Happy 9th Birthday FPL!

Today was the library’s 9th birthday party, and the rain came in in waves much of the day, and we tracked in more dead leaves than we could vacuum up. Miss Jennifer and I hustled around, hoping we could do all the fancy table things Miss J. is so good at. We set the tables up on the lawn and in the driveway. We knocked them down again.

IMG_0635Kelby came over to help a couple of hours early. He gave the sky a good talking too. Then it rained again. We downsized our plans and set things up inside.

Mr. John and Miss Vicky took over the kitchen, the noodle cooking, the garlic bread making.

The twins arrived and followed by Olivia and Klark. They worked on a quick blitz finish of the second alphabet accordion. We were a few letters short, but boy was our first one gorgeous!

Briana pedaled up. Violet, Jasper and Fox finally returned (yeah!). We started serving dinner. Klark and Harper and Danny began with plates filled with garlic bread. An unwise move considering how much other great food we had.

Andrew and Heather walked over, Barbara, Penny, Jen and Tracy, Alex….heck, I forget. The rain stopped and we moved the folding chairs back out, the tables back out…no fancy centerpieces and quite a few mosquitoes, but the sauces were excellent, the pasta hot. The birthday cake had a hard time getting out of the pan (parts of it hung on) but we reglued everything with icing. That is kind of typical….

We finished (except for the cleanup) with the watermelon seed spitting contest in the road. It is getting darned hard to find a melon with seeds, but Ray picked one up at the flea market.

All the kids lined up at the chalk line for the big spit. Violet won with a spit of 17’4″. Go Violet!

Olivia still holds the kid record at 18′ 9.5.”

There was a festival of cleaning-up afterwards. Miss Jennifer said that she’d come back to vacuum up those leaves in the morning. I said…okay. At least I paused before I said it.

Onward to our double-digit birthday!

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June 3rd–getting ready for our 9th B’day!

This was the last Sunday before the 9th Front Porch Library birthday–wow, it sure has been a good long run! But we didn’t think much about the historical side of things. We were too busy stirring the sauce, drawing, baking the cookies for our traditional chocolate chip cookie ice cream sandwiches.
 
Our Alphabet accordion still lacks a few letters, but we began assembling it–and it is GORGEOUS!
 
The library house is also hoping to become an official food bank ( I know, houses can’t hope–but this one seems to) and as I worked to clear space out for more refrigeration I found a 1983 Life Magazine which was the 50th anniversary edition so we perused photos of things like families in saddle oxfords, Lucille Ball (who?), the first photo of earth from the moon, Mick Jagger and Tina Turner looking oh so fine, a phone with a cord (whoa!).
 
And I think we are as ready as we should be one week ahead of the big bash. All we need are a few more pesky letters for that alphabet accordion…
 
Another fine afternoon at the FPL.

May 27th More birthday party doings.

Work continued on the big library birthday bash. Who knew the alphabet had so many letters? And to make matters worse we are doing two panels for each letter. We drew giraffes, vases, worlds, mangoes–we are still working on the alphabet acordion–the party is just two Sundays away.
 
Mr. John continued to be the spaghetti sauce master in the kitchen. Today’s food stand delivery included celery and basil. We go with the flow and worry very little about a recipe found in any cookbook. The only thing we require is that it be plentiful and that it not burn. Since Mr. John has taken over from me some years back the sauce has never burned; when I was in charge I was always googling, “How To Get Rid of That Burnt Taste.” (Throw in a raw potato, cook it a while, then discard the potato–it sort of works).
 
Toward the end of the gathering, Klark asked if he could light things on fire in the driveway. It was rainy…I was tired… Mr. John went outside for something. Wnen he came back in he asked, “Did tell Klark he could burn leaves in the driveway?” I admitted that I had. “You weakened!” he said.
 
How could I explain that Klark is basically responsible and I trust him to burn leaves in a responsible manner? My answer? “Yup. I weakened.
 
You will be happy to learn that I was proven right, that Klark can burn damp leaves in the driveway responsibly. Another fine gathering at the Front Porch Library.

May 20, 2018: Alphabet Day!

I’ve been in NJ visiting my grandboys, but Miss Jennifer was queen of the Front Porch Library on Mother’s Day. It sounds as if they had a great time (she did pass the crown back to me).

Zoey

Zoey, proud creator of the letter X.

Today we were in full get-ready-for-the-library’s-9th-birthday-party mode. Mr. John was in the kitchen, cooking up a storm while the rest of us worked on the alphabet accordion. “Just how long is this table going to be?” a volunteer asked. The truth? I hadn’t thought about how long a table would have to be to accommodate an alphabet accordion when each letter’s panel is 11″ wide. I still haven’t. I figure that all things at the library eventually work out.

We had a good group of kids, all illustrating letters. Brianna and her cousin worked furiously–Brianna always does animals. If you have a letter she has an animal to go with it. F is for Fox.

Zoey, there for the first time, was hesitant when she walked through the door, but she got right into the alphabet thing. (Thanks for the great C and X panels, Zoey.

Olivia’s F was a thing of beauty. The letter F was dappled with fish. Klark’s pineapple P was good too. Kelby was not moved to do any art, but he read aloud to the group from our book of the day, “The Kid Who Ran For President” by Dan Gutman.

Our neighbor Michelle, brought in a crew of volunteers so we were, not only drawing, but sorting some of the many piles of books, toys, building materials that have stacked up…everywhere.

It was rainy during library, so everything took place in two small rooms. A chummy, good day at the library.

April 29, 2018

Once again the Front Porch Library was quiet. Just me, Olivia and Klark. We need to walk the neighborhood and leaflet, and we will (as soon as that lazy librarian Adrian gets some leaflets printed).

The read-aloud was about the sun setting around the globe so we got down the globe and followed the track of the sun, finding each of the places listed.

We continued working on this year’s library birthday party’s major decoration, the alphabet accordion that will run down the center of the main table. Olivia did a wonderful B panel. It featured BFFs. Klark took A and drew some lovely arachnids.

We made a tentative decision that this year’s library birthday party and neighborhood pot luck will be on June 3rd.

Olivia decorated the chocolate cake with M&Ms. It was a day and night cake. One side done in yellows and oranges, the other in blues and violets. We made a modest dent in the cake and then distributed the rest. With all the food distribution that goes on out of the library house we have no problem knocking on doors and saying, “And how about a little chocolate cake? Your chunk comes from the daylight side of the cake.”

It was a restful and artistic day at the Front Porch Library.

April 29th at the library.

Once again the Front Porch Library was quiet. Just me, Olivia and Klark. We need to walk the neighborhood and leaflet, and we will (as soon as that lazy librarian Adrian gets some leaflets printed).

The read-aloud was about the sun setting around the globe so we got down the globe and followed the track of the sun, finding each of the places listed.

We continued working on this year’s library birthday party’s major decoration, the alphabet accordion that will run down the center of the main table. Olivia did a wonderful B panel. It featured BFFs. Klark took A and drew some lovely arachnids.

We made a tentative decision that this year’s library birthday party and neighborhood pot luck will be on June 3rd.

Olivia decorated the chocolate cake with M&Ms. It was a day and night cake. One side done in yellows and oranges, the other in blues and violets. We made a modest dent in the cake and then distributed the rest. With all the food distribution that goes on out of the library house we have no problem knocking on doors and saying, “And how about a little chocolate cake? Your chunk comes from the daylight side of the cake.”

It was a restful and artistic day at the Front Porch Library.

Earth Day 2018

It was a very small library gathering on this Earth Day. Just me, Olivia, Klark and Mr. John. We soldiered on.
 
I prepared a program about four people who have had an effect on protecting the earth. One was a Florida guy (literally), Guy Bradley. It is interesting that he was a guide for plume hunters as a teen and then died as a game warden protecting the rookeries which resulted in laws that protected the birds–then feathers on hats went out of style.
 
I featured two women, Jane Goodall (who the kids knew) and Rachel Carson, who they didn’t. I brought a print out of a contemporaneous newspaper showing how the pesticide industry slandering Carson. We talked about the difficulty of defending the earth and the importance of science when it comes to knowing what has to be defended.
 
Teddy Roosevelt was the last. We read a short biography and looked at the vast number of parks he created. We also became acquainted with his use of the word “bully.”
 
We then went back to work on the alphabet illustrations for our grand table decoration for our ninth FPL birthday dinner. Next comes the cooking of the traditional spaghetti sauce, the baking of the giant chocolate chip cookies that will be made into ice cream sandwiches. The process will take several weeks, but we put on a pretty good spread.
 
A quiet but good day at the library.

April 9, 2018 Botany Day!

Late breaking report from the Front Porch Library. We had a big crowd for Botany day (the local plants were trembling as they contemplated the onslaught).
 
We began with a rush for the ligustrum hedge where botany was not top of the list, climbing was. Everyone took their melted cheese thingies into the upper branches and ate among the leaves.
 
Then we went inside for a read-around. The Twister spinner chose Violet and Brianna. Each read a book to the group. Both are good at reading upside down (a cherished read-aloud skill for anyone reading a picture book to a group).
 
Our neighbor, Karen, brings me the kid page from the New York Times. This time the center page was a collection of dumb jokes. We took turns tossing a small shell at the page than reading whatever joke it hit. We groaned a lot.
 
And then, botany! I showed off diagrams of flower anatomy.
 
Ray lent me his giant magnifier so we could look at the diagrammed parts of all flowers–let me just say that things like anthers and sepals are not always dead obvious, nowhere near as easy to see as in the diagrams.
 
We then went on a scavenger hunt for flowers–and found 29 species.
 
I had hoped to have the kids dissect and diagram their own flowers but the group was large and exuberant. Hoops were shot, bikes raced.
 
The Earlys, a big family that used to live in the neighborhood came back and Linda Guy and her husband (Linda’s book club is a patron of our library) came by and helped us out with the cheerful chaos.
 
Last but not least, chocolate cake, hoop shooting in the street, bike and scooter races, and the crowd dispersed into the dusk–and plants within a several block radius breathed a sigh of relief.

this week at the FPL

We did Easter today at the library. Well, Easter according to FPL notions.

We dyed eggs. Okay, that part was pretty normal, but multiply normal times kids of all sizes gathered around the big plastic table (covered with the big plastic table cloth, the one with watermelon slices printed on it), and they are all dipping and dunking and of course spilling–the orange bit the dust in the first thirty seconds.

The discovery was made that if you stack two eggs the top one only gets half dyed, so we have lots of eggs that look as if they are wearing pants and a top. Then we tried the box of swirly dye. It produced eggs that were interesting even if they tended toward the mud end of the spectrum.

We had an egg hunt for plastic eggs with candy in them. It was a cooperative egg hunt. We had to find 48 eggs and then we split them evenly among the kids. Yup, we found them all.

Our neighbor Jen gave us a chocolate Easter bunny that has been waiting for the right moment in the freezer.

And this was the moment. We read A LOT, thanks to a unique incentive program called Smash the Bunny. We are working on the great book chain–each link has a title read printed on it and the name of the reader, and we plan for it to stretch the length of the yard when we celebrate our 8th birthday. Today, whoever read the most books got to smash the frozen bunny with an impressively large hammer.

Klark read 8 books and he got the honor. Let me just say that a frozen bunny, smashed with a hammer scatters very widely. We shared quite a bit of that chocolate with driveway ants.

It was a great day at the library. We ended with our tradition of bringing the leftover cake to our neighbors Philip and Kathleen. We do it like this. One kid (today it was Violet) carries the cake. Then there is the knocker. Today it was Fox, but Jasper added her knock. The rest of the delivery gaggle is there to yell “Cake delivery!” when the door opens.

We are very traditional at the library. We are like a family that has quirky ways of doing things that every member knows and cherishes. “Cake delivery!” is the final act before the kids speed off on their bikes and the adults wash the dishes. We are off for Easter, then we will be back at it.

this week at the FPL

It was pickle factory day at the library. We had an overwhelming donation of cucumbers and neighbors who horde washed-out glass jars, a match made in heaven.

Yes, we had kids working gleefully with knives. In addition to cucumbers we had peppers, onions, dill from the community garden, celery seeds. We cooked brine in the kitchen in a pot that danced on the burner as if possessed. The kids were deeply impressed by the smell of vinegar– they reeled impressively.

They made their own labels and each developed their own style of cucumber dissection. Brianna just chopped, Klark shredded, chunking was also popular. We had 13 kids, 13 different styles of pickelization.

Our reading continued. The chain of loops with titles on it is now nearly four feet long. We had two new volunteers from FSU, student teachers. They were a big help. They listened to readers and stepped in when the dancing brine pot was empty.

Everyone went home with pickles. Loads ‘o pickles.

Kary, my fellow mother of the library and I once tried to decide what our goal was with the library. Would we be a back-up for school? Work on reading skills? Maybe even math? We do those things, but our mission statement turned out to be making memories. I think we are living up to it.

Another fine day at the FPL.

this week at the FPL

Library was a whirlwind. We had a 12 kids, but some of them should count double. Maybe triple. I read a wonderful picture book about a little girl who drew things that became the stories she told while drawing. Vivienne asked if there were many pages left because she was getting kind of bored. I persisted. She listened politely until the end.

We worked on the book chain, each loop printed with a title read and the reader. We hope to stretch it across the yard at the library birthday party. It is about two and a half feet long as of this second. The yard is very long.

We made paper mosaics. Most were stars or hearts, all were beautifully decorated with geometric scraps of paper. We punched holes in them and hung them from the hedge.

We drew with chalk on the street. We juiced a ton of grapefruits–so many Mr. John had to declare a time out, the juicer was overheating.

Kids climbed the ligustrum hedge. A couple needed assistance returning to the ground.

It was a very busy day at the library, one that included watermelon, grapes, whole wheat cheesy melts,strawberry cake, and two Band-aids.

this week at the FPL

You can’t get started too soon when it comes the the annual Front Porch Library birthday party, we do everything from scratch. Today we began making the highly artistic place mats. Every diner gets one of our individually designed place mats–nice to put a plate or take home for a souvenir.

Olivia followed up on our comic strip day by making a nice comic strip place mat. It featured an incredulous person having a hard time accepting that food could be served at a library. No way! Another had photos of cake glued to it. Message? The FPL is a piece of cake!

Then there was Violet’s “Horse” place mat. It was understated, just the word “Horse” written over and over in many different sizes. There was the WOW! place mat, just that one word writ large, and so many others–you may have to come to the party to get the full effect.

We also began the reading chain. Each title read by a kid gets written on a strip of paper which is then added to a paper chain. We are hoping to stretch the finished chain across the entire yard–see you can’t start that kind of project the week before.

Fox and Jasper tore up and down the street on bike and scooter. The street in front of their house is too busy for tearing.

Klark and I took on a 200 piece Harry Potter puzzle. Kennedy and Violet both weighed in. So did Mr. John, but It beat us, although we made pretty good headway. We found the spooky hand and Harry’s glasses. We just ran out of time.

Today we had a blue moon cake, loads of fruit and cheese–we prove that Olivia’s place mat about eating food at the library is true any time we get together. Books…blue moon cake…magic markers…Harry Potter in 200 pieces? It doesn’t get much better than that.

Another fine gathering at the FPL.

this week at the FPL

It was garden day at the library. Our neighborhood has a community garden and I start about a bazillion plants for it. Today we were giving away plants to kids and their semi-delighted parents–I always start way too many plants for the community garden. (Hence garden day).

In addition to giving away plants, we read a really good picture book about a bleak city that had an abandoned elevated railroad that was being taken over by volunteer plants and a kid-gardener who helped the plants to spread until the city was green and no longer bleak.

Then we walked down to our garden with a stop at Kary and Sally’s prolific loquat tree which now is rather bare up to the height of our tallest kid, CJ. We then paraded down the street, too big a force to be overlooked by traffic.

At the garden we identified the winter and summer vegetables (we are at the turnaround time of the year when collards shade starter tomatoes). The best part was pulling carrots and beets. Fox, our littlest kid (Fox is three but prefers to be thought of as two) invariably pulled the biggest carrots. We picked kale, collards, Swiss chard, lettuce. Everyone rambled back to the library with a big bag full. Then we distributed plants, shot hoops, ate fudge cake.

We also began the first planning for the library’s 8th birthday. We always throw a dinner for the whole neighborhood. We serve that ever-expandable main dish, spaghetti, always using the frozen leftover tomatoes and peppers from the prior year’s garden–this year the storm and power outage robbed us of our frozen stores, but we had a donation of a HUGE number of onions, all on the verge of going over the edge, but Mr. John, at great personal expense to his eyes, cut them up, put the bad parts in the compost, and froze the good parts, and so, we begin to gather the materials for another loaves and fishes dinner that will feed about fifty.

As we were closing up, Joe found a very high-level origami book. Evidently Joe loves doing origami. The library donated the book to him–sometimes the best thing we can do is give our books away. He promised to bring me some origami in return.

It was a nine kid day, which is a good number. Nine kids can all be crazy and still, a good time is had by all. A good green day at the FPL.

this week at the FPL

We used quite a few Band aids at the Front Porch Library today–a sure sign that a good time was had by all–and our main activity wasn’t even strenuous. We were drawing our own cartoons (I printed up the blanks complete with bubbles) and we got down to work.

Olivia worked on the story of a poor Indian girl who grew up to be a great dancer. Vivienne had a laser-chicken (Klark had a laser-bear). Brianna’s was a tale of puppies, Dee Dee continued to work on a multi-page knock-em-down-drag-em out (the best part was listening to him read the lines of dialogue the tough guys were growling at each other). Violet had a story unfolding in a scenic village.

Meanwhile, the smaller kids built with Duplo-Blocks on the blanket and sorted our fine collection of plastic food items. Of course there was the weekly climb in the lagustrum hedge. Violet also found a lot of missing toys in the leaf litter. Library can be very similar to an explosion. She and Jasper also collected dried up air potatoes in the back yard. They look a bit sinister, but Violet treated them as great treasures.

Joe ambled in–Joe is considered very cool by the rest of us.

We adjourned to Klark and Olivia’s back yard to watch Olivia do tricks on the trampoline. While there we discovered why their family has been getting so few eggs from their chickens. We found 17 eggs in the hollow bass of one of their live oaks.

Oh yeah, about those Band-aids: tree climbing, scooters in the street… These things happen.

Another fine Sunday at the Front Porch Library.