Friday Follies

PLAY THE RAINBOW: I'm trying to keep Friday mornings music-oriented during our summer hiatus from Musikgarten. This morning I was going to have the kids break out their glockenspiels, but it was so damn hot even by 9 a.m. I was thinking about water-water-water and like a bolt from the blue I thought, "Oooh, I'll bet they'd like to play water-filled glasses for a change."
I scrounged up different sizes and shapes and filled them to varying levels. While I was doing this, Annabelle deduced, "You're making a water xylophone, aren't you?!" I asked her where she'd heard that term before and she said it was on "Blue's Clues." Good memory!

I thought it would be a lot more fun - and easier for the kids to remember playing patterns - if the water was colored, so we broke out the cake decorating dye and put a couple of drops in each glass.

First, I had the kids hit each glass and together they determined a low-to-high note scale and lined the glasses up in that order.

Next, I let each of the have some time doing free-form songs. As they were messing around I recognized four notes that a bored deep into my brain. I played the opening riff from Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" on the glasses for them and asked them to replicate it. They each got it after just a couple of tries.

I cued up the Nirvana video and had them play along with it. That was a good challenge, as the song is pretty fast and they had to keep up with the pace Kurt, Dave and Krist set.

I left the glasses out on the counter all day long, and Annabelle played them dozens of times. Such a simple way to have some musical fun!

FOLLOW YOUR NOSE: This afternoon we headed to Swanson's - my favorite nursery in Seattle (at least so far). Since it was so hot (90-plus) there weren't a whole lot of people perusing plants. So we had lots of room to roam. We selected several new herb plants for our brand new kitchen window shelf. We also bought a palm tree for the top of the lot and a new purplish grass for the 'beauty strip' along the road. As we were meandering I spied a sign I knew CJ would be interested in. I told the kids, "Look to the left and tell me what you see ..."

After a few seconds' delay they both shouted, "Chocolate!"

Surrounding the sign we found dozens of Chocolate Cosmos plants. Naturally, we took a whiff and my-oh-my, they DID smell just like chocolate. Amazing! The bees were loving them - the Chocolate Cosmos had way more bees on them than any other plant I saw at the nursery.

CJ begged me to buy one. Of course I did.

HERE FISHY, FISHY: Adjacent to the nursery's cafe (what, your nursery doesn't have a cafe?), there is a fabulous indoor pond stocked full of humongous koi. Several of them are bigger than, and definitely outweigh, our dog.

The kids asked some good questions while we were there. For instance, CJ wanted to know if they live in saltwater or fresh water (fresh), and he wanted to know if koi means 'fish' in Japanese. I told him no, that koi is a kind of fish (like a Havanese is a kind of dog).

I knew from having written a story about koi before that 'koi' or nishikigoi are pretty varieties of carp (Cyprinus carpio). In fact, nishikigoi means brocaded carp in Japanese.

The koi at Swanson's are always hoping we have food. I swear they act like dogs - they see you coming, approach you, wag their tails and practically beg for food. This one appeared to want to eat my camera ...
CITY CHICKENS: While I was strolling through the NW native plants, I spied a small sign that said, "Live chicks" and had an arrow pointing east. Well you know that we had to check that out!

Sure 'nuff, we found a really groovy chicken coop tucked in a corner of the shade plants greenhouse.

I really, Really, REALLY want to get some city chickens. Seattle is very pro urban chickens - in fact the city just upped the number of chickens city residents can have from three to eight. We can have both hens & roosters so long as the city noise ordinances aren't violated by wee hour crowing.
If/when we ever get this remodeling *&^% under control, we are definitely going to get serious about adopting some fine feathered friends. But just hens, no roosters.