Summer Camp at Home

Our home is a summer camp for our grandkids, with raspberry picking and a wading pool, and lazy days of play. In the mornings we putter in the garden, collect the harvest, and play in the sand pit. On cooler summer days we venture out into the neighborhood for bike rides and park play, or if it's too hot, we lounge indoors with the heat pump on.

On days without grandkids, we get summer projects done, and enjoy our peace. Our home is our sanctuary, and in the lazy days of summer we get to truly enjoy it.

Agenda:

1. Read "Happier at Home"

2. New sand pit
3. Sky mural

4. Harvest raspberries

1. Read "Happier at Home":

I'm reading Happier at Home, by Gretchen Rubin (2012); last week I finished the first chapter (Possessions), and decided to skip to a later chapter - Neighborhood. I love my neighborhood.

Like Gretchen, I don't much like to travel; and I love my neighborhood. This month I'll try to explore it more, appreciate it more, and become a better neighbor. Gretchen suggests, "Be a Tourist without Leaving Home". She says this means "having the eye and enthusiasm of a tourist: a tourist reads and studies, a tourist shows up, a tourist sees things with fresh eyes".

Neighbor's delightful garden

This first exercise requires me to:

• Learn more about my neighborhood history, neighborhood news, the street trees, and any new buildings or parks.
• Call up memories of the places I pass, like the house where my first mid-wife lived, just down the block from us, where we went when my water broke; and the school where I taught many children how to use a sewing machine.
• Go off the path. Take walks in all directions and go through doors I've never visited.
• See things with fresh eyes; give attention to the rhythm of my neighborhood, and notice gardens and people I've never noticed.

2. New sand pit:

Last year we made large changes in our yard and this year we are fine tuning. One project we completed is a small sand pit in our family play yard: A simple design - we dug out a pit, tamped it down, arranged some large smooth rocks around the edges, and filled it with two buckets of beach sand. Just add construction trucks, and a three-year-old boy, and you've got hours of fun!

3. Sky mural:

Another summer project I've almost completed is a mural on the ceiling in our bathroom. Our bathroom ceiling was an eye-sore for far too long, and since I see it whenever I take baths (often) I decided to finally take care of it.

First I scraped and primed it, then I drew cloud shapes, and a sun, and painted blue sky around the outsides of these outlines.

Then I added clouds using the same blue mixed 1:1 with white paint. When that was dry, I added white highlights.

I also painted a sun around and over the sun-light fixture.

The last step will be a butterfly or two in the corner, over the mirror!

 

4. Harvest raspberries:

We are right at the glorious apex of our raspberry harvest, picking a large bowl of berries daily (which I usually eat with yogurt for breakfast), and then grazing on the leftovers while we play in the wading pool.

Raspberries (Rubus idaeus) belong to the genus Rubus, along with other cane berries such as blackberries and boysenberries. The Rubus genus is part of the Rosaceae (Rose) family, to which almonds, apples, cherries, hawthorns, strawberries, and many other fruits also belong.

I'm going to write more about raspberries this fall, but for now - two notes:

Watering and mulching: Raspberries have shallow root systems, so they need to be watered regularly in spring and summer. Mulching around the plants (using a straw-like mulch such as pea straw, lucerne, hay, etc) helps retain soil moisture and keeps roots cool in hot weather, and also suppresses weeds all year round.

Harvesting: In terms of cropping seasons, there are three types of raspberries:

1. Summer-bearing types – early cropping, produce their crop in summer
   
2. Autumn-bearing types – late cropping, produce their crop in autumn
   
3. Everbearing types – long cropping, produce a large main crop in summer, and a smaller second crop in autumn.

I have both summer and everbearing berries mixed together in the row, both of which are producing right now. I can tell the difference because the summer berries are larger and not as tart. I like to eat them blended together. (The everbearing are more vigorous and are gradually pushing out the summer variety, so I will need to intervene sometime soon.)