Poetry
We picked our first strawberries from our backyard plants this week. This is insanely early for strawberries, in my opinion, but who's complaining.
We're waiting on the organic u-pick farm berries to ripen before we go strawberry pickin' in earnest. For now we'll snack on berries from the backyard.
Brienne and I wrote this haiku together yesterday at lunch while eyeing the bowl of berries for dessert.
juicy strawberries
sweet and yummy in a bowl
pop one in your mouth
PS. I'm fooling around these days with the contrast curve and deeper shadows presets in Bibble, my photo software. You may notice that in some of my photos (like that photo of Brienne), though mostly it's very subtle. Heavily editing photos is not something I'm really keen on doing but I'm having fun with the creativity of it right now.
We bought a "new" vehicle last week. We reached the point where it no longer made financial sense to own a car 17 years old with over 230,000 miles driven when we're not mechanics. So we've upgraded to 1999 Toyota RAV4, only 11 years old. Great mileage and in good shape.
We're all pleased to be riding high after years of car driving (we even have a sun roof - how exciting) but the kids and I thought our (t)rusty white Honda Accord deserved a farewell poem, it is National Poetry Month afterall. So we composed this poem together, a collaborative writing project.
Our car is white and such as sight,
bumbling its way down the road.
Dripping and leaking
bumping and squeaking
and scaring many a toad.
This car's been swell
though the fender fell,
many a mile it has seen.
Up and down, round and round
oh the places you've been.
You've served us well but... farewell
I'm just so darn happy it's April. It's spring here in Maine and this week I planted my peas. The kids and I are taking this month off from structured school activities. Basically we're leaving the math and handwriting workbooks to sit on the shelf. And I'm giving Celine's real life writing (I'll explain more in my writing post coming up) a break. We never stop reading, creating or exploring so technically we're still learning.
Each year in April I fall off the school wagon. I have posts going back two years to prove this. So this year I made the decision to jump off early, save myself the fall and get back on after a month of gardening, yard work and outdoors focused learning.
How ironic then that Lisa at 5 Orange Potatoes is hosting A Great Outdoors Challenge in conjunction with Children and Nature Awareness Month. Her challenge is to "go outside everyday, rain or shine; then take a picture each day, for the rest of April, of your children outdoors and post it." Sad to say, I will not be participating to that extent. I'm too busy writing, photographing and posting about other topics but it's almost guaranteed we will be out most every day this month. Unless it's really cold and rainy, in which case we'll craft, read, sew and head outdoors another day.
I love the premise though and I think it's cool there is a movement of people, encouraged no doubt by the book Last Child in the Woods who are getting serious about getting our kids outdoors. Here, here!!
But did you know it's also National Poetry month? Or so says the sign at the library. So... in honor of both these things the kids and I have written outdoors inspired haiku this week.
Brienne and I wrote this earlier this week.
Spring time is so bright
New flowers with mud and rain
Baby animals.
Later in the week while all bouncing on the trampoline together we wrote this poem. We had no paper and pen handy so Laurent rustled up some birch bark (from our pilfered wood stash, we have no tress to speak off in our little back yard) and Celine provided a rose thorn so I could write it down.
Jumping happily
is so delightful and fun
on the trampoline
It's been a great week outdoors and I'm looking forward to the rest of this month with plans to build a bird feeder, clean up the yard and work in the flower and vegetable gardens.
Springtime.
What kind of fun are you having outdoors these days?
