squeeky wheel?

  After nearly five years of asking, and two different  highway managers holding the job, we finally may have a solution in the wind for our water problem.  Our road and the one on the hill in front of our house are graded in such a way that the water and effluvium from storms runs down our driveway and into our garage - making for a very messy, muddy garage at times.  The previous owners put in a drain system to carry driveway runoff under the patio and have is run out into the grass in the backyard.  Which works - until all the road  water brings  gravel from the road along with the maple seeds and leaves, and everything else that comes down in storms.

The lower step was covered with water, where the basketball is floating is the  lower patio - the water is anywhere from
6 - 12 inches deep there

Garage door handle is 4 inches above the pavement

the water is racing over the patio, as well as pouring through the pipe under the patio.
the result is washed out gardens,  and a magnolia with roots being exposed more and more.

   After calling and leaving another message for the highway manager about how I voted for him because he stood on my front step and promised he would help me with this mess if he got the job; saying I wanted a day and time when he would be here not just -"oh we'll be working out there sometime in July," yesterday at 8 a.m., we walked the area and showed him the mess - as well as all the road gravel in our magnolia roots, and we have a promise of road work including a swale and rock work  starting July 5th.  

    Of course, if all the works, and the culverts actually take care of the majority of the water in the way they should, I am not certain how I shall handle it.  In our house, if a storm comes - day or night either my husband, or I, are out in the driveway getting soaked to the skin as we clear detritus from the drain.  How odd it will be to be able to just sit and look out the window at the rain...

Eighth grade Graduation

   Yup, it is official.  We now have two high schoolers in the house.  The eighth grade graduation was Thursday evening, followed by a semi formal dance.  All the young ladies got gussied up in beautiful dresses.  Some of the gents wore  suits or at least ties - some, well, they had collars on their polo shirts, so I think they felt more dressed up than usual!

   Our daughter chose to buy a dress for this event, rather than have me make one - for which I am quite grateful considering how busy things have been. it was a bright green with a front ruffle and showed her figure off nicely.  The silver high heeled sandals finished the ensemble.
   Since there is a dress code, she wore a shrug during the ceremony, but it came off for the dance.
   We are very proud of her academic achievements, as she was on Honor Roll during both years of middle school.  She received the  President's Excellence in Education Award for her academic achievements, "signed" by President Obama.  (I am certain the first copy was, and then his secretary copied the several thousand being sent to all the students earning it across the country.)
  After the ceremony was a mad house. Everyone poured out into the lobby and there was a sea of parents looking for their grad.  We had tried to persuade our eldest to join us, but since crowds make him extremely anxious, he declined.  After the insanity of the after ceremony lobby, we were just as happy he was not there. Here are a few after shots - before the girls headed off to the dance - at which they had a great time.  this class is actually very close, which is wonderful, since they will be together for the next 4 years.  The class of 2015 - gulp!

with her grandmother

with her baby brother

with some of the girls

with mom and dad

Kindergarten Graduation

   This Wednesday we celebrated the graduation of our youngest child from kindergarten.  He was very excited. They were going to wear caps and gowns and even had a graduation practice on Tuesday. Tuesday night he told me the most important thing to remember was "Shake and Take." His grandmother drove up to be at the ceremony, and we all went out to lunch afterwards.
    The principal spoke first and was warm and loving as she always is.  Next, the teacher spoke of the joys and trials of kindergarteners and their first year in school.  We also saw a slide show.

   As the students each processed in - walking down the center aisle of the auditorium and then standing for a photo, the teacher read each child's quote on what they wanted to be when they grew up.   We heard of many who had ambitions to be fire fighters or policemen (there were A LOT of future police men!), one princess, one doctor, and then my son.  His quote (paraphrased) was that "when he grows up he wants to be a geologist because they study shiny rocks, and a paleontologist because dinosaurs are his second favorite animal, and he also thought he would like to be the kind of scientist who studies crocodiles, because they are his favorite animal, but he didn't know the name for that type of scientist, so he had to find that out. "
    During the ceremony they children sang a song, and a handful of them, including my son,  played drums (djembe,  I think they are called).

djembe in the background

     Their Kindergarten teacher is an amazing teacher incorporating the study of world cultures into the classroom.  He calls the children to settle down by using a Tibetan Singing Bowl, they play the various drums, and work to raise money for a sister school in India. They learned about the natural world through field trips and walks, as well as observations in the schoolyard.  This teacher is moving up to teach third grade, and I hope my son will be lucky enough to have him again.

One down several more to go!

The ceremony ended with "diplomas" and the Shake and take training really paid off as the  distribution went without a hitch

the grad with mom and dad

With his grandmother

  .

Father's Day

   This was the first Father's Day in five years that my husband was not working.  One of the inconveniences of working in theatre is that actors do not get weekends and holidays off as this tends to be when the general population comes to see shows.  This is the fifth season we have been working with an Equity Theatre near our area.  My husband has been in the first show since the inception of the theatre, but this year, no, he starts with show two!
   So, we were all able to hang out yesterday - for most of the day.  Our youngest son made  breakfast for Daddy - boiled eggs, melon and crescent rolls.  My daughter and I put together the hammock we gave Daddy for Father's Day which everyone relaxed or played on at some point in the day.  it was sunny and warm, but not hot.  
   I took a couple of hours to dash out for an audition at the local community theatre.  They are producing Cabaret.  I really want to play Fraulein Schneider - she has the most wonderfully complex and poignant music. However, I am at a weird age - I am too old for the characters like Sally or the dancers, and  too young for Fraulein Schneider.  We will wait and see - but at least I finally got my butt out there and auditioned.
    I hope you all had a really nice day with your dads, or husbands and kids.

A Gift from Bees Past

   We lost both of our hives full of bees this past winter.  We have since replaced them with new packages. When we went to clean out the hives of dead bees before the new ones arrived, we found many frames of capped honey.  We had no idea what we should do with this treasure - leave it for the new girls to give them a head start?  Well we left a few frames in the hives for the new girls, but ten remaining ones we put in a large plastic bin and asked our local bee guru what we should do.  He sweetly smiled and said, "Why don't you  just harvest it?"  Funny how simple answers are often the most easily overlooked!
   So yesterday and today we have been harvesting with the crush method.  Because we have plastic-cell foundation, we are not merely cutting it all out, we are more scraping it off the foundation and straining the honey from the wax.

My daughter scraping the cappings off into a pot

getting the last bits into the pot

beautiful, dark fall flower honey - golden rod to be more  precise

 This method means the bees will have to rebuild the wax in order to store more honey, but it also gives us more wax for candles than just the cappings available when we spin out the honey.  

Wax and honey in the strainer

Rinsing the wax after the honey has drained out

   

    We now have some beautiful dark honey from the golden rod of last fall.  It is a richer, heavier tasting honey than the spring flower honey.   Such an unexpected gift.  Thanks, Bees!

okay, I'm not a soccer mom!

   Is it wrong to admit that I am hoping that my son's soccer practice is rained out?  Does this make me a bad mom?  I am rapidly learning that I really do not care about soccer.  Yes, I want my son to get exercise. I want him to make friends with kids his own age.  It would even be great if he learns the sport. But as for ME - I am not interested in the game at all.  I am sure it is great to some: Pele, David Beckham - I am talking to you.  But for me - nothing, nada, zip, zilch.
    Maybe this stems from the fact that as a child I never really participated in team sports.  I never learned to throw or hit a baseball with any accuracy. Although I swam every summer, after about the third year of trying out for swim team and quitting the next week, I stopped trying out.  Backyard volleyball = great.  Tournament volleyball, no thanks. I am a whiz at badminton!
    My sport was - thanks to a college boyfriend - archery. (Thanks Doug)  In that I found a sport I could participate in on a solo basis to test myself - or in a competitive nature, like our college intramural Olympics where I took a gold and a bronze.  Maybe it is because no one is yelling and clapping and urging you on when you shoot - they just watch, then clap quietly afterwards.  Sounds sort of like golf...who knows, maybe that is next on the list.

Camping

   I had a show I was designing costumes for.  Almost Maine, in typical summer stock fashion, was created on a shoestring with less time than I would have liked.  It opened Friday, so I can breathe for a few days before diving into the next show - Rounding Third.  Opening night happened without me, as I was on my way to camp with my Girl Scout troop.
    I love going to camp.  It is so nice to sleep in the tents and sit around the fire, talking, singing, eating s'mores.  I hate getting ready for going to camp.  The packing is not so bad, but making sure that everyone was assigned an equal portion of the menu groceries, and that I do not forget the frying pan or the buddy burners can get a little stressful.  To top it off, we invited another troop to join us, so we were blending two leader's styles. 
   I think it was successful.  My attitude about camping with Cadettes and Seniors is that they have enough people telling them what to do and when to do things every day, that they should be able to relax.  We did. We cooked on our hobo stoves using our buddy burners for fuel.  We took a hike.  We did a quick service project of moving all the row boats down from winter storage and rowing them over to the docks.

    We swam. It was quite chilly, but the girls went in!  The best thing was that Friday night they decided they were going to get up early, hike to the old fire tower built by the CCC, and climb it to watch the dawn.  All the girls in my troop got themselves up at 4 a.m. Saturday morning and grabbed an apple to munch, took their flashlights and their emergency whistles, and went to watch dawn break.  They had a wonderful day for it, and on the way home they saw a yearling fawn in the bracken.
    Is it a bit of a pain getting ready for these weekends? yes. Is it worth the effort - oh heck yes!