Our homeschool notebook: Fall walk and poems

Thursday, October 17, 2013

Fall walk and poems

I Love Fall!

There's nothing quite like taking a walk on a beautiful fall day. This amazing weather we are having called us out for a walk twice this week. These pictures are from one walk at Graham Oaks nature park.

I can't help but point out every single colorful tree to my kids, and now they have started doing the same for me. It's amazing the things they notice when you point them out enough.

October's Bright Blue Weather

by Helen Hunt Jackson

O sun and skies and clouds of June
And flowers of June together,
Ye cannot rival for one hour
October's bright blue weather;

When loud the bumblebee makes haste,
Belated, thriftless vagrant,
And goldenrod is dying fast,
And lanes with grapes are fragrant;

When gentians roll their fringes tight,
To save them for the morning,
And chestnuts fall from satin burs
Without a sound of warning;

When on the ground red apples lie
In piles like jewels shining,
And redder still on old stone walls
Are leaves of woodbine twining;

When all the lovely wayside things
Their white-winged seeds are sowing,
And in the fields, still green and fair,
Late aftermaths are growing;

When springs run low, and on the brooks
In idle, golden freighting,
Bright leaves sink noiseless in the hush
Of woods, for winter waiting;

When comrades seek sweet country haunt
By twos and twos together,
And count like misers hour by hour
October's bright blue weather.

O sun and skies and flowers of June,

Count all your boasts together,

Love loveth best of all the year

October's bright blue weather.

This kid didn't want to walk at first, but after we were done he even said it was a "nice walk."

Even snow topped Mt. Hood was visible. A beautiful sight!

A tired 2 year old, and big sister to the rescue!

This line of trees just looked like "Autum Fires."

Autumn Fires

by Robert Louis Stevenson

In the other gardens
And all up the vale,
From the autumn bonfires
See the smoke trail!

Pleasant summer over
And all the summer flowers,
The red fire blazes,
The grey smoke towers.

Sing a song of seasons!
Something bright in all!
Flowers in the summer,
Fires in the fall!

"Every leaf speaks bliss to me,

fluttering from the autumn tree."

Emily Bronte

There weren't many leaves fallen on this path...

"When autumn wind goes running
It does some magic things.
It gives the shadows dancing shoes
It gives the bright leaves wings
When autumn wind goes running

It curls the bonfire's tail of smoke
And shares a little whispered joke
With cornstalks who delight to prattle
It turns a seed pod into a rattle
When autumn wind goes running"