Friday | We Will Ignore the Sickness

Hello dearies (or dearie squearies, as I call my little ones). It’s Friday and we’ve completed our second full week of nearly everyone being sick at the same time, with no end in sight. Today’s post is just going to ignore all of that and pretend like it’s not happening, okay? Instead – let’s talk about something much more interesting: the weather and nature!

This week has presented a wonderful variety of weather. Hot and humid with thunderstorms; cool and cloudy; sunny and windy; a day full of light rain. I love variety! And so does my yard:

All shades of green are represented in the grass, trees, and other natural debris. The trees in the backyard have nearly covered up my view of the sunrise again thanks to all of the leaves that have grown in the last couple of weeks. I love watching the sun each morning but I’m thankful for a little help with blocking it this time of year – it is especially blinding! (And because we’re studying medieval history in our homeschool, I have been thinking a lot about how natural it must have been to worship the sun. Just this week we read about the Aztecs and Incans. I love our history textbook – here’s a link to its table of contents.)

The hummingbird feeder attached to the window in front of my desk has been very active this week. Most mornings I hear the vibration of the birds before there’s any sun in the sky and never even see them, but the combination of their little squeaks and the sound of their wings is unmistakable. I think we have honeysuckle growing right under the feeder now. It wasn’t there last year and we haven’t planted any; we think maybe they spread some honeysuckle seeds here while spending time at the feeder last year? It’s pretty cool.

Many of my blogging friends have written about the Merlin app. I downloaded it several weeks ago (maybe months now? Time passes very quickly) and it has been fun. I’ve started setting up the recorder as I’m at my desk writing and just this week I’ve picked up black and white warblers, chipping sparrows, a red shouldered hawk, song sparrows, hermit thrushes, cardinals, and rose-breasted grosbeaks. I wouldn’t have known any of those without the app (even the cardinals because they were singing a song I wasn’t familiar with). Sometimes I think it’s cheating – Mary Oliver didn’t have an app to help her identify what she was hearing or seeing. But most of the time I’m thankful for the technology. 🎶 Look around, look around, at how lucky we are to be alive right now. 🎶 (Hamilton)

We’ve had several nights of sleeping with the windows open and the kitten sits there, twitching her little bobtail, and quivering with excitement. I’m sort of doing the same thing, especially while watching black clouds make their way towards us. I love summer rainstorms – how they can come on so suddenly and pour so heavily. And in the blink of an eye: sunshine is back.

Our special summer learning is coming together. I am looking forward to what’s in store! We will take two weeks off in June and then get started again for the summer. We’ll still be spending time reading, writing, and doing math but are nearly finished with our history and science curricula. We’ll pick those back up in the fall with new textbooks and focuses, but this summer will be nice and slow with these fun books to keep things interesting. I’m especially looking forward to reading the Moomin books aloud.

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I have no idea what this weekend will have in store for us, to be honest. I’m trying to be optimistic. I hope that your weekend is exactly what you need. Take good care!