Salamander

Joe found this beauty yesterday...

Summer Drift/Poetry Monday

We wrapped up school at the end of May and spent two glorious months enjoying the best summer weather for the last few years. After two wet, rainy summers this one has been hot, mostly dry, with one beautiful sunny day following another. But then drift set in.. Our days languished... Hobbits grew bored... So I started school which surprisingly was well received and we have finished one week already and today is the first Poetry Monday of the new school year (we started last Tuesday).

Piping Down the Valleys Wild
By William Blake

Piping down the valleys wild,
Piping songs of pleasant glee,
On a cloud I saw a child,
And he laughing said to me:

"Pipe a song about a lamb!"
So I piped with merry cheer.
"Piper, pipe that song again";
So I piped: he wept to hear.

"Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe;
Sing thy songs of happy cheer!"
So I sang the same again.
While he wept with joy to hear.

"Piper, sit thee down and write
In a book that all may read."
So he vanished from my sight;
And I plucked a hollow reed.

And I made a rural pen,
And I stained the water clear,
And I wrote my happy songs
Every child may joy to hear.

Moonflowers

We're shifting gears a little here at the Hobbit homeschool. Baseball is finished for the year and soccer has begun.(Soccer is much more low key!! No travelling to games!!)School paperwork is in the future. So is canning tomatoes. I guess I could be weeding but I'm going to pour myself a glass of iced tea, sit on the deck, and read Planet Narnia by Michael Ward It has been a lovely summer so far. And the moonflowers are blooming!

My Family and Other Animals

This is the best read aloud for boys who think they are too old for read alouds! It's great for summer too. This is my second time reading this one aloud...I only hope I retain my composure during the part about Widdle and Puke better than I did last time!

Fallen off the face of the Earth?

No, but we sure have been busy. May hit with a bang and we have been juggling two baseball league schedules, wrapping up the school year (with testing for little hobbit) planting the garden, celebrating four birthdays, mowing lawns (ours and three others) and Papa Hobbit had rotator cuff surgery. Whew! And today the peeps arrived!!Aren't they adorable?

Mr. Beethoven at the zoo

Yesterday we were good and finished school but we skipped out on the Lenten Spring cleaning and went to the zoo. (This fellow was very miffed with us when we moved Mr. Beethoven out of reach!)

Poetry Monday

Pippa's Song
by Robert Browning

The year's at the spring,
And day's at the morn;
Morning's at seven;
The hillside's dew-pearled;

The lark's on the wing;
The snail's on the thorn:
God's in His Heaven--
All's right with the world!