The daffodils are everywhere! The trees are exploding!
All the tourists hoping to see the cherry blossoms in April had better change their flights. They'll miss them by three weeks.
I'm knitting up a storm
but I can't show you what...
Here's a small peek.
And this is totally unrelated.
It's the best error message I've ever received.
Today is Nature Photography Day. We're having super-fun-Springtime.
The carpenter bees hovered and bobbed, sometimes bonking into one another.
Soon our fence will have piles of sawdust all around.
My morning walk was the sort that invites long deep breaths.
I was a silly stroller with a camera, admiring ordinary things.
We never know when to expect him. Probably because we don't read the paper. But Friday night, just as we were getting out of the car after the art show, Firetruck Santa appeared!
One of these days I'll be quick enough to get a focused picture. Then again, the blur of the insanity and fantasy of it is fun too.
The morning wake-up walk is absolutely necessary.
Before I go walking, I never think about how soothing nature is, or what discoveries I might make. My mind is fixed on my tea, the warmth of being inside.
Thankfully, I somehow do get myself outside, and then I give thanks, heartily, for the refreshment of it.
Water took many forms today; sometimes a river of stone, sometimes a ripple of reflection.
Where are the geese? I haven't seen them this year.
Today was the day to capture the leaf prints.
I try to walk with my head up, but today, my eyes were to the sidewalk, where the goodies are.
They appear most often after the rain and mud have cemented them to the sidewalk.
Eventually, homeowners with leaf blowers peel up the stuck leaves.
These patterns are temporary; the next rain will take them.
That's what I told the kids at the bus stop, when they asked me why I was crouching and photographing the sidewalk.
I hope they notice these things; I'm glad they were curious and asked. They live rushed and densly-packed lives. They get a lot of exposure to new ideas and activities, but I'm not sure how much growth can really happen when there isn't time to process one's experience and respond to it.
I'm thankful for a childhood of roaming through vacant lots, catching grasshoppers and examining weeds and crickets up close. I have happy memories of floating on my face in a river, the sun warm on my back, and looking through clear goggles at the bright stones and baby fishes under the water. Good stuff.
This year we have a real autumn.
The colors weren't so spectacular, but the climate has been wonderful. Instead of only one month, we're getting two months of autumn, and I'm very grateful.
I walk nearly every morning in our little neighborhood. I pass the same kids and dog-walkers as I make multiple loops.
Some days, like today, I carry a camera and try to catch what I can before it all changes again.
Z had her first cross-country meet yesterday. She's a runner!
From the perspective of the spectator, this is a fun sport.
There was a lot of cheering. I couldn't tell which parents were for which side, because every runner was cheered. With such exertion on their faces, you want every runner to win.
It's 68 degrees, which feels finger-numbing cold after such a hot summer.
The breeze is clean and crisp, the streets somewhat swept after the storm. After my little wake-up walk in the dry leaves, I'm drinking hot tea.
Z's got a light backpack, soon to get heavier, a new shirt and new earrings. She woke up at 6 am, a good three hours earlier than usual.
While she's in the gym or cafeteria finding out what her 8th grade schedule will look like, I'm finishing up a third pair of mitts.
And breathing. Breathing that wonderful air of the first day of school, the promise of autumn, and an hour of silence in the morning.
Life is good.
My time at the county fair was brief this year.
I peeked at the arts and crafts, to get the scoop on Z's artwork (she did very well!) and then I joined the knitting ladies.
If you have a "demonstration" of a craft, you get free admission to the fair. So we were on display.
I don't know whether anyone saw and learned, or just plopped down and joined us. The group kept growing. And then the thunderstorms came, so more folks piled in.
I never get tired of seeing what people bring to the fair.
You can bring anything at all. This angora rabbit was getting plucked and freed of its hot fur.
I missed seeing the baby calf and the baby camels. Too rainy to get out. But I enjoy the 4-H stuff a great deal. As far as 4-H is concerned, if you made it, there's a place for it. If you learned something new, you can proclaim it.
Even something as orinary as packing a good lunch is worthy of display space.
Z and I were in the art supply store when we saw a flyer for an art show. The artist's name looked familiar -- the mother of one of Z's school friends. So we went to the Kentlands to check out the show.
I don't know why, but we'd never been out here before. It was about time. Lovely house, lovely grounds. Z took some indoor photos that will probably pop up on her blog soon.
Marie Riccio's paintings were great. It's inspiring to look in on what local artists are doing. We'll have to have more field trips this summer. Art, jogging, berry picking... we have some things to do.
Taking photos is more than half the fun. Z took this one of me. I rarely get to be in photos so it's good to have another photographer around.
The Fiber Arts Guild had its last day of the year, until we start up again in September.
The study groups presented their work. For ours, I put together a slide show and we displayed our projects. We volunteered one of our gals to speak for us (that's what happens to people who miss a meeting).
I'm always interested in what people are making. The felters were amazing this year. Some of the nuno stuff was especially good but my photos weren't.
Now for the summer in which I have no design plans, just knitting and maybe a little travel. And exercise. Summer of fitness, here we come. Especially after looking at all these goodies.
Rough weather last night. Tornado warnings all around our vicinity. We made beds in the basement and kept the radio bedside, E waking to listen to the report when the thunder persisted.
A long, constant roll of thunder is not a good sign.
Outside, Fuzzy's nemesis was yowling. We hope he found a place to hide.
More warnings and watches today. We've been lucky -- there has been some serious damage in neighboring counties, but thankfully not in our midst. High humidity, a lot of wind and water, and the blossoms all gone. (photo at left by Z)
The Rummage Sale is over. I still have a roomful of pretty things to take to a consignment shop, but the big Thing is over and the crazy shoppers are at home with their new stuff.
I'm exhausted. I didn't even put in half the hours that most of the workers in their 70s did. As usual, they outlast me in every way. I feel like Gus here, who spent all his time snuggling with the pillows and blankets.
E is in England. We thought he was coming home early, with the government shut-down looming for so long. But he stays another week to eat his pub food and cheese sampler plate. He says this is a typical dinner offering at Cambridge. The wine is free too. We'll have lots of photos of London and Cambridge when he gets back.
It's Rummage Sale week! Every autumn and every spring, huge bags come out of the church's shed and it absolutely amazes me how much stuff has been donated, how much furniture, antique-y things, useful things and strange things.
Last year in the boutique I found E a wool suit priced at $10. It looked great on him and fit perfectly, so we had it cleaned. I don't think it had been worn for at least 30 years, so it was retro vintage which he liked.
Anyway, all of this means I won't get as much knitting done. Or cooking, or anything else. Last night was a pot of chicken soup that I hope lasts a few days.
Last night's knitting was all about sideways ribbings and their selvages. Also how Judy's Magic Caston enables a knitter, via grafting or The Zipper, to make a seamless sideways tube and keep knitting without cutting the yarn. I was playing with some glorious sock yarn called Grateful Dyed by the Wild Hare. I played so hard with this yarn I had to recondition it a few times, but it is hardy stuff.
If you've been watching Z's blog, you've seen some of what we've been up to lately.
Instead of going to West Virginia for Christmas eve, snowy West Virginia came to us. On Christmas day, we headed north for Christmas with the Cousins. Aunt Toots (Mimi on Z's blog) put us up with cozy beds and morning tasty waffles.
At the Cousins' home, we did what we all love to do: eat, talk, play games, open presents, eat, talk some more. It was a jolly holiday.
I get a kick out of the festive decor and the personalized gingerbread placemarkers.
There's always strung popcorn on the tree and gingerbread houses on the table.
Look how they glob it on!
I also enjoy Toot's "Fluff thing."
Once home, we headed to the airport, to greet our west coast cousins. They are with us now for some winter break in the district.
We spent a good chunk of an afternoon in the Museum of Natural History, where we examined crystalization and neanderthalization.
Last night we hovered about Union Station before our night-time trolley tour.
These gals are doing well at not requiring a time conversion -- we are all living on west coast time!
The tour was chilly but excellent, thanks to a really great tour guide. I only knit on the trolley a little bit.
On a day with a heat index of 103, we got an intense little storm. It started with a gray patch in the sky, then lightning, rain dumping, trees falling, and we couldn't see across the parking lot. We told Z no, she couldn't run out there in her swim suit, or she'd get conked by a tree. The street steamed, then flooded.
As I was about to turn on the blender for a smoothie, the lights went out. The kitchen was dark and useless. Two days later, we were eating bananas with peanut butter and thinking of all thing things souring in the fridge.
We slept in the basement and gave thanks for the 20 degree drop in temperature. We hung out by the pool when we wanted daylight. Power in the county is not yet fully restored.
Our neighbor participates in a CSA -- Community Supported Agriculture, a farm share. Turned out she's receiving more than her family can eat, so we bought into half her share.
I am excited and hope to do it again next year -- the peaches taste better than any I can get at the store, I don't have to go to the farmer's market, everything is delicious. It's delivered right to our neighborhood.
We are getting our share of fiber and vitamins! We are also receiving fresh eggs and recipes to go with the produce.
Lately we sleep with the window open, so we've been treated to some special wake-up calls.
There's a bird in our complex who has taken to imitating car alarms. At first he had just one variety, but now he's got about three. He goes off at roughly 5:00 a.m.
At least he's not imitating the sounds of the garbage truck backing up, or of the Verizon construction equipment.
Z and E were good to me on Mother's Day. I got a dinner and some plants, and these little goodies. The chocolate with cayenne pepper... oh my. I like more spice than I used to. It's pepper chocolate, pepperjack cheese, Thai food. Yum. Except we went out for Italian this time.
So here I am snuggling a kiddo and getting more wrinkles every day... Also getting to be more like my own mother, in unexpected odd ways. I'm a little freaked out by that but not entirely opposed. I wonder if it will happen to Z. I don't exactly wish it upon her, but these things happen.
Cycles of life. Mama goose came back this year along with Papa goose, who wouldn't let the camera get too near. Z took these photos of the new arrivals by the lake.
I'm missing her right now. She did not come home from school today, because she is off to Outdoor School. She was very excited to go, with her sleeping bag and her tie-dyed T-shirt. Today I fell asleep in the sun on our patio, lost without my routine of the after school snack.
Z was outside doing her homework yesterday, so I hung out of the bedroom window to get a photo. Part of the salad garden is visible, and Button is lolling.
Housplants are starting to live outside, where the heat and light and humidity can help them. Also I can hose them off. Pollen is collecting like dust on everything. Achoo.
It's a nice space to be in, if you remember to wear shoes. The prickly holly leaves are not good to step on.
Book club met last night. I had read the book. Mostly, I liked it. Fellow members are neighbors, most within a block away. Rowhouses make for densely-populated living, so there are lots of neighbors to meet.
I like meeting my neighbors. Recently I've encountered a few in the grocery store, or when I'm out walking. We've been here nearly three years, so such things can happen. There are people to invite over when life is lonely, and that feels good.
I have days when I should not get behind the wheel of a car. Brain is lulled by the sunshine coming in, and I get honked at.
It's hard to care, it's so lovely outside. After a sudden summer, we are back to spring, 70 degrees.
I am in a fog. I will make soup from whatever ingredients are in the house, and possibly take a nap on the couch.
The lettus is growing quickly! Today I came home from a neighbor's house with more pots, so the arugula will soon get a home.
Bummer that we can't have tomatoes yet, but the strawberries are up from Florida, so that will do for salads for now.
School
started
today.
WHOOP! WHOOP!
Deep breath.
I'm gonna make a pot of tea.
Our landlord has been careful about keeping up with the gutters. So we don't have icicles like this.
That's a blizzard. We've got limited visibility here today.
Yesterday E and I dug out the Camry, but it's supposed to get another foot on top of it today.
We haven't had mail service since last Friday, and I have a feeling we won't get any mail until after President's Day.
Yesterday morning, we woke to this.
But then later in the day, it looked like this. And that falling fir tree is worse now, and really worrying us, as it is just barely touching the roof. The lump in the middle is one of our cars.
So we did some snow walking. Getting out the front door, we realized it had indeed been windy last night. The plows had come, but their work was already undone.
Our cars were signaling a lot of sore back for me.
Z got the funny idea of walking to the play structure.
But she didn't really like getting snow in her boots. In the last two months, she has grown I think six inches. Her snow pants are suddenly too short.
So we returned to our little house, and I did some digging. The snow fell as I dug, and when I was finished, another half inch or so was on the ground and car.
E got his exercise by our latest method, our new treadmill. I have also grown fond of it. But on a day like this, any chance to get outside is good.
I was in the grocery store today and it was insane. All the carts and baskets were in use, so I had to carry my items in my cloth bags. The radio says to expect one to two feet of snow this weekend. Plan to be holed up for three to five days (right! most likely one). We are rescheduling Z's birthday party.
Yesterday's snow was great for snow men -- wet and sticky. She and a neighbor tot designed the little snowman together. Later Z did some sledding.
Somehow I ended up feeding four of the neighborhood kids last night. Sloshy coats, mittens and snow pants spilled into the hall, hung off the doors, and dried by the heater. Empty cocoa cups were brought to the sink--all good girls.
That's what Z said when she woke up this morning. This is the view from our living room window -- just makes you want to hop on the treadmill and space out.
No school today. Forecast for the weekend? Eight more inches.
The church bowling party was cancelled, and so we skipped church as well.
They said only an inch of snow, and only a 50% chance, but we got five fluffy inches.
For many days we had temps below freezing and the lake was ice, the snow wouldn't melt. Z took a ride to school with friends in a neighbor's warmed car.
Then we had Spring for two days.
We see why the old dirty snow piles aren't safe to play on, especially over the sewer covers.
What to do in the house all day? Well, after the sledding, there was some cookie baking.
And the snow fell until around 10 pm, when it finally rested. Our parking lot was a lumpy, luminous world.
In the morning, I triumphantly freed E's car from the drifts. Not that I really had any place to put the snow... I buried our other car.
It feels really GOOD to dig out snow. I know that if it was every day, my mood would change, but just like tilling a garden, shoveling a walk is a happy workout.
We're getting record snowfall. Five inches fell last night, and another five have fallen since. It's supposed to keep coming down all weekend.
It's a workout to walk to the sledding hill. It was a workout to shovel the walk (the snowplows are out for the second time already, and it's just past noon).
Thankfully, the house is full of food. Nothing to do but spin yarn and bake cookies.
Why did Z fling herself off the couch and run outside in the 25 degree night, no shoes, no coat, running into the street?
Because she heard the sirens of Firetruck Santa!
He roams the streets at night, blasting lights, sirens and music.
Mornings can be difficult. Z is waiting outside the house of a fellow walker, getting ready to go to school.
At least it's not threatening to be a dark walk anymore... perhaps in a month we'll notice the darkness again.
Every morning is a little darker, and with the rain, darker still.
These leaves will soon all fall away, and they are just as beautiful on the ground as in the trees.
Chestnut Lodge caught fire Sunday evening. It burned clear through and had to be taken down. Here is what is left of it.
Very sad. I get attachments to funky old buildings. This one really had no purpose to serve or place to go, but it will be greatly missed. The locals have been visiting for a few days, watching the take-down and taking their goodbye pictures.
Yesterday I learned about carpenter bees. They are huge and fat and they bore holes in fences. We've got some.
Here is a Bee Hole. I kept thinking the sawdust was due to ants, but I was corrected by a neighbor. That explains why I see no ants but do see enormous bumbling bees.
I have sent a picture to the landlord.
... but it's COLD.
It is the time for dancing in the fallen petals.
The neighborhood is a-bloom. It's cotton-candy-land.
She caught one. It lived a short confused life in a jar, but many more minnows remain. Next time will be catch and release.
When I was a kid, there was much camping and fishing. I could cast out and reel in. I could put up a four-man tent, float a sleepy river in my life jacket, dig a four-foot deep hole in pumice sand and keep a toad in a bucket. I could also rev and flip a fat-tired three-wheeler and pop the top on a can of beer (then take it to Dad).
Z's nature exposure has not been quite so generous. Hunting minnows by the lake is the best it's been in a while. We'll make up for that this summer, when we take a trek out to eastern Oregon.
I'm always stuck at a light next to a mirrored building. The distorted reflections distract me and make it hard to continue safely through the intersection.
After nagging myself for a week, I remembered my camera today. I went twice through the intersection but got no red lights. That just seems impossible.
These are what I captured in motion, blindly pointing the camera out the window while I kept my eyes on the road. Maybe next time I'll have Z in the car and I'll hand her the camera.
Z likes to live in a tree.
So do I. All my happiest escape dreams involve tree houses. This one is a little airier than I'd like...
Glee! Z had a great day tubing at a nearby park on Monday, thanks to friends who shared their tube. (We got rid of our snow things when we moved out here because they didn't fit in the POD.) The hill was deep on the road side and bare on the safe side, due to the way the wind blew the snow around. It still made for fun sledding until I got too cold to stand there any longer.
Some bedtime reading for Pete.
Z was home from school yesterday, but she made a nest on the floor so she could work on her research paper. Topic changed from Japanese Yokai ("monsters," not enough info at the library) to Parakeets.
Today she's back in school, and so was I. Photographing the art class bulletin boards, and hopefully later today some actual kids in art class.
I have a rant that sounds like it's about the school system, but it's really about this square-headed region we live in. The schools are doing all they can and must.
Last night I went to a parent orientation night for middle school. The hour-long presentation consisted of boring PowerPoint slides and printouts identical to what I had already read on the school's web site. (Creative we aren't.) The topic was curriculum and the details of the various tracks they stick your kid in. I know the teachers freak out when someone says the word "track," but that's what they are.
Here's the upshot: My daughter will get no art. If she does not take band (held every day) she is put into either a never-before-taught "literacy through film" class, or the "arts rotation" which is a crap shoot. The arts rotation is compiled from the leftover kids (the word "leftover" was actually used) who didn't sign up for the other two electives. In this rotation you cannot choose whether your kid will be stuck in computers, home ec, "languages of the world," or any other afterthought class they invent. Art is a nine-week passing figment of the arts rotation; maybe you'll get it, maybe not. Incidentally, PE is every day, required, presumably because sports are all-important.
I had a few words for with the administrator. He explained the highly competitive nature of music around here; parents demand it. They apparently think art is time wasted -- he said something about "fiddling with papier mache." Ouch.
I asked why there wasn't more value placed on art. He said art was in everything they did -- music is art, computers are art, film is art, web pages are art. Then he said that I was giving him a very scary look (there we go again, Snake Eyes). I said something like, "I've noticed that in this region, visual art is excluded." He agreed. He said it wasn't right, but that's how the community sees it.
Then he suggested I send Z to the arts magnet high school. It's called Einstein. Z noticed something not quite right about that.
I tell ya, it's squaresville, daddy-o. This whole place has its head in a box.
