A Full Moon...

...doesn't bring on a birth in a miniature horse. To those of you wondering, you can chuck out your Farmers' Almanac now. It's pure fiction! Maybe though, it's because there were clouds last night which covered the moon at times, and the horse couldn't actually see the moon anyway, given that she was in her stall and is too small to see out the window. I should maybe parade her up and down the yard. The girls reminded me that Wm was born only after I'd had four Cokes for a stress test. I reminded them that it was the threat of being induced that caused him to be born the following day. Still, would a horse drink Coke?

Eggs
Anna, Willliam and I are working on dying eggs that do not have artificial basis - for example, vegetable dyes - and are looking for ideas of dyes that are around the house. So far, we've been very successful with tumeric for yellow and onion skins for orange. Beet juice is working a little bit for the light pink and red wine gives a dull and not very pretty purple, but at least I can drink the wine later today :-)

The spinach juice we made by boiling and then mixing spinach isn't working too well for green- although if my Aracauna chickens were doing their job, I wouldn't NEED green eggs, I'd have them. They are taking time off because a colleague of theirs, a Bantam, is sitting on a few of their eggs. They take this as a sign that they don't need to lay. And boiled dandelions made a yellowish-brownish brew that hasn't affected the eggs. So, do you have any ideas for common household veggies or non-poisonous things that can dye eggs? We are finding this a little more interesting than dropping in the tablets from the kit at the grocery.

Smallpox
Lauren is reading Caroline B. Cooney's book Code Orange. I've not even looked at it, but today she looked up from the book and began telling me about smallpox, and how it is now erradicated in the U.S. She went on to tell me about the vaccine, how they developed it, the Latin derrivative of the word and that it means "cow", and that there is a small amount of the virus still stored somewhere. After lunch, she spent some time on the internet, and I heard Anna ask why all the photos of people with smallpox were black. "Because most of the reported cases are in Africa." The book, she reports, is about the virus being accidentally released from a lab.

It's hard at times to see the kids laying around reading. Immediately, "Do your schoolwork" meaning "the work I assigned" comes to mind. Yet, most likely this kind of learning is more memorable. Finding a topic interesting and researching it to the end of your interest level is definitely more appealing and meaningful.