It is also Girl Scout Cookie season starting today here in the Bay Area.. With SuperBowl right in our backyard this very weekend coinciding with the first weekend of cookie sales, we are hoping we can make our sales pitch work for us. With the girls being Juniors (Girl Scouts who are in fourth and fifth grades), they are planning to work on their Bronze Award this year and the funds raised from our cookie sales will also go towards the service project they chose for their Bronze Award. And I for sure am excited about this – I am looking forward to whatever they decide to work on. These are the moments that make it worth it. All the efforts put in being a troop leader, the planning, the back-and-forthing, etc – all of those are totally worth it when the girls learn valuable life skills while doing the various activities that are involved in being a girl scout – true, they could do many of those without being a Girl Scout too – but, hey, the fact is, not many of us would do things we do not need to. 

One such learning experience was our recent trip to the local community gardens as part of earning the Gardener badge. I worked with the community garden director by email and arranged for the girls to have a guided tour of the gardens while going through all the requirements of the gardener badge. The girls also volunteered to help with planting ground cover for garden plots that had been left empty (not rented out) due to the droughts (and now they have a wait list 15 pages long for the not rented garden plots). This was a very informative and totally fun trip for the girls and adults alike. As we walked through the gardens in a light drizzle – perfect weather, it seemed for that trip – we learned facts, figures, and tips and tricks of gardening, about the 4H program, about local flora and fauna, and about community gardening itself. Some people chose to use their gardens for mainly growing vegetables and herbs, while others use it for flowers. A few others use it as their tiny bit of paradise and you can see it – the center of the garden cleared out with two Adirondacks set there for them to relax and enjoy the greenery.  Many use recycled items for decorating their gardens and gave us all ideas to reuse/recycle/reduce waste at home. Here are a few photos from the trip. 

And this collage goes towards Friday
Photo Journal at Serendipity is Sweet, and for SaturdaySnapshot at
West Retro Mommy Reads 

For ABC Wednesday’s letter last week – the letter C, I learned about the cento, the con-verse(consists of three or more couplets which ascend by one syllable up to and until you reach a syllabic
count of eleven which would contain ten lines), and the clarity pyramid forms of poetry among so many others. I finally picked the clarity pyramid to try out. 

The Clarity Pyramid is a poetry form designed and constructed by Jerry P. Quinn. It consists of two triplets and a single line (7 lines in all). Usually, this poem is center aligned when displayed.
First triplet:
Title (one syllable word displayed in all capitals)
Two syllable line (synonym/definition of title)
Three syllable line (synonym/definition of title)
Second triplet: Its design is based around a life event contained within the triplet which helps give a poetic view or outlook on the first line (title) and has three lines as below.
5 syllable line
6 syllable line
7 syllable line
The last line is 8 syllables, and is in quotations as this line contains a quote that defines the first word (title).  

Here are a couple of my attempts at this form:

The full quotes for the ones used above are:

“While we try to teach our children all about life,
Our children teach us what life is all about.”~Angela Schwindt

“All words are pegs to hang ideas on.”― Henry Ward Beecher