Pittsburgh Visit (Kali writing)

Here (at last, sorry for the delay) are some photos of my trip to Pittsburgh (Nov 21-Dec 4)! Of course, photos can't truly capture everything about the trip, but hopefully they can at least begin to give a picture (so to speak) of it. 

Saying goodbye...

And here we are (me with my Aunt Christie and Uncle Mark)!

This is my room/the library, containing 439+ books at the time I was there.

And here I am, reading one of the 439+ books!

Here are some Thanksgiving photos:

I did have flashbacks to being Miss Bingley while wearing this outfit...

...but I wasn't too fancy to help with Thanksgiving dinner (at least not while wearing an apron)...

...and I didn't hold myself to Miss Bingley's standards of propriety for the entire evening...

...let alone for the entire visit.

We took a lot of walks around Pittsburgh, of which this is one...

...and this is another! (Pittsburgh has many public staircases, some of which are listed as city streets!) 

I got to decorate for Christmas twice this year!

This may or may not actually be a photo of us Googling animal nose information or watching videos of things in vacuum chambers, but it easily could have been if it isn't. 

I am usually aware of the fact that I am not an article of clothing, but for some reason I seem to have forgotten that a few times...

I am here, though I kind of blend in with the surroundings...

Eating waffles!

Stuffed bananas! They were delicious (surprisingly or not surprisingly, depending on your level of dubiousness towards stuffed bananas.)

Stuffed bananas along with cucumber curry and curried cauliflower

My visit also involved some painting:

This is not a stuffed banana (and probably
less delicious, though I didn't actually
taste it so I guess I can't really say...)

One of these was eaten shortly after this photoshoot...

And it SNOWED!

Apparently the snow angel I'm making is flying away with me!

I would have liked to be up near the top of this picture (or in another tree nearby; I'm not actually sure which tree this is)...

...but sadly, snow makes tree branches slippery.

We also unexpectedly ended up doing some attic insulation. (In this photo I'm regretting not having worn a coat.)

I didn't actually spray in any of the insulation, but I did take a peek into the attic!

Introducing...

Snowy Personeus!

Who unfortunately did not survive long after my departure (but has since been reincarnated!)

And finally, here is the other Kali, going home.

(Apparently she has an easier time sleeping in the car than I do!)

Tangly Woods Christmas!

As I type, Alida's present, Here Comes Science by They Might Be Giants, is playing in the background. Kali just emerged from her bed. There are sticker pages under way all over the table, along with partially eaten clementines, Christmas danish and chocolates. Dancing with Daddy to the silly songs has taken precedence over the other activities. Not sure that today can top the last two days, but low key unplanned fun times as a family, with parents dedicated to being as unproductive as they can be for the weekend, are equally special in this household. This blog post will be my greatest burst of productivity in my day - I will try to exercise mental restraint whenever things crop up that we could get done!

These past two days were so very special. And maybe even more so with the awareness that having a table full of 8 people to be together with is so unusual this 2020 holiday season. The main way we arranged our time together Christmas Eve and Christmas day was each person getting to choose a 1/2 hour activity to do all together. So that is how I'll order these holiday reflections. After watching the Shalom Christmas Eve service together, I kicked off our group activities by spending our first block of time each choosing someone (or several people) we wanted to send a card/letter to. It seemed fitting to spend time thinking about those that we couldn't be with this holiday and wanted to let know we were thinking of them. The girls have been busy making envelopes from sticker pages and I had a lot of repurposed Christmas cards for the cause.

Next up was my mom's half hour where we turned our creative energies to decorating the gingerbread cookies that the girls had made with her a few days prior. It was a good thing that Terah took a long time on each of her cookies, as she would focus intently on decorating a cookie and then promptly eat it. After eating 3 or 4, she was out of room in her belly but then sought permission to decorate one but not each it! As if permission was needed! The special touch this year was having black walnuts from our trees in the line up of decorations.

The evening culminated in Alida's half hour, which was a concert featuring vocalists, Alida and Terah, and pianist, me! The weak link was definitely the pianist. The girls had disappeared multiple times in the weeks leading up to Christmas to practice their songs. And I had played some carols on the piano one time with them, but honestly didn't know that the concert was really going to happen and that they were really wanting me to accompany them until the day of. Let's just say that my piano skills are pretty rough, but it was still very fun and they were most gracious with my mistakes!

Before we called it a night, Kali gave Terah one present to open to tie her over until Christmas morning. We definitely make it hard for her by putting presents in stockings and under the tree well in advance. She spent many moments kneeling by the tree in the days before Christmas trying to figure out what might be under the wrapping. Kali had the great idea of buying Terah the sequel to Sophie's Squash - a book that we have all had the opportunity to read to Terah MANY times! So now Sophie's Squash Go to School has been added to the collection. She was not disappointed!!

Jason and I were able to slip out for a walk/jog Christmas morning before any kids woke. And what a surprise to see some snowflakes coming down! If Tala had been hoping for anything, it was a white Christmas and I had more or less told her that that was not going to happen. How wrong I was! As we gathered to open stockings and eat Christmas danish, the snow came down. I'm so glad I was wrong and the weather didn't match the weather predictions I had looked at.

My parents were all dressed up (Terah seemed to be mixing up holidays and was threatening to pinch people who weren't wearing Christmas colors and so she helped make sure Grandpa was dressed appropriately). I went to get a picture of Mom and Dad in their spiffy holiday attire, and they were quickly photobombed by the littlest granddaughter, and so invited the other two to join them. 

Stockings were distributed around and some gifts opened immediately to share. My dad was only able to share his black licorice with some members of the family. It brought back memories of many a Christmas when us kids got dad licorice for the thrill of watching dad eat some and then chase my mom around to try to kiss her - she is not a fan of it!

When all our stockings were emptied, it seems a good time to break things up a bit and get moving. Terah chose for her 1/2 hour that we all play sardines together. For those unfamiliar with the game, it is a form of hide and seek where only one person hides and then everyone else searches for that person and when they find the person they hide with them. You only have to play it once to understand the name of the game! It was very fun and maybe a bit too exciting for Dad, whose heart started flip-flopping on the round where he hid and attempted to get up in Kali's tree bed. It was Mom who took the prize, which was the satisfaction of listening to all of us trying to find her for a solid 10 minutes. We scoured the upstairs and downstairs and were ready to give up. I was starting to look in ridiculous places like cupboards that she clearly could not have fit into. Tala finally found her first under the train table up on a coffee table. Who would have thought it would be the 70+ year-olds picking the most difficult hiding places! Mom was clearly very pleased with herself, and with good reason!

That was the best round to end on, and Terah was ready to fit in another game before her time was up so we did a few rounds of Terah's version of Tensi (dice game) before we opened the presents under the tree. It's hard to choose the highlight from the gift opening, but if I had to choose it was seeing the girls each get a pair of slippers from Tala. You could say the gift was not 100% altruistic, as Tala had been enduring having her slippers stolen often over the months leading up to Christmas. They are unlikely to feel as much motivation now. This morning when Terah woke, the very first thing on her mind was to go find her "Lil Bear" slippers. The only trouble for me is that I'm now getting confused when I hear footsteps as Terah in her slippers now sound a lot like Tala approaching. :) 

A month or so before Christmas, Terah had asked for a fancy white dress "with some extras." She added a veil to her wish list a bit later. She and Alida enjoy playing wedding and she was eager for her own dress and veil (and since her only frame of reference is my dress and veil that they play with, hence the request). Her gift was the only one that got shipped to the wrong post office and then shipped back to Richmond, where it is stuck in the holiday chaos. The veil, found by a friend at Gift and Thrift, was still a hit and she is showing great understanding on the delay of the other package. 

By this time in the day, there'd been a good dose of hubbub and we blessed my dad in retreating for a nap while the rest of us did sticker pages together. Even Jason and I both did one for the first time!

But it wasn't too long until Jason and Alida disappeared and I found them snuggled together in our room reading one of Alida's presents together: How to Speak Chicken! When I went up to help get our Christmas feast of injera and wat (Ethiopian) on the table, I mentioned that we might not see them for awhile. Those two sure can bond over all things chicken!

They did pull themselves away to join us upstairs for a delicious meal (mostly thanks to Tangly Woods veggies and meat and Mom's culinary skills!). 

Dad's half hour took us outside with our full bellies for some fresh air. We were given a scavenger hunt to find things that start with all the letters of CHRISTMAS DAY. More opportunities for creativity to shine. Terah was my buddy and we collected: Cactus, Hazelnut, Rock, Icicle, Snow, Thyme, Mullein, Autumn Joy, Sunflower Seeds, Dill, Ashes, Yarrow. 

We came back in and got warmed up playing games for Tala's 1/2 hour. We played the party version of Bananagrams for most of the time - where the focus is initially on making words and quickly is overwhelmed by managing the chaos brought on by the party tiles which make you make words with one hand, or without using your thumbs, or after running around the table, or with having additional tiles given to you or one taken from you... We shifted to pick-partner Rook with 8 people, which was a twist I hadn't done before (1 card in the kitty and you pick 3 partners).

Kali's half hour was super fun and tapped into my artistic insecurities! We each had a paper folded into thirds. We each started by drawing a head of something. Then we passed our paper around the table and the next person (without seeing our head) drew the midsection of the body. In closing we got a third paper that we drew the bottom half of without knowing the head or midsection. Artistic ability is not required for lots of good laughs at the end!

We hardly ended our activities with a slow one as Jason took us to the garage for his half hour - he had replaced Mom and Dad's car with the ping pong table. I wasn't sure about Mom joining for this level of activity, but she noted that the rest of us were thinking a lot more about her ankle than she was (not sure if that was a good thing or not - though I do take it as a good sign as she went to put her brace on the wrong foot recently). I did hit my threshold of risk after about 10 minutes, and suggested we stop playing Around the World and go to one-on-one games for the remainder of the time! 

We ended the day with Christmas cookies and most of us watching a new Christmas moving Jingle Jangle. What a full and fun two days. Interspersed amidst all the activities, delicious foods and gift giving were lots of sweet exchanges of love and affection and care for one another, which is really what made the time together so precious. 

First Snow & 8th Annual Biochar Burn!

Winter is here! Welcome!! On the eve of what was predicted to be our first big snow, we did a whole bunch of harvesting from the gardens before things were covered. Let's see if I can remember: carrots, turnips, lettuce, radishes, spinach, collards, parsley, dill and cilantro. So we had a December salad for one night which was a treat. And then for a spell, it was all covered in a few inches of snow. I believe carrot and turnip digging will resume today!

Oh, there was one other harvest - all the prickly pear cactus fruits. They fruited so well this year and so the desire and time emerged for Jason, with Kali's assistance, to experiment with prickly pear cactus fruit jam. After labor over small parts of 3 days, we have about 1.5 cups of a very interesting jam made with just the fruit and some raw honey. We'll savor it, especially since we still keep finding little spines from the fruits in parts of our bodies! We think maybe the shirt Kali harvested with got in the wash and then the spines got everywhere? They are SO tiny and can hurt an awful lot and be hard to get out. So additional caution will have to be taken if we undergo such a dangerous culinary act again in future years!

And then the snow came! It was a beautiful snow and the girls were out in it for hours every day! I was able to bail on watching a webinar live and carved out a delightful 1.5 hour sledding adventure on day 1. We were able to introduce Tala to sledding for the first time with sledding on our favorite hill over at our neighbor's. While not very deep there was a crusty layer that made the sledding fast! I was smart and left my camera at home so just fully focused on enjoying the time together. It was a much needed break from my computer screen! On Sunday morning, I came out to help with chores for the first time in weeks and went for a few runs right at our place. While a shorter hill, it was fast and we crashed into the prairie patch full of sumac at a rather rapid clip. Still fun but I was a tad more worried about someone getting poked unpleasantly. 

While snow fun was happening for the girls outside, it was also time to prepare for our biochar burn. Step one is distributing the duff that we had loaded into the pit after the old biochar was out of it earlier in the year to absorb water and any excess nutrients in the surrounding soil. It was carted around (in the snow, which was quite an adventure) and placed at the base of raspberries, blueberries, blackberries and fruit trees. The rows of dark duff contrasted on the white snow were striking. While a lovely sight, I won't choose often to do wheelbarrow work in the snow. It definitely made for some sore muscles!

So if we count the first biochar that Jonathan and Jason did on the other side of the garden, this is our 8th annual burn. And this one felt pretty different than the ones preceding it. While we actually had the perfect number to "get the job done," we did miss having others join us for the day. I found myself remembering various people who had joined us over the years, the soccer games happening in the yard in the background, people milling about and gabbing since there wasn't enough work to keep everyone busy, and then coming in to enjoy a potluck and hanging out together at the end (all smelling of wood smoke). This year, it was just our family of 6 (yay, for having Tala join!) and then for our evening meal our table was full as Mom and Dad had returned from WV to their Tangly Woods abode. So the day was still sweet and the ritual still so very meaningful and a perfect way to welcome winter!

I do not get tired of hearing the meditation Jason wrote (he wrote a longer one initially and this is an abbreviated version we read before lighting the fire each year). This year Alida read it for us and I felt the yearly swells of emotions from deep within! I'll intersperse it here with some more pictures from the afternoon. The wood was nice and dry so the burn was clean and went fast (less than 3 hours). We even had time between carting brush and stoking the fire for throwing snowballs at each other. And we ended the burn with a twist that may never happen again - we started extinguishing the fire with snowballs (followed by the hose). 

We kindle this fire for gratitude.  The wood we have gathered to burn is the flesh of plants, our partners and providers on this earth.  We gratefully acknowledge that we need them more than they could ever need us.

We kindle this fire for memory.  We know that without fire, our species could never have become what we are.  To be human is to burn wood; to use its power to change things to our advantage. 

We kindle this fire for light. Through the plants and like the plants, we need light: to fully understand our world our eyes need to see it reflecting off of our landscapes, and we need it striking our skin to promote our health.  Even in our languages, light is truth and shadows are ignorance.  In this shadow time of year, the light leaping from this fire will be a comfort

We kindle this fire for warmth.  As flames spring from the branches burning here, we will eagerly hold our palms out to face them like leaves, absorbing a small fraction of the heat released there.  This world is our home and we know no other, but it can be a cold place, too. 

We kindle this fire for life.  As the smoke rises, we will be reminded that life changes form; it is always being lost and destroyed, it is always being reborn. The char that is left will be used to enrich the soil—a stable place to store nutrients and habitat for soil organisms. 

We kindle this fire for healing.  In these times too many of us are neglecting our connections to the soil, to the plants, to the Sun.  Our willful ignorance has cost us so much; has been so destructive.  We hope that this one small act of burning a char fire can be a part of a trend of restoration. 

We kindle this fire for our descendants. Like trees stretching their roots into the forest duff made of the decaying bodies of their progenitors, we too live by the gifts of our ancestors to us; gifts of resources and knowledge, skill and values that were a response to their time and place.  We have adapted these for our time in this place, and we know our descendants must do the same.  With this fire we mark our desire to leave to them a world that supports their thriving at least as well as it has ours, and our willingness to work to make it so.

For gratitude, for memory, for light, for warmth, for life, for healing, for our descendants, here and now, we kindle this fire.

And now Jason will empty the toilet on the new pit for the first time this morning. And that is coming just in time as last year's was getting rather annoying to find a spot for each new bucketful in recent days! And so now here we are! Having welcomed winter yesterday, we are also eager to welcome a slower pace in the coming days. I look forward to putting on my autoresponder at the end of tomorrow and turning my full focus to our Tangly Woods pod for a bit. I know both Jason and I are looking forward to more times hanging with the kids without the to do list nagging constantly in the background! That is definitely all I want for Christmas!