fun in threes, sometimes fours
general
It was squirrels digging up our garden, and being the eco-friendly folks we are, we went with a non-lethal but hopefully highly annoying and perhaps frightening deterrent: a motion-activated sprinkler.
It turned out to be great fun for the Girl as well.
For dessert today, we had that Polish favorite, shredded carrots and apples topped with chocolate. Chocolate and carrots are a popular culinary combination in Poland, though cabbage and chocolate is a little more classy and the all-time spring favorite is chocolate covered radishes.
Ah, the things we do to try to ween the Girl from this and that...
I had the idea; L created the screenplay — more or less on the fly.
When I moved back to America from Poland in 1999, I had a difficult time adjusting. I missed my friends in Poland; I missed my students and working with them; I missed the adventure.
It was a rough time.
Listening to the last album purchased before leaving Poland, Kayah i Bregovic, didn't help.
Kayah is a Polish pop star; Goran Bregovic is a composer from the Balkans. An odd pairing, but effective. It became the best-selling album in Polish history, if memory serves.
You'll find no other popular music so utterly filled with yearning as this one.
All the tracks have at the very least a ting of longing, but one drips it: "Trudno Kochac" ("Hard to Love"). Though obviously a love song, the refrain captured the duality of my feelings for Poland:
Tak trudno kochac
Lecz trudniej jest
Nie kochac wcale cie
What a summary of the love-hate relationship many of us have with Poland: difficult to love, difficult not to love.
One evening, not long ago, I strolled out to dump some potato peels and other goodies on the enclosed pile when I saw motion in the bin -- it was not yet totally closed up. Since our cat had wiggled her way in there once before, I thought it was the cat. I removed the wire-mesh cover, a shadow jumped out, and I gave it a not-quite-light, certainly-not-swift kick. In the dark, it was hard to discern much of anything other than the fact that the shape moved away from our house, toward our neighbors fence. It climbed the fence and turned to look at me. Our bandit was just that: a raccoon. I'd thought to reach my hand into the composter and grab the "cat" by the scruff of the neck; I was certainly glad I didn't when I realized who our "visitor" was.
We're going crazy with the compost, though, because we've been trying out our green thumbs, only to find them to be a paler green than we'd really like. We planted some melons and squash in a patch in front of the house where I pulled up some diseased boxwoods. Started from seeds, they were smallish, but we didn't really they were too underdeveloped for planting -- especially the squash. Still, almost two weeks later, despite careful watering, sixty percent of the squash is dead and forty percent of the melons. The soil was quality; the seedlings looked healthy -- who knows.
The bigger mystery is in the backyard, where we have our raised bed, which houses some onions, radishes, and a few other goodies. We were walking around the house this evening when we saw this:
Something absolutely ravaged our garden. There were seemingly countless deep, narrow holes along the landscaping timbers.
It's certainly not a dog, for canine-dug holes aren't so precise.
My bet: the raccoon. Squirrels could be another good bet, but we're not sure exactly when the raid took place. Any ideas?
I've been playing with xtranormal.com, the site that allows you to create a movie merely from text. I'm thinking I might use it somehow next year with my English I Honors class when we work on Shakespeare.
Something like this:
(Since removed.)
The pronunciation is a bit off at times, but otherwise, a potentially useful tool.
I'm just not quite sure how to use it...
Teaching eighth grade as a pandemic approaches creates certain challenges, especially when a girl passes out in the bathroom and a local high school closes for disinfection.
Thirty Greenville County School District employees wearing gloves and masks started to clean Mauldin High School from the top down last night and will continue to disinfect desks, lockers, doors and bathrooms throughout the day today after up to 18 of 70 students who had attended a band camp at Disney World last week reported flu-like symptoms which led the district to close the school today. (Greenville Times)
Students come running into the classroom, desperate not to touch anything but the bottles of hand sanitizer that they're most eagerly sharing amongst themselves. They sit down and put their hands in the air as if they're being held up at gun point. They open doors with their feet and they laughingly refuse to touch the copies of Much Ado About Nothing we've been using in class.
A quick look around the room confirms my suspicions: I won't be able to accomplish anything without dealing with this first. A quick review of how viruses are spread. "You can't get it from simply touching a desk, even if an infected person has just touched it," I say. "If you touch that contaminated desk then rub your eyes, pick your nose, and dig something from between your teeth, you might get it."
It truly satisfied few, but at least there was some semblence of calm afterwards.