A Second Look--March 2, 2016

Here are a few things I saw this week

during a Second Look.

Look what I found! I found one crocus pushing its way up through the ubiquitous oak leaves around our house. It's the only one so far, but I have seen other green leaves poking up elsewhere.

The snowdrops are full of blooms this week.

I hadn't had a chance to survey damage from a severe storm we had last week. Luckily, we didn't lose any big trees, but we did have several branches down as well as some broken fence sections. 

But the storm didn't bring down many balls from the sweet gum trees. It would be nice if the all of them dropped in a short period of time because now they require almost year round raking.  It's better to keep them raked because the balls are about the size of a ping-pong ball and can be hazardous to walk on.

White-breasted Nuthatch. If you look carefully, you can see the rusty patch under its tail.

Female bluebird. The numbers of bluebirds around the feeder and nest box are increasing. At one point this week, I saw at least of six of them at once. They appeared to be in pairs.

Out and about--a walk in the woods

Yesterday we had a warm day with no rain--a hard combination to get these days. So Ward and I decided to take a hike with Miss Landers and her dog, Hans. The woods were still monotone brown, and we didn't see many critters (I think they were hiding from Hans), but it was refreshing to be out all the same.

Here are a few pictures.

The first part of the hike followed an old road. Here is Hans alerting to an approaching dog in the distance. The orange rope is one Hans' field training ropes. I'm not sure how it's officially used, but we used it to give him a little more leeway. He could run a little ahead of us, but we could still step on the rope to give him the signal to slow down. We brought him closer to us if there were other people around--which there weren't too many of.

The trail followed a stream and deteriorated quickly in its flood plain--meaning there was lots of mud.

The trail went by Froggy Hollow School House (named for all the frogs that could be heard in the valley). The school was built in 1893 and has been restored. However, it's only open for tours in the summer so we didn't get to see inside.

Hoping to avoid some of the mud, we went up the hill from the stream and took a different trail back. Unfortunately, it quickly deteriorated into a lot of mud also. Did I mention that we've been having a lot of rain recently?

Despite the mud, a good time was had by all--especially Hans. There is nothing more alive than a dog in the woods. :)

Thankful Sunday--February 28, 2016

I am thankful for our emergency workers.

Friday, I went to a graduation ceremony of a young woman who is studying to become a volunteer EMT. (Did you know that 70% of the emergency workers in the US are volunteers?) She had just completed her first segment--fire fighting. Although there were a variety of ages, most of the class were in their teens. During their training, they went to to EMT class for 5 hours a week, volunteered at the fire station for at least 12 hours a week, and kept up with their studies and part time jobs. An impressive, dedicated group.

But dedication is what is needed in this dangerous job.  During the first segment of training, the teachers impressed upon the students, that EMT work is a hard, perilous responsibility. But even with this warning, they all stayed the course.

Also, the leaders stressed that family, whether it was at home or on the job, was very important. They called the candidates "your loved ones" acknowledging that an emergency worker has to have the support of those at home to go out and do this job. In addition, one speaker gave an example of a young man who became badly burned while he was rescuing someone from a burning house. The young EMT was in the hospital for six weeks and there was another person from his firefighter family by his side 24 hours a day. There also was food prepared for his family every day.  This was one of several stories that were shared with us.

So during the graduation, I heard stories from new trainees, experienced veterans, men, women, and people of all shapes and colors. I heard bagpipes play, fire bells ring, and saluted the flag. But most of all during this ceremony, I remembered how thankful I am that there are people out there who are willing to risk their life for me.

Throwback Thursday--Wally's School Days

For a while, I was doing a regular feature called School Days. This was where I interviewed people about their earliest school memories. Below is the interview I did with Wally about his. Of course, I have some different memories as a parent about his early schooling. Here's one is one of them.

We went to our first parent-teacher conference and his teacher had an assortment of Wally's papers showing us his work. One of them was a picture of a house and his family. All of the kids in the class had some version of this. His was not particularly advanced showing a simple house, stick figures, with no perspective. However, she made an interesting comment. She said that everyone looked happy in the picture and they can really tell a lot about a family from a  picture drawn by a kindergartner. She said you wouldn't believe what the kids draw sometimes. Ward and I gave each other a sideways glance and nodded waiting for her to move onto the next subject.

After we got outside, we said, "Boy are we lucky that she didn't see the picture Wally drew yesterday." In that picture, we were a family of fishes in which Ward had big, scary teeth and was eating the rest of us. I'm not sure what Wally was thinking when he drew it and I don't know what his teacher would have thought if she had seen it.  But I'm glad she didn't, so we didn't have to explain that for the most part, we really were like his school picture.

Now here are Wally's memories of his kindergarten year.
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MONDAY, JUNE 18, 2012

School Days--Wally

School Days is a reoccurring feature in which I ask people about their early memories of school. Everyone has a story to tell about this and I hope to give them a voice here. 

Here is today's story.

  

Wally started kindergarten at age five in the 1990's in Houston, TX. His school was the neighborhood public elementary school.

Wally at kindergarten field day.

Tell me about starting school.

My kindergarten class was was in a portable building outside of the main school. There were two portable buildings next to each other for all of the kindergarten classes. Beside our buildings was a large grassy field about the size of 2-3 football fields. Now that I think about it, the grounds of the school were quite large. Larger than the high school that I went to.

I remember that there was a flower garden between the two buildings. One day I crumpled up some dry leaves and put them in the flower bed. Another kid told me that was stupid. I told him it wasn't because the leaves would decompose and help the flowers. He didn't believe me and asked the teacher if that was right. She said I was.

Did you go into the main building much?

Not really. We went to music and art in there. Kindergarten was only half a day, so we didn't eat lunch there. However, I went to first grade in the main building. My school wasn't like most schools. The walls didn't go all of the way to the ceiling.

Did that cause a problem with noise?

Not that I remember. The teachers were good at moving us around and coordinating their teaching so we wouldn't disturb each other. Also, the walls were about two inches thick and had good noise canceling properties. 

One day one of the walls fell down on one of the students. I don't think they got hurt, but it caused a lot of excitement.

Did you like school or have a favorite subject?

I was indifferent about most of it. However, I did like field day. All of the school came out for competitions with relay races of various kinds. The best part was the snow cones we had. 

Thanks. Another time I would like to hear more stories about your school days.

A Second Look--February 23, 2016

We had a warm, beautiful day on Saturday with temperatures reaching the 60's. It was so nice to feel warm air and sunshine again. I used this opportunity to survey the far back to see what has been going on for the last month or so since I took a look. The normal effects of winter were everywhere. Lots of downed branches, although no huge ones. Also fence posts and rails had fallen down probably in part to the weather and in part to the deer.

The ground was very soggy and muddy where it wasn't covered with crunchy snow. However, among the snow and the mud, there were signs that spring is on its way including my first snowdrop bloom.

Here are a few things I saw this week

 during a Second Look.

Shallow snow covered much of the lower back. There was a crunchy layer of ice on top of it that made it fun to walk on.

There was abundant evidence that the deer spent the winter with us.

Among the leaves and weeds, I saw my first snowdrop.

Closer to the house, I saw daffodil leaves emerging. No crocus however.

On Friday, we had several bluebirds visiting the suet feeder and had some good sightings of both males and females.  Notice of muted colors of the female on the left compared to the bright blue of the male on the right. (That's a male house finch behind it.)

The big surprise was the bluebird's nest in on of the nest boxes. I'm not sure when it was built, but I do know that I cleaned out the box last fall. It's too early to lay eggs, so I'm not sure what's going on.