School are having an inset day to prepare for next week so we officially have the day off, which means homeschooling is over – for now (I'm not counting my chickens). It's amazing how hard it is not to do the work when you know it's there waiting for you, being marked and appraised, set by teachers who are taking time to put it out there.
Even if you know they could learn a particular task better another way, the kids feel bad if they don't fulfil their tasks and so do I. Is that a weakness on my part or a strength? The integrity and resilience to get stuff done or the inability to step away and follow your own instinctive path? Or perhaps it just depends what kind of person/people you are... no amount of wondering this seems to have made it any easier for us to just let the homeschooling go. Plus it has helped create a routine. We all need one of those. Of that I am sure.
Today though, today was officially for breaking out. Doing what we would do on a normal day 'ff'. Get them out of the house in the morning and chill with a film in the afternoon. And so we headed out to the skate park again, something of a new favourite haunt of local parents looking for something else to do.
It doesn't look like it's officially open yet as to get into the actual skating bit you need to crawl under a piece of prised open barrier fencing plus the surrounding area looks like its been prepped for planting. I climbed under the fence too so I could sit in the sun and watch them and wondered what they will grow here. A mix of shrubs, grasses and perennials would be lovely. Flowers and plants that soften the edges, add colour, scent the air and catch the light.
Looking around the park there are already lots of lovely trees here, particularly the birches. I imagine these trees have seen this park in various states of souped up loveliness, faded glory and then disrepair before being spruced up again, which is what seems to happen with municipal green spaces. They have lifecycles just like plants do but perhaps we humans could keep a more watchful eye and tending hand on the spaces we create. This one has a lovely atmosphere right now. I hope it remains, gets even better perhaps.
As lovely as the space is, the weather today was absolutely freezing so we headed back after a few hours before I got mother's frostbite, the kind you get from standing around in parks and so they could eat some actual food, not just snacks. We then chilled before heading out again – not strictly within the current restrictions but who is counting the trips outside right now? – and headed to the Flats where we bumped into a friend.
If you get your children climbing trees young it does really help when you want to walk around a copse of trees with your friend, as you don't need to worry about them getting stuck – well hopefully not! Thus me and said similarly-desiring-of-five-minutes-of-peace-and-quiet friend circumambulated (just wanted to use that word) the stand of oaks and our various offspring climbed to their mean tree heights.
As the cold caught up with us again, we returned home, passing through another copse of trees where we saw a couple of juvenile parakeets climbing out of a hole, fluffing their green-blue feathers out after they were obviously squeezed as flat as they could go. I know that birds have very light skeletons due to their hollow bones but it's still remarkable how some of our feathered friends seem to fit into such small spaces.
The bundling parakeets reminded me of my favourite fact while writing the Collin's Garden Birdwatchers Bible last year: that the greatest number of birds that have been found roosting together in a bird box are 66 wrens. Such a cosy vision. Also a reminder that I need to refill my now cleaned out bird feeders while we're going through this cold spell and as the birds begin to breed.
Our last few steps on the flats took us over the now quickly emerging first foliage of cow parsley, bright blue flowering green alkanet (another reminder to dig up any signs of this in the garden as it spreads like mad) and white and red (actually pink) dead nettle.
It's annoyingly cold but homeschool is over and spring has definitely sprung! There is light! Hurrah for that.