a good tuesday

Today began with me breathing a sigh of relief that it was not actually the equinox today, as I had thought.  I don't know why, but it usually takes me three days to a week to actually feel satisfied that we have celebrated the significant days of the year; to focus it all on one day is just too much for me. So! We got to slow it down and just start talking about some of the autumn stories...But first, we decided to clean the nature table.

This was so much fun, the girls would happily volunteer for this job every week, I think.  Dusting every candle holder, scraping wax off the dresser, washing the mirror, taking a fresh look at things...it had been a while, shall we say.

 What I am not showing you: the seventy million acorns we have from last year, and the year before that, which have been sitting in a bowl on the top of the fridge, collecting dust, cobwebs, and waiting for who-knows-what to come along.

 A black cat and a bowl of the harvest - pretty good Fall stuff, don't you think?!

The on to Out.  Tuesdays have become our "Reading Hike" days, so out we went, with fancy sandwiches (um...pb and j for one, goat cheese, cucumbers and pesto for the rest) and water bottles to a hike we'd never done before, from the other end of the lake.

It was gorgeous!!  We decided to try and hike to the Lady of the Lake to see if she was still there, but after an hour I thought we probably still had 20 minutes or so to go and spirits were flagging a bit in the very warm weather, so we turned around and found a beautiful spot by the water to sit.

What I am not showing  you:  the two piles of scat we came across - and yes, I have photos, but they are a little gross, even for me.  What was interesting was that they were chock full of pawpaw seeds! My first and lingering thought was bear, but I acknowledge that my imagination was on fire due to some recent bear sightings in this area...it kept my adrenaline pumping though, realizing that I've never hiked with my girls in an area with bear. Hmmm.  Anyway, I'm pretty sure it was dog. Or a verrrry large raccoon.

We read a book this morning called Blockhead: The Life of Fibonacci, which was awesome and provided such good fodder for discussion.  The rest of the day was spent finding Fibonacci numbers everywhere, and noticing how often we found spirals in our world...

 The hull of a buckeye - a Fibonacci three!

Barely visible - a spider web with its spiraled design, and a beautiful ghost leaf (or "tissue" as Eliza calls it).  Our hike and short read (we finished Half Magic by Edward Eager) took us much of the afternoon...

We ended our day at the library, then home for dinner without Papa and some reading before bed...

What I'm not showing you:  boffing! Do kids do this where you are? It's a fad around here - you cover a stick of some sort - think the size of a sword - with foam rubber and lots of duct tape, and you run around having battles, playing capture the flag and such with other sword-crazy kids.  I think Eliza liked watching more than boffing...but it seemed great fun anyway! And sponsored by the library no less!

What I will show you - what Dan is doing while I am blogging...

one week and some days to comps...Dan, you are rocking that Norton Anthology of English Renaissance Drama.