Looks like Blogger pulled their old format finally and now I've got that new Dashboard (you know, the one they've been urging us all to upgrade to for months, which of course I never did because I like the old one better and it takes me forever to get used to new appearances . . .), so it's taken me a bit to get up enough gumption and stamina to deal with this new format -- but here I am again, finally. After much frustration. Even though IPhoto says it is exporting my pictures to Picasa, Blogger is not showing them in the Picasa albums, and then when I import them directly from IPhoto to Blogger, it's throwing all the pictures in at once, and in random order! So here is a very random tour of the Playhouse portion of the Big Backyard garden at the Memphis Botanic Garden (because I am tired of messing with it -- kind of like aversion therapy for computer!) These are life size fairy houses created by my friend Mary at the Botanic Garden. These are details of the mushroom house shown in the top picture. Lots of little doors and secrets to discover. The picture below is of the inside of the playhouse my friend Mary Jo made out of a discarded standard playhouse that was donated to the Botanic Garden. It is filled with whimsical mosaic and lists of "find the . . ." for both the mosaics and things to look for in nature. I helped her come up with the lists for the nature hunts. Here is a view of several of the playhouses. I've had some very busy weeks, with homeschooling starting up again. Even though I only have my 15 year old left at home, I'm teaching an "election year" Civics/Government class to 15 homeschool teens each week (in my home! yikes!), and I have 3 other teens coming over each week to do a lab for Forensics, which Cree is doing for science this year. With both Civics and Forensics involving other people besides my own child, I am having to do quite a bit of prep work for them, as well as send out reminders on the computer, etc. So, the net result has been not a lot of time (or pictures) to put up here from the past month -- and, as I shared above, getting the pictures on to here has been a challenge! Back in May we went to the Memphis Botanic Garden with some of our homeschool friends and I was able to take these pictures of the "Big Backyard" (or Family Garden, or Children's Garden, as some people call it) section of the Botanic Garden before my camera's batteries ran out. Mary Jo and Mary are long time members of our homeschool group, and their work can be seen throughout the Big Backyard at the Memphis Botanic Garden (as well as galleries). Our group (Homeschoolers of Memphis Eclectic -- known years ago as Unschoolers of Memphis) is the only secular and inclusive homeschool support group in this area and we have partnered with the Memphis Botanic Garden for the past 19 years for classes there for the kids in our group -- so members of our group have a very special relationship with the Botanic Garden.