Finding the Beauty

Join us on Mondays at Jo Knowles blog for Monday Morning Warm-Ups! 

I’m excited to have joined Teachers Write Summer 2014!  Please consider joining. It’s going to be challenging, but as a teacher of writing I must write and write so that I don’t ask my students to do anything I haven’t already done. I read the mini lesson first and so that’s what I am posting, and then I read Jo’s Monday Morning Warm-Ups.  I wrote about our garden before I read the warm-up and I think it’s cool that I wrote about a nature’s beauty without knowing that the warm-up was about beauty, too!

Finding the beauty in writing is easy when I think about my students.  My job as a writing teacher is to help them become better writers.  Seeing the progression of a student’s writing from the start of sixth grade through to the end is a beautiful journey.  That’s why I’ve joined this summer writing group!  So the beauty of writing to me is sharing the journey.  

Come! Sit in the garden a bit. Its many shades of green will wrap you up in peace.  Take a seat on the Adirondack as the soft breeze stirs up and rustles the leaves, a background chorus for the melody of the windchimes’ song. Sit a bit and listen closely to the buzz of bees flitting from purple cone-flower to bright orange day lilly. Enjoy bird song,  twitters and tweets, suddenly silent, until an insect begins its chirp joined by others, chanting a summer refrain. Sunlight exposes green tomatoes turning them first to yellow-orange and then bright red, ready to be plucked from strong green stems.

Feel the breeze dance across your face as the sun peaks through branches of the old oak tree, heating your skin until a drop of sweat forms and drops, splashing on your shirt. Take a few steps and sweep your hand through the sharp scented mint, then pick a basil leaf and inhale its sweet and savory aroma, the signature scent of summer. Pinch off a snap pea and crunch down.  Taste that sweet freshness!  Pick some more for dinner. Check that plump red tomato, is it ready?  No? One more day perhaps. 

Come back when you need to retreat from the storms of mundane life. Come back, your suburban oasis awaits!