Are you finding yourself longing for green garden views during these cold and snowy Maine days? There’s no reason why your garden can’t be a fun and inviting space during the winter months.
We’ve put together a collection of fun ideas to help overcome the winter doldrums.
Build Snow Animals: The National Wildlife Federation Kids has some ideas with easy instructions. If you’d like to feed feathered friends at the same time, decorate your snow animal with berries, bird seed, and other bird delicacies.
Snow Painting: Color some water with food coloring and use spray bottles or ketchup-type squirt bottles to decorate the snow.
Create snow land art Andy Goldsworthy style
Cover the garden with greenery snowflakes
Enjoy! If you try some of these ideas, stop by and let us know how it turned out…
Jane Velez-Mitchell’s non-fictional book details the relationship of Jodi Arias and Travis Alexander gone horrifically awry. It puts every piece of this tragic puzzle in place, chronologically, and adds all the missing pieces as well. It succinctly explains to the reader the childhood backgrounds, the needs, the deeds and misdeeds, the yearnings, and motivations of two young adults and, most importantly, why they clicked, fell apart, yet continued to interact well past their “spoil date.” Travis met a gruesome and undeserved death at the hands of Jodi. Yet, he had signed his own death certificate – in multiples….How did that happen? How could he fail to see his demise pending? Why and how could Jodi justify taking his life? Ms. Velez-Mitchell explains it all in her detailed recounting. The reader need not buy any other book about this crime. Hopefully, tragedies such as this one can be averted by knowing oneself and also by discerning others’ inclinations and capabilities….
Today I went to the Friends of Topsham Public Library’s book sale and bought a banned book! I purchased Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak for my niece and nephew. It was banned in many places but went on to win many awards including the Caldecott Medal. There have been many criticisms leveled at the book: that it is too dark and frightening, that it promotes witchcraft and elements of the supernatural, that it glorifies Max’s anger and ‘inappropriate’ behavior, that depriving a child food as punishment could scare a child, one psychologist even went as far to say that it would psychologically damage children. Sendak portrayed children as they are: mischievous and sulky and angry and scared and sometimes alone, and for this his books have been embraced by generations. I am also a big fan of the novel adaptation by Dave Eggers and the movie (directed by Spike Jonze) that inspired it, which I think are more aimed at adults who loved the book as children.