!=spring

Central Oregon spring is not the spring of popular imagination, in which March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb and April showers bring May flowers and the world slowly turns green. In Central Oregon, spring is a clear struggle for dominance between winter and summer.

Last week summer won out. My kids and I wore shorts to Sawyer Park, where Blake found a garter snake that Sasha caught, and we marveled over caddis flies in their houses. We played outside after school. The peas sprouted and I planted some lettuce.

This week? Winter's back. A storm's blowing in right now; I can hear the wind flinging tree limbs about; and they say that tomorrow night we'll have snow.

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The sun, however, will tell you what's what. It's in the sky 20 minutes longer this week than last.

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Whilst googling "battle between winter and summer," which I hoped would give me a good title for this post, I found this. How interesting. Would you say pond skimming is the modern version of that event?

Why

My sister has a burst appendix. She's been in the hospital since Friday. She hasn't slept since Thursday. Her pain medication makes her hallucinate. My poor, poor sister! I am so tempted to jump on a plane and fly to Pennsylvania. I wonder if my kids' company would make her feel better or worse. (Probably both.)

Here's a joke for her, told to me by my 8-year-old.

Why did the chicken cross the road?

To get to the other side.

Why did the turkey cross the road?

It was the chicken's day off.

Why did the elephant cross the road?

To avoid answering all these questions!

Nature v. nuturing

I learned to ride a bike the summer that I was six. My daughter is strong and sturdily built with good balance and physical self-confidence; there is absolutely no reason why she can't learn to ride this summer – the summer that she'll be six — just like I did. So last week, on our one day of glorious, warm-and-sunny weather, I arranged a biking playdate. We met a neighbor in the (level, large, untrafficked) cul de sac behind our house. I thought seeing the other children ride might inspire her.

My dastardly plans were foiled, however, when the kindergartener we met wouldn't ride, either!

So, you know. The kids abandoned their bikes in the cul de sac and instead climbed trees, climbed rocks, picked itty bitty flowers and made nests in the birdbath.

Why ride a bike in circles on the road when there's so much to explore right here? For goodness sake, Mom.

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I am such a horrible photographer. I just can't see. I was trying to get a shot of the weird way new growth appears on this tree, which looks like an aspen but I think mustn't be; it was only after I'd transferred the pic to the computer that I noticed: child in tree in foreground, abandoned playstructure in background.

This post is part of Backyard Mama’s children & nature carnival.

The mystery of the egg thief

My daughter has a new book about baby dinosaurs in which nearly every dinosaur has feathers. It includes a surprising fact about oviraptors.

"In 1923," writes author Lita Judge, "a new species of dinosaur was found lying on top of a nest. At first scientists thought the dinosaur had died while raiding the nest — it had a huge, toothless beak that looked perfect for eating eggs. They named it Oviraptor, which means 'Egg Thief.'"

Sasha knows about Oviraptors. Any book that goes beyond the Triceratops/T-rex/Brachiosaurus triumvirate will include information about the Oviraptor, since it was discovered so long ago, paleontologically speaking. They're one of the more frightening dinosaurs for a girl who so dearly loves babies. They stand in stark contrast to the Maiasaura, whose name means "Good Mother Lizard" and who is noted for actually looking after her babies. (Most dinosaurs, they say, were like turtles: they laid their eggs and then left.)

But lo. When paleontologists studied the embryos inside the eggs beside Oviraptor's fossilized remains, they realized that Oviraptors were not thieves. They were sitting on their own nests.

Says Lita Judge, "Though he couldn't fly, a father Oviraptor might have spread his feathers over his fragile babies to keep them cool in the searing desert sun while mother brought meat for their next meal. He may also have used his feathers to keep his babies warm at night."

I don't particularly like dinosaurs, but I do enjoy the history of dinosaur discoveries. I find it so interesting that dinosaur books for children include caveats, phrases like "scientists used to believe" or "scientists now think..." They are sprinkled with words like "maybe" and "perhaps."

When a child grows up with books like these, how do they affect her worldview? Will she come to believe that knowledge is provisional, that truths are only temporary, that it's her choice to either "believe" or "not believe" what a scientist tells her?

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Ursula Le Guin has said, "History is one way of telling stories, just like myth, fiction, or oral storytelling. But over the last hundred years, history has pre-emptied the other forms of storytelling because of its claim to absolute, objective truth. Trying to be scientists, historians stood outside of history and told the story of how it was. All that has changed radically over the last twenty years. Historians now laugh at the pretence of objective truth. They agree that every age has its own history, and if there is any objective truth, we can't reach it with words. History is not a science, it's an art."**

My daughter's dinosaur books make me think that science is not a science, but an art.

*"Born To Be Giants: How Baby Dinosaurs Grew To Rule the World." Copyright 2010 by Lita Judge. The illustrations in this book are gorgeous.

**I found this quote here, where it was excepted from "Talking on the Water; Conversations About Nature and Creativity", copyright 1994 by Jonathan White.

Secret spaces

The first house I remember had a fort in its backyard. The fort was a giant barrel on stilts. To get in, we climbed a ladder and opened a door; to get out, we jumped through a hole in the floor, landing in the sandbox below. My sister and I used to wish we could spin that barrel like hamsters, but it was firmly nailed. (Oddly enough, when we moved from that house to another, the new house stood near a park which had a big barrel that did spin.)

The fort stood in the far corner of the yard. A wooden fence to the left of the fort separated our yard from our neighbors'; a wire fence behind the fort separated our yard from a weedy wilderness. It was a vacant lot, I suppose; although my mother hacked a vegetable garden out of some of that weediness, so maybe it was just unused, not vacant. Milkweed grew back there, and sassafras. One of my parents — my mom most likley — taught us to chew on sassafras stems, which taste lemony. We loved the milkweed best, though. My sister and I used to reach through the wire fence to gather it. In late summer the pods get crunchy; when you break them open, silk bursts out. Seeds attach to the ends of the silk. My sister and I buried them in the sandbox, hoping they'd grow. The "milk" in the plant's stem made our fingers stick together; it is, according to this naturalist, as strong as rubber cement. He also says that milkweed's spring shoots can be eaten like asparagus, which is kind of funny because I remember my mom's excitement when she got asparagus to grow in her garden. Adjacent to the milkweed.

Our barrel fort had a small window which overlooked that wild space — the weeds, the beehives beyond the weeds, the stand of trees beyond that. My elementary school stood beyond the trees; in second grade my mother let me walk there alone. I loved to traipse through that wilderness (even after I got stung); passing out of view of the house was scary, but it made me stand taller.

I love the house I own now ... but it's missing a fort. I'm thinking we need to build an addition onto our garden shed! It would overlook our neighbors' chicken coop.

This post is part of Backyard Mama’s children & nature carnival.