It continued raining this morning, and the winds picked up. The car choked out on the way to the train station, so we all stayed home while Mike replaced the battery and changed the oil. Noah and Maxim went to the Maynard Public Library and played with Mark, the world's greatest children's librarian, while Marcela looked for new books and videos. It started to warm up and grow humid in the afternoon and everyone got grumpy. Noah took a nap early. Maxim went to sleep later and woke up earlier. When Catherine got off the school bus (she started third grade yesterday), she stopped in and visited with Maxim. They drew and painted and then learned a dance, which they showed us all. After Dawn picked up Catherine and I put out six weeks of recycling, we stood in the backyard and enjoyed the cooling wind rushing through the trees. All of the rain has soaked the recently stripped windows so they can not be sanded until at least Friday. But taking out all of the recycling made a lot more space in the basement. Marcela swept the floor into a pile and I cleaned up my tool bench and swept up the pile of dirt from the floor. Maxim and Catherine had played in the yard, but most of the things got moved by me because otherwise they leave footprints in the grass. You can see one that got started by the slide, it is the light oval you can see in the lower left corner of the picture of the yard. Out in the front of our yard all three sunflowers have bloomed. The original bloomer, the big one in this shot, hangs face to the ground. The other two still look east into the morning sun. I pulled the horseweed that had grown to over six feet tall, leaving just the sunflowers to conceal the fire hydrant. You can see the long line of recycling in this photograph, the flowers on the squash plant that just won't squash, and the long row of houses just like ours lining Sudbury Street.

Two days of rain here in Maynard. It is what we needed, but it keeps the kids out of the yard. The other sunflower in the front yard bloomed in this rain. Maxim went to her friend Emmaline's house for an hour and came back talking of cinderella and dressed in a blue dress. Noah took all of the 2x4 blocks I made for him last Christmas and put them in a row in the living room. "Look Daddy, a train track." He drove his small plastic train up and down. This evening we played music, Maxim on the recorder, Noah on the drums, and me on the guitar. Then Maxim and Noah took a bath, which ended abruptly when Maxim decided to kick Noah hard enough to knock him into the wall, face first. Now they gulp down rice milk and finger their blankets. Bedtime awaits. "Here you go, Daddy." Noah says handing me the empty cup. He bites his blanket and bounces on his knees as Marcela tries to comb his hair. Maxim sings "Puff the Magic Dragon" as if everyword began with "Bl." They race to the bathroom to brush their teeth, hair still wet from the bath. The rains squeezed us inside, Marcela refiled all our bills, and we made it through another day together at home.

Today we started off in a good mood, but as the humidity got heavier, everyone's mood soured a little bit. The kids ran around, Maxim on her bicycle and Noah in his plastic car, while I worked on the last window. The neighbors across the street had a yard sale and Marcela bought their wooden file cabinet. This led to a flurry of changes in the house as piles that used to rest on the kitchen counter got moved into the new file cabinet on the second floor, and other things were moved so that the counter next to the stove can be used for food preparation instead of bill storage. Piece by piece, things are findng their place here in the house. This afternoon Sarah and Diego with their daughters Laura and Julia, and Hugo and Carina, with their daughter Micaela and son Arron, came for dinner. We made pizzas and empanadas, sauted vegatables and homemade salsa, plus I barbequed some sausages, chorizo pan. We tried to eat outside, but the skies would not cooperate, so we moved into the kitchen. We ate like it was a feast and the kids played around. So much Spanish (Diego, Hugo, and Carina are from Argentina, Sarah is fluent in Spanish) is good for my ears. It reminds me of what I do know of the language and puts me in the mind of Buenos Aires, which is a good mind to be in. The windows are finally scraped. I finished just after 1:00 p.m. today. I started to sand, but Marcela said it was keeping Noah awake during his nap time, so I'll save that messy job for tomorrow. Marcela is looking out the window on the left in this shot. Maxim and Noah are brushing their teeth and I am putting the last of the garbage outside. We like our house. We like the people we have met since moving here. The rest of the houses on our side of the block are covered in plastic. We are stripping down to wood.

The kids went with Marcela to storytime at the Maynard farmer's market this morning. It was a very nice August day, dry and warm. The weatherman said it would get humid this evening, but it hasn't yet. I started mowing the lawn yesterday, but I still haven't finished, so everything is piled to the one side of the yard. That strip hasn't been mowed yet either. The toys are all piled up in the sand box. When everyone got back from the farmer's market, we jumped into the car and went to Somerville to visit Ken, Coralie, and Nico. We made chicken and fresh tomato salad, ate cheese and corn chips. Nico is one year younger than Maxim and one year older than Noah. The three of them play very well together, although everyone was being competitive today. No one wanted to share. The Cooper/Resniks are going to New Hampshire, to their cabin that they built themselves (with some help from me) just north of Hebron, New Hampshire. They will be there all week. I scraped a little more of the last window. This is a picture of the pantry window. It is ready for its final coat of paint. You can see that I put in new trim and re-caulked the seams. I also sanded it and filled in some holes with wood putty. When all of the windows look like this one, we will wash down the shingles and start to paint. Maxim wants to help us paint. She wanted to help us scrape, but I had to explain to her that she wasn't allowed that high up a ladder. She can help us scrape the next time we paint the house.

Maxim and Noah had half-days today. When we came home, they played with the new toys Marcela bought for them yesterday. Maxim has a new pink plastic pony and Noah has a new train. They took their naps well and slept so long that I had to ask Dawn, our neighbor and the mother of Catherine, if she would sit on our porch while I went to the train to pick up Marcela. Marcela was confused when I showed up without the kids, but we had a nice talk on the ride home without a dozen interruptions. The weather was very warm. These are all the plants that grow in the far corner. The sunflower is about to open, the horse-tail weed has gone to seed. The white asters are nearing their end. Down in the middle is a cedar tree, planted by the previous owner. Next summer we want to put a patio here, and maybe build an Argentina-style asado. The kids finally woke up when I started scraping the final window. I finished the second to last one yesterday. I don't know if I am getting tired from scraping all week or if the paint is more cooked on, but these windows have been more difficult to get down to the wood. Being more than 20 feet up in the air also makes the work a little harder. I will finish scraping tomorrow and move on to the next steps. We're getting closer to painting every day!

At lunch time the kids were tired, so I gave them a quick lunch and then to nap. I scraped a little more of the back window, but the clouds looked threatening, which made me nervous atop the tall ladder. We went for Marcela at the train and then to the supermarket for a few things. I tried to read a magazine in the car while waiting with Maxim and Noah, but they wouldn't let me. All the way home and until the sun was setting it rained. The air had been cool all day, but the moisture was welcome. It has been a dry summer. Unfortunately, for the kids, it meant more inside time. They didn't get to play in the yard today at all. Perhaps tomorrow. We ate dinner and read some books. They are slowly going to sleep. Just as the sun reached the horizon, the edge of the rain clouds did too. The kosmos growing in the pot in the yard got a direct hit, which is why they look like they are glowing in this photograph. The long sliver of light comes in between our house and Jake's next door, only twice a year. It was nice ending to a good Wednesday.

The kids spent the day in Somerville, visiting Maria, their family care caregiver from January 2003 until July 2004, when we moved here. Noah thought he was being dropped off and had a panic attack when they arrived, but once he smelled the soup and realized Mom was staying, he settled in. Marcela's visit paid off, she made the most delicious vegetable soup for dinner. After Maria, Marcela went to Coralie's house on Conwell Street. The oak trees in our front and side yards are babies from that plot of land. Noah and Nico played, Marcela told me, and Maxim felt left out. Nico didn't want to play Maxim's games. She likes playing princess and fairy and house and farm and pet store now. He preferred jumping around and yelling. Maxim and Noah were worn out and fell asleep in the car on the way home. I helped Marcela carry them to their beds, but they didn't stay asleep. They cried for a while and then we started playing with them and they cheered up. Noah wanted to be carried around by me for a long time. He is still fussy even now. I stayed home and scraped more windows. The front ones are ready for sanding. I finished the lower part of one of the back windows. My arms were tired today, and it was much farther up in the air than in the front. As long as I didn't look down, I could scrape ok, but each time I did, the ground felt that much further away. I stopped looking down, but held on to the ladder tighter, which made me more tired. Tonight we sang songs and played guitar and waited for the heat of the day to lift.

Everyone back to school and family care and work today. Summer vacation is over. Maxim was playing with Gwen in the sandbox when we picked her up. Noah was happy to see us. I got Marcela at the train first. When we got home Marcela gathered more seeds from her flowers and divided them into piles while she talked to Hugo from Argentina. Maxim played naked in the back yard and I re-attached the back bumper to the frame of the car. The sun is at longer angles near the end of the day on its slow migration toward the southern horizon. It feels like fall, late August, the season of harvest, when you can reap the fruits of your patience. The plastic car had sat in the same place all week in the yard, so I put it out in the side street. Noah played and played. Maxim brought out her bicycle and rode up and down. Later she played in the pool, but he got too cold. The kids seem to have a different energy about them today. We all do. We finished more scraping of the windows. We hoped to finish both of the front windows, but it proved to be too much. I have the hardest part of the second one waiting for me tormorrow. I'm afraid that the sill on the first window (the left one) is rotted through, but I am going to let the dry wind dessicate it before I decide what to do. These are the original boards from 1880 or 1890 when the house was built. I could see today that the clapboards underneath had been a kind of peach color once. The frames were once dark green. Each layer of paint, another personal history. We are trying to restore the underlying character of the house, a sturdy, working-class home.

This morning it rained and stopped and rained some more. We had an early start so that we could catch a train into Boston to visit a beautiful exhibit of handmade quilts at the Museum of Fine Arts. The kids were so excited; they love the train. Gwen joined us at the train station. At the museum, Marcela looked at the quilts and I showed the kids paintings of kings and princes and princesses. They sat on the funny chairs in the exhibit rooms and then we looked at images from the American West and instruments of every kind. When we rode the train home, Noah didn't feel well and slept. Maxim and Gwen played games with Gwen's small plastic horses. In the afternoon, Catherine came by and played with the kids, she is running across the yard in this photograph. Maxim was hanging upside down on the swingset at back. Marcela was lowering the swing for Maxim. The goldfinches are back, as are the mourning doves who like to eat the spilled seed from under the birdfeeder. We have lit the barbeque and will soon eat mushrooms that Gordon gathered today, Chicken of the Woods, they are called. Delicious. It was a humid day and the kids have been sluggish and grumpy. This afternoon, I borrowed a ladder from Dan Simone and looked at the gutter on the north side of the house. Just as I was about to hammer down a shingle, I looked underneath and found a nest of wasps. Thank goodness for nervous instincts. We decided to paint our house this summer. We have finished the restoration of the downstairs windows. They have been scraped to the wood, filled, caulked and re-trimmed, sanded, and painted with a coat of primer. You can see that the upstairs windows have already had their plastic shutters removed and had their rotting trim removed, but they haven't been scraped. Nor has the door, which you cannot see. The siding will be a lightish green and the windows will be a pale beige, the basement will remain brick red. The kosmos growing under the window were started from seed given to us by our friend Anne. Marcela has started collecting this year's seeds for other friends. It will be a busy week ahead as we begin the the fall routine. We look forward to the coming season, though.

"Poor kids," Marcela says sympathetically as we're getting ready for bed. "They didn't get to go out in the yard today." We talked about it. Noah was out there for a few minutes. I watered the plants and moved everything back to its place, which is difficult to see in this night shot. But we just didn't get to the yard. We boiled corned beef and had more of our yellow tomatoes in salad greens. Our friends John and Lisa with their son Griffin, a fellow community school student and friend of Gwen and Maxim, came for dinner. After dinner Maxim came out of the playroom where Griffin and Noah were swinging drum sticks like weapons and wimpered, "Griffin doesn't want to play anything and I've given him five choices!" The boys marched by in cowboy hat and fireman's hat. I tried to encourage them to play the drums, but they wanted to play swords.
We laughed about the difference between boys and girls. I thought about putting the table in the backyard, where the swimming pool is in this shot. I thought about lighting the tiki torches and sitting outside in the night, but the kids were quietly watching a short video, so we ate the ice cream and finished the wine.
This plant, a jade tree, was given to me by the folks at Second Nature in 2002. It was small but healthy at the time. It has grown well since then, like our children and our growing roots.

August 12 - August 15, 2005
Ok. This isn't my back yard. This is a yard in Hartland, Vermont, just southeast of Woodstock. The pond is man made. But it holds lots of nibbling fish and frogs and turtles. Gordon, Marcela, Maxim, Gwen, and Noah are in a row boat in the thickest lillies, at the back of the view in this photograph. Gordon caught a turtle and showed it to the kids. Marie and Gordon bought this place from Marie's brother a few years ago. It is right next to paradise, even with the rain. We arrived on Friday night (8/12) and left Monday morning (8/15). We ate fresh tomatoes and homemade muffins. We found a newly hatched dragonfly hanging out on one of the reeds by the pond. Its wings hadn't come out yet.
Maxim swam, floating on her back and went far out to the deeper parts of the pond. She is becoming a confident swimmer. And she loves to spend time with her friend Gwen. Neither of them feel cold. They will swim in water and play in weather that leaves me wrapped up. When it rained on Sunday, Maxim, Noah, and Gwen ran around and celebrated outside. Noah was unusually naked for the cold here. He is more like me, easily chilled. But the chance to run around made him forget that he doesn't like his feet being wet or being nearly naked in the rain. And they ran and ran and ran. And we freed two bats from the house before leaving. It was nice to be in Vermont.

August 15 - August 18, 2005
Then two full days here. The surf was too dangerous for kids alone, but we played in the lapping tide and built sand castles later flattened by waves. No lawn to mow, no furniture or toys to move or clean up, no pool to empty. Just this enormous ocean. Noah seems to have his first girlfriend. He played all week with Esperanza, Steve and Gabby's almost three year old daughter. Every night we ate enormous amounts of food on the back deck and last night we made a campfire on the beach and roasted marshmallows.
Vacation backyards are often more fun than the ordinary yard we have in Maynard, but we all agreed that we missed our home and we were excited to arrive this afternoon. The yard looks good. You can tell that it rained. We feel that we have had nice summer, our second in Maynard.

To mow the lawn, everything has to be piled to one side, or in the sandbox. No pool today. It was even more humid than yesterday and the kids woke up from their naps unrested and a touch whiny. They gulped down juice and cucumber, cried a little bit, fought some, and started to get excited about our trip to Vermont. It is Maxim's best friend, Gwen, that we will be traveling with and her grandmother's house that we will stay at. The grass had gotten longer than I thought, especially in the places where it receives the most water, right in the center. I moved the cluster of plants, the slide, the ladder for the windows, and our plastic chairs, along with the hose into a narrow strip next to the south facing fence. We always use that reel mower. It does a nice job and doesn't add toxins to the air. Maxim and I bought more finch food for the bird feeder. The finches don't know it's full yet, but I suspect they will have figured it out before we return.

Everything is then moved to the other side of the yard or to its resting place - mostly outside the view of the camera. The cluster of plants moved back to their temporary home. We're almost ready to go. All we need now is to make a list of things for Catherine to take care of. Our bags are packed and our friends will be ready to go in about 45 minutes.

These flowers have grown vigorously along the back corner of our fence. Our neighbors called them weeds until they flowered and starting attracting butterflies and dragonflies. Now they call them daisy clusters. We think they look a little bit like galaxies from a distance. There were six or seven individual plants earlier in the summer, but now there are three, and they are nearing their end. Still, the dragonflies come. You have to be careful to mow around some of the shoots in the early spring, or these flowers will never come. We will try to cultivate them again next year; their seeds are everywhere now.

In the afternoon, when Marcela returned from work, the kids filled up the pool and played in the water for a little while. It was an extremely hot and humid day, which made everyone a little grumpy, but happy enough to wave hello when the camera came out. We still haven't mowed the lawn, but the lack of rain seems to be keeping it from growing too very much. I will mow it this afternoon. I was busy upstairs writing application letters for jobs I hope to get. I wanted to spend some time sitting in the beach chairs with Marcela, watching the kids play, but instead I removed the last of the plastic shutters and rotting trim from the upstairs windows. They are now ready to be scraped. We are painting our house this summer.
This morning, most things were still where they had been last night. The family moved inside, the pool got dumped, but those plants at the back, which are usually spread out around the front and back yard, still stand in a cluster. This way, our neighborhood helper, a lovely six year old named Catherine, can water them easily enough while we are away on vacation. We are going to Vermont this weekend and eastern Long Island early next week. August has been a busy visiting season. It is supposed to rain today or tonight, but they have been saying that for months now and we haven't had much more than a sprinkle and a short downpour one night. The grass stays green because of the swimming pool water poured on it several times a week, because of my children's play, because of our love for them.

We barbequed last night. Pork ribs. And ate fresh lettuce and golden cherry tomatoes from our garden. The kids played in the pool, sliding down the red and blue slide until most of the water had splashed out onto the ground. There had been bird poop on the swing, but Maxim had me scrape it off. We pulled the pile of toys out of the sandbox, barely visible to the left, so that the kids could play a little in the sand. This ended with Noah getting sand in his and his sister's eyes. I set up the beach chairs because sometimes Marcela and I sit and watch the children while they play and chat about our days. Yesterday I grilled and chatted with my Dad on the telephone. We lit the tiki torches, gifts from our best friends in Somerville. As dusk fell and the children had eaten, I poured out the swimming pool toward the brown patch near the grill, and turned over the slide so that the water would drain out of it. We need more food for the finch feeder hanging from the swingset. The lawn hasn't been mowed since July 31. We have allowed wildflowers to grow along the back fence. While we were away, a white morning glory shot up the stalk of one of the weed plants behind the maple twigs and trunk at the back and has begun to flower. It is a small yard, but quite enough for us right now.