As we despair over the mess in the Gulf, there is a glimmer of hope in a new picture book.  Saving the Baghdad Zoo is a brief but significant story of the kindness and care we, the people who wage war, are capable of.  I read it sitting at my desk and promptly handed it off to one of the animal-loving kids who came in just now.  We are capable.  We can save things.  When generosity and compassion are what motivate us, we are capable of great things.  Think about that for a while, British Petroleum.

If you want to see what I look like in the summer (and often throughout the year) take a look at Barbara Bottner’s latest picture book Miss Brooks Loves Books! (and I don’t).  Illustrated by Michael Emberley the face of the VERY reluctant reader on the cover tells the whole story.  The challenge is on!  Miss Brooks, the passionate librarian, and the unnamed narrator, who defines the words ‘reluctant reader’ are in gentle and respectful conflict as the former is certain there is a book out there for the later.  I especially love the narrator’s Halloween poem – “Eek!/ A Freak!”  - and the illustrations of Miss Brooks with her feet on top of piles and piles of books.  I shan’t tell you who wins the battle but I will tell you what….it’s WARTS.  Find it at a library near you.

Sometimes it takes a picture book to light a small spark.  I have read so many that have moved me on to “real” books about the same subject.  This summer’s motivator is Signed, Abiah Rose, written and illustrated by Diane Browning.  Abiah lives on a farm with a family of artistic folks bit it is farming that takes their time.  Abiah cannot stop painting things – Pap’s wagon, the side of the newly painted barn – until finally she is given colors and board on which to paint so as not to spoil the proper look of things.  It turns out that her portraits are in high demand, but there is no reason to sign her name.  She’s a girl, after all, and her proper work will be to keep house and raise a family.  Still, in each of her painting she painted one small rose to identify it as hers.  From the Author’s Note, “Art history books have traditionally neglected the work of female artists.  I was not aware of the rich contribution of women to pre-twentieth century American art until I saw Mirra Bank’s PBS documentary Anonymous Was a Woman, and its accompanying book.”  Needless to say I have ordered the documentary and the book.  Thank you, Ms. Browning.  Ms. Browning is a newcomer to the field of illustrated literature and I certainly hope she will return again and again.

Dear Library,

Thank you for putting the Calvin and Hobbes book in the collection.  It got me to make a transmogrifier.

Sincerely,

Ben McG

(I am not in the least bit worried about Ben making a transmogrifier.  Well…..maybe I am the least bit worried…..how bad can it be?)

The amount of pleasure I take in this small piece of earth should probably be shameful but it isn’t.  I am in a state of awe every day at the beauty of it.  The birds are glorying in the birdbath, splashing happily not matter how close I stand.  They know I mean them no harm.  They land on the patio now as I sip my morning coffee.  What joy!

The black garbage bin the boy-child and I created at the beginning of the summer does its job nicely.  I dumped beautiful dirt into the new compost bin I created yesterday morning from nothing but found materials and a $2 sledge hammer.  I was off to Lowe’s yesterday to buy a length of hose and some chicken wire – the first to extend the hose INTO the garden so the soaker was watering food not grass and the second to build a second compost pile that would allow for more air circulation and better turning.  The black garbage can can’t hold everything when one eats mostly vegetables.  On my way to mega-hardware I stopped at a grage sale because there was a length of hose hanging on one of the tables.  How much?  “$1, and it works just fine.  I put those ends on m’self,” he smiled.  And you have sledge hammer? (I had intended to borrow one from someone to break up a cement blob-like thing under the black garbage compost.)  “Yup.  $2 and that handle will last you a long time.  Don’t you worry about that black tape,” and he nodded sagely and confidently and I trusted him.  So for $3 I had almost $70 worth of supplies.  And then I thought about it and decided against purchasing the chicken wire.  Maybe I could make the frame for this new pile out of something else. 

I commandeered three pieces of trellis-y looking stuff from the former husband and Voila!  The new compost bin took shape.  It took almost no time to create it and the soil is happily ensconced in its new home. I was going to toss the old black garbage can but have decided to build the compost in there and then transfer it to the new pile when it becomes dirt. 

I cooked the first zucchini from the garden last night.

So…. on Saturday I grew dirt and food.  It doesn’t get much better than this!

And so it goes.

My life is full
of wills and won’ts.
Will it rain
or won’t it?
Will the zucchini be large enough
or won’t it?
Will this….
Won’t that….
This morning the birds
landed next to me
as I sat on the patio reading.
Who needs a book
when the poetry chitters
beside me,
today’s own miracle.

It is difficult in the summer to find the time to write – uninterrupted and quiet.  But then I can always make excuses (or find reasons) NOT to do something:  too hot, too cold, too busy, not nearly busy enough.  What I have found, though, in these days of the backyard, is a certain peace.  In the early mornings as the sun is rising and the evenings when she sets I sit and watch as life drifts over the patch of earth beyond the parking lot.  The birds have found the birdbath.  The plants have found the soil.  Last night I could feel it all happening, feel it in the marrow of my bones.  It was as though my own feet were planted in the soil and I too was being watered and supping on earth nutrients.  This morning a much needed rain fell and I walked the garden in my pajamas, feeling the drops on my arms and hair.  I raised my arms above my head, palms open and up.  The water touched them, filled them, and I was like the zucchini and beans and tomatoes and cilantro – celebrating being alive.

The dynamic and demographics of my corner of the unverse changes during the summer.  During the school year I spend my  time with the tortured, existential souls and spirits of adolescents.  During the summer my work world is filled with toddlers and babies and elementary school kids and the middle schoolers (who don’t know they are supposed to be tortured existential souls yet.)  Our number rise daily and the children enjoy each activity no matter how simple.  Calendars, photographs and such are here http://www.fairport.lib.oh.us/ if you’re interested.  But honestly – may favorite part is the story telling.  Our story hour numbers climb in the summer and I have an entirely new audience to entertain.  It’s awesome!  One of my favorite little dudes came in today with this:  “Miss Caffy, do you have any more Melvin books?”  Hmmm.  I dunno, Jack.  Let me look.  And low and behold there was one on the shelf and there is nothing, nothing in the world like the face of a child that changes from apprehension (Will my new favorite book be there?  Will she be able to find it? ) to pure delight and a glorious exclamation of “Mom!  She finded it!”  I have to tell you that after 15 years it still isn’t old and my eyes fill at the delight of a child and a new treasure.

PS  If you’re interested the book was  http://www.simonandschuster.com/specials/kids/behindthepulse/trucktown/

And so it goes

The first in a long time attempt to put photos on the blog.  The garden in June:
 

Wonders lie in words.  Whole entire worlds are revealed in metaphor and simile that are both true and untrue.  Lives, with exultant joy and limitless sadness, a given as a gift for the seekers of understanding.  To show children (and all people, for that matter) the power and importance of words is significant and essential.

The life of Pablo Neruda is fictionalized in Pam Munoz Ryan’s The Dreamer and it is a read to be savored.  The rhythm of Neruda’s poetry (with which I am ashamed to admit I was not familiar before this book) lives in every sentence, every phrase, every question.  Ryan has absorbed his work and his world into her skin and it comes out through her fingertips in a style that is brilliantly hers.  There is not one false step here and our sympathies for Nephtali are never clouded with something as mundane as pity.  We applaud his victories and cheer him on in the losses.  Nothing can destroy the heart of the poet.

As teachers and librarians we sometimes forget that writing is not just learning about punctuation and metaphor and simile.  Certainly those are important but most of the time it is more important to simply write your own truth, your own vision of the world and when you are an adolescent that truth is very close and very personal.  If we try to put it into the box of proper form we kill tiny pieces of the writer’s heart.  Patricia MacLachlan’s Word After Word After Word is the story of five fourth grade friends who explore and discover their own lives in a month long visit from a famous author.  Henry, one of the characters, says, “I write to save everything I have.” Yes.

Find these at a library near you.  And it’s summer reading time so sign up for the adult/teen/children’s program while you’re there.

And so it goes.

I think I might have a problem.  I can’t seem to stop.  Every time I turn around I’m doing it again.  I try and try to stop but it feels so good and smells so lovely. But I think I might have a problem because, you see, I’m running out of room.  I don’t have anywhere to plant more stuff.  I had to content myself today with putting a couple of petunias in a pot on the table on the deck.  I planted marigolds in the garden yesterday because the seeds I planted in mid-May washed away in the first big rain storm. And….

I HAVE BABIES!  The cherry tomato blossoms have turned into little green orbs promising popping flavor warmed in the sun.  They are better than pop rocks any day of the week. 

I am making notes already for next year’s garden.  What to plant where and rotating crops and things of that nature. 

Something is eating the dahlias.  And the giant sunflowers are there one day and gone the next.  It’s as though some alien swoops in at night and vanishes them.  I’m not kidding.  It’s weird.  Whatever it is doesn’t take them all at once.  It started by kidnapping the ones behind the stump and I just assumed some bird ate ‘em so I planted a red clematis back there and it is going to be lovely climbing on the fence.  But then whatever it is started kidnapping the ones beside the stump – not all of them at once which would make some sort of predatory sense – just one or two at a time.  One day they are there growing apace and the next day they are gone, poof as though they had never existed at all.  Weird.

On a side note, I bought some sweet cherries at the market today and they are perfect – just the right combination of tart and sweet and crisp and nice to bite in to. 

And that, my friends, is the news from the North Shore.  Off to read.  And I must start on some wash cloths and pot holders for a former student’s wedding.

And so it goes.

The back yard here on Orchard Street is configured so that each duplex has a patio, and a back, side and front yard.  Along the back is the parking lot/driveway and then there is another patch of yard that really doesn’t do much but finishes the property nicely.  The landlord keeps the grass mowed and takes care of a couple of decorative flower beds – one at the mouth of the drive and one between the two sets of duplexes.  Across from my patio and driveway, the patch of lawn was more a pile of detritus than anything else so last summer I put in a little patch of garden, as you know and this year I expanded it another 4-5 feet.  It looks quite lovely and lush.  There is a very large tree stump next to the garden and I have gazed at it for a year contemplating and pondering what could be done with it.  I have decided to make the stump and the two foot radius around it a have for our winged friends….
As with all such projects, it was more work than one thought.  First there was a question of the rubble.  I cleaned up al the brush and weeds, garnering 5 large yard waste bags full of …. well….. yard waste and a box of cement pieces parts that belonged to something once.  Next I turned over the soil around it.  Some of the soil was quite lovely but most was just icky city dirt so I bought a couple of bags of dirt from the local hardwareand spread that about.  It is dark and rich and lovely.  I planted short sunflowers in the front of the stump and they are doing nicely – growing apace and promising flowers and seeds for my friends.  Along the side and the back I planted giant sunflowers.  The ones on the side have come up and are leafing out and appear healthy enough but alas, the sunflowers behind the stump have yielded nothing at all.  I can’t think why unless it is lack of sunlight.  Hmmmm.  What can I plant in this shady spot that will grow and provide a haven for my feathered friends?  Suggestions?  Nothing is too absurd.  Then there was the dilemma about what to do with the top of the stump which induced much head scratching until an epiphany was reached and the adventure began….
A bird bath in the summer and a feeding spot in the winter.  YES!  But where, oh where could one acquire just the bowl of a birdbath?  I mean, birdbaths usually come with a top and a bottom and I didn’t need the bottom because I had been given a stump.  A giant plant dish would suffice suggested a friend.  So off I toddled, male-child in tow for the adventure.  First stop my favorite haunt for odd and discarded treasures from other people’s houses.  While that stop yielded a hoe for $1 and a small wooden ladder to decorate the front entrance, it did not yield anything that would serve as a birdy bathtub.  Next, back to the local hardware.  Alas, again.  They had no giant plant dishes but they did have a hanging birdbath that was glazed with blue and quite lovely but it was $30.  While I love and care about my flying neighbors, I was not about to drop $30 on a dish to sit on a tree stump.  Sigh.  Would I have to venture into the local mega-hardware to find what I needed?  Drat.  And then the boy child remembered an small, falling down shop that manufactured cement yard ornaments.  Let’s try there, Mom.  Oh honey, I think it’s closed and surely they will not sell just the top of the birdbath.  As we drove up to the shop it looked more falling down that ever and the yard was full of waist high weeds and not gaily painted Snow Whites and Virgin Marys.  But the gate was open and there were fresh hand-markered signs on the doors flapping in the wind.  See, Mom, it’s open.  I looked dubious.  He smiled.  We disembarked and flailed our way up to the open door.  Hulloooooo?  Silence.  Stephen King type silence.  Huuuuulllllllooooo?  Hey, Ma!  Look there’s a birdbath top!  And there lying in the weeds of the front yard was an in tact bird bath dish!  We could taste success.  Hullllooooo?!  More eagerly now and Stephen King be damned.  This went on for a bit and I was just about to leave $10 and a note when a disembodied voice came fromt he window of the house next door.  The house, by the way, looked exactly like part of Mr. King’s imaginary neighborhood.  Hello?  Can I help you?  Yes.please, We’d like to but the top of a birdbath.  I don’t think I got any of them, said the voice behind th darkened window.  Yes you do, said the boy, There’s one right over there, pointing.  Oh, said the voice behind the screen.  Make me an offer, then.  $10, said I squeakily.  Sure, and a hand opened the screen and snaked out the window to collect the money.  Boy placed the ten in the hand and scooped up the birdbath top and put it in the car.  Now it is ensconced on the stump awaiting the first bather and I am looking for perennials to plant around and behind that will say “Come here and rest our weary wings.”  Suggestions welcome.
And so it goes.