The three baby owls dropped by for a visit this evening, but it was too dark to get a decent shot.
general
Late Morning at Furman
Tomatoes
The tomatoes are really starting to take off just before we do. Blossoms everywhere. Pin-size to golf-ball-size green tomatoes here and there. This year, I’m doing the opposite of last year when I simply let them be. This year, I’m pruning, pruning, pruning. The manager of a local university’s sustainable organic gardening program told me I could do two things to get bigger, juicer tomatoes: snip the suckers mercilessly (which I’ve not been as successful with as I would like), and snip the stems so that they only have the first to leaves remaining. The former I’d heard of; the latter was new to me. He explained it this way: “Either you can have your vine spending substantial energy and nutrition growing stems and leaves, or you can have the putting that into the fruit.” He assured me that each stem only needs two, maybe three leaves. And so our vines look a little different this year.
Especially when the late sun hits them just right. (And of course Lightroom hits them just right.)
Blueberries
Evening Soccer
Dessert
Lucanus elaphus
I found it floating in a bucket out back that had a couple of inches of water from the last storm. It was still squirming, trying to escape, doomed to drown. I pulled it out and took it to the Boy to show him. He put on gloves and was eager to hold it.
Fear of such animals I supposed is learned, or more importantly taught. Tell a kid constantly that such creatures are out to get him, and he’ll likely believe it. Tell a girl that the only good snake is a dead snake, and she’s likely to hold that opinion for decades. But kids are naturally curious — it’s what gets the hurt. With the Boy and the Girl, we’ve tried to strike a happy medium: such insects might, like roaches, carry certain bacteria on their bodies that are not particularly helpful, but in and of themselves, they’re harmless. Certain snakes are deadly, so we should never approach a snake and try to make a plaything out of it, but an enormous black snake slithering through the grass (as happened here five years ago) does much more good than harm.
With people, there’s the whole additional possibility of deceptiveness. If only it were so simple with humans.
The End, 2017 Edition
Last year, one of the teachers on our team was a novice. Like all new teachers, she began the year with a little trepidation and a lot of excitement. When the year ended and students were walking off the eighth-grade hallway for the last time, she got a little teary.
“You going to get all sentimental this year,” I asked a few days ago.
“No,” she replied quickly.
It’s a common enough reaction: that first year, watching the kids leave and knowing you won’t see them again, you feel a little sinking feeling. They’re your kids, your first kids. The ones that taught you more about teaching than any class in college ever did. You fall in love with them in a way: they’re special, even the ones who drive you crazy. And when they leave, you’re not quite sure you’ll ever have kids that you feel so warmly about, kids quite like this. After a year or two, though, you see that the next batch of kids comes in and replaces the old batch. You can’t even recall many names from the last year without stopping to concentrate on the task. And you feel just the same way about this group as you did last year’s.
It’s then that you stop being quite so sentimental about it all–and all teachers, no matter how cynical or burned out they are now, were sentimental about teaching at one point–and realize, yes, you will have kids just like this next year.
There will be another Susan, whose loud and constant talking drives you nuts but who seems to have a potential about her that she herself doesn’t even fully realize.
You will have another Albert, who sometimes can’t foresee the consequences of his actions or the implications of his body language and so comes across sometimes as being quite a disrespectful child.
Another Amelia will sit among your students, seeming always to be enveloped in a happiness that spreads to all around her.
There will be another Chester, who has poor physical and social coordination and tries to make it up by showing off intellectually.
Another Davonte will dance through our door and then proceed to do nothing. Ever.
Every student you have this year will come back next year–and the next, and the next, and the next–with a different name, a different face, but the same basic personality. Or with a similar face and different name and radically different personality. Or any and all combinations of those three, hardly exhaustive possibilities.
For a teacher, it’s not the end. It never is, until you quit teaching.
Awards Day
Four awards, including all A's.
Huntington Beach 2017
We put it off several times: once, because someone was sick; a second time, because the timing was no longer convenient. Did we put it off a third time? I can't remember. But this weekend has been a long time in the making. We were originally going to spend last Labor Day weekend at Huntington Beach, but we ended up spending Memorial Day -- that seems appropriate, timing-wise, as they two three-day weekends bookend the school year.
We first went about six years ago.
We fell in love immediately. We went back again at some point, but none of us can remember when exactly. It was pre-E, for sure, but that's about all we can remember. Perhaps the link above is to our second visit? it all gets smeared in the memory. I reread the entry and find this:
Her first beach experience, some two years ago, was moderately traumatic for her. The sound of the waves terrified her, and the waves were forever chasing her form the water’s edge when she finally got the nerve to approach.
This year was different.
That first time at the ocean was at Edisto, so this must be have been our first time at Huntington. Still, it's only a year before the Boy's birth: when did we go again, pre-E? Again, smeared it the memory.
So I want to set about to to write down all the details of this experience I can remember, knowing that if I don't, I won't remember it. But I set out doing so with the understanding that I will only pick and choose, letting the pictures do the rest.
The first day we arrived and, after setting up camp, headed out to the beach. The Girl took her boogie board out to test the waves; the Boy, after a few minutes, turned to the gigantic sand box that lay all around him. Then they switched. That pretty much sums up the entire weekend: playing in the sand, playing in the waves. After all, what else can you do at the beach?
But there were the subtle changes. L, no longer afraid of the water, gradually found the courage to go out with me a little further than before, looking for more boggie-board-able waves. The Boy was at first reticent to go far beyond the last little crests and bubbles of waves that had been churning inland for some tens of feet. He finally found the courage, with a little help from K and me, to go out further, and to require less of a reassuring hand while doing so.
Day two started at Brookgreen Gardens. "We've been here three times now -- we have to go," declared K. It is famous for its sculptures, a fact interested me and bored L -- until she started seeing statues from Greek mythology, her current obsession thanks to the Percy Jackson series.
The final day -- another morning on the beach.
A perfect weekend, over all.