{Compost}

One week ago a semi arrived at The Bungalow with eight steamy yards of black gold. I had ordered this delivery and scheduled it for Wednesday. What I had not anticipated was the size of the delivery truck, which did not fit down my leaf lined drive, or in fact my neighbor's. So, instead of having an extra large pile of evolving cr@p deposited in a discrete and manageable space near my raised beds and rain barrels in the back yard by the barn, it has sat for the last week in my front yard.


Don't get me wrong. 


I. love. compost. 


{In a huge pile in my front yard, not so much!}


We have spent the last week shoveling and loading the nutrient rich organic matter around every plant and shrub on the property. We have filled our raised beds with it and all of my planters. We have worked in along the roots of the peonies and the rhubarb and the lilacs. When I put in twelve new hosta lilies along the now tamed hedge I back filled with compost. (When my friend Sarah visited last summer, she said, "That's a hedge?!?" about the monstrous, leafy 15 foot high expanse that separates our property from our neighbors to the North. It's now a more manageable six feet tall. The width of the expanse that we cut back allowed us to use the space to create a six foot wide mulched bed.)


We have offered compost to all of our gardening neighbors. We sent it in trash cans for my MIL's rhubarb. If you live in drive-able proximity, please come help yourself! We have whittled the pile down to about a third. Which means we still have the equivalent of two pick-up beds of compost available. 


Compost is magic. It feeds plants, keeps down weeds and is living. It's warm to the touch. (This kind of freaked my kids out.)
* Side note: my oldest promptly volunteered for all dishwasher and laundry duty to avoid any contact with something that is warm and steamy!


When we bought The Bungalow a dozen years ago we were thrilled to stumble upon the garden files of Phyllis, the thoughtful perennial gardener who lived in The Bungalow with her husband in the 1970s and 80s. The owners between Phyllis and The Johnson's had let everything become overgrown, but with the help of Phyllis' garden maps, sketched on yellow legal pads, we were able to decipher what plants where popping up around the yard. We transplanted the rhubarb and asparagus, that was overgrown with trumpet vine to a sunny spot in the back yard. We moved peonies, that after thirty years of tree growth where then in the shade, to a sunny row in the back. With all of these transplants we used compost. For good measure we tamped it around other beds as well, and threw it down with grass seed on bare spots in the lawn. It was miraculous.


After our five years in China, The Bungalow was looking pretty overgrown again. But with the sweat equity of four of the five Johnson's, and with the help of compost, we are hoping to bring it back to the glory it once knew in Phyllis' care. 


Thank you compost.

Our Little Town ...

Our little Midwestern town boasts two four-way stop intersections, a small church, a small school, a meat locker and a volunteer fire department. Our Little Town doesn't even have its own zip code.

But, once a year they out do themselves. On Labor Day the population of Our Little Town triples. Kids line up to ride their bikes in the parade, old fashioned tractors and prancing ponies join the mix. Veterans, local politicians, and fireman joining the ranks. After the parade there are games for the kids, BBQ and concessions, and a general milling about catching up with others.

It's a homecoming of sorts, and this year it truly was for The Johnson's, once of China. We sat on the front porch of The Bungalow with our coffees and hot chocolates, watching the pre-parade events.

Bei Bei got caught up in the excitement, and in the last minute decide to ride in the parade. She proudly pedaled her folding Chinese bike along the short parade route, reinforcing every Chinese stereotype with her bicycle bedecked with small Chinese lanterns, a pair of chopsticks in the handle bars, a cheesy computer generated sign and a stuffed panda wire tied to the back. She wore her traditional Chinese yi fu, and the kind of bamboo hat that is popular and practical in Southern China. (Although the one she wore, we actually picked up in Vietnam! I won't tell if you won't!)

Our little 3CK made the local paper, and we think she might have been the cutest thing on two wheels this Labor Day in Our Little Town.

In my little town

I grew up believing

God keeps his eye on us all

And he used to lean upon me

As I pledged allegiance to the wall

Lord I recall

My little town

Coming home after school

Flying my bike past the gates

Of the factories

My mom doing the laundry

Hanging our shirts

In the dirty breeze*

- Simon & Garfunkel "My Little Town"

* disclaimer, we have neither factories nor a dirty breeze

Updates @ The Bungalow

Summer improvement projects are continuing at The Bungalow. And while distributing 12 yards of mulch for the landscaping, and 17 tons of limestone for the drive were DIY projects, we are leaving this one to the experts.

Ignatius and his crew arrived yesterday to begin updating the trim and shakes. They removed all the exterior (storm) windows, and pressure washed the areas that will be painted. (Which made occupants of the house feel a bit as though they were living inside of a car wash!)

Today the crew of four returned, on quite possibly the hottest day of the year, to paint and stain the areas they pressure washed, scraped, and caulked yesterday.

We, as many of you know, have an avid bird watcher/nature lover among our ranks. And, even though EHJ isn't here this week (she and MGJ flew to Canada on Sunday with their auntie, for a few days of fun ahead of the rest of us), Mr Johnson knew how important the patient momma mourning dove is to our bird girl. He asked the painting crew to mind the momma bird, and they were careful to do so. They removed the nest from it's perch under the soffit, placed in on the table by the pond, and then returned it to its original spot when they were done. (There was one white egg in the nest.) And do you know what? That momma came back!

Summer at The Bungalow

We're a fortnight into the summer holidays, and we're finding a relaxed groove.

We've been lazy risers.

Sometimes we eat berries and yogurt beside the bathtub size pond Mr Johnson dug seven years ago that we've spent much of the spring reclaiming. (We ordered 12 yards of mulch to spread around various landscape projects in the yard, which we quickly realized was about six yards too much ... slowly we whittled the pile down.)

Twice we've packed picnic lunches and headed to the Windy City. Other days we've simply gone to the museums, and skipped the parks and beaches.

We come home and eat salad dinners on the front porch and watch rabbits sneak out from the hedge. And talk about our day.

We listen for the birds we can identify (mourning doves and cardinals and the cocky, squawking starlings). We've had a clear vantage point of a momma robin and her trio of sky blue eggs in our living room window. And an equally clear view of the harsh reality of nature. All three chicks hatched... but momma pushed the weakest one out and left another alone and rejected in the nest just as he had begun to fully feather out. (Our morning dove momma under the eaves proved more devoted, and has carefully coaxed two sets of chicks into this world.)

EHJ is studying the Bird's of Illinois handbook. Trying to determine which kind of bird is most likely to live in the cavity high up in the old hack berry tree. She has an app on her iTouch to identify birds and their calls. And one for trees. When we go on what Bei Bei calls 'family walks', our Middle is keen to collect leafy folliage from around our village and come home and try to classify it.

MGJ stays up late reading. Moving quickly through a stack of books from the library, but turning down the opportunity to mail in a weekly math challenge to her jr high teacher. She is learning how to do the laundry and unfurls towels and sheets to air dry on the line. And more begrudgingly unloads a dishwasher perpetually full of plastic picnic ware.

Bei Bei watches the changes in the yard ... loving to go on rides on the green mower and make observations about the perenials. The tulips and magnolias of Spring, now a distant memory, have given way to lilacs, followed by the Korean variety of lilacs, with smaller tighter blossoms that bloom two weeks after the traditional ones. The peonies have nearly all faded, the white ones opening first, followed by the dark pink ones. The rose bushes are both blooming, fighting against heavy down pours to keep their petals. The hydrangea bushes have opened with bright white balls of blooms. The mock orange, beside the porch, where cardinals are keeping a nest, is full of fragrant white petals as well. Our overgrown, untidy, uneven hedge has a small white blossom that is lightly scented, and wafts all the way back to the clothes line.

Earlier Bei Bei had a friend over for a play date and with the seriousness of a 60 year old (not six year old) pointed out projects around the yard ... "We're not quite done with the mulch yet, we still need to put some over there." (She faithfully scooted her own little wheel barrow around the yard in May and June beside my garden cart, and loaded and spread mulch with her pint size rake.) Bei Bei pointed out where the cardinals live and the momma birds on their nests. "I can see it's butt," her friend quipped, but and our resident comedian didn't take the bait. "Those are her tail feathers," she replied solemnly. "She's sitting on her eggs."

The girls have invented their own game of kickball, where the pitcher rolls the ball to all the bases, not just home plate (which happens to be a corner of the playhouse.) When my parents spent a short weekend with us, they quickly versed them in the ever-evolving-rules of "johnson girl's kickball." And a sweaty, multi-generational match ensued. The have finished their soccer season, and still seem compelled to be kicking something around the yard, to each other, or in a disadvantaged scrimmage.

We are drinking in these sweet first moments of the summer ... in our yard and on the porch of The Bungalow ... Creating memories of summers in North America with The Three.

Home {Another Five Minute Friday}

My kind of Home

When I saw this week's prompt I was overwhelmed. It is the one word that hovers in the back of my mind and sometimes sits in the end of my fingertips, waiting to be blogged. And yet, I hold back. For nearly six months I have been wrestling with this word called home. Rolling it around on my tongue, trying to define a concept that seems intangible.

{This post should be five minutes, but it could go on so much longer.}

Defining home has become simple. So simple that it's definition is obvious. Home is wherever the four other immediately members of my family are.

When the five of us are together, we are home.

But home then is not just a place, but can be many places.

I wrestle with this, this idea that we have left where we were, and to returned to where we came from, and that we were home both places. Yes we love the sturdy familiarity of life in The Bungalow. But the structure, the address, the yard alone are no longer the definition of home for me.

When people ask how it feels to be home, I always reply, "We are happy to be back."

Because, in my mind, we've been my kind of home all along.

For other blogger's thoughts on home, visit the Gypsy Momma, where this week's Five Minute Friday Prompt is: Home.
http://thegypsymama.com/2011/06/five-minute-friday-home/

Moving Back into the Bungalow {Stories My Phone Photos Tell}

Circa Jan/Feb 2001

We spent several weeks working, living, sleeping and playing in a very sparsely furnished house as we prepared for the arrival of our shipment.

Rhubarb ...

For all the rouge growth in our tangle of a yard in the half decade of our absence, there are one or two bright spots: the lilacs have doubled in size; the boxwoods are {finally} a nice shape and size; and the rhubarb... oh the rhubarb!

Rhubarb is one of Mr Johnson's favorites. (Although he recently confessed that he doesn't like it in crumble or crisp form). Last summer we ate our fill over home leave. And there is a possibility that some sour stalks may have been wrapped in newspaper before we departed Vancouver last summer and slipped into a duffel bag. It is possible that they were not detected by customs or security, and we may or may not have feasted on that impossible import twice .... stretching three chopped cups into two different recipes. That might have happened.

Our oldest turns twelve today. Our oldest who has a mature palate for her age and an interest in a variety of flavour combos. So for her birthday she's not getting a cake, but a clafoutis. She sampled the still bubbling, not-too-sweet goodness after school, and confirmed what I guessed when I perused this first-time-recipe ... she loved it.

So, because it's so yummy, and because you might have your own rhubarb patch out back, I'll include the recipe here (with apologies to all my friends in QD who cannot get rhubarb ... if it makes you feel any better I can't get pomelo or Korean pears here, or reasonably priced or locally grown cherries ).

Spiced Strawberry Rhubarb Clafoutis
from the Interweb on a google search

Fruit
1 lb ripe strawberries, hulled and halved
1 cup rhubarb (about 2 stalks), diced
4 tbsp butter
1/3 cup sugar

Batter
1/3 cup sugar
1/4 tsp salt
3 eggs
3/4 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
3/4 whole milk
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp ground cardamom
1 tsp fresh-ground black pepper

Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9-inch cake pan or casserole dish.

In a sauté pan, melt the butter. Add the rhubarb and place the strawberries on top, cooking for about five minutes and giving an occasional shake to make sure it’s not sticking. (The goal is the reduce the fruits’ juices to create a bit of a syrup without turning the strawberries to mush.) Sprinkle the 1/3-cup of sugar over the berries, stir and bring the mixture to a boil. Cook for a few minutes, until the mixture thickens slightly. Pour the fruit into you baking dish and let cool while you make the batter.

In a medium-sized bow, whisk the sugar, salt and eggs together until it is light. Slowly add the flour, whisking until combined. Stir in cream, vanilla, cardamom and pepper. Pour the batter over the fruit. Bake for 35-45 minutes, until the cake is puffy and browned on top. Dust with powdered sugar or serve with whip cream or ice cream.

(further apologies to my international friends for the Fahrenheit temperatures and non-metric measurements. You'll have to do the reverse google searches I had to do whilst in China! I can tell you that 350 F is 177 C!)

Spring is Here!

Although someone should probably inform the thermometer, spring is here, and we're seeing it everywhere in the yard around The Bungalow.

Do you see that fabulous blue sky?

It made a brief appearance this morning before disappearing behind rumbling dark clouds.

The girls think this blue, blue cloud filled sky looks like the wallpaper in Andy's room in the Pixar's Toy Story trilogy.

After living in foggy and overcast Qingdao, where we only saw brilliant skies in May and October,

we are thrilled with all the blue we're seeing in the Midwest!