No rational grounds for it

We love our yearly grandparent photo. This year at the Dallas Arboretum. 

The rain held off for my birthday trip to the Dallas Arboretum with the whole family. I love that my birthday falls during spring break--anything we do feels like we are celebrating. What a beautiful world they've created at the Arboretum. It's big enough that when you visit just a few times a year it feels like a world without end--always something new to see. 

Almost every semester I read a story with my students called "The Garden Party" by Katherine Mansfield. Walking through the Dallas Arboretum, I always think of the opening of the story--here's an excerpt from a few lines into the story:  

"As for the roses, you could not help feeling they understood that roses are the only flowers that impress people at garden-parties; the only flowers that everybody is certain of knowing. Hundreds, yes, literally hundreds, had come out in a single night; the green bushes bowed down as though they had been visited by archangels."

Trying to take a pic at the end of the day--forced smiles anyone? 

It's quite sad to think of it this way, really: to think of a garden as artificial, an illusion made to impress or to flatter the intelligence. Not to malign the story--it portrays a delicious irony between the world of wealth and beauty the family carefully tends for itself and the dismal realities of other people's lives right outside their door. And there certainly may be an element of this in the massive expense of maintaining of an arboretum (in full bloom in early March?) in the middle of a city. But those ironic opening lines of "The Garden Party" do not really capture how I experience the beauty of a garden.

I thought about the arboretum again this week when I got to the end of a wonderful novel called "The Goldfinch" (won the Pulitzer prize a few years ago--I'm quite behind). The main character is talking about paintings, about "those images that strike the heart and set it blooming like a flower, images that open up some much, much larger beauty that you can spend your whole life looking for and never find” (759).

That's much more like it: the power of an artfully made image (or garden) to connect to our hearts, to renew us, to remind us of our deepest longings. The power of beauty to change the way we see and think and feel.

a poppy blooming in our yard

Making our yard beautiful

And so we tend our own gardens--our own little patches of beauty. Making little paintings of the garden has been my way of tending to beauty, I suppose. I'm a more whole person when I'm somewhere in that creative process. 

For JB, it's the process of envisioning and creating the actual garden and cultivating it from year to year. Our yard is a demonstration plot in some ways.  How can we take full advantage of the unique soil and conditions of our native Texas landscape and make it the most beautiful and sustainable thing it can be?

Playing in a friend's garden

And for the children,  "Those first images that crack your heart wide open and you spend the rest of your life chasing, or trying to recapture, in one way or another? Because, I mean—mending old things, preserving them, looking after them—on some level there’s no rational grounds for it—“ (757). There doesn't seem to be much rational ground for a fairy garden like this either, but it sure captures Eliza's imagination. And it was a satisfying project for JB's creative energies too. 

Add caption

tending to the fairy garden 

Fairy pond in a tree

No rational grounds for it

We love our yearly grandparent photo. This year at the Dallas Arboretum. 

The rain held off for my birthday trip to the Dallas Arboretum with the whole family. I love that my birthday falls during spring break--anything we do feels like we are celebrating. What a beautiful world they've created at the Arboretum. It's big enough that when you visit just a few times a year it feels like a world without end--always something new to see. 

Almost every semester I read a story with my students called "The Garden Party" by Katherine Mansfield. Walking through the Dallas Arboretum, I always think of the opening of the story--here's an excerpt from a few lines into the story:  

"As for the roses, you could not help feeling they understood that roses are the only flowers that impress people at garden-parties; the only flowers that everybody is certain of knowing. Hundreds, yes, literally hundreds, had come out in a single night; the green bushes bowed down as though they had been visited by archangels."

Trying to take a pic at the end of the day--forced smiles anyone? 

It's quite sad to think of it this way, really: to think of a garden as artificial, an illusion made to impress or to flatter the intelligence. Not to malign the story--it portrays a delicious irony between the world of wealth and beauty the family carefully tends for itself and the dismal realities of other people's lives right outside their door. And there certainly may be an element of this in the massive expense of maintaining of an arboretum (in full bloom in early March?) in the middle of a city. But those ironic opening lines of "The Garden Party" do not really capture how I experience the beauty of a garden.

I thought about the arboretum again this week when I got to the end of a wonderful novel called "The Goldfinch" (won the Pulitzer prize a few years ago--I'm quite behind). The main character is talking about paintings, about "those images that strike the heart and set it blooming like a flower, images that open up some much, much larger beauty that you can spend your whole life looking for and never find” (759).

That's much more like it: the power of an artfully made image (or garden) to connect to our hearts, to renew us, to remind us of our deepest longings. The power of beauty to change the way we see and think and feel.

a poppy blooming in our yard

Making our yard beautiful

And so we tend our own gardens--our own little patches of beauty. Making little paintings of the garden has been my way of tending to beauty, I suppose. I'm a more whole person when I'm somewhere in that creative process. 

For JB, it's the process of envisioning and creating the actual garden and cultivating it from year to year. Our yard is a demonstration plot in some ways.  How can we take full advantage of the unique soil and conditions of our native Texas landscape and make it the most beautiful and sustainable thing it can be?

Playing in a friend's garden

And for the children,  "Those first images that crack your heart wide open and you spend the rest of your life chasing, or trying to recapture, in one way or another? Because, I mean—mending old things, preserving them, looking after them—on some level there’s no rational grounds for it—“ (757). There doesn't seem to be much rational ground for a fairy garden like this either, but it sure captures Eliza's imagination. And it was a satisfying project for JB's creative energies too. 

Add caption

tending to the fairy garden 

Fairy pond in a tree

No rational grounds for it

We love our yearly grandparent photo. This year at the Dallas Arboretum. 

The rain held off for my birthday trip to the Dallas Arboretum with the whole family. I love that my birthday falls during spring break--anything we do feels like we are celebrating. What a beautiful world they've created at the Arboretum. It's big enough that when you visit just a few times a year it feels like a world without end--always something new to see. 

Almost every semester I read a story with my students called "The Garden Party" by Katherine Mansfield. Walking through the Dallas Arboretum, I always think of the opening of the story--here's an excerpt from a few lines into the story:  

"As for the roses, you could not help feeling they understood that roses are the only flowers that impress people at garden-parties; the only flowers that everybody is certain of knowing. Hundreds, yes, literally hundreds, had come out in a single night; the green bushes bowed down as though they had been visited by archangels."

Trying to take a pic at the end of the day--forced smiles anyone? 

It's quite sad to think of it this way, really: to think of a garden as artificial, an illusion made to impress or to flatter the intelligence. Not to malign the story--it portrays a delicious irony between the world of wealth and beauty the family carefully tends for itself and the dismal realities of other people's lives right outside their door. And there certainly may be an element of this in the massive expense of maintaining of an arboretum (in full bloom in early March?) in the middle of a city. But those ironic opening lines of "The Garden Party" do not really capture how I experience the beauty of a garden.

I thought about the arboretum again this week when I got to the end of a wonderful novel called "The Goldfinch" (won the Pulitzer prize a few years ago--I'm quite behind). The main character is talking about paintings, about "those images that strike the heart and set it blooming like a flower, images that open up some much, much larger beauty that you can spend your whole life looking for and never find” (759).

That's much more like it: the power of an artfully made image (or garden) to connect to our hearts, to renew us, to remind us of our deepest longings. The power of beauty to change the way we see and think and feel.

a poppy blooming in our yard

Making our yard beautiful

And so we tend our own gardens--our own little patches of beauty. Making little paintings of the garden has been my way of tending to beauty, I suppose. I'm a more whole person when I'm somewhere in that creative process. 

For JB, it's the process of envisioning and creating the actual garden and cultivating it from year to year. Our yard is a demonstration plot in some ways.  How can we take full advantage of the unique soil and conditions of our native Texas landscape and make it the most beautiful and sustainable thing it can be?

Playing in a friend's garden

And for the children,  "Those first images that crack your heart wide open and you spend the rest of your life chasing, or trying to recapture, in one way or another? Because, I mean—mending old things, preserving them, looking after them—on some level there’s no rational grounds for it—“ (757). There doesn't seem to be much rational ground for a fairy garden like this either, but it sure captures Eliza's imagination. And it was a satisfying project for JB's creative energies too. 

Add caption

tending to the fairy garden 

Fairy pond in a tree

I love this valentine Benjamin brought home from school 

We had a bit of a worry last week when Eliza came down with pneumonia.  I took her in to the doctor thinking he'd send us home quickly again like he usually does, but this time we didn't leave before she got two painful antibiotic shots in her legs. We were close to having to go to the hospital, but thankfully, the shots did the trick and she was doing so much better by the next day. And now it's just a memory. She's back to her old self--insisting on wearing tutus all day and night (over her pajamas), dancing, making us all laugh, and throwing the occasional (twice daily) two-year-old tantrum.

A quick Eliza story: She is still very interested in dancing and ballerinas in particular. I told her the other day that when she gets potty trained she'll be able to start a real dance class and learn how to dance from a REAL ballerina. She looked at me quizzically and said, "But mom, I'M real." Ha! Of course you are, dear one. You are a real little dancer too. Maybe she and her teacher can just compare notes : )

post-pneumonia dance on the bridge 

Now we are looking forward to my parents' yearly Spring visit starting tomorrow. I made the mistake of talking to Ben about it as I was putting him to bed tonight and I can still hear him up in his bed knocking around being excited.

This week we made our decision about school next year for Benjamin. I think more than the issue of WHICH school to send him to I've have and still do struggle with picturing him in school all day five days a week. Having experienced what I think has been the perfect schedule with small children (working part time) for a few years now, I can understand the attraction of home schooling and the benefits of having more home time for small kids. Sigh. It may be a hard transition for all of us.

Our Valentine's day picnic has become a tradition. 

We've decided to send Benjamin to a public Montessori school that I think will be good for his particular learning style. He already has so much internal motivation to learn and I hope this will be the right fit for encouraging the exploring of the world that he wants to do. This week he's been sitting at the dining room table doing addition and subtraction problems on his fingers (and now increasingly in his head) as JB and I tell him to "EAT!" When he woke up this morning and came into our bed, he said, "mom, let's count by fives together." 

Ha! I went to check on Ben just now after I wrote that last sentence and found him at the top of the stairs asking, "Mom, what's 1+2+9+10?" This is ridiculous. 

Making donuts! A new project made possible by Aunt Amy

The kids have also been playing together pretty well lately too. We enjoy doing projects together--like these donuts! And they love their imaginative games together like the Mayflower, below, and several imaginary worlds involving a submarine, diego and alicia from the TV show, and halloween. 

When I picked up the kids from school one day last week the adults out on the playground were all very charmed by watching Ben and Liza play together on the playground. On that day, the pre-k class had been out there with the 2-year olds but at some point they wanted the 2-year olds to leave and go to a separate little playground a little distance away. Ben and Liza both started crying and calling for each other and while the adults were charmed and were eager to relay the story to me, poor Ben was actually still quite sad when I picked him up. It took him a while even after we got home to find his joy again. 

donut dough

baked ones were fun to decorate 

These ones though--sheer perfection. 

Taking all their worldly possessions across the ocean on the Mayflower. 

A free art appreciation class at the Waco Art Center