Scenes from a Saturday

It's a (relatively) quiet Saturday.  Pumpkin is upstairs building Legos.  Dumpling & Cupcake are busy arguing, I mean artisting.  ;)

I'm working on my kombuchas.  So far I've only used plain, black teas, but today I've brewed a nice green tea to try.  It's time to transfer last weekend's brew into the smaller jars for flavoring and carbonating.  I've made some with berries, some with wild plum juice, but I think my favorite flavor is lavender.  The kids like it, too, but Sweetheart passes. 

SCOBYS aren't too pretty.  I traded eggs for one to start all this last month.  Now I'm passing them onto interested neighbors.

Kombucha

 Much prettier than the SCOBYS are the lilacs.  *Sigh*  They are lovely.  They really aren't quite blooming, but I had to drag in the house everything I could just because I've missed them so!

We don't really have lilac bushes.  We have lilac trees.  Many of them are up to the second story and one reaches up to the attic.  We have a variety of purples light and dark as well as a few white lilacs.

Everything is so lush and green right now.  It is so nice.  We've had some rain this week, but it's been the wind that been tough to deal with. 

It's even stopped the logging in the mountains behind us.  A neighbor warned us a few weeks ago that they were putting in a helipad just south of our property.  Thankfully, it's temporary.  Throughout this month they are cutting trees in the woods behind us and then will  bring each tree down by helicopter.  We have been watching them north of us and they are getting closer and closer.  We can even hear the chainsaws cutting above us.  It's going to be pretty noisy around here soon. 

Dumpling, however, is quite excited about it all.  He watched them build the helipad and loved all the big trucks and graders.  He'll be camped out back in the attic for the best view when the chopper starts flying I know. Pumpkin will look up once and go back to his Legos knowing him.

Well, it's time to help the little artists clean up and head upstairs to scrub the bathtub.  Exciting, I know.  You're jealous, aren't you?


***** Cupcake is wandering around carrying all her paintings to the dining room to dry and singing her little songs.  She sings and dances around all the time.  Well, when she's not arguing.  She sings songs from church some days, but most days she just makes them up as she dances along.  They are often about how pretty she is and about how much everyone loves her.