Spring Wildflowers

Spring has finally started to appear! Can you believe it? Of course, they're still talking snow. I thought the FCC has rules about saying naughty words on air, but "snow" must not be one of those naughty words, at least by their rules. In April, it's a naughty word by my rules, however!

Anyway, ds7 and I found the following while we were riding on the Rail Trail the other day: bloodroot and two little sprigs of Dutchman's breeches. I showed him how the bloodroot leaves and stem "bleed" (it was more orange than red, strangely...usually it's red!) Dutchman's breeches are my favorite...they're so cute and they really do look like upside-down Dutch boy pants hanging from a clothesline. The timing was especially appropriate, as we had just finished reading The Wheel on the School the night before :-) In my yard there are three little wild strawberry blossoms (so far). I'm so glad to see the first signs of spring. Bring on some more flowers, and some wild strawberries to munch on, too!

Overheard in the backseat...

DD11 gets a text message from a friend, Julia. DS7 asks "Who is Julius?" I interjected that it was Julius Caesar. After a moment, DS7 replied that Julius Caesar is already dead. DD11 referred to the texter as "she", at which DS7 informed her that Julius Caesar is a boy, not a girl. Um-hm, sounds like somebody's been eavesdropped on core 6 again ;-) That was two or three months ago when we covered that time period. Yay, he remembered!

Invasion of the Cat Burglar

So picture this. DD11 is sitting on the "throne". She's alone in the house...I'm at work, the "boys" are asleep. Suddenly, she hears a noise in the bathtub. Unable to arise and discover the source of the noise, she sits quietly, contemplating the causes. A mouse? A burglar? A CAT burglar? Suddenly, a head appears. A furry orange & white head. Thankfully, it was nothing more serious than the dreaded cat burglar.

So now we have discovered why our septic system gurgles and blurbles. The cat has been bathing while we are away, and filling our septic tank. I thought he'd smelled sweet and clean lately ;-)

Another record maple syrup year...

I just realized that the last thing I said about maple syrup season was that there'd been a fire. Oops! Things didn't halt because of a little thing like a fire. My dad ended up with 850 gallons of sap (100 more than last year) and 15 gallons of cooked syrup. Would have been 20 gallons if he hadn't lost sap in the fire, but he was in danger of losing the sap to spoilage because he was having trouble getting it cooked fast enough, so perhaps the fire was a bit of a blessing. Anyway, everything is packed away for another year, which we are of course looking forward to, but we'll take spring, summer, and fall first, thank you very much ;-)

What to blog about?

I was reading about the International Food Blogger Convention. Wow, does that ever look fun? Food and blogging...two of my favorite combos. But really, I'd rather blog about education, because I have this:

Yippee, boxes of books...some of them new, some of them being recycled (hence the non-Sonlight box...that's core 2 that I pulled off the shelf...so easy thanks to the nice orange spine stickers SL provides :D)

So yes, I'm at work. I'd prefer not to have to save any lives today, because those books are speaking to me. Very soon they shall be in my hands, and then, woe to anyone who dares to interrupt me for something so trivial as...say...needing an ambulance ;-)