Helpful, Creative Boy

Kevin and my complex's landscapers have waited a full year for this day!!!!  Kevin helped them last summer every Thursday, and will this summer too, except the weeks he is in a day camp.  The landscapers ask often how Kevin is and when he will be here again.  :)

Today, he helped weed, and he picked up the pieces trimmed off the shrubbery.  Such a great helper!

I leave him with the landscapers, and they insist he is NO trouble and they love having his help.  What a kid! 

We have talked a lot about hydrangeas lately.  Chautauqua Institution has glorious ones everywhere.  His neighborhood has many too.  In fact, his parents wondered recently what the name of that gorgeous shrub was, and Kevin told him I knew.   ha!  They took a photo and emailed it asking for the name.  The only hydrangeas in our complex are in my yard.  (Well, the Blacks have a different variety than the large showy bloom ones.) 

As I walked Kevin back to my house, he told me he picked up a "degraded hydrangea" bloom with the clippings.  Of course, I know the word "degraded," but that is not a word in my regular vocabulary.  I would be more likely to say degenerated, deteriorated, decomposed, withered, or wilted.  But he knew degraded!  Smart kid!

In fact, people often tell me he is a very bright child.  His willingness to converse with adults, his growing topics of conversation, and expanding knowledge base, all add to that perception.

Kevin has been spending his craft time making 3D paper creations.  He completed a bouquet of flowers for me today which look amazingly like irises!  They are lovely!

 He also made a rattlesnake! 

 And he is in the process of making a cardinal using some PlayDoh on the legs so that, hopefully, it can stand up in its nest, on a branch!   

This evening, Grandma had a special Rotary dinner to attend.  I found a babysitter among the teen children of Rotary friends.  Of course, he entertained her royally.  He was playing the piano for her when I left, and she played for him too.  I gave her several ideas of things they could do.  They did play in the sprinkler, but Kevin found the water too cold, even though the temp today had been 91!  Kevin has been working on some 3-D paper creations such as flowers and birds.  They worked on more of those, and Laura took home a lovely flower made by Kevin.