The Coltsfoot

The winds of March are keen and cold,

I fear them not for I am bold.

I wait not for my leaves to grow,

They follow after, they are slow.

My yellow blooms are brave and might,

I greet the spring with all my might.

When the snow is on the ground

Little bells are to be found:

Hush! Tread soft for I can see

Snowdrops sweet for you and me.

-From Germany, Spring Wynstones book page 18

March is a wonderful month here in the Deep South, typically warmer with flowers and trees blooming,  and sunny days.  I am looking forward to the renewing practices of Lent that begins this week.

here is what we are celebrating:

• March 1- The Feast of St. David
• March 6– Ash Wednesday, which we will mark at church and within our home by changing our nature table and setting up things for Lent
• March 9-10 – I will be celebrating Waldorf homeschooling at the Waldorf Homeschooling Conference in Atlanta
• March 25 – The Feast of the Annunciation, which we will celebrate at church
• March 30– The Feast of St. Innocent of Alaska ( we will celebrate at home with some wonderful books about this saint)

ever shifting homeschooling:

Our junior is set for her senior year with mainly outside classes at our local hybrid school and finishing the last of a few subjects with me; I will be working on transcripts this summer and we started visiting colleges this past month.  Very exciting!

Our eighth grader is still seriously contemplating public high school due to it being within walking distance and the fact it has an animal studies program complete with equines and a barn, which is her area of interest.  So we have homeschooled one teen, perhaps public school will work out for this teen – this would be a new journey for us and I already had everything ready for ninth grade, so that feels a little sad, but  I am resting in that things will work out as they should ❤

Our rising fourth grader will be homeschooling in the fall and I am thinking of block rotations already.  Right now I am  thinking of Man and Animal 1, Man and Animal 2 with Local Geography, Fractions, Geometry (winter break), and then move into Norse Mythology, Birds of Prey, Math – with Weland the Smith as our read aloud and lots of art to come from that, African Tales, Math in the Garden or The Popol Vuh (undecided).

self-care

there is some stress going on with a pet’s illness so I am trying not to get so far behind on my self-care that I end up sick for six months which is what happened last year about this time.  Working on myself and my own discipline in self-care, is hard for me.  I find setting my times for self-care out for the next week helps, as does thinking of all those self-care times as appointments and marking them on my calendar.

I went to observe a pelvic floor practice this past week and hope to go again soon.  I am waiting to hear from a pelvic floor physical therapy certification I applied to, and if I get accepted I will  go from there into completing a clinical doctorate.  My goal is to have a tiny few times a week practice as our youngest child heads into high school and then to expand that as he goes off to the post-high school world.

marriage

i don’t normally talk too much about marriage on this blog, although I have a little in the past.  My husband and I are coming up on 27 years of marriage in May, and we are both in or close to our 50s, so it feels very real to talk about all the things of this stage of life – enjoying each other and this stage of life to its fullest, paying for college, young adult children, even the idea of retirement  and what we will be doing then (although that is quite a ways off with a rising fourth grader and me re-inventing my career).

Can’t wait to hear what you are up to this month!

Blessings and love,

Carrie