In looking forward to this coming week, I was reminded of the lovely get-together the boys and I had with Hetty, Flosey, Jillibus and Dilly (Babble friends) last summer. Here is my favorite pic from that day:

Left to Right: Jill, me, Flosey, Hetty and Dilly. Dilly has since gone on to the greatest word game of them all.

Already in the veggie garden, we have:

From starts (Black Lake Organic starts, our favorite local nursery/garden store):

Basil (one purple, one green, no name)
Calendula (two “citrus” type and two other)
Cucumbers (5, various types)
Dill (no name)
Parsley (flat, italian-style, no name)
Tomatoes (3 varieties, I think they are 2 yellow pear, a slicing tomato and 2 sauce type)
Squash (9 types, including some pumpkin, some patty-pan and winter squash)

Seeded (from Uprising Seeds, a new company to us, we’ll see how we like them):
Basil
Beets, “Bull’s Blood”
Carrots, “Scarlet Nantes”
Salad Greens, “Uprising Mesclun Mix”
Tomato, “Green Grape”

Seeds waiting for space:

Beans, “Kentucky Wonder” (Pole Beans)
Beans, “Broad Windsor” (Fava)
Onions, “Top Keeper” (overwintering storage, white)
Onions, “Winter White Bunching” (overwintering, scallion)
Peas, “Cascadia”
Peas, “Oregon Sugar Pod II”

In the rest of the yard, the asparagus has been declining rather a lot the last two years, the nectarine’s space is still empty, the strawberries and most everything else are hidden under tons (only a slight exaggeration) of grass and “lady’s bedstraw/cleavers” — and the figs look like they will have a nice yield in a few more weeks. We won’t have as many plums as I had hoped, but the apples are outdoing themselves this year! and the cherry tree is LOADED with fruit, we’ll see if I can get netting up in time to keep the crows off them.

I figured since I am avoiding math homework I might as well take a couple pics of the garden as it looks since this morning…

This is me, looking over the squash (which are a little droopy from the hot sun today), just past 6 pm my time.

This is the stidkid, looking over the tomatoes (in the bed) and the newly seeded areas to each side (beets and carrots).

And this is the center of the garden, the “strawberry pot” was a dismal failure at berries, but does great with herbs. The yellow and orange flowers are calendula, punctuated with italian parsley, and in the circle scratched around those are a mesclun (salad blend) and basil patch. I may round off the corners of this bed and border it with bricks or rocks …

And on the topic of math avoidance… I can’t say I am really avoiding it much. I have been working at rather fast pace the last couple days, doing nearly two chapters since Wednesday night. I am trying to work ahead fast enough that I will have some space and time to let things sit before the end of class. Since the teacher has me (and a couple others) working ahead of the rest of the class, I am finding that some of my questions hold me back but then get answered later on.

Do I enjoy math? I can’t say that I am enjoying it any more now than in high school or the few math-intensive (but not specifically math-oriented) courses in college. BUT I can say that I am understanding things a little more, gaining some new insights into how to present the material, and learning a little bit about my own brain, so I can interpret things better for others.

And that is, after all, what this course if about: learning about the processes students go through to learn basic math skills. Geared to people who teach or hope to teach in grades 1-6, it is less about learning one specific method to perform tasks and more about the reasons that several different methods work (and why sometimes only one way works). I am glad I am taking this class, and I will be glad when it is over… Meantime, I will finish the reading and exercises for the chapter on fractions tonight and take the test tomorrow morning, leaving some writing and summarizing for later.