Growing up

    Today my four year old went to a party - without his parents - and it was an "away" party.  His friend had a party a a Chucky Cheese (sp?) which was about an hour away.  He rode in the car with his friends and went to the arcade and had a great time!  He was so excited!   He is "all grown up"!
    Afterwards,  I had to go to the theatre for fittings for the show I am working on.  As my husband is out of town, I took the kids, a picnic lunch/dinner, a complete change of clothes for each child, two gallons of wash water, three quarts of drinking water, baseball caps for all, and a frog trap (old plastic fish tank for our beta) and  let them play in the frog pond behind the theatre while I dressed actors.   They had a great time - were the happy trappers of 6 frogs (all released), were covered in pond muck and slime, stank to the high heavens, and were very happy.
    After sluicing them with the hose from the theatre - they'd used up the 2 gallons of water before I got there, I had them change in the car and we headed home. After about 5 minutes of tickling me with a bullrush, my four year old fell asleep.
    Such a busy day for a little man.  When I carried him in from the car, I realized he may be all grown up - kindergarten in the fall - but he is still my baby...

So busy

   Back from Baltimore where we finished clearing out my mother-in-law's house and closed on it.  All done.  Of course we brought home another two car loads of "stuff" - some last minute things that we needed until the end like lamps, brooms, buckets and so on, and a lot of other things like books, mementos, etc.  Our house looks like a tag sale exploded in the lower floors.
   When my dear husband  finishes the run of this play, we may have a week or two to try to cull and organize before having to turn our minds to the next school year.   I have dress rehearsals for the show, The Last of the Boys next week.  If anyone has a good web site  for understanding what pins/ribbons/patches were worn on class A uniforms for Spec 4 soldiers in Viet Nam, please let me know. Thanks.
     Can't wait for the show to be done as it have a small break before starting the last show of the season.  We bring in a package musical for the third show, which I do not have anything to do with, so I can think of other things.  This show is interesting - two vets in 1999 with differing perspectives on the war - we see Robert McNamara, a dead soldier, all sorts of good things.
      The garden is growing fabulously - the heat has made the curcurbitae leap  into a growth spurt.  We have winter squash and  cukes climbing the trellis, the summer squash are finally setting blossoms, and the watermelon is still trying. Cucumber salad is on the menu for tomorrow night.  As I suspected, the lower garden bed which was washed out soon after planting has an interesting pattern of growth.  I found some red iceberg lettuce growing on the edge of the lawn, carrots are sprinkled through out the bed. and one tiny clump of basil held its ground.   The big stuff is fine - the squash, cucumbers and tomatoes, even the borage did well and stayed put.  Just the tiny seeds floated around to make a serendipitous garden emerge.  Need to get out there with a hoe - I have been weeding a handful at a time, and the weeds are winning!
    The cotton is an interesting experiment.  The cotton in one bed has basically given up the ghost - the ground there is pretty awful - hard and full of rocks.  Some in another bed is doing okay, but it is getting too much shade, I think, as the hops vines are overshadowing it in the afternoon.  I have three in pots and two have gotten much bigger and are looking good, one is not doing as well.  The ones in the plastic pots are the best.  Things to remember for next year...