Seasonal Celebrations: 12 weeks to Seasonal Living and lots of photos

As Winter officially turned to Spring last month it was hard not to celebrate, wasn't it?  

In lieu of Easter, as much as I enjoyed the tradition growing up, we focused our energy on welcoming a new season around the Vernal Equinox, the first day of Spring. 

We counted down the days and intended to catch the first sunrise, but ended up sleeping in later than usual and woke up to rain anyway. 

I put out a little bowl of milk chocolates and a jar of salted caramels, and invited the kids in the afternoon to pick out some new science tools. Roscoe chose the Visible Man, yet another dissection specimen, and a blood typing kit. Merritt chose a magic school bus experiment kit about germs.

Roscoe typed his dad's blood: O+

We cleared out the craft closet and found vouchers for an ant farm and a ladybug house. We bought an incubator and took a visit to our friend's farm to pick up 8 duck eggs. The embryos are now about 6 days old with tiny beating hearts we can see when we candle them at night.

Welsh Harlequin embryos at 6 days gestation

As if by magic the week that followed was warmer than usual and we enjoyed more time at home in the afternoons, hanging out in the backyard with windows open and breezes blowing through.

We went for a little nature stroll through the backyard and the boys took note of the many signs of Spring: new blades of grass, acorn sprouts, periwinkle, leaf buds. 

Sunlight through the fence, new daffodils, green shoots

We gathered some knitting and art supply scraps to assemble a nest builder for the birds.

Merritt put together a still life from backyard pickings and I strewed some colored pencils and paint.

He was curious what Daffodils look like under the microscope. He found a tiny slug inside one who turned out to be very entertaining under magnification with its little retractable tentacles.

On the patio we drew flowers with chalk on the patio out back and consulted the Smithsonian's Natural History book as reference, one of our favorites.

We played with paint and explored making new colors. 

When April came we took a long holiday weekend to celebrate our wedding anniversary as a family on a sprawling farm near Sperryville, Va.

I loved the guinea fowl best. The noisy little watch birds run around in a small flock on the lookout for anything unusual or threatening. Our bedtime routine was interrupted one night by their squawking, and when I had finally given up on the boys finding sleep we peered outside to see that the hens had an unwelcome skunk visitor surrounded from the ground up. The boys ran outside in their jammies to check things out.

One guinea hen in the treetop, five on the ground 

Skunk chase

On Saturday, Andy and I hiked Old Rag, a 9+ mile circuit hike to the top of a rocky outcrop with an intense rock scramble to the summit. We didn't put a lot of thought into preparing for the hike, which made for a mentally challenging climb. We were underprepared for the number of hours it would take, the cooler windy weather that morning, and the demands of navigating a maze of boulders. The heights were dizzying but the views were gorgeous. Andy and I read our vows to each other at the top. I dug for them in the attic boxes before we left and it had been at least six years since I read them last. I had looked forward to discussing ways to revise them moving into our next decade but they read as true as they had ten years ago, even though we wrote them for each other when we were just 21.

I'm thrilled that Spring is here and I want to celebrate it every day. How about you?

Check out the HomeSpun Seasonal Workbook if you're interested in starting your own intentional journey to Seasonal Living.