The Garden Dirt: Getting Ready for the World

Did you know May is unschooling month?

While it may seem counterintuitive to dedicate something as restrictive as a month to the free-form hippie spin that is unschooling, there's a good reason to spend a little time talking about it. And that is because, almost nobody knows what exactly unschooling is. We who school in the unfashion find ourselves describing what unschooling isn't as often, if not more. Does an unschooled student use workbooks? Have to do things she doesn't want to do?  Tend to her personal hygiene? Consider the feelings of others? Or are the little drop-outs all feral id, abandoning promising projects to hone Minecraft skills, only taking a break to go swear at elderly people in public?

The answer, of course, is D) All of the above, except for swearing at old people in public. Because some things should be done only in private.

The term "unschooling" is so undefined that it becomes a blank screen onto which people project their best or worst assumptions. Most discussions on educational styles tend to describe their merits and faults, because these styles have been defined for many years, by the pedagogical . Unschooling is...un. It's hard to say what it is. Each of us is making it up as we go along.

And that's kind of the point.

This is where I usually insert a garden metaphor. For this family, unschooling is much like hardening off.

Wait, what?

Here, on this very blog, I have covered how to germinate seeds, but I haven't gotten to what to do with them before putting them outside.

In order to have your tender little sprouts all ready to grow in the big bright outdoors, they will need to be hardened off, or exposed to the sunlight in small, indirect doses, in order to acclimate them to full-time sunshine gradually. Otherwise, the sun's rays will bleach them white and kill them within an afternoon. Not that that ever happened to me or anything.

A good way to start is on cloudy days, or in the shade, letting about-to-be-transplants be uncovered for only a couple of hours at a time, for a couple of days. The rest of the time, they should be indoors, or under cover.

These barrel halves let light through to the salad seedlings hiding under them.

Increase their time in the sun in the days to come, and in about a week, the world won't be such a lethal place to the delicate plantlings. If you are successful at the art of knowing when to shelter them, and when to expose them, they will be as strong and healthy as they need to be for the rest of their days. They become tough and sure, strong from within and tempered from without.

This is where I usually insert a learning metaphor. I think hardening off needs to happen to people too, to help them grow in the world. Only, instead of UV radiation, we must learn to weather the opinions, criticism, and scrutiny of others. I feel we flourish when we find a small but adequate space in our mind, where our intuition calls the shots, and we come to care very little about what the people around us think of us.

 This can be accomplished in school too.

You see, I wouldn't be anythingschooling if I let the words and thoughts of those close to me influence me very much. Years ago, our decision to stray from conventional public school for everyone all the time solicited many an unsolicited opinion. Not feeling like slaying misconceptions about unschooling, I would say we had decided to home school a kid or two, and suddenly it was story time. Some of the people in my life felt the fact that they would choose differently for their family was relevant to what my family was doing. It really wasn't. I knew it and that was good enough. I thanked them for their advice and made my plans anyway.

Like most mothers, what I've taught my kids has largely been about treating others with respect. It's what we parents do: tell them to share, use their words, solve their problems, and treat others as they would like to be treated. All of that still stands. Nevertheless, along this little path, I've unlearned preoccupation with what others think about my decisions. Such concerns are unimportant, often inaccurate, and ultimately completely impossible to resolve.

 How can you please everyone? There are songs about how impossible that is.

The process of raising these people, whateverschooling we're using, has been a gradual process of finding what motivates and going with that. I have come to trust that thing inside that tells me what to do next, more completely than the notions of somebody who is not living my life. I have come to trust us to define these things for ourselves as we go along. So, even though George, working his way through a science workbook, looks very schooly, or Henry's clarineting literally happens at a school; unschoolings are afoot. Being an autodidact doesn't mean you can't elect to use resources at your disposal to learn things and have experiences of your choosing.

 Unschoolers can, and often do, choose to be taught.

My  self-led learners are also expected to practice delayed gratification and impulse control out the a. Ain't nothing school about that.That's just the natural result of living in a big messy house full of animals. Obligation, responsibility, and concern for others get a daily workout.

There is no shortage of reasons why you will not get what you want as soon as you want it in our home. So go outside and play.You've been HARDENED OFF!

 See? Our fence is just like the one on the BU background!

These Little Gem Lettuces are ready for the big time. All acclimated and everything, my once-sprouts are now standing on their own in the sun. The soil under them is a vast place for deep roots, the sun above shines intensely at times, the sky brings wind and rain; and they're ready for all of it. Those bright leaves know what's up. Inherently perfect (even when the bugs show up later this summer) this whole robust arrangement has had the right mix of tough love and tender care, and will tick through the clock of its life, inspiring many a photograph, I'm sure.

Kind of like these people I'm growing, except I won't eat them.
Probably.

The Garden Dirt: Potatoes: A Personal Voyage

Even the potatoes know what time it is.

This has become a familiar March sight: Potatoes, telling me they are ready to spring into action. That they want to nestle into the earth and convert sunlight and the elements into soft starchy spuds of all colors. Yes, once again, I will be nervous, muddy and tired, but most likely rewarded beyond measure.

Harvesting and eating potatoes from my garden kickstarts an ego trip like no other. Impressively heavy, and substantially filling, they do what a salad can't: convince you that you really could feed yourself from a sunny patch of dirt.

I started collecting these little babies last fall, from the CSA we joined. All the littlest spuds, and some of the biguns went into a paper sleeping bag for the winter. I love to peek at them for the first time months later, surprised by the length and forceful nature of their vines. It's as though they're saying, "It's time to get going again, Lassie!"

 Don't all potatoes have an Irish accent? They do in my wee head.

Credit where it's due, I first heard "It's time to get going again." from Neil DeGrasse Tyson, as he kicked off the recently revived televised spacetime odyssey, Cosmos. Of course, he wasn't talking 'taters, he was picking up where this guy left off.

He and his wife wrote the original TV series, back when I was a little kid. Then, he was just a weird guy in a turtleneck, who wasn't The Electric Company, much to my dismay. Now, he is Carl Sagan, and he will always have a special place in our family's collective heart.

In making Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, Carl sought to discuss everything that is or was or will be. Not bad for thirteen episodes of a show from the eighties.  It dances brightly from spectacular space photos to lively earthy snapshots of city street life on the coast of the Mediterranean. Watched all over the world for decades, Cosmos spoke the universal language of all of us, and what we know about our world; sharing all the knowledge and always making a case for learning more.

I find this beautiful, sure, but also very useful. Compiling and sharing knowledge isn't just a noble pursuit for future humans, it's how I go about trying to be more successful at the stuff I try to do, more of the time. Which brings me back to my paper bag of potatoes. I grew them wrong for the first few years, charmed by online claims that they do well in vertical situations. Plant them in a barrel! In a cardboard box! In a straw-filled mesh cylinder! In a cowboy hat! Well, that may work for some zones, and some varieties of potatoes, but I found, year after year, that my potato production was paltry, and was happening at or just above the roots. No golden rosy purple orbs growing all the way up the vine.

Surely, Carl Sagan has something helpful to say on the matter.

 "It seems to me what is called for is an exquisite balance between two conflicting needs: the most skeptical scrutiny of all hypotheses that are served up to us and at the same time a great openness to new ideas."

Bingo. For whatever reason, I needed to ignore what worked for so many others and find out what worked for me. So, I dispensed with the gimmicky containers and returned to the ground under my feet, digging up a wide deep loose bed, edged with big stones.

More online digging got me thinking that I should also adjust the soil pH. Spuds love soil that has more than your average amount of free floating hydrogen ions. (aka alkaline, or basic) Where I live the soil is notoriously acidic.(aka the opposite of alkaline) Blueberries, azaleas, and rhododendrons love it, but it's bad news for potatoes.   There are a few ways to amend acidic soil. I went with bone meal, mixed in with the soil in which the potatoes were planted, and to any soil mounded on the vines throughout the growing season.

mmmm, boney

What happened next was nothing short of scientific.

 Only twice as many taters as before, that's what. So, I repeated the successful method last year and had an even higher yield. I was able to feed my family and had even some extras to sell at the farmer's market. I guess I sort of figured out this little corner of the cosmos.

I've encountered these truths before, so there must be something to them: That it's your job to learn from your mistakes when something isn't working; and that there is probably a path to success as you define it, as long as you're skeptical and open, humble and hard-working. This view makes mistakes into lessons. The story of your path becomes a helpful map for people you'll never meet; as long as you share it, and as long as they know when to ignore it and forge their own way.

 Stay tuned to the BU Facebook page to see how we're going about things this year. I'll be planting my potatoes today and will post pictures of our grand new set-up!

The Garden Dirt: Magic Beans

Like many homeschooling parents, I watched the Creationism v. Evolution debate between Ken Ham and Bill Nye two weeks ago. As one might predict, both men spoke respectfully from a place deep inside themselves, and returned to their corners, declared the "winner" by each of their respective sides.

Like some homeschooling parents, I spent most of it wondering why on earth they were having this discussion, and calling it a debate. What were they trying to accomplish? How many minds were changed? Is there an absolute truth there that one of them nailed and the other missed?

Unexpectedly, Joe Coffey, an Ohio pastor who appears in the HBO documentary, Questioning Darwin, cleared this up for me when he said, "If that's the way the world works...if it's just this mechanical thing... then you believe in a God that doesn't intervene in nature, That takes away any possibility of miracles, any possibility of answered prayer..."

He's right!

The scientific method doesn't require a "prayer" step, nor does it contend with miracles in any way but to dissect and explain them.

While human history (and the present) is full of scientists who pray, in all kinds of ways, when it gets down to the real sciencing, publishing "God did it." in lieu of research just won't do. I kind of thought that was pretty obvious back when Galileo's life was threatened by his own church for supporting heliocentrism, the radical notion that we live in a solar system rather than an earth-centric planetary system. He recanted. The dude with the telescope.

JKLOL Please, don't kill me.

Many devout believers have pursued the sciences since then, able to reconcile faith and fact. That's why we have the very technology I am using to publish this very blog at this very moment. (Hallelujah for that, amirite?) Maybe they understand that, rather than try to eliminate our beliefs, the whole point of the the scientific method, is to take them into account. To address the fact that our culture, background, beliefs, or just good old-fashioned fear of being burned at the stake, could possibly influence how we form answers to our questions about the world around us, in a way that renders us less-than-objective.

So, to me, debating evolution v. creationism is like saying, "Who is right? Combustion engines or People who love Disney movies?" I don't see how they're on opposite sides of the same point, except, maybe when it comes to the issue of miracles. A miracle is a funny thing, because, by its very definition, it is supposed to defy all that we know to be true; all that we seek to understand using the scientific method. Growing up, I was taught that believing in miracles requires faith, but most scientists just want to take out their scalpels and figure out exactly what makes the miracle tick.  Does this make them faithless, or curious?

As I have lived, year after year, I have found truer definitions for words I learned as a child;  "faith" and "miracle" are the two biggest ones.

 Faith is building a trellis for beans I haven't planted yet. 

The sheer hours of squatting, cutting, and tying to make a couple of simple bamboo teepees will have you wondering if it will all be in vain. If the seeds will be bunk, or get sick quickly, or be invaded by predators, or grow to a stumpy height, leaving the top of the trellis to mock you with its bareness.

 Faith doesn't mean I believe none of those things will happen, it just means I act as though they won't.

It means I am counting on the well-worn miracles of germination, iron phosphate, and photosynthesis to make all that work worthwhile. Sure, those things I call miracles can be explained, but that does not make them less profound to me. I am filled with wonder when those green leaves pop up for the first time every year.

  And I am a grateful primate indeed when my act of faith is rewarded so fruitfully.

Marveling at the magic of science is something I love to share with my li'l miracles. To see our study on germinating runner beans, check out these photos on the Backyard University Facebook page.

The Muddy Kitchen: It's About Thyme

It's weird when you have a blog. Life gets full, time becomes tight, and you notice you haven't been writing much on it. But then, you think, what should I write? At the switch-over from 2013 to 2014, I don't want to waste anyone's time with a top ten list of crunchy cute things they'll never get around to doing. I don't want to wax nostalgic about how grand the last twelve months was, even though it was pretty great at times.

I will probably want to stick a recipe in here somewhere.  Especially since New Year's Day typically presents an opportunity to eat a particular something, with the belief that it will influence your luck throughout the next year. For those of us who grew up in Midwestern/ Southern U.S., black-eyed peas would be that magic dish that will hopefully ensure some good times in the next twelve months. Whatever. You don't need to give me a reason to eat black-eyed peas, I love them. Tell me it'll bring me good luck, and I might end up eating seconds or thirds. You know. Just to hedge the ole' bets.

The time is upon us for such a dish, but instead of going to my favorite black eyed peas recipes, I decide I want to switch things up. Do something different this time. To the internet! All of my searching left my mouth watering and my brain noticing that one word kept popping up again and again: Thyme.

 Whoa. I think mama just got her blog back.

Did you get a chill? Because I did. I put on a hat and it went away. Anyway, thyme, it seems, goes with the timely little bean. Every recipe I found called for thyme. You get it right? Time, thyme? Homophones, yo. What a perfect dish for me to make today and eat tomorrow, because, on New Year's Eve, I can't help but be contemplative about this time marker, and how it seems to arrive sooner each time.

Here's a little tale from way back when. When I was about 7, I got my first invitation to a slumber party. I clearly remember the date printed on the little card and that it was three days away, which seemed like FOREVER.  Eons passed as I clutched that little card and compared it to the calendar, looking at what seemed to be a frozen clock. Time didn't just drag, it sagged and stretched tortuously.  I don't even recall anything about that slumber party, just the agonizing wait that preceded it.

Now, as I anticipate putting the household Christmas decorations away, when three days feels like the blink of an eye, I am somewhat comforted by the fact that time flies more and more, the older you get. Celebrations of next year will arrive faster than they did last year. And no, this is not because I am a Time Lord.

See, forget gray hair and wrinkles. You know you're getting older when it feels like time is speeding up. What used to feel like forever is nothing. A year? That's nothing. <-Not something I would have said ten years ago, when a year was a larger percentage of the time I've been walking this earth.

Time, for us peoples, is relative. That means a day is not a day and a year is not a year. As far as we're concerned, these things exist in a relationship with us, because we obey the laws of time ourselves. When we are first born, a day is equal to our whole life. At the end of your first year, 365 days = 100 % of your time here. All the living you've ever known.

A year later, 365 days drops down to only half of your life span, but that still feels like a significant chunk of time. Like half an eternity.

 As the years go by, each one diminishes in comparison to your time here, which really does alter how you perceive that span of days. It feels like something you're seeing from farther and farther away. It never changes size, even though to you, it appears to be shrinking.

This can make us good elders for generations behind us, as we age; because we become capable of thinking more realistically about five years from now, ten years from now, generations away. These notions are less abstract, and more approachable.  It's like seeing more and more of a mountain range with every day. I, personally, find this journey calming, even though I already don't feel like there are enough hours in the day.  I have so much living in the moment to do before the rapidly approaching Christmas 2014.

Like eat these delicious, lucky Stewed Black-eyed Peas.

Brainstorms: Advent Calendar II: The Preparening

In typical fashion, my preparedness for upcoming holidays is a big jagged line of highs and lows. Let's start at the bottom. Thanksgiving is, like, forty eight hours away, and not only have I not done any shopping. My cookbooks, spiral notebook, and pen, are sitting on the living room coffee table, making sad trumpet music of failure at me every time I look at them.

However, at the tippy top of my super mom accomplishments is this year's Advent Calendar. I capitalized it because it has earned a spot in the list of traditions I attempt to cram into December. Only, remember last year, when I realized you actually have to start thinking of them in November? I didn't forget that this year. I got right on it about a week ago, because, not only did I want to have it finished by December 1st, I wanted to be able to share it with all the world well before then.

I decided to make the different units of the calendar hold the chocolate. Oh yeah, I also learned, just give them chocolate each time. Always learning here.

Our take on an amalgam of a million different kids craft idea sites all over the internet. Paper pyramid trees, a forest of them, full of candy, each waiting to be opened and harvested.

Here's how they started.

 It's like a triangle base, with three triangle sides, each of those sides having a little flap.

That helps sturdy the box corners.

We decorated them, numbered them, scored and folded them, punched holes at the top, stuffed them, and tied them shut. When you're doing 24 of anything, it's best to go as simple as possible. My mind could imagine all sorts of adorable embellishments, scraps of lace, buttons, magazine pictures, wrapping paper. They could look much more dolled up. We just used our stencils, stamps, fingertips and ink pads, with stickers and the occasional glued on dot from a hole puncher. Sometimes you have to let some things go and just plow through. Get her done, so to speak. I mean, there are springerle cookies to make, for goodness sake. Otherwise they won't be properly aged by the time we watch Sound of Music! (panting, wild-eyed)

Holiday Traditions: Sometimes they fill you with a love for the steady rhythm of time, like a song whose beat never fails; a song to which you are invited to add your own artful meaning, thus sharing a bit of what's inside you with those around you, and partaking in what they offer. This loving commune can be what makes life worth living. Other times, it can feel like, "OH NO! Christmas Eve is tomorrow and we never made those gingerbread Tardises I saw on Pinterest!! AND WHY HAVE WE NEVER GONE ICE SKATING AND THEN HAD COCOA?! This is when I take a deep breath and tell myself to move on. Enjoy finishing something, instead of spending forever making it just so. The little people in your life will benefit more from that light-heartedness than any clever craft activity.

Another variation on this idea is to fill the boxes with something other than candy. A small ornament or gift could fit in the box, which can be adapted to fit most anything. You could also stuff the trees with little slips of paper, saying that it's time to make a wreath with a parent, or read a seasonally-themed story, or play a favorite song from a CD, turned up loud, dancing around. As long as you mix it up and do something out of the ordinary, it should feel like a treat.

Only, don't intermingle candy and non-candy box contents. I learned that lesson the hard way. If it goes- Day. 1: Make a wreath, Day 2: CHOCOLATE, Day 3: Read  'Winter is the Warmeest Season" with Henry. Guess who hates reading books now? The kid who was really hoping for some candy. So pick one road and stay on it. We're stuck here, giving them chocolate every night, but it's not too late for you. Don't worry though, we're a merry bunch.  Rocking out to carols and making wreaths will happen, even if we are not commanded to do so by the little trees.

Tails and Tidings: Visitng Purrfessors

Halloween was over two weeks ago, but we still have a few sweets in the old trick-or-treat bucket.

 Meet  our latest house guests:  Tootsie, Snickers, Taffy and Twizzler, here to bring the mewing, the clawing, the purring and a big dose of vitamin Awww.

 Circumstances did what circumstances will do sometimes, and these local little felines suddenly found themselves without their mother. Of course, the stellar Tillamook Animal Shelter rescued them, and shared photos of them on Facebook, drinking from bottles and napping in fluffy piles. When I saw this, I waited exactly three nonchalant minutes before asking Geza if we could provide them with temporary foster care. He waited exactly one tenth of a second before saying, "Yes."

Why? When life is so hectic and there is already too much not getting done, why bring kittens into the mix?

Because, well, shoot. The reason is sort of deep inside my head, like a feeling that something is happening now and it is important. I've had this feeling before, and I liked what happened when I listened to it. Yes, it was when a pregnant dog spewed puppies all over my living room. Noticing a theme here?

I suppose this is what people romanticize about country life: all of the life. I've never heard a person speak disparagingly of a childhood filled with baby critters, even if things are messy and laborious at times. When we chose to homeschool, I decided against any particular program or curriculum, and cut out activities the kids weren't actively begging me for. This wasn't because I'm lazy, which I can be, but not in this case. It was because I believed something else would fill that space.

And that something just happens to be animals a lot of the time.

Impromptu Kitten Unit or What My Kids Get Out of Caring for Critters

Science: Squirming cause and effect.

For the younger two, the conversations have gotten deep. Often, we compare our bodies to the kittens'. Look at her forepaw. It's like your hand, isn't it? But it's also different. How is it different?

The way an animal behaves when he's content, hungry, in pain, or looking for some fun, is communicated without the fog of verbal meaning. For a person who is still getting the hang of words and their definitions, it is useful to employ these concepts without being graded on syntax. By responding to another creature's cues, a young person can practice caring, before they know what it is. Which leads me to

Empathy: What's it like to be you?

Not only can we talk about their body parts, their habits, and their needs, we can try to put ourselves into their paws.  We learned that kittens have very limited vision and rely on their whiskers to figure out the world directly in front of their faces. As soon as Mae saw Tootsie shudder and stare blankly at a shadow, she melted with empathy, scooping her up to keep her safe. Imagining that someone else is having a totally different experience than the one you are having is a heavy-duty abstract notion for somebody who is not yet five.

Confrontation Therapy: Sensory Overload, but in a Good Way

A litter of kittens, like most critters, provides ample scratching, stubbornness, wriggling, and sudden noise-making. This barrage of sensorial tricks and treats can surprise, startle, delight, frustrate, and sometimes hurt a young person, trying to make the kitten stay in the Lego house.

I can see how someone like George benefits from this. He's a big fan of predictable routines, and doesn't appreciate sudden anythings, except when flappy chicks, pushy puppies, and scratchy kittens are involved. When, while handling resident or visiting animals, he gets a faceful of wings, or a tiny little nibble from a barely-weaned, furry mouth, his resilience is inspirational. There's no giving up on loving a kitten. They spark in him a desire to return and try again; to build relationships over time.

Math: Count the Combos

Last, but not least, when you have to care for four kittens, you have frolicky fun word problems in the making. While they are our furry little teachers here at the BU, they are also doing their fair share of learning. These babies need to be handled, startled, cuddled, and surprised by humans during their early days. That's because, when they find themselves in a shelter eventually, potential adopters will not consider a hissing frightened ball of feral fur for a pet. So, every evening, Henry and Thomas bring the kittens upstairs in pairs, to climb up pillows, jump off of beds, surf the storms of beds sheets and hide in book forts.

Night after night, as they took up various combinations of cats, we got to talking. How many different kitten pairs are possible?

What's the best way to figure that out? Sure, you can start with:  Snickers plus Tootsie (1), Snickers plus Taffy (2), Snickers plus Twizzler (3), and then keep counting all of the other cats that way, but you'd soon run into some repeats. Taffy plus Tootsie (4), Taffy plus Twizzler (5), Taffy plus Snickers? Nope, we said that already. So, moving on to another kitten, Twizzler or Tootsie, we're going to have even more repeats. I asked aloud, "Isn't there some kind of mathematical formula, to help us know how many possible kitten combos can be taken for playtime upstairs?"

Lucky for all of us, the dad of the house is mathmalicious. He dropped this little beauty on me before I was even done asking for it.

N  x (N-1) = X
            2

N=the number of kittens, or puppies, or platypi you happen to be grouping into pairs. In this case, that number is four.
I'll spare you the ciphering. Where N=4, the answer to how many unique pairs can be made, X= 6. The kids may romp with six different sets of cats in their adventures upstairs.

Question: answered
Math: learned

We can move on to play time. I give you the Tabletop Kitten Arena

Nowadays, people tend to talk about what they feel thankful for in their lives. 'Tis the season. I know if I asked this house, everyone would say they're grateful for kittens. If could ask the kittens, I'd like to think that they'd say they're grateful for us. And the heat lamp.