A Week, Briefly (5/25/20)

This was a week of many highs and lows.

I'm going to leave out the lows . . . which will make this a rather lopsided view of our family . . . but the highs are more fun . . . and I've already written ever so many sad posts.

Most places are still closed, and the ones that are open require face masks.  I'm not willing to put face masks on my young ones who find them frightening, so we had a school day on Memorial Day.

It was productive.

Brother started this little Bible storybook spending a week on each story;  I would read it to him 3 times, and then he would work on reading it.  Part way through we switched to taking turns reading pages.  By the end, he was reading whole stories by himself.  He finished it on Monday.

The teens and tweens wanted to catch the 50% sale at the thrift store, so they quickly made some face masks that wouldn't meet any safety standards anywhere but at least made them look compliant.

The store required it.

(I've studied the whole mask concept sincerely, and I've come to the personal conclusion that they do not work.  I do not condemn those who feel they are a good idea, but I do respectfully disagree.  That is why I did not provide my daughters with "proper" masks.)

They found some clothes, books, and movies that thrilled them.  They also helped me because I sent them to shop for some shirts for Mister Man, and they did a great job.

Some of our cabbages are ginormous!

We woke up to rain on Tuesday, so I scanned the radar videos, chose a place that was supposed to have at least a little bit of sun, and the younger 8 kids and I ran away from home.

Actually, what we did was start our "Get to know Missouri" summer state study.


We headed to Rich Hill which was a coal mining town, and we saw the giant coal shovel.

Can you even imagine the tractor that pulled this thing?  We saw a drawing of it, and this giant bucket looks like a regular shovel at the end of a regular tractor!!!

We also saw a regular coal shovel.

And we saw a train caboose.

It was still raining there, so after a picnic lunch under a pavillion and a bathroom stop at a gas station, we headed to Osage Village State Park which was the site of an Osage Indian Village from the late 1700s to the early/mid 1800s.  There's nothing there now but prairie grass and historical markers.

But there was also sun and wind and space and freedom and joy.

At least Baymax felt joy when Little Princess told him he was walking where ancient Indian Chiefs were buried . . .

 . . . and when we found a dead crawdad to study and enjoy.

I know he doesn't look thrilled, but he really liked it!

The rest of us were joyful the whole time . . . as long as we weren't taking pictures.

On the ground is a rock that shows signs of Osage women's work cracking nuts and sharpening bone tools.  We imagine they sat under this very tree when they worked.

And this made Hike #13 of 52
28.56 miles + 1.2 miles = 29.76 miles

Wednesday was a school day.

*Mister Man started Rod and Staff Grade 3 Arithmetic.
*Brother was anxious, but he had a successful day.
*Little Princess, Nature Angel, and I have been holding off moving to chapter 2 of our astronomy text until we can do some actual star-watching.  It has been cloudy for over a month!

On Thursday we had torrential rain off and on all day.  Lots of flooding happened around us, and our (finished) basement leaked, but we're okay.

We had another day of school.

In the afternoon, we watched the 1979 version of Superman with Christopher Reeve.  Some of the kids loved it; some not so much.

In the hour before dinner, the kids filled out field trip narration pages about our Tuesday outing.  I'm hoping for the kids to make their own state books.

Sunshine flooded the skies on Friday morning.

I took the kids on a walk/hike immediately after breakfast.

We found a crawdad in the mud . . . the flooding dislocated them from their homes, and they were everywhere trying to get back where they belonged.

We stopped to play Pooh sticks.

I played, too.

I printed a nature scavenger hunt before we left.  It was actually too easy.  We found everything and more!!!

Lola found a tiny snail.  That's her finger next to it for relative size.  She is a fan of snails.

The displaced crawdads provided breakfast for great blue herons and various mammals in the area.  We found hundreds of leftover front claws strewn along the path.  The kids collected them energetically.  Mister Man even found a connected pair and a head, which he put together to make a fascinating crawdad "bust."

Nature Angel fell in love with the reflections in puddles.  "Oh, mom!  It's like the entrance to a fairy land!"

We didn't stomp through all of the puddles because there was some awesome life in some of them.  At times we trod carefully, stopping to examine what we found.

The best experience of the whole hike was interacting with the live crawdads along the path.  They were so fierce and brave!  Every time we encountered one, it sprang into defensive position as if it were ready to fight us--in spite of our size.  My little boys couldn't stop talking about the brave crawdads, and we found ourselves trying to guide them to watery cover so they didn't end up as lunch for a hungry heron.

Studying their many legs and other aspects of anatomy, studying diet, studying habitat--none of that could have inspired us with the same admiration for these funny creations as actually watching them prepare to fight the giants that we are.

The actual interaction has inspired admiration and a desire to protect lives that were previously only vaguely known.

This puddle teemed with tadpoles, many of them with back legs and tails.

We still need to look up this spider.  Is that an egg sac?

This is Moth Mullein--far prettier than its name!

We thought this was a Dogbane Leaf Beetle, but the head shape is wrong.  Then we wondered if it could be a 6 Spotted Tiger Beetle, but this one has no spots.  We're still searching for identification.

We learned that this is Musk Thistle--quite different from the Tall Thistle and Canada Thistle that we're used to seeing.  It's leaves look like Stinging Nettle, so I was quite fooled until we saw the blossoms and looked it up. 

Along the way a friendly hiker paused to tell us about the Salsify flower.  (We failed to take its picture, but here's a stock photo). 

He told us that the flowers are edible, and that if you peel the roots, they're edible, too, and taste like oysters.  Once he told us about them, we were suddenly able to find them everywhere.

I like how knowledge opens our eyes!

And I like kind people who share their knowledge with us!

At the end of the hike, I found I'd locked my keys in the van.  Knowing that Sir Walter Scott had the other key with him at work (he'd tried to get spares made twice, but locksmiths were closed), I called AAA for service.  It took over an hour an a half for service to arrive--while we waited in the sun at the trailhead.  Kids got creative about finding shade.

We got pretty sunburned anyway.  Kudos to Super Star who dropped what she was doing to bring us water and fruit snacks while we waited.  When Sir Walter Scott got home from work that night, he told us, "I didn't have the key.  It was sitting on the bathroom sink!"  Super Star could have brought it to us, and we'd have been home in 15 minutes!!!!  Live and learn.

Hike #14 of 52--LLBVP Trail + extension
29.76 + 3 = 32.76 miles


In the afternoon Grandma and Grandpa came over for a visit.

Grandma brought about a dozen skeins of yarn for my house full of finger knitters, knitters, and crocheters.  Projects are being planned right now.

Thank you, Grandma!!!!

As we showed our garden off to Grandpa, Little Princess asked to pull a carrot "just to see if it is ready."  Permission granted, she did so, and found a 4 inch long, 1/2 inch diameter baby carrot.

Not ready.

She and Nature Angel shared it, said it was bitter, and fed the greens to the chickens.

And after bedtime stories (the littles and I finished reading The House at Pooh Corner), Nature Angel, Little Princess, and I headed to the field to look at the stars. 

We took a flashlight and our planisphere with us.  City light pollution and a waxing quarter moon dimmed much of what we could see, but it was good to find the big dipper, Polaris, Regulus, Arcturus, and Spica.  It was also good to see the first fireflies of the season and to see what we think were satellites scuttling across the sky.

Today is Saturday . . . and, unusually for us, Sir Walter Scott is home.  The sun is shining, the temperatures are late-spring-like, and we have a thousand projects and errands to take care of. 

It feels kind of like a holiday.