Today

A female red winged blackbird is repeatedly yanking yellowed grasses and flying them to the cedar tree.

A common grackle landed right in front of a black squirrel and proceeded to shoo him out of the area.

The frog I saw a week ago in my pond has not been seen since. I've searched often.

Every tree has a soft focus look about them in contrast to their winter starkness. Their flower and leaf buds are swelling.

A male red winged blackbird just chased a morning dove right out of the yard.

The air is warmer and humid. It rained most of last night and today.

The sky is dark grey in the horizon but the sun is out right now where I am.

And the birds are singing. It makes my heart glad.

Constellation Narration

I did a constellation chart with my daughter when she was about nine years old. It turned out to be quite beautiful. When she was a teen we attended a Royal Astronomical Society meeting and set up a private tour of the local observatory to explain further what astronomy was all about. That inch wide but deep work we did instilled a fascination for the subject that has now lasted ten years. She is even taking astronomy as an elective course in university.

I have a few young students this year and thought it would be nice to revisit this subject. We read the same book; it's not fabulous but for an introduction it works. What is great about it is that the constellations are presented in an order that makes it easy to jump from one star group to another. I have my students carefully copy out each constellation as it relates to one they already know. I have them do it in their nature notebooks going back to the same page so as to get as many of the constellations together within one picture.

My eight year old student insisted that each constellation had it's own box, she is at a stage where even her copy work has boxes around each entry. I was concerned that she wouldn't retain the relationships between all the star groupings.

Once they narrated what they knew of the position of the constellation they were allowed to pin it onto their star chart:

                         

 We had been adding one constellation a week since September. We then had a six week break over the Christmas holidays and I thought I would find out what they still knew about the constellations when we met again in January. I asked them to draw their star chart from memory with their proper names.

I was amazed. They both were able to recall each constellation and place them fairly close to their correct positions. I, too, did this exercise. I do have them all in my nature notebook but do not have a star chart of my own. I was able to recall that there were eight constellation but could only draw in five and name four.

Everyone needs a star chart.

Milking Cats

A kitty rescue from a farm. She got separated from her siblings and was considered too young to survive on her own.

How can you resist that?

We took her. The farmer gladly gave us a box of cat food as incentive to be released of the responsibility. She had to be fed by syringe. I bought cream. She sucked that down easily.

My neighbour agreed to kitty-sit while we were out for the day and was horrified that a cat so young didn't have proper milk. So she sent her husband to buy cat milk. Yes, cat milk.

We came home to this. I burst out laughing in disbelief!

HOW DO YOU MILK A CAT????

This is what I pictured in my head and laughed and laughed and laughed. Ridiculous

No where on the carton or online did it specify what kind milk was actually used. I am assuming it is cow's milk. Upon closer inspection I see that it is CATMILK  and not cat milk.

Had me giggling for days.