Monday—Ziggurat meets Mayan temple

Over the weekend Calvin attended a program at the library about healthy eating and living. It was presented by UofM's Natural History Museum, but had been poorly advertised and only one other kid showed up. The truth is, if we hadn't already been at the library for the book sale, we wouldn't have known about it either. As it turned out, Calvin had a great time at the program while I worked the book sale, and he came home with four different starter plants that he planted himself.

So Monday started with a little watering.

In addition to chocolate cherry tomatoes, ladybug tomatoes, green beans, and carrots, Calvin came home with a stuffed red blood cell that he won in a game of Bingo. He named him Mr. Red Blood Cell, of course. I had no idea such a toy existed, but apparently there is a whole line of these things, from brain cells to the black plague, so after breakfast this morning we did a little jogging around the Giant Microbes site (just watch out for the venereals).

Then a little Lego play with Mr. Red Blood Cell and the Ziggurat he and his dad built yesterday.

Ziggurat, meet Mayan temple.

Mayan temple, meet Ziggurat.

There was some nomadic hunter gatherer play, obviously set in the time before farming but after domestication of wild animals. Either that or this nomadic hunter is in serious danger.

Calvin did some cut paper art, and we read all our library books over again—lots of great story books about the evolution of farming, technology, and eventually civilizations. While I was on the treadmill he read The Enormous Egg, and while I was showering he watched a few Schoolhouse Rock videos.

I had a dentist appointment this afternoon (possibly my least favorite thing) while Calvin got some Gram and Grampa time. Then the store, a walk with Iris, tea with tangrams.

And a piano lesson for everyone.

Oh no! The tomatoes!

There is an exuberant energy that comes with learning something new. Upon grasping a grand new concept or coming to the end of a good book sometimes I just want to get up and run around the house to burn off the sudden vibrations running through my whole body. I see this in Calvin, too, but often when he's that excited all it does is make me feel tired. I must be getting old.

The sudden dances of joy today were frequent and bright. For starters, any science activity that involves water and dye is pretty massively exciting. And there was an Amazon delivery today. That's like Christmas come early! A science non-curriculum book for me, Prehistoric coloring books for Calvin, and a new game for us all. We try to pick up new games every so often and the new addition today was Shut the Box, something that we're addicted to already. Who said math had to be boring.

Math-U-See is going well for us still, although I'm frustrated that they provide no extra practice sheets. I've been searching out some pretty good free sites for printing practice pages, mostly clocks from this site, and dinosaur addition color by number pages from Enchanted Learning. If only I could find the Burgess Shale color by addition page I'd be all set.

And a walk outside later in the day. Actually we've been tied up in the house quite a bit the past two days with the sniffles. We even missed this afternoon's homeschool gathering at the park in order to get some extra rest. We have tickets to tomorrow's game and I want us all to be well enough to go and enjoy it. But with so few outside days remaining we had to get out for at least a little of this one, which foiled this little bugger's plan of eating our tomato plants right down to the ground. He was sleeping so we snipped off the branch he was on and dropped him in a box to observe for a few hours before taking him over to the field and dropping him off. I just couldn't kill him, but I really hope he doesn't find his way back.

Butterflies in the garden

Jon says "there's a beautiful butterfly. What's that plant they like so much?"

I say "It's a butterfly bush."

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail

"I know it has butterflies on it, what kind of plant is it?"

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail

"It's a butterfly bush."

Giant swallowtail

"There's no need to get snippy."

Giant swallowtail

It's a butterfly bush.

Broccoli and cauliflower

I don't trust the weather forecast anymore. I feel that in previous years it was more reliable than it has been this year, but in May they kept promised respites from rain, and now that July has arrived (and even in June) they keep promising rain that fails to materialize. Thanks to sprinklers, and copious amounts of time spent positioning hoses and timing waterings, our gardens are looking pretty spry, but corporate lawns along the outer urban road lines are looking pretty dead these days. In fact, it looks a lot like August around here.

And rain or no, we took the opportunity of previously promised rain to hide indoors from the heat (making little sense since don't use air conditioning) to play games and read books.

It was hot.

Speaking of gardens, Calvin and I learned something today. A month ago we planted our square foot garden plots with tomatoes, chart, kohlrabi, beans, egg plant, peppers, onions, and cauliflower and broccoli. Since then we've harvested the chard several times, and waited patiently for the rest of the plants to grow and mature to the harvesting point. I've never grown broccoli or cauliflower before, but I know what it looks like in the store and the little heads of white and green that sprouted weeks ago were like miniatures of the real thing, so we thought the thing to do was to let them grow. Since then we've watched them grow, and grow, and grow, and for some reason it wasn't until today, as I harvesting chard for dinner yet again, that I decided that, from their current state, they could never grow the heads we are so used to seeing at the market. By this time they were tall and gangly...and flowering. For shame. It took only a very brief internet search to realize where I'd gone wrong—harvest the baby broccoli head and next week you'll get more of them, eventually leading to a full, market worthy, head of broccoli. No one told me.

I wonder how many things in life we fail to research and thus let pass us by. I remember reading once that intelligence isn't so much how much or what you do know as the state of recognizing how much you don't know. Calvin laughed with me at over error, and I cursed myself for not taking the time to look into the art of growing cruciferous vegetables. And because I couldn't let the flowers go to waste, and because they had a sort of rustic charm to them, we made bouquets of cauliflower and broccoli flowers and took one to my mother when we stopped by to share dinner. I'm not sure she was amused, but any gift from a grandson is enviable.

milkweed

We came home from the western side of the state to a garden nearly in full bloom. It can't be in full full bloom because we've carefully planted so as to have blooms throughout the growing months of the year, but the summer blooms are now out in full force. Bee balm, yarrow, cone flowers, daisies, in pink, red, yellow, white...even the milkweed finally bloomed this year. I still remember, the first summer we spent in the house, sending Jon and my dad into the field behind us to dig up a milkweed or two before the mowers came and plowed them down. Digging up wild flowers is against the law in Michigan, but they were about the mow them over, so I think nobody probably noticed. Digging up milkweed is not as easy as one would think. This one had a rather developed root system, a huge cluster of tubers, that required hacking much more than digging. I nursed the three pieces in buckets of water to encourage them to send out new roots, and I carefully planted the two that survived. I was ecstatic when they grew the following year, and again the year after, but this is the year they've finally decided to bloom. Look how happy I am over a weed.

milkweed

Pink yarrow

red yarrrow

true phlox, and a coneflower in the background

We were gone for just two nights, but getting back to our routine is going to take at least that long, or maybe we just don't have a summer "routine" to return to. The library was closed on Monday so we sorted today instead. Piano, journaling, games, and the garden all called to us. And some quiet time laying on the floor with books during the hottest part of the day, watching birds visit the feeders and letting what breeze there was wash over us. We're hoping for rain tomorrow, or else we might be playing in the sprinkler yet again, but that's what summer is all about.