Adirondack Tails

Painting and Pussycats

2010-04-08T16:21:00.004-04:00

Whoooooeeeee, it's been a long time.

To sum up:
Brian got laid off in July. We were homeless in September. We closed on a house in October and moved in just as soon as we could. It needed a LOT of work. We're still wading through it. Brian laid a hardwood floor while I wrote my portfolio for National Board for Professional Teaching Standards.

The rest of the house we're working on room-by-room after the initial painting binge and laying carpet in the bedrooms in October and November. Everything is lingering in the 85%-done range, but we're knocking things off little by little.

This week was spring break. We did a lot of work on the house. And adopted a pussycat from a local shelter.

We have a front sitting room, divided from our back living room by a galley kitchen and dining area. We do most of our living in the back, which needs a significant amount of work, so we decided to focus on getting the sitting room finished first.

First, let's cast our minds back to the way the house used to look...........

Glance back up there and REALLY take in the dingy yellow walls, the hideous awning windows, the nasty old 60s linoleum tile.

The first part of the transformation was the windows. We ordered them just before New Year's, and they were installed in February.

The guys were supposed to be here between 8 & 9.

No guys.

STILL no guys. And no phone call.

So I called the office, and they let me know that the guys were running late. Nice of them to fill me in.

FINALLY they showed up, at almost 11:00.

There's windows on that thar truck!

Didn't take them very long to get to work tearing a big hole in the house. They started in the back living room, and did one set of windows at a time. Then they worked their way around to the front sitting room.

Then we decided we were going to paint. We picked out a nice neutral tan color that looked dirty and cold once we got it on the walls. 25 paint samples later, we decided that the public areas of the house would be green, and we'd repaint the office to be not-green.

This past weekend, we did a LOT of painting. Then we committed a lot of hangings.

I give you the after:

We love it so much, and it's given us so much hope! This place WILL feel like a home, eventually.

I've painted the first coat of paint on the entry way and down the hallway, and part of the kitchen. This evening and tomorrow around school work I'll put on the second coat and get going on the trim on that. Next up is the dining room and whatever parts of the kitchen I can reach without an epic ladder.

We have a lot of hideous wallpaper to strip in the living room yet. Then we can patch and paint and hang the curtains back there, too.

We can't wait to get it done.

Here's the still nameless kittyface.

The first hour or so he was hanging with us in the bedroom, being all social. Then we tried to introduce a dog to him and he retreated to the closet. The TOP SHELF of the closet. When it appeared that he wasn't coming down any time soon, I stuck his basket up there so at least he had something to snuggle down in.

Yesterday, though, he decided to make our bed his fortress of solitude and hung out there for a significant part of the day.

This morning he was pretty comfortable with the bedroom door open and the doggies sniffing him through the gate, so I brought the dogs in one at a time to get better acquainted with him. After a while, we had some serious inter-species diplomacy going on.

First, Quinn made some peace with him:

"I haz a kitty!"

Then, Pulu decided she could be calm and not-spazzoid enough to come visit, too.

Here he is, lounging after I kicked the mutts back out of the bedroom.

After the Great Peace Summit, I took Mr. Pants to the vet for a check-up. He is 7 lbs of healthy kitty, give or take one ear full of ear mites. Poor itchy boy.

While we were at the vet, he discovered that if he headbutted the seam in his cardboard carrier hard enough, he could squeeze himself out through the resulting openings. Didn't take him long to reproduce the trick. I was planning to go get him a proper kitty carrier after the vet's appointment, but I ended up bumming one from the vet for the trip over to the pet store and back. Heh.

After we got back from the vet today, I locked the dogs in the bedroom via the doggy gate and gave himself the tour of the rest of the house. He's been exploring and settled in to hang out on top of my grandmother's table next to my grandpa's Ugly Lamp (tm).

Now everybody's loose in the house together and co-existing pretty peacefully. Catbutt even got up to chasing down a big ol' buzzy-fly that was hanging out in the house this afternoon.

He really, really, REALLY needs a name. Nothing quite seems to suit him yet, but he's just now starting to explore the house and show us his true personality.

Only a little late: Spring Break 2009

2009-08-01T22:09:00.001-04:00

I just realized that I NEVER posted anything from spring break this year. This is from my paper-and-pen journal on our way to the airport, with pictures and links along the way. Our life list and pictures are thrown in for fun at the end. This was our second run at the Buena Vista, Texas, area. This is a prime birding location down at the tip of the boot-toe in Texas, because migrants need to decide if they're going to follow the Rio Grande or the East coast. Tons of birds get pushed in/down by disturbances in the Atlantic / Gulf of Mexico, which means that lots of exotics make their only appearance in the US in this 200-mile stretch of border towns. Plus, it's warm in April, while we're usually ducking snow storms on our way out of town on Spring Break.

We got a whole mess of new life birds, which is pretty impressive. In what now totals just over seven days of birding in the region when you combine time from our two trips, we got better than 100 new life birds. Which is even more impressive.

There was a lot of time spent in the car this trip, and that got overwhelming because this wasn't supposed to be a driving vacation. We flew down there and stayed so we'd have more time to bird. Our location was what we thought of as centrally located, but we found ourselves driving 30, 50, 70 miles to get to the next birding spot. It made for what felt like late nights and shorter birding days.

It was sunny and gorgeous most of the week. This was a welcome respite from the stormy weather we'd been having for most of March and April. Seriously, who turned on the blizzards at the EQUINOX!?!?!

We went to a lot of places we'd birded before. We also went to some cool new places that we'd like to visit again at other times of the day or with different weather conditions. There were a few places that we visited before that we didn't get back to, as well. So, in summary, we will probably go back down there again.

The bed and breakfast that we stayed in was really rather nice this time. We both agreed that it was farther from where we did most of our birding. On our last day, we went out to South Padre Island, which, it turns out, was HOPPING for rare species and protected birding spaces. We could have stayed at the KOA Kampground on the Island for the same price as the B&B, so we're thinking next time we'll do that. Camping on the ocean. YES.

We rented a small SUV for this trip, and it worked out fairly well. We really liked the Dodge Nitro that was ours for about ten minutes before we realized it had temp tags that were set to expire the next day. We didn't like the Chevy Equinox we had next because it had all sorts of chrome in the cockpit that reflected into our eyes as were were driving around. Plus the windshield wiper squirter was broken, so even though there was plenty of wiper fluid in the reservoir, we had bugs all over our windshield. Remember that opening scene in Men In Black when there are bugs splattering all over the windshield of the truck? Yeah, the highway was sort of like that. Which made birding from the highway ..... difficult.

A brief stop at the McAllen airport the second day of our trip saw us switching into a Toyota Rav 4 that was pretty acceptable for the rest of the trip. We still wish we would have had that Nitro for the rest of the trip. That was a pretty sweet ride.

We had our customary run-ins with border patrol while we were down there. Lots of the birding places are right along the Rio, and are just dirt access roads that run down to the river. The Rio Grande River is only 100 yards wide at a lot of these pull-out picnic places. A strong arm could huck a baseball straight across the water with little problem. We would often cruise down to the river only to have a BP agent follow us a few minutes later to check on us. I'd guess that they see as many birders as they do coyotes down there, since they didn't seem to be surprised to find us there with our binos. One or two guys even asked us if we'd seen anything good!

The last time we went down a path to the river, it was supposed to have superlative birding. We parked under a tree next to an old picnic table to eat our lunch. We were going to leave the car, and walk back up the road to an old defunct RV park that is still maintained for birding trails. While we were sitting there eating, we spotted the green kingfisher, a bird that's eluded us two years in a row. Brian snuck out of the car with camera in hand to try and get a picture of it. As he was lining up the shot, the bird flew. And Brian realized there were four guys on the Mexico side of the river with sniper rifles. He backed away just as slowly as he could force himself to do. I didn't start to freak out until I got my binos on them and realized that the guns weren't over their shoulders but in their hands. Of course, if they'd really wanted us dead, we wouldn't be here anymore. So that was exciting.

(and also high on the list of stories that we will not be telling my mom) (oops. Mom, don't have a heart attack. It was months ago. REALLY!)

There was a lot of aruging with the GPS unit, which made our lives mostly better. There were a lot of places that provided lousy maps or directions for how to get there, and since those places were off the beaten track, a few times our GPS didn't think we were even on the road. After a bunch of by-the-seat-of-our-pants navigations, though, we've got a big list of places saved in our address book for next time.

We didn't run into local birding friends on this trip. We did, however, run into a few folks more than once. It worked out really well, because the first set of ladies directed us to a feeding station we'd missed, where we found the buff-bellied hummingbird that we'd been hunting. At another place, a gentleman pointed out a bird that turned out to be a blue grosbeak (even though he'd thought it was something else--he was an enthusiastic German birder in a touring RV that we played hop-scotch with a few times at one of the parks. A few other guys helped confirm some shorebird IDs that Brian and I were mostly convinced about, which built our confidence in being able to ID shorebirds (we both share a weakness there). Birders on SPI were very friendly and happy to give tips of where to go to see different things on the island. We passed a few of them viewing something through scopes and pulled over along the side of the road. There we got a good look at the Aplomado Falcon. We'd gotten a good glimpse of a pair of them earlier in the day, but they'd spooked when Brian got out to warn the birders behind us of them.

One of the birders we ran into mis-identified the Tamaulipas Crow at the Brownsville Dump. Still, last time we'd wanted to go to the dump and not had time. So this time we did. We spent an hour or better there, marveling at the profusion of birds swarming around the active work zones.

We were both totally entertained. There were all of these "unofficial" birding hot-spots that have rarities. Those places are accustomed to birders showing up for birds instead of the normal business, and many of them have maps that they'll give out with advice on where to go. There are all of these funny birding codes: "pull through the first fence to the caretakers cabin. Honk twice. If nobody comes, proceed through the second fence, park and start your walk." Things like that. The Brownsville Dump is one of those places. The guide book said, "pull up to the left of the office and show your binoculars, they'll wave you inside."

In reality, when we arrived, the guy said, "Oh, good! Let me give you a map!" and slid one out through the cashier-night-drawer. He explained all about where we should go and where the best viewing was. He was incredibly friendly for a sanitation worker dealing with what was probably his eightieth car of birders for the day! We went away empty on the crow, but got some really good looks at Chiuahuan Ravens. We also got a big kick out of the fact that we're probably the only two people we know who would stop and have lunch on vacation in a landfill. Heee!

The guy who though he'd seen the crow at the dump also told us that the Tropical Parulas were still at the highway rest-stop. Brian and I altered our route on our way back to the airport to go through the rest-stop, and realized that we'd done some good birding there when we'd driven down two years ago. We crossed the highway and beat through the bushes a little bit and found our Parulas, the last bird for the trip.

We got to the San Antonio Airport in time for a massive line of thunderstorms to cut straight across all of Texas. We're talking replete with tornadoes and golf-ball sized hail. FUN! We stood in line for a dog's age at the airline counter to try and see if there was another flight line that would help us avoid Dallas-Fort Worth airport. We found out that it didn't matter that our flight was delayed out of San Antonio, because our flight from DFW to Philly was straight up cancelled!!!! The lady punched about a zillion keys on her workstation and finally hooked us up with a completely different route home to my folks' house. We ended up going to Chicago, then hopping airlines and coming in to Harrisburg.

The net result was a 11:30 pm rescue from my dad at Harrisburg Friday night, and my folks taking us down to Philly on Saturday afternoon to retrieve our car.

And thus ends the mis-mash account of our spring break trip 2009 to Mission, Texas, to see all the awesome migrating birdies.

Here's our list (in slightly chronological order):

Hermit Thrush (me only)
Golden Cheeked Warbler (hellooo, endangered species!)
Long Billed Dowitcher
Mottled Duck (me only)
Least Grebe
Laughing Gull
Buff-Bellied Hummingbird
Gull Billed Tern
Least Tern
Greater Yellowlegs
Green Kingfisher
Painted Bunting (me only)
Audubon's Oriole (I called this one and was VERY proud of myself!)
Swainson's Warbler
Louisiana Waterthrush
Red Crowned Parrot
Mexican Magpie Jay
Royal Tern
Bonaparte's Gull
Black Crested Titmouse
Wilson's Plover
Sandwich Tern
Ruddy Turnstone
Willett
Tennessee Warbler
Aplomado Falcon
Chiuahuan Raven
Caspian Tern
Common Paracque
Olive Sparrow
Black Throated Green Warbler
Blue Capped Viero
Blue Winged Warbler
Nashville Warbler
Swainson's Thrush
Baird's Sparrow
Black Skimmer
Glossy Ibis
Neotropic Cormorant
Tropical Parula

Here's some of our best shots. Also: CAUTION!! There be snakes below!

Black necked stilts: not new this trip, but one of my favorite birds....

Common moorhen hiding in the reeds:

Diamond-backed black water snake:

Red-crowned Parrots:

Least Tern (the little one!) next to a Laughing Gull:

Tri-color Heron:

Blue Grosbeak:

Painted Bunting:

White Ibis:

Ruddy Turnstone:

A Brown Pelican on South Padre Island:

What we think is a Man 'O War Jellyfish:

And a shot we took for my dad:

Tackling the Kitchen Part II, Plus CSI Final

2009-06-21T20:05:00.001-04:00

Yesterday after Brian left for Indiana, I got to work on the tiles in the second half of the kitchen. These tiles were only slightly less hideous than the ones in the first half of the kitchen.

Unfortunately, they were actually installed correctly, which means that they were actually stuck down to the floor.

It didn't take me long to empty out the chairs and table and wine cooler. I took up the threshold that used to divide the two areas of the kitchen/eating area. Then I stopped to take a picture:

Some tiles were more stubbornly stuck than others. Some cracked away when I was trying to peel them up. I was battling the Revenge of the Lung Funk, so I gave up last night with the floor looking like this:

The only good part was that there were juuuuuust enough tiles left that I could hop-scotch across the floor without having to peel my own feet off the floor with each step. Pulu and Sara's dog, Mea, found out the hard way that they should stay out of the kitchen.

This morning I saw the maintenance guy weed-whacking, and he told me where to look in the shop for the paint scrapers I used last time. I scampered up there, retrieved a few tools, and was able to make some headway on the stubbornly-stuck tiles. (yes, that is black mold you see on the floor. I washed it down with bleach before re-flooring)

And what was Pulu up to while I was wrestling with those tiles? Lounging and defending the yard from marauding bands of squirrels.

Finally I got the last of the tiles peeled up and could vacuum up the worst of the debris.

The new flooring went down fairly quickly and started to look FANTASTIC almost right away.

Time to check on the big dog. Yup, still lounging.

Rats. Ran out of tiles. Time for a break to run to town. Took Sara with me, who also needed a break. We accidentally stopped for ice cream after we hit Lowe's. Much needed girl time!

"I guarded the yard while you were gone, mom."

Re-supplied with tiles, I prepared for the final push (I hoped).

The one thing about cheapy-peel-n-stick tile is that it's easy to custom-fit edge pieces with just a pair of stout kitchen shears.

Aaaand, a short time later, I'm done (sort of!)

Pay no attention to the final edge of the room, where I'm short 5 tiles. I'll pick those up tomorrow and then be able to put the threshold back down lickety-split!

I'm pooped!

Later this evening I'll load the kitchen back in. Tomorrow I'll pick up those last five tiles and call this project a wrap!

While I'm all posting pictures, I thought I'd share some of the shots from the crime scene final that my kids did in Forensics. I don't want to share pictures of their faces, but here's a few highlights!

(there is real blood in these photos, but it's all dried. It was bovine blood that we got from a supply house. But, skip this if you're sensitive!)

Oh dear, it seems someone has been shot.

I actually set up two separate but identical murder scenes--one for each team. The crime scene tape divides the two scenes so they didn't accidentally cross-contaminate their scenes.

Team 1 at work:

Silly perp, left footprints in the blood.

The victim fought back. He's got defensive wounds with blood and fibers under his fingernails!

The wound, shell casing, blood flow, and a little bit of the purple-magic-marker "lividity" that the kids used for time of death:

Looks like a .22 shell.

And they finally remembered to measure the footprints!

Whoooo! Team 2 found a suspicious white powder in the victim's pocket. Wonder what it is??

Their crime scene reports are due on Monday. I can't wait to see what they came up with!

Tackling the Kitchen

2009-05-22T14:48:00.002-04:00

There I was this morning, standing in our kitchen, doing the dishes, and grumbling to myself about the agony my foot was in, again from the cracked and peeling vinyl tile in our kitchen.

The tile has been an eye- and foot-sore since Brian first moved in more than five years ago now. Since I moved in after our wedding, I've managed to gash my feet several times on the flooring. (goodness, will it really be five years since we were married this September?!?!?)

So today, once more hurting, I decided I was going to Fix. It.

It's important to note here that this is Brian's busy season. He left for work before 8 this morning, and likely wont' get back tonight until well after 7. If I was very, very good, this remodel job could be completed and a lovely surprise for him when he gets home tonight.

I was already planning a jaunt into town, so I just decided to add Lowe's to my stops. There I spent some time meditating in the vinyl tile aisle.

I picked out something that I think is rather nice. It's reminiscent of what I put into the entry way, but it has a pattern that could be laid out in an interesting way. It's also cheap, which means that we're not pouring more money into our pit-of-a-house-that-we-don't-own, and that I could afford what I needed to do the entire kitchen and still have money left over for a latte.

I got it home, and got started.

First, I recorded how shitty our old floor was for posterity.

At first glance, it doesn't look so bad. A bit dated and cheesy, maybe, but not bad:

Except then you notice that there's some rogue tiles over by the cabinets that really, really don't match. They actually match the eating-area part of our kitchen, which is divided from the food-prep part of the kitchen by the counter/pantry shelves that you can't see in this picture.

A slightly closer look reveals that we're also camoflauging some tiles that are missing completely with a kitchen rug, just in front of our sink:

And if you take a closer look, you'll noticed that the tile is loose around the edges, and cracking away. It sticks up sometimes when it is really humid. I scrape the soles of my feet on it all the time, and I have actually drawn blood from some serious gashes on more than one occasion.

It only took me about twenty minutes to tear up the old tiles. I'd swiped a paint scraper from the maintenance yard, which was just the ticket to loosen the few still-stuck places on the old tile:

Once I got a look at the subfloor, I didn't feel badly about slapping down some crummy flooring that won't last for more than a few years. Truly, our house is held together with bubblegum and toothpicks. Even though I've rationally known this for the entire time I've lived here, it still astonishes me. It took me a LONG time to scrape the floor and vacuum up all the detritus.

Then, I got ready to start laying the tile. The first course looked fantastic:

Yes, I know you're supposed to measure from the center of the floor and work outwards, but please believe me when I tell you that it would not matter in the slightest in our house. The floor is in no way to be confused with flat. None of the walls are square with each other, or even perfectly straight up and down. The best case scenario was to match up as best I could to the existing seam and work from there.

I did wind up accidentally ripping the toe kick off of one of the bottom of the cabinets, but it wasn't actually being held in place by anything! I found a fork under the stove when I tipped it up to slide the tiles under the edge.

What?!?! There was absolutely no way that the stove or fridge were coming out of where they are. I honestly think that the counter was laid after the fridge was put in place, because there are mere millimeters between the fridge and the counter and the fridge and the wall. I can't even open the door up wide enough to take out one of the crisper drawers!!

By lunch time, I had the bulk of the tiling done. All that was left was fitting the non-standard tiles around the edges:

I went up to lunch, where Brian sat unsuspectingly next to me, having no clue what I was up to. Muahahahahaha.

After lunch, it took me less than an hour to finish custom-cutting the tiles around the edges. I screwed the threshhold back down between the kitchen and eating area and cleaned off the kitchen table, which I'd been using as a staging area. Ten more minutes of cleaning and our house looks like nothing happened. Brian won't have the first idea what I've been up to until he gets into the kitchen proper. HEEEE!

Here's our fabulous new floor:

Once the school year has ended and I have more than just one day off, I'll tackle the eating area part of the kitchen. That tile is obviously slightly newer. It's not cracking apart yet and is still stuck down pretty firmly. It'll take a lot more elbow grease to rip it up, but the place is going to look spectacular when I get it done.

Truly, I should have done this ages ago!

Crafty!

2008-10-13T09:15:00.000-04:00

So this all started at women's weekend. I signed up to take a beading class, and I simply wasn't satisfied with what I came away with. I've been fiddling with the necklace ever since, and along the way I stumbled across a few more projects that I simply couldn't live without. Or live without trying. Or something.

My sister-in-law and niece are really into beading, and I'm sure I don't have the mad skillz that they do. Still, I'm relatively proud of myself. I don't fancy myself a master craftswoman, but I'm proud of the things that I can create by hand, yaknow?

So, without further ado:

The obsidian necklace. One of our educators had something like this years ago, and I've wanted one ever since. Finally found a place to get the bead, and the rest was cake. Little bit of waxed linen cord, a barrel knot or two later, and shazam!

Next is the necklace from women's weekend. It's serpentine and mossy agate and mossy jade, with some crackled-y pendant stone that I don't know what it is. This is NOT what the necklace started out as! I had some other not-matchy green jade in there and it just looked like a five-year-old's craft project. Which is fine, but didn't go with the things in my wardrobe that I wanted it to match. I have restrung it twice and finally managed to squeak earrings out of it to boot!

Close-up of the center stone and the serpentine:

Next is a hematite necklace. I've got a thing about hematite. I've been wearing it since 9th grade and it's my second favorite stone behind opals, which also happen to be my birth stone. I've got a lanyard that I wear my school ID tag on that is made of hematite, but I wanted a necklace and earrings set that was more grown up than the hematite necklaces commercially available. I stole this design from a friend's necklace and made it my own.

The lady who runs our beading classes at Women's Weekends makes these chunky, multi-strand necklaces and gets in some really cool stuff. I have been looking at a drusy pendant necklace that she created for at least two years now. Problem is I wasn't a fan of the necklace part. So I found a bead shop online that sold drusy pendant stones and made my own! This is my first multi-strand-with-pendant necklace, and I'm proud of how it turned out. The drusy is hard to see, but it's basically little 3-d quartz crystals that come out of the pendant itself.

And finally, while picking up the last few supplies I needed, I found this gorgeous blueberry quartz donut. I didn't know what I was going to do with it, but I knew that I HAD to use it. So far, this is what I've come up with. Not sure it's really going to work when I wear it, but we'll see! I can always unstring it and re-arrange!

Isn't that mottling on the donut gorgeous? I love it!! It was the proprietor of the bead store that gave me the idea of pearls to put with the blue quartz.

Photo Update

2008-08-17T18:09:00.001-04:00

Hi!

So I finally hooked up our camera and downloaded the photos. So you're getting some random photos tonight!

First, some doings from my garden this year.

My mom brought me some iris last year. She thought she was bringing me yellow ones, since I already had some purple Japanese iris. We were both surprised when this is what bloomed:

My mother-in-law bought me bulbs for Christmas. Some got here in time for Christmas, and some came separately in the spring. The squirrels had a field day eating the bulbs, but I was able to force some inside. These sweet little daffodills were some of the only ones that bloomed this year. Next year they'll be gorgeous.

I really thought my clematis weren't going to survive the winter, but they sprouted and have been going great guns all summer long. Here's two of the colors that I have growing on our fence posts.

Finally, this is the double delight rose that I thought was a goner for sure. Instead, it bloomed three times so far, and has another bud coming! The rest of my roses are legging out, but not blooming a lot. I think it is because of the late transplant and lack of sunshine early in the summer. Next year they'll go crazy in their nice sunny spot.

This spring, the theme for Women's Weekend was "Wild Wild West." Brian set up a photo-booth, and we had to have our picture taken together.

We're the baddest outlaws in town, pilgrim.

I went to a week-long geology field camp for Earth Science teachers. I took lots of nerdy photos, including one of S. and I sitting on a stromatolite formation.

This is me just before I chimneyed up a narrow little passageway to an incredible view of a high-elevation lake. If you look closely, you can see that this is actually a HUGE thick layer of very coarse conglomerate, sitting atop crystalline limestone. Crazy!

Last but not least, here are the photos of Brian's office remodeling.

Here's the before views:

And here are the after views (he still needs to sort out and tidy up some stuff, but it's a week before his season, so this is when his office is most chaotic anyways)

Spring Break Part 4 & Final Bird List

2008-04-27T16:11:00.001-04:00

Thursday was our last full day of birding, and the pressure was on for us to pick from the smorgasboard of places we hadn't yet been to. We had two different places to check out along the river, plus at least three canyons we hadn't explored yet.

We set the alarm early and packed our lunches the night before. The first stop was a riverwalk that was signed by a local nature conservancy. Turned out that much of the trail was through an open hay field and the trail never took us down by the river itself. We bagged that pretty quickly and swung across the river and down to the San Pedro River Inn, yet another B&B that has viewing open to the public. There were two ponds that we explored while chatting with a woman staying at the inn. She and her husband were RVing full time--one of several couples we met who were doing that.

We didn't get much in the way of any sort of birds, so we decided to head out. We gave the river one more shot and headed slightly farther north on the river to the San Pedro Riparian Nature Conservation Area. We missed the hummingbird banding that they'd held that morning. The trails there did lead us right down to the river. I caught a shot of a scaup, and we finally caught some vermillion flycatchers on film. We chased a flicker, hoping to find that it was a gilded flicker. Unfortunately, we were unable to make the call either way, and the photos didn't come out so well, either.

The day was starting to heat up and we were not in the mood for yet another set of peanut butter & jelly sandwiches. We decided to bag the river walk, catch some lunch and finally go up into the canyon beyond our own B&B.

We stopped at the visitor center at the Ramsey Canyon Nature Preserve. They'd had a scope on a whiskered screech owl who has nested in the bole of a huge sycamore tree right outside the visitor's center.

From there, we hiked a 2-mile trail up to the summit of the canyon in search (again) for red-faced warblers. The hike started out lovely, and slowly became more challenging as we got closer to the top. Sadly we saw neither warblers nor anything else particularly interesting. We DID meet some other hikers on their way down that told us THEY had seen the warblers just a little bit down from the summit into the east-facing Miller Canyon.

At the top, we took a breather with two German tourists we'd been leapfrogging up the trail with. We saw a rock wren and a spotted towhee, but that was the last find of the day. No warblers for us. At least the view was fine!

We hiked back down to our B&B where we polished off the leftovers from Wendesday's splurge--mexican at a restaurant just down the road from our B&B. Since we'd gotten skunked on every bird we were hunting, we decided to try and get in a few hours of birding on Friday before we left. Consequently we packed everything up for our departure the next day and crashed out early--equal parts exhausted disappointment and hopeful anticipation.

Friday morning we were up and moved out of our B&B by 7 am. We headed north to Tuscon to try out a canyon just north of the city: Bear Canyon. We made good time to Tuscon and found our way up the canyon road fairly easily. The morning rushhour slowed us down a little bit because we were driving through a lot of residential neighborhoods. Finally we got up into the hills and out of suburbia into saguaro cactus land. The road kept climbing up the canyon, and finally we were in high-elevation conifer forest. We stopped at the first picnic area that was mentioned in our birding book. We STILL didn't find the red-faced warbler in our two hours in the woods. However, we did spot both a hermit warbler and an olive warbler, two pretty rare finds that only pass through for two short periods each year. Those two birds brought our total up to 69 life birds for the trip.

Brian was watching the time, and we got back on the road to the airport. We weren't disappointed too much, even though we didn't catch the warbler we most wanted to see. If we have to go back to anywhere in search of new things, this part of Southeastern Arizona is the place to come back to!

A minor tragedy struck when we forgot my nalgene in the rental car at the airport. We got through check-in and security with no problems, though, so I couldn't complain too much. We were just finishing our lunch when a gentleman greeted us. He said, "Hey, you're those birders from New York!" We had run into him at Beatty's Guest House earlier in the week. Awesome.

In no time we were on the flight back to Minneapolis, sitting next to a girl with a small shi tzu in a carrier under the seat. He fussed a little and we gave him some doggie loves. Our layover in Minneapolis was just long enough for us to have dinner at Maui Tacos and get some final souveniers for folk--a moose-shaped chocolate lollipop for my mom and a moose keychain that looks like it's pooping when you squeeze it for Aaron.

At Philly our bags arrived with no delay and the hotel shuttle got us off the curb less than a minute after we exited the airport. The hotel was lovely, even though there was a sorority formal in the drunken stages of winding down. We were both surprised to see one of the members of security walking around with a taser!

We crashed by midnight Eastern time. The next morning we drove up to Oxford Valley Mall & met my folks for lunch & the great doggy swap. Pulu was very confused but excited to see us when she realized that WE were the people getting out of the car parked next to Grandma and Grandpa's car. Hilarious. Our drive north was uneventful and we were home in time to unpack and relax on the couch for a few hours before crashing HARD on Saturday evening.

Here's our final bird list, in roughly the order in which we saw them:

Phainopepla
Hooded Oriole (New to me only)
Black Tailed Gnat Catcher
Crissal Thrasher
Cassin's Kingbird
Brewer's Sparrow
Sawinson's Hawk
Hammond's Flycatcher
Green Winged Teal
Lazuli Bunting
Savannah Sparrow
Cooper's Hawk (New to me only)
Wilson's Warbler (not new to either of us, but a favorite)
Wilson's Snipe
Acorn Woodpecker
Cassin's Finch
Gray Flycatcher
Vermillion Flycatcher
Ash Throated Flycatcher
Cassin's Vireo
Mexican Jay
Bridled Titmouse
Bewick's Wren (not new)
House Wren (not new)
Ruby Crowned Kinglet
Lucy's Warbler
Black Throated Gray Warbler
Summer Tanager
Treen Tailed Towhee
Canyon Towhee
Abert's Towhee
Black Chinned Sparrow
Lincoln's Sparrow
White Crowned Sparrow (not new)
Gray Hawk
Gila Woodpecker
Black chinned Hummingbird
Swainson's Dark Morph Hawk
Black Headed Grosbeak
Magnificent Hummingbird
Rufous Hummingbird
Arizona Woodpecker
Anna's Hummingbird
Lucifer Hummingbird
Scott's Oriole
Elegant Trogon
Scaled Quail
Dusky Flycatcher
Biff Breasted Flycatcher
Say's Phoebe
Hutton's Vireo
Plumbeous Vireo
Townsend's Solitaire
Grace's Warbler
Hepatic Tanager
Yellow Eyed Junco
Painted Redstart
Calliope Hummingbird
Elf Owl
Gray Vireo
Bullock's Oriole
Violet Crowned Hummingbird
Rufous Crowned Sparrow
Montezuma Quail
Black Phoebe
Rock Wren
Bushtit
Spotted Towhee
Western Wood Pewee
Whiskered Screech Owl
Hermit Warbler
Olive Warbler

Spring Break 2008: Part 3: Skunked & Near Death Driving

2008-04-26T22:00:00.001-04:00

When last we left our intrepid nerdy-birders, they had finished the afternoon at Mary Jo's Ash Canyon Bed and Breakfast.

Before we crashed out there was actually much more drama: the promised internet connection at Ramsey Canyon Inn was...not so much in actual existence. There followed a very stressful twenty minutes when all of the following events occurred: I had to sweet-talk Bill's aged mother-in-law into letting me try to use their business computer to log on. I failed to be able to log in to EITHER of the two computer systems I needed to access. I tried jacking the ethernet cable straight in to my own laptop, but the firewall wouldn't let my laptop talk to the internet. The ONLY thing I could get in to was my work email, from which I sent a panicked email to my professor. Then I left the smelly main lodge and ran into Brian, who had given up on going out to dinner and started grilling. I burst into tears of anger and frustration, feeling like my stupid class was ruining our day. Brian soothed me, forced me to eat the chicken, and we staggered in to town. Finally found a McDonalds with internet access. Brian bought fries for him and a sundae for me while I tried to get my work done before the battery died. The only plug in evidence was in use by a woman who had a saint-style bleeding-Jesus-on-the-cross desktop photo. STRANGE.

Tuesday was looking up quite a bit when local birders Rick & Cindy arrived at our B&B exactly as Brian and I were loading the car. They directed us through the back residential streets to the front gate of the Ft. Huachuca Army Depot. They talked us through the process of checking in to the base, and in no time we were on our way up Garden Canyon.

We were in search of the Elegant Trogon, birds that nest in only a few places in the United States. They usually show up on tax day. This year they were a day early, and we got a great view of them. Unfortunately, I forgot my camera when we got excited that they were there. On our return trip, they were hunkered down somewhere cool & shady for the afternoon.

We drove higher into the canyon on a rough dirt road. It was a good thing that we'd rented a SUV with high ground clearance. At the second picnic area, we parked and walked into the woods looking for warblers and petroglyphs. We saw the cave art, but didn't get any warblers.

At the end of the road, we parked and hiked up the trail probably two more miles. Rick was an excellent ear-birder. He would hear one or two notes and tell us what we were listening to. His eyes weren't so good, but Cindy's were excellent. He'd tell us what we were hearing, and without fail she'd spot it. The woods were pretty quiet, but we still managed to get a large number of birds. Most of them were flycatchers that we never would have been able to ID without Rick & Cindy.

We spent the entire morning in the canyon with them. About lunchtime, we threw in the towel and headed off the fort and back in to town. Before we dropped Rick & Cindy at their car, they took us up their road a little bit looking for scaled quail, these goofy little quail that look like they have cotton balls glued to their heads. Rick heard a Scott's Oriole flying overhead, but neither of us got a good enough look at it to add to our list.

Unfortunately, the gigantic ops blimp that the fort uses for reconnaissance training was down on the ground, signaling high winds. The winds did, in fact, come up as the morning progressed. By afternoon, it was pretty breezy. We decided to spend the afternoon at another B&B that is known for the sheer variety of hummingbirds.

Up at Beatty's Guest Ranch, there were fewer hummingbird feeders. A gentleman at the entry directed us up through the apple orchard to the other viewing station. It was really strange being in the middle of the desert and surrounded by budding apple trees.

Up at the observation station, we ran into a guy we'd seen in Garden canyon photographing the trogons earlier in the day. We ran into the loud couple from Pennsylvania that had been on the river walk with us, and the obnoxiously loud couple from Pennsylvania that had been on the EOP walk. As the two other couples chattered away, we learned that one of them was the nature writer for a newspaper in the Allentown area . I wish him joy of his columns the next few weeks, because he certainly dampened the pleasure of our visit to the viewing station.

We did see lots and lots of hummingbirds there. Most were species we'd caught at Mary Jo's or at our own B&B yard: Black chins, Magnificents, Broad billeds, Anna's. Finally, after almost an hour, we saw what we thought was a female calliope hummingbird. A few minutes later, her mate buzzed in for a snack and we were sure.

On the left, a female calliope. On the right, a magnificent.

While we waited for our calliope, we spotted a lucifer hummingbird, too.

Finally, our calliope lit long enough for me to get a few shots of him.

An Anna's started buzzing around, too, and I got a really lovely shot showing the iridescent red hood they wear.

The wind kept up, though, so we gave up after a few more minutes. Back in our canyon, we birded our way slowly back up the road. We started with a nice little Swainson's Hawk sitting on a utility pole at the end of the road.

We didn't get a second shot at the orioles, but by the time we got back up the canyon, a flock probably 20 turkeys was in and around the yard at the B&B. Within an hour or so, most of them had roosted in the trees and were just gobbling at each other now and then.

After making dinner, we walked down the road at dusk to try and spot some elf owls. We heard them chattering at each other and saw some bats. Another quarter-mile down the road and we were able to see the tiny, tiny owls flitting up onto utility poles and starting to hunt.

Wednesday was the day we were planning to go the farthest afield. We were headed to Patagonia, where there is a rest stop that is a hot spot for wrens, warblers, and other migrants. Up that way was another state park and yet another backyard habitat that attracts an incredible number of birds.

First stop was the rest stop. We got there as a few other birders were finishing up. We had to work really hard to see much of anything, and nothing photo-worthy. We had grabbed the camera and were about to cross the road to a small river that is another great spot for birds. In rolled three vans of retiree birders and their guides. Brian and I decided to bag the walk across the street if we were being invaded by 20+ people. We would cross and re-cross paths with these vans for the rest of the day.

From there, we drove up to Patagonia Lake State Park, another hot spot for migrants to lay over on their way north. We got skunked again out there, with very few birds coming out to play. We hiked up one trail, failed to see the promised black-capped gnatcatcher.

We made lunch at the shoreline of the lake and headed back into town to Mrs. Patton's place. The Patton's home has been open to the public for years and years, even since Mr. Patton passed away. We ran into some folks from the EOP walk, and some other folks from the river walk here! It was getting to be a very small town for birders.

We sat in a very pleasant back yard watching lazuli buntings and finches galore, until a kestrel came zipping through and chased everyone away. The hummingbirds were the first to filter back in, but finally the bigger folks came back to the feeders. We finally got our eyes on our Scott's Oriole. A few minutes later, our violet crowned hummingbird showed up. Those were the two real prizes we were hunting for, so we birded and ran!

From Mrs. Patton's, we drove into a Nature Conservancy area. The wind was up and the birds were hiding, so we didn't bother to pay the fee to walk the trails--especially since they were less than an hour from closing. Instead, we opted to go back to the rest stop and try the river walk there.

We were rewarded for our efforts with a rufous crowned sparrow and more looks at vermillion flycatchers and scotts orioles.

It was getting on to late afternoon, so we decided to head back home. We chose an alternate route home, which was going to take us past Parker Lake. We drove along grassy uplands on the east side of the Huachucas through a road that got smaller and smaller the farther we went. We finally got to the lake, where we were rewarded with a spectacular view of a gigantic lake. We spent about twenty minutes trying to decide what kind of cowbird we were looking at. When we finally gave up and were pulling out of the lot, I caught a glimpse of a bird. I got a good look before he flew, but Brian missed it. A flip through my book revealed that it was a Black Phoebe. Brian was able to spot him and even take some shots of him sitting out over the water, waiting for his next meal.

The gazetter showed us a road that wound around the south side of the mountains and brought us home back up from near the Mexican border. The narrow paved road turned into a recently graded gravel road. Since Border Patrol passed us and made their way on ahead, we figured it had to be a decent road.

We did keep seeing these signs, which sort of amused us and sort of worried us.

So the road. It was in the gazetter. Had to be navigable, right?

Uh, NO.

It got incredibly twisty and windy and narrow and climbed in altitude to almost 6500 feet. Brian was a basket case, and though I'm not scared of heights, even I was a little nervous on the road. I was mostly nervous because the sun was setting and we were losing light fast.

Just as we neared what we hoped was the crest, there were some pretty good sized rocks in the road.

Except, then they flew out of the road into the ditch alongside it. Turns out they were two exceptionally complacent Montezuma Quail.

Finally, just as the sun was setting, we crested the hill and were on our way down. It didn't take long for the gravel road to become paved again, and by full dusk we were back down in the valley and listening for owls as we cruised back up the canyon.

For the next two days, Brian kept pointing at the mountains and saying, "I DROVE up there!"

Spring Break 2008 Part 2: Sierra Vista Days 1 & 2

2008-04-20T20:24:00.001-04:00

After exhausting the desert museum in Tuscon, we rolled south and east for Sierra Vista. We weren't sure how far out of Sierra Vista town our B&B was supposed to be, so we made arrangements to stay in Sierra Vista proper on Saturday night. We drove around town a little bit and settled on a Best Western.

The lady behind the desk recommended Daisy Mae's Stronghold for dinner, which is a 100-year-old steakhouse in town. We unloaded our stuff, cleaned up a little, and headed out. The taverns was in the armpit of town, and looked like it had been there for 100 years, and not too well taken care of. I thought for a moment that we were entering a biker bar and facing our own deaths, but it turned out to be a sleepy little establishment full of locals who didn't stare too much when a couple of tourists stumbled in. All the reviews online are about the same--shabby restaurant, great service, incredible food. Honestly, I don't think I've ever had a better steak. It was fantastic.

Next morning we were up early and out to the EOP, the Environmental Operations Park (a fancy name for the wastewater treatment plant). The city of Sierra Vista has piloted this program to restore native wetlands. It's got a birding observation deck, and on Sunday mornings, the local conservancy leads a special walk throughout the grounds. The people who turned up were a fifty-fifty split of local birding buddies and tourists who found out about the walk and showed up for some local expertise. We saw lots of great stuff, and the hike leaders were world-class birders. One was especially good at birding by ear, while another was a specialist in marsh critters. I got myself some street cred when I spotted a bird sitting out on a piece of grass rather close to us, and it turned out to be a relatively good find and difficult to ID, besides.

By the end of the walk, several of the local folks had given us tips of other places to go birding, and other guided walks. We decided to join one of the leaders on a walk on Monday morning, too.

On our way out and back from the EOP, we saw this sign, which caused me much amusement.

From the EOP, we went back to the hotel and cleaned up and checked out. Meanwhile the guy from our B&B called us. There had been a pretty good mix-up with him taking over the ranch we were supposed to stay at. We ran over to the ranch we were supposed to stay at to meet him. He offered us a few alternatives, none of which really gave us what we'd been looking for: privacy, unconnected apartment with kitchenette, barbeque, internet access. He told us that the larger apartment at his other B&B had the kitchenette, barbeque and internet. Turns out there was no internet, television or radio on purpose--a philosophical choice that I understood but that eventually made our lives difficult when I had a due date for my class.

We finally agreed on where we'd stay, shook hands on it, and headed back out of town for a few hours while they turned the room around for us. We decided to head out to Tombstone, which was only about 15 miles away.

On our way out of town, we saw another sign which amused us to no end. A utility shed in someone's back yard had this on one side, and a basketball hoop on the other.

Tombstone has been totally corrupted into a tourist trap of epic proportions. It looks a lot like a hollywood set, mostly because something like 50 westerns have been filmed there. A chunk of the old main street has been preserved as a pedestrian area with horse-drawn tours in covered wagons and stagecoaches. Every few minutes a troupe of actors in wild west costumes play out a short skit of a story from the old Tombstone. These escapades culminate every evening with a re-enactment of the famous gunfight. During the afternoon, though, it's a little more lighthearted. The troupe has also errected a pretend gallows and has a pub lady taking $5 for the chance to put a pretend noose around your neck and stand next to the hangman. While we were there, we watched a mother pony up her cash to put a noose over her own neck AND the neck of her 9-month old infant.

People do some crazy things.

When we got back into town, we checked in to the Ramsey Canyon Inn B&B. We got the Trogon Suite, though the manager worked a deal with us to stand by the terms of our original agreement with the Rail Oaks Ranch, where we were supposed to stay in the first place. As the website says, the Ramsey Canyon Inn's pies are out of this world. There was a weird smell in the main lodge, though, that haunted us throughout our visit.

The view from the Rail Oaks Ranch was fairly open since it was farther down the canyon. Our view from the Trogon Suite was still pretty amazing.

The next morning we were up early for a Riparian Walk along the San Pedro River. We were frequently stuck in the back of a line on a narrow trail along the river, so there were a bunch of things that we didn't get to see. However, we saw lots of things that were new to us, and we touched base with some of the folks that we'd walked the EOP with the previous day.

One of the guys, Rick, had chatted us up quite a bit at the EOP and we saw him again on Monday morning. By mid-walk, he had talked himself into going birding with us on Tuesday morning. He decided to be our local guide-on-the-ground for no other reason than that he felt like going birding to the same place we did.

After our morning walk and catching some lunch in town, we went back to our room where we spent some time watching the feeders in the yard. We spent an hour or better stalking some hummingbirds and taking a few shots of other birds. We saw a black-headed grosbeak, several acorn woodpeckers, and a mess of hummingbirds.

We were most excited because we thought we saw a rufous hummingbird at the feeder, something we thought was fairly unusual. Turns out that nearly every sort of hummingbird in the entire universe makes its way through the Huachuca mountains in spring migration!

Later we made our way up to the Ash Canyon Bed and Breakfast, fondly referred to as Mary Jo's place by local birders. Mary Jo has just one guest house, but opens her garden to birders for a small donation that she uses to buy food and sugar for the birds.

Out front, she's got almost a dozen humming bird feeders, and out back she's got all sorts of other feeders for birds. You can literally sit in a comfy chair for hours watching the birds that come in there.

The hummingbird feeders were crowded, so we made our way to the back yard, where we took some decent shots of all sorts of birds.

A gila woodpecker helping himself to an orange:

A bridled titmouse came by to have some suet cake and look at me:

The Mexican jays liked to pose for me:

An Arizona woodpecker came by for some suet, too.

The hooded oriole was having an identity crisis and snacking at the hummingbird feeder:

The canyon towhee posed for me, too:

A yellow rumped warbler was flitting around quite a bit:

A Gambel's Quail was strutting around in back and posing with his punk-rock mohawk. These guys are hilarious and I can't get enough of them:

Finally, we had some folks who REALLY knew the difference between a house finch and a Cassin's finch. We know that this is definitely a Cassin's, though I'm still not a crack shot at telling them apart.

After baking in the sun at Mary Jo's for most of the afternoon, we went in search of dinner and called it a night. We were having a really hard time staying awake much after dark!

Spring Break 2008 Part 1: Tuscon, Arizona

2008-04-20T17:58:00.001-04:00

Turns out that we picked the perfect time to fly out. Had we gone a few days earlier, we would have been caught up in the chaos from the American Airlines flight cancellations and bad weather in the upper plains states. Our flights were full, but ran on time or early. We got to Tuscon and found our luggage, and got our rental car with no problems. From there, we headed out to the Arizona-Sonoma Desert Museum. We took tons of photos there, both to get used to the new camera and because there was lots of nifty things to see there.

Standing out front of the museum was a docent, holding a kestrel. They are such beautiful birds that I never get tired of looking at them.

We quickly realized that our awesome find from last year, the cactus wren, was pretty much a junk bird in Arizona. We actually later learned that it's the state bird of Arizona. Here's one, sitting up in a cactus, singing prettily for us.

A ground squirrel was hiding on a rock and chittering at us before we went down into the mining and minerals cave.

Inside the cave, there were all sorts of awesome mineral displays, including a gigantic stack of sulfur crystals, a double-terminated quartz crystal thicker than my wrist, and nifty display showing how crystals can form in cavities.

Back outside, we took some neat photos of cactus blooms and these crazy sticky trees with Dr. Seuss-style blooms on them.

We walked around the grounds, photographing all sorts of wildlife--rescues now kept in captivity for their safety and our enjoyment. Box turtles, a mountain lion who was snoozing in the sun, a wolf who couldn't be bothered to keep track of the onlookers, a big-horned sheep who was posturing, and more birds than you can imagine kept inside a netted area. The lizards were just hanging out everywhere.

Kentucky Vacation Photos (Finally!)

2007-08-05T09:08:00.000-04:00

Most of the photos I took for the trip are nerdy geology pictures that I hope to use in my classroom.

For example, this stone shelf. Just looks like a nice flat place to walk along near the top of a mountain, yes?

Ha-ha! It's really a natural bridge!

We rode the cable car up, but Brian wasn't sure he could face the first drop on the way back down. So, we hiked down the Rock Gardens trail. I took some photos of neat rock structures on the way, including this section of crossbedding:

and this--I have no idea what this is called. Bad geology major!

At the base of the trail, there was a gumball machine. Except that you might break your teeth instead of rotting them if you tried to chew on what was inside.

The next day, we added a new national park to my tally.

The rest of these pictures are from our cave tour.

A crevice that allows water flow:

An early coral fossil:

A USGS benchmark in the room called Grand Central Station:

Frozen Niagara Falls from the top:

What happens when stalactites and stalagmites join:

Flowstone formation from the bottom:

A view of the ceiling:

More flowstone:

There are a number of entrances. After all, Mammoth Cave is the largest cave system in the country. This is the historical entrance, the one first used to explore the cave.

Then, on our way back home, I actually had batteries in my camera for the awesome road cut at Sideling Hill in Maryland.

And there you have it!

Big Excitement at Camp (Not the Good Kind)

2007-07-30T21:16:00.001-04:00

I've finally uploaded my vacation pictures.

But that will have to wait, because I have other pictures to share with you.

When I got home from school today, Brian shot out of the house with Quinn on a lead. She told me, in the Quinny Voice, that there was something awesome for me to see. I dropped my stuff and went back out to walk away with Brian & Quinn.

We started walking down towards the town beach, towards the end of the road. About the time we got to the fenced-in entrance to our beach area, Brian said, "Are you ready for something that will bake your noodle?"

And then we came around the corner to where I could see Leap Inn, one of our staff cabins that houses two people.

Well, housed, really.

Here's what happens when you overload an electrical outlet in an ancient building with old wiring:

This is the room where the blaze started. The tan stuff you can see is the remains of the melted mattress. The second picture is a close-up of the mattress.

From the sounds of it, it was a textbook training-style fire. The flames licked up on the (nearly new) metal roof, which kept it mostly contained. The sail shed didn't even get scorched, though it was only a few feet away.

On the other hand, a dying tree near the front of the building is going to have to come down. Here's Brian inspecting the scorch-mark line.

The heat was enough to boil sap out of the boards, even though they're probably 30 or 40 years old by now.

Some of the sail boards leaning against the eaves outside the shack are probably goners, from the tar that was deposited on them.

I just feel so badly for the two guys who were living there. Both of them are working on programming this summer, otherwise they would have been in the cabins, as usual, with campers.

One of them is now one of our leading musicians, and had three guitars in the cabin. One of them wasn't even paid off yet. He salvaged one guitar, but lost his other two, lots of sound equipment, his laptop, his iPod, and all of the clothes he had at camp with him.

The other guy, the one who was living in the room where the blaze started, lost everything. He's had a rough year at school and is looking very ill from his freshman year in college. He had to leave staff training early because of a death in his very immediate family less than three weeks ago. And now this. Poor guy.

This is what really got me, though. We have these songbooks that the camp uses to sing songs out of. Some are old camp favorites from far and wide, while others are songs specific to our camps. They also have a few of the non-sing-along-songs that are used at various times of the day, including the graces we sing before each meal.

Lying just beyond the orange fencing in the sand was this:

Happy July!

2007-07-01T16:05:00.000-04:00

Summer camp starts today!! My friend Aaron is the camp director this year. He's very nervous about it 'cause he's got big shoes to fill, but as of last night, he's feeling really ready and excited.

He ran staff training all last week, and it seems like it was very, very successful. He did an auction of camp memorabilia to benefit our scholarship campaign. That jerk brought in $1900!!! We struggle to get that much out of our charity auction in February with our richy-rich benefactors there! I was astonished at what he brought in, and so was he. He'd challenged the staff: raise $1K and he'd shave his beard. Raise $2K and he'd shave his head and beard and stay clean shaven all summer. He's glad to be off the hook for that one, but came over to get a razor blade and some shaving cream last night. This evening he'll be shaving his beard off in front of the entire camp. Hilarious!

Friday night after staff training was over, Brian, Aaron and I ran some of the inevitable "I need this stuff for the start of camp AUGH!" shopping. We had a hilarious time, because Aaron was decompressing big-time and was extremely ADD. We had the cashier in Wal*Mart cracking up by the time we got out of there. Saturday Brian and Aaron went golfing. Today Aaron's gone all day, which gives Brian and I chance to do something that was Brian's brilliant idea and that I'm really excited about:

Guerrilla Gardening!

Aaron has been feeling really bad about how camp looks. For lots of reasons, maintenance hasn't been spending a lot of time in making camp look pretty. I mean, it's supposed to look all rustic around here, but not run down.

Now, at one time, a really avid gardener lived in the house that Aaron lives in now. Between then and now, three separate guys have lived there, which means that where there was once flower bed is now just weedy grass that gets mowed/weed-whacked. Brian's idea is to do some lightning-strike gardening while Aaron is out doing opening-day stuff. He'll come back and we'll have cleaned it out and planted some pretty, low-maintenance stuff that will make Aaron's place look nice, but require nothing from him in terms up upkeep.

So we looked around a little bit yesterday. I talked to Keith, who has some hostas he wants to thin at his apartment house in town. And we left it at that last night.

This morning Keith and I went into his place and dug up all sorts of fun/interesting things from his yard. Then Brian picked me up there and we went to my two favorite local nurseries. We finished up with a stop at Lowe's to get a small Burning Bush for the project, too. We're now just waiting until child-drop-off officially starts to go get started. Pictures to come, of course!

Muahaha. Muahahahahaha! We have successfully carried out the stealth gardening.

Here's all the goodies in the car: a big bin of hostas, snow-on-the-mountains, violas and a few liriopes for my garden. A bleeding heart bush, a "mocha" coral bells, a burning bush, and some various annuals of different shapes and sizes.

Here's Brian while we were clearing out the weeds and re-finding the bed-edging rocks.

And here's the finished project. We didn't take any "during" photos since we were trying to get it done before we got discovered. We were sure that Aaron would walk up for a quick break to get a soda at any moment, so we were really twitchy! When we'd finished without getting found out, Brian got a little Captain in him. Heh.

Nearest Aaron's front door: burning bush and two colors of hostas, edged with coleus.

Next is the two colors of hostas, mocha coral bells, and another stand of two colors of hostas.

Then some white perennial that I don't know the name of, a stand of two more colors of hostas, some vanilla spoon daisies and lily of the valley.

Then violas, some sort of columbine, the snow-on-the-mountain and some sort of begonia. I forget what those cool spiky yellow annuals are called. But we got some of them, too.

The other end has some sort of purple flowering sweet potato vine billed as an annual, and a white bleeding heart.

It's a very different feeling sort of flower bed. We tried to get things that don't bloom very much for ease of care and also because Aaron is so allergic to bee stings that we were seriously afraid we might kill him. Still, it's already very cool looking and once it fills it, it's going to look even better. It'll be low-maintenance for him, and look great all summer long. Plus next year we can just replant those few annuals for him and voila! Another amazing season.

Now I just want him to come home already and find it, though it's more than likely that it will already be dark before he gets home tonight. Oh well, he'll see it tomorrow morning at reveille.

Ah! I forgot about reveille! DURRRRRRRRR!

Anyways, in my garden this week, a few more things bloomed.

The petunias on my stump are really starting to go crazy. If only the mail-order white ones would keep up with my red ones!

Another clematis bloomed. This one is Dr. Ruppel.

The daisy that the big cheese brought me is also blooming like crazy. I hope that it's a perennial!

And finally, FINALLY! One of my nifty blue mail-order plants is blooming. This is the Stokes Aster:

Early J une

2007-06-13T06:26:00.001-04:00

I had major battery issues with my camera, so you get two weeks of gardeny goodness for one in this entry.

I laid three more courses of bricks--working until I ran out of the bricks I needed and the black flies drove me inside. I need to go over to the bone yard to get more of the bricks. I was able to lay out where I think the walkway should finish, though, so I can get just enough bricks this coming weekend to finish the project:

My strawberries aren't really doing much of anything. But with some rain and then some sun and warmth, my tomatoes are suddenly shooting up three and four inches overnight. I've heard farmers say that if you listen hard enough you can hear the corn growing. I think it must be true of my tomatoes, too.

My first fruit, coming on the vine!!

My flowerbed is finally taking off, helped with a few new plantings of perennials I got from a new local garden store.

Last week:

This week, it still looks like a bunch of green bushy things, but I can't believe how much fuller it's gotten. New things are in the dead center (balloon flowers) and the right (delphinium)

My butterfly bushes aren't doing much of anything yet, but my clematis are really climbing on the split rail fence. The bud hadn't opened over the weekend, but today when I got home, I was rewarded with this:

The delphinium that convinced me to buy some is really nifty. It's mostly a pale blue, but the centers of each petals have a sort of bleed-through pinkish effect. It's not a pink flower, and not a blue flower, and not a purple flower, and it doesn't reproduce well in photos, but it's sure nifty. It was blooming a little bit when I bought it. After a few days of good sun, rain, and a bigger space in which to stretch out its roots, it's in full bloom now:

The iris bloomed over the weekend, and have mostly peaked and started to wilt now. The hummingbird buzzed me while I was standing there taking photos. He's getting much less shy now, and even let me get within a foot or two of the feeder to take some photos of him.

I found some neat petunias to supplement the bowl on top of my stump. They're red with little spots along the edges that are white. Going with my red-and-white theme in the stump bed. The perennials in the stump bed are definitely getting bigger and stronger, but most aren't anywhere near blooming. One of the crimson scabiosa had a nice bud on it over the weekend, but I could tell that it wasn't going to be really RED when it opened. Today, sure enough, it's hot pink. Hopefully it darkens next year once it's established.

And finally, I got tired of looking at the rose corpses in my rose bed. It was driving me crazy to know that I'd transplanted three dead hunks of wood. None of the two suppliers guarantee that their roses will winter over up here, so I couldn't get free replacements. But wait! My favorite local nursery had roses on sale the other day. And they had lots to choose from! Including my beloved blaze, the *snicker* golden showers that I got by accident last year, and my long-sought-after Joseph's Coat. So I splurged on those and planted them. I need to tie them up to the trellis yet, but I wanted to give them a day or two to settle in before giving them any more trauma.

Weekly Garden Photojournal

2007-05-28T15:03:00.000-04:00

So I've pretty much wrapped up my gardening for the weekend. I may go out a bit later and water, but we had some decent rain last night, so it's not absolutely necessary, I don't think.

I'm still slacking on finishing the walkway project. That can wait (again) until next weekend. This weekend, we had more important team projects: erecting a rail fence that was my genius husband's idea, designed to make our yard look like it has visual barriers to keep wandering campers out. Also on the agenda was some maintenance-y stuff, and completing another section of back fence to limit the view our dogs have out of our yard and into the neighbor's yard.

So, here's what we done did:

I planted clematis and our solar lights at the posts closest to the walkway, to make it a little more welcoming looking for our regular visitors and ourselves.

(try not to mind the pieces of wood in the background of some of these pictures. It's leftover from the re-roofing they did to our house last week. When maintenance comes to plug our skylights, they'll use that wood back inside the house again).

I mulched around the stump, since the last of my bare-root plants are finally sprouting. My beautiful bulbs finished blooming, so I have them stashed back on the other side of the shed. The pot that's on top of the stump is growing what is supposed to turn into cascading white petunias.

I've planted the half of the replacement strawberries that have arrived. They were slow to perk up, but seem to be doing all right now. The other half have been in transit now for 18 days. I don't know how well they're actually going to do. If I can just get some started this year, I should be in good shape.

My front bed seems to be finally taking off. The Forget Me Nots are blooming, and everything else has at least sprouted.

In my rose bed, the Double Delight is just leafing it up. The Caribia is FINALLY starting to put out a few tiny buds, but you can hardly see them.

Still waiting for Blue Girl and my John F. Kennedy to wake up. My three climbers from last year are goners for sure. Not sure what to do with the corpses--have to remember to call the suppliers first.

As for the butterfly bushes, I weeded them and then mulched around them, after adding a clematis to the bottom of the wrought iron feeder hook. Look closely and you can see the two hummingbird feeders hanging from the hooks, too.

And, speaking of bird feeders, here's the second squirrel-proof feeder that I added to the yard, along with our original one. You can see Brian's newest addition to the bird attractions in our yard: an orange feeder to help attract some orioles that we have been hearing out in the wetlands. Look closely and you'll see the Downy Woodpecker helping himself to some black oil sunflower seed.

And finally, the project that caused the most consternation because we tried to do it at the heat of the day: adding a second fence panel to the original one we put up. Turns out the first one didn't completely block off our dogs' view of the beastie next door, so we needed a second panel. After some swearing and gnashing of teeth, we got it in okay, with only a few scraped knuckles to show for it. The yard slopes up fairly sharply, so we went as level as we could without some serious excavations. It's hardly professional work, but any barrier between us and the neighbors is a good one.

And that will be it for the rest of the week. Now, I desperately need to crawl through the shower and get clean.

Procrastination & Rain

2007-05-20T16:01:00.000-04:00

Procrastination and rain conspired to make me miss a week in my garden photos. But! I did some more playing in the dirt this weekend, and have an updated set of pictures from the short time today when the sun actually came out.

We brought back a ladder from the maintenance yard so I could work on the feeders again. I have two brackets mounted, and two different sized arms to go into the brackets. I've been experimenting with the arrangement that works best. With the addition of our squirrel baffle, I think I finally got it about right. Now the birds can get the seed, the squirrels can't, and I can fill everything up without needing to climb up on rickety plastic garden chairs.

We've had quite a lot of birdy action in our yard, too. Our regular visitors of nuthatches, chickadees, gold finches, red-winged black birds, and titmouses (titmice?) have been supplemented by tons of sparrows, the rose-breasted grosbeaks who seem to be sticking around, and cardinals who are usually shy. The downy woodpeckers and hair woodpeckers are getting more brave about coming to the feeder when the dogs are in the yard. The ruby throated hummingbird has emptied my feeder once already, and visits many times a day for a snack. We had a magnolia warbler and a ruby crowned kinglet in our scraggly trees this morning, too. Both of those were life birds for me. Supah-sweet!

The sun finally broke through, so I sat in the yard and did my correcting for the weekend. I made myself finish all of it (and I do mean ALL) before I had lunch and then dug in the dirt. Sara and I went to Lowes and to get ice cream the other night, and we split a flat of these marigolds that are a creamy white and almost look like daisies. I got three tomato plants that night, too. Yesterday with Heather I picked up two red poppies to put in my red bed to fill it in a little bit. All of that needed planting, plus my replacement green wizard rudbeckia were patiently waiting to be planted, too. I discovered that my master plan for a tomato bed along the house was not going to happen--it's all packed down cobbles used to support the house. Dar! So part of my strawberry bed will be tomatoes. I replanted my impatiens from the porch bed into the front bed, and there, magically, was enough room for our tomatoes.

Here's the latest pictures. I swear I weeded the butterfly bushes at least twice. Maybe I need to just get over it and mulch there.

The front bed with the replanted impatiens:

The rose bed is just kind of keeping on. Only one of my roses has woken up yet--the double delight is tentatively putting out tiny leaves.

Here's my re-arranged tomato-berry bed, with three strawberries I got at Lowes because I'm afraid my replacements never will really get here. You can almost see the single tomato cage I've got in. I need four more. Near my shovel is the tiny spare basil that Sara gave me earlier today.

Here's the stump with the pretty marigolds, and a second view showing the poppy plants.

How does your garden grow?

2007-05-06T12:57:00.000-04:00

After a week that featured some dismal, grey, chilly weather, we had a high pressure system push through. The result was high blue skies, a few poofy clouds, some stiff breezes, and bounteous sunshine. The temps are struggling into the 60s, but with the sunshine and some hard-core gardening to keep my heart rate up, I was quite warm puttering around the yard in a tank top yesterday.

First on the agenda was filling bird feeders, putting up the final pieces of the feeder hangers, and tacking up new screen over one of our windows. Then, since Sara found a place that would deliver topsoil to us for free, I got started on filling my strawberry beds. Unfortunately, the strawberry plants that came with it seem to be dying of fungus, so I'll have to call Gurney's back and ask for some new ones.

First, I fit the bottom layer into the garden bed by our front door. Then I smoothed out the dirt that was left. This is where the construction project has been stuck. Since the bed assembly came with a little sprinkler hose, I had to sink that before I could add the next layer.

Then, with a few more whellbarrows-full of dirt, I fit the second and third tier and patted it all down. The soil is nice and sandy, so I think strawberries will really like it. The finished product, and all nice and damp from a good sprinkling.

Next on the list was our walkway. Our walkway was sort of hodge-podge. All different widths, and seemingly never finished on a few paths to nowhere. It's been overgrown around the edges terribly--I kept finding bricks hidden under tufts of grass.

So I ripped out the part that was headed out into the yard around the flower bed, and started a nice, clean edge with the edger-pavers.

A bit farther up, I discovered that I had to rip out some other, overgrown bricks, too.

Then, Brian's assistant Heather came by and asked if I wanted any help. I told her that if she wanted to help do the walkway, to go crazy. She pretty much took over and finished most of the rest of Walkway Project Step 1: widen.

I never expected her to do so much, but she really went wild! Step two will have to wait until next weekend. Then, I'll work on extending the walkway all the way out to the driveway and giving it a nice, finished off edge out there, too. For now, though, it's a major change that makes the place look a little less ramshackle!

MEANWHILE, I'd received the bulk of my shipment from Spring Hill Nurserys. It came in two big boxes of happy surprises.

I wasted no time in sorting the plants into different piles: one for the front perennial bed, one for the red bed that will go in around my stump, one for the butterfly bush garden, and one for my lilac hedge.

I put the butterfly bushes in, singing them little songs about how happy they would be here in the Adirondacks and how much fun they were going to have with our butterflies. Then, I put up one of our shepherd's crooks between them, and hung a humming bird feeder. It looks sort of forlorn, but once they sprout up, it's going to look fabulous.

(you can hardly see the poor little things!!)

Then it was plantings in my perennial bed. Balloonflowers, rudbeckia, pincushion flowers, a magnolia, golden sedum, a few more iris. My gladioulus are on backorder for the moment. Many of the things that came in were to be planted with the crown at or below the soil line, so for now my perennial bed looks a little forlorn.

Then, I planted the clematis that I got in honor of my grandma. I'm hoping that it will slowly climb up that big pine tree right behind it.

This morning, I potted the white petunia plants I got for the stump. They're supposed to grown long and trail down the side of whatever you plant them in, though right now they're just about the size of my palm. I've still got the bulbs I got for Christmas coming up in my old pot, so I got a second pot at Lowe's last night. Now I can have a spring bulb pot that I force inside in february to get early spring bulbs, PLUS a pot of petunias for summer to get started each year, too!

We finally got the dog house moved over into the yard where it belongs. Now Pulu can use it happily while she's on her lead, and I've got the space back at the front corner of the yard. I can pick up edgers this week and start putting the red bed in around our stump this week, too.

Slowly, it's coming together.

Now, some fun pictures that I "digiscoped" from our kitchen window yesterday. Digiscoping is when you put your digital camera lens into the eye piece of your binos or your birding scope and take pictures that way. I was shooting through a VERY dirty window and a dark window screen, so the quality isn't fabulous. However, as the birds are getting braver about using the feeder while we're out in the yard, I think there may be some promise there as the season goes on.

The life bird I got before breakfast yesterday morning: a rose breasted grosbeak

Our chickadees are really brave. This one didn't mind me taking his picture. This morning, when I was moving the feeders around, I was about a foot away from the feeder. A chickadee lit on the perch, looked me all over, and hopped over to help himself to some seed. He was completely unfazed by the fact I could have reached out and touched him.

Brian reports that he saw the first goldfinches back here at camp last week, but they found our feeders for the first time yesterday. The pair that's been stopping in fairly frequently is in the midst of molting, so they're pretty scruffy looking.

Our downy woodpecker doesn't mind using the feeder, but he really prefers the suet cakes that we put out for them.

Grungy

2007-04-22T11:11:00.001-04:00

Remember how my house looked last weekend?

Like this? During the Great Nor'Easter (i.e. slush storm) of aught seven:

Well, this weekend is GORGEOUS. It's been chilly at night, since the skies are so clear, but yesterday it went above seventy. Today we're well on our way. So, I made it my goal to get my rose bed put in against our shed.

The materials I've needed have been waiting for three or four weeks by now. I covered the ground that would become the bed with weed cloth, in hopes that the black color might help warm the ground up a bit.

Yesterday, I started by taking down the trellises that I installed on the front of the house last year. Other tall, pretty things are going in that bed this year.

Next, I installed all of the trellises on the new shed. There was some swearing and gnashing of teeth, but I got it done without major injury to me or the trellises:

Next I borrowed the little gas-powered tiller that our neighbor has. It took me a bunch of wrestling to get it done, but I got the ground tilled up. Then I ground in some peat moss and rose fertilizer. I took a short break. My forearms were already killing me what with the drilling and hammering and vibrations from tilling. Back to work, I installed the bed edging blocks to match the other beds I've already got in the yard.

After lunch, it was time to transplant the roses! I dug the four holes for my climbing roses and sprinkled in a bit more fertilizer. Then I gently dug out the three roses from my beds last year. I planted them and my new climber so that they'll be easily tied to the trellises. Then, it was three more holes for my bush roses, and a bit of agonizing over the color progression.

After I got the roses in the ground, I put the weed cloth back down around them. Now I just have to decide if I'm going to mulch on top of it, or put in something else like pea gravel. I'll have to go browse Lowe's here in a bit.

This is what the bed looks like now. I did add a fence, since some of the mutts around here have a penchant for digging in freshly turned dirt.

Hopefully, soon, it'll be bearing flowers that look like the glossy catalog photos of my plants.

Climbing roses:

Blaze

Golden Showers

Show Garden

and Blue Girl

Bush roses:

JFK

Double Delight

and Mojave

Of course, I couldn't play in the dirt all day long without Quinn trying to help me (notice the dirt on her nose and paws from her own excavations out in the woods).

Spring Break Summary

2007-04-15T16:03:00.000-04:00

We're all home now, safely ensconced in our cozy house while the SNOW flies outside. Brian and I got in last night and crashed out immediately after a 13 hour drive. This morning we retrieved the dogs, who have now been thoroughly scrubbed and are both snuggled down drying in the living room and munching on chewies.

Now I'm procrastinating on school work while photos upload. Hey, a girl can hope for a snow day in April, can't she? April 15 and we're getting a blizzard. The lake is still frozen solid. RIDICULOUS, I say.

Anyways, highlights of our vacation:

Round trip we drove 5076 miles. We passed through eleven states and saw 46 state license plates, plus District of Columbia, any number of Federal Government cars, and a consul plate. We saw four different Canadian province plates, as well as five Mexican state plates. Our tally came to 53 new species of birds, though each of us got one bird that the other missed. We ate about a million pounds of fast food, had some fabulous local food in Texas and New Orleans, and talked to some really nice people. We're already more than half sold on the idea of going back to the same RV park for spring break next year, while trying to recruit Brian's friend Mark to come with us. With him along, we'd probably get another twenty kinds of shorebird alone that we couldn't identify on our own.

In all, it was a smashing success.

On Friday of last week, this is what our yard looked like:

As we drove south, it slowly warmed up, though there was still snow on the ground in Virginia and Tennessee:

As we entered Alabama, it climbed into the 50s, and even though we hit Mississippi at night, it finally broke into the 60s.

It stayed in the 60s as we drove across Louisiana and into Texas. It didn't really warm up much even when we got to Houston.

We stayed in a cute little mini-RV at the Bentsen Palm Village RV Park. It was fabulous, and we'll definitely stay there again.

Here's our first little trailer:

In the middle of the night, the water heater sprung a tiny leak. I put some towels down, and went back to bed. By morning, it was a complete gusher, and hand transformed our kitchen into a large lake of warm water. Brian and I bailed water until the office opened.

Then they moved us to our second home-away-from-home, which was slightly larger and had a spare bedroom.

Our Bird List (in no particular order):

Kreider's hawk (red-tail variant)
anhinga
eurasian collared dove
fish crow
bronzed cowbird
lark sparrow
black necked stilt

crested caracara

horned lark
green jay
great kiskadee
common chachalaca

common moorhen
pied-billed grebe
northern shoveler
broadwing hawk
ringed kingfisher
clay-colored robin

common ground dove
white tipped dove
white winged dove
inca dove
ladder-backed woodpecker
golden-fronted woodpecker

harris's hawk
blue winged teal
lesser yellowlegs
roadrunner

white ibis
fulvuous whistling duck
tri-colored heron

gull-billed tern
reddish egret (white morph)

mountain plover
whimbrel

long billed thrasher
curve billed thrasher
prothonotary warbler
altamira oriole
black crested titmouse (Brian)
roseate spoonbill (Leah)
black bellied whistling duck
buff-bellied hummingbird
gray hawk
cactus wren

Bullock's oriole
ash-throated flycatcher
black-throated sparrow
pyrrhuloxia
cave swallow
scarlet tanager
yellow-throated warbler

Keep in mind that many of my birdy photos were taken through our birding scope or through one eyepiece of my binoculars. We dream of someday having decent birding-photography equipment, but for now our choice is between traveling to SEE the birds, or being able to take PHOTOS of the birds. Traveling wins!

A few other fun photos of our trip:

We ran into a pecarry a few times during our jaunts into the state park. This particular morning, he was having himself a filling breakfast of dropped birdseed at one of the feeding stations.

The cacti were all in bloom down there, and you can probably tell that the trees were in full leaf, too. In fact, we drove back through a 60-degree temperature change. It was 94 when we left Texas, and now it's hovering around 34 degrees here.

A few reminders of how warm it was there:

A cactus that was as big as my living room.

and some of the blooms. I was obsessed with taking photos of these.

But now it's back to the real world, which looks a whole lot like this:

(and still snowing)

Slackers, My grandmother, and knitting

2007-04-02T19:16:00.000-04:00

Okay, a wee school rant: It is the end of third quarter here, and the four-day week before vacation. My grading deadline for all make-up (read: not-turned-in-on-time) work was last week tuesday. I had several large projects due in my one class. There is a shockingly large number of my students who turned nothing in and are AMAZED when their grade isn't what they are expecting. It's making me very growly this week. Thank goodness it's almost spring break.

Ahem.

So over the weekend, I finished two knitting projects in between heaps of grading! Though to be fair, Teagan's scarf was in the works when I put it down to knit B's baby blanket. And it's taken me since September to finish the baby blanket.

First, the finished baby blanket. I made it out of the most annoying yarn ever. It knotted as I pulled it out of the skein, knotted on itself, and was really a difficult thing to work with. It took me forever because it was so fine, but boy is the finished product fabulous.

But I tossed the rest of the gigantic skein because I could. not. stand. it. One of our new educators was going to scrounge it for arts & crafts, but she finger knit with it for about five minutes and agreed that it needed to be tossed.

Then I picked back up Teagan's scarf. I started it out of the extra skein of yarn I used to make her baby blanket. I can't believe that was five years ago already! This scarf will be a giant for a delicate little thing like her, but she'll grow into it. And she'll get it just in time for school this fall, at the rate I'm going:

Alas, the picture doesn't really capture the softness of the yarn or the gorgeous purple tones of the scarf. It made me sad to finally use that gorgeous yarn out of my stash. But I'm so excited to send it to her!!

Last night I cast on a baby blanket for my best friend's new wee one, due to arrive in November. I made my first baby blanket for her out of some of my favorite yarn. The first blanket was in mango, and the second one will be in sour apple. This time I'm playing with some patterning with stitches, but the yarn is still just YUMMY to work with. It knits up so fast that I'm already several inches in, and I've almost finished my first skein. I'm itching to get my fingers on it, but I have to finish my powerpoint for tomorrow's class lessons.

On our way home from town on Saturday, I spotted two doghouses and a big "FREE!" sign on the side of the road. I pointed them out to Brian. We turned around and stopped to check them out, then staked our claim to the larger of the two. It's kind of ratty and run down, but it's a big, solid, hand-made doghouse that will be great for Pulu to use to get in out of rain or sunshine this summer. We've got it unloaded into our driveway area and still need a few of the neighbors to help us haul it to its final resting place.

Quinn was terrified of it, and wouldn't investigate without me offering many treats and to crawl inside with her. Pulu was very interested in sniffing it all over. Here she is surveying the neighborhood from it this afternoon:

and then she decided to lounge a little bit:

And lastly, a little tribute to my grandmother (and my mom). She had this trick, you see. It was her secret weapon in winning raffle baskets.

She taught my mom, and my mom is freakishly good at winning raffle baskets, too. There is an everything-store near my mom's house that has a huge section of Christmas decorations every year. They used to have all sorts of free raffles--for baskets, for pre-decorated trees, you name it. There would be little tables with jars, little slips of paper with golf pencils, the works. You'd stick your name on the slip of paper and toss it in the basket.

Some of my clearest memories are of filling in those slips. Mom would do her name, and I'd do my dad's name, since he wasn't usually shopping with us and I was too young to enter. After we finished writing out our name, address, and phone number, we'd ritually crumple up the papers into little wads. Then we'd smooth them out and put them in the baskets.

Mom always told me that it made your paper float up near the top, and not stick to any of the other papers, so you had a better chance of being picked.

And it must have worked, because man, my mom won what seemed like a ton of those baskets.

So.

The senior class is doing fund raising to go on their senior trip. One thing they do every year is a raffle. People donate prizes of various things. Seniors sell tickets to everyone they can. On your ticket, you write the basket number that you want to win and dump it in a jar.

My mentor was laughing at me as I crumpled up my tickets before sticking them in the jar in the office.

But Grandma's trick really works. I came in to the office this morning to find a white cardboard box in my mailbox. Inside was this, my prize from the senior raffle:

New Beginnings

2007-03-22T19:16:00.000-04:00

After a thaw, a re-freeze, we were threatened with a sloppy snowstorm that might have dumped up to four more inches of the white stuff on us. Today was another thaw day, and they're calling for Saturday and Sunday to be warm and fabulous. When I got home, about half of my flowerbed was melted out. The mountain of snow melted down significantly, so I got out there with a snow shovel and helped it along. Tonight I'll put my bulbs outside in their cardboard box to get them good and chilled so that I can plant them on Saturday.

In fact, I feel so confident that spring might almost be here that I ordered my flowers and trees and shrubs today. I am so excited! I just went for it and ordered all of my project beds. Lilacs, butterfly bushes, roses, a all-red bed and a blue-yellow-pink bed. I got the strawberries, too.

This weekend I hope to get down to the home improvement store and get some peat moss and fertilizer to till into our beds. Plus pulling away the nasty hay bales along the front of the house where I want our tomatoes to go. If I'm super motivated, I might even measure and get the edging materials, too.

Somewhere every spring there's the moment when I stop seeing things as nasty, gross, muddy snow and start seeing them as waiting potential, if only I will come and plant something new.

A small school-day story: I was doing a lab today with my classes that marks the change over from "out there" stuff--astronomy, atmosphere, weather--and the "in here" stuff--water movement in the ground, soil and erosion, rocks, volcanoes, plate tectonics, all the stuff that I ADORE. So, it's a good time. The lab involves using a long plastic tube with a clamp at the bottom and a bunch of beads of different sizes. We pour water into the tube and take various data, which tells us a lot about grain size, pore size, water retention, and rate of flow. I'm about two weeks behind the other teacher, so I had a chance to watch her extensively as she worked her way through the lab with her students. I tweaked it a bit and did it with both classes today. We'll finish it tomorrow. The kids loved it even though it was a whole-group approach where each student got to do a different part of the lab. I also thought to add a drop or two of food coloring to the water before we used it. Even just having something nifty to look at drew their attention more effectively. Rule #857,345,320 of teaching: never underestimate the power of adding food coloring.

And finally, some fabulous news from my Oldest Best Girlfriend.

She and her fabulous husband expecting their second bebe in the late fall.

I am beside myself. I can't believe how big her Maura is already, and I've hardly had a chance to visit and meet and get to know their amazing little daughter. And now there's going to be ANOTHER honorary neice or nephew.

I am beyond thrilled!

Lessons Learned

2007-03-20T18:09:00.000-04:00

I had a pretty mellow day today, but I learned a few things.

First, I learned that my curriculum is fundamentally broken.

I attended a seminar that was ostensibly about learning to score the state test. The group was small. One other teacher had to cancel, so that left just me and this other guy with the facilitating teacher. I know the facilitating teacher through a few channels--I used to sub at his school, and I know a bunch of the other teachers in his department. He is also neighbors with one of the science teachers at my school. I ran into the facilitator and the other teacher at my school at the tire place a few months ago. In summary: It's a small world after allllll.......

Anyways. So only about the first hour or so was about grading the state test. It was kind of cool--we all graded the same answers for two different tests. We were all pretty much on the same page with scoring, gripes with questions, and thought processes about whether answers were complete or not. It made me feel much better about my current practices.

The rest of the six hours we had together we devoted to comparing notes and sharing best practices. This facilitator is AWESOME. Honestly, he's like freaking Bill Nye and Mythbusters and Mike Rowe and National Geographic Channel all rolled into one young, vibrant, enthusiastic teacher. He shared some awesome materials he's created, including two ten-minute movies related to topics that he created with his friend (the guy I subbed for but have never met!). We talked about all sorts of things. And I realized that this year, my curriculum is horrid and boring and killing the love of science for my kids, and not really helping them. All of the things I want to do with my curriculum this summer are spot on. I want to shift over to more lab-focused learning. More demos. More hands-on fun stuff that teaches the concepts through discovery. Both teachers have highly successful students on the state test, and it's not because they hammer test questions all year long. They thoroughly teach the content all year long, in a much more logical sequence. Then they hammer the test prep the last month or so. Where I want to go with my teaching, the facilitator has already gone. And it's great over there. I really have to get there this summer.

I dropped Brian's computer (which is having a malfunction AGAIN) and did a spot of shopping for him.

Back at home, I scritched the doggies, then got kitted out to go for my second run of the week. Brian and I went for a run on Sunday, and it like to have killed me. But I strapped the shoes back on again, stole Brian's wind pants and ear-warmer, and off I went. The battery on my shuffle was dead, though, so I took the larger iPod. My old cardio circuit music isn't on it anymore, so I picked the 80s mix.

At which point I learned my second massive lesson for the day. I run better to music that makes me happy. It was a battle through the pain when I was listening to Axel F (something I have always enjoyed, but never really loved). THEN on came Come on Eileen. At which point the pain went away, I started grinning like a fool and running down the road with my head up and eyes closed.

Okay, so besides the part where it's not too smart to run blind, that was a major breakthrough.

The song egged me on because I associate it so closely with some of the very best moments in my life. Dancing with my Freaky Friends at the Writers' House in college. Dancing with my Freaky Friends at four different weddings, including my own. Realizing that if I can't run for the whole song, what makes me think I can still boogie down when the song makes me hit the dance floor?

So now I need to go back and make an ultra-favey-80s-running mix.

And get back out there again on Thursday whether I HURT or not.

Back on the Horse

2007-03-18T19:08:00.000-04:00

This poor blog has languished for almost a year now.

It's the time of year when I get some spring fever. I take zillions of photos of the ice melt while I wait for the lake to open. I start obsessing on what will go into my flower beds. I get crazy crafty with little to no warning.

It's been way too long since I shared any of that. So it's time to get back to it.

I was working on my cunning plans for my garden yesterday. Really, we're probably not going to do a garden this year, but I'm going to put in some of the ornamentals that I've been craving for the past few years. We want to put a section of fence up between our house and the new neighbor-lady's, and I am for sure going to get around to putting in lilacs to disguise it.

I want to find a nice, unobtrusive place to finally set up our composting bin that my mom got us for free, and get going on that. Maybe more lilacs will help to disguise it.

I'm hoping that I can get into the dirt while the ground is still cold enough to encourage some spring bulbs to sprout. I got a huge box of gorgeous bulbs from my mother-in-law at Christmas, and I'm hoping to get them to bloom this spring.

I'm also looking at moving my roses and putting in an entire rose bed, plus planting a slew of butterfly bushes and/or other goodies to attract butterflies. Maybe even a shade garden. I'm toying with a red perenniel garden to go around our stump. I want to put in tons of iris and other goodies in the bed I built last year along the house.

I think I'm going to move our tomatoes along the house and stake them up right to the house this year. In the existing bed, either more pretty pretty perenniels, or maybe a strawberry bed.

But for now, I'm contenting myself with smaller projects.

Because my flowerbed looks like this:

I made this today:

With the warmer temperatures last week (now but a fading memory after our Nor'Easter on Friday), it was clear that I'm going to need some taller waterproof footwear for mud season. So, after much waffling, I settled on these wellies: