Catching up

Okay, so I've been really bad about blogging. To be fair, I've been very, very busy. So here is the latest:
The 4th of July weekend went off almost perfectly. We had over 10,000 visitors to the Wall. Visitors came from all over New England. Many were vets who were thrilled to have the Wall be near home. One visitor was a Gold Star mother. She visits the traveling walls anytime they are near her home in VT. She always brings a bouquet of flowers and a note for her son. Then she has someone else place them at the Wall for her. She can't look at his name, even after all these years. She told me she's just not ready to give him up yet. There are lots more stories, I just can't quite write them down yet.

My grad school classes are done, projects aren't. Okay, one is all done. The other two are in the process of being worked on. The cool thing about Antioch is I do not have to do traditional work. I swear if I had had to write a research paper this summer I was going to hurt someone. So I created a handbook on working with teens in group settings. It's called "Herding Cats" (For those of you who know my kids at the NET, you understand). My other projects are illustrating and writing a book for kids on salt marshes (my favorite type of wetland) and doing a monitoring visit and an easement proposal. Do I know how to have fun or what?

The other project will be my authentication project for my practicum. Since I don't finish teaching until August 7th, I'm not worrying about that until the 8th. Then, I'll work on the curriculum. UGH! (I hate curriculum development, it is evil).

With any luck, I will have the details of my fall and spring practicum ironed out today. Though I'm still awaiting official word that I have been selected to be the student editor for the 2009 edition of the Whole Terrain Journal. We'll see after today what is what.

My garden is growing well, despite it's very late start. I expect to have the first harvests from it in the next week or so. My rosemary plant is thriving. Apparently, I can only grow them outdoors. I do have to spend a little time weeding and hoeing up the plants. I have to wrangle up red worms too, so we can start vermiculture composting in the house (Don't tell Rowan). Inside, my jasmine plant is also blossoming for the second time this year. I'm very excited since it usually only gets flowers every 18 months or so. Of course now I have to wait again to repot it. It needs a larger pot and a sturdier trellis to grow up.

Other than that, I've been taking lots of naps. For some reason, I'm not tolerating the heat very well this summer. By 8:00 in the morning, I'm generally saying it is too hot (Yes, I know, frightening isn't it?). I blame it on associating with so many snow faeries. (You know who you are) They must be rubbing off on me. Bad faeries! I just need to hang out with my dark faeries once school is back in session. They will counter the evil snow effects. Maybe we can even conjure up an Indian Summer. Hee!