Maybe I'm still a larva

There's just so much I didn't even imagine I didn't know! Here I am, almost all grown up, and I'm just learning the life cycle of ladybugs.

We've discovered a ladybug tree at school.  All the stages are busy on this one crepe myrtle tree just outside the school office. Here's an adult emerging from its pupa. My larva photos did not turn out. For extra fun, there are black ladybugs with two red spots. Holy metamorphosis, Batman!

Crepe myrtle trees provide reliable landscape color through the hot season  in north Texas. You can spell it "crape", too, but it never looks as classy in my humble O. Crepe myrtles have interesting bark.

This morning I woke to news of a fast-flowing hip-deep Martian stream. Billions of years ago it deposited rounded gravel that became cemented together to form a sedimentary conglomerate rock. Not that my little students ever sit there like clueless lumps staring up at me with all the spark of soggy pasta...

I had to look it up, but gneiss is not a sedimentary conglomerate. Gneiss is a nice way to describe a metamorphic rock. It's gneiss to have nieces. Both my nieces are gneiss.

gneiss

   [nahys] 

noun

a metamorphic rock, generally made up of bands that differ in color and composition, some bands being rich in feldspar and quartz, others rich in hornblende or mica.

I love that the Mars rover is named Curiosity, and I hope curiosity is contagious! Every teacher would love to ignite more sparks of curiosity.

Gneiss probably comes from German and Old Norse for spark. It's an igneous rock transformed by heat and pressure. And, of course, igneous derives from ancient word roots for fire with a sacrificial connotation.

It's hard to explain "knife" to young readers, you know? And now it seems that "gnocchi" is more closely related to knuckles than ignition. The pasta is pronounced either nockey rhyming with hockey, or nyuckey, which doesn't sound all that appetizing.

gnocchi 

1891, from It. gnocchi, pl. of gnocco, from nocchio "a knot in wood," perhaps from a Germanic source akin to knuckle. So called for their shape.

Gnow don't get me started on rhymes, as I've got to go talk to Gepetto.

head and shoulders gknees and toes
head and shoulders gknees and toes
eyes and ears and mouth and gnose
head and shoulders gknees and toes
gknees and toes

And to complete this ramble, here is Andy Williams singing Cole Porter's "You'd Be So Gneiss To Come Home To"... you'd be so nice by the fire...

© 2012 Nancy L. Ruder