Hard Work U

Bouldering. It's climbing, without a harness.

 In our homeschool this week:
Flower got started on Singapore Story Problem 4. She just gets it. I keep trying to get her to draw a graph cause I know she'll need it later but right now she just doesn't see the need. We started on long division. She's like Feeche, mathematics is just her deal. Even with that, IEW Fairy Tales and Fables is her new favorite thang. She wrote her second story this week and did it all on her own. She loves our little writing group (and so do I!) and IEW makes it so do-able. Latin is cruising along, history and science. Feeche spends hours a week writing and it shows. His organization and cohesiveness has improved greatly.



House Work: Dr. Fix-it installed a door, a real door, a real wood door,  (maple, pre-hung, stained and beautiful) in the basement bathroom (our only working shower right now so this room sees a lot of traffic!). This sure beats the torn and tattered, duct taped shower curtain that was there before. Tomorrow he'll be putting a ceiling in the bathroom. This week-end we'll get the rest of the mudding done on the upstairs bedrooms and then next week-end we'll texturize ceilings and walls, paint and then, maybe, just maybe, we'll move up there, despite the missing trim.

By the Books: We finished the Wrinkle in Time quartet, (including Many Waters) and went back to Laura, picking up  By the Shores of Silver Lake. We went to the pageant at DeSmet this year and were sorely disappointed, more so because our day there a year ago was delightful. Our literary friends, the Enak's have suggested the Betsy Tacy series and we are looking forward to delving into them. I picked up The Left Hand of Darkness by LeGuin this week.  I'm not loving it- it's not a book that you love. But the plot and theme is intriguing enough to really capture my imagination. It's one of those books that is hard to wrap your imagination around. Hopefully I'll get a review up when I'm done. I'm curious what LeGuin will do with what she has started.

What's cooking

Sweet potatoes, winter squash and pumpkin. Mmmm. Love the smell of fresh squash being cut open. I like it plain but KB drizzles butter and brown sugar on it. I cooked some pumpkin today and this week-end we'll be eating a pumpkin pie. Just because.

On the homestead
 Hauled manure from Green Acres (you wanted to know that, right?!- thank-you, Cyndi and Stan! You get the best neighbor award again!) for the garden and spent an afternoon getting beds dug in. We are on the look-out for more cause we plan to open up a couple of other areas to make a bigger squash bed and to put in sweet potatoes along with the russets and reds. Harvested Brussels sprouts and more parsley. Dried pumpkin and squash seeds and lemon verbena. Love, love, love lemon verbena. I purchased a way too twiggy potted and pitiful specimen at the end of season clearance and have been transplanting it and gently pruning, along with lavender, basil and rosemary. Scents and greenery to get us through the long winter on the Territories.

Words for the week
Voluble -Marked by a ready flow of speech; fluent
obdurate- Hardened in wrongdoing or wickedness; stubbornly impenitent:
specious-Having the ring of truth or plausibility but actually fallacious, deceptively attractive
fecund-Capable of producing offspring or vegetation; fruitful, marked by intellectual productivity
pertinacious-Holding tenaciously to a purpose, belief, opinion, or course of action
perfidy-Deliberate breach of faith; calculated violation of trust; treachery

Field Trip: Rock Climbing. It's hard work, on many levels. Wish there were a wall closer cause my kids would live there. They got in the car starving, exhausted and complaining that their fingers and fore-arms hurt, slept the whole ride home, woke up and asked when we were going again. Our kinda fun.