GRACE UNCENSORED

friday!

and it’s a beautiful day and everything is good…

here are the photos i took of the LAST TOMB CEREMONY OF THE YEAR.  the sky was beautiful on tuesday night.

once again, kevin was in the back.  he claims he’s in the back because he’s so tall.

i kept trying to get a good shot of him, but he was continually covered up by somebody.  all you can see here is the top of his hand.

and don’t those two guys to the right of him look at least as tall as him, if not taller?  yes they are.

as they got ready to shoot, i couldn’t see him at all, not even his jacket sleeve.

there he is!  looking very very serious.

i was about to get a good picture, and as the shutter finally clicked, this guy walked through.  damb flag thing.

the sky got more and more pretty.

here they are at the end of the ceremony.

and this is the final picture of them for the year, unless i happen to be there when they’re doing some random thing between now and next summer.

the next night, the sky in the back yard was incredible.  when we walked out on the deck there was a pink cast to everything.

the smoke stacks were really cool.  they don’t even look real.  i love this picture.  kevin said they look two-dimensional, and i think he’s right.

the pink didn’t last long, though.  here it’s almost gone…

i wanted to get a picture of the sky from the deck but it was hard to see much of the sky because of all the trees.  we were about to race to the front yard to get another shot, but by then the pink was completely gone.

wednesday was AMY’S BIRTHDAY, by the way.  so if you happen to see her you can wish her a belated happy birthday, although she might not like that because she doesn’t like lots of attention focused on her and her special day.

right now i have to make her BIRTHDAY CAKE because we’re celebrating tomorrow night.  so if you do wish her a belated happy b’day, DON’T MENTION THE CAKE!

actually she told me that she was going to make her own cake but i put my foot down at that.

ok i must get busy now,

friday grace.

THE BLUE-RIBBON AWARD-WINNING SPAM-TASTIC TURKEY SPAM TETRAZZINI!!!

HERE IT IS!  BEV IS WEARING ONE OF HER FABULOUS PRIZES, HER SPAM T-SHIRT!

mom has this cute little spam truck.  she brought it over to show bev, and i’m not entirely sure why she didn’t want to give it to her.  maybe mom is going to enter something in the contest next year…

the spam was delicious, by the way.  dad had been eagerly awaiting the SPAM-TASTIC spam, and he did have two helpings, and didn’t even touch the lasagne that i’d made.  but then next day he said the tetrazzini “wasn’t as rich” as tetrazzini he’s had in the past.  he’s had the kind made with ultra-heavy cream and lots of super-high-fat cheese and maybe some lard thrown in.

here are two photos i forgot to include about the saturday photo shoot.  here, kevin and his friend rich are just hanging out.

and this is a close-up of him with his sign.

that is all for now.  more later.

ok then,

thursday grace.

more photos! another video! a flurry of activity over the weekend!

what a busy weekend!  not a moment that wasn’t a flurry of activity!

ok, maybe i did have time for a (very short) nap saturday afternoon, but it was pretty busy nonetheless.

saturday morning kevin was going to lincoln’s home, where they were going to re-create a photo taken after lincoln was elected president.  i took lots of pictures, because it was all very scenic.

here are some of the people milling about.

abe!

a mixture of tourists and reenactors – the asian women there on the right wore bright red lipstick, very chic.

a very cute little boy in old-fashioned attired, and his mom is there in the background with a baby.

these costumed ladies were very fancy, and tourists were taking lots of pictures.

kevin got to hold the sign!  somebody had an identical sign in the early photo because kansas wanted to be part of the union.  kevin is here with other members of the 114th, all looking quite dapper in their fancy duds.  i’m used to seeing them in their blue uniforms.  i probably wouldn’t even recognize them in modern-day clothes.

this woman was quite fashionable with her little bitty parasol.  the two guys were both smoking long-stemmed pipes.  i don’t think they were from around here – supposedly there were people coming in from all over the place, different states even, but there wasn’t really a huge crowd.  but the people in attendance seemed a little more gussied up than reenactors i’ve seen around here.

i wish i’d taken a photo of this white-clad couple from the front.  in the original picture, there were lots of people dressed in white.

everybody was gathered together for the photo, finally…and the guy toting a big garbage bag walked through.

this is sort of the angle of the final photo, except that the guy shooting it was up in a cherry picker.  in the window on the lower left, a mary todd impersonator is sitting.

here’s the guy in charge striding across the street.  i like this picture because of his purposeful stride.  his name is dave wachtveitel, and he’s a park ranger at the lincoln home.  he might be in charge of the home, i’m not sure.

after the photo, the public was invited to join the reenactors for another picture.  i love the stance of that old guy in the bright yellow shirt down there on the right by kevin.   he looks like he’s really hustling to get a good spot.

the photographer in the cherry-picker.

kevin and me.  but ok, now here’s the thing – i got this woman standing in front of us to take our picture, but do you notice how everybody else is looking up?  THAT’S BECAUSE THE GUY IS TAKING THE PICTURE.  i never heard him say that he was going to take it, because i was very busy showing the woman how to use my camera and she had problems so i had to show her some more.

so, when the photo is published somewhere, all the people will be looking at the camera, except for us, who will be posing for this woman standing with her back to the camera.  oops.

i laughed at the woman in blue’s expression here.  i thought it was so funny that i had to show it to her.

as people were leaving, one woman opened her fabulous parasol.  damn, i really need to work on getting myself a nice dress for any dances that might come up, plus more photo opportunities.  plus i really need a cool parasol like this one.

i made the photo black and white, but i didn’t mess with it enough to make it look beaten-up and authentic.

sepia isn’t bad, but it looks much too crisp for an old-fashioned photo.

here’s the video i took of the event taking shape:

and that’s all the photo documentation i have of the weekend.  we went out on the boat every day, which was fantastic.  i want to go out on the boat and jump in the lake as much as possible because COLDER WEATHER IS LOOMING.  except that it’s supposed to be hot tomorrow.  but then we’re going to have a perfect labor day weekend, and i might just stay outside the entire time.

ok then,

monday grace.

videos of the tomb ceremony

in between running around all day long today, i uploaded six videos of the tomb ceremony.  watched in sequence, this covers most of the stuff that happens during the 20-minute ceremony every tuesday night at lincoln’s tomb – and as i mentioned, next tuesday is the LAST ONE for the year.  with the added bonus of punch and cake.  or cookies.

as i was posting this on you tube, i noticed that there’s ALREADY a flag-lowering video out there! with six parts! the person who shot it shot lots more footage i did. they included the long section where somebody from the crowd walks up and down the line inspection everybody.

the most important thing to not about that video is that KEVIN ISN’T IN IT! that must have been when we were in scotland.

so here they all are:

this just in!

i was about to close the computer, briefly checking my e-mail for anything of note, and i got an E-MAIL FROM DAD!  dad used to send me the occasional letter when i lived far away; mom’s letters were also enjoyable but she wrote lots of them, like i did, so it was always a special treat to get one from dad.

but there’s never any writing from dad now that he lives a half-mile away.  but today, an e-mail!  so i’m including the whole thing here:

he’s a funny guy,my dad.  i love him.

ok then for real,

gh

thursday morning,

and i just can’t wake up.  soon mollie and i will burst out the door and go running, but for now i’m wishing i’d tried to sleep another half hour.  last nightwe stayed up very late for us, til midnight, watching “the madness of king george.”  this is one of the many movies we have dvr’d and have been sitting around there inside the magic of our tv for a really long time.  we’ve had this one since february, but i think i had recorded it a year ago and then deleted it and then added it again.  if you haven’t seen this film, i highly recommend it.  i didn’t want to start watching, but it was engrossing and fascinating and disturbing and really well done.  the guy who is the husband in “as time goes by” has a small part in the film.  i always like seeing somebody in something that’s so very different from what i’ve seen then doing before.

last night we watched this odd thing called “dr. horrible’s sing-along blog.”  it was about 45 minutes long and starred neil patrick harris, and it was quirky and i just looked it up on wikipedia and it was made in 2008 so maybe you’ve already seen it.  you can see it online if you look it up.  the guy who did it, joss whedon, is a very successful hollywood writer and director and all of that.  you might recall a little show he did called “buffy the vampire slayer.”

as august winds down, i still have more photos plus a bunch of video.

here’s lovely erica at her birthday party. i think she looks better than anybody else who’s worn it in the birthday hat.  note that she got TWO birthday desserts, neither of them cake, which she’s not so crazy about.  one of the desserts is a peach crisp made with peaches from our tree…

…and the other is a tray of bev’s delicious AWARD-WINNING COOKIES!  you can kind of see in the photo above how nicely bev arranged them (she always does this, the fancy arranging of thing), but by the time i snapped a picture of the tray they had already been attacked by many COOKIE FIENDS.  mmmm, cookies.

last night was the next-to-last tomb ceremony, so you’d better get there next tuesday night at 7 o’clock if you don’t want to miss the very last one.  PLUS next week they’re serving punch and cookies after.  maybe punch and cake?

there haven’t been as many people in attendance this year.  even though the weather was perfect tuesday night, not so many people showed up.

across the way, though, i spied this fellow and he looked like he was wearing NO SHORTS AT ALL, just that shirt and those big black socks.  i told mom that he was probably wearing some pink high-heels, too.  in this bigger picture you can see the shorts, but if you squint he definitely looks pants-less, with just those big white shimmering thighs.

once again, kevin was IN THE BACK.  he says they almost always put him in the back because he’s tall, but that guy directly to the right of the flagpole, russ, is just as tall.  they need to put kevin up front more, that’s all i’m saying.

my, doesn’t he look somber?  except then they’re standing there at parade rest and if he finds me in the crowd he always breaks into a grin.  not so official but very cute.

here’s all the guys standing for their photo op at the end.  lots and lots of people take pictures then.

i also shot a bunch of video with my camera to capture most of the whole deal, but i don’t have time now for all that slow uploading and everything.  later, though, the EXCITING AND DRAMATIC CEREMONY will unfold before you.

unless youtube rejects the videos, which it does an annoying amount of time.

ok then,

thursday morning grace.

more FAIR FAIR FAIR

besides carefully perusing  all of bev’s AWARD-WINNING ENTRIES, kevin and i spent a lot of time looking at other stuff at the fair, too.

first, the butter cow.  why, i ask you, did kevin figure that this was a view of the cow that ANYONE WOULD EVER WANT TO SEE???

and my, the butter cow sculptor certainly worked on her backside cow details, didn’t she?

the cow was OK this year, but i think it’s been better before.  i think i mentioned that there appeared to be a big line around its neck, as if the neck had been severed and then re-attached.

besides examining and documenting bev’s MANY MANY AWARDS.  we saw other cool stuff in the hobby building.  when we first went in, there were some artful produce arrangements.

this makes me want to have a produce arrangement on our front porch.  dad always decorated the porch with many wreaths and pots of fake flowers and all kinds of fancy stuff, and right now we have lots of real plants that were desperate to be outside for the summer, plus a couple of dad’s wreaths.  hmm, i could steal a few ears of corn from the field where we run, but i don’t know where i’d get bunches of those stalks of wheat or whatever.

some PRIZE WINNING CORN.

lots of produce.

this is popcorn.  very pretty.  it would definitely look good on my porch.

mmm, grapes.  the thing about all this produce is, do they just judge it on appearance?  apparently so, because there were plates of peaches, five peaches per plate and the little marker said “peaches, five per plate.”  that means they didn’t eat any of the peaches to judge them, which seems slightly odd to me.  we had some beautiful peaches growing on our trees, but even some really rotten-looking ones were delicious.

but maybe looks are everything, as is the case in so much of life.

when we go running, on our way out to the field, we run past a fence with grapes growing on it.  i could have entered them because they were lovely.  i could have also entered our beautiful peaches.

i wish we’d gotten a better picture of this funny thing.  it was in the category “antique games” or something like that.  it’s a “dial typewriter.”  did people actually use this for typing?  and if so, why was it in the games category?  anyway, it was cool.

right next to it was this old monopoly game.

after over an hour in the hobby building, we moseyed over to the other end of the fairgrounds.  all the way across was the orr building, where i’d seen all the happy chickens on sunday.  kevin wanted to see them; he had some chickens at one point in his life, when he was living by himself out on a little farm.  he raised aracunas.

but alas, the chickens were all gone.  the huge, deliciously air-conditioned building looking empty, but then we spotted a couple of BUNNIES!  we saw jerry hicks, who for some reason was KING OF THE RABBITS this year.  he and his wife had to go around to the millions of cages and staple name cards to each one.  there don’t seem to be a lot of perks in being bunny king.

it was funny because there were only about four or five bunnies when we got there.  this one, a “junior doe,” was just so cute…

you can see another bunny way down the way.  clearly, this little bunny was lonely.

an older bunny.

jerry said that bunnies literally die of fright – if they’re cornered or get particularly scared by something, it can kill them.  for some reason, jerry has 300 bunnies.  did he tell me why he has so many?  does he live on a farm?  he doesn’t seem like the kind of fellow who lives on a farm, and i’m pretty sure he didn’t explain his huge huge bunny collection, except to say that his kids raised them for 4-H.  and then, clearly, they must have multiplied like, well…rabbits.  300 of ‘em.

it was getting hot outside, so we lingered a while, and jerry said they would be bringing in the bunnies all day.  and sure enough, a kid rolled in a big stack of bunny cages.

a multi-story bunny prison.

this was my #1 favorite bunny.  bachman.  he was quivering a little, and seemed like he really wanted to escape bunny jail.

bachman and his friend…turner, maybe?  were conspiring about how to bust out.

then we saw a guy who had unloaded a bunch of pure white bunnies onto a table, and they were hopping up and down.  “they just had a long ride,” he said, “They want to stretch their legs.”

unfortunately, i didn’t have my camera with the video capability to capture the funny sight of the bunnies boink boink boinking up and down the little green strip.  here, it looks like a couple of them are contemplating the very long jump to the ground, while the other one posed for me.

really really cute bunnies, running free.

this gives you an idea of the vast emptiness of the place.  it was much quieter since the chickens had flown the coop.

i think this picture is funny because the fanny pack around my waist makes it look like i’m leaning way back.

we didn’t stick around to see the many other cages being filled because there were more fair things to see.  we walked into the pig barn, and i have to say that i think more and more that i want to be a vegetarian, or at least i want to stop eating pork.  i don’t eat a lot of it, but it was just so sad to see the pigs all stretched out and panting in the heat.  kevin says that at least as smart as dogs, maybe smarter, so WHY did we decide it’s ok to eat them?

jerry said that rabbits are way down on the food chain, not bright at all (and obviously as scared as rabbits), but how did it happen that we started eating pigs instead of keeping them for pets?

we sat in the pork pavilion where they were serving pork chops on a stick (no, we didn’t have one), and i looked around at the many people stuffing the pork chops into their mouths who actually resembled pigs quite a bit.  there was a video playing – it showed happy baby pigs, pigs frolicking all around, happy happy pigs…and then a plates of ribs, ham, bacon.  they skipped the horrible slaughtering part.

i really need to become a vegetarian.

we wandered through the state fair museum, which desperately needs updating.  it was getting hotter and hotter, and we stopped to say hi to a state cop who kevin knows.  it was funny to watch the guy’s eyes at first, because when kevin called out to him there was no recognition at all, only his stern cop face, but then when he finally realized that this goateed guy was kevin, he broke into a happy grin. all cops?  they all want to retire ASAP.

we went into the illinois wine building, delightfully air-c0nditioned, and i got tickets for five wine samples.  i really wanted to like one of them enough to buy one, but they didn’t excite me.  maybe if i’d tried ones from more wineries…but then, of course, i’d never have made it back on the long walk out.  the last thing i got was a delicious cup of a wine slushee.  mmmm, cold and delicious, if just a little bit too sweet.  hmm, i think i should make wine slushees sometime very soon.

we went back outside and my slushee instantly melted.  we wanted to see a little bit of this act of about six kids, a family of bluegrass players, including their mom.  we stood there for about two minutes in the sweltering heat and decided we’d had enough.

i didn’t get to the fair as much as i have in years past, but it was very nice to go with kevin, who usually manages to avoid it like the plague.

all right then,

tuesday morning grace.

the fair!

first, i must show you bev’s AWARD-WINNING FAIR ENTRIES.

second place whole wheat bread.  the funny thing is, i think the night before she was going to bake the bread, she asked me if i had a good whole wheat bread recipe.  THE NIGHT BEFORE SHE WAS GOING TO BAKE.  she didn’t use my recipe, because it’s whole wheat herb cheese bread, much too complicated; hers needed to be plain whole wheat bread.  i don’t know where she found the recipe, and i continue to be amazed at the blase attitude she has about finding a recipe for her entries.  i plan everything so far in advance, and would never wait till the night before baking to look for a recipe.

clearly, her style works for her.

this is what the little winning cards look like.

here’s another red ribbon, for her pie crust.   i’ve never had one of bev’s pies.  i really don’t think she makes pies very much, if at all.  ditto for the whole wheat bread, come to think of it, unless she’s secretly baking this stuff.

this is the GRAND PRIZE SPAM-TASTIC TURKEY TETRAZZINI!!! mmm.  it didn’t look so appealing a couple of days after they put it on display.  i wonder what she’s going to do with her spam t-shirts and her many spam-related prizes.

the morning i was writing about her win, she called me.  she was concerned that i’d write BAD NEGATIVE THINGS about spam, and how much bev actually eats spam, and stuff like that – she’s afraid that the many many spam officials nationwide are all diligent readers of this blog, and when her SPAM-TASTIC TURKEY SPAM TETRAZZINI is entered in the super duper grand prize national competition, my disparaging remarks would heavily influence the judges’ opinions, and her hopes for a huge bag of cash, a jet, a trip to sunny spain, and the other many many other SPAM-TASTIC prizes would be dashed.

i would never write anything bad about bev.  maybe, in time, she will realize that.

i do my best to not write disparaging things about most people, except of course those who more than deserve it, namely, blago.

here are more and more of her award-winners.  her third place honey nut bars:

her second place cookies; i can’t remember what kind they are, except i know they’re cookies that have to be made with cake mix.  they’re some kind of chocolate.

her BLUE RIBBON cranberry nut bars.  mmmm.

when she came over for dinner the other night she said she’d bring some of her “reject” cookies.  i thought that maybe these would be the cookie recipes she made that didn’t win any awards – maybe turkey spam cookies, or perhaps spam fudge.

so i was delighted to find that these were just the slightly less-than-perfect cookies that were part of the award-winning batches.  she obviously didn’t need to enter the whole darn batch of cookies in each competition, so there were plenty left over.  she arranged the “rejects” on a birthday plate (it was erica’s birthday dinner), and they they all seemed quite perfect to me.  everybody loved them.

i think she branched out into different kinds of non-food collections a few years ago.  she won second prize for her music boxes.  i thought this was good since she only had two of them, an the other award-winners had at least three different boxes.

she won a prize for her bells, but we forgot to take a photo of them.  sorry, bev.  next time.

but here are her AWARD-WINNING TEACUPS.  they’re quite lovely, as you can see, but she didn’t understand, neither did kevin or me, why she won first place.  there were many other very nice collections of tea cups.  she said this is the third year she’s entered and she’s never won anything before.  i asked her if she entered the same ones every year and she looked aghast and said NO OF COURSE NOT.

she was definitely robbed in the holiday craft package-wrapping category.  yes, she got a third-place ribbon, but she should have won first place.  the wrapping is a piece of fabric, and as you can see, there’s a tape-measure ribbon and a pin cushion bow.  very clever and pretty.

i should have taken pictures of the BORING first and second place winners.  both were covered with regular old wrapping paper.  the 1st place on had a big fluffy bow with a couple of white twig-like things sticking out of it; they’re those things that you see on top of over-the-top christmas trees.  but YAWN, shiny blue paper, not creative at all.  the second place package was just as boring, with some dumb ornament attached to the bow.

yes, she was robbed, but i guess we won’t picket or write angry letters to the editor or stage a sit-in protest this year.  bev did quite well for herself despite the lousy picking of the award-winning gift box wrapping.

after all she is the SPAM-TASTIC SPAM QUEEN.

hmm, that’d be a great halloween costume…

bev promised that she’s going to make us some SPAM-TASTIC TURKEY TETRAZZINI very soon.  dad is waiting in breathless anticipation for that.

and hmm again, is she starting to make plans for her trip somewhere for the NATIONAL SPAM COOKOFF?  because really, i can’t think of anything much more exciting.

ok then,

grace all about the fair.

sunday morning…

and i’m having trouble getting motivated.  kevin went off to the shooting range bright and early, and i’m still sitting on the screened porch in my nightgown.  i walked down to the dock, which took a lot of effort.

the president of the gun club where they had the civil war skirmish, and where they do the cowboy shoots every month, had some neighbors to the property put lots and lots of mud on the property.  this was mud that was dredged up from the neighbor’s pond, and it was full of runoff from the pesticide-chocked farms nearby.  the resulting sludge is stinky, awful stuff, that isn’t going to be good for planting any grass over any time soon.  clearly the gun club president doesn’t know much about farming or dredging. The skirmishers came from wisconsin and northern illinois, and most if not all of them camped at the club.  one guy told kevin that as he was lying in his tent, if he turned to face the wall he could smell the pungent sludge odor.

not the greatest camping experience.

here’s a pile of the sludge.

i went out to the club to pick up kevin, and he was there with his friend garrick.  i thought it was funny that they were wearing almost identical shirts.  they had a good time, despite the stinkiness and their jobs of carrying water and doing all kinds of tasks to make sure the shoot went smoothly.

yesterday when kevin was at the shoot, i wasn’t just lollygagging around here like i am today.  mom and a couple of her friends came out for a boat ride, and i also invited erica to join us.

it was a beautiful day for a boat ride, and mollie was, as usual, happy to go along.  but then we stopped at a park on the other side of the lake for a bathroom break, and we tied up the boat at the edge of their dock.  mollie was anxious to get on shore, but she slipped stepping off the boat onto the dock and fell right down into the water.

the problem is that, well, she’s kind of heavy to pull up when she’s wet.  luckily she was wearing her harness, so there was something to grab onto, but sharon and i were pulling and she just wasn’t coming up, plus the boat kept trying to bump into the dock which would have squashed her.  i kept shrieking and pushing the boat away from the dock as we struggled to pull her up, as she paddled furiously while looking up at me so heartbreakingly that i couldn’t stand it.

then there was a SPLASH in the water.  erica, the only person on the boat wearing jeans, jumped in to save her.  she swam over and pushed mollie from below and we pulled again and up mollie came.  WHEW.

i said that at least everybody can know that i can be counted upon to panic in a crisis.

mollie was just fine after her rescue, and she was happy to sit next to erica when we all got back on the boat.  when we had all gone up the hill at the park, erica stayed in the water swimming.  i’m pretty sure she really wanted to swim anyway, but it must have been a little challenging, swimming in heavy heavy jeans.

when we set off again, erica wrapped a towel around herself and took off the jeans.  luckily sharon had an extra t-shirt, so erica changed into that.  here’s grateful mollie with her rescuer.

the rest of the trip was without incident.

after i picked up kevin, we drove to his friend wayne’s house.  remember when kevin was helping with wayne’s extensive basement remodeling?  after months and months, the basement is now completely done and i can’t believe i totally forgot to take any pictures of it.  it looks fantastic, plus his daughter, fresh from culinary school, prepared a delicious meal for a crowd of people.

when we went outside, the sky was beautiful.  my camera phone couldn’t do it justice.

i have SO MANY FAIR PHOTOS that i must put up here, but now i really have to get up since soon it will be 11 o’clock and mollie needs to go for a walk even though it’s almost too hot for it.

ok then,

sunday slow-moving grace.

trying to catch up with all the photos…

i keep taking pictures, but then i don’t sit down long enough to put them up here, so i’m trying to KEEP UP.

here’s winnie, constantly trying his best to chill out.

the lake was just so sparkly and glistening and beautiful on sunday morning.

and here are the hostas which are blooming like crazy.

the enormous hostas in back of the deck.

even though it was insanely, crazy hot last week, and so humid that sweat was dripping off my face, we had to plant the many many day lilies we bought last weekend at the fabulous sale at washington park.  we bought about nine bags, i think, and each bag had multiple plants.  LOTS AND LOTS of lilies.  we went the weekend before the weekend we just had.  so technically, two weekends ago.  MAN the summer continues to shoot by in an alarmingly rapid rate.

anyway, the big liles on the left and right were there already – dad planted them quite a while ago.  we planted about seven more, and spread the last of the red mulch we had.  we’ll spread much more mulch next spring.  it was really hard to dig up the many many things growing around the tree – many of the weeds had turned into little trees, and it was a struggle to dig out the roots.  this area had been one big forest of stuff before we started digging.

kevin tore out some of the shrubs along the side of the deck (DON’T TELL DAD!!!!!!), and we planted these little bushes plus lots more lilies.  at first we planted about six of them, then amy came over to observe what i was doing.  this is where i planted the first clump and she read that they were TOO CLOSE TOGETHER.  ugh, i didnt’ want to dig them up and move them.  she said “that’s ok, you can move them in a couple years.”  the next morning, though, i decided i didn’t want to have to do it in a couple years, when they would be bigger, so i pulled them up and re-planted.  she then showed me a MUCH MUCH EASIER way to dig a hole.  i had been doing it all wrong, and so that first day of digging i did much more work than i needed to do.  at least she was there to show me.

last year we had exactly one peach growing on the two peach trees down by the water, and eventually that peach just vanished.  the year before we’d had a huge crop.  this year there are quite a few, so on wednesday i started picking.

they’re so beautiful.

this is the nifty peach picker, perfect for reaching the high ones.  it’s maddening when they’re so high that i can’t even reach them with the picker.  there are now quite a few peaches on my screen porch, and a lot in the fridge, and still more to be picked on the tree.

this beautiful peach has been picked, and maybe even eaten already.  i just ate one that was on the porch that must have fallen on the ground; it was really soft in places.  it was delicious.

beautiful shimmery lake.  there are quite a few peaches hanging out over the water, but i think if we try to pick them from the boat, the boat would crash into the rocks.  surely there’s a solution to this vexing problem.

ah, more lilies i planted.  this is sort of a terrible picture; the lilies are down there on the lower right, and then there are two little lilacs, and more lilies that you can’t possibly see on the upper left.

last week amy was outside and saw a guy on a riding mower out in the grass in the lane.  suddenly the guy screamed, jumped off the mower and ran away…and the mower was still running.  we surmised that he’d run over a  hornet nest.

that must be what happened, because here’s part of a nest that kevin found out there.  i know that hornets are bad and sting you and all of that, but isn’t this beautiful?  i mean, they create these delicate nests, and the material looks and feels just like paper.  it’s really extraordinary.  maybe i’ll have to throw away the nest now that i’ve taken a picture of it.

kevin is now telling me how a hornet builds a nest:

“they chew plant fibers, then take that mixed in with their saliva and spit that out along the edge where they’re working – the different variations are because they’re getting different plant fibers they get as they build the nest, and that’s what makes it like paper.”

he added that he didn’t bring back the innermost comb of the nest because there were live larvae inside, and they’d have hatched in the house.  this would have been problematic.

we went outside this morning to see if the inner comb part was still on the ground, but it had been mowed over.  but they hornets have been hard at work building a new nest.

one lone hornet came crawling out to get his picture taken.

we had quite a day at the fair yesterday; it was really hot and sunny, and we walked around a lot and when we got home i couldn’t figure out why i was so exhausted.  this morning when my calves were sore it dawned on me that we did lots and lots of walking.

i’ll be posting the photos later, maybe when i take a break from the many activities today.

ok then,

friday grace.