ALWAYS have a back up outfit

  Today is Homecoming at my older children's HS.  Tonight is the dance.  This year the theme is The Great Gatsby.  Now to me, that is a novel first, a film second and third, but not a theme, per se.  However, the idea of a 20's era dress was very appealing to my daughter, so to the store we went for red satin and seed beads.  Oh, yes, this was not going to simply be a dropped waist with a hip sash - Heaven forbid!  We decided on beading the front of the dress.
     Sometimes, even though you know how overly scheduled your days are, and how many responsibilities you have, you just have to say, "Okay,  I know this will kill me, but let's try."  So I cut the fabric, and was ready to sew when I realized the beading would have to happen BEFORE sewing.  Armed with an audio book and a clear (ish) dining room table, I copied the rose patterns onto the front of the dress and began.

   We decided on a black outline, then steel beads for defining the rose petals, as well as short  iridescent bugle beads for accents with gold  seed beads for the roses themselves.  Yeah, right.

The lower pair - not mirror images, as I had to freehand part of the design  when, after the first  use, our transfer paper failed

After about 6 hours of work, I was not even half way done.  My daughter helped when she could, but two people on one dress front gets tight.  We had a good time, however, listening to music, talking, and video chatting with her boyfriend. (My first experience with Skype.) Last night at 3 a.m. I had to sleep for a bit because I was not longer seeing straight.
    5:30 dawned grey and dim, and I looked at my husband and told him he was going to have to get our son to his 6:30 team bus for the meet, as I did not have any brain cells awake. By 7 a.m. I was up and beading.  By ten we decided that the gold seed beads looked fabulous, but were taking longer to apply than we had, so we would make the second pair of  rose images the reverse - bugle beads with gold  leaf/highlight areas.

The section we did not get finished.  

        At about 2p.m., my daughter and I realized her dance was at 8 not 7, so she called her boyfriend to see if he could move their reservation back an hour.  The dinner reservation was for 5:30. He was not inclined to do this, and reticent about why, making me think he had other things planned that just dinner, so I did not push it. Finally at 4:15 p.m. I told my daughter, to stop beading I was going to stitch the darn dress up, she might be able to get away with wearing it if part of a rose was not beaded, but not if the garment was in pieces.   So I stitched like the wind, and realized that I would need an extra 20 minutes just for the pressing.  So, with great disappointment and yes, a frustrated tear, I sent her to grab two dresses from my closet that I thought would work.  She tried on a blue one with a black sheer overdress - not drop waist, but sheath style.  After pulling the shoulders up an inch, adding a rhinestone choker, chandelier  style earrings, and a beaded evening wrap, she was ready to go.  Was it what we planned?  No.  Did it work? Well enough. Did she look pretty?  I'd say, yes.

Look who I almost ran into!

As I was looking for milkweed pods I stopped just in time to avoid walking through this:

which was a good thing since it was made by this

and I do not think she would have been happy with me.

It's Apple Time!

     Do you remember last Spring, before we even bought our farm, we were posting photos of all the gorgeous trees in bloom.  Well, it is now apple time and we are finding the apples and the crab apples

and trying to educate ourselves as to the varieties.  Yesterday I spend an hour or two wandering the farm, picking apples up from the ground, or pulling them from the branches to feel, smell, and eventually taste them.  I determined a few things:  we have a lot of apple trees; no one has pruned them in years, the neglect is appalling;

Most of the apples look like this - suffering from fungus or insects or disease - I am still investigating

Some trees are healthier than others

 we have many different varieties of apples; the deer seem to have gotten to all the ripe ones at easy picking levels; if the deer have not gotten to the ones on the lower branches, it is not luck, it is because they are not ripe.

These are ripe and sweet, but I need a ladder for this tree as the deer stripped the lower branches already

 I tasted a lot of sour apples yesterday!
     Apple trees are amazing things.  This tree is completely hollow - there is actually a hole at the base on the other side, which you cannot see in these photos, yet it is still bearing fruit!

An amazingly resilient tree

The hollow goes all the way through

The opposite side

  So this weekend we will spend some time at the farm with a ladder, some baskets or bags, and this coming week the house will smell of apple butter, apple sauce, and possibly pie!

Life in this town

   I have lived in many places in my life.  I have visited MANY more.  There is always something special about each place.  My little town here in upstate NY is special in many ways. First of all, it  is fairly unique because it is a two college town.  We are awash in students  for most of the year, and then we are awash in baseball playing youth in the summer.  This area is known as "baseball country" according to the banners on Main Street!  There are several theatre and museum options, as well as more baseball at Damaschke Field.
   This town LOVES its parade.  We  parade on July 4th.  We have a Memorial Day parade, a Halloween Parade, a "holiday parade."

There is puppet walking for First Night, as well as fireworks on the Fourth of July and New Year's Eve.
    Labor Day we have a gathering of balloonists in the park behind our house.  They do a Balloon Glow in the evening, and flights during the day.  Very pretty.

    Although we like to complain about the weather - very grey a great deal of the time, it is a good place to be, and as everyone told us when we were first house hunting, a great place to raise kids.  

A Coop and Crayons

   The chicks living in the brooder box are getting cramped, so it is a good thing we have ALMOST completed the chicken tractor.  My husband and I were roofing it today, and have to add the doors and windows before we can out  the chicks in.  The roofing material is a currogated material that feels like some form of rubber coated felt.  It is dark brown, and pencil did not show up on its surface.  We needed a grease pencil, which, of course, was not in the tool box we had at the farm.  However, a mother is never without a stash of things to keep kids occupied in the car, so I was able to dig out a yellow crayon and it did just fine.  We are hoping by tomorrow to have the birds in ther new domicile.
   My husband and I start back to school this week.  Summer was so busy and stressful, I am actually looking forward to classes.  My teaching load is a little lighter this term - I still have three classes, but we lowered the class size in my Theatre Appreciation classes from 65 in each to 50.  This means 30 less papers to grade, 60 less projects, 60 fewer exams,  and 210 less quizzes to grade.  I will only have 116 student this term as opposed to the 146 I has last fall term.  Whew! 
    Fall also includes designing two productions, one at the college of Clybourne Park, and The Outgoing Tide at Chenango River Theatre, with a dream cast which includes my husband. This will be so nice for him.  Right now he is in a brilliant and beautiful production of The Winter's Tale, by William Shakespeare.  He is King Leontes and the Shepherd, and has been so busy and stressed by this very heavy show, starting on Outgoing will be quite relaxing!

Spiders, Spokes, and Blueberry Pies

    I am fascinated by spiders.  Not to say I want one crawling on me, but I think they are amazing creatures, and I adore photographing them. Every summer I find myself creeping very close to rock walls, peeking into corners near doors and windows, and scanning gardens for likely subjects.  Usually we have a wolf spider living near our back door, whom we name Pete (to make it seem less scary). To our disappointment, this year Pete was a no show. So, I have kept an eye out for other specimens.
     I am finding that  my new camera does not have as tight a zoom as I would like, so a new lens may be on the Christmas list this year.  A couple of weeks ago I saw this little critter sitting on the latch to our gate.

 I think it is a crab spider, but please leave a comment and correct me if you know for certain.  I was amazed by its gorgeously vibrant yellow, and by the complete lack of fear. It did not like the lens in its face, so it went into attack stance.

(Kind of cute when it is smaller than the nail of my pinky finger!)
     A rite of summer when you are small is learning to ride a two wheeler.  Our youngest has been avoiding this, because he is the type of kid who, if he can't do it right the first time, does not want to bother with it again. Lord help us when he gets to high school!  Last week, Drew  took some time to get him past this biking aversion, and a few yards at a time, he was riding.

Starting on the lawn makes falls less painful.

balance!

It won't due to have the chain fall off!

Look where you are going!

PEDAL!

      The last few weeks have been very uneven for my children.  With Drew and me in rehearsals, they have been fending for themselves, and much of that time was spent on "screens": I-devices, computers, tv.   We were past due for some outside family time. So yesterday, after my daughter's training session for one of her volunteer positions, the kids and I went blueberry picking.  The Blueberry Farm is a wonderful place.  The woman who owns it is a dear, and tries to be out in the field to talk to her customers. She is a former student of mine.  She is 75 or so (I have lost count) and makes me look tall (I am 5'3" on a good day).  When she hands you a picking bucket she tells the children to be certain to eat some as they are picking.
     We picked nearly 20 lbs of berries, and when we went to weigh and pay she waved me off.
    "No, don't pay.  Just enjoy them."  I told her we had picked a lot, and I couldn't not pay.  Her response?
   "Yes, you can, I'm rolling in money."
   "Yes, and this is how you make it."
   "Nah, I play the stock market!"
So we are now making blueberry confections; pie last night, blueberry bread, jam, and cookies today,  and every bite is a little sweeter due to her kindness. It is all about paying it forward.

Ring of Fire

   We opened Ring Of Fire, a musical tribute to the music of Johnny Cash tonight.  What an amazingly talented group of musicians are on that stage.  If you are near Greene, NY in the next few weeks, try to catch the show. It is a fun night out.

    Of course the tech week preceding the opening means my poor kids have been living on chicken nuggets and take-out.  I am happy I have a couple weeks before having to get back to classes,  and start on the next two shows (The Outgoing Tide at one theatre and Clyburne Park at another) so I can get caught up on house chores - yes, this place looks like Atilla's Huns encamped here for the last week.  So many projects I was hoping to complete this summer are still UFOs (un-finished objects), but I have a few days - so there is hope.
   Last week we went to the county fair.  I am not a fan of the midway - a near accident on a ride at Lake Quassapaug when I was young has cured me of the need to be in a small metal bucket while it flies in the air trying to fling its contents across the fair ground.  So my son and I spent our time in the animal barns.  I really loved seeing the sheep, and realizing which breeds are too big to start with. I definitely want to look for a dark fleeced lamb next year when we are shopping!  The goats won my heart, but I am not certain I could raise them for meat, and I do not want to run any sort of dairy right now.  I might be persuaded to have a few angora goats! Fibre animals would be okay for me!
    When the press of the crowds, the odor of the hogs,  and the noise of the sheep and goats and the hijinks of the cows got a bit much for my son, we retreated to the horses.  There, no matter what, he settles down.  Horses whinny occasionally, but they do not jump all over the place, or stink, or moo in your face.  There is a nobility, and a calm dignity  in horses that never fails to soothe him.  Especially the big  ones - Percherons, Belgians, and Clydesdales seem to be his perfect match.