Calling all bees

It has been raining all week and many of the beautiful white glowing flowers have fallen but I managed to capture a few views prior to the blustery weather. Beautiful, aren't they? 

A few years ago we had a bumper crop here and managed to have more flower blossoms than any other year. 

Then last year Dan took a few photos of Narina in her bonnet on a family walk. I have one of them enlarged in my sewing room.  Bliss.

2012 Bluebell Walk

                                                    

It is the tradition of our family to go on a yearly bluebell walk.  It used to be a season full of visits, but the season of our lives has a bit more in the children bubble and we get caught up in our lives and forget about the forest floor. This year we were in Dorset for the bluebells and this is where I first saw them in full bloom 6 years ago.  They didn't seem as prolific this year, but magical none the less. 

The woodland

Poo duty

Play little gnomie gnome

Trying out some wood sorrel

Love sweet forest love

My favorite tree

This moment: Window Rainbow

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. ~Amanda Soule  

                                       

Our play group's visit to Tablehurst Farm

Before our little Steiner group broke up for the term we went on a field trip to Tablehurst Farm to check out the new babies that had arrived.  We had a guided tour and were able to watch an ewe in labour then saw her again seconds after her birth.  It was amazing to do as a family and as a group.  I love the smell of a barn full of babies!

This Moment: Spring Showers

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. ~Amanda Soule 

Knitting Projects

Slowly time is opening back up after the birth of Esben.  Four and a half months later and I have managed five dolls this month plus a few hobby projects. A friend of mine from our Steiner toddler group is very involved in The Christian Community Church.  She has organized a craft morning once a month where a teacher instructs the group on a simple craft.  It was a great experience for me to be in a room full of crafty women and to gain confidence in a relatively new skill. Knitting.  It was there that I learned how to make a bunny.  Soon the bunny turned into two and chicks were born as well.  Then a gnome!  My heart is full from new projects, new friends and the community that surrounds purposeful craft.

Easter Monday

 

Happy Easter Monday.  We celebrated Easter today.  We had gone to visit family this weekend and were just to exhausted to get it together to have a proper celebration yesterday.  We were just as tiered today but made it happen anyhow. Yesterday we finished dyeing the rest of the eggs. The one shown above is done by wetting crape paper pieces and putting them on an egg. Then when it dries the eggs are left with the most beautiful hues.  We did this at our Steiner play group but instructions can be found in "All Year Round".

We hid our eggs around the living room with a little piece of Nakd chocolate/ orange bar (as they say on their site: . Just raw fruit and nuts cheerfully smooshed together!100% natural ingredients, no added sugars or syrups, 1 of 5 a day, gluten, wheat and dairy & GM free).  Eat away sweetie!  We filled our felted eggs with almonds.  Then put a new trowel, fork, and Tinti bath colour and an apple in their Easter Baskets. It was a fantastic and healthy.  Narina had a blast and loved collecting the eggs from around the room.  We put them in a glass vase which is now on the window sill with other eggs we have collected and there is Easter for another year.  We had a great time as a family. We have been drowning in a sea of Narina using the word NO with so much authority lately it has zapped us all of some light. We used the rejuvenation spirit of the day to fill us up.

Bliss!

Community

We are in the middle of school applications, job applications and life evaluations.  I read this on the Ringwood Waldorf School's website. How perfect for the changes we are going through as a family.  

“And if any man works for the community, he must perceive and feel the meaning and value of this community, and what it is as a living, organic whole. He can only do this when the community is something other and quite different from a more or less indefinite totality of individual men. It must be informed by an actual spirit in which each single person has his part... The whole communal body must have a spiritual mission, and each individual of it must have the will to contribute towards the fulfilling of this mission. In every single member down to the least, this Spirit of Community must be alive and active.”

Rudolf Steiner Anthroposophy and the Social Question (1905)

Surreal signs of spring on the farm

 

How do you know when spring is here?  Yes, the baby sheep, cows and blossoming orchards help.  In our house it is the ivy that grows through the wall in the middle of our livingroom. It isn't even an exterior wall.