Wolcott Wizards

I spent two great days this week at Roger Wolcott Early Childhood Center in Windsor, Connecticut. Lynne Markwell, the Early Literacy Specialist, kindly invites me to visit all of their terrific kindergarten students every year. Greeting me in the hall was this wall of wonderful word wizards--successful young readers! Aren't they cute?

Word Wizard information HERE.

Tortugas!

Quite a chorus line on the log at Frog Song Pond today. Well....a silent chorus line, anyway.

Maybe basking line is a better description. More photos on my other blog, HERE.

These two wanted to be alone, however....

I recently heard that Turtle Splash! will be out next year in a Spanish edition. Muy bueno!

Craig Reinauer, a preservice elementary teacher studying education at Towson University in Baltimore, Maryland, adapted Turtle Splash! to create a stop-motion animated video for his class project. Check it out HERE---quite charming!

Pond Babies

Sample art for proposed project, POND BABIES.

Okay....so I haven't actually seen any babies yet this year, but I keep looking.

The mallard drake has been swimming around and annoying the turtles all by himself the last couple of days, so perhaps the mama-to-be is egg sitting. We've had ducklings on Frog Song Pond nearly every year. The turtles have been out in herds....(hmmm....what's the collective noun for Eastern Painted Turtles?) but I haven't spotted any hatchlings.

Oh, deer...

I am determined to have a successful vegetable garden this year. The summer I was working on Mystery Vine, I had a magically wonderful garden with a bountiful harvest. Then last year, all went terribly wrong. Torrential rains rotted two rounds of seeds, and a parade of critters-- particularly deer, groundhogs, slugs and beetles--gobbled up the third planting. So this year, I'm starting with infrastructure. We had a glorious weekend, with bizarrely warm weather. I purchased a long roll of mesh fencing, foraged the woods for poles, and erected a nine-foot deer fence around my picket-fenced garden. I hope it will convince Bambi's descendants that it really isn't worth the trouble. Festooned with white ties and fluttering ribbons, I also hope it warns the birds away from harm.

A friend of mine teased me about it this morning. "What? Nature girl? Animal Lover? YOU put up a deer fence?" she asked dramatically, a twinkle in her eye. "I love my children, too," I explained, "but I didn't let THEM go wherever they wanted to go either." So there. Next step, a chicken wire barrier to keep out the very fat groundhogs.

UPDATE: Just finished my new gate! Ta-da!