- The point of painting is not THE painting. It is PAINTING. The end result doesn’t matter, but enjoying the process does.
- Plowing through all your new library books in a five-hour reading marathon is a legitimate choice. Don’t worry about rationing them out all week. You can just read them again.
- Footie pajamas make a great, warm layer under snowpants and no one will know you aren’t dressed.
- When caught doing something you shouldn’t, the best defense is to flatly deny and walk away. It confuses the opposition.
- Stripes go with plaid, pink goes with purple, and socks don’t need to match. If someone questions your clothing choices, start crying. They’ll backpedal instantly and think twice before doing that again.
- There’s really no logical reason why you should get the housework done before you have the fun adventure. I mean, when you really think about it.
- Go karts are aces.
- Yahtzee is better if you don’t overthink it.
- When in doubt, go back to the beginning and start over.
We took the kids camping this summer. I haven’t done much camping in my adult life due to my inability to develop a talent for sleeping on the ground. And it is a talent, I can only assume, given that other camping people don’t seem to end up sleeping in puddles at 3 a.m. or have boulders rise up out of the ground to stab them in the shoulder, despite the tent area being a smooth sea of cushy grass at set-up time. Clearly, there is some sort of genetically-linked gift (strategically placed fat pockets?) that allow some people (the power of slight, unconscious levitation?) to sleep comfortably on the ground (bones that rubberize after dark? Internalized water repelling capabilities?). I don’t have that gift.
Despite this, when I think of my childhood, the times spent crammed into a tiny camper, eating Dinty Moore beef stew and roasting marshmallows, take up a surprising amount of memory space considering we only went for a week or two per year. Sometimes we took an old Army tent instead of the camper, and I can bring to mind the exact smell of that damp canvas, the ring of the metal poles as they clanked together in their bag, the feel of grit under my sleeping bag.
In contrast, I remember nothing about my entire second grade year. Not a thing. It’s a complete blur.
Anyway, given the importance that camping memories have for me, it was clear that I would need to find a way to take my kids off into the wild. And that way would have to keep me off the ground. And because we still have a half-built house, that way would have to be justifiably cheap. These conditions puzzled us for a while, but last fall some friends were selling their pop-up camper. Have you experienced the wonder of the pop-up? It’s got the scrappiness of a tent…but with beds. Beds that are a good five feet off the ground. My god, could anything be more perfect? Needless to say, we snapped that up and last weekend, we finally got around to taking it out.
Like other events on the child-adult experience divide (*cough* Christmas *cough*), once you cross to the other side you suddenly realize that things don’t just…happen like they did when you were kid. You don’t just “go camping” like I remembered. Before the camping part there is the buying and the cleaning and the packing and the sorting and the winnowing and reminding and the reserving and the panicking and the frantic searching and the testing and the hooking up and the driving and the unpacking and the…well. You probably get the point. It wasn’t how I remembered it.
Except for the part where “I just need to hook up the trailer. It will only take a minute” turns into an hour of sweating, swearing, debating, cajoling, wrestling, banging, finally connecting, and “Oh, hell, the lights don’t work. What should we do? Just drive carefully?” That part was EXACTLY how I remember it.
Other things were how I remembered them, as well. We went to Cobscook Bay State Park, which I tented in once, many moons ago, with Michael before we were married. (I know it must have been before we were married, because I sure wouldn’t have volunteered to sleep in a tent AFTER we were married.) My mother insists we went there when I was a kid, too, but I have no memory of that. In truth, I probably do have memories of it, but it’s just blurred into all the other state parks we’d camped in through the years. When we arrived, it was like a sudden time warp back to my childhood. Same pine needles, same pit toilets, same initials carved into the picnic table shelters, same state park brown paint slapped on every wooden surface. These state parks. They never change. They exist outside of time. They are stable and eternal. They are perfect.
It was a successful trip, but not perfect. We went fishing. We traipsed around back roads. We foraged some of our food–clams, mushrooms, berries, fish. We washed dishes outside. The kids seem to fight more than I remember fighting with my sisters (SHUT UP, MOM), Sam got sick and didn’t sleep well, and I had to take Annabel on a middle-of-the-night run to the pit toilets where I heard something large breathe right next to me. It poured torrentially our first night and, while the camper didn’t leak, that unpleasant, musty dampness hung on.But I didn’t mind, what with being five feet off the ground.
On the morning we left I spent some time snuggled with Annabel on her bunk, looking out at the carpet of pine needles to the ocean beyond. “I really like this, Mom,” she said. “Do we really need to go? Can we do it again?”
Yep. We can.
As you may remember (or maybe not; it’s been a while), my relationship with hiking has been a mixed bag since I had children. While the image of scaling mountains with a toddler strapped on your back seems very wholesome and appealing (to me anyway), in reality it, well. It looks more like this (see 2011).
But good news! Last year, we went hiking. A lot. We signed up for a local hiking challenge that required 12 hikes over the course of the summer and, whether it was the chance to compete for something or whether they were actually big enough to like hiking, we did it. (This one. I recommend it, local folks. It’s fun.) The kids already have started asking about the challenge again this year, AND I’ve taken them on one successful hike this season independently, so I figure this heady level of success makes me an expert on children’s hiking. Please, let me share my knowledge with you. No one else cares.
1) Harder, not longer. The worst, whiniest hikes were the ones that were gentle meanders because those? Were boring. Steps so steep they required stabilizing iron rungs? Yes. Borderline rock climbing? Yes. Vertical descents made of nightmares and maternal heart attacks? Yes. Long slow switchbacks that allow you to breathe while they give you a chance to take in the view and enjoy the day? OH GOD THIS IS SOOO HAAAARD. I’M BOOORRRRED. ARE WE DOOONE YEEEET? I’M HUUUUNGRRRRYY. So my advice is to pick your mountain, find the shortest, most brutal way to the top, and go for it. Your quads may not thank you, but your sanity will.
2) Talk some trash. After you’ve selected your trail of torture, make you mention to your children that you’re pretty sure they can’t handle it. Are they feeling strong enough? Really? This is going to be really hard. Are their muscles big enough? Really? Can you show me? Hmmm….I don’t know. Maybe we should pick another trail, this one might be too hard… and on and on. If your children have even the tiniest bit of the competitive spirit that mine do, they will eat this up with a spoon and throw it back in classic I’LL SHOW YOU style. (We are a completely functional family, I swear.)
3) Don’t make them carry anything. This runs contrary to my usually rock solid parenting rule of Ye Shalt Carry Thine Own Crap. You know those parents carrying their kids’ backpacks into school? Yeah. That’s not me. You want it, you carry it. Momma ain’t no pack mule. But…in this case, it works better to leave them backpack-free. This makes it easier for them to scamper through the woods without getting their backpack caught on trees and also (critical when you are climbing rock walls, see #1) helps keep their center of balance where they expect it to be. It also prevents them from stopping every 13 seconds to drink from their fun new water bottle. Which reminds me…
4) Each kid gets their own water bottle. Obvious, I know, but something you may ponder skipping once you realize you are going to be carrying all that water. Don’t. To save on weight, sometimes if it’s a short hike I don’t bring a separate bottle for me and just drink alternately from theirs (sidenote: I am not a germaphobe). They don’t at all mind sharing with me or Michael but with each other? Oh ho ho. No.
5) Make a game of finding trail markers. Obviously, if you are taking small children in the woods, staying on the trail is a minor concern. While not getting lost is the number one reason why this is important, we also talk about the lesser reasons: to avoid stepping on plants, so we don’t scare or hurt animals, so we don’t accidentally make a new trail to confuse people, etc. Anyway, we find this easier to do if they think “finding the blue marks” is some great scavenger hunt created just for them. Feel free to use some feigned idiocy around this concept during low points, too. “Oh, you bumped your knee? I’m sorry. Hey, which way are we supposed to go? Do you see a blue mark? I can’t find it. Oh silly me! It was right there. Let’s go.”
6) Keep band-aids in your bag. One hike last year was pretty much at the kids’ maximum ability. Covering 500 or so vertical feet in two miles round trip, it is a trail that most adults consider pretty moderate, but it is challenging for those with shorter legs. By the time we were coming down the mountain both kids were pooped and, as a result, careless. They both had minor spills that resulted in slightly bloody scrapes. Notice my wording there? “Minor,” “slightly,” and “scrapes”? Apparently it didn’t feel that way to the overtired sufferers of these wounds, who howled like they had lost one of their smaller appendages. In the midst of the fracas we discovered that we forgot to bring band-aids. Cue a whole new round of woebegone wailing. Everyone got over their boo-boos within five minutes but the scarring left by our lack of preparedness lives on. From then on both kids checked before every hike to make sure we had band-aids and that was the very first thing Annabel asked this year when I pulled out the pack. “Did you check to see if there are band-aids in there? Make sure you pack band-aids!” So. Band-aids. Bring them. Also, learn to say “It’s just a little blood. You’re fine” in a totally nonchalant way.
7) Bring a friend. Most commonly uttered refrain when hiking with my children: “Keep going, guys! Good job! Not much further now!” Most commonly uttered refrain when hiking with my children and a friend of my children: “Wait up, guys! I said hold up! Fine, if you can’t wait for me than at least make sure your brother doesn’t run off the mountain, okay? Hello? FIND THE BLUE MARKS!”
8) Put chocolate in the trail mix. Trust me.
It started with a guest.
When your house is small, like ours, you learn to be flexible with your space. The playroom is an alcove in the living room. The laundry room is our linen closet. Our office is wherever we sit down with a laptop. Our guest room is…Sam’s room. If you come to stay with us, we’ll put you up in a tiny room covered with dinosaurs and a twin bed. Sam, meanwhile, goes to have a sleepover in Annabel’s floor on the old crib mattress.
So that’s what we did when my mother came to stay for a few days a bit before Christmas. She stayed in Sam’s room and Sam and Annabel had a giggly sleepover. But after she left, he didn’t want to go back to his room. And Annabel didn’t care, so he stayed there, on her floor, for days. Every night it was the same thing, “Annabel? Want to have a sleepover again?” “Yeah!”
Travel at Christmas broke up the routine and things went back to normal. Then, after a few nights: “Annabel, want to have a sleepover?” There we were again, two kids, one room, one in a bed, one on the floor. Again and again and again. After a few weeks of this, there was really only one solution.
It’s cozy, sure, but at least we have a playroom now.
Okay, that part’s still a slightly messy work-in-progress. But that giant box of Legos is no longer in my living room alcove and we’ve now got a full-size futon for guests. So we’re going to call this a win.
Oh, hi, internet. I’ve had a very busy summer. I have a lot to tell you. But not today. Today I had a request for my apple cake recipe and while I would like to tell you about hiking, gardening, housebuilding, and kindergarten, first I need to do this.
I discovered this recipe a few years ago and it exists on a very strange, very small website that I don’t even understand. I don’t know how I found it; I don’t know who these people are; I don’t know if this website has been updated since 1996. What I know is this is a great apple cake. Full credit, however, goes to them.
But, of course, I am incapable of making any recipe without changing it to within an inch of its life–usually by healthifying it. So first is the regular recipe. Then is the version I usually make and which I feel is healthy enough to give a kid for a snack.
Apple Cake (unhealthy version)
4 cups peeled and diced apples
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup salad oil
1 cup chopped nuts (pecans or walnuts)
2 eggs, well beaten
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon salt
Heat oven to 350 degrees. Mix apples and sugar thoroughly. Add oil, nuts, eggs and vanilla. Mix dry ingredients together and add to apple mixture. Bake in a greased 13×9 inch pan for 45 minutes to 1 hour (check after 45).
Serve frosted or unfrosted. This cake is one of those that you can pretty much finish and serve however you like. If you want to frost it, a sour cream frosting is very nice. Whipping cream or ice cream go very well with it, too. My favorite way to eat it, though, is with no frosting at all.
Got that? That’s a lot of sugar, right? I don’t think I have ever made this recipe with TWO CUPS of sugar. I can’t even imagine it. It is plenty sweet with half that. Wait, am I scooping myself? Whatever, here’s what I do:
Apple Cake (Cherie’s healthified version)
5 cups peeled and diced apples
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup applesauce
2 eggs, well beaten
2 teaspoons vanilla
1/4 cup water
1 cup all purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon salt
Follow directions as above. The whole wheat flour that I use is very dry, so I add a little water to the batter to offset it. You may need to adjust accordingly. If you bake a lot, you will notice that this batter…looks weird. It’s very thick and full of apples and kind of hard to spread in the pan. Don’t worry. It will be okay.
My family is anti-nuts in baked goods, so we don’t do that. But that would make this an even healthier kid snack so if that’s your gig, try it.
And she’s totally right. You absolutely do not need to frost this thing. At all.
Annabel launched into a impromptu soliloquy about bees during the morning drive, so I made it into a poem for you.
I like bees.
I like the music they make when they hum.
I like that they land on flowers and make more flowers.
They don’t sting if you don’t bother them, Sam.
Yep.
I like bees.
But not wasps.
About a month ago we made our annual pilgrimage to Florida. This post isn’t about that trip, which was fine, but not our best vacation ever. We did our usual eating of fried foods, drinking of Cuban coffee, and letting our children play with alligators.
See? Not Maine.
This trip was not the best for a few reasons, not least because Michael developed an odd rash the day before we left. We pondered it for a bit, but as he didn’t seem in immanent danger of dying and we had packing to do, we ignored it and went on our merry way.
And merry it was, until the next day when we realized the rash was spreading and that it was becoming increasingly painful. All the image searching of rashes that we could do (and, please, don’t search rash images unless you really, really have to) seemed to suggest that it was shingles. But it couldn’t be shingles because Michael’s never had chicken pox. So we searched and searched and finally he showed the rash to his mother.
“Oh, sure,” she said. “That’s shingles.”
“But I’ve never had chicken pox,” he said.
“Sure you did,” she answered. “You had it the same time everyone else did but you only got two or three spots.”
And just like that, we learned that not only had Michael had the chicken pox after all, rendering moot years of discussions about how we’d handle chicken pox in our kids, but he also had shingles, a disease generally limited to the elderly and the infirm.
Now, shingles, for those who have not had a reason to extensively research it, are caused by the same virus that causes chicken pox. After you have the pox, the virus stays in your body, hanging out in the nervous system until a weakened immune system allows the virus to gain a foothold. At that point, the virus travels along your nerves until it reaches the skin, where it causes a rash. This sounds creepy and painful, and it is, and it pretty much ruined Michael’s vacation. It didn’t do a whole lot for the rest of us, either, as we tried to accommodate a downed member of the family.
Everything we read suggested that it was possible to catch the chicken pox from someone with shingles, but it was pretty rare. For transmission to take place, a non-immune person essentially has to come in direct contact with the rash.
“So just don’t rub the children’s faces on your oozing sores and it should be fine,” I said, looking up from my father-in-law’s computer.
“Got it,” Michael said. And he kept his shirt on and washed his clothes separately and that was that . Or so we assumed.
Because we are dumb.
**************************
About a week after we returned home from Florida, I found myself in the bathroom getting the kids ready for bath. I pulled Annabel’s dress off and immediately noticed three small, red dots on her stomach.
“Huh,” I said.
“What’s that?” she asked, curious but not scared.
“I don’t know, but it looks like it may be the chicken pox.”
“COOL!” she yelled. “I have the chicken pox!”
I was less enthused.
The next day I took her increasingly spotty self to see the doctor, which I had to do in order to make sure that her immunization records showed that she’d had the disease.
“Yup,” he said out in the parking lot where he came to look at her, so we didn’t infect everyone else. “That sure is chicken pox. Do you know where she contracted it from?”
“Well,” I said. “Her dad had shingles.”
“Really?” he said. “When did he have them?”
“He still does, a bit.”
“And you don’t know anyone else who had chicken pox?”
“Nope.”
“Really?”
“No.”
“Wow,” he said. “That’s a pretty compelling case. But, honestly, the chance of getting chicken pox from shingles is so rare it is practically theoretical. This is amazing!”
I, again, was less enthused.
Because I believe in giving full credit where credit is due, I need to tell you that Annabel really was a superb chicken pox patient. She rarely complained, she tolerated quarantine even when it required her to sit endlessly in the car while I ran errands, and she was generally excellent company. But by the of the mandated six-day sequester, she was healed up and quite ready to go back to preschool.
I packed her up, sent her on her way, and assumed it was over.
Because I am dumb.
**********************************
You may wonder why I was so casual about the whole thing considering that I have another child in the house. The reason is this: Sam had received the chicken pox vaccine. We had intended for neither kid to get it until they started school, believing that natural immunity had a slight edge over vaccine immunity during the course of a lifetime (though we went back and forth on this a lot especially considering–remember?–we thought Michael had never had the chicken pox). But we learned when reviewing Sam’s vaccination records at his three-year check-up that somewhere along the way he’d gotten the shot.
We didn’t really mind either way, and, frankly, by the end of Annabel’s bout with the pox I was tired of calamine lotion, hideously behind at work, and pretty much done with the varicella zoster virus altogether. Plus, I was feeling pretty lucky that Annabel’s case was as moderate as it was and I wasn’t really looking to roll the dice a second time.
But, hey! Guess what! A week after Annabel went back to preschool I was pulling Sam’s shirt off for bath (seeing a pattern?) when I noticed tell-tale red spots all over his stomach and back.
“Look!” Annabel yelled gleefully, “You have chicken pox, too!”
So I hauled him to the doctor the next day, which happened to be yesterday.
“Sure does look like the chicken pox,” the Friday doctor said. “I don’t see this much anymore, honestly, what with the vaccine.”
“But he got the vaccine.”
“Right. We tend to see that cases with the vaccine are much milder. Is his milder than his sister’s was?”
“No, it’s worse.”
“Really? But he has fewer spots?”
“No, he has more.”
“Interesting. It looks like the vaccine didn’t help much here.”
“You think?”
“This really is unusual. Believe me.” And I believe her.
Because I am dumb.
********************
To recap:
My 37-year-old, generally healthy husband developed a illness usually limited to the elderly and the infirm from a childhood disease he never knew he had.
He then gave this disease to our daughter in a manner of transmission considered so unusual that it is “practically theoretical.”
Our daughter then gave the disease to our son, despite his being vaccinated against it with a vaccine considered around 90% effective.
When I was at the doctor with Annabel, he seemed oddly pleased with her contraction of the pox. “The thing is,” he said, “she will now have a 99% chance of being immune from this for life. That’s actually really good.”
I had the chicken pox when I was a kid. I don’t remember having it, but I definitely did. I’ve never in my life worried about getting it a second time. But right now? I’m looking at how percentages are running for us and I’m thinking, boy, I am basically guaranteed to end up in that 1%, aren’t I?
A few friends who have followed this saga have mentioned that I should buy a lottery ticket. It seems to me that the luck we’re running is actually the exact opposite of what is needed to win the lottery. What would happen if I went to buy a lottery ticket is that I would somehow bump into the person behind me, causing them to slip and fall and sustain tremendous injury. They would then sue me for everything I have, including my family, who I would be forced to sell for cash, and I would end up destitute, penniless, alone, and covered in the first-ever-known simultaneous case of chicken pox and shingles.
So buying a lottery ticket doesn’t seem like the right move.
But I might do it anyway.
Because I really am that dumb.
Remember when I interviewed Annabel on her birthday? Well, Sam turned three this past Sunday and, as he is a second child, it took me a few days to get around to the interview. More truthfully, it took me three days to get around to it because 90% of my time with Sam is spent chasing him around at full-speed, trying to get him, and everyone around him, through his early childhood intact. Interviewing falls a bit by the wayside.
But no matter. We finally got to it and, as he is less of a lying liar who lies than his sister is, this requires significantly less editing time.
Without further ado, Sam at three.
What is your favorite color?
Pink
What is your favorite food?
Lollipops
What’s your favorite thing about school?
Telling my teacher about it. [No idea, folks. No idea.]
What makes you happiest?
Making bread.
What makes you sad?
When someone knocks over my tower.
What is your favorite thing to do with Dad?
Play with him.
What is your favorite thing to do with Mom?
Clean up the kitchen and do puzzles.
What is one new thing you’d like to try this year?
Play with a triceratops. [!!]
What would you like to be when you grow up?
A firefighter.
What’s that going to be like?
I’ll put out the fires.
Photo ruthlessly stolen from Dory, because she takes far better pictures of my children. And just about everything else.
I’m not particularly interested in flower gardening. I’ll freely cop to the fact that one of my most significant faults is my truly excessive practicality and flower gardening is just…eh. What’s the point, right? I can’t eat them. I have limited gardening time and limited gardening space and extremely limited gardening talent, so why would I waste any of that on something that is not fundamentally useful?
Then a few weeks ago I was reading a bit about gardening and the author mentioned, in an offhand manner, the way that inter-planting flowers in your vegetable garden can help bring in pollinators and increase yield. And I thought, “I’m sorry, what?” And this is such an obvious truth to gardening that I hesitate to write it here because it makes me look a bit, well, dim. But I guess I am dim because I never fully thought about before. You mean something doesn’t necessarily need to be 100% needed to be useful? Well. That’s interesting. It also explains a lot about my crappy gardens.
There I was a thing I was going to do last year that you may remember. I was going to give $50 away every month to a charitable cause just because. You may have thought I forgot about it. I didn’t, really. I spent the money for a bit, and then we had tight month for one reason or another. So I skipped that month. And then I skipped the next month, probably for the same one or another reason. And then I kept skipping months, even after cash flow improved, because I couldn’t stop overthinking where it could go, or what I should give to, and which was the best way to spend the cash. What if I gave the money to Organization A, when Person B was clearly in more distress? Or what if Person B was really not the neediest and I should really be worried about it Fundraiser C? And so on and so forth while my $50 did nothing for anyone.
But I didn’t forget about what I’d said I would do. The obligation was still there, in the back of my brain, squatting angrily next to all the other obligations I was ignoring. It takes a lot of energy to ignore all of those things, all those bills to pay, things to clean, food to cook, exercise to do, and, yes, blog posts to write. No wonder I’m so tired all the time. But when you ignore as many obligations as I do, you learn to silence the muttering from back there so that you can get on with the more important stuff, like building block towers with the children or watching Downton Abbey.
Then the other day a friend of mine posted a link to a friend of hers who was raising money to help offset costs of a stem cell transplant. And I didn’t wonder if the cause was legit, I didn’t do a background search on the recipients, I didn’t check with Michael, I didn’t wait to see if something better came along in the next week. I didn’t even stop to wonder if these folks were secretly planning a trip to Bora Bora. I just hit the “Contribute” button, typed in my payment information, and whispered, “Fly free, little fifty bucks.” Okay, I didn’t actually do that last part, but I kind of wish I did.
The obligation beast (well, that one anyway) immediately left the back of my brain to go get some lunch and that’s when I remembered: “Right. This is what I meant to do all along.” Over the last year I’ve been feeling so badly about my inability to plant a vegetable garden, the most absolutely perfect, truly productive, absolutely-above-reproach vegetable garden, and I never realized that what I actually needed to do was to plant some flowers just for the fun of it. And, shockingly, those flowers might turn out to be useful, too.
I’m going to try to do better this year, both in gardening and in being charitable. And I wish those fine folk s a lovely trip to Bora Bora.
If you are interested, that family has reached their goal but they are still accepting donations because they will have costs above and beyond their goal. Link here: http://www.indiegogo.com/flinn/
I am not lying when I tell you that our tree is…what’s the word, what’s the word…homely. It’s homely. It’s homey, too, but definitely homely.
It started out okay at the tree farm.
While I was taking this picture, everyone was yelling at me to help. I did. Eventually.
But then we decorated. And our decorations are, really, quite bad.
We’ve got more kid-made ornaments than you can shake a stick at:
I was actually trying to just take a picture of one, but they were packed in so close it was just easier, and more point-proving, to grab all three at once.
We’ve got relics of Michael’s childhood, which always seem to involve basketball and Charlie Brown characters.
This wins my vote as the most bizarre Santa I’ve ever seen.
We’ve got ornaments that make no sense to anyone not us:
No, we didn’t go to London one year. THAT would make SENSE.
And we have, as promised, the world’s most bizarre star.
Yes, that’s a picture of Annabel on her trip home from the hospital glued onto a paper star that has since been decorated with glitter paint and I could explain it but, frankly, the story is less interesting that the star.
And that’s not even going into the knitted garland, the half-broken lights, or the angel who looks like a hooker from 1864.
But Christmas trees have one redeeming quality and it’s this: if you plug in the lights, step back a bit, drink a cup of really strong eggnog, and don’t pay too much attention to any one thing, they still manage to look kind of pretty.
And, yes, blurry. That’s probably the fault of the eggnog.
P.S. You think this is bad? Check out the year we actually screwed extra branches into the tree. A live tree. I am not making that up. We did that.
Beyond the Dooryard 