Poem of the Week: Lilacs

Lilacs

By Amy Lowell

 

Lilacs,

False blue,

White,

Purple,

Color of lilac,

Your great puffs of flowers

Are everywhere in this my New England.

Among your heart-shaped leaves

Orange orioles hop like music-box birds and sing

Their little weak soft songs;

In the crooks of your branches

The bright eyes of song sparrows sitting on spotted eggs

Peer restlessly through the light and shadow

Of all Springs.

Lilacs in dooryards

Holding quiet conversations with an early moon;

Lilacs watching a deserted house

Settling sideways into the grass of an old road;

Lilacs, wind-beaten, staggering under a lopsided shock of bloom

Above a cellar dug into a hill.

You are everywhere.

You were everywhere.

You tapped the window when the preacher preached his sermon,

And ran along the road beside the boy going to school.

You stood by the pasture-bars to give the cows good milking,

You persuaded the housewife that her dishpan was of silver.

And her husband an image of pure gold.

HT (and the rest of the poem): Poetry Foundation 
Images from Spring Hill Nurseries

Art Prize!

Not only did Klenda get four works in the (juried) art show, she won a prize in the watercolor category!

The top picture with the glass is the prize winner.

She also had the portrait of Mxyl (done in coffee).










And an Ultraman, and a magazine cover (both created digitally).


There was actually a fifth work that was entirely digital that made it into the show, but that only shows up on the show's computers.


Congratulations, Klenda!

WordlessWednesday: The Zoo

Awesome History: 1971-1972

This was pages 298-307 in The American Story by Jennifer Armstrong:Nixon and China, Bobby Fischer, and Marlon Brando.

For our art activity, we painted cherry blossoms using Sumi-e bamboo brushes.  Klenda taught this, and the paintings came out really well!

This was a reference to China and the Chinese cultural exchange opened up by "ping pong diplomacy."

 For our active activity (Bobby Fischer), we did chess.  All the older kids loved this, but we had other games available for the younger kids.

This was a plus for me, since I got to play my favorite "little kid's" game, Mystery Garden.  All of my kids have outgrown it, but our younger students were as enraptured as the Zoomlians had been.

And for our snack, we had egg rolls.

We are now in the part of history that I lived through, but before I really remember it (I was a toddler). 

The End of April

It's the last of April, and, judging from the 182 photos in the April folder, we've been busy!

Easter with our parish, Easter with extended family on both sides, gardening, outings, driving, Spring, Astronomy, Rocket Science, and Awesome History, it's been a wild ride!

Also, we saw the Avengers movie.   Actually, I forgot to mention it, but we saw Pacific Rim:
Uprising last month!

Tomorrow starts May and we are heading into our busy time of the year.

This is the last week of college classes for Klenda and Zorg,and next week is the last class for Mxyl, so they are all heading into finals.

Rockets!  What's next?

We are building our rockets to launch at NASA Goddard next Sunday, and that will be the end of Kid's Astronomy and Rocket Science.  Awesome American History is winding up as we approach present day.  We've started talking about what we want to study next year!

And, of course, the Emperor is starting to wrap things up.  His seniors will graduate in about a month, and his other students will finish up a few weeks later.

Also in May we have 4 family birthdays, our anniversary, a much anticipated visit from Angel (from Switzerland), and the big annual visit to the graves.

I love May!   It's chock full of family, friends, flowers, and classes, often with beautiful weather to boot.  And by June, I will want a nap.

Poem of the Week: Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Robert Frost, 1874 - 1963

Nature’s first green is gold, 
Her hardest hue to hold. 
Her early leaf’s a flower; 
But only so an hour. 
Then leaf subsides to leaf. 
So Eden sank to grief, 
So dawn goes down to day. 
Nothing gold can stay. 

HT: Poets.org 

Images from my garden. :)

The Lawn, or In Praise of Dandelions

More flowers!

Honestly, I love dandelions.  I never got over seeing a field of dandelions when I was 4. 

I know this is supposed to be the suburban gardener's nightmare, but if dandelions were difficult to grow, they would be really expensive!  Think about it: beautiful flower, interesting seed head, fascinating floating seeds, interesting leaf shape, and edible (and medicinal) leaves.

I love it that God didn't make them hard to grow!  Since they are so prolific, every child can make dandelion crowns from the flowers and blow wishes (or dandelion clocks) on the seed heads - play that never would be allowed on, say, a lotus.  I'm glad God didn't make beauty rare.

To me dandelions are an invitation to enjoy God's gratuitous beauty.

Have a beautiful weekend!

Wordless Wednesday: In the Garden

Rocket Science: Laws of Motion 2018

1st Law: A body at rest stays at rest, a body in motion stays in motion unless acted on by another force.

Looking at inertia with the quarter/card/jar trick.

 Looking at mass with scales and balances (and jelly beans!).

We also looked at momentum with raw and hard boiled eggs.

And we made balloon rockets.

Full  1st Law class here.

 2nd Law of Motion: F=ma, force equals mass times acceleration.

It takes twice as much force to move twice as much mass, or half as much force to move half as much mass.

We looked at this by dropping a heavy marble and a light foil ball into flour.  They hit at the same time, but the heavy ball made a big crater, and the light one barely sunk in.

We did a few other demonstrations including a race of a heavier and lighter car down a ramp.

And we made puff rockets!

Full 2nd law class here.

3rd Law: Every reaction has an equal and opposite reaction.

Gotta love a Newton's Cradle!

We also did the thing where the kids stand in a wagon and push on me.

And the billiard ball thing with angles.

And Alka-Seltzer rockets!

Which worked this time since I had bought new film canisters.  It was still pretty random: some popped up 15 feet in the air or more, but many only popped up a couple of feet.  We got the best results with half a tablet and just enough water to cover it.

Full 3rd Law class here.

 Lots of science fun!


Next week, we'll build and paint our model rockets, and the following Sunday we'll launch them at NASA Goddard!