BEGINNING OF SCHOOL YEAR PHOTO

      I've noticed on the blog and face book lots of the traditional start of the year photos. This got me thinking! It looks like the school photo was traditional far and wide. I've seen some European (Dutch) examples. There are many American examples. 

      I also wondered how far back this tradition goes. My Mom took our first school day photos when I started school in 1945. Mom had a camera, but many people at that time did not have cameras.

      I think the school photo gave a message to kids that school was important and that parents supported them. First day of school was an occasion to observe. 

      Now I'm not sure how many years Mom took our pictures. I can only find photos from about gr. four or five. I guess when I started high school it wasn't cool the have a picture taken.

       It seems like the tradition carries on. My grand children had first day of school photos. 

        Now I'm so proud of my photos that I just had to show them to you.

Right to left: Brother gr.2, sister gr 1, me gr 3 Somehow Rex  got to be a major part of the picture.

My brother and I . Brother starting gr. one and I in gr. 2. New lunch boxes. I'm the one with the spiffy bib overalls.

       I also have to show my own kids on school starting day.

The start of Middle School

     How about you?  Did you get your picture taken on the first day of school?

COOL FALL WALK

  Sunday was one of those cool, dark, damp days. It was suggested that we go for a walk as we couldn't do anything else. 

      We have a fine nature sanctuary here. Part of it was farmed but most of it has never been logged. It consists of two oxbow lakes, heavily wooded escarpment and valley floor.  It's been a sanctuary for over 100 years, It's a good habitat for many critters. 

       One critter I found there I will never forget. I saw a large reed shaking vigorously while all the other reeds were still. I watched and soon saw a mouse climbing up the reed. Now the reed was in about 70-80 cm  (14-15 in.) of water. All of a sudden the reed broke off and I heard plop. So I said, " Goodbye mousey. " No sooner I had said goodbye and another reed started shaking. 

      Now when I got back the the nature center they looked it up and found that it was a western meadow jumping mouse. I'd never seen one before.

     So with camera around my neck we set out to do the 4 km (2 1/2 mi) trail around the sanctuary. The camera batteries went dead before I made it half way around.

   

Yellow aspen from the north

Same grove of aspen from the south

A gray day when it's difficult to see sky

Hangin out on a beaver lodge

A few ducks were feeding.

Now my camera batteries went dead.

A Little Confusion!

      For the last week or ten days I've been noticing something come up about daughter's week. Now I saw it several times so I got curious. Curious enough to look it up.

      I found many widely different pieces of information.  So what did I find?

      I had a hard time to track down daughter's week. There was information but nothing definite.

       Some sites suggest Son and Daughter day. This makes sense to me. I feel that in a family if you honor one child the other says, "Hey, what about me?"

      However there was lots of information on National daughter's day. Now the dates for national daughter's day was all over the year. One site was very specific...the fourth Sunday of September. Other's said August 11. there were dates in April May and June. It looks like whoever declares national daughter's day gets to say when the date is.

     What is National daughter's day for? Well, this makes some sense. It's to honor our daughters! So there are cards and suggested gifts for the occasion. It's starting to sound like this is commercialized.

     However, since we're on the topic, I can certainly take the opportunity to tell you that I have a great daughter. I have a great son but I'll have to leave that to National son's day.

    My daughter is a very lively energetic full of life character. She's always ready for a challenge. She's also very quick to challenge anybody else. House renovation is her passion. A do it yourselfer yet! When she lived here, Dad was her assistant. 

    Bright,  smart, ambitious. She finished two degrees and has worked in different fields. She worked in human resources for an oil company, taught high school (in French!) and now is back in human resources. She works in a group that develops programs for a large company.  She's in Australia for this week introducing training packages. Last week she was in Cleveland and next week she's back in Cleveland. Busy!

    After all that she has time to keep up talking to Dad.

    I always tell her , "She's the best daughter I could ever have." I tell my son the same thing. Keep things even!

      Now I don't need a special day to think about my daughter . I can do that all year.

I Got One!

      I like blogs with good photography. I particularly like photos of birds, animals, plants, insects ,scenery and lots more.

     Now I try to take pictures of  things from the list above. Well , I've not been very successful. I'm too impatient. I don't want to sit quietly and wait for the subject to pose for me.

    Now the other day a golden opportunity came my way. It was a cool day and I found a dragonfly on my shed door. I raced in for my camera. Yep, he was still there when I got back. I took some quick photos and took my camera back in the house. When I came back out the dragonfly was gone, so I took a photo of a living dragonfly.

    Now here's where I really suck. I'm not able to identify and dragonflies. I'm looking for people who will identify my dragonfly.

My Zinnias Perform Well

    Well, I think they're Zinnias. I could stand to be corrected. If I'm wrong, I know people will very kindly correct me.

    This is the first year I grew zinnias. Gardens and plants around here are short in variety. How come I grew zinnias?

     Well, I've only grown white petunias in my carport planter and this year I planned to grow petunias in the carport planter. In fact, I bought some petunias as bedding plants.

     One day in the spring my neighbor came over and asked me if I wanted some seeds. His sister is a seed distributor and had given him some out of date seeds. Neighbor didn't have any use for him. These were the type of seeds that are implanted on a piece of fabric and all you had to do was lay the strip on the ground and carefully cover it with the correct depth of soil. He gave me Alyssum and another variety of seed. I planted all the seeds in the one variety and threw the package away. I didn't expect any of them to grow. I watered the carport planter very well. I didn't water the Alyssum that much. The seeds I didn't know the name of germinated and grew well. None of the Alyssum germinated. They have been blooming for three weeks and they are zinnias. 

     Now the big surprise is that the micro manager really likes the variety of colors of the zinnias.  Now she wants to plant zinnias again next year. Fine by me.

    But the next time somebody gives me some seeds to plant , I'll keep the package.

Do Your Research , Red

      In my previous post about the fish, I was missing some information. That information was supplied very quickly after I posted  My former colleague, Rae informed me that this was a combination art and science project. It's called artist in residence. For the whole week this artist takes over the art and science classes. At the end of the week they have many colorful fish and have learned about water and fish.

     Schools here are on a school based budget.They have money for special projects so they bring people or groups in for  week for a special project.

     My son's very best girl told me there was one of these projects at a school she is familiar with and another person reported seeing a streams mural on a school fence.

     So the next time I had better do more research when I post on one of my discoveries or I could just say that I learned much more by doing the post.

    Now do some of you have a Streams mural at your school?

Surprising What is There When You Look

      A few weeks ago someone posted about a mural on a fence. Aha, I said. I know where there's something similar beside me.

       About 3 or 4 years ago an interesting art piece was placed on my neighborhood school fence. For about a 100 m a pattern of fish were attached to the fence. I thought, "Well, that looks nice but I wonder what it is." Well, I kept driving by the school 5 or 6 times a week. I always noticed the fish.

       Now the fish were bright colors and many shapes. From the road it looked like they were ceramics. I was impressed.

      I could only think that it was a very interesting school art project. So with the post a few weeks ago I decided I had to take a look at the fence mural. One afternoon I took my camera to take a look.

      I was impressed. It was a project to teach kids about fish conservation. I'm sure the kids learned about different kinds of fish and fish habitat. They probably learned about fish anatomy. And the art project was a big part. I'm sure the kids will remember what they learned for a long, long time.

      Someone cut out basic fish shapes from plywood. It looks like there were 5 or 6 different shapes and I'm sure each kid would get one of each pattern to paint. Some kids tried to paint a realistic fish such as speckled trout. Some were very, very good. Others had some very imaginary patterns.

      So I've been driving by an interesting project for three or four years missing out on it's significance. How many other people have been passing by and not investigated?

       So hats off the the kids, teachers and school for creating a very interesting project.