Poem for Monday and MD Sheep and Wool Festival

Daily
By Naomi Shihab Nye

These shriveled seeds we plant,
corn kernel, dried bean,
poke into loosened soil,
cover over with measured fingertips

These T-shirts we fold into
perfect white squares

These tortillas we slice and fry to crisp strips
This rich egg scrambled in a gray clay bowl

This bed whose covers I straighten
smoothing edges till blue quilt fits brown blanket
and nothing hangs out

This envelope I address
so the name balances like a cloud
in the center of sky

This page I type and retype
This table I dust till the scarred wood shines
This bundle of clothes I wash and hang and wash again
like flags we share, a country so close
no one needs to name it

The days are nouns: touch them
The hands are churches that worship the world

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Sunday was sunny and gorgeous, high 60s, so after younger son was done working at Hebrew school, we picked him up from my parents' and went to the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival at the Howard County Fairgrounds. The festival is always great -- it's free, it has lots of animals and crafts plus crafting equipment, there's live music in several places most of the day, and many fair foods (homemade lemonade, funnel cake, etc.) are available though we had eaten lunch so avoided those. The only sad aspect was that I was trying to meet up with and we managed to play phone/text/Facebook message tag all afternoon! When we left the festival around closing time, we stopped at the Brighton Dam azalea garden, which has over 20,000 azaleas and made up for missing the National Arboretum azaleas this year.


A pair of sheep waiting for their turn to be judged at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival.


Yarn produced by Dancing Leaf Farm, which we often visit on the Countryside Artisans Tour.


In addition to sheep, we got to see Boer goats...


...Angora and other fur-producing bunnies...


...and huacaya and suri alpacas.


These "Paca Pops" of roving were created by A Paca Fun Farm, which we also visit on farm tours.


Here is Adam petting a sheep.


And here are Paul and myself at the Brighton Dam Azalea Garden, planted by WSSC on the banks of the Patuxent River.

We had burritos for Cinco de Mayo dinner. Adam had finished his homework and took an evening off studying from the SAT and AP exams (the former was Saturday, the latter are next week) and watched Once Upon a Time with us -- he was mocking the dialogue since we could predict so much of it, but we liked the twist on the Peter Pan story even if there was not nearly enough of Regina overall. Then we caught up on Da Vinci's Demons, which continues to be crack that makes Dan Brown seem entirely accurate by comparison (they couldn't get their Hebrew letters straight, let alone Italian history or the main character's sexual orientation) but is kind of like The Tudors with supernatural stuff -- crack, but entertaining crack, and much less sexual violence than Game of Thrones.