Tuesday, February 16, 2010

And for Mother, Gorgeous Yellow Tulips

Okay, Thing One here, to report that Monday was not the day of my dreams. Thing Two did not appear at the door dressed and ready to go. On the other hand, that meant I got to go for a walk on my own, a kind of wander through the woodlot.

Since I won't go out and leave Thing Two sleeping after I've got the kitchen stove up to fever pitch and piled a lovely lot of wood into it, in case the place goes up in flames and she sleeps through the fire alarm, I called her downstairs before I left and gave her a to-do list. Just call me the wicked stepmother, and call her Cinderella.

The woodlot walk was good. One of these moments I'm going to get out the Audubon Society  Field Guide to North American Mammals and look up the big sort of dog like tracks I saw, to see if I can figure out how to tell coyote tracks from fox tracks. That will be a lot simpler than the other thing I wish I could learn, how to haul wood out of the woods with a horse. A Newfoundland pony seems about the right size for me and the wood I have.

I've been reading Guerrilla Learning, How to Give Your Kids a Real Education with or without School and thinking that I might be a lot less fiendish mother if I took the suggestions in it to heart. One of the interesting things is that they keep giving me quizzes about my own learning experiences and learning goals. I keep reading them and thinking, I have no answers to these questions.

The other thing I fall over is the idea that I just might be too old to learn to work in the woods with a horse. I can fell and limb trees all right. I took a silviculture course back in 1987 and I have a nice chainsaw and safety gear and like to use all of it. There is plenty of work to do, even without removing any wood from the woodlot. But, there is also wood that we could use for heating and for building projects and I know I never want to let a piece of heavy equipment in my woodlot again, so it's horse's muscles or my muscles.

When I got back to the house Cinderella was hard at it and had got quite a bit on her list done. We had breakfast and admired the two large bunches of gorgeous yellow tulips she had gotten for me for Valentine's Day. They are a truly wonderful gift, one that I would never have chosen for myself and yet perfect. They have opened more and more each day and finally yesterday evening I was able to catch their amazing lemony scent. I know I will be looking for them in the bulb catalog for this fall.

There is no more fortunate Thing One in this world than I, to be blessed with such a generous, spirited and amazing companion as my darling Thing Two.

3 comments:

  1. Hello.
    Just stopping by to say hi from Halifax. Celeste Cote directed me to your blog:) I am currently homeschooling the youngest of my 5 kids, a 13 year old girl. Celeste is partnered with my oldest son:) I don't have a blog but I am on facebook and on twitter.

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  2. Hi Susanna,
    Thanks for dropping by, I'll look for you on facebook, it is great to expand our network of home schooling folks. We get up that way off and on and also are glad if we can host people down at this corner of the province.

    How long have you been homeschooling your daughter and did you homeschool your other children as well?

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  3. My daughter has never attended school. We started officially homeschooling in the fall of 1991:) My oldest 2 boys who are 24 and 22, were homeschooled through grade 12. My third and fourth boys entered the local highschool at grade 11 and 10 respectively.

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