Spring

Year's at the Spring.

Day's at the morn.

Morning's at seven.

Hillside's dew-pearled.

The Lark's on the wing.

The Snail's on the thorn.

God's in his Heaven.

All's right with the world.

- R. Browning

After nearly a week of rain and a night of thunderstorms, we have a beautiful sunny afternoon.

And suddenly, the grass is green!  The flowers are blooming - explosions of daffodil and hyacinth in the front bed, splashes of purple and yellow in the back yard.  The mourning dove who has built her nest outside the children's bedroom window for the past several years has returned, and from the way she's sitting on that nest I suspect she's laid her eggs already.  Jack saw a robin earlier.  I've been noticing them for a couple weeks, but this was the first bird he spotted and ID'd all by himself.  (He was very excited.)  And, thanks to Mr. Thorton Burgess, we now know that the robin is a thrush.  :D

This afternoon, they brought armfuls of wildflowers inside for me.  I now have a pot of dandelions on the kitchen table, thanks to Sally, and a huge pile of dandelions, violets, and purple dead-nettle that Jack wants to catalog for nature study.  He's not crazy about the idea of drawing them, he just wants to find them and look at them.  For today, I'm OK with that. 

I showed him how to find the leaves at the base of the dandelion.  Then we came inside, and I taught him how to use the key in our field guide - explaining some of the terms and showing examples of the various types of leaves.  Then we sat down with his haul and tried to classify them.  We narrowed the dandelion down to two: we think it is a red dandelion, based on the leaves, but will have to wait for a seed-head before we can totally rule out the common dandelion.  Of course, they picked ALL the flowers, so we may have to wait a while.