9th Birthday Party

It has been a long summer without my camera. Since my computer was out of commission for awhile too, there weren't any blog posts. The camera was expensive to fix, so I waited until I really needed it, for R's 9th birthday party. I'm so happy to have it back. It felt like one of my arms was missing.

We had her party at our neighborhood pool.


Suddenly the sky opened up, with rain and hail.




E caught a hailstone.


I captioned some of these pictures to send to family, but I forgot to save a version without captions.

That was a nice birthday memory--a rainbow just for R.

She wanted a wolf cake, with Oreo frosting. It was so much fun to make. She gets to keep the little wolf figurines and play with them. I bought the edible cupcake toppers on eBay.


Then the girls came back to our house for a slumber party. They are picking out books from the shelves D built for me, to hold my Dad's history scholar's library. R has commandeered some of the lower shelves for her own books.

Eleven girls in the basement!

Charlie wanted so badly to go downstairs. But he has a history of jumping on sleeping heads and licking faces.

Poor Charlie!

He got a lot of love in the morning.

The next morning, they opened presents and D made chocolate chip pancakes, the birthday girl's request.

D built this rope swing for R in the backyard. It swings you right into the bushes, and for some reason, every kid who comes over thinks that is just the most hysterically funny and entertaining thing.

It was fun to have a house full of girls for one night. You forget how little fourth graders are, until they are all swarming around you in the kitchen in their pj's, telling you exactly how much butter and salt they want on their own bag of popcorn. 

Rain Garden

A whole night and day of drenching rains, finally. Everything is perking up.

One of the front yard beds is looking better, thanks to my friend Tom and his gift of columbine and snapdragon yesterday. I got them planted just as the rain started falling. The little grassy things are thrift from Tom, I hope they take. Behind that is the pretty white flowers of bacopa, one perennial that came back for me this year. And way in the back, the Shasta daisies. I love the dark green foliage even before they bloom. These came from one seedling I started under lights indoors three years ago.

Charlie gets a wet head from the dripping bushes. Still a handsome gentleman.
Peas planted on St. Patrick's Day, loving the rain.

Magenta Swiss Chard.

Mesclun ready to be planted.

Charlie in the spot where he dug up all the grass. That stage didn't last very long, he is mostly a good dog now.

Georgia O'Keefe in the salad greens.

The dwarf blue spruce planted all around with purple alliums is my favorite thing in the backyard. I wish I could go back three owners ago and say thank you.

Allium and a peony bud in the back yard.
So many things bloomed this year that had been sulky or just absent in the four years we've lived in this house. I think it was the first year without a late killing freeze.

Tom's columbine. I always think of them as blue, I love this creamy color.

I have been planting out the winter sown milk jug seedlings. I'm following the instructions, we'll see if anything actually blooms. That will be another post.
Dandelion skeletons are lovely. I will still work to eradicate them.

Front yard peonies just ready to burst open.

Wild rosa eglantina by the front door. I wish whoever planted these could know how much they are appreciated years later. Who knows how old the gorgeous peony is, how many owners back it goes.

Buds on our Home Depot David Austin rose from last year. I have been fertilizing and watering and putting epsom salts and coffee grounds around all the roses, mostly out of shame for how I neglected them last summer.

April Rain Song 
by Langston Hughes

Let the rain kiss you.

Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops.

Let the rain sing you a lullaby.

The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk.

The rain makes running pools in the gutter.

The rain plays a little sleep-song on our roof at night—

And I love the rain.

School Concert

Very nice job third graders. The theme was Songs from Around the World. This is "Scotland the Brave." I love kids' concerts, they are still little enough to be enthusiastic about it. Although now I have the irritating chorus of "The Happy Wanderer" stuck in my head, Val-deri,Val-dera,Val-dera-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.

Art Show and a Fairy House

Here are R's entries into Tuesday's Art Show at school. This is called "Little House with Bed and Couch." She left off half the roof so she could play with the furniture inside the house.
This is "Moonlight Howl." Media: Crayon on Paper. She asked Santa for a standing easel with a big roll of paper and acrylic paints and pastels, but she mostly likes to use crayons on typing paper and work at her desk. On Thursday she brought home this box of sand and sugar, left over from their Native American projects at school. This is not even her group's project. She said "The other kids said their moms were just going to throw it out, so I said I would take it home." Now I really can't throw it out, for a while anyway, because she built an elaborate fairy house in it after school. She is pointing to an ivy leaf umbrella over the patio. Next to that is the "vineyard" with dusty miller vines and grape muscari grapes. The rocks with the bark roof in the upper left are the "sleeping quarters." There is a little pool with a bark ladder and slide, and in the foreground is the garden, "planted with seeds."

Seedling Update

The upstairs seedling room has been through several iterations since my last post. A lot of the cold-hardy seedlings have been spending time outside hardening off.

Salad greens, pansies, Johnny jump-ups, leeks, sweet peas and stock flowers.
Some have been moved outside to the cold frame and hoop house that D built for me. I'm putting in more lasagna beds (no fun to put down the newspapers on a windy day, but we wanted to get it done).

Some of the wintersown seedlings in jugs are starting to come up. This is spinach.

Cleome and alyssym.

Stock.

The asters I planted in January.

Salad greens moved from the front window to the garden, and herbs moved in.

Newspaper pots in the upstairs seedling room.

Genovese, spicy globe and opal purple basil. The basil has really taken off in its heated beds.
 
Japanese eggplant just sprouting. The peppers and tomatoes are still waiting.

Gorgeous mesclun. Botanical Interests Valentine Mesclun, one of my favorites.

Although I promised I wouldn't, I started a little colony of seedlings in the basement.

Impatiens, phlox and rainbow coleus.