Photo Hunt: Sad

Saying good-bye to the squirrels at the end of a camping week-end always causes sadness for Shelby and Annie. For other photo hunts using sad go here.

Annabella and Oakleaf : Hardy Hydrangeas on Lake Roosevelt

When I first saw a hedge of brilliant blue hydrangeas in a coastal town in Oregon I wanted those at my house. Alas, I have tried, but I just could never get the Nikko Blues to be successful in my dry climate and sandy soil. I read somewhere that Annabella and Oakleaf Hydrangeas grow well in those conditions. They surely do! I have fallen in love with both of these types of hydrangeas. They each have a long blooming season. The flowers dry nicely and the leaves create interest in the garden also.The Annabella creates that fresh combination of bright white and lush green in a shrub. The blooms often get over 10" in diameter. I love it when the white blooms dry and turn to a lovely pale green color. Whether freshly cut or dried on the plant, the blooms are perfect in bouquets.
I saw a picture in a gardening magazine a few years ago of a hedge of Oakleaf Hydrangeas after the leaves turned in the fall. The colors were remarkable. Mine are just beginning to turn.The Oakleaf is one of the few hydrangeas native to the United States.They bloom in single or double white flowers, then turn a beautiful mauve color that turns deeper with the fall colors.
As you begin your wish list for your next year's garden, you may want to consider either or both of these hydrangeas. I guess I will have to let other gardeners be successful with the brilliant blue, pink, and violet colored ones. If you want to see gorgeous hydrangeas grown in the area south of me, go visit my blog friend JBelle and take a garden tour. You can find her stunning photos here.

Reflections on Ponds in the Fall

Trees take on a whole new look when they are reflected in the smooth surface of a small pond.
The sun was in the right position so I wanted to see what I would catch in a photo image of the newly cleaned pond. I was surprised at the reflections I caught.

In the pond behind the house, the trees haven't grown as tall yet. The sun and clouds create a whole different reflection here. I think the reflections confuse the cats a bit, but none of our feline friends have tried to catch a bird in the tree in the reflection in the pond yet!

To Autumn

To Autumn

1.

SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

2.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

3.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

-John Keats

Sibling Assignment # 75: Just Standing on the Radley Porch Was Enough

This week's sibling assignment came from Silver Valley Girl. Without reading hers I almost wrote a similar post about the same teacher and a similar lesson. We often agree on things and both of us remember the poetry teaching of Mr. Bachman. You can find her detailed post and video here. Raymond Pert has reentered the blog world after being away. His will soon be found here.
"Look back on your years as a student at Kellogg High School, and write about a memorable moment in one of the classes you took. This could be a postive or negative moment, but it has to be a very vivid memory, and one you can retell with much detail."

Instead of my experiences with poetry I wrote about a memorable moment with a classic novel. The spring of my sophomore year we had a student teacher. We held class in the cafeteria after lunch and she had a podium she stood behind as we sat at the lunch tables. Classic literature in junior high and high school so far had included Great Expectations, Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, and Silas Marner. That was what I thought you read in English classes. Our student teacher taught To Kill a Mockingbird. The book was one of those Literary Guild books that came once a month for my mom. I remember it on the bookshelf in the bedroom.

One thing that stood out with reading this novel was that it wasn't in a poor part of England and the characters didn't speak in verse. To Kill a Mockingbird had characters that hung out and played in the summer. They lived in a town in rural American that I could relate to. In reading this book I understood that a novel in class could be about common people dealing with uncommon events. Many of us knew some man that created mystery like Boo Radley. I could believe I might find trinkets left in a tree. It was a rare occastion that anyone saw an African American person in Kellogg, but I knew the difference between families that lived in Okieville, Little Italy, or the big houses by the Bunker Hill Office Building.

Maybe it was having a different teacher that was also someone I had admired in our neighborhood growing up. Perhaps it was those spring afternoons when the sun shone in and we listened to her read passages of this book aloud to us. The memorable moment in that English class was when she read the last chapter. After Scout walked Boo Radley home she spoke my favorite passage from the book.
"Atticus was right. One time he said you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them. Just standing on the Radley porch was enough."
Something shifted inside of me that day. That quote from the book and movie stayed with me.

The next year as classmates learned of the deaths of their fathers, brothers, uncles, and grandfathers in the Sunshine Mine fire I tried to walk in their shoes. A few years later when my brother was in an accident at the Zinc Plant I tried to walk in his shoes. It took many years to understand the impact and consequences of those events.

Today I reflect on this passage when I hear students taunting one weaker than them. I help them understand empathy. It is especially difficult when our native students travel to a rural town to play basketball and they are called insulting names or people shake their fists at the bus. Can these young adults really stand in those shoes?

This book and movie are two of my all-time favorites. Our students read this book as freshmen so my last year's class is reading it right now. As they carry their copies to class I get excited and ask them about their experience with the book.
" Hey... who names their kids Jem and Scout and Dill, '' one joked.
"Stay with it," I replied,"trust me... you will love it."

I loved watching clips this week-end of my favorite scenes from the movie. Just hearing the theme song reminded me of Scout and Jem and Dill and summers and the trial and the night Boo Radley came out. If you haven't read the book or watched the movie do it before you watch this clip. It may be a spoiler!

A Day of Work: Fall "To Do" List

the greenhouse waiting to be filled again

I felt at peace this morning reading Silver Valley Girl's post called A Day of Rest here. It is such a contrast from my day yesterday. My sister deservingly took a day of rest and slept, did some reading and writing, plus attempted to get over her cold.
I was energized to have A Day of Work. Our school honored Native American Day on Friday so I had the gift of a three day week-end. Friday I toured our gardens and captured a photo catalog of how plants looked, what needed to be divided, and what perennials needed to be moved.
Yesterday we decided to knock off a "to do list" of fall chores. Even though frost hasn't hit, JEJ decided it was time to move the plants into the greenhouse. I love this fall ritual of saying goodbye to the empty summer greenhouse and filling it once again with the plants that winter over. These geraniums will continue to grow and bloom as they adapt to their winter home. In a few months we can begin to propagate new starts of many plants to have ready in the spring.Our cat Sweet William is in there somewhere. He has already found a spot to sleep among the pots. It is his favorite spot in the winter.
It was also time to make use of the raspberries and zucchini that had a summer rest in the freezer. There is nothing finer on a sunny fall morning that the smell of raspberry jam bubbling on the stove. I have heard it is okay to use a canner on a ceramic top stove and then heard it isn't. I didn't take a chance and used the burner on the barbecue. I felt a bit like a pioneer woman out canning my jam over a hot fire (in this case propane!)
The frozen zucchini was made into bread, but I ran out of ingredients so the rest will be baked today. Now my canning shelf and freezer are once again full of goodies for the winter.

There is that balance between work and rest. My sister leads a very busy life and that day of rest was exactly what she needed. It was my time for a day of work and I enjoyed the feeling of accomplishment as I ended the day with bowl of homemade chili, a warm fire, and a good book.