On Forests and Picking Berries

"I suppose all woods everywhere are really just different bits of the one wood, pushing up through the earth like the different bits of the sky that shine through the clouds are the same sky."
Elizabeth Goudge, in Herb of Grace
I can't tell you how immensely I enjoyed this lovely novel and another by the same author, "Bird in the Tree." Mid-twentieth Century writer I've just discovered. Seems she had some acclaim in her day, and was forgotten. Do tell me what you think if you've encountered her, as I would like other perspectives.
Pictured are blackberry brambles. I picked like a bear, with tongue and paw and saved them up for the long cold winter.
Blackberries vary surprisingly. We have tart black raspberries, small and dainty covered in delicate prickers, as well as blackberries on our land. In just one corner of a valley on the property, there are blackberry canes thicker than a man's thumb, with long strong thorns guarding drooping clusters of heavy berries as big as acorns, juicy and dark and sweet. These are barbs that will rip your jeans if you rush by, leave a bright scratch on a forearm, punch into a finger and leave it smarting for days.
It is because they guard treasure!

Menomonie Weekend

We just spent a wonderful weekend both in my home town of Menomonie and at the Perlieu land. We got to see both of my parents, go to my 10 year high school reunion, and relax at the cabin. Probably the highlight was a stretch of about nine hours on Saturday that Libby and I got to be around Menomonie without the boys. It turs out that, given the chance, we still really enjoy hanging out together!

Here's a small album of photos from the trip. They're not regular family vacation photos, since some are things we found interesting (signs, Menomonie's green algae-rich water, graphitti) as well as the normal cute kid shots. As always, I recommend the slide show option for viewing them.

the Bike Trailer

A couple of days ago I mentioned biking around with the boys in a bike trailer. I didn't include any pictures in that post so I thought I might right now. We were out yesterday on our (almost) weekly trip to Java Train. I like most of the features of this trailer, except the cloth topper. It attaches to the back of the thing with Velcro, which isn't quite sufficient for the amount of tension it requires. I'm going to bolt it on one of these days. I like how Libby bungied a milk crate to the frame of the trailer. It serves well as a trunk!

A Nest on the Porch

I love having a porch. It's the overlapping of indoors and outdoors, public and private, personal and community. Libby recently rearranged ours and feels even more living room like than our actual living room.

Gibbie's favorite thing to do on the porch is make a nest out of pillows and blankets (but mostly pillows). He'll spend a long time contentedly being a little bird going in and out of his nest.

Zero Driving Days

After Gibbie and I finished fixing the car as shown in the previous post, our family didn't drive again for six days. We biked everywhere. This was extremely gratifying and probably one of the longest stretches of Zero Driving Days we've had.

Since I bike to both of my jobs, weekdays are easy Zero Driving Days. The weekend is the challenge. So far we've successfully biked to church only once. It's uphill most of the way and we need to leave home early enough to give me plenty of time to be early. (I can't be late for church if I'm supposed to play the opening hymn!)

We pull the kids in our Cannondale trailer which Libby has equipped with a milk crate "trunk" for our stuff. We can trade off who pulls the kids for the different legs of our travel in a given day. Unlike driving in the car, we can split off in different directions whenever we want to and both have a vehicle.

I'd say the biggest drawback is how hard it is to hold a conversation while traveling like this. We often read in the car, which is of course completely impossible on bikes. Thus our current book Paradise Lost is not going quite as quickly as others have, but ah well.

All this and I haven't mentioned gas prices... but I guess that's obvious.