Garden, Grindstone, Good Grief

Ok so it's been a while since I posted. Life got busy. After moving to town and hating it, we relocated yet again. Now I live in Monmouth, a jewel among towns, where I hope to stay for a good long while. We're renting a cute little bungalow in a neighborhood of cute little bungalows, and ours is on the last street on the edge of 'town' so the back yard opens out onto farmland. Everything I need from town is withing walking distance and I spend a good deal of time walking here and there. I have a good sized front yard with some immature cherry trees, a dogwood, a Japanese maple and lots of birdhouses, and a big back yard with an apple tree, poplars, and raised beds, in which I'm growing pumpkins this year. I just put in some zinnias, gazanias, and impatients in the front bed and one gorgeous electric-salmon pink dahlia that blows my mind every time I look out the window. I also put in a Japanese painted fern that Maria gave me back at the red house (I've been packing it around, I love it so) and as soon as this blessed rain pauses, I have a rhody to put in and Addison's hydrangea needs a spot to grow.

So I've been gardening and teaching and toddler chasing these past couple of months, trying to get the kids all caught up on their schoolwork. We're a bit behind, having moved twice this year, and I want them back on schedule by fall, so our noses are firmly affixed to the grindstone. In an effort to get back to art history, which I dropped about a year ago, I printed out several paintings by DaVinci and posted them on the wall for the kids to take a look at. One of the paintings I chose was Lady with an Ermine. I pointed out the ferret to Rosie, my little animal lover, and then I went on to give a brief biography of Da Vinci...his work on human anatomy, his famous frescoes, the lure of the Mona Lisa, his attempts at invention. Rosie was thoroughly impressed. "I didn't know a ferret could do all that!"