Opal hasn't been enjoying school lately, and greeted the new school year with no enthusiasm. Yes, she was changing rooms, but this merely added the terror of the unknown to the misery of the disliked. She felt about it as you might feel about having your root canal from a new and different dentist. It might be better, but could it possibly be better enough? And what if it was ...

A few weeks ago, Opal brought home her work for the past year. She is in general proud of it, and it's fun to see how her work changes over the course of the year in most subjects. But my favorite is her journal. Every day there was a journal question; on Monday it was always "What did you do over the weekend?" and on Friday (when it did not go in the journal) it was "What was ...

On Saturday, Henry and Jason were in town, and came to Palo Alto for breakfast. They told me the story of their trip to the aquarium to write in Opal's book of museums. It's amazing how much extra stuff they remember when interviewed; they started out by saying the aquarium was great and they liked the sharks, but after they told me about the sharks, they then told me quite a lot ...

Pictures of the pretties from the garden:

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Opal got up this morning and decided to wear a dog T-shirt with dog leggings. Alas, the dog leggings were impossible to put on fully; they turned out to be size 5, and even leggings have a size limit. Next pants; jeans in a size 6. (The child is 6 and a half.) It was possible to put the jeans on, although it was not easy for her to do them up. Plus, it's fortunate that she thinks ...

Opal and I did end up reading Any Which Wall (she looked at the back of the paperback first, and was quite taken with it. The cover just really doesn't work for her). We're still in the middle of an Oz book (a Ruth Plumly Thomson), and we're partway through Emmy and the Incredible Shrinking Rat. We have run out of James Herriot to listen to, and now are listening ...

Worst version of the "children are starving" reasoning EVER: Opal is running a bath and standing on the edge of the tub, trying to reach the sponge on the window sill. I advise her to stop. "But I need the sponge!" "You have the washcloth and the purple scrubby thing." "But I need the sponge to build something." "What?" "I need the sponge to build something up high for the water ...

People keep talking about how lovely my garden sounds, and truly, I do cherish it. But I have to imagine that most people are envisioning something more gentle, organized, cherished. A garden that doesn't have, for instance, one horsetail, and a volunteer palm tree still at that awkward stage where it's got fronds all the way down to the ground. Did you know there are spikes, I ...

Among the plants in the garden were some flourishing objects that looked a great deal like agapanthus. But they failed to bloom in the spring, tra la, and in fact the leaves all died off in late spring. That was a puzzle, but we cleared away the dead leaves and moved on. Perhaps next year they would be happier. And then, about two weeks ago, flower shoots appeared. Looking much ...

We went out to see if the lemon balm was still surviving (yes) and were surprised by a pair of birds, quite brave, scratching about on the ground. They weren't thrashers, which I'm used to seeing scratching on the ground, so I got out a bird book when we came in. Opal looked at it, awed "We OWN that book?" she said, clutching it to her chest. "We have this book at school! I've ...