Catching Up!

I haven’t been super-awesome at keeping up here, but that doesn’t mean that I haven’t been keeping myself busy. So here’s what’s been going on.

First, with spring, there’s been lots of gardening. Cute W has begun his most ambitious vegetable garden yet, while I continue with my native plant-a-palooza. This year, that’s mostly been weeding, although one of my most notable projects was yanking out a massive invasive honeysuckle bush and replacing it with a native serviceberry plant instead.

This is the absolute beast of a bush that I removed. It was quite a project! A lot of sweat, plus some hacking with an axe.

Mostly, I’ve been reveling in all of the lovely, lovely native blooms appearing in our front yard:

From top left, these are: tiarella (early spring blooms, supposed to spread and eventually form a little hedge), sedum ternatum (also bloomed early spring, but I just love the way the whole plant looks, and this is ground cover that will hopefully keep spreading), 2 pictures of pink lantern columbine (because one shows how pretty the pink is and the other has a bee enjoying it –these are still going, although they’re still a little young and spindly-looking for now), phlox stolonifera (I love these purple flowers and I hope it spreads because it’s one of my favorite early bloomers), lupines (highly-coveted host plant for the Karner blue butterfly; these were blooming a couple of weeks ago and then a bunch abruptly disappeared, either eaten by wildlife or picked by someone who couldn’t resist them), and our current stars of the show, these lance leaf coreopsis plants.

There’s also been more travel, with a quick trip to Boston. This was G’s first time there, and we coordinated with J to pick her up from Smith, where she is currently doing an undergraduate research fellowship in a chemistry lab (!!! I know!!! how awesome is she?!?!), so that she could spend the weekend with us.

Once we picked J up, we stopped at Captain Jack’s Roadside Shack because I’d heard raves about their lobster rolls, and we thought G needed to try one. I’d say it wasn’t the tastiest lobster roll I’ve tried, but it was good, and it was huge. It was almost too huge. Next time I’d get one lobster roll and ask for an extra bun to split up the completely unwieldy pile of lobster. Oh, and I’d skip the fries entirely in favor of the scrumptious onion straws. G was not a fan of the lobster, but she enjoyed her burger.

We decided to get a Go City pass for Boston in large part because Cute W found a deeply-discounted Groupon, but also because we thought the hop-on, hop-off trolley might be better for my not-quite-awesome ankle. As it turned out, we didn’t ride the trolley much, and when we did, we found the driver obnoxious. But we did enjoy having the entry fees included for so many places, allowing us to take a lovely boat ride and to pop into Paul Revere’s house, the science museum, and other spots without worrying about committing to a long stay.

We also lucked out with timing and caught some of the super-fun Red Bull Cliff Diving Championships, where divers were plunging from the Institute of Contemporary Art into the Boston Harbor. It was pretty terrifying to watch.

It was also Pride, which made everything more festive. Altogether an excellent visit. One of our favorite parts is that we got the chance to meet on of J’s Italian host sisters, who is currently living in Boston. She was charming, and it was very fun getting her together with J and G.

Back at home, I finished my next embroidery project. I’d attended a Rotary meeting wearing my embroidered sneakers, and someone asked if I’d be up for embroidering something to include in the auction portion of the upcoming Cornhole for a Cause fundraiser. So I stitched a cute (if I do say so myself) little bag:

Hopefully they’ll fill it up with something fun and someone will want it.

G has two and a half weeks before she leaves, and before July 5th, she’ll be packing in three final exams, a senior gala, a graduation, M’s return, hosting a small goodbye dinner, presenting at a Rotary meeting, attending lots of graduation parties, and two trips out of town. So it’s going to be busy!