Target practicing :: letter writing :: chess-ing :: biscuit making :: googling :: walkie-talking :: star-gazing :: screenplay writing :: building :: drawing :: card playing :: dueling :: inventing :: book-looking :: thinking
Some of the ‘other’ ways of learning, here, lately
When you find yourself face-to-face with a big thing,
Look it square in the nose, and grin!
Have a lovely weekend, friends!
Linking with Amanda today. Savoring the (many) musical moments that happen around here these days! Sweet Home Alabama, anyone?
Have a lovely weekend, friends!
There it was alongside the trail, a mounding bramble sprawled, weighty with blackened berries. We stopped. And picked until fingertips were stained red and water bottles were poured out, then filled up with whole berry juice. We ate just as many, berries gushing as each 'pillow' popped liquid sweet, warmed by the California sun.
What do you do when heaped under covers with two boys on a dark and snowy January night?
You recall that surprise meeting with a wild blackberry bush on that last summer's day. It's easy to remember as the lamplight shines on the vegetables, herbs, fruit trees, and, yes, berry bushes in the pages of the gardening book that you pour over together. The talk is of soil and worms, good bugs vs. bad bugs, corn ears and potato eyes. You grin that the guys are just as interested in this growing as you are. "What's a greenhouse and which composter is your favorite?" they ask. "Are tomatoes a fruit or a vegetable?" "Oh, look at that garden floor plan!" You all agree that it would be wonderful to have a garden 'floor plan' just like that one day.
And on it goes until you just can't keep the eyelids open any longer.
Then, through the dim, the boy known as The Fruit Bat says, "Mama? Do you think we could grow some blackberry bushes?"
* * *
I've got some gardening titles squirrelled away on my wish list now, because growing blackberries in Wyoming? We may need some help with that one :
Do you have any well-loved gardening books that you'd like to share? Leave a comment and let us know!
I've never been much of a journalist, as in filling pages in a blank book every night before switching the bed lamp off, though I have given it a good shot several times earlier on. The most memorable one was when, at age twelve, I found a locking diary in my Christmas stocking. Beginning with the new year and crisp, white pages edged in gold, I wrote every day for a couple months. My favorite entry from that first diary? On January 3rd I wrote, "Boy, this year is going by fast!"
I grin now, at the memory.
Because years and life and blank books later, I know better who I am. I know that pouring the day out onto pages in a book every night isn't me. And, thank goodness it isn't, because I personally can't think of much else that sounds as flat as that (preparing taxes, maybe?).
But.
I have many books with lined pages on the shelf, some are filled, others are waiting in queue. What's in them you say?
Ideas.
The creative ideas that constantly fly around in my head have to end up somewhere, so they're put down in pages. I have sketches and notes from baby showers that I hosted 10 years ago; there are sewing patterns, gift lists, recipes, holiday plans, gardening ideas, and the list goes on. I give myself no rules for keeping these books, save for a knowing that 'this book (or this section of the book) is for these ideas; that one is for those' (entertaining; interior design, decor & floorplans, sewing, homeschool, gardening, etc.). Inside, they are pretty close to a free-for-all of pencil scrawl.
I grin now, at the thought of all those journals. I grin at the knowing.
This is my way.
P.S. Now, go read what kind of journal Joan has kept for 25 years! Then, read Amanda's beautiful account of finding, and resting in, her way.
It's Friday.
That means that, for one hour and thirty minutes, everything will stop, and I will draw.
I will draw.
Last week I fell in love with quill pen and ink, and simply couldn't keep quiet about it.
As in squealing. And gushing. Right there in class.
Right.
So, there was that, and there was O Come, O Come Emmanuel, too, that hummed out of my voice box ad nauseum around and between all the squealing and gushing and drawing. I'm sure my art instructor and fellow students wished I could, sort of, keep. it. down. and/or pick another song already, or something (especially the fellow art student who happens to be my tweenage son, poor boy).
I did try Jingle Bells.
It was just a little harder to draw to, somehow.
I don't know.
Have a lovely Friday + weekend, friends! What's in your plans?
Because of a boy. And eight years. And music.
The music that came with him, that comes from him, that is him.
Now, on his very own real guitar.
The one he'd seen and played in an antique shop three months ago. The one with the amazing tone that reached out, grabbed his heart and wouldn't let go.
That one.
Because of friends, because of family, because of unexpected turns of events, it came to him.
That very one.
We hear them playing now, often, like soul mates who finally met.
That boy and his guitar.
When this shot came through my phone, I smiled. And I remembered when he was four, and how he desperately wanted to jump off the shed roof. He thought he could fly, so why not? (You can do just about anything when you're four and wearing a cape.)
Now look. There he is, flying.
For real.
