Fox Family Gatherings - Part One

I have a large family. Five siblings, five in-laws, and eight nieces and nephews. My parents are still together after forty-two years (!) and we all get together as a whole family at least once a month. Barbeques, birthdays, Mother's Day, Father's Day, Independence Day, Christmas, Easter, cherry picking, and much, much more. It's always such fun. I honestly never really understood why people dreaded getting together with their families so much. We're extremely lucky, too, in that we've always lived very close to each other. Two hours, tops. (This was thrown for a huge loop recently when my sister met and married a wonderful man from England and moved there. We noticeably don't really know how to handle that little reality and I am for sure living a slightly lonelier life without her here. Love you, Suzie!) The two years I spent at school in Virginia were fantastic, but it was hard getting used to not being home for births, birthdays, and family outings.

The Garden's Progress - Year (and Part) One

Man, I really need to process photos more often. I wait to write blogs now because I noticed so few of them had photos to go along with them, but now I have so many pictures of all the fun things we've been doing and it's slightly overwhelming! Okay, must pace myself. Maybe I can make it a goal to write a blog every other day this week. Here's hoping. (And yes, I realize Birch STILL hasn't written a guest blog. This vexes me slightly, but he'll do it at some point. Patience, young Jedi.)

Annoyingly enough, I completely forgot to take pictures of the yard when we moved in almost a year ago. We must have been in a serious hurry to take out the eight inches of pea gravel that was filled with cat feces, not to mention the 10ft.-tall oleanders that were acting as a privacy screen simultaneously making it impossible to garden.

We (take that loosely as I was pregnant and horribly sick throughout the whole process) set to work. Birch dug out the gravel first and piled it into a back corner of the yard that doesn't get much sun year-round and then I sawed the oleanders to pieces leaving only the stumps (and some massive root systems) for Birch to pull up. And yes, that was absolutely 100% sexy to watch. All that took about a month to finish. Ugh.

Keats and the Cool Vibrations

I wrote this over a month ago, but it was lost in Draft Land. :) Here 'tis:

Thank you to Amy and Andy for the wonderful vibrating baby chair! Miriam and Ben showed us the light on this thing with their darling little lady, Sofie, and Birch and I were planning on buying one for Keats this month, but once again our friends swooped in for the rescue! While at a house party to watch some fights on UFC (Birch is a big fan), Amy slipped Keats into an electronic rocking... thing which had Keats mesmerized enough for Birch and I to eat at the same time. We were sold. Unable to fit that into the trunk at the time, Amy offered up the vibrating chair. (Can you tell they wanted to get rid of some stuff?) It's only been a bit over a day with the thing and both Keats and I are truly infatuated. It's what is allowing me to write this, actually. I can rock it with my foot which is great.

By the way, Keats sleeps with his arms up almost always. Apparently, just like my eldest brother, Hugh. Isn't it adorable? I love it.

Realizations of Thoughts Already Thought

In describing my hopes for our small "plot of land," I could merely refer you to Michael Pollan's second chapter of his book, Second Nature, and although I believe everyone should immediately go out and buy it, read it, and pass it along to friends, I'm no sure that simply passing the torch to another will necessarily fulfill my own need to express myself and the hopes not only for my garden but my family as well.