October 7, 2008 @ 11:38 pm | Filed under: Uncategorized
You’d think I’d have learned my lesson after what happened to poor old Homer and Herodotus. But nooo, I had to go and write about the happy little caterpillar who found its way to my kitchen windowsill and spent the past week munching my geranium to shreds. I celebrated his presence the night before last, and then all day yesterday he was nowhere to be seen. Mysterious, I thought, but honestly I wasn’t searching too hard.
Well, this morning I found him: curled up sideways in the dirt in the bottom of the pot. Poor little thing. He thought this was a friendly place. Little did he know he had entered the Caterpillar House of Doom. If caterpillars could write there’d be a cautionary chalk mark on our doorpost right now, I’ll bet.
We’ve had several in the past that didn’t make it, so now I strongly encourage my kids to leave them in (or take them back to) their natural habitat so they will have a better chance to live! They are always wanting to bring in some sort of little critter, but many have not survived, so they are starting to “let go” and do what is best for them. Right now though we have a mantis next to me. We probably should let it go this morning! We also just brought back a new hatchling snapping turtle and two new kittens from vacation! (sigh)
We had two tadpoles and were very excited about watching them turn into frogs. My youngest, who received them for her birthday, had decided their names based on who got legs first (the first one to grow legs would be named Pillow, and the second would be called Blanket). Alas, they did not live long enough for us to end up with either a Pillow or a Blanket. I hate when that happens.
Curled up sideways doesn’t necessarily mean dead. We’re currently harboring several caterpillars that hibernate (curled up sideways under leaves). I know, different regions, seasonal differences, variations amongst caterpillars etc. Just mentioning it might not actually be, you know, over.
We are suddenly having a bad run with caterpillars after hatching a few very successfully. Ours have done the same – dug down into the dirt and met their end. : /
(A roundup post with links to my notes and reviews)
Hey, what happened to all those booklists you used to have in your sidebars at the old blog?
They're still accessible at melissawiley.typepad.com, where this blog lived from January 2005-March 2008. You can also find all my Lilting House posts there, or try the search bar here. All my previous Bonny Glen and Lilting House posts have been imported to this site.
Every day is complicated, messy, and full of friction. And every day has glorious or cozy moments worth celebrating. I seldom bother to chronicle the friction and the mess because writing time is fleeting and precious—and childhood even more so. I’d rather capture the small joys that I might forget—or take for granted—if I don’t take time to set them down in words.
(Excerpt from this post about Real Life, quoted here because I don't want anyone to be under the impression that things are always perfect around here! Heaven knows we are anything but. Perfect, frictionless, orderly? Nope. Happy? Most of the time!)
Be like the bird
Who, pausing in flight
On limb too slight,
Feels it give way beneath her,
Yet sings,
Knowing she has wings.
—Victor Hugo
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“Exploration,” says John Stilgoe, author of Outside Lies Magic, “is a liberal art, because it is an art that liberates, that frees, that opens away from narrowness. And it is fun.”
Yes: it is so, so much fun, and that is why I write these posts all chattery with excitement over this or that connection the kids made today. (Or that I made myself!) I know I get carried away, but that’s the point, isn’t it, that way leading on to way has carried me away?
And yet—and yet—I think we are at once ‘carried away’ and made more fully present in the now, more rooted, by these relationships between ideas about things past and future. The joy of connection makes me want to celebrate this moment, this brief encounter with wild-haired child and broad-trunked tree, bus going by, sign on church wall, Scottish warlord creeping over the tower wall and startling the English soldier’s wife who has just put her babe in arms to sleep by crooning that the Black Douglas won’t get him. Child, laughing, shouting “Dinna ye be sae sure aboot that!” across the courtyard outside the library. How can I not celebrate this freedom?
You’d think I’d have learned my lesson after what happened to poor old Homer and Herodotus. But nooo, I had to go and write about the happy little caterpillar who found its way to my kitchen windowsill and spent the past week munching my geranium to shreds. I celebrated his presence the night before last, and then all day yesterday he was nowhere to be seen. Mysterious, I thought, but honestly I wasn’t searching too hard.
Don’t worry, I’m not doing too well with caterpillars myself. The ones at my kinder died. I told the kids that they went outside to get some air.
Of course, I did cut up their goldfish in front of them.
But caterpillars…
Good thing my housemate cares for our silkworms
Posted on October 8th, 2008 at 12:31 amWe’ve had several in the past that didn’t make it, so now I strongly encourage my kids to leave them in (or take them back to) their natural habitat so they will have a better chance to live! They are always wanting to bring in some sort of little critter, but many have not survived, so they are starting to “let go” and do what is best for them.
Right now though we have a mantis next to me. We probably should let it go this morning! We also just brought back a new hatchling snapping turtle and two new kittens from vacation! (sigh)
Posted on October 8th, 2008 at 4:35 amWe had two tadpoles and were very excited about watching them turn into frogs. My youngest, who received them for her birthday, had decided their names based on who got legs first (the first one to grow legs would be named Pillow, and the second would be called Blanket). Alas, they did not live long enough for us to end up with either a Pillow or a Blanket. I hate when that happens.
Posted on October 8th, 2008 at 5:22 amCurled up sideways doesn’t necessarily mean dead. We’re currently harboring several caterpillars that hibernate (curled up sideways under leaves). I know, different regions, seasonal differences, variations amongst caterpillars etc. Just mentioning it might not actually be, you know, over.
Posted on October 8th, 2008 at 11:58 amWe are suddenly having a bad run with caterpillars after hatching a few very successfully. Ours have done the same – dug down into the dirt and met their end. : /
Posted on October 13th, 2008 at 6:21 am