🎶 Hey June, Don’t Make It Bad / Take a Sad Song and Make it Better 🎶

I hope you don’t mind having a Beatles song stuck in your head for the next few days, but I thought their advice for Jude also worked really well for June. I’m hoping June can help us all figure out how to help each other through this difficult time. I’m here today to share some flowers and a few things that have brought me joy this week. I didn’t publish a post on Wednesday and feel like I really need to catch up with you all!

There’s a lot to share in this week’s flower report. This is just a smattering of the blooms (or almost blooms!) around the yard. I have to admit that I’m most excited about all of the blackberry blooms that are in the opening picture. And that’s just one little section of our blackberries! They still have a long way to go and depend on unpredictable rainy weather, so I’m trying not to count my chickens before they hatch. (but there are a LOT of flowers and I’m already tasting some wonderful blackberry custards!)

Matthew managed to get the tomatoes and basil that he started in the basement into the ground this week. Success! We’ve been picking radishes straight out of the garden, rinsing them with water from the rain barrel, and eating them in the yard while playing. We’ve picked a couple of our planted strawberries, but have been pleased with an abundance of wild strawberries (thanks to our illness, we’ve fallen behind on mowing which has allowed those little weeds to grow like mad).

A Few Exciting Things:

• Ruth Ozeki was a clue in one of this week’s NY Times Mini Puzzles!
• We finished our history curriculum for the year! I cried when we finished our big, fat history book. It felt like such an accomplishment and I learned so much! Farewell medieval history – see you again in another four years. We’re moving on to Late Renaissance and Early Modern History in August. Queen Elizabeth – here we come! (Here’s a link to the textbook we’ll be reading from | And here’s a link to next year’s curriculum) I get very excited about reading from these history books.
• We’ve had some rainy and cool afternoons, which has meant a return of poetry teatimes. We do these more regularly during the colder months, but the outdoors is too enticing during the spring and summer. I was so happy to make us a pot of tea, pull out some poetry books, and spend the afternoon speaking in an English accent.
• Do you get Emily P. Freeman’s emails? If so, did you read her recent one about spontaneously buying a house in the mountains? That beautiful brick house resting in the shade? (I’m sorry, I can’t link to it because it was an email and I don’t feel right about sharing her pictures.) The house is a delight and reminds me of Beatrix Potter. That email brought me so much joy and I’ve already read it 4-5 times! Subscribing to Emily’s emails are totally worthwhile even if you don’t necessarily subscribe to her belief system.
• I was going to buy this Richard Scarry Busytown game for the kids at Christmas, but the price shot up to over $100. I saw that it dropped back to around $20 a couple of weeks ago and snapped it up (it’s now gone up to nearly $50. I am surprised to see the price fluctuate so much.). Bryce, Bronwyn, and I have all loved playing it! No one gets frustrated because it’s a game that promotes cooperation and teamwork, the board is big enough for even the clumsiest fingers to navigate, and there are no rules to make it harder to win. It’s just plain fun and has been wonderful for these rainy afternoons. I think it’s even worth the $50, given how much we’ve enjoyed it.

---

Today I want to leave you with a poem that we read several times during one of our teatimes. It’s from a book for children and I think it’s one we can all get something from. (And I’m sure you know about my love for snails.)

The Snail

The snail doesn’t know where he’s going
and he doesn’t especially care,
one place is as good as another
and here is no better than there.

The snail’s unconcerned with direction
but happily goes on his way
in search of specifically nothing
at two or three inches a day.
– Jack Prelutsky

I just love poetry that rhymes. I can’t help it! 🐌

I hope you all have a weekend full of exactly what you need. Take good care.