Until this week, we outsourced our grass cutting. I decided to opt for a more environmentally friendly option (as well as gain a bit more control over the renegade clover), and I bought a reel mower. It came unassembled. Winnie chose to offer assistance to her mechanically challenged momma. How could I be mad at the shredding of the instructions when she has been primed for such destruction all year. Her weekly Montessori report cards applauded her pincer grasp work, i.e. paper tearing. Sigh. Somehow, it all came together, and the clover is hidden for this week.

We keep agritourism afloat around here. These babies can’t get enough of beasts and fields. As we drove home, Winnie uttered her familiar possessive lament, “my donkey, my pigs…my pigs.”

We are busy busy bees, ticking off our preparations. Soon, we will have reason to CELEBRATE. 

They jump in wearing pajamas. They jump in wearing finery. Rarely, do they play in the waves in swimsuits. Their wardrobe either says “locals” or “mom doesn’t feel like wrangling me with a rash guard in hand.”  

“Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons. It is to grow in the open air, and to eat and sleep with the earth.” Walt Whitman

“Come forth into the light of things, let Nature be your teacher.” William Wordsworth

Camera shy, isn’t she?

In Montessori, the daily tasks the toddlers are presented with are called lessons. Winnie was so fixated on filling up her glass this year that her teachers created a special water lesson just for her. Everyday, she came home in a new outfit with the drenched clothes she left me in sealed in a Ziploc. She has a lot less spills these days.

The little tune she sings (and the unsolicited sweeping) is music to my ears.