Smiling People

217. Smiling at people. I love smiling at people in stores. It always surprises them. And I love their look of surprise, followed by a smile back. Sometimes I take it as a challenge to see how many people I can get to smile while I'm out shopping. I love being around people, even if it's just in line at the store. Little conversations I have with people, connections I make, are like liquid energy just poured into me. I come back from my excursion on fire and ready to tackle life at home. Someone smiled back at me! NOW I can do the laundry without flinching! (If I only stay home I wander around doing bits of this and that, and eventually pool in one place starting directionless projects.)

Flower Face Button confusion possibly resolved!

I think I may have figured this out. It took me awhile to get the flower button to work. I guess at some point I turned off the face recognition, but didn't realize it, and poof! Like magic, the white focus square I had been looking for appeared! I think at some point face recognition got turned on and I didn't realize it. So I confused the face recognition square (green) with a focusing square (white) and that is what has been driving me nuts! I thought I was focusing when it thought it was recognizing faces.

Also, the macro (flower button) won't work with face recognition on. Apparently they are mutually exclusive. (No close up faces!) So - I didn't know the difference and have just been frustrated. I think this is a case of "really cool camera gets ahead of the person it is SUPPOSED to help."

But here are a couple of pictures from playing around with it this morning.
MUCH better! and...
(What ARE these?)
And one more to show evidence of the crazy record breaking pollen count. (Notice the front flower is in focus and the back ones are blurry. THAT'S what I'm talking about!)
I guess the hard winter caused some trees to bloom late, so now they are all blooming at once! Sue's poor friend at school had to go home yesterday with puffy eyes and hives! I'm getting itchy just thinking about it! You know it's bad when the pansies and sidewalks are coated in yellow dust.

And a big thank you Tara who helped me figure this out from 1,000 miles away! (Just think what she can do when she's in your neighborhood!)

About the camera - I found the flower button that might give me close up pictures. It took a bit to find out how to get into the right mode so it would turn on. But then, it worked great for some things. Thanks Tara! It gave me this...

Pretty! But it also gave me this..... (which is pretty cool, actually, but not what I expected) and this..... The focus is closer, but not on my main subject. I'm sure there is something else I'm supposed to do to regulate the field of depth. How do I figure out where it focuses. It's like it has a mind of its own. I'd like to take a ton of pictures right then to get it right, but it's so hard to see the screen on a sunny day that I'm not really sure what I have until I get inside. Any more ideas?

I thought this shot of Grandma Rachel's roses was going to turn out. I'll try again to get the focus right. But at least you all can see they are growing. Go Mr. C. and his green thumb!

Spring Colors!

216. More Spring stuff. The red-buds are out.

Our mystery plant bloomed. Any idea what this is? A narcissus, maybe? A kind of daffodil?

Everytime I walk around the yard I find a new kind of tulip.

I had no idea we planted so many. Some may have been here before us, but who can tell now?

And does anyone else slightly obsess over the new spring color on the trees? I keep wondering how you would mix that. It's mostly white and yellow. But there must be a hint of blue somewhere in there to make it read green. Or is that just because it's sometimes next to darker green? (In this picture it looks yellow.) Maybe I'll have to ask the crayola people. They seemed to have nailed the spring green color.
I also wonder why the color is so different than at other times of year. It's almost yellow now, and will get deeper and deeper green until late summer. Then things will get all olive and tired looking until fall.
I'm sure that if you asked a scientist why the colors are so different they would start spouting something about photosynthesis. I just wonder if the colors are made to match the mood of the season, or if the mood we have at some seasons of the year matches the colors around us.



On a side note, my camera is driving me crazy! Taking pictures of things close up doesn't work. It keeps focusing on the background. The tulip picture looks like that. And it's not as bad as a bunch of others I took. Anyone have any solutions for this with a point and shoot digital? Is there just a setting somewhere I need to find? Or do I need to be very very good and ask Santa for an SLR for Christmas?

Conversations

213. Counting Spring? Walking to school today, the S-Train asked, "can you count all the petals on a flower, or leaves on a tree?" I thought I could do the flower, but I might lose count on the tree. The S-Train said, "I can! I could take a marker, and mark all the ones I counted already!"

214. Honesty. Lou, in Sunday School yesterday. The teacher asked, "How hard is it to be honest? Can you be honest?" Everyone said, yes, they could be honest. "What about being COMPLETELY honest?" Lou, without missing a beat, "Oh, that's harder."

215. Old jokes discovered. Lou is doing a state project. One question was, what is the main form of travel. Her dad told her it was the interstate. She thought a moment. "How do they have interstates in Hawaii?" Good question!

Outside

211. The yard. Oh the Yard! Mr. C has rototilled up everything, and planted the cold weather plants. Some from plants, some from seeds. We have cold weather veggies in, and pansies in the front planters. The zinnia seeds are planted, and he even brought me a raspberry bush!

Everyday something new pops out! The daffodils were gorgeous, but are almost gone. The grape hyacinths are out, and there are three types of tulips in bloom. (one kind is about gone, and one just barely bloomed today.) There is a different, ruffly daffodil out, and a mystery plant that is about to bloom. I can't wait to see what it is! New growing things. Ahhh.

212. Our neighbor, and our neighbor's yard. Mr. C had put out some flyers earlier in the winter offering to do snow shovelling or lawn care. Well, Tuesday, a neighbor called. He is the sweetest, funniest man. He turns everything into a joke. His 85th birthday is coming up. When he tried to mow the lawn that day, he fell and hit his head. (Got quite a goose egg.) He said it might be time to stop mowing the lawn. So Mr. C and the girls went over to take care of it. He was so sweet and kind. The S-Train tagged along with the bow he got one Christmas. Our neighbor showed the S-Train a bow he made out of lemon wood when he was a boy scout. He seemed to enjoy having the group around.

We'd like to get a consistent lawn per girl to mow this summer. That way they can earn their own money and learn a skill and how to work, etc., etc. Mr. C will go with them. I think it'll be a good mix all around.

Books! YUM!

207. Author! Author! DNA Lit Fest and The Reading Reptile. Is there a better children's book store anywhere? Every year they bring in the MOST AMAZING group of authors. Every year we go spend a small fortune on children's books. Everyone chooses a book. We get them signed and get our pictures taken. We have pictures with people like Jane Yolen and Brian Selznik and Mark Teague. (If you don't think you know those people, you'd be surprised, click on their names to link.)

This year there were lots of cool authors. Brian Selznick, Uri Schulevitz, (an icon in the world of children's literature. Up there with Tommy De Poala and Maurice Sendack. I missed hearing him speak. I'll get notes later from a friend who was there.)
Patricia Polacco, and Kate Klise (whom I had never heard of, but who gave a great talk at the Saturday conference.) I was so close to getting my mom here to hear Patricia Polacco, but things didn't work out. We had a great time anyway.

And in more detail...

208. Patricia Polacco. My mom's favorite children's author. She was so sweet to the S-Train while signing books. He kept showing her his new book by Adam Rex. She was patient and looked at it with him. (There was only one guy behind us waiting at this point, and he thought it was funny.) When we went to take a picture with her we tried to get the S-Train to put the book down and get in the picture. She kindly said, "Oh, don't disturb him." So - that's the picture we have. When she signed a book for my mom the next day, she said, "What a wonderful name!" She just seemed to like the sound of it. And...


She brought the keeping quilt! Apparently it will go to a museum in Finley, Ohio, this summer. Her daughter's quilt guild has made a replica for her to take around. She is sad about giving it up, but knows that to preserve it, that's where it will be taken care of best. She gave a beautiful presentation. Retold stories of her stories. She was magnificent and wonderful. I took lots of notes, and she ended with a sweet prayer/blessing from her grandmother.

The great take away was to never underestimate the influence of a grandmother or teacher, or understanding adult, on the life of a child. She couldn't read until she was 14. Now, because of a caring teacher, she writes books for children.

209. Adam Rex. The. Funniest. Books. If you don't know his books, you should. Great boy humor. I had never heard of him before. We ended up with three of the kids' books being his. Fabulous. I recommended "PSSST!" to the S-Train. He was unconvinced until I read it to him. Then he showed to to Patricia Polacco, and read it over and over all night - until he took it to bed with him!(Mr. Rex told the S-Train to put rabbit ears on him in the picture! Love it!)
The oldest and I laughed all the way through the book "Guess Again!" So that was her book. Here's a sample. If you've read books to very small children you'll recognize this type of rhyme. It's supposed to help small kids predict the next page in the book. Not here!

There is a silhouette of what looks like a rabbit in a carrot patch. It says...

"He steals carrots from the neighbor's yard.
His hair is soft, his teeth are hard.
His floppy ears are long and funny.
Can you guess who? That right! My...

Page turn

"Grandpa Ned!"

And the picture is of Grandpa standing on his head. What looked like ears are socks about to fall off his feet.

It's not nearly as funny here as it is in person. By the end of the book, you don't know what to expect, and it always surprises you.

Sue got "Frankenstein Takes the Cake." Which I didn't like as much, because I'm not all that into monsters, but she liked it.

210. Andrew Clements. Was not at the lit fest, but came here this week to promote his new book. Again, yea for Reading Reptile! Missed Activity Days with Sue and Lou and took a friend to go see him speak. He was great. And one of our favorite authors turns out to be just as nice in person as in his books. Can't wait to read the new one. But we'll get it from the library. The first book in his new series just came out. The second comes out in November. He held up the flash drive that apparently holds the third!! Wild. A whole book, right there.

He apparently writes in a 10X12 shed. It has an AC and a wood burning stove and a cot and a composting toilet. He says it's like a life boat. He never has to come out if he doesn't want to.


My favorite new quote.

"I don't make books. I put together free words on cheap paper. Then I send them to a publisher, and they send me money."