October's Bright Blue Weather

October 17, 2015, Charleston Falls  Photo by Pauline

October 17, 2015, Charleston Falls  Photo by Pauline

"O suns and skies and clouds of June,
And flowers of June together,
Ye cannot rival for one hour
October's bright blue weather."

First stanza of October's Bright Blue Weather by Helen Hunt Jackson.

My dad often recited this in October.  I'm sure it must have been one of the recital pieces he learned as a child.  Learning such poems was common when  he was in elementary school and schools presented programs for the parents.  There are eight stanzas in the poem, all of which paint pictures of October.

Below are some other photos of October.

The three photos above were taken by Tom in our backyard.

This was taken by Phil at Brukner Nature Center while walking the Brukner Butterfly Transit.

Postscript

I mowed and mulched after posting this blog.  That's when I noticed the sky was truly bright blue today.  I stopped mowing and mulching long enough to get my camera and take the photo above.

The last stanza of  Helen Hunt Jackson's poem...

O sun and skies and flowers of June,
  Count all your boasts together,
Love loveth best of all the year
  October's bright blue weather.

The North Wind Doth Blow, February 17, 2014

Dark-eyed Junco (Junco hyemalis)  Photo by Tom Persing

    The North Wind Doth Blow

The north wind doth blow,
And we shall have snow,
And what will poor robin do then,
Poor thing?

He'll sit in a barn,
And keep himself warm,
And hide his head under his wing,
Poor thing.

            Anonymous

Juncos are snowy weather birds.  In this part of Ohio we see them only in winter.  They come to our ground feeder.

Northern Cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis)  Photo by Tom Persing

Northern Cardinals are here all year.  This is a male.  The females are grayish or brownish, tinged with red  on their crest, breast, wings, and tails.  Tom took this from our dining room window.  The bird was on the far side of our back yard.  Once again, his new camera with the image stabilization did the trick.

Northern Cardinal, Photo by Tom Persing

These photos were taken late in the afternoon.  The temperature was 29 degrees, Fahrenheit (-1.7 Celsius).  A few minutes earlier rain was pouring down.  It left trees and birdfeeders and eaves of houses trimmed with icicles.

More About Miss Grace Durrin

Miss Durrin was a legend.  She was ardent about her subject, Children's Literature, at a time when it was often dismissed as a lightweight field.  Her course was dreaded by many elementary teaching majors because it was not an easy course.  We were expected to go out of her class knowing something about children's literature, the more the better.

The big project for her class was a collection of children's poems, at least a hundred neatly typed and bound in a sturdy binder so we could use it in our classrooms.  I had been alerted to this project before I went to college by a woman I babysat for.  She offered me her book if I wanted to use it.  She was proud of the "A" she received on her selections.  She said she used her book a lot when she was teaching

I took her book though I intended to make my own choices since I have always liked poetry of all kinds.  I enjoyed reading poems and picking out my favorites but putting the book together was a major problem for me.  I was an terrible typist.

Another relic in the basement, my high school graduation gift from my parents.

In those days  the only three ways of correcting  typing errors were to use White-Out, a liquid bought in a bottle, or small  rectangles of paper covered with a chalky substance which covered up the error when typed over, or erasable typing paper.  She told us we were not allowed to use the erasable paper.  She wanted a neat collection with no errors.

I typed page after page, only to make horrible typing errors as I neared the end of the page. Then I got nervous and started making errors after typing only a word or two.  Finally, my blessed roommate took pity on me.  She typed most of my collection.  Many of the poems in my book are from the book of the woman I babysat for.

That project was one of the best projects ever required of me.  I still have the book. It's in the basement, too. The bits of white on the cover are from the label which fell off some time or another.

I used it in every classroom I ever taught in...first grade, third grade, fourth grade.

This is the first page of the four page contents list.

In Memory of Grace Durrin

She read what has become one of my favorite poems of all times in her Children's Literature course at Bowling Green State University.

The Night Will Never Stay

The night will never stay,
The night will still go by,
Though with a million Stars
You pin it to the sky;
Though you bind it with the blowing wind
And buckle it with the moon,
The night will slip away
Like sorrow or a tune.

Eleanor Farjeon

I found Miss Durrin's photo in one of those things I have saved because I have a big basement...The 1957 KEY...the Bowling Green State University yearbook.

Happy Birthday, Samantha

When I think of reading to you when you were young I think of poetry. First I read Mother Goose rhymes to you. Then I found an old poetry book I had read to your mom when she was young. Its cover was taped on with masking tape so when I came across a newer edition, I bought it.
 

By the time you were in kindergarten, you wanted something different so I found a poetry book whose title, Sing a Song of Popcorn, I remembered from a Children's Literature class.

Remember the Jumblies? The refrain was...

     Far and few, far and few,
        Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
     Their heads are green and their hands are blue,
        And they went to sea in a sieve.

The poet is Edward Lear.
.

Click on the picture to get a better look at the Jumblies.

I Meant to Do My Work Today

The first line of this poem by Richard Le Gallienne has been running around in my mind ever since this beautiful early spring arrived. Click on the picture to enlarge it and read the poem more easily.

I have been painting although I have no painting ready to discuss on this blog. On Thursday, I painted "en plein air" for the first time this spring. A friend and I met at Hobart Urban Nature Reserve. The day was HOT (81 degrees Farenheit)and the sun was bright. On Saturday, two friends and I painted at Andy's Garden, a large plant nursery in Troy. We sat around a display of Bleeding hearts, painted and talked.   Again, I don't have the painting to the point where I want to share it.

When I haven't been painting with friends, I have been walking with Tom at Garbry Big Woods Sanctuary and Charleston Falls. Yesterday, Tom and I spent about an hour on Redbud Trail watching the downy white Great Horned Owlet in the hole in a tree growing in the ravine below the trail. The best Tom was able to get with his Canon EOS was the owlet peeking at him with one eye. The day was cold and windy but sunny.

And here is the owl a bit closer.

For some reason, blogger kept turning the digital photo in the computer sideways even after I had turned it so I resorted to printing a photo, scanning it in and showing it to you via this method. That probably accounts for the poor quality.

Thanksgiving Day, 2011

                     Autumn Graze by Marsha Elliott

Best wishes for a a beautiful day.  I hope you have many blessings in your life and that you remember them today.

                100% Wool, Hung Out to Dry  by Marsha Elliott

I hope  you laugh with family and friends.

And I hope that the evening brings you the kind of peace that Jane Kenyon writes about in the poem below.

LET EVENING COME

Let the light of late afternoon
shine through chinks in the barn, moving
up the bales as the sun moves down.

Let the cricket take up chafing
as a woman takes up her needles
and her yarn.  Let evening come.

Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned
in long grass.  Let the stars appear
and the moon disclose her silver horn.

Let the fox go back to its sandy den.
Let the wind die down.  Let the shed
go black inside.  Let evening come.

To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop
in the oats, to air in the lung
let evening come.

Let it come, as it will, and don't
be afraid.  God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.

                                         Follow Me by Marsha Elliott

    **********************************************
See more paintings by Marsha Elliott at these sites.

http://marsha-elliott.artistwebsites.com/

http://www.redbubble.com/people/melliott

http://profile.to/marsha-elliott/

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Marsha-Elliott/89860008172?ref=ts

Happy Birthday, Samantha

Samantha loves to talk and I love to sit and listen to her. She has interesting thoughts.

Samantha, Grandpa(Tom) and cousin Ted

Samantha likes poetry. When she was very young I read to her a lot. One of the poems we both enjoyed was this one.

Isabel met an enormous bear,
Isabel, Isabel, didn't care;
The bear was hungry, the bear was ravenous,
The bear's big mouth was cruel and cavernous.
The bear said, Isabel, glad to meet you,
How do, Isabel, now I'll eat you!
Isabel, Isabel, didn't worry,
Isabel didn't scream or scurry.
She washed her hands and she straightened her hair up,
Then Isabel quietly ate the bear up.

This is the first verse of Adventures of Isabel by Ogden Nash.  It is found in many poetry anthologies for children.

Samantha likes to act.

Samantha is about to kick the soccer ball. One of her nicknames when she played during high school was P.T. That's short for Pink Tank.

Samantha and her cousin, Sean, at Thanksgiving.

Have a Happy Birthday, Samantha,  from Grandma.

The Middle

I came across this poem four or five years ago.  It was cited in a letter to the editor of Modern Maturity Magazine.  The writer couldn't remember the poet who wrote the poem.

               When I remember bygone days
               I think how evening follows morn:
               So many I loved were not yet dead,
               So many I love were not yet born.

I thought of my dad who had  been dead for many years and I thought of my grandchildren who had not been born.  I copied the poem into my journal of bits and pieces that I want to carry with me when I am old and feeble and carted off to a nursing home.

Last year I was browsing at our local used book store and found a set of books by Ogden Nash.  Since I came across his first poem when I was in grade school I have enjoyed his humor.  I bought four of the books.  And on page 160 of Versus I found this same poem, this time with a title, The Middle.  One of the reasons I enjoy Ogden Nash's poems is that they have a bit of truth to them, even the funny ones which were the only ones I had ever read  before coming across this one.