Light and sporadic blogging ahead

Not only do we have the big music/speech arts festival coming next week, with lots of last-minute rehearsing, fine tuning, and costume assembling, but this morning at 11 my husband gave me a whopping 20 minutes’ notice that the bedroom remodel was about to commence. This after our 40 roosters had been dspatched to [...]

A man and his wolf

There’s a new BBC2 documentary, part of the “Natural World” series, about Ernest Thompson Seton (1860-1946) and his wolf Lobo, one of the subjects of Seton’s Wild Animals I Have Known. The new documentary isn’t to be confused with the 1962 Disney live action movie, “The Legend of Lobo”.
In The Telegraph, Steve Gooder, director [...]

Learning in the Great Outdoors

Terrell at Alone on a Limb is celebrating his 61st birthday with the 10th edition of the Learning in the Great Outdoors carnival, marked by 62 terrific posts (one for each year and one to grow on).
Many thanks, Terrell, for hosting such a splending carnival and many happy returns!
By the way, the Great Outdoors home [...]

Your inner fish

Busy around the house yesterday, we were listening to CBC’s “Quirks and Quarks” science show, and I was delighted to hear the engaging Dr. Neil Shubin (whom I quoted here*, from Natalie Angier’s recent book, The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science).  You can listen to the interview here.
Dr. Shubin, [...]

Reviews here and there

David Elzey at the excelsior file has a review of What To Do about Alice?: How Alice Roosevelt Broke the Rules, Charmed the World, and Drove Her Father Teddy Crazy, by Barbara Kerley, with illustrations by Edwin Fotheringham. David calls it “a great book” and “a tidy biography of a colorful, spunky girl who [...]

The Learning in the Great Outdoors Carnival is up

The New Year’s edition of the Learning in the Great Outdoors Carnival is up, hosted by Terrell at Alone on a Limb. Terrell writes,
Learning in the Great Outdoors is intended as a trading center for those who use, or want to use, the environment as an integrating context for learning. If you are a teacher, [...]

Still sniffing around the kitchen: Chemistry with the Curious Cook

More apologies. I’ve been meaning to post links to all of Harold McGee’s “Curious Cook” columns in The New York Times but fell down on the job. I was reminded by yesterday’s column, so below is the list. Once again, you need to register to read NY Times articles, but registration [...]

Paddle your own canoe

Shooting the Rapids, oil on canvas, 1879, by
Frances Anne Hopkins
We were doing farm chores and driving around in truck the other week with the radio set to CBC, as usual, when I caught a bit of music and Shelagh Roger’s comment that it was based on the Caldecott Honor book by Holling Clancy Holling — [...]

Our late summer visitor

I noticed this morning while feeding the chickens that all eight roosters were outside in the pen. This is unusual because the four at the top of the pecking order generally stroll around the pen, lording and swanning around, while the four at the bottom of the pecking order quake and cower on the roosts [...]

Rescued from the sump pit

One of the kids’ jobs in the spring and summer is to keep an eye on the sump pit in the garage, to fish out anything or anyone that’s not supposed to be in there. This morning Laura discovered a tiger salamander (Ambystoma tigrinum var. melanostictum), which is quite common in these parts of the [...]

More from the garden

Eggs from the duck nest in the backyard, not 10 feet from the house. We watched over the duck and her nest for almost a month, mostly from a distance and not too often, and despite the nearby marauding magpies, the duck managed to hatch out all 10 eggs. We checked on the nest on [...]

For the birds

Late last spring, the kids asked if we could have “bird school” all summer. So, in addition to our various field guides, we pulled all of the bird books off the shelves and grouped them together in the living room on the coffee table. Indoors and out, the kids read the various books themselves, [...]

A better late than never reminder for the (Late) Late Spring Edition of Dawn’s Field Days

Dawn at By Sun and Candlelight has this season’s installment, in words and plentiful pictures, of the latest Field Day, just in time for late Spring. Rainbows, skinks, flowers, birds and bird books — something for everyone, especially on an early Spring morning or a quiet, rainy day. Thank you, Dawn, for the wonderful idea [...]

Poetry Friday: Arbor Day edition

Appropriately enough, we had word from the county yesterday that our 900+ new shelterbelt trees will be ready for pick up by May 9th. Tom phoned to borrow the county’s tree planter, which make the process much easier, and we’re getting some fabric mulch this year so that the kids and I don’t have quite [...]

Trip snaps

Palm tree (friend’s garden)
[...]

Charlotte’s cousin

Our friend, the donkey spider (since removed to a safe place, for all concerned, in the garden away from the house)

Poetry Friday: The frolic architecture of the snow

The large, wild, and often impenetrable snow drifts produced by last week’s wind reminded me of this poem.
The Snow Stormby Ralph Waldo Emerson
Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,Arrives the snow, and, driving o’er the fields,Seems nowhere to alight: the whited airHides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,And veils the farmhouse at [...]

Great Science Books — for adults and kids

Susan at Chicken Spaghetti has a post* with links to Discover Magazine’s 25 Greatest Science Books of All-Time, what the magazine calls “the essential reading list for anyone interested in science”; at the Discover page, you can also find a link to an essay by Nobel laureate Kary B. Mullison on the greatest science books.
Worth [...]

new computer on the way

phew
cutting and pasting getting very old
a few good and new things:
The Late Autumn Edition Field Day
The November edition of The Edge of the Forest
new blog from Susan Kapuscinski Gaylord, Making Books with Children; the first post is about constructing a medieval book. HT Chicken Spaghetti
tired now.

Poetry Friday II: the Cybils’ selection of the day

My second Poetry Friday selection today is an excerpt from one of the poems from the Cybils-nominated Butterfly Eyes and Other Secrets of the Meadow, written by the prolific, lyrical, and award-winning Joyce Sidman and illustrated by Beth Krommes.
All of the poems in Butterfly Eyes are riddles, which is a wonderful way to engage children [...]