Baby turkeys and tiny frogs

The days are getting longer, the afternoons are getting hotter, and the neighborhood is alive with the noise of children all day long. With the final day of school last week, our early morning bus stop ritual came to an end and, almost as if on cue, our newly minted pre-teen started sleeping in. Maybe it was the extra digit, maybe it was the loss of the rowdy bus stop crew, maybe it was the excessive consumption of sugar over the birthday weekend, or maybe it was a combination of all three, but whatever the cause, late mornings, grouchy days, and contrite evenings have been the norm all week.

That would be a terrible way to start the summer, but it's even worse as a way to finish up a school year, and though the rest of the district is no longer in their desks, we find ourselves wrapping things up a week later after taking two weeks off around the busy spring theater schedule. So through all this we've still been attending the kitchen table school, trying to tie things up in one final week. Gah.

By Thursday the lure pull of that something savage, and free, and totally summer was too strong a force to resist, and we gladly left our business to join friends, also released just that morning from the confinement of school, at the botanical garden. Not even the heavy, wet, almost chilly day could keep us down. There are inside gardens, too, with cacti and enormous, almost Jurassic fish. And when we finally did get outside, the wet weather had drawn the tiniest toads out into the open in such great numbers that the ground practically errupted in jumping toads with every step we took. Then, surrounded by lush, brilliant gardens, the kids spent an hour playing in the building scraps pile, constructing and deconstructing again and again. Refreshed by laughter and friendship, we are now ready for the upcoming week of choir camp and school planning.

Plus, baby turkeys (look hard—they are hiding in the grass behind their mama).