Birds singing in the sycamore tree

Still working the whole self-portrait thing. This is the at-home me (as opposed to the last one, which was the at-work me). I realize looking at this that when I think I have a neutral expression of calm repose it actually looks like a frown. Have to work on that, although I know when I'm nervous or uncomfortable I tend to smile too much and so there's a happy medium out there somewhere. I so hated as a child being told to smile all the time, but that sounds like a post for another day.

Lesley asked about the maple seed pods and if there was any relation to the sycamore trees she remembered growing up in England. For a week, there hovered just outside my ability to pull it in the memory of some old song with the words "sycamore tree;" I kept trying to let it come to me, to get more than those two words to float in and it finally came. Dream a Little Dream of Me:

Stars shining bright above you, night breezes seem to whisper, "I love you"
Birds singing in the sycamore tree, "Dream a little dream of me."
Say "nighty-night" and kiss me, just hold me tight and tell me you'll miss me.
While I'm alone and blue as can be, dream a little dream of me.

(YouTube is taking forever and ever to load for me this morning, so I haven't seen this clip but it promises to be Louis Armstrong's version of the song if you're not familiar with the tune.)

But from what I can tell, there must be some other tree than the American Sycamore that goes by that name, since the American Sycamore has a very different seed pod. Although I'm sorry to have left Lesley's question unanswered, I love little journeys like this, and am so relieved to have finally come up with the song.

[Blogger is giving me font trouble -- I'll try to fix it but if this looks all weird and a jumble of sizes, it is not my fault...]

Not wordless because I forgot it was Wednesday

A little detail to show you the red of spring on one of the maples in our yard. While we also have red maples on which the leaves will darken to a deep maroon, these maples will ultimately turn green -- then back to red again in the fall. This particular tree is taller than our house, but when we planted it, it was barely the size of a pencil; in fact, it arrived to us in a standard business envelope in the mail! It was one of the ten free trees we received for joining the National Arbor Day Foundation. They still give away ten trees (you'll see the link right on the home page) and I imagine that they all still arrive at your house in an envelope. I look out my window now and count five trees standing that I know came from that group which seems nothing less than miraculous to me.

Dean has piano lessons on Tuesdays after school, and the lessons take place in the library at our school. He loves to grab a book or two at the end of each lesson, and yesterday chose One Small Square: Backyard. This is part of a wonderful series of nature guides for children that are about choosing a square in a particular environment and observing it over time. He was inspired to collect a supply kit (journal, pencil, magnifying glass, trowel) and head right out to begin his project. He needed a little help and wanted some company so we went out together to enjoy a little time before dinner. My parents were great at giving me books like this one, but just did not have the time to help me follow through on the projects. I remember that "I've got to do this now!" urge -- children really want to act immediately when something interests them -- and felt gratified to be able to be the parent I want to be and help him make it happen. Reminded me to do that more often -- be the parent I want to be.

And a couple more delights of this week! Ken has a colleague who is married to a woman from Japan and who was kind enough to ask Ken if there was anything they could bring back from their recent month-long visit to her family. Um, well, yeah -- I can think of something.... I'll show you more soon of this gorgeous embroidery book and the sewn project book. Heavenly.

Thank you for all the support on the self-portrait project (and you play along too, now) and the blogging. I think the "self" part of the portrait-taking is key -- I know I make a different face when someone else is holding the camera. I think everyone does. Makes me think about painters and self-portraits and the importance of your own vision of you and not you as seen through someone else's lens (literal or figural). I failed to say that yesterday's picture was the "me at work" view. I'll post as I come up with portraits of the other me's.

Time and again

Okay, so I was struggling with it before, but now that we have the dog I'm finding it even more difficult to give this the time and effort I would like to give it. I feel that the vast majority of my posts are but wisps -- wisps! -- of what I intended them to be and have more to do with getting it done than doing it well. I'm trying to figure out how to carve out a bit more time for this, particularly because I realized that what I enjoy so much about other people's blogs I read is that the writers' insights, reflections, and revelations (as well as their photography and story telling) broaden my own perspective. That is, they give genuinely and generously in what they share and I learn from it, think about it, enjoy it. I'm not returning the favor with short, just-get-it-done posts and that make the experience unsatisfying even for me.

So, I'm trying.

Hope Revolution rocks on:

I noticed that another of the participants in the Flickr group added "Pass it on!" as well as the full Hope Revolution title and URL. I'm going to do that on my new batch of cards so that the project is a little more clear for any recipients who are curious about the card they've ended up with in their hands. My favorite drop-off point these days is inside books in the children's book sections we frequent, and I have to storm the library with these as well. I figure that making the card useful as a bookmark may mean it hangs around longer.
Spring is making inroads in New England! These tiny bits of color that start to come up in the trees -- lots of colors, not just greens -- are an endless delight to me. Red is as much a spring color here at green, thanks to the maples and maybe even the oaks coming out. I love the soft haze of color, like smoke.

And I am working this month on self portraits. There are a lot of reasons why I don't feel I have many (any?) recent photos that capture how I think I look, or how I want to look. Like most moms, I have eleventy million pictures of Dean and almost as many of Ken (and of Dean and Ken) but barely a handful of me and I don't like most of those. Yes, it does feel strange and self-indulgent to take pictures of myself, but I realized that I have very few photos of my mom at the various stages of her life and would like at least to give Dean the ability to remember me along the journey we've taken. I wonder if he'll think a picture like this really looks like me; such a hard thing to grapple with -- how do we see ourselves, how do others see us? And unlike those teen years when you have (and take) all the time in the world to stare in the bathroom mirror to contemplate who you are and how you look, it turns out for me anyway that I barely really even know what I look like anymore because I don't think about it. So I invite you, too, to put some effort into getting pictures of yourself that you like and I highly recommend taking them yourself.

Were we the last family in America to finally see Pirates of the Caribbean: The Black Pearl? I remember we saw a preview when it first came out (2003) and Dean was totally freaked out by the marching skeleton feet and it went firmly on his "no way" list. But times change, boys grow up, and Netflicks delivers. We loved it. LOVED it. I think we especially loved it more for seeing the WDW ride come to life, but maybe that was icing on the cake of a story we loved as well. I understand the third one isn't worth bothering but we've got the next one (Dead Man's Chest) on our list. Yes, it is good to have the weekly family movie nights back.