Tuesday, October 9, 2007

Dreaming of warmer weather

It is nearly freezing at night now. My tomatoes had just started producing. I hadn't even gotten a quart of salsa out of them yet. So I brought all the ones that I thought would ripen indoors and put them in my front window. Here's hoping!

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9 comments

Ter said...

cold here too!!
we discovered our tomatos were actually mini ones. didn't get very many but I blame that on the fact that I planted them too late.

Question for you. We had spaghetti squash for supper last night. I saved all the seeds this time... how can I prep them to plant for next season? (can I?)

Anonymous said...

I'm not sure how I stumbled here but I love your blog and pics! It seems we have a lot in common. I added you to my rss feed:) I fantasize about gardening and sewing, but haven't gotten into either yet. knitting and photography is about as crafty as I've gotten. (and recently cooking). baby steps in this life journey, I guess.

Katie said...

Stay warm Val, it was in the 40's last night here....I must admit it was nice to dress warm :)

Anonymous said...

yes! always eager to hear about good books.

I did notice the first week we started unschooling it felt a little crazy, as we felt obligated to follow EVERY whim or interest the children had. It didn't take me long to relax though (major type B personality here). The more I read on unschooling, the more I relax and realize the children have years to learn and we don't have to cram it all in. Its amazing what they do on their own, once I step out of the way though.

One thing we are still floundering about is bedtimes and food issues. We went to extreme freedom for a few days, but then pulled it back in. They are too young at 3 and 6, we feel. They need some sense of structure...or maybe we'll change our minds yet again. LOL

I'm reading "Teach Your Own" now and I have a slew of magazine subscriptions I will be requesting for my birthday next month (life learner, etc). If you have any suggestions, I'll take them!

Val in the Rose Garden said...

I am reading a few books right now... The Well Trained Mind by Susan and Jessie Wise (Bauer), Teaching Your Own by John Holt, and Radical Unschooling by Sandra Dodd. All are wonderful books! I am gathering millions of ideas to share with my homeschool group and just to keep in the back of my mind for the future. The Well Trained Mind is the philosophy I go off of for all of our "school day" stuff... and then we go off and do fun things for the rest of the day. Every Wednesday is exploration day, we go with another homeschooling family and do farm days, or like yesterday, we just find leaves and press them from the backyard. lol... but we are always doing something with nature. Monday is library day. We go there and check out books on what we are interested in. Thursday is Farmers Market day... I pick up my CSA box, and we have a cookie and listen to music... and any of these outing days spark interest in my children and we go with that... they make lists of books they want to look at. We have been on a "Little House on the Prairie" kick for about a year... or two... for a LONG time. We go to Pioneer Farm http://www.pioneerfarmmuseum.org/indexold.html at least once a year, and this last time we wrote about it in our journal, and went to the Ohop indian village as well. And right now we are on an Indian kick. Talking about Sacagewea, Pocahantas, etc.

Like I said, we are an structured unschooling family. lol... things inspire weeks (sometimes years) of unit studies on thing we never even knew we were interested in. I just picked up Ecojournals which I am getting spiral bound to add to the kids nature journals in their three ring binders... http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw/102-4528394-4284935?initialSearch=1&url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Ecojournal SO much fun. There are days when doing this type of schooling is hard, but then... compared to what? Having kids that hate to learn? I mean really... I enjoy most of it... to have enthused kids, who ADORE reading and learning etc... who could ask for more?

Val

Hows that for the longest comment ever?

Anonymous said...

I opened this page to see what might be new...immediately seeing your tomatoes on the window sill -and I laughed because I'm doing the same thing!
Summer was just too short this year!
Thanks for sharing.

Anonymous said...

Kindred spirit for sure! That is the john holt book I'm reading now. I'm starting to skip through the beginning, since I feel I don't need to go over the reasons why they don't need formal schooling anymore. LOL

We do the library trips, homeschool outings, reading Wizard of Oz out loud and Isaac (6) is doing the Headsprout.com games right now. and That's about it. I always hear about all of these in-depth unit studies. Maybe we'll get into that later. I guess learning to read and having fun is where we are at now.

Its good to hear about other's unschooling goings-on. :) and you reminded me I wanted to look into a CSA membership.

Amanda said...

Your tomatoes are beautiful! To ripen the green ones you can wrap them in newspaper and put them in a cool dark spot. Check them once a week until they are red.

momma said...

Love this blog and all your pics, glad you posted it on the llnoe site. Cold here too. My tomato plants all died early this summer because of where we planted them. Old tree had been cut down and the roots hadn't been removed deep enough...blocked all of my the tomato plants' grow. Darn it. Next year I have plans for different areas.

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