Late summer, zip zip zip, birthday

In the past I’ve not understood those parents who bemoan the start of the school year. I mean, I love my kids as much as anybody, but after a whole summer of having them around, frankly, I was always looking forward to a little more silence.(Not total silence, you understand, since only one of my boys is in school and the other is with me every second of every day, mostly.) Anyway, that’s how I used to feel. This year I was filled with sadness at the start of school, because it was the end of things like:

Makin' rainbows with the hose sprayer

H had swimming lessons. They were great, but pictures of kids doing swimming lessons are awful. This one of C, waiting, is much more interesting and entertaining.

But swimming lessons lead to increased confidence, and that lead to wonderful scenes like this one out in the river. It's like they're forging across the ocean, H inspired by his future, and C just doggedly keeping up. They're really only 10 feet from shore.

Puppy, worn out from all the swimming.

So help me, someday we will drive real tractors.

Down-time during summer

Going to amusement parks.

Riding the helicopters. Apparently I was the only one having fun.

H as Mini-Lancelot in the Missoula Children's Theatre production of "King Arthur's Quest"

So then school started. I considered home-schooling H this year, but I think he has a good (I’ve heard great) teacher. Maybe next year. I think at least some homeschooling is beneficial to a kiddo, but I also think going to the school is valuable. Why not mix it up? We’ll see. I wish there were a way to do a half-home/half-school thing at public schools. I can understand why there isn’t, though. I hesitate to join the homeschoolers in part because as a whole they present a really insufferable holier-than-thou self-image. Not all of them — one family in Wanakena homeschools and both children and parents are quite lovely. However, there is a big heap of speshul snowflakiness about the movement overall that makes me feel like I’m biting aluminum. Also, middle-class entitlement is just rampant. Blech. Yet, I like being around H and think I’d like to nurture his enthusiasm for learning and make sure he’s not just bored all the time (a couple of years ago, I really needed a break from him more often and felt I lacked the patience for home education, leaving that to the pros. Not so much now.) I don’t flatter myself that I can educate him better than professional teachers, but I do think some time doing the passion-based learning thing is beneficial. Other than summertime, I mean… so anyway, no news there, just rumination. School started again.

First day back from second grade

C is so jealous that H gets to ride the bus. He posed for a first-day-of-second-grade picture too, just to be part of things school-ish.

So now this kind of stuff is mostly relegated to weekends (except for I’m taking him out of school one day per month for field trips. We’re going to a modern-dance-for-kids show on Wednesday in Potsdam.)

At the lean-to, trying to kick a stump over. Didn't work.

If you are using that thing to steal my soul, you better at least have a bit of hot dog for me.

Emerson continues to get bigger, duh. He’s about half-grown (weight-wise) now and Brad and I took him on a long-ish hike yesterday (sans children — my birthday present). It was a popular trail, and crowded, so he was on leash the whole time, pulling us uuuuuup the mountain and doooooown the mountain. We’re working on things…

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First snow in the valley

This morning I walked H to school in a light fall of  rain and a little super-wet snow.  As I exited the school, the air was full of fat, fluffy flakes.  It even seems to be sticking the tiniest bit now. The leaves are only maybe half fallen from the trees, and the snow is forming a new (spotty) carpet over the old one of green grass and yellow leaves.

Baby C was either bored with it or too overawed to really react.  Or maybe his coat is just so puffy that he would rather hold still than try to move.  I’m leaning toward the last explanation for his stillness.

T-minus four days.  I’m living in rooms full of boxes and clutter.

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I can’t get to this place enough

Great Basin National Park.  And the drive there is killer.  I mean that literally and figuratively, as there are few landscapes so clearly able and ready to kill.  To me, only salt flats exceed it that way.  I love them both, of course.

Me and David Arora are going to have a little chat, human-to-book about all the fungus (see below).  And next outing, even if he doesn’t feel like coming along and I don’t really feel like carrying him, he will be wrestled into the backpack anyway.  If needed, he will bump the birding guides, or at least the heavy one.   In case you prefer a clearer opinion, yes, that is my very favorite mushroom book. And I have read or consulted more  mushroom books than one might expect, being still pretty useless when it comes to mushroom collecting.

I am in a tent! I love looking fuzzy!

World domination type laughter.

From my parents’ comments, I am beginning to suspect that this bristlecone pine is older than me.

Columbine is my favorite mountain flower

Big ‘un

Bolete?

Neato, whatever it is.

Look at me! Look at my orangeness! The writer of this blog doesn’t know what I am!

No euphemism intended, pink asparagus. But not. It was sticky. Stinkhorn? NO!! Pinedrop! It’s a PLANT! Thanks, MSJ!

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A Spanish of one’s own

I’ve tried to teach H some Spanish over his early years, as have all of his preschool teachers and daycare providers.  He isn’t terribly interested in it, so I don’t push it a lot.  Apparently, he’s been paying attention, but not the way I thought.

Today he debuted “his Spanish.”  It is incomprehensible, being wholly unique to him, but he is pretty consistent with accent.  The only word I can remember right now is “clo,” which means “hush.”  Lida Jean, his very beloved blanket, also apparently has her own Spanish.  In fact, she is some kind of Spanish whiz, as she not only has her own Spanish but can also understand all other types of Spanish.

So I guess what he’s learned in his few short years is that “Spanish” means “words no one understands.”

We spent a long time at the garden today, as I am one of the water stewards (water stewardesses?  water attendants?) and today we got the drip system all ready.  During the couple of hours it took, H succeeded in

(1) burrowing into the compost pile, dirtying his clothing to an award-winning level,

(2) eating a mystery weed.  All I know is that it’s in the parsley family and he strenuously insists it was dill, which is most certainly is not (he is being watched for signs of, you know, dropping dead — why did it have to be a umbel?),

(3) running around with a tomato cage over his head and shoulders, threatening to impale people on the ends.

I’m letting it all go (other than the casual monitoring for sudden death, that is).  It sure is nice to have a place where we can both busy ourselves with interesting activities.  Most times it’s pretty one-sided as far as who is really, really interested in what’s going on.  I mean, I get bored sometimes watching kids play on a playground.  Yay for big gardens.

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I’ve got to chill with the full weekends thing

Saturday: Helping to clean out my Aunt Bessie’s house. She passed away a couple of months ago. I don’t like the thought of taking stuff from a dead relative’s house; it just seems to vulture-like, but her sisters were clearly desperate to get it cleared out, so I took the sugar, a couple bags of flour, and a tiny food processor, which has now replaced our other tiny food processors. The basement is still nearly full, so hopefully Bessie’s sisters really will give me a call when they start hauling things up. They are both in their 80′s (I think) and they will definitely need some help. Bessie has a beautiful, huge fermentation crock down there (I have no spot for it, but I admire it). And a large amount of uneaten stored food.

For supper I got to go out with some old friends who were with me on a study-abroad in 1998. Only five of us were there, but it was really great to see them again. I haven’t seen Shulamit since maybe 1999 — not too sure. I didn’t catch some of the conversation, so I promised them I’d make an update-questionnaire to post on our Yahoo group so we could find out what’s up with the folks who didn’t make it.

Directly after we headed way out of town to a Star Party hosted by the local Astronomical Society. H is now proclaiming that he wants to be an astronomer when he grows up. He’s actually been saying that for a while (along with fireman) but he now says it with much greater conviction. I was very impressed with his understanding there as the society members let him look through their big telescopes and talked with him about what he was seeing. He was pretty excited about Saturn, I can tell you. Of course, who isn’t?

Sunday: We went on a family hike. This hike is notable because (1) it’s the first hike Baby C has been on, (2) it’s my first hike since before I was pregnant, which means about two years, and (3) it’s H’s first hike in which there was a specific goal to reach.

Here are the boys before things went a little wrong.

We headed for the Living Room in the front up behind the university. This is the first hike we ever took H on, too, actually. And the same thing happened — we took a wrong turn or two and ended up on a rocky spine, with me feeling a little hysterical, what with a young baby in a chest carrier. This time we got lost in a worse spot, and I decided not to go on. Clambering along this ridge would be fine without a baby, but with him, I just wasn’t willing:

So Brad and H went on without me and I climbed carefully back down the rocky scramble we’d already gone up. I saw them a few times along the ridge, going very slowly. H did a great job! He wasn’t scared and was very focused on getting to the goal. Here he is on one of the “chairs” at the Living Room, eating his lunch in triumph.

I am a total wimp — my legs are all sore today, and I gave myself a mild ankle sprain on the way down by not looking where I was putting my feet. All should be back to normal in a day or two, but I can see that I will need to ramp my hiking back up slowly this summer.

And for the record, to get to the Living Room, you take the second main turn-off from the Shoreline Trail, not the first.  You don’t head up the bottom of the ravine; rather along the south side.

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Springy, springy storm

Yesterday H and I planted some more seeds in the garden, just ahead of a storm.  For the record, the first round of carrots, lettuce, arugula, and broccoli raab is now in.  Some of the seeds are old; we’ll see how they do.

Then the storm arrived with a bang — hail.   I love an occasional hailstorm.  I’m glad they don’t happen everyday, but they are exciting when they do.  H wanted to go stand in it to “see how it feels,” so he did.  He claims it didn’t hurt at all and he likes hail.  That doesn’t mesh with my experience, but whatever.  I guess we’ll have to send him outside to play next time the baseball-size hail comes down (kidding…)

It rained all night.  It is a drearily beautiful, soggy day today, perfect for watering in those seeds if they didn’t get hailed to death.  The flowering plums are starting to break bud now, and the pears too.  Two or three weeks ago a tree started blooming around the neighborhood; I think it was fruiting plums, but I don’t know.  Is it usual that fruiting-type trees bloom earlier than their oranmental counterparts?  I’ve never noticed anything like that before.  I’ve always assumed they bloom around the same time, but this tree was definitely earlier.  (Update — answered by a smart, smart commenter — they were apricots). Now I’m watching one in particular to see if it produces plums.

Also, thrift store, I have somethign to say to you, and it’s this:  what the hell?  I’ve been a knitter for years, and I’ve checked diligently, hoping to serendipitously find some nice yarn. Frustratingly, your shelves have always been full of all colours of crochet cotton instead.  Now I try my hand at tatting, and there’s NO crochet cotton to be found?!?!?!  The handcraft universe hates me today.

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Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge

We spent much of today at the Bear River National Migratory Bird Refuge. This is a place we have visited several times, but I haven’t been there since 2007. Today I got to see the Tundra Swans, which I haven’t seen before, despite having visited in March before. I couldn’t get close to any of them, and my camera and binoculars were not quite adequate to get a really close-up view, but there were thousands of them. And they were clearly illustrating why they are not called mute swans (one of my books said their call was like yodelling. I kind of like that, and I can corroborate it.)

Here is a list of what we saw today (and a few notable no-shows), for reference next year. This past winter has been pretty mild and relatively dry in the Salt Lake Valley. The past month has been pretty warm, and the past week very very warm, in the 60s every day.

• Tundra Swans, thousands
• Coots
• Double-Crested Cormorants
• Mallards
• Blue-winged teal (I think)
• Common goldeneyes
• Pelican (only one — I was so surprised when the giant white sleeping bird stirred and showed a huge yellow beak!)
• Yellow-headed blackbirds
• Western meadowlarks
• Horned larks (I think)
• Great Blue Heron (only one this year — we saw several a couple of years ago in March — it was hunting, probably frogs, holding perfectly still and staring down into the water)
• Harrier (notable because there were three hunting together, and I assume at least one was a juvenille)
• Bald eagle (adult, solitary, hunting above the harriers)
• Sandhill cranes (at least 16 — eating in a recently plowed, muddy field — I’ve never seen so many together before. They tended to be moving in pairs, but not all of them were.)
• Avocets (only a few)
• Killdeer
• Canada geese
• California gulls (and maybe ringbills, I didn’t look very closely)

Things we did not see which we have seen at other times of year:

• Night Herons
• Any types of ducks other than the above-mentioned ones — there may have been Gadwalls — I’m no good at distinguishing them from female Mallards — so, no other teals, Pintails, Redheads, Canvasbacks, Buffleheads, Ruddies, Shovellers
• Red-winged blackbirds
• Any type of grebe
• Any type of swallow
• Stilts
• Any type of tern
• Franklin gulls
• Glossy ibis
• Pheasant
• Muskrats
• Snowy egrets

I took only pictures of snakes. I just can’t get good picture of the birds, most of the time. But next to the place where we usually eat lunch, each spring the slope next to the pavilion is slithering with snakes. There weren’t a whole bunch today (yet?) but here’s a pic of one of the larger ones coming out of his hidey-hole.

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