A Peak at the September Garden

I am watching the burning bush get tinges of pink as the leaves begin to turn. One Virginia Creeper leaf is bright red. Other plants are just getting a spurt of growth. Here is a garden tour. Above another morning glory to brighten up the gate.

I so enjoy the grapes before they ripen.

 I love watching the leaves turn on the Oak Leaf Hydrangeas.

The trumpet vines are outdoing themselves right now! Please Mr. Frost... give our gardens a bit more time.

Teacher or Learner?

 a view from my classroom door

Do I teach more or learn more in my profession? Each day as I learn more about my students and how they view the world I realize you never stop learning.  Even though I have students two or three years  I continue to learn more about them each year. I realize part of that is because I am their writing teacher and students often share more of their inner thoughts and events of life through writing.

Just today I was reminded how death has recently touched numerous students in ways I never realized. I  learned that one student that appears tough on the outside was a bit scared when we did some research on the beginnings of some popular urban legends today. I also learned that a new student I just met is a pow wow dancer and travels all over the northwest performing with her family in pow wows and has lots to teach me.
How much do I really teach? I often see myself more as a coach or guide than a teacher. I don't teach them to read words or write the alphabet. I do coach them as to how to think deeper and respond more fully. I also guide them in how to take risks. I also learn how to become a better reader and writer right along with them.
Yes, I am more of a learner than a teacher. Perhaps that is why I stay in teaching. I reread a short story today that I have probably taught six times and learned more. I am challenging myself to become a better mathematician this year to assist students that struggle with math in a learning lab. I struggle with math so I am working side by side with these students so we can think and problem solve together. That will be a huge learning curve for me during this school year. I was really nervous as I took the pre-assessment today along with my students. Perhaps it is a good idea for them to see us out of our comfort zone.

I will continue to explore this idea of teaching and learning this year while I am relearning how to do geometry!

Images of Late Summer

I really love teaching school, but I don't love leaving my gardens this time of year. This is when the annual flowers come on strong. This is when the tomatoes are ready to can. This is when the sun sinks behind the mountain a bit earlier, but the gardens are warmed by the golden light of the gloaming. Plus, I miss the kittens during the day. I caught Grayson on the bench by the pond above.

 

The colors in the verbena are very vivid now.

 

I really love the colors in this coleus plant.

 

The area around the pond is a lovely place to eat dinner.

Our morning glory are finally blooming!

Thank You Walt Whitman

 traveling north on Highway 395 at sunset

 "This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body." Walt Whitman

Leaves of Grass

Page preface, first edition

Published in 1855 

I have thought much about this quote over the summer.  I want it visible in order to reflect on it as I move toward another season of life. It will be reminder of what I shall attempt to do. 

I also think I will read Leaves of Grass.

Many Houses and Home

 "Never make your home in a place. Make a home for yourself inside your own head. You'll find what you need to furnish it - memory, friends you can trust, love of learning, and other such things. That way it will go with you wherever you journey.”~Tad Williams

He Has Lived In Many Houses

furnished rooms, flats, a hayloft, a tent, motels, under a table, under an overturned rowboat, in a villa (briefly) but not, as yet, a yurt. In these places he has slept, eaten, put his forehead to the window glass, looking out. He's in a stilt-house now, the water passing beneath him half the day; the other half it's mud. The tides do this: they come, they go, while he sleeps, eats, puts his forehead to the window glass. He's moving soon: his trailer to a trailer park, or to the priory to live among the penitents but in his own cell, with wheels, to take him, when it's time to go, to: boathouse, houseboat with a little motor, putt-putt, to take him across the sea or down the river where at night, anchored by a sandbar at the bend, he will eat, sleep, and press his eyelids to the window of the pilothouse until the anchor-hauling hour when he'll embark again toward his sanctuary, harborage, saltbox, home. -Thomas Lux

Photo Opportunities

I work well when I have systems. I don't have a very good system for organizing my photos. I know what I need to do, but then just when I am about to do it, I take a hundred more photos. It was fun today to decide on photos to frame for display. It was also fun to take a tour of the last year in my life through the photos. I have taken some pictures I really like and I have taken way too many pictures of exactly the same thing. It is so hard to delete pictures. I know I have backed them up. I know they are on my blog, or Facebook, or in an online album. I still have to delete them. Here are some of the favorites I found today. The one above is of Shelby in the gazebo in the spring.

Lake Roosevelt in the spring.

amarylis

 

Annie obsessed with squirrels.

 

snowy trail at Sherman Creek

Grayson and Junebug come home.