WORDS

my weekly posting of a poem, a quote and a passage from literature.

Sleeping in the Forest
I thought the earth remembered me, she 
took me back so tenderly, arranging 
her dark skirts, her pockets 
full of lichens and seeds. I slept 
as never before, a stone 
on the riverbed, nothing 
between me and the white fire of the stars 
but my thoughts, and they floated 
light as moths among the branches 
of the perfect trees. All night 
I heard the small kingdoms breathing 
around me, the insects, and the birds
who do their work in the darkness. All night 
I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling 
with a luminous doom. By morning 
I had vanished at least a dozen times 
into something better. 
~Mary Oliver




All that is gold does not glitter; not all those who wander are lost. The old that is strong does not wither; deep roots are not reached by frost. From the ashes a fire shall be woken; a light from the shadows shall spring. Renewed shall be a blade that was broken; the crownless again shall be king" - JRR Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

"In I got bodily into the apple barrel, and found there was scarce an

apple left; but sitting down there in the dark, what with the sound of
the waters and the rocking movement of the ship, I had either fallen
asleep or was on the point of doing so when a heavy man sat down with
rather a clash close by. The barrel shook as he leaned his shoulders
against it, and I was just about to jump up when the man began to speak.
It was Silver's voice, and before I had heard a dozen words, I would
not have shown myself for all the world, but lay there, trembling and
listening, in the extreme of fear and curiosity, for from these dozen
words I understood that the lives of all the honest men aboard depended
upon me alone."

           ~from Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

AS TALL AS A BLUEBONNET

  The children wondered who was taller, the Lupines or themselves. 
The Lupines are blooming in our meadow and have also seeded themselves outside our garden fence. They are also known as Bluebonnets and are the state flower of Texas.

"Look! Their leaves are like big stars!"

Have you read Mrs Rumphius by Barbara Cooney?

"It is a delightful book about an elderly  lady who shares with her neice the things she did throughout her life.  She had set out to do three things in life. She planned to go to faraway places, live by the sea, and as her grandfather had told her, -to do something to make the world more beautiful.

She became a librarian and helped people find books. She went to a tropical island and climbed tall mountains.

Everywhere she went she made friends. Then she found a little house by the sea to

 live in. She knew there was still one more thing she needed to do to be happy, and that was to make the world a more beautiful place.  She couldn’t decide what that would be until one day she saw some lupine flowers.

 She began to scatter lupine seeds everywhere. People thought she was crazy, but the next Spring there were lupines everywhere. And the lupines continued to spread and grow every year. Miss Rumphius became known as the Lupine Lady."

Ask the children:

To make the word more beautiful, I would  ______________________. 

See what ideas they come up with :)

Perhaps they would like to draw their own Lupine. Use a Lupine flower or picture for inspiration. Talk about the stem and the petals. Let them observe with a magnifying glass

The children drew their Lupine stem with green colored pencil and made the petals by dipping their finger into purple paint and dabbing it on the paper.

The Gallery of Lupines

You may also like to read The Legend of the Bluebonnet by Tomie dePaola

WORDS

my weekly posting of a poem, a quote and a passage from literature.

After a While

After a while you learn

The subtle difference between

holding a hand

and chaining a soul 

and you learn 

that love doesn't mean 

leaning

and company doesn't always mean

security.

And you begin to learn

That kisses aren't contracts and 

presents aren't promises

and you begin to

accept your defeats 

with your head up and your eyes ahead

with the grace of a woman

not the grief of a child

and you learn

To build all your roads on today 

because tomorrow's ground is

too uncertain for plans 

and futures have a way of falling down

in mid-flight. 

After a while you learn

That even sunshine burns

If you ask too much.

So you plant your own garden,

and decorate your own soul

instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers

 and you learn

that you really can endure

that you really are strong

and you really do have worth

And you learn

And you learn

with every goodbye 

You learn . . . 

~Veronica Shoffstall 

"When at last I took the time to look into the heart of a flower, it opened up a whole new world...as if a window had been opened to let in the sun."
~ Princess Grace of Monaco

"I looked again at the heap of quilts. An hour ago they had been patchwork and nothing more. But now! The old woman's words had wrought a transformation in the homely mass of calico and silk and worsted. Patchwork? Ah, no! It was memory, imagination, 

history, 

biography, 

joy, 

sorrow, 

philosophy, religion, romance, realism, life, love, and death; and over all, like a halo, the love of the artist for his work and the soul's longing for earthly immortality."

  ~from Aunt Jane of Kentucky by Eliza Calvert Hall

WORDS

 my weekly posting of a poem, a quote and a passage from literature.

Ask of Her, the mighty Mother.

Her reply puts this other

Question: What is Spring?-

Growth in every thing -

Flesh and fleece, fur and feather,

Grass and green world all together,

Star-eyed strawberry breasted

Throstle above Her nested

Cluster of bugle blue eggs thin

Forms and warms the life within,

And bird and blossom swell

In sod or sheath or shell."  

 ~Gerard Manly Hopkins

We need a renaissance of wonder. We need to renew, in our hearts and in our souls, the deathless dream, the eternal poetry, the perennial sense that life is miracle and magic.
~ E. Merrill Root



"The stranger was dressed all in red, excepting a little black around the base of his bill. Even his bill was red. He wore a beautiful red crest which made him still more distinguished looking, and how he could sing!   Peter had noticed that quite often the most beautifully dressed birds have the poorest songs. But this stranger's song was as beautiful as his coat,and that was one of the most beautiful, if not the most beautiful, that Peter ever had seen.
                    ~Peter talking about Glory the Cardinal in The Burgess Bird Book for Children

WORDS

 my weekly posting of a poem, a quote and a passage from literature.

MAY-FLOWER

Pink, small and punctual.

Aromatic, low,

Covert in April,

Candid in May,

Dear to the moss,

Known by the knoll,

Next to the robin

In every human soul.

Bold little beauty,

Bedecked with thee,

Nature forswears 

Antiquity.

~Emily Dickinson

(Facts About Mayflowers- Scroll down below)

We sleep, but the loom of life never stops; and the pattern which was weaving when the sun went down is weaving when it comes up tomorrow."

- Henry Ward Beecher

"I noticed plenty of mallard and tufted duck in the flighting ponds but saw no nests. Blue shiny beetles again caught my eye along the bank, and spiders darted in and out of the reeds. There were water boatman at the water's edge, something I had not noticed before, and many more young trout than ever before. The cattle-drink and newly-made 'island' were full of tiny silvery fish, swaying this way and that as if they were being pulled by the same invisible string. They leapt out of the water every so often; perhaps a predator was amongst them.

~from Janet Marsh's Nature Diary

*************************************************

Facts about Mayflowers

   The Mayflower is a belly plant, i.e, one must lie on one's stomach to catch a legitimate moment of putting eye and nose to the beauty and perfume.

• The scarcely shrubby Mayflower is a tough, slightly woody, more or less rough-hairy plant with light brown, creeping stems and alternate, olive-green leaves.
• The scientific name, Epigaea repens, coined by Linnaeus in 1753 from Greek and Latin, literally means creeping (or running) on the earth.
• Mayflower typically grows in sandy or rocky, acid soils in woods and clearings, often on hillsides and banks, including road banks, especially under oaks and pines or hemlocks with such other ericads as mountain-laurel.
• Other common names of Mayflower are: Gravel plant, shadflower, ground laurel, mountain pink, winter pink.
• Mayflower plant leaves are alternate, evergreen, leathery, Ovate or oblong, with entire margin and a rounded or heart-shaped base.
• The Mayflower has a small fleshy fruit, 5-chambered, many-seeded capsule that splits open at maturity. Ants then disperse the seeds.
• Mayflower blomms from March to May.
• The Mayflower leaves contain ericoline and ursolic acid along with arbutin, which is a urinary antiseptic.
• Unfortunately, since 1925 Mayflowers have been on the endangered list.

SLIPPERS IN SPRING

Do you have any slippers in woodlands or thickets near you?
One of the joys of spring is the Lady Slipper.

                                  It is also called a moccasin flower . It is beautiful and very unique .

Graceful and tall the slender drooping stem,

With two broad leaves below,

Shapely the flower so lightly poised between,

And warm its rosy glow  ~Elaine Goodale

~Invite the children to take a closer look with a magnifying glass and notice all the parts of the flower.  Look closely at the leaves too.
~Ask : Who visits this flower?  Where is the pollen?  How do they get to it ? What do you think of this kind of slipper?
~Provide the children with sketch pads and colored pencils and let them draw what they see.

We all see something differently when we look at a flower just like we all have our own opinions and thoughts. The more children discover and watch the natural world and draw what they see, the more observant they will become in all aspects of their lives.

~Read to the children this delightful book, The Legend of the Lady Slipper by Lise Lung-Larson and Margi Preus

The illustrations are beautiful and are filled to the brim with color!

Perhaps YOU can  search for some slippers in woodlands near you!

WORDS

*WORDS* 

 my weekly posting of a poem, a quote and a passage from literature.

Winter is many months of the year

But now at last Maytime is here;
And birds sing from a leafy screen

In the trees and hedgerow freshly green;

And the wood-anemone is out in the shade,

With its blushing petals which too soon fade;

Once more the bracken is unfurling there,

And bluebells gently perfume the damp air."

  ~Veronica Ann Twells, Maytime

"To see a hillside white with dogwood bloom is to know a particular ecstasy of beauty, but to walk the gray Winter woods and find the buds which will resurrect that beauty in another May is to partake of continuity."

- Hal Borland

"But it was a jolly, busy, happy, swift-flying winter. School work was as interesting, class rivalry as absorbing, as of yore. New worlds of thought, feeling, and ambition, fresh, fascinating fields of unexplored knowledge seemed to be opening out before Anne's 

eager eyes. Hills peeped o'er hill and Alps on Alps arose. 

Much of all this was due to Miss Stacy's tactful, careful, broad-minded guidance. She led her class to think and explore and discover for themselves and encouraged straying from the old beaten paths to a degree that quite shocked Mrs. Lynde and the school trustees, who viewed all innovations on established methods quite dubiously.

~from Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery