Born with the moon in Cancer
Choose her a name she will answer to
Call her green and the winters cannot fade her
Call her green for the children who made her
Little Green, be a gypsy dancer.

. . .

(chorus)
Just a little green
Like the colour when the spring is born
There’ll be ccrocuses to bring to school tomorrow
Just a little green
Like the nights when the Northern lights perform
There’ll be icicles and birthday clothes
And sometimes there’ll be sorrow.

. . . . . . . . . . . “””””””””“ . . . . . . . . . . .

-- This is part of a song called Little Green, written by Joni Mitchell after she gave her baby up for adoption around 40 years ago. She’d called her Kelly, as in kelly green. But she wished her a “happy ending” and wrote this heartrendingly beautiful song to her.

You know, when she sings the chorus for the last time and draws out the word ‘sorrow’ as only Joni can do, that she is describing her own deep, deep longing for this child.

. . . . . . . . . . . “””””””””“ . . . . . . . . . . .

Little Green is on Joni’s fourth album, for which she became famous. It’s called Blue, and was her last folk album.

She followed it with pop, rock and jazz, and now I wouldn’t know what to call her lush, life-describing music. It’s in a category all its own. Pure Joni. No one can touch it.

~~~~~~~~~Barney the Stoneskipper ~~~~~~~~

And who knew? Henry Ford was an innovator in square dance.

“Square and Round Dancing:
The decline in popularity of the old-time sets was addressed by American automobile magnate Henry Ford. Ford, who drew on his assembly-line methods for breaking down tasks in car manufacturing, worked with dance teacher Lloyd "Pappy" Shaw to create a system for standardizing and calling square dance moves that has been credited with popularizing modern square dance around the world.” - The Canadian Encyclopedia

It looks like the heatwave has finally broken. It feels as if fall has arrived. After no moisture to speak of all summer, now just when the farmers are halfway through getting their crops off, it started to rain during the night and has been pouring all day. I don’t think I could stand to farm for a living.

Don is at school for the first day of the new academic year. Barney is going to homeschool, though when it came down to making a decision one way or the other he was unwilling to risk liking homeschooling less than he likes school. Which is a fearful way of thinking, one that he will probably suffer from for his whole life.

I couldn’t let that pass without trying to show him alternate possibilities. He could try it till Christmas and then go back to public school if he should hate home study. And he needed to be reassured that I thought he would like independent study and have help when required.

***

My aunt phoned.
“You’ve got a new cousin!”
This morning her daughter went to her doctor, who was going to induce her (? - I thought she wasn’t due for two more weeks), and when he checked her she was 9 cm dilated. He said “Go straight to the hospital, do not go to the bathroom.”

When she got to the hospital, the doctor told her to push. She did, and out came Gracie Rose, a five-pound girlie.

Wow.

“She can’t be one of our family if it was that easy for her,” Mom said, when I called with the announcement, “but good for her.”

She has Mom’s name. I like that.