To celebrate the day we decided to start by planting a garden. We put our garden on the bare spot in our back yard where there once was a playhouse. For the last few years it's held a pile of decaying oak leaves. It's about the sunniest spot we've got. We built a little 6x6 ft box with 2x6s to contain all the soil we wanted to add. The existing soil in that spot is a sandy clay with very little organic content, so we mixed in some bags of good soil along with the fully processed contents of last year's worm composting bin. There were still quite a few skinny little underfed wigglers at the bottom. Finally, to keep the rabbits out of the garden, we added a little fence around the perimeter. Our garden contains some tomato plants, peppers, carrots, and zucchini. We'll see how it works out. I keep checking, but I haven't seen a single tomato yet.
All the trees and shrubs at the back of the yard are flowering, so it looks really pretty right now. Our grass, in contrast, is thin, weedy, lumpy, and scraggly, just the way a lawn should be. Come to think of it, our old cat Maggie also fits that description.
We thought it would be nice if Abbey and Quinn recorded a Mother's Day duet on the piano. Mrs. Black assigned this piece, The Butterfly, to Abbey and Quinn a couple of weeks ago, but it didn't get written into their lesson books so we'd all forgotten about it. We remembered it yesterday, and they've been working hard this weekend to get it polished enough to make a video. Quinn's part is probably just as difficult as Abbey's, so relative to his skill level it's much more challenging for him. But it's the first duet they've played, and it took some effort just to learn to coordinate.
We had to try this quite a few times, and I put in two of the attempts, just for fun.
Yay, Abbey and Quinn, that was great! Nice job learning it so quickly.
ReplyDeleteI think I learned that same tune in my "Teaching Little Fingers How to Play" book but it was called Lightly Row.
Shaun, this makes me think of a duet, I think called Petite Minuet, we played at a recital about a thousand years ago.
Yes, Lightly Row, was certainly what I thought it was called. The book we've borrowed from Mrs. Black said was a Spanish folk song.
ReplyDeleteI'd been trying to remember whether we'd ever played a duet at a recital. I remember the name Petite Minuet, but I don't remember the song.
Thanks for posting the duet. I enjoyed it very much.
ReplyDeleteDad came across Petite Minuet not too long ago. I'll see if I can find it. Maybe Dad & I can play it.
Awesome. We were just listening to Alexis pick out Ode to Joy on the piano, and I decided to take a look at the blog... She really enjoyed seeing Abbey and Quinn playing.
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