a beautiful morning

it was a beautiful morning, and my friend and i were up early to take a walk along the high line into chelsea.

la bella luna sulla notte di lunedi

when coming out of the subway tonight, on our way home, morgana, chanda and i were very excited to see the stars. the moon was shining brightly in the western sky, and twinkling south of her was . .

sirius and orion's belt! here is sirius, orion's belt is just a little up and to the right. it doesn't show up on the picture, but it's there! what an incredibly clear night we had. it made me feel very happy.

rainy days and sundays

it didn't start out all that rainy, but by the end of the day it was pouring! greg met korrina at the subway to help her carry her bags home and they came in drenched! it was like someone was pouring buckets of water down on them.

we ended up doing a coop shop, which we haven't done in months because of all the snow! it felt so wonderful to be there picking out all our normal items for the seemingly decent prices we have (compared with any other grocery store).

we had leftover bean soup for dinner, and these delicious cheese and spinach pies that i found in the freezer section. they were $3.74 for a box of 12, which really isn't too bad. it's cheaper than all those amy's packaged food products (chanda had been asking for an amy's frozen pizza . . but she was very happy with the spinach pies).

saturday at the green market

we bought eggs today at the green market. we bought a dozen from the usual farmer, and then another dozen from a new stand that we saw today. she was selling small "pullet" eggs and we bought them because there was one blue egg in the batch.

i love blue hen eggs. only because they're blue!

morgana couldn't resist taking a picture of her egg also. oh! we also bought some delicious cheese! goat cheese. we usually don't because it's soooooooooooo expensive at the green markets . . but this looked so yummy, and it was! especially when we paired it with the apples we bought today.

packing and lunch and knitting calculations

korrina spent the day straightening up her room and packing for her youth conference in summit, new jersey. she had to bring a nice dress to this one as it's a sean CONnery con, and they'll be dressing up. my guess was that they would do a 007 theme dance.

we had a delicious lunch of perogis and black bean soup. our friends tessa and cindi joined us for a few hours before they left for tessa's ballet class.

i enjoyed using the cabbage leaf bowls that my friend janet made for me in her pottery class.

this is a little bit of sister time before korrina ran off to catch the train. she was looking for a shawl pattern in our old interweave knits magazines.

after korrina left, and morgana was at dance class, chanda worked on the calculations for her raglan sleeve sweater that she would like to make.

she'll be using yarn we bought at purl by the sea last week. it's lamb's pride superwash worsted in charcoal grey.



our books of the day were read by chanda. she found these sailing books at the amagansett library and has been reading them diligently. stories from the stars is reading motivated by our current main lesson block on greek mythology, and our constellation observations at nana's and nonno's.

painting, studying and library day

we started our ancient greek mythology block today. morgana hasn't done this before, so she worked with us. however, she will read more about the ancient culture and history; areas chanda will explore next year. we did water color painting, which we haven't done in awhile so it felt different and fun.

i believe they are all different versions of mount olympus with the palace of the gods and the sun and sky. i read the creation story about gaia and uranus and their offspring. talk about melodrama and communication problems . . . it makes for exciting and fun reading!


these are the pastel drawings they made after finding my pastel pencils up in the closet over the stove. i forgot i had them there. it's good some of us snoop around occasionally.

today was a library day. (of course the two books that were not renewable were not in my bag when i got there! they will have to be returned on another day.) it's women's history month, so we chose several biographies about women which we will read during these next few weeks.

morgana also chose the audio cds for harry potter and the goblet of fire, and chanda searched for the second book in the swallows and amazons series, swallowdale, but we will have to order it from another branch.

our books today were aliki's gods and goddesses of olympus (our favorite drawing was of chronos swallowing his babies!), and tallchief, america's prima ballerina. rosemary wells interviewed ms tallchief, and it's a fascinating book about how she became interested in ballet, and how hard she worked to be a ballerina (these prima ballerinas are really incredible workhorses. they just don't stop dancing.)

korrina was working on her lab report (there were a lot of calculations, she says!) and studying for her exam which she took in the evening. of course there were a few friends going in and out while she was working . . . but she did manage to spend some time alone with her studies. well, never completely alone . . there's always a cat curled up around her somewhere.

going through the courtyard, on our way to the library, we were excited to see the crocuses poking their heads up through the leaf detritus!

sunset walk

the sky was beautiful this evening when chanda and i went out for a walk.

we stopped at the grocery store. hmmm . . it feels like just yesterday that she was the right height for this cart!

better management for new york city's geese

these are geese we saw in east hampton at the bird santuary. i believe one is an embden, and the other two are chinese. i currently don't have a photo of the beautiful canada geese that frequent new york city's parks. the geese have posed a problem for the region's airports for a number of years now. (you can read a new york times article about it here, and a more recent article here.) unfortunately, the city's current policy towards canadian geese is to shoot them or gas them. i found an article about the situation on the audubon site. thankfully, audubon has suggestions on how we can all work to try and change this attitude. if you scroll down to the end of the article, you'll see that the nyc chapter of audubon has asked nyc residents and people outside nyc to register a complaint. please call! and please follow the instructions audubon gives. it's not always easy communicating with the 311 complaint line, but the article has very good tips and specific information you can give to make your voice heard. in addition the USDA publishes an impact statement upon which the public may comment. when the edited version is announced, and comments will again be accepted, i'll post a link. comments on the recent version were just closed yesterday. thanks so much!