Wonderful, Marvelous, Extreme, Great Excitement!

I found a new flower I have never before photographed!

So I photographed it! And identified it! And I know you share my great and overwhelming joy!

Why are you looking at me like that?

 

Fire Pink (That's what it's called.)

I Will Now Subject You To My Poetry, Part Deux

My Feral Self

Standing at the farthest edge
of the farthest edge of the Wild Place,
my feral inner heart stirs.
A step inward.
Awakens.
A step.
Stretches. Purrs.
A step.
Growls,
Will you accept me?

Will you abandon the Mayapple glades,
leave far behind the Wild Stonecrop covered rockfalls,
forsake the safety of slow brooks,
sleep in nests, weave vines into your hair,
become a mythology unto yourself?

Will you embrace the faeness of you?

In Other News

An intrepid Indigo Bunting came to visit us while we were sitting on a blanket under our tree. He wasn't even phased by two little boys, ten feet away. In the boys' defense, they have learned how neurotic mommy is about birds and are capable of holding quite still given the proper motivation. This constitutes MAJOR
EXCITEMENT for me.

Kids are hilarious. I should carry a memo pad around so I can write down the things they say. Abraham's latest acquisition of the English language constitutes a native understanding of contractions. I often tell him he is such a big boy! He often tells me, "No, I am'n't!" But he is fearless. Here, he is hugging the baby alligator at the Creation Museum.

I don't know what the most prehistoric part of this picture is... that dino, or Joe's shirt.

The cuteness is just overwhelming, I know.

My neighbor's wonderful irises are a-bloomin'.

We've been out in nature, as usual. The creek is a great source of pictures, wildlife, and poison ivy rashes.

Woods Toad

Creek Turtle
Moss-some, dude!
Look! It's TreeBeard!

Tiny crop circles! ACK!

This Creek Walk has been brought to you buy the Number 4...

wild turkey eggs...

and fungi!

And finally, today's random wildflowers....
Flax, I thinkScarlet PimpernelVetchlingLadybug!
YIKES!Broadleaf Waterwort, clearly named by a hopeless romanticThe Pinkest Fleabane I've ever seenBlue Eyed Grass, yay!Blue Eyed Grass, up closeJacob's Ladder

Crap, The Mayans May Have Been Right...

But the weather sure has been pretty!

Seriously, though. I think it snowed maybe three times this winter, and then spring came... in February. No exaggeration. I saw daffodils in the last week of February. Then a bank of supercells four states tall spawned 62 tornadoes in one day. And then it snowed. On the 3rd of March. But perhaps worst of all, it never got cold enough over the winter to kill off all of the tick eggs, so we won't be able to go outside this summer without them crawling up our pant legs. And the straw that broke the camel's back... I made this really awesome flower bed under the mailbox, and the cats have been pooping in it!

Stinking Mayans.

Look! Charlie made a grass angel!

But on a more positive note, we have been receiving frequent visits from a hungry Great Blue Herron. He's too shy to let me sneak up on him very close, though.




















And now for a quick pictorial history....

We went to the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden--
Look at this weird plant life in front of these tulips.

That's a zebra. I'm pretty sure.

The above and below flowers are not the same... And I haven't seen them! They must be identified!

Brown eggs make for really awesome bold colors!
Abraham goes for quality, not quantity. Each egg he found, he immediately broke open to inspect it's contents.

Intellectual Discussions

Just so nothing gets lost in the translation: Boo-Gah= booger.

One of the benefits of homeschooling is that we don't have to get up at six a.m. and stuff everyone into clothes and shuffle them out the door. Don't get me wrong. We still try to get up by seven or else Daddy comes to grief trying to get the kids to bed at night. But we have the freedom to snuggle (wrestle) in bed a bit before we have to get dressed, fed, and educated. So we were doing this on Friday before getting started with our day when an intellectual discussion broke out between the boys.

Charlie: You're a Boo-Gah!
Abe: I not! I a Ding-Dong! You a Boo-Gah!
Charlie: No, you're a Boo-Gah!
Abe: No, I a Ding-Dong!
(Repeat for about 20 minutes.)

The best part of this was that it wasn't a fight. It was like they were truly having a debate about the relative merits of Boo-Gahism vs. Ding-Dongishness. Finally I said, "Well, I'm a Boo-Dong!"

Both: No! You're a Boo-Gah! I a Ding-Dong!

Touche

Not long ago, I made the mistake of prescribing hard candy as a hiccup cure. Charlie had hiccups and I gave him a hard candy to suck on, and it actually worked. But, alas, my children are geniuses of unspeakable evil. By the next day, they were tugging on my skirt, "Mo-om! I have the hiccups! Can I have a piece of candy?"My response quickly became, "Prove it."

So a couple of days ago, Abraham comes to me.
Abe: Mommy, I have hiccups! I need piece of candy to feel me better!
Me: No you don't.
Abe: Yes it is! I have a hiccup! It's in my nose!

I have no response for that.

Random Act of Kindness

A while back, someone did me a random act of kindness. An anonymous person in a van in front of me in the drive through line at McDonalds (Sh! Don't tell anyone I eat there occasionally or it will blow my nature-foodie persona!) paid for my meal. On purpose. I'd like to say it brightened my whole day. In a way, it did. Every time I thought of it that day it put a big goofy smile on my face. It was a reminderl that kindness exists. Yet I have to admit that I probably snarked at my kids just as much that day as any other. Probably I was just as cranky about having forgotten my list at Warlmart. Quite likely, I didn't remember to be more thankful. And evidently, I didn't get around to writing this until a long time afterward. Still, it has stuck with me, and made me question whether or not I am always kind. So how much is a random act of kindness worth? I decided to do a randomish act of kindness today. I bought some kids at the library a jug of chocolate milk. I wonder what they'll do. Will they remember that? Behave better in the library? Think about doing something nice themselves? Oh, I doubt it. Yet I don't mind spending a couple bucks to give a couple of kids a dose of calcium and vitamin D. It might have done me some unnamed good to do it. So I think a random act of kindness might actually turn out to be worth something. Not that I expect the world to change in a pay it forward-ish way. But maybe if I try to stay conscious of what kindness can do, I can be the exponent. Maybe I can increase kindness for people in a small area. Or maybe it just amounted to a free smoothie. What do you think?