Shhh... There's a flower fairy hiding in my house.

Don't tell Helen, but this is one of her Christmas presents:

"How to Find Flower Fairies" by Cicely Mary Barker, a pop-up book published this October by Warne. Info here, but you can order it through a local independent bookstore!

We Went, We Played, We Conquered!

Richmond Symphony's "Come and Play" concert was a fabulous success, at least from my perspective from somewhere in the middle of 36 cellists! Emily, who sat across the arena among nearly 200 violinists, was thrilled, too. She had put a good bit of effort into practicing music that was challenging for her, and reported after the concert that she had only gotten totally lost on the last piece.

In addition to the fun of making and hearing music, the concert provided a way for people to support music in Richmond Public Schools. Registration fees and donations at the door are being matched by the Bryan and Kathryn Harvey Family Memorial Endowment to repair and purchase instruments for kids in school music programs.

For my original column about the Come and Play concert, see the December 07 "First Thoughts."

Thanksgiving Visitors

We have four extra guests at our house for Thanksgiving this year, but they don't take up much space and are light eaters. They do seem to complain quite a bit, but I can't really understand what they're saying.

Even if they might have a bad attitude, all is forgiven because they are so CUTE!

Yes, three baby chicks hatched from a 5th-grade science class incubator. I happened to be in the classroom at the right/wrong time on Wednesday morning as the science teacher was apparently feeling a little anxious about plans for the wee ones. You can't see the 4th chick in this photo--it's a little bitty quail chick. I'll post him soon.


The chicks had been living in a series of "habitats"--boxes decorated to look like farms or forests or meadows, taped together with doorways cut between. We took two boxes, one of which someone had thoughtfully decorated with a jungle theme, complete with pipe-cleaner vines, construction paper trees, acorns dangling from yarn, and photos of wild animals from an old Ranger Rick magazine.

So you've never seen a quail chick? Neither had I.

Bailey the quail is about the size of a cotton ball on toothpicks. Here, he's lurking around near Ronnie, who is likely to trod upon him out of sheer obliviousness.


At least the big chicks don't pick on poor Bailey, who needs them for warmth. He keeps trying to hop up on their backs when they sit down to sleep, or nuzzle under someone's wing.









All four fluffies operate on a random on-off schedule. They'll be pecking around, cheeping and scratching the floor, when suddenly they'll fall silent and nod off for two or three minutes. Then someone will wake up and complain that everyone else is a lazy, boring oaf, and they'll all wake up and do whatever they were doing before.

The chicks usually sit down to sleep, but the quail seems unable to manage the leg trick to make this happen. He'll waver back and forth, eyes closed. When he really sinks into sleep, his head drifts forward until his beak is almost touching the ground.

At one point during the day, someone stuffed an old sock into a Lego unit and put it into the habitat, possibly to serve as a nest. Bailey discovered that if he stood right in front of it, he could lean against it to sleep:

(See how he's up on his tiptoes, as if he fell asleep trying to scramble into bed? Awwww!)