Journey With Me!

As many of my readers already know, I’ve made friends with the squirrels that inhabit my local park. I make a point to walk through it’s paths each day, on my way to and from the river.

Over the entire summer, I’ve had to play dodge ball with construction workers and machinery, in and around both my park and the river I walk along.

I’ll admit that it’s been rather intrusive and inconvenient, for me personally… but, I think it’s been much worse for the small woodland creatures that live in the park, and along the river.

Don’t get me wrong… The roadwork and piping have to be done! It will be for the betterment of the park and community, when the work is completed, which is nearly done. The thing that has been bothering me, for some time now is this… nearly all my squirrels are gone!!!

At the beginning of summer we bought a bag of peanuts for my friends at the park, but if it weren’t for the cheeky squirrel that has adopted my husband, that bag would still be sitting there full of nuts. Even on the rare occasion that I might encounter a squirrel, they are so frightened and distrustful that they won’t even accept the peanuts I offer.

When I sought answers from House Acorn, I discovered that the entire royal house had simply vanished! The entirety of all the Acorn Kingdom seemed to have moved away, in a hurry. I was shocked to find that their Royal Tree has been square in the middle of the massive pipe bridge, being placed across the river! No wonder they moved!

Aside from being saddened that the Royal Tree was standing empty of squirrels, I was shocked to think that the entire valley has apparently been evacuated. Like I said, what few squirrels that have remained in the valley, refuse to have anything to do with humans right now, so I can’t even enquire about the whereabouts of Squagon’s family.

You see, we’ve not had any word from Squagon’s parents for some time now, causing much confusion and hurt, within the heart of my tiny friend. Even if I try to say that I understand how he must feel, it would make the little one feel no better! All that Squagon knows is that his family never visits, never writes to him, and refuses to call him their own. Even with all that hurt inside his heart, the sweet babe keeps asking that I find out if THEY are alright! I swear, he’s the most compassionate little squirrel I’ve ever known… and I happen to know a good many squirrels, thank you very much!

So, on behalf of young Squagon, I shall do my due diligence in finding out any information about the whereabouts of his kin. While the few remaining squirrels in the park are of no help to me, there are others…

With the park being empty of squirrels, for the most part, a large community of Canadian Geese have been summering in one of the back fields. Also, for some time now, there’ve been a group of these Ravens that constantly follow behind me, as I head for the river.

Usually, I’ll keep my peanuts for the squirrels, until I reach the end of the park. If they haven’t claimed them by then, I’ll toss some of the peanuts into the grass for the Raven Boys, as I’ve dubbed them.

Aside from feeling like I’m being stalked all through the park, the boys are quite respectful, waiting patiently for me to reward them at the end of our walk together.

In the morning, I think I shall fill my pockets with some of my best peanuts and put on my journalist hat. I’m going to find out what happened, here within Acorn Valley… and discover what has become of House Acorn!

Wish me luck!

I got to thinking about words and how we use them, nowadays. Why would I be thinking about this? Well, I am Wiwohka the Woodsy Wordpecker… am I not?!

Anyway, I got to thinking about the word “Love”, from how we define it, to how we often employ its use. I decided to stay away from the “why” part of this, as it is a slippery slope… at best!

I went onto Google in search of the word’s definition, and it’s ridiculous how much fodder keeps being added into many of our dictionaries, these days.

Most of what I found were different examples of love, in sentence form. I ended up staying with Oxford’s actual breakdown.

The Oxford definition for the noun portion of the words meaning, is this: an intense feeling of deep affection.

The verb meaning is: to feel deep affection for (someone).

I’m not kidding, people, this is the first line for both forms of the words meaning, out of the Oxford Dictionary! The only difference is the word feel, which is supposed to satisfy us as an action… that’s it!

Ok, well then… let’s look up the word affection, which is in both descriptions.

According to Cambridge Dictionary, affection is defined as this:

a feeling of liking for a person or place: She felt no affection for the child. He had a deep affection for his aunt.

Again with that “feel” word!

There sure does seem to be a whole lot of emotions running around, but not much action to accompany them, as I’m sure you’ve already noticed.

Let’s try a different tack! What about the definition of friend, which is often associated with the word love.

Again, Oxford describes the word Friend as both a noun and a verb, just like it did for the word love.

The noun portion is this:

“a person whom one knows and with whom one has a bond of mutual affection, typically exclusive of sexual or family relations.”

Here we go, right back to the word affection.

The verb form of friend:

“add (someone) to a list of contacts associated with a social networking website. “I am friended by 29 people who I have not friended back”

Really?! I’m not even making this stuff up!

I have come to believe that if we leave LOVE in the hands of scholars and media platform buttons, we are doomed!

In all of my crazy brain writing this morning, you might be asking yourselves “what’s love got to do with any of this?”

In my dictionary battles, I can clearly see Love being minimalized into nothing more than a feeling… how sad!

It seems that when we enact the verbal form of Love, first, we discover that the noun form of the word has become so so so much more than just feelings!

If it weren’t, the outcome of the world’s future would be quite unthinkable… in my opinion, that is.

Sometimes, I hear a song that speaks better about how I feel, than I could put to words.

This song, by Tasha Layton, played during my river walk, this morning.

Maybe someone is struggling through a difficult time in their lives right now, and God simply prompted me to share this song for them this morning.

Whatever the reason might be, here ya go, my friends…

God Bless!

You won’t catch me forgetting to bring reusable bags, for bagging my own groceries… no sirrrr eeeee Bob! Not this time! I’ve been reminding myself since last night, not to forget them, so I’m all set!

However, I will admit that for some reason, my feet are a bit cold…

If any of you were wondering why I had pictures taken of all the babes, we’ve decided to try some schooling this fall. For the most part, the babes don’t really need general schooling, as most of their skills are by natural instinct.

However, they’ve insisted on doing what regular children do during the school season. The reason for their new found interest in learning, comes from the big yellow buses that have been practicing their routes for the upcoming school year.

When I explained what the buses were doing, out came the questions about what school was, and why we didn’t have our own bus, or a school for learning.

So, long story short, I shall attempt to offer a school year experience for the babes here in the barn, minus the school bus. Not only can I NOT drive a bus, but we’ve not nearly the peanuts it would take to buy fuel for said bus!

The plans for school have been laid, and the babes are climbing the rafters, in excitement for things to come. The first thing I wanted to do was take some new school pictures of each babe, which you all voted on, earlier this week. Thank you, by the way, for all the response… it really helped me out!

I will put the chosen pictures at the end of the post, for anyone wishing to check them out.

I did actually homeschool my three children for about 5 years, when they were small, so I think I can pull off a fun year of some class like learning that the babes should enjoy. We can do some basic shapes, letters and numbers, followed by some art and music.

Even if the babes cannot fully master writing with a pencil or pen, I feel confident that they can learn to recognize those things… and they can paint with their hands, if they don’t like using the crayons.

We all know that play dough is non-toxic, so even if they eat it, they should be just fine.

I’m actually very excited about doing this for the little ones, and Brutus even said that he, too, would teach them some things. I think it’s going to be a wonderful experience for them, as well as for myself!

Starting today, I’ve filled the barn with school supplies, like paper, rulers, children’s scissors, non-toxic paint, and things such as that. I also bought each babe their own backpack, to fill with one of each item they find interesting. This way, I can learn what each student wants to learn about the most. It should help me to tailor our classroom lessons to fit each babe’s needs.

Wish us luck!

Again, thanks for your feedback on these photos!