Ra Kenworth

I stopped thinking of wild plants as weeds as I started eating them, and putting them to good use. I typically transplant everything that needs moving.

My most protected weed is milkweed, and before when I was caring for an adjacent lot, it was orchids. Many of the "weeds" I simply consider vegetables (the stinging nettles I deliberately cultivated) and volunteers like lambs quarters. Or they are medicinals like wild sasparilla, cohosh, heal-all, wild leeks, or pollinators / tea like echinacea, rudbeckia (black eyed Susan's), bee balm etc., or wild carrots to hold up my compost hills.

And edible fruiting bushes are certainly not weeds, even slightly invasive ones -- they can all be managed

Clover in my opinion is certainly not a weed: it is an important part of the ecosystem.

There are no weeds except for poison oak/ivy and invasives, which kind of depends on where one lives.

Emilie McVey wrote: take iron gluconate and 7-8,000 IU of vitamin D.  (Using the drops in water or other liquid is easy and has no taste).   I thought it was worth a shot; certainly nothing else had helped.  My heavens!  This has been the best winter, in terms of S.A.D., of my entire life!!  No exaggeration.
Maybe this suggestion will help someone else, too.

I'm so glad you've gotten your SAD beaten! I know the B's are a big deal, and it's a bit complicated that D needs to go with K2 and also A and taken with dietary fat, but also calcium, magnesium, melatonin for some if having trouble sleeping but not more than 3mg, and now it seems iron (and vitamin C to help process it)

If I ever learned the iron connection I promptly forgot it because I have high iron in my well water, but when I go up north for the winter I'm eating fish so I should keep this in mind! I imagine a multivitamin would do the trick. I also learned the hard way that a few days of my son's zinc supplement put me in a better mood because I finally got rid of some sort of cold that I guessed was actually lung irritation from mold in heated forced air filters.

I had rubber mats made of recycled tires that were 4x8 I was planning to put in my free running gutted motorhome I picked up, but the test chunk revealed that the cold cracks the rubber despite being protected inside, so it got relocated to cover my 60-70 year old cheap 1/4" 4x4 plywood sub flooring that is nailed down and requires regular hammering in the spring and fall (and sock darning)

Being black it's terrible for showing the dirt but I think my place fits in that kitchen so there isn't a lot to keep clean!

I use 8% cleaning vinegar, citric acid, and baking soda, plus a biodegradable dishsoap, which I also use for hand washing clothes, and One+, a biodegradable shampoo/body wash combination. Apart from that, on occasion I take clothes and towels to a laundromat and bring my biodegradable laundry soap, and can't stand dryer sheets. I clean the car with baking soda and vinegar too

I don't know if having used biodegradable shampoo since I was in grade 7 has anything to do with me having almost no gray hair at 60 something

A really ugly picture (to be sacrificed) at a garage sale with a nice wide softwood frame might be worth consideration.

With the 3 underneath it means they are no longer quarter notes
You play 3 of these to make a quarter or beat (of 3 beats)

Think of
Merrily Merrily Merrily
For that set of 3 triplets as they are called

I looked at pricing for Duolingo premium. It's around $80 something Canadian.
Here's another option: ISBN 978-1497440500 it's $17.22 cad on Amazon 50 Christmas Carols with Sheet Music and Fingering for Tin Whistle or you can check the other books this author has written for instance Easy Tin Whistle Tutor Book 979-8312827170 $21.66 -- both include tin whistle fingering, so depending partly on whether you play more by ear and would like to be able to bring along a whistle to Christmas celidhs, etc, or whether you like a very structured approach, I am confident with your existing background in music you would have no problem with any of these books.

They are probably for the key of C but as you may notice, penny whistles are made in various keys. I find it pretty fun to whip out a penny whistle and just start playing along and although you aren't necessarily interested in learning another instrument, it may make learning to read music very easy.

I find when sight reading music, it's easier for me to do so with a flute of some kind rather than trying to do it in my head. Probably because I have a strong ear as you will having used tab.

Just a thought

r ransom wrote:

To my untrained ear, they sound identical.

And then we have 9/8 .

Actually 3/4 and 6/8 can be interchangeable although they aren't supposed to be, and a lot of songs started coming out with 6/8. 6/8 tends to be quicker. There is style as well that will affect how it is sung.

9/8? Occasionally and I used to use Question by The Fixx to demonstrate 7/8 at the time I was teaching this. Money is also another. Rhythm always fascinated me. I was thinking only this morning about all the stuff taught in schools that didn't fascinate me lol and those who were indoctrinated into duck and cover, teaching a generation to ignore everything they were taught 😂

I found the easiest group to teach music reading to were my pre readers in kindergarten and junior kindergarten. You definitely don't need an instrument although I had them learning recorder before long.

What hasn't been mentioned yet is rhythm and that's where I always started, although I would ensure the children could play an instrument without written music so it didn't become a crutch as I found happened to me with piano.

If you're reading tablature you have a good foundation in rhythm, but you may wish to work on that first.

I find it's beneficial to learn to read rhythm independent of melody (the rising and falling of notes) and for a group I only had for a year with no prior music lessons, that was sufficient for playing drums in high school. I used their rap to teach it.

I learned the basics alone with a booklet for recorder when I was 8, although penny whistle with a booklet is possible. Personally I think this is easier than just singing for learning the notes. There is a certain logic to the lifting of fingers that corresponds with the rising of notes along the staff (the 5 lines). Excellent explanations here on how this works!

I might add having a music degree, I am still not fully fluent at sight reading, the act of playing that voice or instrument in your head, when the music is difficult. I used to use song surgeon to slow down music so I could hear it properly and write the music for it, or simply to follow along for fast fingerwork like Jethro Tull, but typically I use a short hand where I write the names of the notes and essentially do tablature -- for flute - I have been writing that way since I was a kid.

I expect by now, there are apps that will scan the scored music and play it for you, so you may only need a basic level of music reading and get by without any suffering!

Also there are bound to be apps out there that will teach you to read, and maybe have an interactive virtual keyboard on a touch screen so you don't have to lug around the actual thing, but I do think the keyboard is the best way to understand the sharps and flats (the same thing which is clear on a keyboard as being the black notes).

Repetition is key, as mentioned about the weekly choir method.

Ukulele is a great instrument to play! A fantastic choice!

It may help to know what kind of learner you are

Learners may find the ultimate is regular repitition, in learning efficiently.
Others find frequently is great and regular intervals seem to show no benefit...

No I don't have a reference, so just call it the opinion of an extinct music teacher 😂

For many, the solution is to join a church choir. It is a fun very social way of doing something regularly that you might benefit from, in learning efficiently

I belonged to a choir for a while and a lot of members couldn't read the music. They would pass it over to someone else to sing a little jingle. I used to do rapid chicken squark versions that would crack up the choir master! A 2 second squark could clue in the gang!

Randy Eggert wrote:One word: chocolate.

That might be the magnesium Elsie is talking about that we need along with D and K2. I didn't think to mention magnesium (or chocolate / cocoa) but I take it or else I get leg cramps. Magnesium is to mammals as chlorophyll is to plants.