Time and more time

We are talking about time at my house. I have started up a weekly calendar with the nifty magnet thingies we got when we were home. At this moment, our calendar shows a week at a time and the weather today.

The weather magnet got changed three times today, from "cloudy" in the morning to "windy" at lunchtime and "sunny" in the afternoon. May have to rethink that weather thing; there have been days when we would have to use all five options and make some more as well. How many ways can you say "overcast and threatening to rain" in English? In Dutch there are quite a few.

The magnet for "happy birthday" caused quite a stir this morning; I had to explain to Daan again (and again) that when it is someone else's birthday it is not necessarily his birthday, too. Though I finally sang "Happy Birthday" to him at his insistence after he sang it to me. Douwe took me out to the petting zoo and then into town for french fries and a coke after school for my birthday. He even paid for it, though I had to give him the money first.

Well, I suppose I take him places I like for his birthday, too, so we are even. But I was quite surprised; he never did that before. I didn't actually get that it was for my birthday until he said so this evening at bedtime. I figured he just wanted french fries today.

I was the recipient of a rooftop garden for my birthday; I can tell that Nel picked out all the flowers because they were all blue and purple. Conversely, I can tell that Douwe picked out some of the flowers for Nel's garden because they are most decidedly not blue and purple; they are blazing red and yellow and orange. The herbs I picked out myself last week. Dearly Beloved made me two boxes to start the Square Foot Gardening project; only this being Europe it will have to be half meter gardening. I will post some more pictures tomorrow when I get everything into dirt -- the flowers are still in the post they came in. I also have to transplant my strawberries already as they are setting fruit and I think they don't have enough dirt to support his massive growth pattern. In any event, they have to be watered something like twice a day if it doesn't rain.

I also am now the proud owner of a stephanotis plant in a pot and Nel even remembered that I had expressed some small desire to try orchids. So she bought me a smallish version of the orchid we had for our wedding lo these many moons ago.

My sister Jennifer the Younger got her card here on exactly the right day, a feat of timing which may never again be surpassed. Well done. My sister Jennifer the elder bypassed the problem and sent me two e-cards, guaranteed to get there on the right day barring server incidents. (The kids seriously dig the airplane one).

Since the calendar is a hit we are proceeding on the time front with a little kit about time which I picked up in the States. It has a book which covers the notions of time -- seasons, months, and so on -- and has little things you can build and do to do with time. It starts with making your own sundial and progresses to making your own clock, then learning how to tell time from the clock. Douwe took one look at the box and decided we are making the clock tomorrow; the sundial has no moving parts you see.

It lacks a miniature working model of stonehenge to track the solstices and equinoxes, though, bummer. But it seems to have everything else.

However, I expect my children will discard all that twaddle about the cycles of the seasons and phases of the moon and so on and go straight for the real point -- the part that moves and does stuff and can be taken apart is fun, no way around it.