Milestones

Yesterday, while eating dinner, Kaya asked me how the baby gets in the belly.  It struck me as such a big leap forward in her manner of thinking.  A pointed and thoughtful question.  An understanding that women have babies, that women carry babies, that babies come out of the mother.  An understanding of 75% of the process, with just the final piece of the puzzle missing.  How the hell did it get in there?

A few days ago, Kassie was helping me with the dishes, as she has been doing for a couple of years now.  She almost always asks to help.  When I say yes, she grabs her sponges and scrubbies from under the sink.  I pull up a chair for her to stand on.  As I wash, she claims the items she needs, that will remain in her sink - the rest I rinse and place in the wire drainer.  Then she plays.  Water and suds in the cups, pouring from one to another, utensils, making soup, stirring, splashing, singing.  Always lots of singing.  She had recently taken to some rinsing and placing in the rack as well.  I finish washing, drying, cleaning counter tops, the dinner table.  She plays on...maybe a quick potty break, but she remains.  I go take a shower and come back and most times, still there. So the other day when I came back down from my shower, she was no longer standing on her chair...the kitchen was empty.  As I looked around, I stopped dead in my tracks.  The sinks had been drained and wiped up.  I saw just a couple of the cups she had been using placed on the counter, in there respective places, underneath the cupboards that were out of her reach.  She had rinsed and dried all the dishes from her sink - and she had put them all away.

Little ones maybe.  But milestones nonetheless.

Root Harvest

A couple of days before the Arctic air mass that is currently parked over us moved in, I figured it was probably time for me to harvest the remaining  root veggies.  I thought about using the ground for long term storage, covering them sufficiently with mulch to withstand the freezing temps, but frankly the whole thing made me a bit nervous.  So I pulled 'em.

Nothing ridiculous, but not a bad haul given I'd been munching on all of these the entire summer.  Golden and purple top turnips, golden and purple beets and orange and purple carrots.  You'd think the girls had a hand in the variety selection with all that purple.

The purple harvest was followed up that evening with a pink sky. 

Followed the next day with our first flakes of the season...

And the next day with a couple inches of ground cover.  

We've had single digit highs for a few days now and I dare say that my lettuce, broccoli, kale, collards, cabbage, swiss chard, along with a few other things, are toast.  I didn't fully comprehend the depth and length of this cold snap and therefore took no measure to protect them.  I have to wonder if row covers would have even helped here?  An experiment for next year, I suppose.