Autumn splendor hike

After days upon days of chilly rain we woke this morning to a thin layer of white frost sparkling in bright sunlight. One couldn't ask for better fall hiking weather, there just isn't any better to have. We had breakfast, we layered on the clothing and donned hats and mittens, then we joined in another county park naturalist guided hike. The find of the day was a multitude of fungi—here there and everywhere—but my favorite moment was spending time with a little spring peeper. He may sing his best in the spring, but he is one beautiful frog in the fall when his color is in style. The rest of the day was less exciting, filled with winterizing the yard and gardens and getting started on a Halloween costume (which may seem late, but it's still earlier than last year).

Bracket or shelf fungus

Puffball fungus

Bracket or shelf fungus

Northern Spring Peeper (Pseudacris crucifer)

Once Upon a Time there was

Watching The Three Billy Goats Gruff today on stage, the troll asked the audience for their advice: should he let the littlest goat go? My son alone in the audience said "no!" When I asked him why not, he told me his concern that if the troll didn't eat the first food that came along, then he might not get another chance and so might not get enough to eat. But of course.

We had a great time at the play, but what I loved most was hearing his thought process. We didn't read a whole lot of fables or fairy tails when he was younger. It wasn't really an intentional omission, just that we had so many other wonderful things to read, but the more I think about it the more I dislike fairy tales anyhow. They seem beautiful at first glance, but they're awfully one dimensional. Gregory Maguire had the right idea when he took the traditional tales and turned them on their heads, showing the "other sides" of the stories in books like Wicked.

Calvin's thinking that the troll is also worth a life is a refreshing thought, one that bucks convention and has many elements in it from our recent discussions on evolution. All living things have to eat, and meat eaters are not evil, they're just hungry like the rest of us. Even better, like Maguire he had to willingly go against the tide to say "no" in an audience of "yeses" and to me that right there was worth the price of admission.

How my five year old beat me in Monopoly

Actually, that can't be what this post is about because I'm not really sure how it happened. No I wasn't playing seriously cut throat or anything, but it's not like I let him win, either. I think the real key is that at five you don't have a strong sense of risk/benefit analysis so caution tends not to get in the way when luck is there to help you out. In any case, I ended up with a total of $63 to my name, all properties mortgaged, and I owed him $1,150 for the rent on Illinois Ave with hotel. If nothing else I'm finding that Monopoly is a great way to use math, especially creative math and math in your head, and it's also a great way to stretch patience, memory, and attention—we'd been playing this game on and off for two days.

It's been great to have a couple of days just at home. Math, monopoly, making dinner. A little piano, a lot of coloring and art. Calvin made a model T-Rex (which he affectionately dubbed "Model T"), and he's got a dinosaur diorama in the making (he's still on the background painting phase). He wrote a book on matters, as in the states of matter. We're making our way into the Cenozoic era finally so we re-watched Walking with Prehistoric Beasts and we'll do the same with Walking with Cave Men. No video is perfect, but we've been happy with this series in general and of course Calvin loves them.

Fall glory

Nature's first green is gold
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

-Robert Frost

Fall celebration at Parker Mill

Making our tax dollars work for us—we've certainly gotten our allotment of fun out of the county parks service this year. We've always enjoyed hiking the area parks, and we've attended a handful of their events in the past, but this is the first year that we've participated quite so heavily. Or maybe they are offering more events this year, because we've enjoyed guided hikes and naturalist education programs almost once a week since mid summer.

The other amazing thing about is that there are still parks we have never visited. Today was fall celebration day at Parker Mill Park, a new one on us. It started chilly and a little damp, but the sun finally came out while we were making bird houses and fall crafts. We shelled corn, ran the mill stones, and watched a heron fish on our way to the head race. It was a good day.