Poetry Friday: Poems for late December

An old favorite, and something new, at least to the blog.

I Heard a Bird Sing
by Oliver Herford (1863-1935)

I heard a bird sing
In the dark of December
A magical thing
And sweet to remember:

"We are nearer to Spring
Than we were in September,"
I heard a bird sing
In the dark of December.


Time, You Old Gypsy Man
by Ralph Hodgson (1871-1962)

Time, you old gypsy man,
Will you not stay,
Put up your caravan
Just for one day?

All things I'll give you
Will you be my guest:
Bells for your jennet
Of silver the best;
Goldsmiths shall beat you
A great golden ring;
Peacocks shall bow to you;
Little boys sing.
Oh, and sweet girls will
Festoon you with may.
Time, you old gypsy,
Why hasten away?

Last week in Babylon,
Last night in Rome,
Morning, and in the crush
Under Paul's dome;
Under Paul's dial
You tighten your rein --
Only a moment,
And off once again;
Off to some city
Now blind in the womb,
Off to another
Ere that's in the tomb.

Time, you old gypsy man,
Will you not stay,
Put up your caravan
Just for one day?

* * *

The last Poetry Friday roundup for 2007, and some Ogden Nash, can be found over at MsMac's Check It Out.

With get well wishes for MsMac, and wishes for a happy and healthy New Year to all, from Farm School!

Poetry Friday: the week that was

Harvest started this week with swathing (cutting the crops -- the row they fall in is called a swath), and the first killing frost arrived Wednesday night. The second one, last night, and the furnace kicked in for good measure. Goodbye tomatoes, cosmos, and zinnias, and hello, happy pantry and busy days. Or busy pantry and happy days. My week in numbers:

Poem for Poetry Friday: one, and it's a short (anonymous) one:

There was once a young lady of Ryde
Who ate a green apple and died;
The apple fermented
Inside the lamented,
And made cider inside her her inside.

Oh heck, make it two:

A maiden caught stealing a dahlia,
Said, "Oh, you shan't tell on me, shahlia?"
But the florist was hot,
And he said, "Like as not
They'll send you to jail, you bad gahlia."

HipWriterMama is hosting today's Poetry Friday round-up. Thanks, HWM!

The rest of my week in numbers:

Apples and crab apples picked in the past week: 15 boxes

Cider we pressed ourselves the other night on the deck: 16 four-liter pails, stored away in the deep-freeze

Evans cherries picked Wednesday night before the killing frost: three four-liter pails. Today I'll make cherry preserves, to use later on as pie filling or sauce for ice cream or cheesecake.

Vases full of cut flowers from the garden while I can still enjoy them: eight

Apple pies baked: two

Roasts cooked: three (two chickens, and one enormous pork roast, served with homemade apple sauce)

Boxes of tomatoes in my kitchen: three, one with green tomatoes, one with red ones, and one half-and-half, on the way to red, one last big box picked before the first frost.

Remaining cucumbers and zucchini left on the vines, discovered before the frost: one each.

Pumpkins we are trying to keep warm and growing: three

Number of meals featuring freshly picked or somehow preserved apples and/or tomatoes and/or berries: all of 'em

Enormous "Farmer Boy"-style meals prepared to feed the swathing crew, around the kitchen table and hauled to the field to be eaten as a tailgate supper: three

Evening meetings out of the house: two, last night and tonight.

"Nice Matters" award from Frankie at Kitchen-Table Learners: one, which made my week. Thanks, dear. It's always nice to be nice, especially when people in town seem to be giving you sidelong glances because your fingernails look black (but are really stained from chokecherry juice) and your palms are green and smell funny (from picking tomatoes), no matter how hard you scrubbed with the nail brush and half a cut lemon.

Big sky country

On of the only benefits of the sun setting earlier is that I'm still up and about with the camera. I took this the other night, while Tom and the boys were hauling bales, and Laura outside in the garden with me.

















The tree tops at the bottom are our "Hundred Acre Wood", really more like 30-40 acres, north and west of the house, filled with deer, woodpeckers, and, in the spring, morel mushrooms.

Cool runnings

Though we don't have any sledding hills near the house, I'm told by those in the know that our snow-filled but otherwise empty silage pit at the corrals makes a dandy sledding hill and bobsled run. It also for some reason is amazingly effective at making the kids whiz through chores faster than usual. Santa has received much praise for his timely gift this snowy Christmas.

And the experiment for the day, the kids' idea, is seeing if they can sled the mile and a half home. Davy sounded rather doubtful, but the other two persuaded him to change his mind by offering to pull him home on the sled if he can't make it. And just in case they find the chest-deep stuff that almost defeated Tom the other week and none of them can make it, I promised to go looking for them in the next hour or so if they don't make it back before then.

Just spotted from the window: my three Olympians high-stepping through the high snow. Time to make hot chocolate, and I think they deserve some candy cane swizzle sticks.

Solstice

Our resident snowy owl flew overhead this morning not once but twice as we did chores, a sign, the kid and I thought, of the day's importance. We celebrated by helping pack food hampers and toy bags at the local Santa's Anonymous effort, and now the kids are stringing up some extra outdoor lights they found in one of our outbuildings. If it doesn't move, it has lights on it now.

Winter weather has been here for a couple of months already regardless of what the calendar says, but today is special because the daylight hours begin to lengthen, an event worthy of great merrymaking and celebration for those of us northerly types who spend a fair amount of time outdoors. Today, for example, the sun rose just before 9 am and set just after 4 pm.

I like this time of the season, when winter isn't a new flirtation, thrilling and exciting, but an old steady, cozy and comfortable. I'm used to putting on the extra layers, to driving on the ice and snow, and that first day of the first as unpleasant as it is unexpected chill is just a a memory. And winters with snow, unlike last winter when the first snow came just before spring, are an extra delight; I was reminded today by a radio commentator that this time last Christmas the temperature was around 15C/60F, thoroughly unChristmassy.

I posted this last year for the shortest day, and I'm posting it again, because the lyrics remains my favorite bit of solstice song and poetry:

Ring Out, Solstice Bells
by Jethro Tull

Now is the solstice of the year,
winter is the glad song that you hear.
Seven maids move in seven time.
Have the lads up ready in a line.

Ring out these bells.
Ring out, ring solstice bells.
Ring solstice bells.

Join together beneath the mistletoe.
by the holy oak whereon it grows.
Seven druids dance in seven time.
Sing the song the bells call, loudly chiming.

Ring out these bells.
Ring out, ring solstice bells.
Ring solstice bells.

Praise be to the distant sister sun,
joyful as the silver planets run.
Seven maids move in seven time.
Sing the song the bells call, loudly chiming.
Ring out those bells.
Ring out, ring solstice bells.
Ring solstice bells.
Ring on, ring out.
Ring on, ring out.

Added later: Somehow forgot to mention that another one of our traditions on the first winter night is to read Happy Winter, written and illustrated by Karen Gundersheimer, which really, really should not be out of print (and would you believe our library discarded its copy several years ago, though their loss is our gain). A sweet winter story accompanied by charming illustrations and a crackerjack chocolate cake recipe (favored by Laurie Colwin, blessedly still in print, no less). And it closes with Mama's winter lullaby:

Hush and quiet, close your eyes,
The moon's a night-light for the sky,
Where sprinkled stars are twingling high
And far below, the deep drifts lie
'Til Northwind spins and flurries fly.
A snowy blanket's tucked in tight
And so are you, and now good night.
A happy winter day is done.
Now close your eyes and dreams will come.

Christmas on Huckleberry Mountain

Roger Sutton, editor in chief of The Horn Book (HB), offers his blog readers a very fair, well-reasoned review by Melinda Cordell, of the new Charlotte's Web movie, over at the HB website.

While at the website, I happened to notice on the sidebar a link to a special Holiday Posting of Lois Lenski's memories, entitled "Christmas at Huckleberry Mountain Library", published by The Horn Book in 1946, the year Miss Lenski won the Newbery for Strawberry Girl:

Huckleberry mountain library — the only rural library in Henderson County, North Carolina — is open for two hours every other Sunday afternoon to the mountain children, and was to be open on December 23. Packages of books from three of my publishers arrived on the 22nd, just in time for library day.

The library is a small log building, with a rock chimney at one end, sitting at the foot of the mountain, shaded by long-leafed pines. There had been three deep snows — more than this locality experiences in an entire winter — so the low-hung branches of the pine trees and the roof were white and glowing in the bright winter sun.

The children always come early, the young librarian, an educated mountain girl, said. The hours are from two to four, but often they are there by one-thirty. She has to open the door as soon as she gets there and keep it open, even at the risk of being very cold because the open door is a sign of welcome. If the children see the door closed, they may turn around and go home!

Through the weekdays, the building is unheated. So we went over early, to put up some greens and a little Christmas tree, and to get a fire started. Some young pine trees had been cleared out of the woods near by, and these Stephen chopped up. We had brought some dry wood, kindling and newspapers with us. The fireplace was filled with snow, and the chimney was very cold, so in spite of all our efforts, we never did get what you would call “a roaring fire” or any noticeable amount of heat in the room.

Read the rest here. A warm holiday thank you to the folks at The Horn Book for rekindling and sharing the memories.

Digging out

We're in the midst of another snow storm, and we'd be in big trouble if it were any colder; luckily, the temperatures are right below freezing. It started snowing again yesterday, and the wind started yesterday evening, so by 3 pm Laura's voice teacher reluctantly decided to cancel the recital. They'll try again next month. Overnight the snow continued and the winds picked up, so this morning we treated to even higher and more amazing drifts than before. Snow and winds still falling and blowing, respectively, with whiteout conditions. Tom and the kids set out for the corrals with the pickup truck after breakfast to do chores and as expected couldn't go all the way with the truck. They set out on foot, but the drifts are up to Tom's chest so it was quite the quarter-mile walk. Davy had the easiest time, since he's the only one light enough to be able to walk on top of the drifts.

I stayed home, futilely shoveling in front of the house and probably equally futilely making meatballs for tomorrow's 4H Christmas party and potluck dinner, which will probably be canceled (but then I'll have some tasty last-minute meals in the freezer), and listening to An Oscar Peterson Christmas.

***

Digging out after a three-day snowstorm about 1913: "Standing on the roof of the James Ward home, Milton, North Dakota, Mrs. James Ward, Nellie Ward, James Ward, Hugh Ward"; photograph by John McCarthy from The Library of Congress

Poetry Friday: A magical thing and sweet to remember

I Heard a Bird Sing
by Oliver Herford (1863-1935)

I heard a bird sing
In the dark of December
A magical thing
And sweet to remember:

"We are nearer to Spring
Than we were in September,"
I heard a bird sing
In the dark of December.

Unplanned blog holiday

Last Wednesday thanks to small and very remorseful child who shall remain nameless, my laptop developed water on the brain....

Can get online and fetch email but keyboard is kaput so can only cut and paste like ransom note. veryveryvery tedious. Can't be fixed, need new computer, but that means a trip to big city so who knows when. So haiku and fibs and archy-the-cockroach-lowercase and Tarzan-speak order of the day. So bye for now ;-)

veryveryvery cold snowy and windy since last Weds too, near minus forty, icy roads, travel even to town dangerous. ah, home.

The gods are laughing

So much for my plans for the next few days.

Just got back from chores to find a message on the answering machine from the electric company advising us of a "planned power outage" tomorrow and Thursday, from 9 am to noon and from 1-4 pm both days.

Well.

No power means no water, no light, no heat (did I mention those cold daytime temperatures coming?), and none of the niceties like CBC radio or that nice new KitchenAid mixer. Of course, this isn't a problem for many of our neighbors, most of whom spend the day in town and none of whom homeschool. All I have to say is thank goodness for my vintage O'Keefe & Merritt gas stove. I think I'll mix up the batter for Davy's cake first thing tomorrow morning, and maybe some cookie dough, and we can do the baking throughout the day to keep warm. If it snows, so much the better, because we can spend most of the day outside playing, and we can at least have hot chocolate, cookies, and oranges.

Right at the rink

I mentioned yesterday that the kids went skating for the first time on the pond in the pasture behind the house. It's a "new" pond for us, one that had been dry for years and years until this year's spring rains, and it's big enough for hockey games and, more importantly, close by the house and easy for the kids to get to on their own several times a day. Our other "rink" is the dugout about a mile north of the house, which pretty much requires Tom or me to go with the kids. So everyone is thrilled with the new rink, the kids because they can go skating often, and me because I can go skating once a day and the rest of the time keep an eye on them from the house. We'll have to get some small square straw bales out there for benches, but in the meantime Davy pulls the wagon along, for sitting on while they pull on their skates.

While Laura and Daniel were at art lessons yesterday, Davy and I ran a few errands that turned out to be skating-related. We picked up some more Fry's Cocoa and mini marshmallows for hot chocolate. Then, while dropping off yet another box of outgrown toys and clothing at the Goodwill shop, Davy found a pair of skates for himself (for all of $3.50, and in good shape, too). And at the hardware store, I decided to spring for three blaze orange safety vests for the kids to wear over their parkas and two orange watchcaps complete with deer patches on the front (Daniel is using my father's orange Cabela's cap with earflaps, so he didn't need a watchcap). The thing is, while I bought these items for the kids to wear while hunting with Tom in the early mornings -- and yes, they all went out again today -- they are dandy for skating. Or rather, for keeping an eye on skaters; if I can see three little orange heads bobbing around like pumpkins, I know that all is right at the rink.

Poetry Friday: Sharp November frost edition

It must be November...

because I have a frozen moose hide in the back of my truck (courtesy of my brother-in-law, who bagged his antlerless moose on the first day of hunting season, Wednesday, but was going to leave the hide behind until Tom reached him and begged him to pick it up); because my kids were up at 6 am this morning while the stars were still twinkling overhead to accompany Tom on his first day hunting (which ended up as just a walk in the woods); and because, as the school bus went by 30 minutes ago, my three were already on the pond behind the house, skating in the c0ld, swirling snow, fog, and blustery wind. From the back window in the boys' bedroom, I can just make out a dog walking carefully on the ice, and a small orange cap going around and around in circles.

Rhyme of November Stars
by Sara Teasdale

The noiseless marching of the stars
Sweeps above me all night long;
Up the skies, over the skies
Passes the uncounted throng,
Without haste, without rest,
From the east to the west:
Vega, Deneb, white Altair
Shine like crystals in the air,
and the lonely Fomalhaut
In the dark south, paces low.
Now the timid Pleiades
Leave the shelter of the trees,
While toward the north, mounting high,
Gold Capella, like a queen,
Watches over her demesne
Stretching toward the kingly one,
Dusky, dark Aldebaran.
Betelgeuse and Rigel burn
In their wide wheel, slow to turn,
And in the sharp November frost
Bright Sirius, with his blue light
Completes the loveliness of night.

***

Head over to Kelly's at Big A little a for the day's Poetry Friday round-up, not to mention the Cat Edition of PF. Thanks, Kelly!

Poetry Friday: Vegetables

This is the poem Davy is memorizing right now, and might recite at the homeschool declamation day later this month. I'll post Laura's and Daniel's selections on other Fridays.

The kids and I dug up our potatoes, all 100+ hills, on Wednesday; white ones, red ones, and a special pink-skinned Ukrainian variety for which my mother-in-law had seed potatoes. Earlier in the week, there was a frost one night cool enough to wilt all of the remaining tomatoes and tomato plants, so all that's left in the garden are some carrots and a few beets. The petunias and gazanias in the container boxes are still hanging on, though.

A happy Thanksgiving to all the Canadians!

Vegetables
by Eleanor Farjeon (1881-1965)

The country vegetables scorn
To lie about in shops,
They stand upright as they were born
In neatly-patterned crops;

And when you want your dinner you
Don't buy it from a shelf,
You find a lettuce fresh with dew
And pull it for yourself;

You pick an apronful of peas
And shell them on the spot.
You cut a cabbage, if you please,
To pop into the pot.

The folk who their potatoes buy
From sacks before they sup,
Miss half of the potato's joy,
And that's to dig it up.

************

The Poetry Friday round-up is over at Kelly's Big A little a this week. Thanks, Kelly, and happy belated Friday to you, too!

And I don't think Karen at lightingthefire's perfect autumn quote and Blade of Grass poem made it into the official list so I'm adding them here.

The Magnifying Glass
by Walter de la Mare

With this round glass
I can make Magic talk --
A myriad shells show
In a scrap of chalk;

Of but an inch of moss
A forest -- flowers and trees;
A drop of water
Like hive of bees.

I lie in wait and watch
How the deft spider jets
The woven web-silk
From his spinnerets;

The tigerish claws he has!
And oh! the silly flies
The stumble into his net --
With all those eyes!

Not even the tiniest thing
But this my glass
Will make more marvellous
And itself surpass.

Yes, and with lenses like it,
Eyeing the moon,
'Twould seem you'd walk there
In an afternoon!

*******

Liz at A Chair, A Fireplace and A Tea Cozy has the week's Poetry Friday round-up, including news about the naming of Jack Prelutsky as the new Children's Poet Laureate, a choice I just can't get too worked up about...

*******

We've been very busy this past month, a different kind of busy than the usual farm and garden busy that kept us so busy at home over the summer. This busy needs us in town more often and has us relying on meetings and other people. I don't dislike it, but it takes some getting used to. Plus the kids are on a roll with school, and Davy has cracked the reading code, which is thrilling. It's been a round of music and art lessons resumed (new voice lessons for Laura, adding Daniel to art), the semiannual homeschool facilitator meeting to check our progress ("There's learning going on in this house!" he smiled at me), the start-up of homeschool gym days and homeschool support group meetings, and an organizational meeting for a new 4H baking club, so it looks as if Laura might be in two 4H clubs (the other meeting for the beef club is next week). And the calendar for the rest of the year is starting to fill up -- Christmas music recitals, the possibility of a Halloween party at a friend's house instead of the usual trick-or-treating, homeschool poetry recital, and more. Oh, and Canadian Thanksgiving is much too close (next weekend). I'll try to get back here with some more posts, updates, and links, in which I'm sorely behind...

Poetry Friday: Remembering Eiluned Lewis

We Who Were Born
by Eiluned Lewis (1900-1979)

We who were born
In country places
Far from cities
And shifting faces,
We have a birthright
No man can sell,
And a secret joy
No man can tell.

For we are kindred
To lordly things:

The wild duck's flight
And the white owl's wings,
The pike and the salmon,
The bull and the horse,
The curlew's cry
And the smell of gorse.

Pride of trees,
Swiftness of streams,
Magic of frost
Have shaped our dreams.
No baser vision
Their spirit fills
Who walk by right
On the naked hills.


Another treat from Favorite Poems Old and New, selected by Helen Ferris and illustrated by Leonard Weisgard.

Eiluned Lewis was a Welsh poet, novelist, and longtime correspondent to Country Life magazine, where she contributed the "Countrywoman's Notes" column. In her lifetime she was likened to Jane Austen, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Kenneth Grahame, and Arthur Ransome. Miss Lewis's sister Medina once observed, "Eiluned's childhood days cast a spell on her from which she never really awoke."

Her work Dew on the Grass, which originally came out in 1934, is scheduled to be republished later this fall, at least in the UK and Canada.

****

Kelly at Big A little a has the day's round-up along with a poem, "A Little Bird" by A.S. Pushkin. Thanks, Kelly!

Deadline coming up for the Early Autumn Field Day

A reminder from Dawn at By Sun and Candlelight that the deadline for the Early Autumn Field Day is at the end of the day next Monday, September 25th. The Field Day will go up on Wednesday, the 27th. For all the details, read Dawn's latest post.

The weather is just fallish enough -- considerably cooler than the beginning of the month, with a fair amount of rainy days since last week, and gazillions of geese gathering together -- that I might actually get something written for this one!

Poetry Friday I: My Prairies

My Prairies
by Hamlin Garland (1860-1940)

I love my prairies, they are mine
From zenith to horizon line,
Clipping a world of sky and sod
Like the bended arm and wrist of God.

I love their grasses. The skies
Are larger, and my restless eyes
Fasten on more of earth and air
Than seashore furnishes anywhere.

I love the hazel thickets; and the breeze,
The never resting prairie winds. The trees
That stand like spear points high
Against the dark blue sky

Are wonderful to me. I love the gold
Of newly shaven stubble, rolled
A royal carpet toward the sun, fit to be
The pathway of a deity.

I love the life of pasture lands; the songs of birds
Are not more thrilling to me than the herd's
Mad bellowing or the shadow stride
Of mounted herdsmen at my side.

I love my prairies, they are mine
From high sun to horizon line.
The mountains and the cold gray sea
Are not for me, are not for me.

*****

For more on Hamlin Garland, who won the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 1921 for Daughter of the Middle Border, visit the Hamlin Garland Society website, which includes a bibliography listing other poetry and books by Garland available online and a good list of resources.

*****

Hop over to Kelly at Big A little a for the day's round-up, as well as "an excerpt, a review, and a big, big recommendation." Sounds good to me!

Poetry Friday: Harvest edition

For Tom, our captain during the swinging change of days

Father
by Frances Frost (1905-1959)

My father's face is brown with sun,
His body is tall and limber.
His hands are gentle with beast or child
And strong as hardwood timber.

My father's eyes are the colors of the sky,
Clear blue or gray as rain:
They change with the swinging change of days
While he watches the weather vane.

That galleon, golden upon our barn,
Veers with the world's four winds.
To fill our barley bins,

To stack our wood and pile our mows
With redtop and sweet tossed clover.
He captains our farm that rides the winds,
A keen-eyed brown earth-lover.

***

Frances Frost was the mother of poet Paul Blackburn (1926-1971)

Combine time

It's combine time now. [Updated to add: When I first posted this earlier in the evening, I was just recovering from the suppertime whirlwind that was my kitchen, complete with grain moisture reader on the kitchen table, and the rosy moon wasn't up yet. Then I realized, after we've been gazing at it all week that it's finally the full, Harvest Moon. Not just great timing, but a great gift of extra light when the men are out working in the fields till midnight. Shine on, indeed.]

Tom arrived home just before eight and was grabbing a quick supper when his friend arrived and it was time to start combining the wheat. With good luck (no breakdowns and no rain -- only the latter is a virtual given), they may be done by Saturday. Tom will run the grain truck back and forth from the combine in the field to the grainaries, and his friend will run the combine. The kids were getting ready for bed, Laura already in her nightgown, when our friend arrived, but they switched gears very quickly. "Please, please can we go?" Harvesting/
combining for the junior set around here is like Christmas -- it comes only once a year and doesn't last nearly long enough.

And like Christmas, I have to plan special meals. These have to be ample, tasty, and portable. So far I think it's chili and plum tart for tomorrow, pork roast and peach pie for Saturday.

Since Saturday

Finally made it to Staples on Saturday for our fun school supplies, mostly for Davy, who is overjoyed about starting first grade: oversize (5"x8") index cards with primary ruling for beginning writers; Laurentien's new best quality "Studio" colored pencils (not as pricey as Prismacolor Juniors which are more than Davy needs right now, but better than the usual store brand -- even he noticed a difference, and Laura our colored pencil expert said they compare favorably to the Prismacolors); Crayola IQ Sketching markers; oversize index tabs long enough to peek out beyond the plastic page protectors; yet another package of aforementioned page protectors; new binders for Davy (orange, because purple and green have already been claimed); stickers for everyone (Hot Wheels x 2, and farm animals x 1); a new Mead "Upper Class" student planner for me (where I can write each day what they actually did for the day rather than what I planned for them to do); the Staples "house version" of the Desk Buddy (Desk Jockey? Desk Buddy?) with 10 slots (three of each -- how did they know I had three kids? Plus the one extra in the middle for my own stuff) that will make it easy for us to keep pencils, rulers, erasers, etc. on the table and corralled while the kids do their seatwork; and an impulse buy from the Teacher's Aisle, a $10 Multiplication Songs CD.

******

The leaves and the sun, sadly up later and down earlier, not to mention the geese and ducks gathering together in droves, are all saying "autumn", but the air temperature, still near 90, is saying "summer". Rather a nice if unusual combination for the prairies, all in all. No rain either, good for harvesting and for leaving sneakers on the deck, but the trees are starting to get pretty thirsty again.

Tom decided to celebrate Labor Day and the good weather by inviting some family and friends to say goodbye to our incubator-hatched wild ducks -- once and for all identified as blue-winged teals. After chores on Monday morning, he and I boxed them up, and then we all drove over to our pond, where we released what I still think of as my eight babies. I suppose I expected them to waddle out of the tipped over cardboard toward the water, but as soon as the lid was lifted, all of them took flight and circled around the dugout, practicing their takeoffs and landings. The kids gasped and giggled and said their goodbyes. For the past few mornings, the kids and I have taken part of a loaf of bread to feed our former babies, and while we can't tell which ones of all the ducks swimming around are "ours", they all seem to be more than happy with the treat. We wish them goodbye and goodspeed, literally and figuratively, in evading the arriving hunters and heading south.

We ended the day rather differently, by the side of the road 10 miles north of home, the kids and I standing by in the dark with pails of water, a shovel, and a fire extinguisher while Tom welded one of the bearings that had piled up (this is apparently a technical term) in the swather, the part on the tractor that cuts the grain stalks and lays it in a tidy, erm, swath. All the fire precautions, including moving the tractor out to the side of the road from the field, were to prevent a stray spark from the welder causing a fire in the ripe grain, which is after all just dry grass. Think tinder. Tom finally got everything fixed by 9:30, and if the kids hadn't needed showers before we left the house, they certainly needed them on arriving home. So much for my grand plans of an early bedtime before our first day of school.

******

All the more reason, along with our early harvest, to start yesterday's back to school efforts gently, and with lots of coffee. The day began with the "goodie bags" I started a couple of years ago, when I realized that I didn't really want to squirrel away the really fun books, art supplies, and CDs I had found over the summer: the American Girl Kaya story collection and the AG school planner for Laura, a few Jim Weiss CDs, some DVDs, a Timex learner's watch with the dinosaur strap for Davy, a couple of Robert McCloskey books for Daniel, a couple of small Lego kits for the boys. The kids each did one lesson of Singapore math and some penmanship, we looked after the animals, then headed to town after lunch for the first music lessons with new teachers, piano for Laura and Daniel and voice for Laura. Both of the teachers seem personable and pleasant, and I needed to make some changes to keep Laura interested and inspired in lessons.

Today we did some more math, penmanship, and managed to read aloud some of the goodie bag books (George Shrinks, Lentil) before Tom spirited the kids away to work on the new-to-us grainaries at the corrals. This morning Daniel asked for a spelling test, so we may start spelling tomorrow, then grammar and history in next week, and science the week after that.

****

I'm predicting a pretty slow day tomorrow too. Tom didn't get in with the kids until almost eight, and after a quick dinner and necessary baths, they're all unwinding by watching the "Bridges" volume from the goodie bag DVD, "Building Big" with David Macaulay (did you know that there's an activity/experiment with the kids from "Zoom" at the end of "Bridges"? I didn't). Or I could just consider that the science lesson for the day and go ahead and check it off my list, knowing full well the kids will attempt the activity on their own tomorrow...