Moving sand art

My mother's father was from the Ukraine. I grew up hearing, tasting and admiring all things Russian. He died when my mother was 13 (murdered, long strange story) so I never knew him. But she passed along some of this heritage through her passion for Russian artists (mostly dancers), blinis at The Russian Tea Room, and through the music. Oh. How I love the music. I wish that she were still here to have felt this performance with me. I hope one of you watching is as blown away by it as I am.

The antique effect

Inspired by the new-to-me yard sale treasures that I found at my friend Elizabeth's home, I "antiqued" these photos, in iphoto. Right after bringing them home, I spent an hour or so de-cluttering corners, a table top and a window sill, in order to better display each piece. I was seeing my home with new eyes.

Gillen found this book. It was written at the turn of the century, just a few years before the building of our house. It's been fun to read the recipes, that call for low or high heat (all done over a fire) and imagine the people who lived here cooking this way. The best part is the large amount of information about etiquette . Gillen and I read about how one was to behave as a guest in a farmer's home, what to expect and not expect from the servants, why a bathing room is a necessary room, not just a luxury, especially for tired farmers.
Below is Elizabeth's grandmother's suitcase. It is very heavy (porters were everywhere back then, apparently), lined with linen, and covered with stickers showing her destinations. It has three wooden hangers from which I'm going to hang art supplies in the art room. When I propped up this suitcase in there as well, Nicolas tried to remind me that the art room is a sun room, for eating as well as art. So, it may move to some other corner, but it will be on display.
This coffee jar now holds our beans and the sweet green pitcher holds the hot coffee until it has cooled enough to be poured into glass.
The new kitchen windowsill:
Cookbooks will now lie open for me on what was intended to hold the family bible. This will inspire me to try new recipes.
Though, in the light of day (rather than under the antique effect) it is made apparent how little room I now have to cook. I did declutter another area as well so that I can temporarily move my large cookbook pulpit, if necessary.

We also got a bureau (for $25 and a watermelon), some duck decoys (for Gillen), and more. Thank you Elizabeth and family.

What I really like, right now

I started the day tired (Jesse was sick in the middle of the night) and while doing the mountain of laundry from the night, I found myself muttering about things I do not like right now - things like the man who threw a paper bag out of his truck window while slowly merging on to the highway in front of me yesterday, and the fact that Jesse is sick, and the overworked farmer's mood...

But at the same time, Frickle came out of the woods to greet Gillen, Jesse never threw up again and Gillen decided to work all day at the farm to help Nicolas. One of his employees was out.

So enough with the whingeing. (Though I do wish people wouldn't throw stuff out the windows...)

Here's more of what's good right now:

Asparagus, salads (from the farm and backyard farm) and homemade granola bars.

Facebook - my new fun time-sucker.

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, about the year she lost her husband and almost lost her daughter. What a writer.

My Side of the Mountain, by Jean Craighead George. We just finished it. It's the first book in a trilogy about a boy living in the wilderness with a peregrine falcon. Gillen has decided that he too will live in the wilderness, but on a smaller scale. When he turns twelve, he wants to live in the woods at the farm for a week. I would have loved that then too.

My once-a-week zumba class. Under this Latin influence, my hips have come to life, emphatically - but painfully. Once I get in shape this time, I'd like to never take a two-year hiatus again.

Watching movies with my boys. We watched their first Shakespeare movie - As You Like It, directed by Kenneth Branagh. Shakespeare is one of those things that I really wanted them to like so didn't want to present it the wrong way or with too much scare-them-away-instantly-eagerness. They liked it! I'm holding myself back from adding too many Shakespeare movies to my netflix queue.

Helen's flowers at the farm:Spring. Here in Georgia, it will be over any minute.

The farmer just came home, back in a good mood.

SNOW Day!

I wished for Spring and got something so much better - a March 1st Georgia snowstorm! Jesse had never seen snow that he could remember and Gillen had never seen anything like this.

It started in the middle of the day with wet flakes, many of them as big as a half dollar. They didn't seem to be sticking but who expected anything like accumulation. We were just grateful they'd decided to show up.
I got a picture of the snow in my hair, thinking that was big.
Jesse made a large snow ball by collecting snow from around the trampoline for several runs.We discovered that you can look up into the falling snow more easily when the overhanging porch protects your eyelashes. Jesse called real snow "way better then he ever could have dreamed".
We had lots of walks with Tuki who discovered that she loves snow, and lots of snow ball fights with the neighborhood kids.
And we hadn't seen nothin' yet! There was loads of accumulation and now, hours later, it's still coming down. It is tapering off, which is good for our hoop houses at the farm, but just for one magical day (and maybe tomorrow?) it was a freshly covered, memory-provoking, abundant New England wonderland, in Georgia.
At one point, I was inside thawing my feet (we have the wrong shoes down here - I'd used sneakers until they were soaked and then cowboy boots). The kids and Nicolas were just outside playing. I heard a loud explosion, and then silence. They ran back and reported having seen a snow laden branch that was resting on a wire suddenly burst into flame. The fire immediately went out and so did our power.We had our little wood stove cranking, lots of candles, and a gas stove to make some simple food. The kids played a board game by candlelight and then decided to play their instruments for us in the inviting golden light. It was so Little House on the Prairie, with a bit less fiddle experience ; ). I was thinking about how happy I was to go to bed early (I had a bad migraine last night) when suddenly the power came back, and with it our ability to stay up and get our entertainment elsewhere. I guess eventually it would have gotten old. While I typed this, I'd left the light in this room off and the candles burning. But the typos were getting scary.

Awards

In honor of the Oscars last night, I am thanking beautiful Gail for this award. I thought about giving the speech that I practiced as a child (for my best actress oscar) but it needs some updating.

I am passing it on to just one of the many blogs on which I am hooked, as I hate leaving any one out and this makes it less gnarly for me. So, the award goes to Wistful Wanderlust, a blog that I got hooked on relatively recently . I wish much happiness for Laura. Oh! I forgot. I first have to list six things that make me happy. That's easy.

1. Nicolas, Gillen and Jesse - so breathtakingly so. Especially when they are happy.
2. Blogging - It combines reading, writing, photography, and connecting with amazing people - all major ingredients to my happiness.
3. Good movies - two days ago I got to watch those films nominated for best picture in a movie marathon at a theater, with unlimited popcorn, sitting next to Kelli and Abbi. It was bliss. I loved all of the films (though we didn't stay long enough for "Frost/Nixon"). "Milk" was my favorite.
4. Traveling and exploring. I love so much about travel - getting out of the routine, discovering, all of the heightened senses that come when you aren't in your own territory. I could do without the plane trips. But I am almost over that.
5. Dancing. It used to be, when I was really dancing, that feeling that I would have after a few classes in a row, or after dancing for hours at a club, of just being, just happy, not attached to anything. Now, I am just happy to still be able to move enough to have started taking Zumba dance classes!
6. Crafting with paper. ( I think eating lobster may make me happier but since it's only good in Maine or Boston or on northern islands, I'm not getting much joy from this one.)

The other award that I have received, from Danielle and Ginger, is this one:It looks heavy and oscar like doesn't it? I could be tempted to pull out the speech and the smelling salts. But I won't. I will pass it on to a few talented women in Australia whose bright summery photos have brought me smiles this winter. I pass the award across the equator to Che and Fidel and Four Leaves.

These are the rules to accept the award:
1. You have to pick 5 blogs (or a few, or more : ) that you consider deserving of this award for their creativity, design, interesting material, and also contribute to the blogging community, no matter what language.
2. Each award has to have the name of the author and a link to his/her blog to be visited by everyone.
3. Each award winner has to show the award and put the name and link to the blog that presented her/him with the award.
4.The award winner and one who has given the prize have to show the link of Arte y Pico blog so everyone will know the origin of this award.
5. To show these rules

What I love, right now

-That the kids and I got to go on two adventures with friends this week - to the Atlanta History Museum and then yesterday to visit Kelli, Kyra and Alec. It was good to go somewhere, driving in the GA winter sunshine, to reconnect with Jim Henson's muppets and to hang out with good friends.

-That we get to stay home tomorrow and not go anywhere. It's so cold that there won't be a farmer's market this Saturday and therefore, Nicolas doesn't have to work too much tomorrow and can hang out part of the day with us here! Finally, a farmer's day off.

-That it is winter and we are hanging out upstairs again with books (right now, the one I wrote this summer) and legos.

-That we can hang out downstairs near our wood stove and be warm, now that we have insulation.

-That other than my toe, I feel healthy!

-That my rubber stamps are standing up (spread out like a small city) on a shelf in our new art room cabinet, calling out to be pounded into ink.

-That Gillen and Jesse are laughing in the next room, and not at each other.

-That one time out of twenty, every day, Tuki-dog actually uses her new dog door instead of scratching to be let in.

-That I am sitting under a beautiful handmade throw (my Christmas present from Dina) that is keeping me warm and stylish on our new couch.

-That I am happy with the white couch.

-That we have "The Sopranos" (the beginning of the last season) coming to our mailbox tomorrow.

Grateful to be Here

Really. I confess that I kind of did want to move to the little village of Benne Vagienna in Italy, and even more to Nicolas' family's biking community in Holland. Last January, it was Sydney and the Blue Mountains of Australia that had my heart. Can you blame me?

But I do love our life here. Luckily, this year's election week was a good week to be coming home to America. Yes, it was.

Big reasons to be cheerful:

We got ourselves a video camera. Our other one has been dead for a while now. Nicolas wants me to make educational farming You Tube videos. But in the meantime, Jesse and Gillen have been spending hours filming bike-stunt (well, they try for bike crashes actually) videos. My favorite part is watching Jesse watch himself. I want to record that giggle; and put away that laundry.Lat weekend had us at yet another food event, this one on a local southern farm with bluegrass playing and all the best chefs in Atlanta cooking. We go to this one every year.This time Nicolas was excited to be paired with the restaurant Five Seasons Brewing.They dipped his sweet baby turnips into a carmelized butternut squash sauce:In another booth his African squash made an appearance in an array of local vegetables that were fried in a tempura batter. Mmmmmm...And lastly, tonight is the long awaited So You Think You Can Dance concert in Atlanta. That show was our summer obsession and inspired Jesse to start dancing. The kids and I are meeting Mindy and her family there. We'll turn that Crystal Organic Farm sign into one that celebrates our favorite dancers.

Savoring Slow Food at Terra Madre

The fried calamari, the honey, the chocolate, the raw milk, the beers, the preserved fruits and olives and bread dipped in olive oil. The gelato! The canollis:

It was intense, this huge amount of food and people. We were very grateful that first day at the Salon de Gusto, having not slept the night before (well, me) in anticipation of a 4:30a.m. wake up call to make our flight to Turin from Brussels, and having dragged our luggage around for hours, to find these clever chairs, made from rolled up old newspapers.A few days later we would discover the most important section of the food booths - the "presidio", a large area set aside for rare, sustainably produced foods. These foods had to pass a rigorous set of guidelines in order to receive the presidio label. Each of these booths had a banner (one in English next to the one in Italian) describing the area where it was produced and giving detailed information about its production. There were amazing foods - like the raspberry sized strawberries that are only ripe for ten days a year. After being given a shot of the grappa , La Grappa di Susanna, produced with these strawberries, we couldn't resist buying a small bottle to share with family at Christmas.

Another fascinating food was a sweetener that grows in vine-like tenticles from an Italian tree. I wish that I had more information about these icycle-like, good for diabetics sugar, but the smiling Italian men who harvested it didn't speak any English. We brought home a bag of these, as well as a jar of dark, small, intensely sweet plums, Cannelloni beans, Quinoa from Peru, dried olives, an African cereal grain, and Sicilian honey. We also brought back beautiful fava beans and a strong, pink colored garlic - to plant.

Some of our treasures:And some North American Slow Food Presidia information.

I wished we could have brought back the seeds of these Italian tomatoes. They are cultivated in volcanic rich soil, which we will never come close to recreating, and they hang in kitchens (which are much less humid than ours in the south) where the tomatoes stay good for weeks!We ate a lot of cheese samples. This is a Parmigiano that we saw in the Salon de Gusto food fair:

Hanging Buffalo Mozzarellas:I discovered a new favorite - Pecorino Cheese.
The part of Italy where we were is part of the Piedmont Region. They are known for their meats. There were hundreds of cured meats. I think we may have sampled them all.

Salmon:

This was an entire room of hanging proscuitto at the Salon de Gusto.
And then, at night, we were all treated to a four course meal at all of our hotels or bed and breakfasts or hosts' homes. I don't know about everybody's situation, but our hotel dinner was accompanied by as many bottles of red wine as we wanted. These were slooow meals with great conversation with fellow farmers, and a ridiculously generous and jovial hotel staff looking after us, in a village called Benne Vagienna. But that is for another post. I need to go drink some water after thinking about all that meat.

Some Really Good Things

-It rained last week, all day and night. It gave me that first-snow-of the-season-in-the north-when-you-don't-own-a-car-or-a-driveway feeling. I was so happy. It had been a really long time.-I went to Goodwill today to get some clothes for our trip next week to Europe and I scored! There were a few mothers there who were lacking in good will towards their children (not abusive, but disrespectful) and that was not a good thing at all. But that's for a different post and mood.

-Pulling myself away from laundering and admiring my new shirts and sweaters to scrounge up some dinner for my family, I entered the kitchen to this sight :Nicolas and Gillen decided to make some pesto with the last of Gillen's backyard farm basil. I was told to go walk Tuki. They had dinner all taken care of. Pretty good, huh?

- After restarting fifteen times (I'm not exaggerating) I taught myself to knit socks this week (well, with the help of three library books, a library dvd and an online tutorial). So far, I have knitted the ten inches that go on the leg, and haven't yet conquered the heel or toe, but I am so proud of myself. I'm talking several needles pointing in many directions. I didn't grow up with this stuff.-I seem to be able to eat wheat again, for the first time in eight years. I tested it out with a hamburger bun last week and when I didn't get a rash, I made chocolate chip cookies, with white flour and ate lots of the dough and cookies. This means I can eat pasta at the Slow Food Convivium in Italy. That is an unbelievably good thing.

I hope there is much good in your life.

Games

Despite having discovered the really cool graphics and challenges of on-line gaming (in Runescape and World Of Warcraft) the guys surprised me by taking out several board games this week and Jesse created a new WOW-inspired outdoors game.

We played Imaginiff with Logan. In this game you imagine how the people playing, as well as people whom you all know, would answer several questions. I love that they included "Daddy" for Logan's father and "Papa" for Nicolas.


We have three Monopoly games - the original one, which we turned into a bird/dinosaur monopoly game years ago, the Here and Now American version and the Here and Now Australian version. The other day, Gillen's friend Aaron skipped school in honor of his birthday and we played the Australian version with him for hours.We also played it with other friends another day this week:

Jesse usually goes alone to "training" for his imaginary WOW raids, when Logan is not around. But this time, I followed. Tuki always tags along. See her? The small red, ecstatic motion in the middle of the field?

And I've been getting in shape dancing with Jesse in the wii dance dance revolution game and reliving songs that I danced to in the eighties. Scary.

New things

Brain freeze:
Gillen made clear popsicles (we are getting more exciting things to freeze today. We are out of anything but vegetables right now ;)

Nicolas and Gillen have new mountain bikes. Nicolas is riding his back and forth to the farm and he and Gillen have gone to a few challenging trails. They are loving it! I want one too.

I am taking more walks with Tuki in the fallish air.I received a bike delivery of one of those cool red flowers that pop up every year around now.When the kids and I played Quiddler the other day they could make their own words, without any help. They are getting so old and wise.

Treno

Back in March, Jesse decided that he wanted to make his own card game. He asked me to cut out cards from card stock and once in a while asked me how to spell something. He would put the cards away for weeks at a time and then suddenly make them every day. Every once in a while he'd ask for new colors of card stock.

About a month ago, Jesse thought of selling these cards at the Live and Learn Conference untrepreneurial fair. This gave him a deadline and he started working more quickly. As of today, the game is officially complete.

His game is called Treno. He has created four different decks of 35 cards each. They are called: Rainbow, Sea Serpent, Light and Earth. I picked one card from each deck to post here.
He came up with very clear and interesting directions (it's less complicated than yu gi oh, so even I might be able to play). He is decorating containers for the decks.

I hope he sells a few at the conference. They are pretty darn cool - not that I'm objective or anything.

Dragonflies

This morning, we went to a Dragonfly workshop at Charlie Elliott, our local nature center. It was led by one of the experts on dragonflies - he wrote the southestern book, literally.

Giff gave us a slide show presentation and then we hit the ponds to catch them and even hold them for ourselves.


Gillen has his friend Cole here for the weekend and they weren't so sure about letting the dragonfly workshop take up valuable time out of their day. Thankfully, they ended up loving it and were the last ones to go back to the car. Jesse (here with his best friend Logan) treated it as a sport. He had a fierce need to catch as many dragonflies as possible.

He tried giving them the signal that they were cleared for a landing...
One seems to have chosen a runway behind Jesse.
Finally, he chose the strategy of running as fast as he could , net flying and eyes darting.He had caught many more when we first got there, when he wasn't trying so hard. The Olympics are giving us all a need to reach intensely, and with lightning speed, for our limits.

There were hundreds of dragonflies. I particularly liked this amber winged one. Up close, its wings are iridescent.I plan to sit on the stone bench in Gillen's garden and try to catch a glimpse of the nymphs coming out of his pond. They slowly leave their ecoskeletons in order to spread their wings and "harden" into dragonflies. This process takes about an hour and Giff said it is incredible. Dragonflies spend 90% of their lives, several years, as nymphs. The hour long process when they come out of their hard skins is their most dangerous time. They are also amazing to watch mate - their bodies form a heart shape as they connect.