martinzoo

A diamante poem follows a very specific format – there are seven lines, and each line must have a specific number and type of words. When it’s finished, the poem will be in the shape of a diamond.

Line 1= Topic (noun)
Line 2 = Two describing words (adjectives)
Line 3 = Three action words (-ing verbs)
Line 4 = Four words: (nouns) the first two words relate to line 1 and the last two words relate to line 7
Line 5 = Three action words for the ending noun (-ing verbs)
Line 6 = Two words to describe ending noun (adjectives)
Line 7 = Ending noun (opposite of Line 1)

GB wrote this diamante poem today.

*                                 War

*                      Violent, Destructive

*               Killing, Fighting, Shooting

*         Battle,     Gun,     People,     Home

*              Hoping, Working, Talking

*                        Secure, Calm

*                               Peace

How cool is this? They repaved our road today. And it was a great chance for little boys (and curious moms) to see how it gets done. I’ve read that the cost of repaving the roads has gone WAY up because of the price of oil. So, I’m really grateful that they were able to get our neighborhood done. VDOT says that they try to repave every 7-8 years, so I hope this will last us that long. It sure is nice! My van is loving the smoothness of it.

We don’t have a particularly long cul-de-sac, it has seven houses, but it took a full 7 dump truck loads of asphalt. Afterwards, we came inside and looked up what all those trucks were doing. I would have asked the men who were working, ….. but they were looking at me quite suspiciously when I was taking pictures……… so I didn’t want to give them a complex.

I am a layman, so remember that while reading my description of the repaving process. Looking at the graphic above, and thinking about a truck being on top of these parts, you’ll see that moving left to right, the heating unit heats the existing asphalt to a 185-219 degree level. Then the scarifying section gouges strips into the existing asphalt (this is a good way to even out the surface), then the rejuvenating roller smooths out the asphalt dust. The new mix of asphalt is added in from the dump truck and mixed with the old asphalt. Then it is laid back down, leveled, and smoothed out. The last process is the compacting roller. This squashes the new mix of asphalt down and provides a smooth surface. My words, although I did borrow the graphic from this site, which was quite informative.

In my video, you can see the dump truck attaching to the heater miller paver. The whole process was much quicker than I would have guessed. They did our whole cul-de-sac in about an hour and a half. Impressive!