Last spring, the kids and I were inspired by Tracy Kane's book, "Fairy Houses Everywhere" to create our own little fairy house in the backyard. Although the activity was just one afternoon, the kids had a blast and the house remained, more or less, intact for the rest of the summer.
This fall, we had some terrific luck when the Florence Griswold Museum did an exhibit on Fairy Houses. I wasn't fast enough to get Q signed up for one of their classes on making fairy houses, but Grandma did score us a "Twinkling Twilight Firefly Tour" - an evening tour of the fairy houses.
When Noodle saw our tour guide, her eyes widened. He was a slim man, dressed entirely in black, with black wings. Henceforth she referred to him adoringly as 'The Butterfly Guy' or 'The Fairy Guy.'
Our tour started at 5:30, in the pouring rain. We were in the midst of a cold snap that had dropped the temperature to 35 degrees. The children happily tromped behind the guide, who explained which fairies lived in which houses, and pointed out special features of each. The grown ups whimpered and wished for snow rather than rain.
The next week the temperatures soared into the 50s and we returned with J and discovered that the twilight tour had, by necessity of time, skipped more than half of the houses. An hour and a half wasn't enough time.
The fairy house tour, complete with a 'Do It Yourself' area, whetted Q and J's appetite for architecture and last week they built a loftier fairy house on the foundation of the previous house in our backyard.
As we left home the next day, Noodle pointed to a pile of leaves in the street, "There's a fairy house!"
3 comments:
Cool pics...I like your Blog :)
My mother had given E a similar book, and he has enthusiastically built many fairy houses in our yard and other places. When we vacationed in Harpswell, ME (summer '08) we were charmed by the hiking trail there ("Cliff Trail") full of fairy houses to detect, and an area where the building of fairy houses was encouraged. Yay for fairy houses!-CAQ
Oh my gosh - the fairy houses are wonderful!! What a neat (doesn't seem to do it justice but there you go) experience!!
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