Tender Tracks Thurs. Day 56

April 19, 2018
Waxing Moon
Fairfax, Lansdale Ave, Wendolyn’s Home

Austen absent.

Today was such a beautiful day. The sun was up, warm and a gentle breeze would come in and out now and again.  Our focus was to walk to the road Landsdale, right near where I live, and harvest  Calendula flowers.
Yet, to begin our day the children had a GRAND time, exploring the creek right where we were.  They truly had such a fine time as they gathered so many different kinds of rocks. Puma was and is really into trying to learn how to skip rocks so he was looking for all the right skippers.  Vita kept finding different shards of clay, Owen added to the collection of our building collection of treasures and rocks. Avaline found many incredible rocks along with Devin.  And, they did a fairly good job of staying dry until….well, suffice it to say that after circle Puma and Owen had a little change that took place. 🙂

Circle time we had on the “stage” and through story, discovered what we were about to do for the day. The ease just being where we were and playing was delightful and all were at ease. Then, packing up and off we go to our adventure but first, I made a map on the stage with sticks and things so we could find our way and THEN off we went.  Down the road, past the Fire Mens Home, around the corner to watch all the different Koi fish. Avaline was so excited about the “baby Koi” and how “CUTE” they were!  Puma did not know that this place with water and the fish even existed and was excited to see it. Then we looked out for “Metal Monsters”/cars and crossed over the “concrete river”/the road and phew, made it safe and sound to the other side.
I took them down a “shortcut”/back alley and Devin got to see the entryway of his other school!  We then made it back to the main road and kept going. By the time we made it to Landsdale it was time to take off some coats, even more than we did earlier, and drink some water. Then, SPLAT, and CRASH went the glass bottle that we had to put our harvested plants in. Ruby and I cleaned that up off the road as best we could and carried on but….Owen was sure he could not go any further yet, with some of Ruby’s love and magick he got up and down the road he continued until we all found two different Calendula patches to harvest from.

With a little bit of gratitude and learning how to harvest in the kindest way with our Plant friends, they each picked some from one batch, then down the road a teeny bit to the next batch to harvest some more.  Then, to my house. But, oh dear, they really needed to eat so, why not go to my backyard??? And that is what we did. We ate in my backyard and then, it was clear that they all wanted to go inside and started saying that they should try and pee. That was the give away to their desire to go in. However, I had not truly “child proofed it” for their arrival and today was not the day to play with all the things I have in the house anyway. However, they did get to play with some of my instruments: Native American flutes, drums, harp and conch shell.  Then looking all about, getting cozy on the couch and listening to a story from my personal children’s book’s library.

And oh yes, before we got to my place to eat lunch they harvested lots of Plantain, which is why we came here in the first place!

They were now rested enough to make our way back.  I showed them yet another shortcut and off we went.
Throughout the day Devin and Owen were needed for band-aids and cut cream as they were the Guardians of Safety on this day.  They were busy!
We did finally make it back in time to put all of the gathered plants into two glass jars and then fill them with Olive Oil.  Each one of the children helped and then we shook, shook, shook it to cover the plants.  We then sang our goodbye song and off they went as they each got picked up to move onto another adventure.