Thanksgiving in Maine, 2018. We had the Eely-Warings and the Waring-Warings and Orion, who gets his own mention. It was delicious. Highlights include chasing Orion in circles, cooking with Liam and Reid, eating great food for 4 days. And catching up with rellies.
Liam reads to his cousin Orion.
The thanks giving meal.
Videogames with goofballs.
Codenames
The pose.
In this second posed group picture, we were supposed to do something crazy or goofy. When we asked mom what she did that was crazy, she said “I showed my teeth, which is… unusual.”
This Halloween, Sal and O’da visited, and it was perfect that they did. Here’s a visual documentation of our experience. Liam was link, right down to the tunes he learned on the ocarina. He also borrowed a professionally made Hylian shield from Antonio and Seth (thanks Antonio and Seth!). Reid was a grim reaper with awesome black leather boots and a bloody scythe. They have only just reached the end of their accumulated candy, after eating four pieces every day. So that’s about 100 pieces each. Reid still has some to go!
We spent Labor Day with the Walsh Dalozes in Barville this year. To do so, however, we had to clear a large log from across the road before we could access the cabin. We also hiked rattlesnake mountain again for the stellar view.
This year we volunteered at the homesteading tent at the Common Ground Fair. Liam said “I think it was a great experience to help out at the Fair.” Reid said “It was one of the best Common Ground Fairs I’ve ever been to.” Liam and Reid guided visitors in making corn-husk dolls, and Katie and I helped people make tortillas and served soup. Volunteering made it feel much more satisfying. Afterward we went to the big feast for the volunteers, which made it special as well.
Inspired by a brilliant gift from our friends the Hasbrouck’s, we took the Waring grandparents on an adventure to create a meal from nothing but locally available wild edible plants. Liam was especially excited and energetic about this idea.
Liam and Reid clipping sumac berry clusters off of the tree for sumac berry juice
Liam and grandma Marie beginning a difficult harvest of burdock root.
Reid and grandpa Topher process this strange but edible can’t tail route. They are Kors are fibrous and have a white starchy paste which can be eaten.
Liam whittles a burdock root down to an edible core.
Topher shows how to extract the center of the cattail root.
After hard work and harvesting and long work in processing this is our meager bounty of starchy fibrous cattail root.
Boil the burdock root for half an hour…
Sumac berries soaking in water. It’s something like lemonade, unsweetened. Not bad!
Our Linden leaf salad which Liam garnished with snapdragon flowers!
I believe we finally ate our meal after all of our hard work and processing at about 1:30 PM!
Liam did some diary on the topic.
Despite the fact that we did not collect very much food, after trying all of our wild edibles our ravenous hunger somehow left us.
Katie has recently finished a year-long yoga teaching training, and has jumped right in to teaching. She’s currently got five classes a week and is building her clientele!
Katie shows off one of the tricky poses she’s mastered. She mastered this before the yoga teacher training, actually.
