Devon’s First Vacation

Just a few months ago, I was very happy to share the task of writing this blog with one of my Peacebus students, Ava, who is in grade 4. She was my first guest writer and I’m sure that you will enjoy her story…

http://bitsandpeaces08.blogspot.ca/2012/05/mr-jim-goes-bald.html

For today’s blog, I’ve asked another very special person in my life to help me write a story. My son, Devon, is only 9 ½ months old, but as you will soon see, he is already a very talented and funny author…


It’s been a lot of hard work growing up over the last nine months – what with all the growing, eating and playing – so I thought that it would be fun to relax for a day and go to a lake side cottage with my mommy and daddee.


We packed my Opa’s van very early in the morning. Just before we left, daddee went over his checklist…

Bathing suits – check!

Yummy food for the bbq – check!

Toys – check!

Devon – check!

Alrighty then… it was time to leave!!!


During the ride, mommy was always asking daddee if he was sure that he knew where he was going. We didn’t get lost – not even twice!


It was a long drive, so I helped out, too.


When we got to the cottage, we left all the unpacking for later and rushed straight down to check out our beach.


Daddee said that this beach was made especially for me. “A golden beach for a golden baby boy!” is what he said.


Since my bathing suit was still in the van, we spent a few minutes flying over the area, just getting our toes and fingers wet.


The water was so warm that we had to go for a swim, right away, so we quickly changed into our swimming outfits. Daddee wore swim shorts and I wore my swim hat!!!


I’m not sure what, “swimming in the buff,” means – it’s what daddee said I was doing – but it sure is great!


While we were swimming, mommy relaxed with a cold Ice Tea on the beach.


Having mommy and daddee together for such a long period of time is hard to do. We’ll have to have more vacations in the future.


This is the cabin that we stayed in. It is very small, so we spent most of our time outside on the beach.


We sure did a lot of swimming. Koly also loves to swim and he joined us most of the time.


Daddee spent a bit of his time taking photos of nearby flowers…


… and the always changing clouds in the sky.


Mommy likes taking pictures, too. She took seven photos to make this one really long image. It was very beautiful staying in Northern Ontario, with all the trees, hills, rivers and lakes.


One of the games I love to play is called ‘Making Bubbles With Mommy’. Daddee’s not very good at this game… or else it might be called ‘Making Bubbles With Daddee’ – but it’s not.


It was sunny, then it was cloudy. Sunny! Cloudy!


It drizzled for a little while, so we all had a little snack, staying dry underneath the tent awning.


There was only one small bit of cantaloupe left… and I wanted it! So I showed mommy and daddee my newest trick – I CAN CRAWL!!!!


Daddee said that if we all clap our hands together really loudly that the clouds would crack open so that it would be sunny again… and it worked!


Then we saw three golden ducks swimming on our golden lake. Daddee said that this was a good sign.


We could see the sun’s light on the trees, across the lake. See how the distant hill only has a little bit of light on it – near the waterline? Well, for the next few minutes we watched as the sun’s light moved higher and higher until all the trees were bright with sun.


And then, we saw a rainbow. And then, there were two rainbows!


Daddee said that it’s not often that you will see a rainbow touching the ground, but if you do it’s a lucky sign. One of these days I’m going to have to ask daddee what a ‘sign’ is.


Boy! The weather sure changes a lot when you’re on vacation. After daddee took this photo of the fog, he said that his photo looked a lot like U2’s album cover ‘No Line On The Horizon’. I’m going to have to ask daddee what a U2 is, as well!


And then it was sunny again and I got to play with a turtle that mommy found for me.


After some more swimming, daddee and I relaxed with a cool drink as we lounged about on a beach chair.


I told mommy that we should get a family vacation portrait before we all had too many cool drinks and forgot. I told her that Koly wasn’t in this photo…


… so we tried again. This time daddee was making funny faces and I remembered that I was wearing just my diaper – not a very classy family photo…


… so we tried again! This time we got it perfect!


Just before dinner time, we all decided to have a game of ‘Bang The Ball With A Stick Hammer’. Daddee was winning for most of the game and then I decided to help mommy out with my expert advice. “A little to the left, mommy. Oh! That’s too far. A little more to the right! Perfect! Now hit it hard!!!!” I was a great expert advice giver and mommy won the game!


And then… guess… guess… it started raining really hard. Daddee said that he didn’t care if it was raining or not, “we’re here to have fun no matter what.” He set up for another ball game and then we all played in the rain… under our umbrellas!!!!


It got really cool outside, with lots of lightning and thunder, so we had to spend the rest of the day playing inside. Daddee and I played my favourite game ‘Peek – a – Boo’ for hours and hours!!! Did anyone notice that I’m standing up in this photo? This is one of my newest tricks, too. First, I crawl over to a piece of furniture and then I climb it until I’m standing on my two feet. I can get up alright – sometimes it’s the coming down that hurts a bit!!!

I’m sure glad that I brought so many toys to play with. Mommy is a great friend to have around during toy time. We can play for hours and hours and she never gets bored. In fact, mommy spends most of our play time laughing!!! She thinks I’m funny!


Another of my favourite games to play is called ‘Godzilla’. Here’s how it works… first mommy has to build a tall tower out of blocks…


… and then I destroy it! What a great game!!!!



All this playing has given me quite the appetite. I think that it’s time for lunch. Mommy asked daddee to feed me. When mommy came over to see how things were going, I heard a whole bunch of new words that I’ve never heard before… she was directed them to daddee. Daddee said, “I’m not teaching Devon to play with his food, I’m teaching him how to be creative – a great artist!”


Near the end of the day, daddee likes to play me songs on his guitar. He says that he’s putting music into my head so that I’ll have musical dreams when I go to sleep.


Daddee’s been playing me songs for my whole life. I’ve been watching and listening very carefully and today I decided to show daddee what I’ve learned. He told me that I will grow up to be a fine musician.





Just before I go to sleep, I like to have my bedtime bottle. While I’m drinking, I’m thinking of all the wonderful adventures we had today on our first ever family vacation!!!! Thanks very much, mommy and daddee – I hope we can do this again really soon!!!!

Devon

+ + +

Thanks very much, Devon, for writing your first blog story to share with my friends from around the world. I’m sure that they will all enjoy it.

As your editor, though, I do have just one comment to make – just so you’ll know for the future. This vacation that we all enjoyed lasted for a whole week… not just one day. I’ll have to remember to teach you a little something about a thing called ‘time’… but that can wait until you’re a bit older!

Daddee

Guerrilla Gardening – Year 3

It’s been over two years since my last blog story about my ‘Guerrilla Gardening’ adventures. This is a link to my favourite story about this topic…
http://bitsandpeaces08.blogspot.ca/2010/04/guerrilla-gardening-attack-2.html

… so that you can become familiar with the inspiration behind this motivation.

The spring of 2011 was so wet – it seemed that it was raining almost every single day – that I got behind with my regular veggie patch and so I had no time to tend to my ditch peaceflowers throughout the city.



This spring was rather dry and after I had got ahead with my own veggie patch, I thought that it would be good to check on my ditch gardens to see how they had faired over the last two years.

I chose this location for a guerrilla gardening site cuz I thought that only tall grasses grew here and that our flowers would be able to dominate and thrive. I learned that this area filled in with Golden Rod and these plants absolutely smothered the Day Lilies that we had planted. If our Peaceflower garden was to survive a lot of work would have to go into continuously clearing away the existing plants and I just didn’t have the time so I decided to not put any more effort into this garden.

This was another location where we planted orange Day Lilies in the shape of a peace symbol and you can see that I had many helpers for this adventure. We all had a really great time!!!

A few weeks later, I did manage to revisit this site to do a little weeding, hoping that our Day Lilies would dominate and thrive.



Upon my inspection of this site, earlier this spring, I noticed that several plants had actually survived but most had perished. I thought about why this was. I concluded that because the soil was a heavy clay that the roots weren’t able to survive. I thought that if I was to revive this garden that a lot of work would have to go into mixing the existing clay with a sandier soil to create the proper growing conditions. This would have been too much work for me to accomplish alone, this year, but I am hoping that one day I may be able to do this.

It’s such a great site and thousands of travelers would be inspired! Hopefully… one day…

Well, I had just one site left to inspect. I had my fingers crossed for a good omen, as I was feeling a bit disappointed by my two other failures.

As I got closer, I could start to see a few brightly coloured green leaves and this put a smile on my face. I began to move some of the dead grasses away, from last year’s growth, and I kept finding more and more Day Lilies. Yeah!!!!

Soon, I had found that most of the flowers that had been planted here two years before had survived and a few of them had also reproduced other Day Lily tubers (roots)!!! I’ve added some small green dots to this image so that you can see the shape of the peace symbol more clearly.



I figured that these flowers had survived because the soil conditions are perfect and there are few other dominating plants – this ditch is mostly grass.

I decided to add more Day Lilies to this ‘Guerrilla Gardening Attack Site’ to make it even better. I went home, to my gardens, and began looking for flowers to add. Many patches of Day Lilies that I had planted around my house had reproduced in excess of what I wanted, so I dug these flowers up to add to my ditch art.

This was a patch of a different species of Day Lily. Instead of blooming with tall stems and orange flowers, this species has shorter stems with yellow flowers that actually bloom earlier in the season than the orange ones. I figured that by adding these flowers to my ditch art that the peace symbol would be in bloom for a longer period. First the yellow flowers would bloom and then the orange ones.



I chose to dig up this patch of yellow Day Lilies cuz they just weren’t getting enough sunlight where they were. By moving them I opened up this space in my garden to plant other flowers that were more suited for a shaded setting.

So… with a shovel in hand and a bag of Lily tubers, I set off to enhance my peaceflower ditch garden. When I first planted at this site, I simply cut an X into the ground and pushed the tubers under the folds of the ground. This time, I dug deeper and pulled out small plugs of earth. I broke the soil up in my hands and planted the tubers in these holes, filling them in with the loosened soil, hoping that they would reproduce and spread more easily.

As you can see, the flowers were already quite large when I planted them.

Several hours later, I was finished! About thirty additional flowers were planted at this site and I was very excited to see how it would all look once they had grown and bloomed.



I really wish that I had more photos to show you. I wanted to finish this story showing the peace symbol in full bloom, but I never had a chance to do this. Over the last several months I did manage to drive past this site a few times and I did see the flowers in bloom, but on these occasions I was working and I didn’t have my camera with me.



So… to conclude… I will have to ask each of you – my blog readers – to use your imagination and picture these Day Lilies in full bloom, adding inspiration into the lives of all the passing motorists who happened to catch a glimpse of something very lovely and purely peaceful!!!



Jim