Been a long time since posting...life is so hectic as summer winds down. No matter how we want those long and lazy days to last, they don't.

Overnight, the garden goes into overtime, producing tons of tomatoes all-of-a-sudden, or so it seems.
Overnight we go from quiet mornings to busy homeschoolers.
And overnight, the leaves are changing colors, nuts are falling from the trees, and the sounds outside in the evening are not the cheery calls of robins, but the steady hum of desperate insects hoping for one more big date before the first frost.

And so the wheel turns.

Garden Pix from July

This is the start of the hydrangea season...will put up a post of it in it's full blue glory...


this one isn't from the garden, but the living room couch where Lissa was snuggling with the pooch...
Look who was looking at me taking pics...'hey Mom...watcha doing?"
The perennial green garden (there are a few blooming daylilies there later in the season, and of course, the bleeding heart on the right in the spring)

A Weekend of Little Blessings

A View to the Backyard

After weeks of cold, of rain, of just general "blecch"...we leap-frogged over spring and headlong into summer. From the low 50's to the 90's in one short leap...

Yet it was perfectly timed to coincide with Memorial Day weekend, and how can one protest a sudden, unexpected heat wave this early in the season on the official Summer Kick-Off Weekend?

not even I could grump about that!

Lee got home early from work on Friday, and we had a long, luscious weekend of quiet. I still had to work Saturday, and it was a surprisingly active day at the clubhouse...followed by a Sunday that can only be described as languorous. Slept in a wee bit, then off to the restaurant for breakfast, since it was Lee and my 33rd anniversary!

Breakfast at IHOP was a bit disappointing, though the kiddo's seemed to enjoy it. The moms? Not so much. Our waitress was a peach, however, and was very accommodating to our large, sometimes loud, group, including a differently-abled adult son.

At home, we tended to gardens, to front lawns gone to hayfields, to hedges.

Even Monday was laid back. Gosh, two days in a row could spoil a family! We went for a lovely hike at Wachusett Meadows Audubon Sanctuary, clambering through fields and woods, finding the glacial boulder and watching the kids scramble up and around it fearlessly. Then onto Browns Hill where we summited quickly, and KC led us down the tricky trail back to the meadow!

A quick stop at the "Twinkie-Winkie" Store in Princeton garnered ice cream treats for the kids, and then home on a leisurely back road.

And after much de-ticking (yes we were *loaded* with the little beasties...ugh!) I remembered the community garden meeting last night and got there in the nick of time! So now it's official, we have our garden plot for the summer. Tomato's and squash and corn and pumpkins....and hours of fun, peace, tranquility, bird watching and garden sweating to come!

What a weekend of little blessings it was!

May, 2011

I am soooo loving May this year!!! First early azalea to spring open with warm, sunny days....

..while tiny violets nestle into the small spaces between the rocky steps to the backyard..
The ferns and hosta have bolted up, from tiny promises 10 days ago, to rich full green-leaf.
and I'm loving being outside for as long as I can before the sneezies get me!

It's funny, this is 'my' Japanese red maple, one of my favorite trees in the garden...and the kids climb it like little spider monkeys. KC proclaimed it "the best tree, ever!" Since it's not much bigger than they are, there is little chance of serious injury, (crossing fingers!), and it delights me to see them loving being outside playing without hundreds of bought toys, but with imagination, and fun.

This is what May is all about, really.

Kirsty goes to NYC

Can you believe it? I was in the Big Apple. The city that never sleeps. New York, New York! Somehow, I found myself volunteering to be a driver and chaperone for the youth group at church.

Best impulsive decision, ever.

I'm such a rube. A hick. A tourist..... and yanno what? Could not care less!!! I had the best time. From architecture, to the incredible weather (sunny. blue skies. 40-50's...not a drop of rain!); from street vendors to the fascinating people, and all the incredible food..WoW.

New York pizza? omg. And the bagels? Srsly? Who knew?

Well, New Yorker's know. Buy a slice for a buck and you've got a meal! Run 'round the corner and buy a just-made bagel...oh so soft inside, and just perfectly firm on the outside....

Oh, and the walking... oh my gods above and below!!! We walked from Battery Park, to the financial district. There were somber moments at the World Trade Center site...it hits you like a fast blow to the gut...or a fist grabbed tight around your throat..shocking and unexpectedly painful even after all these years.....then, tears and shivers, a soft-spoken prayer, and a heavy heart.

We proceeded to Chinatown for an authentic Chinese meal. (omg--i'm gonna be saying that a lot.)

Then on to SoHo, and the Village, and St. Marks (a 'place', not a church!). All told, we walked for 11 hours. We sat down once in all that time, at the restaurant, for an hour.

yes.

Eleven. Hours. Of. Walking.

And that was just *Saturday* !!!

We walked nearly all day Sunday as well, (7 hours!) taking in the beauty of Central Park (omg!!), and "my" group heading to MOMA (Museum of Modern Art)...and get ready for yet another OMG....

Jackson Pollock....Picasso...Monet....Manet...Andrew Wyeth (omg i got to see Christina's World....!!!! And too bad I didn't discover until *after* we got home that Starry Night was there...*pout*...well, tis a reason to go back, right?!)

just a few of the many, many things I was so lucky to see there..

Just a small aside here....I don't think you can fully experience the sheer genius of Jackson Pollock unless you see his art up close and personal...I was not a fan...until Sunday.

Wow. His work blew me away. It is raw, and visceral and intense...so full of humanness...and no, I've never seen the movie about him...but he spoke through his art.

There were so many paintings and wood block prints and sculpture (there were these perfectly round marble "balls" and an "urn" that were to represent "woman" on a round marble disc...wait, lemme see if i got a pic of that....)

Yes! (pictures? how about over 300 in 48 hours?!) So this is the "breast and symbolic opening of a woman, representing her ability to bring life into the world."

As a woman who never gave birth to any of her kids, that didn't resonate with me, not at all. Yet frankly? I was mesmerized.

The thing about those marble "breasts"? They were *perfect* spheres, and the sheer smoothness of them...the marble was as slick, and smooth as skin... it was amazing that hard cold marble could be transformed into something so perfect.

and there was this one, same artist and sorry I didn't get his name.....

the ball might have been gypsum? it too was perfectly round, but not slick the way the marble one was...this one had shimmer/gleam to it...

And oh my the "memory maker" things...a wild turkey in Battery Park (where the Staten Island Ferry leaves for Ms. Liberty)

...the long subway ride to the park at the start of our epic trek, packed like sardines....the Elvis impersonator who was more than a little bit kinda freaky...the Broadway show( omg! )...the Chinese Lady who chased me through her little shop in Chinatown selling me a purse for "10 dolla...8 dolla...okay for you ...5 dolla" (i did buy it for $5!) (this after buying $50 of other things there...she really liked me... )

And the buildings. Gosh.

Like this one (just outside of Battery Park, in the Financial District):

the mirrored front reflected the sky, the passing clouds became living art... I was enchanted with that..and the mix of old and new living in some sort of strange harmony...St. Pauls Cathedral all gothic architecture, right next to tall glass-fronted sky scrapers....the statues,and the people...great green goddess, the people.

The energy there is electric. At 11 p.m. it is nearly as hubbub-filled as at noon. (and in the Village? MORE people than at noon!!)

And the streets, all stories in themselves...Wall Street, Fifth Avenue, Central Park South, (yes I did take pictures of them all!)...and Broadway. Omg! me, hick from the stix...ate lunch on Broadway .... !!!

and Times Square?! OMG...where to look? oogling *everything*...look up and see Radio City Music Hall, and down there to the building where the New Years Ball drop happens...

Would i go back there again?

oh, yes!

(but not, please, until next year...I'm still processing...and my feet? they might leave me)

Always i cannot figure out the uploading-- so these of course are backwards....

So backwards this post will go!

From the top...the broken-limbed birch from the infamous ice storm 2 years ago; those azure sky's are only to be found this time of year...and certainly no portent of the impending storm hurtling towards us even now...

Other than this hopeful sign that faces towards the front door...and the cirrus clouds as KC and I had a "brisk" walk (that said with multifaceted meanings!) to the dentist this morning at 20 degrees and windchill too cold to think about...

And back about 3 weeks now the Princess Cake for the Princess. The ladies' dresses all have battery op-tea lights underneath, buried in the cake (and I thank goodness for Cake Boss showing me how such as this is done!!)...with the hills and vales requested by Ms. Princess herself. "So the Ladies are outside dancing in the snow" she said....

Perhaps because she has discovered the unequaled joy of throwing herself onto a sled and careening down the hill into the backyard....someday that little girl will wind up in the brook as her Mommy did so long ago...

So for these joyous moments of Winter..we smile and grit our teeth, knowing...knowing..that the days are growing longer every day (415 and still light out this afternoon!!)...and the wheel turns us click by click back to Spring....

...and the seed catalogues are getting dog-eared from all the love...

A Mural is Born

As usual, I can't make heads or tails of how to load the pictures in any semblance of order, so this final picture of the series is the only one in proper order!

The kids painted all the "bricks" by spatter painting red paper with black, white, and gold and silver sparkly paint. The used "recycled" bottle brushes, which make perfect smudgy-spattery marks. I cut them into the "brick" shapes, and they're glued onto the white background.

This year the kids can do so much more! They painted Santa's boots coming down the chimney, and helped shred and glue the "fluff" at the bottom of his pants, which hang down over his boots.

The star at the top of the tree was done tracing the shadow of a star that hangs from the dining room chandelier, in the only 5-minute window the light reflects off the neighbors windows and into my dining room window...just a kewl confluence of events. I had to capitalize on it!

The tree was quick-painted with the chisel-edge of a foam trim brush!

Tomorrow the kids will make paper "stockings" to hang from the "mantle", and I'll paint ornaments on the tree, as well as gluing 3-D items onto the "branches"...and the kids will "glitter paint" them to give them pizazz....

(and don't get me started about the hour we spent assembling the gingerbread house...it was a kit but the kids had a BLAST!!!)

Such a creative, positive energy day!