July 17, 2009 @ 8:33 am | Filed under: 100 Species Challenge, Nature Study, Photos
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Welcome to
the online home of
children's book author
you'll find posts about:
- my Little House books
- other people's books
- my family
- (here's our funniest stuff)
- raising a hard-of-hearing child
- our big cross-country trip
- my affection for social media & my iPod Touch
- homeschooling
and much more!
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Where to find unabridged Martha & Charlotte Books
Rose, 11 yrs
Beanie, 9 yrs
Wonderboy, 6 yrs
Rilla, 3 yrs
Huck, 14 months
and Scott, the love of my life
by Deborah Heiligman
(shows up in posts
here and here)
by Tanita Davis
Betsy and Joe
by Maud Hart Lovelace
Mockingbird
by Kathryn Erskine
(notes)
Liar
by Justine Larbalestier
Winona's Pony Cart
by Maud Hart Lovelace
(selections)
Carney's House Party
by Maud Hart Lovelace
How to Say Goodbye in Robot
by Natalie Standiford
Kendra
by Coe Booth
Secret Keeper
by Mitali Perkins
The Prince of Fenway Park
by Julianna Baggott
(I interviewed her here)
The Kitchen Madonna
by Rumer Godden
Asterios Polyp
by David Mazzucchelli
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.
(I use this a lot)
Find my books at IndieBound
Author and Illustrator Blogs
- Elizabeth: When I 1st saw the post-I thought it was going to say he baked you that loaf of bread!
- Erin: I saw one MORE post about this book yesterday and decided I need to buy it. Told my husband when he walked in...
- Jennifer: That feeling of wonder never goes away. We were eating the light whole wheat last night and with every...
- Penny in VT: I bake bread every day, but haven’t used this book. I’ll have to check it out....
- Elizabeth M: I think sometimes I sound like a commercial talking about this book — but it completely changed...
- Carlie: So fabulous! Haha! I might have to get that book.
- beth: Thanks for this one! I loved The Gammage Cup, and enjoyed the sequel, but I never heard of anything else...
- DnSmum: Mmm… just went to amazon to “preview” this book. Noticed that there is a second book by...
- Yeah, We Could Live on This
- From the Archives: The Firelings by Carol Kendall
- How Rose Is Feeling
- Better Yet, Please Pass the Lemon Curd
- Please Pass the Butter
- Crowing over Crow Books
- Snippets
- From the Archives: A Child’s Delight
- Fascinating Live and Dead Things
- Cheered by Crows
(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!)
Who, pausing in flight
On limb too slight,
Feels it give way beneath her,
Yet sings,
Knowing she has wings.
—Victor Hugo
Twitter Updates
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?
(from a post called Way Leads on to Way)
meaningful work
imaginative play
good books
beauty (art, music, nature)
ideas to ponder and discuss
prayer
Whence It Came
That is a gorgeous shot. Almost looks animated… the brown seeds on the white background!!
Posted on July 17th, 2009 at 10:53 amSave me some seeds!!!
We’ve got seedpods by the dozen! And caterpillars too, WOOHOO!!!
Posted on July 17th, 2009 at 10:57 amI love milkweed seeds! Aren’t they just mesmerizing? We finally got our milkweed planted – our first planting (you will appreciate my outrage over this) was sprayed with something very toxic at the growers w/o the nursery knowing and the caterpillars DIED after ingesting it. Isn’t that just ridiculous? There is one reason to plant milkweed and that’s as a food crop.
Posted on July 17th, 2009 at 11:09 amCool picture! And Jennifer that is awful!!!!
Posted on July 17th, 2009 at 1:37 pmAnd those are “Small Milkweed Bugs” (rather than “Large Milkweed Bugs”) on the seed-head. My son was impressed as he has taken lots of photos of Large Milkweed Bugs but has never seen the Small M.B. That is the name used in Kaufmann’s field guide — guess you can see why it got its name!
Posted on July 18th, 2009 at 7:01 amLindsay, thank you!! We spent some time yesterday trying to ID the bugs but had no luck. I was hoping someone here would know…
I’m cracking up about their name. They were all over the milkweed pods at 8:30 in the morning. When I went back out an hour later, they were gone. In the cool of the evening, there they were again. We’ll have to read up on them a bit.
Here they are at Bug Guide: http://bugguide.net/node/view/244787/bgimage
Posted on July 18th, 2009 at 7:10 amWe had our very first Milkweed beetles this weekend! No seedpods yet, but, unfortunately, TONS of aphids. And yet, despite their destructiveness, it was very cool to find the ladybugs there eating them and the ants there herding them. And teaching my son about them was an interesting experience as well. I think he was more interested in catching and moving the ladybugs and then in spraying the plants with soapy water than in the gaining of knowledge, but he did do an excellent job with the sprayer.
Posted on July 20th, 2009 at 4:28 am