Whole Wheat Sourdough Saga: Part 1

I've been looking for a whole wheat sourdough bread recipe.

My, but that's a mouthful to say. Sorry.
It should be a tasty mouthful when I'm done figuring it out.

But that's what I'm after: whole wheat sourdough bread. The kind that isn't hard like the rocks I'm making now, and that's pretty easy to make, and I won't be learning bakers' percents for this project. Ain't nobody got time for that!

I've discovered some things recently:

1. Mostly wheat bread (which is what I'm making now, because the texture is appalling when I make 100%) makes my cravings stop. So much for bread being evil! A while back, I discovered that I'm chronically short on magnesium. Hence the chocolate cravings. (Ahem. Pardon me while I grab some dark chocolate chips.) And the muscle twitches. And a couple of other annoying things. I've been messing around with my sourdough partly because it's fun, and partly because it's cheap and that matters right now, and after a while I realized that my chocolate is lasting longer - I no longer felt like I had to go grab a handful after the kids go to bed. Which is cool. I'm pretty sure that it's the wheat flour: that stuff's got a fair amount of magnesium in it, and fermenting it a bit before I cook it does some cool chemical stuff that makes a whole bunch of nutrients much more bio-available.

2. Lots of people cook with all sorts of flours. Apparently sourdough is fancy food. Whatever. I want egg salad sandwiches and toast with butter. I need something basic. I want no strange einkorn flour, rice flour, rye flour, nor anything like it. At least, not today. Just plain wheat.

3. You can substitute sourdough for baking powder. Which is mostly unrelated to anything here, but it's seriously cool. Takes a touch of planning, though.

4. Sourdough bread is not like white bread. Seriously. The finished product is similar, but the dough? It's a whole 'nuther critter. Practically needs its own word, it's so different from white dough. It's crazy stuff. And finding someplace that will give me a recipe for the proper care and feeding of the start (seriously, here! that stuff is alive!) so that it will magically make awesome bread... it's been a task.

So I'm trying this one. Perfect Sourdough Bread. She's suggesting a couple of changes from what I'm doing now: first, she feeds her start twice daily. I'd begun to suspect that mine wants that kind of treatment. I'm going to try it out. AND, she says that it ought to be thick. So I'm going to go a bit thicker than I have been. We'll see. I'm excited. I'll post pictures. And thus begins a Search For The Perfect Sourdough Saga. At least it'll be a tasty trip.

Onward to Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 or Part 5.

Tree Change Doll Inspired Doll Makeover Tutorial

I did this a while back, then got hung up on the clothes part of the make-over and didn't post it for a very long time - more than a year - thinking that I'd get on the stick and do something with the little clothes. But I haven't. So I'll have to figure out what I'm doing. I'm interested in a swap - a re-painted doll for some clothes. Or something like that. Whatever. This is how I did the paint:

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Check out these lovely Tree-Change Dolls, made by a clever lady from Tasmania. She made a few, took some pictures, and posted them on Facebook. From there, social media and the crying need for dolls that look like real girls -- and not trollops-- took over, and the beautiful dolls went viral, gathering hundreds of thousands of "likes" in a few days. She only had 12; for the most part, she's not selling, though she does have an Etsy shop. I'm sure, given the huge demand she's suddenly very aware of, that prices will be high.



But she did do a tutorial on how to get the paint off. And, starting from there, I'm doing a pair of make-overs that are completely inspired by her work. I think it's fabulous, and I'm grateful she's shared it with the world. Redoing existing dolls solves nicely my discomfort with commercially available dolls, which is, for me, well worth the effort. My Tigress adores dolls! "Bay-bee!!"



Actually, there's a lot of tutorials out there. My Tigress showing interest in our friends' dolls, I want to give her some that look like girls I'd be comfortable with her spending time with, were they real.  Image matters, not because one group is better than another, but because the branding people choose tells you things about how they spend their time and the attitudes they have adopted. I want my girl's dolls to encourage our family's values, not normalize things which we find inconsistent with our values.  So here is my process, including the tutorials I have used, all inspired by the lovely Tree-Change Dolls. A couple of my friends asked, so I am sharing the process I use to do this.

This is what my dolls looked like, right from the thrift shop. The one on a left is Bratz brand; I don't recognize the brand on the right. They're both in pretty good condition, though the one of them has a bit of nail polish on her eyes. Shouldn't be a problem, though.

I also grabbed a couple little baggies of mini dolls. Not a bad haul for $7. I tossed a couple, but most of them were pretty nice. They should clean up well. 

And cleaning up is my first step. These girls need a bath, and they need their hair done.  I looked at several tutorials. Everyone seems to agree on the same basic steps that this tutorial shows.

The dolls' hair cleaned up nicely, and both of them had just a few scuff marks on their bodies which also came off nicely. Now, it's time to take off their paint.

And the nail polish remover worked beautifully. I didn't have any, so I got some labeled 100% acetone, and had no problems with smudging, though it is pretty smelly stuff. The Bratz doll was really easy to clean. 

The second doll has teeth as well as lips, and the tight corners were difficult to get into. I used a toothpick to push the cotton puff into the crevasses of her mouth. I think there may be a tiny bit left, but mostly, it all came off. 

While I was at it, I also carefully removed the blush from one of the smaller dolls. She's clearly a little girl, and I didn't think she needed makeup. The q-tip did the job nicely, and I don't think I'll do anything else with her. 

Figuring out what type of paint to use was the next challenge. Sonia doesn't have a tutorial on that part of the process, at least not at this point, so I went and looked at several other YouTube tutorials to see what other doll artists are using, and the consensus seems to be that acrylics are good, and won't damage the vinyl faces. Apparently some paints do. Some people are using the craft acrylics, and others are using the tube acrylics. I already have a pretty good collection of the craft acrylics, so that's what I chose. After my faces were finished, Sonia's husband, John, posted to her Facebook page about what she uses:  Jo Sonja's paints, which seem to come in both tubes and craft bottles, so I'm still not sure what, exactly, she's using. She was able to find a matte varnish, so if I do very many of these, I'll get some, maybe, but the glossy varnish I did use worked well enough that I'm not in any hurry.

I couldn't find a lip tone that said bare, natural lips to me, so what I did was I picked a brown that was as close to the doll's skin tone as possible, in this case, I picked Folk Art's Coffee Latte (I took the doll into Hobby Lobby and held paint next to her until I found one I liked. Happily, it should work for both dolls.) and I mixed it with a red I liked, in this case Creamcoat's Tibetan Sunrise. But the color would depend on the doll's skin tone, I think. 

I went ahead and did the Bratz doll with the same colors. The paint is ever so slightly translucent, so my white dot by her teeth took a couple coats to cover up where it got on the lips, but that's not a problem.

The white dot starts out big -my brush is both almost too big for the job, and also a bit older, so this is what I started with, and I had to cover quite a bit of it up. But I learned on miniatures, touch-ups are a normal part of painting, and it doesn't bother me to do some. Just start with the part that's in there deepest, and work your way out. In this case, there's only two levels: teeth and lips. 

Her lips are moulded to be exaggeratedly big, but they turned out ok anyway. It kind of looks like she's pursed her lips, or is in the middle of saying something, and I can live with that. (If you like, you can do more teeth, like this one, which helps with the weird shape of the Bratz lips. I didn't see that idea until it was too late.)

Next, I needed to put back the eyes. Tigress doesn't like it that they have no eyes. "Eye! Eye!" That's what she's been telling me. One of the tutorials I looked at mentioned that the eyes should be just slightly off-white, which tracks with what I have observed messing around in Photoshop: stark white eyes are creepy. I've used Folk Art's Whicker White, and it's working nicely. 

The second eye is a little more difficult, since I wanted it to be pretty close to the same shape as the first. Both dolls had their second eye-white wiped off completely with a bit of paper towel. The Bratz eye folds also got wiped away once, and repainted. The craft acrylics I am using are really forgiving, and you have a few minutes to mess around with them. A clean paintbrush can also be used to pick up small amounts of excess. The paint isn't hard to wipe away at all, if you need to correct something, as long as it's still wet you're good. 

I did eyelashes and eyebrows next. The paint I got is nearly an exact match for the skin color of the dolls, especially the Bratz doll, which I am doing first, so I mix up a little bit of paint that's ever so slightly darker.

I didn't like the eyebrow on the right. So I did it again. It had dried already; there's not much paint there and it dried quickly. No problem. The same q-tip technique that removed the blush from the little doll earlier this evening took care of the misformed eyebrow. I was just careful not to disturb the eye itself. I also noticed that I'd managed to get white on my thumb and smudge her face. I'm typically a bit of a mess when I paint. Oops. But it just rubbed away, and I washed my hands. Again. The second go at the eyebrow was much more satisfactory. I like the little "corner" at the top of the brow, which was missing on the first try. 

When my friend Jay Fullmer first taught me to draw, he loaned me the book, "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain," and I did about 3/4 of the exercises in the book before I got distracted. The important thing in drawing is to draw what you really see, and not what you think you ought to see. Turning your paper and your reference material upside down can trick your brain to stop seeing what it expects, and start seeing what is really there, and that's how I got the eyebrows as close to symmetrical as I did: upside down, I had to think about angles and line lengths, because it was a lot less "eyebrow" looking. So it was a lot easier that way. Keep an eye on your anatomical reference points, too: how far past the beginning of the eyeball should your line begin? How far into the well of the eye? I recommend you get a reference picture from a doll you like. Use it with your first eyebrow, then copy your own work to make the second one. The second doll had bits of her eyebrows erased several times while the paint was wet, but I managed to avoid the nail polish remover. 

The next task is the irises themselves. So much about these dolls is the same; I think I'm going to give them different colored eyes. Their skin is dark enough that blue doesn't make a lot of sense, so I'll be going with green and brown. 

I grabbed a pencil and sketched in the basics first. My Bratz doll also needed a little touch up where the eyelashes had pushed into the white eyeball, so I took care of that as well. All day, I've been referencing this picture from the real Tree-Change Dolls. I just love the way she turned out. So I had another look to see the details of how her irises have been done. I'm also drawing on this tutorial, which I used to make matching dolls for Tigress and her cousins last December. 

Now, it's time for color. I grabbed the Bratz and the brown. First, I painted the pupil, then the brown iris. I did a dark color for the iris's base, and then a lighter brown to add some flecks. Happily, I found a brush that's a little smaller. The flecks are dry brushed, which means that most of the paint on my brush, I wiped on my paper towel. The idea is to see some of the deep brown under the light. I  need to retouch the pupil on the second eye. You can see here the difference a little dry brushing makes. 

Next, she needs a glint in her eye; glints make the eye look much more life-like. For this, I dug through my box of paint and found the stark white. I looked at my referral picture again, to see how she'd done her glint, since she did it so nicely. You can use the paint to kind of shape your brush a little, depending on how you dab it as you pick up your color. I flattened my bristles into a line, and used that to put the glint in. 

The Bratz, now not so bratty, is almost done with her paint. I'm a little worried that my paint will chip off, so I picked up some Triple Thick at Hobby Lobby while I was getting supplies. It was recommended in this tutorial, here. It's glossy, but that works for lips and eyes. It may be a bit odd for eyebrows, but I doubt that Tigress will notice or care. 

And her new paint job is done! 

The second doll's eyes are just a little smaller, and my green completely covered the black dots I had made, so they will have to be put back before I go on. 

So put back the irises, and used my toothpick to add gold flecks to her eyes, but they're too obvious, so I'm going back with another green, slightly lighter than the rest, to cover them up a little. 

Add the glint, and the varnish, and the second doll is also done with her painting, and both of them are getting anxious for new clothes. So, the next step is to read some of the tips for sewing doll clothes that I've been gathering on Pinterest. Though my girl seems pretty happy with the dolls, even in the old, ugly clothes. She's been showing her Daddy. Do you like her outfit? She found Hero's swim shirt and insisted that she should wear it today. 

Next, I started looking for a tutorial for making clothes. There are lots of tutorials out there for making Barbie clothes, but I knew this could get a little interesting, because these dolls aren't as big as big as Barbies, and, looking at the dress the one doll came with, I can tell that regular Barbie clothes are going to be big. So I started working. First, a skirt, because they are easy to make. I used this tutorial. The waist had to be taken in a little, which I did by starting about 3/4 of the way down the skirt and slanting in from the original stitching as I moved toward the top. It's still a little generous, but it works. Next time, I will make the skirt a little bit smaller, with an elastic that's only 3.5 or even 3 inches long, rather than the 4 inches the tutorial recommends. 

After that, a shirt was in order. The same blog had a nice shirt tutorial, one that goes together very easily, so I went with that. This time, I started with the suggested measurements, but held them up to the doll as I went along, and just sort of snipped off the excess. I have no idea what the actual measurements are, but it turned out pretty well, I think. I still need to add velcro to the back, since I forgot to buy that when I was out yesterday, but even without it, you can see that the doll is starting to shape up nicely. One tip: keep your excess threads to a minimum, and clip them close to the fabric as you go along. I often go back and trim my threads at the very end of the project, but this one doesn't like to do it that way. Being so small, the threads look terrible, and they get in the way as well. Plus, I had some close calls where I almost clipped my little shirt when the layers were all together and I had to go back and clip in between them. Do it as you go along.

It turns out that I don't actually like making doll clothes, and I need to find somebody to swap with, or buy some or something... the clothes just aren't fun. But I could paint for people!

Psalm 11: Flee Unto My Mountain

This psalm starts out so beautifully, whether you are looking at the King James or the Joseph Smith Translation.

From the KJV: 

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"In the Lord put I my trust: how say ye to my soul, Flee as a bird to your mountain?"
-Psalm 11:1

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This idea of being protected and sheltered by the Lord is even more clear in the JST: 

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"In that day thou shalt come, O Lord; and I will put my trust in thee. Thou shalt say unto thy people, for mine ear hath heard thy voice; thou shalt say unto every soul, Flee unto my mountain; and the righteous shall flee like a bird that is let go from the snare of the fowler."
-JST Psalm 11:1

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I'd never heard of a fowler, and it's not in the Bible Dictionary, so I googled to see what I could come up with, and found that it really adds to the impact of the JST version of this verse:

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Fowler: A professional birdcatcher. In the days previous to firearms, birds were captured with nets spread on the ground, in traps and snares. ... The fowlers supplied the demand for doves and other birds used for caged pets, and furnished the market with wild pigeons and doves for sacrifice and such small birds as were used for food. ... Sometimes the snare held fast, sometimes it broke; then the joy in the heart of a freed man was like the wild exultation in the heart of the escaping bird.
-Bible Encyclopedia: Fowler

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Photo courtesy the LDS Media Library

It's no small threat, either: the threats we flee from in this Psalm are life-and-death matters, particularly if we're still working within the idea of the righteous as small birds. 

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"For, lo, the wicked bend their bow, they make ready their arrow upon the string, that they may privily shoot at the upright in heart."

-Psalm 11:2

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 So what do we do? How do we run to the Lord for safety? Where should we turn our steps when we flee from the wicked?

To the temple.

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The Lord is in his holy temple...
-Psalm 11:4

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We flee from the wickedness, from the evil snares, by taking refuge in the temple. The scriptures draw a connection between both mountains and temples, and also temples and safety. Consider these verses (they make a nice scripture chain):

JST Psalm 11:1 -- The righteous flee to the Lord.
Psalm 11:4 -- The Lord is in His temple.
Micah 4:2 -- Let us go to the mountain of the Lord, the house of God.
Isaiah 2:2 -- All nations flow to the mountain of the Lord's house.
Alma 26:5 -- Sheaves (converts) are gathered to garners (temples).
D&C 109:24-28 -- Protection from the temple.
D&C 101:65 - His people gathered as wheat to garners.

Brother Bednar has had a lot to say, in various talks, about this connection between the temple and safety. Here are some of the things that he's taught:

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The Prophet Joseph Smith declared that in all ages the divine purpose of gathering the people of God is to build temples so His children can receive the highest ordinances and thereby gain eternal life. This essential relationship between the principle of gathering and the building of temples is highlighted in the Book of Mormon:

“Behold, the field was ripe, and blessed are ye, for ye did thrust in the sickle, and did reap with your might, yea, all the day long did ye labor; and behold the number of your sheaves! And they shall be gathered into the garners, that they are not wasted” (Alma 26:5).

The sheaves in this analogy represent newly baptized members of the Church. The garners are the holy temples. Elder Neal A. Maxwell explained: “Clearly, when we baptize, our eyes should gaze beyond the baptismal font to the holy temple. The great garner into which the sheaves should be gathered is the holy temple”. This instruction clarifies and emphasizes the importance of sacred temple ordinances and covenants—that the sheaves may not be wasted.

-Honorably Hold a Name and Standing, April 2009

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 And, he said this, speaking to the whole church, but most particularly to the youth:

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Many of you may think family history work is to be performed primarily by older people. But I know of no age limit described in the scriptures or guidelines announced by Church leaders restricting this important service to mature adults. You are sons and daughters of God, children of the covenant, and builders of the kingdom. You need not wait until you reach an arbitrary age to fulfill your responsibility to assist in the work of salvation for the human family. ...

As you respond in faith to this invitation, your hearts shall turn to the fathers. The promises made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob will be implanted in your hearts. Your patriarchal blessing, with its declaration of lineage, will link you to these fathers and be more meaningful to you. Your love and gratitude for your ancestors will increase. Your testimony of and conversion to the Savior will become deep and abiding. And I promise you will be protected against the intensifying influence of the adversary. As you participate in and love this holy work, you will be safeguarded in your youth and throughout your lives.
-The Hearts of the Children Shall Turn, October 2011 Conference, emphasis added

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Took a Walk

The kids got invited to a birthday party, and I got to take a nature walk all by myself.  That hasn't happened in a loooong old time.

It's really different, doing nature all by myself. I liked it. And I missed the kids.  Before I had kids, I never used to have that problem. I went places and did things by myself, and it was fine. Now, even when I'm enjoying it, I'm thinking, "Oh, Hero would like that. It would be fun to show this to Peanut. That's where Dragon would be jumping." Funny how things change.

I never used to even see the little wildflowers. 

They're all over the place. Little gifts from Heaven.

The trail I was on is a little bit different habitat from where I'm usually birding. 

It's only a little different, but it sure made a difference in the birds I was hearing. 

But quite a few of the ones I know were there. I like that. It's a good feeling, knowing the critters that are around. My bird-friends were singing all over the place. And there was a bunch of little bitty frogs that I kept startling. They were too quick to hop into the underbrush, though, for me to get a picture of them. I ought to learn more about the frogs. They're cool.

  

Chickadees have been kind of scarce in my yard lately, but there were tons of them in the woods. I enjoyed watching them. They were behaving differently than they do in my yard, too. That's always interesting, watching old friends do new things in new places. Nature always has plenty to teach.

I heard some of the Clay-colored Sparrows that I recently figured out. They're cool; they sound a bit like bugs. Now that I know them, I smile whenever I hear them. They're shy, though; I've only seen them a handful of the times that I've heard them.

The flowers are still blooming, but this one shrub was already yellow, and the cicada song has switched from their early song to the late song. I'm seeing signs of Fall all over, and I'm having a hard time deciding how I feel about that. I feel much the same kind of ambivalence about my kids growing up. They're getting big enough to leave places, without a parent. Even Peanut. I'm slowly getting more "me time". Peanut has a long way to go, still; she's only 3. But Dragon is starting to prepare for his baptism in another 2 years. It'll be done and over so fast, he'll be baptized and preparing for the priesthood, like Hero is now, and I won't hardly know what hit me. Hero is already more than halfway to adulthood - he'll be 10 in September, and when he's doubled his age, he'll probably be nearly finished with his mission. Maybe have a sweet young thing on his mind.

It's a long way off, yet, but I'm realizing that this season of my life, like summer, isn't going to last forever. I suppose that's a good thing. To everything there is a season.

But I'm glad that it's summer now.

August Watercolor Challenge

The watercolor painting featured in the logo this month is Fritz Fabian's  "Courtyard Scene", which was painted in 1944, and you can read a little more about it here.

I missed posting a challenge in July, but in August I'm more on the ball, and moving on into Chapter 8: The Greens. Soan says that most of her greens are mixed, so I'm thinking that I'll spend some time playing around, seeing how many greens I can mix up. There's some discussion of opaque and transparent colors, and how they mix into greens, on page 106. Especially interesting is her commentary about the role of red in mixing up greens - it would have taken me a very long time to think of trying adding red to get a good green! After that, the chapter goes on to discuss the various types of green you run into. There's a lot of information, and I think that time spent just "fooling around", painting rectangles of various greens, trying to get the hang of making just the one you want, would be time well-spent. Something like this:



And then I always enjoy a time-lapse. Watching how experienced artists build their paintings has been extremely helpful to me. Here are a few that I enjoyed this month:

And birds. I love birds, and want to do another one, soon.



And now, for some "Pinspiration" to give us some ideas of what might be fun to do with all this green we've been playing around with:



And that's it! Happy painting! Don't forget to stop by and show us your work!

My Garden was a Jungle

I'm forever thinking, "Oh, bummer! I should have taken a Before picture!"

I didn't do that. 

But my garden was a jungle. Five or six years ago, Hero put in about four little strawberry plants in a little section of the garden that we declared to be his. They didn't make much of themselves that first year, but they have been getting happy ever since. The thistles and other weeds have been getting altogether too happy, too: the past couple years they've been chest-high. This year, I've done better: they've only been knee-high. And the path was long-since overgrown. And the other day my best friend pointed out the obvious: 

My garden was a pitiful mess. 

My first reaction was justification: those weeds are only knee high! And that represents tons more work put in than last year! And the front gardens are (more or less) presentable!

She just nailed me with The Look (she's got a great one). And went back to taking pictures of the kids blowing mega-bubbles. This is one she sent me:

Well, maybe it's some more work than previous years. 

Ok. So I did let an embarrassingly large portion of my strawberry harvest rot on the plants because trying to break into the garden to pick them was completely overwhelming and life's not so easy right now ... So I didn't do it. 

Yeah. Maybe my garden is pitiful. 

It was just the kick in the pants I needed. I'd been threatening to go get mulch and Do Something for quite some time. This week, I did it. 

But I forgot to take a "Before" picture. So I can't show you my garden in its full weedy glory. It was bad. 

First, I scrounged some cardboard and picked up as much mulch as I could fit in the car -- the city has it for free. No excuses there! And I put the cardboard right over the plants growing where the path ought to be, weeds, strawberries, and all. Squish. And I put a ton of mulch on top of the cardboard. BAM! Now getting into the garden didn't feel so impossible. Plus, with the garden getting Real Attention, I started to have kids interested in what is going on. That's good, too. I love how Dragon was quick to protect his hands, but didn't feel any need to do the same for his feet. I did suggest it. 

Mulching a path was a good start. And it made it easier to see what still needed doing. So I kept going. I started by the gate and killed weeds, dramatically reduced the strawberry population, and added more mulch to all the areas I cleared. I tried (again) to pull the grass out of my oregano plant, and clipped off the flowers to try to get it to pay more attention to growing leaves. I might even try watering it. Crazy talk, I know! 

I was feeling pretty happy with myself - even sent my friend a picture. I spent the better part of an afternoon on it, and made Real Progress. I even cleared a spot and planted a little bit of peas and lettuce: the online calendars say now is when you plant the mysterious Cool Weather Crops. Right as we're going into what will likely be the summer's best heatwave. But whatever. I don't loose much by trying: the seeds were already in the drawer, from when I meant to do this 2 months ago. 

So at the end of the first day, there was lots of progress, but it's clearly not done yet, and even after dumping mulch everywhere I'd worked, there were still some jungle-y parts. There were still plenty of weeds and tons of overgrown, overcrowded strawberries. And the back of my van was still full of more stinky mulch than I could lift, so it stayed there till the next afternoon. 

I excavated my chives -- look, they're still happy and I can keep using them! -- and killed grass invading at the fence line, then mulched the remains. I found both my tomato plants -- one already has tomatoes on it! -- and got some supports on them. Both the boys turned up, wanting to work on their sections -- see the little fences? Those are dividing their parts from the other parts -- so there's progress there, too. I planted another section of peas and decided to try for a cabbage. Ought to be interesting: I've never tried cabbage before. 

At the end of the second afternoon, I'm still not done. And we're having an ugly heat wave, with heat indexes supposed to be in the triple digits, which is Really Hot this far north, plus, we'll be drinking our air, with the humidity we usually have when it gets hot. 

But we get up "early" now - we're gradually leaving second shift behind and it's not uncommon now for the household to be stirring by 7:30 or so. And I'm hoping that if I roll out of bed and sneak outside I can get some more done in spite of the heat this week. 

It's nice to have some order in the garden. It's teaching me things. 

Like, the good things are still there, but weeds and things can make them hard to see. 

Like, planting the seed is just the first step, and if you stop there, you will miss the full potential of the thing. 

And how I've waited and resisted killing those strawberries -they're super yummy! - and they took over the place and nothing got harvested and enjoyed, not even the strawberries. But now that I made the path again, good things are happening. Keeping things tidy (even in a kinda-sorta-almost tidy kind of way), makes a big difference. 

And there's this phrase: "in the process of time". I've been pondering that this summer, and I want to give it its own post, soon. (Here it is!) But it's really remarkable how many things grow slowly, over time. 

I'm really enjoying the way my garden is starting to grow. 

Commonplace Sampler: June

I have since often observed how incongruous and irrational the common temper of mankind is, especially of youth, to that reason which ought to guide them in such cases, viz., that they are not ashamed to sin, and yet are ashamed to repent; not ashamed of the action for which they ought justly to be esteemed fools but are ashamed of the returning, which only can make them be esteemed wise men.
-Robinson Crusoe, p21-22

A modern Darwinian education cultivates nothing less than practical atheism, if not actual atheism.

-Brandy Vincel, Charlotte Mason, Total Depravity, and the Divine Image

Thus, to understand the action of a hormone on its target, we must know the local concentration of the hormone, which is affected by the rate of its synthesis and secretion, its half-life, and transport through plasma or extracellular fluid to its target cell; the proportion of hormone available to receptors, which in the case of steroid hormones is influenced by the plasma concentration of binding proteins; and the number of unbound receptors.
-Human Reproductive Biology, p8


The girl who kisses the chamber door of her class mistress will forget this lady by and by; but the parasitic habit has been formed and she must always have some person or some cause on which to hang her body and soul. I speak of  'she' and 'her' perhaps unfairly...
-Charlotte Mason, vol 6 p49


There is a common notion that it is our right not only to say what we please but to think what we please, that is, we believe that while the body is subject to physical laws, while the affections, love and justice, are subject to moral laws, the mind is a chartered libertine. Probably this notion has much to do with our neglect of intellect.
-Charlotte Mason vol6 p49


As for literature -- to introduce children to literature is to install them in a very rich and glorious kingdom, to bring a continual holiday to their doors, to lay before them a feast exquisitely served.
-Charlotte Mason, vol 6 p51