Christmas in June

Yesterday was the last day of school for Miss Somersault (age 9) and Mr. Skinny (age 7), finishing up 3rd and 1st grades. Last night, we all stayed up late assembling the bunk beds for the girl room. This week's big project was painting the room, which took an exquisite amount of patience in that it required taking a pitchfork and shovel to the mounds of accumulated junque Miss Somersault has accumulated over the years (future anthropologists will be interested in her complete collection of placemats from every restaurant she's ever been to, but I digress). The bunk beds were done around midnight, and fearing a disaster born of tiredness, I put the ixnay on raising the matress up to the top bunk until I had a chance to sleep. So we had one last night of Miss Somersault and her little sister Little Miss Stubborn (age 3 1/2) "camping out" in sleeping bags in Mommy and Daddy's room.

Because of the bunk bed project, I didn't get a chance to water the garden last night, so I slipped out this morning around 8:30. We've had a bonus week in the garden: the tomato census is at 26 on the vine, with the Sun Gold's calving like crazy. (I'm not sure if that is the correct term, but that's what I call it when the fruit emerges out of the tomato blossom). There are two monster tomatos growing, one on the early goliath plant (named "Joe Goliath" by Mr. Skinny) and the other on the variety called "Abe Lincoln" (named "Lil' Mac" by me, but then again I'm a pain in the butt). So we'll see who produces better. We also had the first pepper emerge practically overnight, so that the one fruit is now almost four inches long. We've been in lettuces for about a month now, and the peas and beans should be coming in very soon.

But then I went over to water the blueberry bushes and behold! Patience is a virtue. The trickiest thing to teach kids is patience---I know, because I'm pretty durn impatient myself, and gardening is helping to cure me of that. So I slipped back into the kitchen and the kids had finally woken up and come down, and I said, "(Lil' Miss Stubborn, do you want to go out and check the blueberry bushes?" handing her the little pail she's set aside as her blueberry pail? She's checked those bushes every day for the past 3ish weeks since the berries first appeared, and I've been telling her you'll know when they are done---they are blue all over. Each evening before dinner, when we go out and get lettuce for the salad, she's checked the bushes, at first frustrated, but the last couple of days she's reported back "almost there, daddy!" So when I handed her the pail, her eyes got as big as saucers---almost as big as when I had showed her the completed bunkbeds this morning.

So they all ran out in their pajamas bouncing like Christmas morning, heading out to the blueberry bushes. Fortunately, The Dear One had the camera out, and captured all the glory. We brought the pail back in, and I made up a huge batch of fluffy blueberry "pankies" (as they are called in Stately LLama Manor). Someday I might even give up my sooper sekrit pankie recipe.

Pa from Little House would have been proud, I'd like to think.