worth worrying about). But he's such a good kind person that people, especially those with maternal tendencies, often find their protective instincts aroused.

So that's the type of boy he is, and that's the kind of effect he has on people. And when you hand a boy like this a viola in a musical sea of violinists, you magnify the effect. He's not the bright flashy melody in ensembles. He's the sound that's deep inside the music, that helps create a foundation, that responds to the music around him, supporting and compensating, helping it all work without calling attention to himself. But if you watch and listen specifically to him, and tune in to that viola sound, you're amazed. He's there, with everyone else, fitting in beautifully, but at the same time he's different. He's immensely intriguing, but in an understated way.

All of which led him to be the one kid out of the mass of string players at the music festival who got plucked out for special attention. The adjudicator loved him. Too much, I think. We were all a little uncomfortable with the magnitude of the praise and attention, which was to some extent at other students' expense. I wish it hadn't been quite so blatant, but it's water under the bridge now.

Nevertheless I think he has passed a crucial landmark as a violist this year. He is now reaching a level advanced enough to be capable of playing exciting chamber music, and has the musicality and ensemble skills that will carry him far. And because he's a violist, he's going to be in demand. There are never enough violists to go around. He's already been recruited for a summer school orchestra this August, knows he's almost sure to be assigned to the most advanced string quartet at our Suzuki Institute this summer, is the viola section leader in our community orchestra, is likely to be recruited to round out a student string quartet in the third music summer school week, and has been asked to provide a viola presence as a soloist at a regional showcase concert tomorrow. It has begun.

The cupboard under the stairs

We rearranged a few things in the family room last week. For the first time in many years it feels like we've made some significant progress towards decluttering and simplifying our most chaotic of multi-purpose rooms.

One of the results of the rearrangement was the creation of this little nook under the ladder-like stairs up to the loft. It's really just a case of the file cabinet not quite filling the space, but once we added a lamp, a stool and a naugahyde desk surface, it became the perfect little desk for Fiona. Here she is merrily working on some math, though it could be handwriting, drawing or colouring. This kid loves seatwork.

I love the Sonlight catalogue. We have found so many great readaloud suggestions from amongst the pages of the World History Core programs. And we order things from Sonlight occasionally, since they have an inexpensive ship-to-Canada system that gets around all the common glitches. My new copy of the catalogue arrived the other day.

As I flipped through it I wondered to myself -- maybe I finally have a kid who would like a curriculum. Not that I'm about to dive in a buy Fiona some school-in-a-box program at age 5. But maybe, some day, she'll be the one of my children who will want, and thrive on, an organized curricular approach to academics. She consistently and persistently enjoys bookwork. She asks for it daily. She likes working with me. She enjoys being taught things. She enjoys reading, and being read to. She's less perfectionistic, less introverted, than any of her older siblings. She's much more willing to learn "in public", with her mom sitting nearby available to help.

Time will tell. In the meantime, she's enjoying her cupboard under the stairs as she merrily plods through Miquon Math.

Suddenly spring

Four days ago we awoke to fresh snow upon the ground and it seemed that spring was nowhere near. Today ... it's almost 20 degrees C. The snow is almost gone from the open part of the lawn, the driveway is clear of ice and slush, and there is new green to be seen on the ground if you look closely. We packed up the rink liner today and got out the bikes. We hand-graded the worst of the ruts out of the driveway near the carport.

Sophie put up the hammock and ate her lunch outside in it, then swung and read her book. Kids climbed the big rope-swing. The garden beckoned me -- some of the raised beds are now free of snow, and I did a cursory clean-up of things I should have got to last fall. The rhubarb is poking hopefully up through the snow.

It is finally truly spring. It's about three weeks later than usual, I think, but it's certainly making up for lost time.

Back at John's

This time our unschooling friends were busy, so it was three generations of our family that visited. We had slept in after last night's late arrival back from Nelson but when we finally got up we called to see if our friends would like a visit. Sure enough John was keen. He's been doing well lately.

On today's program:

Liszt Consolation No. 3 (Erin, piano)
Lully Gavotte (Fiona, violin)
Handel Bourrée (Fiona, violin)
Sakura Sakura (string ensemble, everyone)
Telemann Concerto in G for 2 violas, 3rd & 4th movements (Noah & Miranda, violas)
La Provencale by Marais (Noah, viola)
Two Grenadiers (Fiona, violin)
Preludio from Bach's E Major Partita (Erin, violin)
Humoresque by Dvorak (Sophie, violin)
Go Tell Aunt Rhody (string ensemble, everyone)
Largo & Gavotta/Allegro from Corelli Concerto Grosso Op. 6 (Erin, Grandma, Sophie, Noah)
Londonderry Air / "Danny Boy" (Erin, Grandma, Sophie, Noah)
Scarlatti Sonata K. 8 (Erin, piano)

I think it's pretty neat that my family is at the stage of being able to pick up and play ensemble repertoire together without any extra preparation. And it is so lovely to have the excuse to do so.

Age- and ability-levelling

The regional non-competitive music festival is a three-hour round-trip drive away, and the kids from our little program were heavily involved in the string portion this year. The administrators of the festival, in a bid to encourage our participation, were very kind and accommodating from an organizational standpoint. We kept our kids out of the small, specific classes (like "Romantic Solo, under 12" or "Solo, age 6 and under") and instead put them in the general class ("Recital Group: three contrasting selections, Junior level"). And as a result the festival organizers were able put all our kids' performances on one day.

It made for a marathon day. We left home at 7:30 a.m. and didn't get home until almost 11:00 p.m., but it was a price we willingly paid for not having to make three or four trips. There were five families from our program taking part, so we all arrived together with a real sense of it being a festival, a celebration.

There were some glitches with the rehearsals and accompanying which I won't get into here; suffice it to say that there was considerable extra stress added to the solo performances due to these unforeseen circumstances. But the kids all pulled through gloriously. The under 14 Recital group class consisted of 9 students -- entirely our crew -- split into a morning session and an afternoon session, with a few miscellaneous classes scattered around the edges of 'ours'.

It was such fun watching our kids be in the audience. They've known each other for at least five years. They are incredibly supportive of each other. They sat in various combinations, on one or two of the front pews of the church, smiling, applauding, discretely high-fiving each other after performances, letting Fiona slip from lap to lap, hugging, whispering quietly during the interludes. The ages were 5, 8, 9, 11, 11, 12, 13, 13 and 14. The levels from early Book 3 to post-Book 10.

In the middle of the afternoon session the adjudicator did a kind of double-take, realizing that this vast range of students was all part of the same entry class.

"It's kind of unusual," she said during the verbal adjudication of the spunky 8-year-old who had just played a snappy confident Presto movement of the Vivaldi a minor Violin Concerto, "to have a class where 8-year-olds are together with advanced 13-year-olds. This is where you parents and teachers should talk to the organizers of the festival, so that next time there's a class for 8-and-under, and 10-and-under and 12-and-under. That way you [the 8-year-old] can be in with a group of that's your own."

It was one of those moments when I didn't know whether to laugh hysterically and or pick my jaw up off the floor and start a loud rant. The 8-year-old in question was at that very moment crammed into a pew amongst a joyfully friendly group of five smiling friends who were, in every possible way, "a group of her own." These were her friends, role-models, the kids she's a role model to, her fans and supporters and fellow-musicians. "Just look at them!" I wanted to shout. "What 'group of her own' could possibly be better than this?!!"

Thankfully I just sat there smiling and quietly rolling my eyes. My mom, who teaches all these kids, quickly spluttered "but these are her friends!" The adjudicator acknowledged this obvious fact and moved on, likely without really thinking it through and questioning her assumptions. Is there really anything that can be said that will shake people out of their assumptions that the best learning environment is one that consists of people who are more or less exactly your age and more or less exactly your level? It's just such an ingrained part of how we as a society do education. Even when an amazing alternative model is staring us in the face from the smiling second row of seats at a music festival, we fall back on the same unthinking assumptions.

In the evening the Summit Strings, our seven Book 4-10+ students, ages 8-14, played as an ensemble to cap off their contributions to the festival. The performance was stunning. It said everything that I had wanted to say to the adjudicator about the value of combining ages and levels, but it said it in music -- so much better than any words could have.