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I've never been a big fan of perfume. Or jewelry. Or cut flowers. Nope, on Valentine's Day no need for those symbols of romance. Unless there's some dirt attached. And roots. And how-to care instructions. After all, should love be allowed to wither & dry up like a bunch of thorny roses in 7-10 days?

Or should love, like a rare & exotic specimen (found at Home Depot's nursery center), be transplanted and nurtured to grow. And flourish. And, given at least the minimum amount of required sunlight exposure, spread. So that eventually it can fulfill its destiny. And become an invasive species....
 
Yep, it was with some relief that we had kids. And could return to celebrating a pressure-free Valentine's Day the way it's meant to be: Sweet. Creative. Poetic. Filled with love stories.  Yet, sometimes heartbreaking.  Even puzzling. Or full of cross words. And, quite often, cutting.

With scissors, that is. For snappily sniping snipping construction paper hearts in homemade valentines. Made out to relatives, playmates & their very bestest buddies, ie Jane (Goodall), Ben (Franklin), Ozma (of Oz) & Zoboomafoo (of Madagascar).       












Originally, it started with a fella who was all heart(s), my grandmother's handiwork, saved & passed down to the girls. I wasn't too fond of him, but Mikaela was smitten. So together we came up with new versions, adapted to fit our particular family's peculiarities: We love each other, true. But we -- work at home/school at home/stay at homers -- also bug each other, no denyin' it. Obviously, we're a family of LoveBugs!




Ahh, the enigma that is love. How confusing. With multiple, elusive variables. And seemingly endless unsolvable problems? Sounds like MATH!  So M&K became matchmakers, pairing up brokenhearted equations. Some were real, to reinforce subtraction or multiplication practice, yet others were more algebraic & abstract, for instance OX/X = O (hugkiss divided by kiss = hug) or Mom = Super Cool (huh, too easy?). In addition, we played the usual weekly arithmetic games, but with sweet tarts as the tokens of our affections, plus the spoils of victorious conquest. When we really wanted to strike at the heart of the matter, our coordinated strategic attack was to rally the troops by playing Valentine Battleship with heart stickers as targets. The girls put their whole hearts into making puzzles of all kinds, out of stray pieces of cardboard as well as pre-jigged varieties, and incised increasingly intricate labyrinths of love (masterfully minute mazes). And, for our math club's Valentine's Day party, we rearranged tangram hearts & then figured out their irregular-shaped areas. (Now if that doesn't combat affirm stereotypes about the exciting world of homeschooling socialization, don't know what will...) Finally, to introduce the idealistic youngsters to that all important lesson that love is a gamble, we dealt them life's their hands & taught them to toss out their Hearts with abandon while making it a point (ten, actually) to protect the diamonds in the rough & ignore the others ('cuz they're all cards).
But equations - even learning them by heart - wasn't enough. One must also be well versed in the language of love. So we started -- as do most of the world's great thinkers, recognized philosophers & gurus d'amour -- with conversation hearts. First, M&K composed unique messages, such as My Sweet Jabberwocky, U R Spooky, Hug a Turkey, Got Heart? Next, they picked 5 random candies to use in a short story. Katrianna's was about two lovers (an orange & a banana) who are trapped in a chilling ivory tower (fridge) & must escape in order to achieve their shared burning desire (hiking the entire Continental Divide trail in one sultry summer).

Traditionally, every February 14th we recite a selection of loveworthy poetry, perhaps Linus' favorite How Do I Love Thee? by Elizabeth Barrett Browning or that more oft quoted (well, only by Chris) My Cheeseburger, originally performed by the gourd-eous Mr. Lunt of VeggieTales fame. Then we write our own. For example, a couple of years ago the result was Mikaela's poem about an oatmeal canister's unrequited love for a shapely bottle of vanilla extract:

In the pantry, on the shelf,
Sat - and sighed - an oatmeal jar;
It loved the vanilla with all its heart
And so it wished upon a star.

Though the door was fastened shut,
The oatmeal wished so much, so loud,
That the mango heard and laughed so much
He attracted quite a crowd.

The vanilla sat on the cupboard shelf
In oblivion to all;
The oatmeal wished and wished in vain
All for his sweetheart tall.

The vanilla was a container large
As was the oatmeal, too,
But the vanilla knew not of the oatmeal jar
Whose heartbreak grew and grew.

The oatmeal languished in the dark
And pined the whole day through;
Yet of her lover, sighing so,
The vanilla never knew.

When the flax moved in, with flaxen curls,
The oatmeal smiled, and shook, and gasped;
Though the vanilla remained on the cupboard shelf,
It was now a thing of the past.
 

Of course, soon it became clear that our daughters needed to gain some historical perspective on love. And its tormenting capabilities. Ya know, the general, pervasive misery it's inspired throughout the ages? (Oh, sure, and the joy, too.) So they read books about Saint Valentine and the Romans' Lupercalia festivals and the quaint courting customs of America's pioneers. Mikaela even created a crossword puzzle to honor the holiday in her newspaper.
 
 
Down
2. It is sometimes used to trim paper hearts
3. A type of candy with messages written on it
5. Venus' son
6. The Greek goddess of love
7. Another word for embrace
8. Roman festival where boys meet girls
9. These can be pink, white or red
11. You pucker your lips to do this
12. Lovebirds

Across
1. A gift that is an expression of love
3.  Feb 14 was named for _____ Valentine
4. Heart-shaped boxes of _____
5. Another word for dating
10. This _____ symbolizes endless love


We also had heart to heart talks about Greek mythology. Taking heart (notes) & learning about love's hospitality through Baucis & Philemon, the dangers of idolatry from Pygmalion & Galatea, and the woes of Romeo and Juliet's precursors, Pyramus & Thisbe. Echo & Narcissus urged reflection on vanity's futility and we admired Daphne's ability to remain chaste while being chased, though her ultimate fate seemed unnecessarily treesonous. But primarily we were intrigued by Cupid & Psyche, eager to see what happens when 'Heart' & 'Soul' unite!     O my, whatever occurs?!  Not much, not after their mother-in-law gets in the way. (Hey, this isn't coming from me. I'm merely repeating what that ol' scholar-woman Edith Hamilton said. About Aphrodite, Cupid's mom. If literature teaches us anything, it's that it would be wrong to apply these universal truths to all situations, right? Grossly eros-neous, imho.)       



But most importantly for our little red-haired girls, the majority of their Valentine's Days are spent with Charlie Brown. As in Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown & You're in Love, Charlie Brown & It's Your First Kiss, Charlie Brown. Or, for a radical change of pace, Snoopy's Getting Married. These toons cut straight to their hearts sparkying more elaborate papercuts cutting ventures, as well as "Love Is..." sentence completion exercises based on Schulz' Happiness Is... series. A sampling of their efforts: LOVE IS... snuggling your gorilla, cinnamon toasts, sharing a full box of crayons, an evening without baths, a good book, an Indian summer day with caroling birds, a Shipley's chocolate iced doughnut with extra nuts, a hard challenge, and...


Jam-In Valentine Butter Cookies
3/4 c softened butter
1/2 c white sugar
1 egg yolk
1 tsp vanilla
1 3/4 c all-purpose flour

Roll dough into 1" balls. Place 2 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheet. Flatten & shape into hearts with raised edges. Fill with ¼ tsp fruit preserves. Bake at 375 for 8-10 minutes, until golden brown on bottom. If desired, sprinkle with powdered sugar after cooling. Makes 2 dozen.

Lastly, for parents - or should I simply say "those currently experiencing a post-Romanticism era"? - Valentine's Day offers the perfect excuse to expose your children to love's loftiest heights. In the form of 24 consecutive hours of mushy Motown love song classics by Marvin Gaye, Al Green, Stevie & Smokey. And don't forget those maudlin Temptations, the Supreme sentimentalists or the cheesy Chi-Lites. What about the saccharine Spinners, the gushing Commodores, the 4 tottering Tops, and Earth Wind & Fire's global heartwarming (or has that been dissed proven lately?)... Wait a minute, sorry, there's nothing special here. I already make our kids listen to this stuff monthly. Ok, weekly. Ok, ok, daily. But it doesn't seem to exalt Love irrationally. Instead, M&K perceive Love to be omnipresent, yet somewhat analogous to background noise. Now that's putting love in its proper place...     with the mute button just out of reach.
  
CROSSWORD ANSWERS
DOWN: 2.lace 3.sweetheart  5.Cupid 6.Aphrodite 7.hug  8.Lupercalia 9.roses 11.kiss 12.doves ACROSS: 1.valentine 3.Saint 4.chocolate 5.courtship 10.loveknot
M's poem, drawings & crossword puzzle are used here with her grudging permission & retain her copyright. Or else.

In honor of Claude Monet's birthday, based on a song first performed to wide acclaim by the O'Jays -- fine artists in their own right -- may we now present our rendition of "For the Love of Monet."

Uh huh, that's right --
                                    As everyone knows, Monet always souled out.

And, just for the record, we have plenty of water lily gardens in Texas, too:

     But, perhaps, they leave one with
     a slightly different impression?













Later, gator.

Katrianna's efforts in botany have led to the inevitable --- that's right, Sex Education.  Yep, she's discovered the Joy of Pollination!

The little Luther Burbankette is doing her best imitation of a honeybee and experimenting with cross-pollination in great earnest. Talk is all about anthers and stamens and the ripeness of the pollen. It's really been quite stigmatizing. She's become obsessed with all that is prolific in her plant kingdom.

As an added bonus, she  studied the fine art of "pinching back" and picks certain prospects for a little branching out inducement - there's just no stemming her excitement. She estimated this morning that she has over 1,000 plants in some stage or other - that includes sprouts, seedlings and all. It's likely closer to 100, but she is quite pleased regardless.    
 
Her amaryllis finally bloomed, proving my anxious worries that we had somehow chosen the one & only "dud" bulb were for naught. Indeed, it surpassed our expectations by producing six beautiful flowers, which she interpreted as an indisputable testament to her horticultural omnipotence. She then proceeded to reward her worthy subject by dismantling it, clipping it leaf by leaf, snipping it root by root, until she had reduced it to a mere replica of its former self, a light bulb. Her madness did have a method, however, for it allowed the dissection of one unfortunate soul - wherein she conscientiously adhered to the sworn principles of the Hydroponic Oath - but also uncovered several baby bulblets which she tenderly added to her nursery. I guess that'll teach her to be such a "cut up."

Lately, she's also been urging me to eat as much guacamole as possible - my parental pit-tance perhaps? No, simply a pit-ifully disguised desire for more avocado pits for toothpick skewering & observational purposes. So, now she's raising avocado plants - well, at least that's what they'll be if they reach their full potential, but at the moment they seem to be woeful underachievers who spend their time in stagnant wallowing and self-pity.

For Easter, she did surprise us all with magnanimous gifts of our very own personally decorated and exorbitantly scotch taped alfalfa seed packets, complete with homemade watering cans (paper cups with toothpick holes punched in the bottoms). Accompanying them were detailed instructional booklets which warned of the deleterious consequences of waterlogging, root overcramping & the exact technique for turning young plants regularly (which means on the half hour) toward the sunlight so they can perform photosynthesis. A staunch conservative in these matters, she expects the seedlings -once she's provided them a healthy environment- to make an honest living and earn their own food. 

But, with the exception of the paperwhites which emerged early and in showy profusion so they could have the pond's reflections all to themselves (they are so narcissistic), most of our backyard looks a bit seedy. Last week, Katrianna enriched the soil with peat moss, blackened banana peels and other organic fertilizers to sow lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes, alyssum, sunflowers, cosmos & marigolds. She's also added a lot of Miracle Grow to her watering can as an antidote to revive the numerous shrinking violets and withering wall flowers.  Yet, she seems confident that she will ultimately sucseed and reap a plantiful harvest due to her willingness to get her hands (well, her gloves) dirty, along with her matchmaking 'natural selection' expertise.

Meanwhile, when dusk overtakes the remains of the daylight and forces her back indoors, she passes the evenings poring over vegetable guidebooks & flower encyclopedias in growing impatients for a bloomin' garden of her own.


Either that, or she plots in poetic couplets:
                                         by Katrianna

               Plants are nocturnal, they wake up at night,
               If you woke at nighttime, you'd be in a fright,
               To see plants who are running, plants in a hurry,
               Plants dropping their leaves in a flash and a flurry,
               Plants from your garden, coming inside,
               Plants who are humble, plants of great pride,
               The African Violet's running, thus,
               He's in a hurry to catch the bus!

[Poem reprinted here with her permission & her insistence that it is "officially quadruple copyrighted." Violators will no doubt be paid back in spades.]

March Madness has started a little early around here. Only for us, it's not on a basketball court. Our 3-point baskets are hanging, netted with nothing but peat moss, and bricks, in small shards, are added to the soil to achieve perfect pH balance.

So, move over, Mike Krzyzewski:

Katrianna has convinced the whole family to participate in a "Grow Off!"
                    Are you ready for this?

Yes, it's a round-robin-redbreast tournament to determine who can grow the healthiest plants.  (Vegas lists "Little Sprout" with a -6½ point spread over "Big Sis." Parents aren't expected to make it out of the first round.)

My daughter's intense interest in sprouting seeds is not so much for our consumption, but serves as a necessary developmental step in her dreams of large-scale cultivation. Her future plans to be a naturalist have long included setting up Katrianna's Nature Center to oversee endangered animal breeding programs.

In her pitch to get us to make gardening part of this year's homeschooling studies, she explained it as follows: It is imperative that we devote ourselves to honing our gardening skills in preparation for one day, in the very near future, when she will have to grow healthy and abundant foods to feed all of those endangered animals. We aren't just doing this for her, understand, we are doing this to save all of the world's endangered animals from starvation. (She was astute enough to pick this tactic instead of simply admitting her budding sibling rivalry - see previous post.)

Recently, she also added a new "growth potential" caveat, outlined in her 501(c)3 charity proposal (now at 17 pages and counting), that she plans to "branch out" into endangered plant propagation and save all those threatened botanical species, as well. So there, put up your Dukes, Coach K and Jane Goodall!

At this very moment, we have all sorts of sprouting vegetable, herb and flower seeds indoors. In addition, Katrianna's "forcing" an Amaryllis bulb by the tried and true method (just pin its leaves behind its back, eventually it cries uncle). She's also making eyes at several sprouting potatoes, performing intricate kiwi experiments & hatching pinecones in hopes of reforesting the entire western United States.

Finally, during this morning's breakfast, she successfully captured some squirmy pomegranate seeds from a fresh fruit and potted them up. Relying on the De-meter system as my measure, I wouldn't let her eat any more than six of the seeds, though... Just in case she pulled a Persephone and inadvertently managed to delay spring. Don't you Hades when that happens?

How did it ever occur to us to study such a radical subject as gardening? It could not have anything to do with the fact that every single "What your child should learn" syllabus lists it as a mandatory science item for alternating years until graduate school (or the 5th grade, whichever comes first). Our approach to the subject was surely more original & organic than that...  

Katrianna was the one to push seed sprouting as part of her academic agenda this year. But, in the interest of full disclosure, please note: We do not claim to have invented the lima-bean-in-a-ziplock experiment. As far as I know, kids have been doing that one since around the time man first discovered fire. Only they used those other baggies, the old-fashioned kind, with the fold-in flaps. That's right, the kind we parents used to pack our pb&j in for summer camp, the ones made from the lining of goats' stomachs instead of the "zipper seal." But same idea. (Note to Homeschoolers: add this bit of trivia to your homemade world history timeline, charted on scrolling butcher paper, which winds its way around your dining room and down the hall.)  

Really, if you want to learn more about lima bean sprouting origins, just take the guided Lascaux cave tour in France. (Did you think they painted all the time?)

And, as much as I'd also like to claim Katrianna's gardening interest was an offshoot of my playing Audrey Hepburn and our touring around the Gardens of the World, that's just not so either. It was not the result of seeing Monet's Giverny, British Columbia's sunken gardens, Portland's famed roses, or even Stratford-Upon-Avon's very own "Shakespearean herb garden" (bet Shakespeare wished he'd thought to capitalize on that back in the 1600s - he might not have had to struggle with playwriting & instead could have turned his father's glove making business into a gardening glove making business, thereby assuring his future success).

No, none of those visits made my daughter green with envy. The real impetus for Katrianna's verdant desires was simply sibling jealousy (but I do claim quite a bit of credit for fostering that whenever possible). When looking through Mikaela's old portfolios last summer, Katrianna found her sister's original flowers & seeds section, completed when Mikaela was 5 and she was 2. Exactly what was the attraction? It wasn't the nifty construction paper seed parts with their movable flip-up features, or the labeled diagram worksheets, or the still life watercolor renditions à la Georgia O'Keefe, or even evidence of her sister's kindergarten attempts at flower-themed Wordsworthian sonnets. 

The pure motivational factor in this sudden passion for gardening was to acquire her own set of pages with seed packets & seed samples glued beside them. That's it. They were colorful, commercial, tactile, and as close as our family comes to displaying glitz & glamour.  And, most importantly to both girls, it was that subtle "I have something you don't have" quality, repeated in singsong delivery week after week, that made it a must-do school project.

Leading us back to Shakespeare, who captured the universality of this phenomenon when he penned that famous, so oft quoted line from Romeo and Juliet:

          Do you bite your green thumb at me, sir?     (Act I, scene i)

So, with that, we will Candide-ly continue to tend our own gardens...

Katrianna has been busy refining a self-watering seed contraption. Despite the fact that she actually enjoys hovering over her plants and watering them at the slightest indication that they might need it (or even without any indication whatsoever), she spends much of her time inventing and perfecting various irrigation systems which, theoretically, free her up to pursue other botanical designs.

Her "capillary action machine," as she calls it, has gone through several modifications and improvements, including the use and abandonment of juicy juice box straws, regular straws, popsicle sticks, glue, qtips, duct tape, toothpicks and about 35 dixie cups. But, it still takes more time to implement than the good old-fashioned watering can option.

Believing she actually did want to develop an easier method, Chris got caught up in the excitement and, like any true, empirically-motivated scientist, googled it. He then replicated a satisfactory (to him) solution - oh, did he ever miss the point!

But, now his "experiment" sits alongside hers and provides some good tension and suspense - less in terms of observing how the seeds progress, more in terms of observing how and when my daughter's patience with her overzealous assistant wears out.

It's official: we've become a family of bean counters. No, it's not the recession, as bad as the economy is.

It's also not our vegan aspirations, as we inconsistently but sincerely fail to achieve them. (Besides, just to clarify, vegans eat way more than beans. . .  Nuts, for instance. There are lots of nuts among vegans.)

It's really, truly, that these days we simply spend a great deal of our time counting beans. And seeds. And sprouts. And, hoping and dreaming and, if you will, plotting for the day of fruition, when we can actually count real, live plants instead.

What's pathetic, and shows homeschooling parents might just devote too much time to their kids, is that my husband and I find ourselves conferring late at night (when the kids have finally gone to sleep and we should be having those pressing adult conversations we put off all day). Why?  Well, to struggle with the ethical dilemma of what to do when one of Katrianna's plants begins to wilt. Similar to the proverbial replacement of a dying goldfish before the kid realizes the dire conclusion of overfeeding it. . . At least, in our case, there is no toilet flushing involved and the evidence, all those little dirt particles, can literally be swept under the rug.

We only did that once. OK, maybe a few times.

But, sometimes tough love is necessary. Now our daughter is having to face the consequences of waterlogging her beloved apple seedling. It hasn't been easy. She'd started oh-so-optimistically with ten seeds harvested from a Red Delicious. Five germinated, which of course led to blueprints outlining elaborate configurations of the rows and rows of trees we'd find in her future orchard.

It was not to be. One was lost to fungus, one had instantaneous leaf shrivel, another had root rot, and one suffered inexplicably, despite hours spent poring over gardening advice books and Katrianna's multiple diagnoses and subsequent attempted "cures." The sole survivor didn't have a chance, as her older sister kept diligently reminding her to water it. Begging the question, again, just how conscientious is too conscientious?  

So, we're trying to move on. After that heartbreak, what's next? Surely something foolproof.  This called for a surefire, horticultural confidence builder.

Yep, that means lima beans. In ziplocks. With damp paper towels. Tiny utopian models of self-sufficient eco-systems.  Absolutely no worries.

It's not overly obsessive if I find myself waking hourly to check on the little guys, is it? And, I only sing them three lullabies a night, no more. I think that's fine and they really like it. I can tell, because I only sing one lullaby for the "control group" and they're suffering. Really.

Give your children roots. . . (on a worksheet, preferably with a diagram, to be labeled and colored by the child)