Sunday Salon, April 19

Flowering cherry trees

Weather: Warm and gorgeous

In the garden: yesterday we spent the better part of the day cleaning up three flower bends. Don had to put on sunscreen and I should have done so, too. The day was gloriously warm. We cleaned up the concrete debris from our the slab we had poured last November. Don rototilled the beds. Today we will plant two new azaleas (one white, the other dark pink) and a few sweet pea seeds. Ah. I love this time of year.

In the library: this is National Poetry month so out come the volumes of poetry for students to peruse. This last week was National Library Week in the Bethel SD. I was honored several times by my administration team and the school leadership team. It was a first for our district and for me personally. Unfortunately my clerk was out due to a family emergency so she didn't get to partake in the festivities. Our school is gearing up to become an iPad school next year---every child will be assigned an iPad for the year. We are still at the stage of planning how to implement this.

Grace: A friend and I are teaching an adult Sunday School class on the topic of grace. Grace is love and mercy given to us by God as an undeserved free gift. We can do nothing to earn or deserve this gift. We just started the class today and will continue into June. We hope as Christians we learn ways to express God's grace and to extend it out in to the world at large.

100 best books of the decade so far: from the editors of the Oyster. I've read 16 of them but want to read many more. How about you? Have you read any of them? Which are your favorites? While they were at it they also listed 16 YA Titles that should appeal to just about every teen. I've only read five of these books but would concur about their general appeal.

Books read this week:

• The Neverending Story by Michael Ende---a classic children's tale of acceptance and finding oneself. Set in Fantastica. It is a marvelous story made popular by a movie in the early 1980s which I've never seen.
• Poisoned Apple: Poems for You, My Pretty by Christine Heppermann---a collection of poems of modern retellings of fairy tales.

Currently reading:

• The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins---my Classics Club selection. I'm enjoying it.
• Becoming Billie Holiday by Carol Boston Weatherford---a fictional account of the making of Billie Holiday, the famous jazz singer. It is written in verse.

Upcoming book clubs: this coming week both clubs meet. The SOTH club will be discussing the All-Pierce County Reads book, The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown. The RHS Book Club will be discussing The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins.

Dog walks, dog baths, dog kisses, dog love...Muffy is the special dog in our lives. Here is a favorite poem in honor of Muffy and her doggie love!

LITTLE DOG'S RHAPSODY IN THE NIGHT 

He puts his cheek against mine
and makes small, expressive sounds.
And when I'm awake, or awake enough

he turns upside down, his four paws
in the air
and his eyes dark and fervent.

Tell me you love me, he says.

Tell me again.

Could there be a sweeter arrangement?
Over and over 
he gets to ask it. 
I get to tell.

---Mary Oliver, Dog Songs

Happy week! Happy Spring (or Happy Fall to my friends Down Under!)