Fixing fence is spring around here. We started back in late February because it was so warm out. This weekend, the spring blooms began to peek from the fruit trees- the pear blossoms are so lovely. I’m praying that we don’t get hit like we did last spring with the torrential days long winds that took at the tiny little fruit buds and drove them into the ground!

Hoeing and tilling the tree rows began a few days ago, but I helped finish it up the last couple days, take a tally of trees that’d died over winter, and make decisions on what to replace them with. The rhubarb I transplanted from a neighbor is coming up and, in its third year, we should be able to harvest more. The garden is also on my mind: cucumbers, zucchini, and maybe tomato if I can get them to grow. I might also try watermelon again, but a different variety.

Spring also means that students are distracted, and in the “I want it to be summer already” mode. It is national poetry month, so I introduced a poetry project on Friday. On the board it said, “We interrupt this study of the Hero’s Journey to bring you National Poetry Month and a poetry project.” The conversation went something like this:

“What? Another poetry project! But, Mrs. G(1,000 extra credit for the ‘Mrs.’), we already did that!”

“It’s National Poetry Week…just wait until you see the options!”

“Big Whoop! Do we have to?”

It went on until I passed out the options that another teacher and I had agreed on. They liked these: write a poem on a sidewalk (get permission) and take a selfie proving you wrote it and give me a copy of the poem, get together with a  group and produce an “exquisite corpse” poem, put together an anthology with artwork of your favorite poems, memorize and recite a poem to the class, attend a poetry reading (I’m going to host one at the local coffee shop-I told them, ‘no, the coffee is not on me’), watch a movie centered around poetry and write a review, follow the rules and write a found poem you submit to the New York Times found poetry contest, and come up with your own idea and get it approved.

They didn’t know what a found poem was, so we used our writer’s notebooks to write one and they were wonderful! So, now they are again excited by poetry-at least most of them are.