Growing Things

Perhaps someone can explain my visceral desire to grow food on my balcony. I would love to have the time and energy, money and availability to do much more- to compost, grow food organically, and even do some hydroponic 'window farming.' Strawberries all winter! But, alas, I live in the trench between English-language websites which explain how to do it all, and Russian reality, where I can't remember the word for 'fertilizer' and I have no idea how to find all the 'easy' supplies that the websites recommend. One of my favorite websites is a Canadian cold-weather-urban-gardening one. In some Canadian cities, they give away balcony-sized compost boxes, complete with worms! If only...

But for this year, we've had more success than ever before. Seeds from the local supermarket; Soil and planters from the 2-minute-walk-away store. (Though the woman who works there hates it when I come in with my three roving children, and ask that she, once again, reach the biggest planters, which for some reason are all on the top shelf. I have offered to get them myself, but she won't let me behind the counter!) She was incredulous that I was taking home the bag of dirt. "Now? By yourself?"

"Sure, I have a big stroller."

After five minutes of self-concious effort to put the huge bag in the (shrunken?) stroller basket, Ella was ejected from the stroller seat. She whined all the way home and the soil enjoyed pretending to be a baby.

We have spinach, broccoli, and apples growing. One day, the boys saved their apple seeds from their snack, and how could I resist the pleas to plant them and grow apple trees? So now we have 8 apple trees... if you can call them that when they are two inches tall! (They are on the far right of the following photo.)

After planting a lot of broccoli seeds, I read the instructions on how to grow it, and it turns out we need five-gallon planters. We are transplating a few shoots, and eating the rest as sprouts. I'll be very surprised if we actually get any broccoli! The apple 'trees' ... well, we'll see if they live through the summer!

We already thinned the plants pretty ruthlessly. And the boys ate the sprouts in handfuls. Amazing.

Our sunny balcony is like a greenhouse (which will be a problem in the warmer weather) but it's poorly insulated and very cold at night. The multiple bulbs I planted resulted in one shoot early in the spring. It was the closest to the door, and I wonder if enough heat leaked out to keep that one bulb from getting too cold. I didn't know bulbs could get too cold, but in containers at -30C I guess was too much. The seeds that did the best were those which have never been to the balcony, but rather stayed on the inside windowsill. I know spinach should be a cool-weather crop, and it seems that our climate is ideal. But they seem to be pretty happy at 70F (or hotter, in the daytime sun)!

So, here are way more photos than you want to see. Mostly for my dad, so he could imagine our balcony! The balcony extends from the kitchen to the kids' room. Here is the view from the kitchen window.

The same corner, but photographed from the middle of the balcony, looking toward the kitchen. The boys' workbench and tools are spread out, with one planter on top (basil, spinach and dead bulbs) and the pots of daisies on the floor. The white windowsill in the corner is the kitchen window.

Here is the opposite end of the balcony, photographed from the door of the kids' room. Our transplanted spinach is in the red bucket. And it's doing well, though the websites warn against transplanting.

Musicals

A few weeks ago, the kids gave Miss Lena a concert. They turned off the room lights, turned on the night light (as a spotlight substitute) and stood in a line, belting out their favorite songs. Ella loves to sing alone, but usually gets mixed up with the words. Then she invites the boys in. I was amazed not only by their decent pitch, but also by the way the belt out the song, like they are on stage. I credit the Glee songs that they watch on youtube for the wide-leg, arms to the side and open mouth stance.

(see former post for the video of them jumping to the "Jump" song.)

http://coefamilyadventures.blogspot.com/2009/12/jump.html

Once one child (or Eric) starts singing, they all join in. It can go on and on and on. I usually have to stop them singing at meal time so that we can finish our meals.

Eric has been playing guitar with them more, and the boys are practices keeping the beat with various percussion instruments. Ella likes to drum on the guitar case, though her sense of rhythm is pretty post-modern.

Favorite songs:
Glee "Jump" "You Can't Always Get What You Want" (I highly recommend this to any parent as a response to, "But I really want to!"
Veggie Tales -Lyle the Kindly Viking "When We Share"
Go, Diego, Go - some song about walking like a dinosaur.
They Might be Giants- "I can add," "Seven" and of course, "The Alphabet of Nations."

Development Updates for Everyone!

Danya recently picked up his new Magic Tree House book (thanks, Mom and Dad!) and started reading it. At bedtime, he read the whole chapter out loud to Tima and Ella. The next night, he read six chapters. For the first time, he’s reading chapter books (with fairly simple, short chapters) that used to be too hard. Before this, his English reading each day was about six pages with four lines each.

His Russian reading is getting easier, though he doesn’t understand most of what he reads. But he is enjoying memorizing poems, and can do more than a stanza a day now. This week he had a whimsical one of around three stanzas that he memorized overnight. (He takes the poem to bed with him and practices it instead of complaining that he can’t go to sleep.)

More than anything, though, Danya loves Eric reading to him. After many months they’ve recently finished The Lord of the Rings. (It’s hard to say who enjoys it more!) And now Eric has restarted The Chronicles of Narnia. As it is, we wake up to children begging to be read to, and at each meal they also ask for us to read. I’m hopeful that Eric can start reading some of the homeschool books to the boys, but we’ll have to see if he enjoys them as much. Usually I read those when Eric is travelling or at work. Danya and Tima both enjoy them-they insisted I read The Wizard of Oz again, which isn’t my favorite!

We’ve just had a new infusion of chapter books from our teammates, along with next year’s History and Geography curriculum. Hopefully, we won’t have to do them during formal ‘school’ time this summer, but they’ll get read anyway.

Tima is loving math right now, but only in his own way. When he has subtraction problems in his school book, he rejects the number line provided, and gets out the Monopoly Deal card game. After sorting out the money cards (10 minutes) he looks at his problem, for example 36 – 4 = ____ . He adds up the cards to reach 36 (which takes at least five minutes, since there is one $10 card, and the rest are $5 or under). And then takes away 4. And then he re-adds the money cards to see how much he’s left with. (This takes up to 10 more minutes, with a lot of getting mixed up, usually.) Then he writes the answer in his book. While I admire his creativity, and know that he’s getting a lot of adding practice, it’s hard to be patient with this since he has at around 12 problems to do. I told him he could use the cards with one-digit subtraction (for example 5-2= ) but after doing one problem, he said that it was so easy he didn’t need the Monopoly cards.


For Ella, it's all about clothes. Ella was very disappointed last month when we told her that her favorite pajamas were too small. Too put it mildly! The 'pajamas' are actually a Colorado Rockies outfit, shiny purple shorts and tank top. (Thanks, Mama Coe and Papa Coe, for giving them to us eight years ago!) But the top was so tight she cried when it was taken off, and the shorts were no longer fitting over her diaper. So I flippantly said that the shorts would fit if she didn't wear a diaper. A month later, I accidently let us run out of diapers. And she was so excited! "Now I can wear my purple shorts!" exclaimed Ella. And thus we began the big experiment. Which I felt was a huge mistake, especially since we had no diapers in the house. I imagined that after she wet the bed the second time we would really wishwe could just put her in a diaper. The first night I woke her up twice to go to the potty. And the best part was that she woke up without crying (first time ever, I believe) and immediately knew why I was waking her. After a week, we had one accident, and I exercised my new sewing skills to widen the neck of the tank top.

One other tank top Ella found while we were putting away winter clothes is a plain blue one. Ella wanted it on, right over her dress. And she calls it her ‘tink-ball shirt’. Tima decoded that she got ‘tink’ from ‘tank’ and thinks it’s a real sport. So now we are waiting to learn how to play ‘tink ball’.

A last word on clothes—Ella loves a little pleated skirt (thanks, Andes!) with a matching sweater. When she wears it, she bounces around all day, imitating ballet moves. “You know, Mama? My ‘kirt maked me dance!” she exclaims as she twirls.

Saturday Preparations

According to Russian tradition, spring cleaning is done on the Saturday before Easter. We did a little extra, and the boys volunteered to clean the balcony. This is the open balcony where they have been playing 'hockey' in the warm sunshine. I think they might be disappointed that it's no longer slippery without the layer of dirt. We took two dustpans of dust and grime off of this little space! And then wiped and mopped a few times until it was clean enough to go barefoot.

I think we hit 50 F (9C) today. Outside, the boys begged to take their coats off, but all the Russian kids were wearing coats and hats, even while rollerblading in the sunshine. So we lived it up American-style on our balcony-shirtless and barefoot.

Finally, we've hit the age(s) where egg-dyeing is not too out-of-control! I even had fun. I only wish we had more eggs! My favorite was Ella's collection of purple eggs--she was the most productive and monochromatic. But Danya came up with the 'globe' idea yesterday at the Huddlestons' and I was inspired. We colored continents green, polar ice caps white, and then dyed the eggs blue.