Steph – Page 55 – Stephanie Sicore

April 3, 2007

On a lighter note:

I quickly hashed out what I wanted to accomplish with the gardens around the house. Here’s one nook:

Every surface area in the studio is overflowing with seed packets and logs and lists:

Of course, moving into an established garden already has its perks:

especially the lilacs, here in the kitchen and at my bedside table. I love the heady scent that lulls me to sleep.

You can see more photos of the garden on Flickr.
While you’re there, get a taste for some real garden planning in Montanaraven’s “Gardens: From Napkin Sketch to Reality” set . Then look at the hand tool that you can use to make eco-friendly plant pots using newspaper. I found them for sale online here (in the UK) and here (US) and I would love to have one for the kids. About $14.
These wooden pawn-looking tools are great and the children enjoyed planting purple coneflower seeds for our Austin garden using one last year at The Wildflower Center during the Spring kickoff. Fun stuff.

April 3, 2007

6 or a Half Dozen Stitches?

Growling echoed across the house and within my heart like a bad dream on repeat; I knew Chas was on top of the dog somehow and when I ran into the room, there he was, just like I imagined. Three years ago, Ford was in this same position when Seti snapped, scarring his cheek. This time, I whisked Chas off the ailing dog and flew out of the room. And on the way, looking back at Seti, I ran us into the corner of a door.

If you’ve never watched your child’s head bleed, you’ve never experienced that unhinged, piquant surreality of blood everywhere, coming from everywhere on your child’s head at once, struggling to find it’s source in the pulsing flow of it all, onto the floor, soaking your clothes, his hair, his entire face, while trying to find your keys, trying to find your purse, and shoes for each child and a rag and a cellfone and, in my case, my sanity. You don’t understand how it is possible for such a small child to leave such an extensive trail of bloodsplats from corner to corner in the house as you run in circles, looking for all your missing pieces.

But we spent some quality time connecting with other parents in the ER, watching in amazement as Chas threw spinning arcs with an inflatable football across the waiting room to a new friend from Amsterdam. And as he sat still under the tired fluorescent lights in triage while the plastic surgeon stitched his perfectly positioned 2.5 cm glabellar lesion (with special-order blue Proline thread! He was very impressed), I was able to sing with him and smile and nod that this may very well be the first of many such visits, and that this one (despite being of my fault and not his, and given his physical exuberances) was certainly overdue.

April 2, 2007

Convalescing Seti

Seti is drinking freshly prepared chicken broth. He is eating rice and chop biscuits, stewed chicken meat, skillet parsnips and poached eggs. After each meal, he lets me hoist him gently out the back door and rest him next to his favorite boxwood, to pee. When I return him to his bed, he proudly growls like a fiercely independent old man as I lay him atop his heap of blankets. He will sometimes leave his wicker bed in our bedroom and hobble into the living room to endure the loud music the guys are recording, or accompany me to smell the paint fumes in the room I am painting. We have a temporary bed at the ready in each room, and he treats each as his favorite, so long as we are nearby. Rebuilding leg bones, after all, is a family collaboration.