Meg Reads

This was a quick, fun, read. Not really any new content, but good reminders and ideas to reinforce the self reliant concepts I’ve been teaching/offering to my children for years. 

A few things:

Corbin expanded his lawn mowing business to include our yard. I debated over whether to pay him for this, but since this chore lies outside of regular contributions, we are offering him a (small) commission.

Reese and Quincy are about to experience what economic crisis looks like.  Everyone on quarantine = no one needs a sitter and their source of income has come to a screeching halt.  No work = no cash flow.  

Reese still has her bathroom cleaning business and picked up a second client on the lane to start up this summer.  I’m hoping this economic stall generates some creativity and ingenuity for them.  They begged me to get chickens again yesterday. I think they do not remember the part about raising chicks and waiting 4.5 months until they begin producing eggs.  My car desperately needs a detail and I’m just waiting for a bored child to jump on the opportunity before them. 

We spent hours in the garden and greenhouse, yesterday. Thanks to my dad, the lights in the greenhouse are up and running. My neighbor, Mr. Terry (who built those beautiful dressers for us) collects donations for the Shriners and gave us bunch of long fluorescent bulbs a couple years ago, that they had no use for. They’ve been sitting in the greenhouse collecting dust since then, but yesterday, my dad helped me change the bulbs out and hang up the fixtures.  

The kids each joined in with other work and the result was 98 peat pots of seeds started. We just used what we had lying around out there...the pots are old and dry, and the seeds are so old, who knows how many of those old seeds will actually germinate, but if they come up, the return on the children’s time-only investment will be pretty great. 

Quincy found a 6+ year old bag of mammoth sunflower seeds and worked them into the “soil” along the back fence line.  The boys moved rocks that the restoration company dumped into our lawn back into

The rock beds (because evidently, the restoration company is not coming back to finish the complete mess they made with that).  The littles scooped potting soil. Reese sorted out a bin of seeds that was pulled from our garage shelves after the fire, but boxed up by the restoration company, but boxed up upside down so all the seeds fell out of their packages and mixed together. It was fun to test the kids’ knowledge of seeds. They recognized peppers, beans, corn, peas, cucumbers, watermelon, and carrots seeds (yes...they were all mixed together 🤦🏻‍♀️ but all of the squashes are too similar. So Reese packaged them up in a mixed bag of squash seeds that she labeled, “Mysterio Seeds” 😂😂  

Everyone contributed and I sang a Mother Mantra, “Willardsons are hard workers!” enough times that I hope they all believe it as gospel.  Great job, Willies.