Berry Picking

Yesterday evening, the kids and I went berry picking.

We didn't find many ripe berries, but had a great time. We went to our corner lot, the Dragoness with her hat and umbrella, Mr. Inventor with his "lucky jacket". It started to rain just as we were leaving, but it was nice, without lightning, and the showers came and went for a while. Sometimes we would have to get under a group of trees, to wait out a heavier rain, but mostly it just kept things cool. Our clothes and shoes were drenched, as much from wading through tall grass and weeds as from the rain.

The Inventor and the Dragon found the few berries we did see. The Princess did much better on this walk than when she was younger. This was partly because she is taller (always before, it seemed she was at eye level with some thorn or bramble, and would disappear in a clump of weeds), but the water also helped make things easier, I think. There were fewer bugs, we were less worried about snakes, and the plants let us pass without as much of a fight.

The Dragon and the Inventor, and sometimes the Princess, were able to roam ahead, following the clear deer trails, and leaving me to take my time looking at trees. The Princess was with me when I found a solitary mulberry tree, she got some of the berries.

I also saw plum and crabapple trees loaded with fruit. This should be a good year for learning to can and preserve food.

The kids found beautiful wild roses, pink, on climbing vines, and couldn't wait to show me. The Inventor found one of those insect galls on a stick, and brought it home, we've been trying to imagine what kind of bug lived in/hatched out of it.

We stopped for a while at the pond behind our property, where we saw some deer, and several interesting birds. While we sat there, watching and listening (the kids were amazingly quiet!), the sun came out and cast a hazy, golden glow on everything - oak and locust trees, waving grass, pond algae, water.

The kids were ready to go home, then, so we trudged back up to our field, where Dad met us in the van, to give us a ride home. The Dragon had decided to walk home, and we stopped to tease her a bit.

Sort of wish I'd had my camera, but sometimes you have to just experience things fully, without stopping every few minutes to document things.

A Beginning

I'll be blogging here about our homeschooling adventures. I've been trying to decide how to organize the posts, but it looks like I'll just have to jump in and let the organization happen (Ha! Where have I heard that before?).

Another thing I'll have to get used to is identifying where living becomes learning - I'm not quite sure there is a line, and so I'll have to play that by ear, too. I'm guessing I'll just post about what the kids and I have been doing. It'll be great to be able to look back at what we've done, and this way, we can keep the grandparents updated!

The title for this blog comes from one of my many idealistic dreams: I'd love to see us working, playing, and learning happily together; somehow the ultimate representation of that, for me, has become an image of all of us gathered on the front porch some summer evening, singing in harmony. It's a picture of a family happy to be together, enjoying each other's company.

We're a long way from that dream, and really, it's more of an inspiration than a plan; the idea is to work on the "enjoying each other's company" bit. Anyway, we are here on our place, and we are together, so we've got lots to work with.

Hopefully this blog will end up documenting the steps we make in that general direction, but in the meantime, I'll post about what we do around here that we count as learning!