What do you wear to a Butterfly's funeral?/Annual "Up a Tree" photo

I sadly realized this week that our magnolia tree isn't going to blossom.  It went from buds to leaves, thanks to our warm March and cold April.  So sad that we can't get our annual photo of Bea in it, so this one taken earlier this month in our Japanese maple will have to suffice:

Bea came home Thursday all chatty about Samm's caterpillar never hatching and how they buried it near the cemetery on the playground and how she has to wear "blue, or something somber" to school Friday for its funeral.  It was all she could talk about, how sad it was that "it never got to fly and live its life."  Underneath this sweatshirt is a blue dress with leggings and she was ready to go. 

 Bea has been taking a pottery class downtown and loves it!  She brought home two items so far, including the bowl pictured here which she insists on eating every meal out of.  I love her sculptures and am so glad that we are able to give her this opportunity and that it's 1/2 mile away!

The other "what we're up to" right now is the book The Secret Garden.  She got it for Christmas a couple years ago and I tried it and after about 3 pages detailing cholera in India and the death of a little girl's parents and nanny, Bea remarked "I think this book is not really appropriate for children," so we put it away.  She remembered it though and we pulled it out again right after Lolo and Lola left, and are now nearly half way through reading it aloud every night.  She (and Anthony) absolutely loves it , adores the characters and how I read it with the Yorkshire accent, and goes around the house calling us "tha' "(you) and thee and herself a "lit' o' wench." The timing of year is perfect too since the birds are so noisy lately and everything is blooming in the gardens here.  There have been several books that have marked her childhood:  Charlotte's Web, the Little House series, Cricket in Times Square, Cats of Tanglewood Forest, and now this one.  This girl could sit and listen to books all day long. I wouldn't trade any of the hundreds of hours I've spent reading to her for the world!