One [fill in the blank] week
That lawn not mowed in two weeks now. The pool in need of shock. The front lawn, now a tangle of spurge and flowering grasses so thick I worry that my reel mower won't cut it. This week has been a blur. Both of us were teaching every day. The kids were attending Art Camp downtown. We piled into the car every morning at 7:45, me to school, Maxim, Noah, and Marcela to the Art Center. I taught class from 9:00-12:00 and then graded and prepared for a new class the next day. I took my class on several field trips around the city this week. We also (the class and I) talked about the geology of Pinellas County and systems as a way of understanding the city. Marcela helped 5-12 year olds from the middle-upper-crust of St. Petersburg sketch and assemble several thousand pieces of art, a job she came to enjoy more when she realized they only wanted 'camp' not 'school.' Maxim and Noah each made a dozen or so pieces of their own, which they toted home in decorative bags yesterday. We piled back into the car each afternoon and returned home where the kids would swim or play while we assembled dinner and prepared for the next day without really recovering from the one just completed. Now it is Saturday and we sleep later and ignore the to do list that won't go away just a little bit longer. But we have much to do. Next week will be one of transition. The kids start school on Tuesday. Marcela has orientation for graduate school on Thursday. And I have another full week of field trips and classes. As an aside, I got nearly perfect student evaluations for my environmental history course last semester. That felt good. And now, to the lists...

Busy week

I left my camera at school, so this photo of the new orange purslane plant that we bought last week and hung on the front porch will have to suffice. This has been a week of beginnings; Marcela began teaching her art class at The Art Center, three classes a day. The kids went to their own classes, and Deontae, one of our neighbor's kids, joined them. On Thursday I began day long workshops to prepare for Autumn Term, the three-week freshman course that all Eckerd freshmen attend before school starts in September. I am teaching a course called Urban Ecology in Florida: St. Petersburg, and that began yesterday morning (yes, Saturday) at 9:00 a.m. It also marked the beginning of a new friendship for Maxim, who met Emilie Novo Riesing, the daughter of graduate school friends of mine who were visiting from Germany. They are both seven years old. Emilie speaks German and Spanish, but also understands English. Maxim speaks English and little Spanish, but understands Spanish well. They managed quite well. We decided that we would play exchange when they both got to high school in a few years. One year with Emilie here in the United States, and one year with Maxim there in Germany. Maribel is from Galicia, in Spain, and we expect that we will see them next in Spain some summer in the not too distant future. This week was also the beginning of my 43rd year. Coincidentally, Maribel was born precisely one year to the day after me and so it marked the beginning of her 42nd year. Marcela made us a cake and the kids bought me a Red Sox t-shirt and Red Sox "born into it" magnet. We put the kids to bed and then sat up until 1:00 solving the problems of the world and sharing parenting stories and tips. Of course, this left me five hours to sleep before I had t wake up and prepare for the first class. So, also the week of the beginning of not enough sleep. This week we managed to get Noah up onto a bicycle, mostly by giving him one that had belonged to Maxim and custom painting it. So, hopefully, this is the beginning of Noah's learning how to ride a bicycle. He seems to enjoy it so far. With the training wheels all the way up, the bike is very stable, which he liked, except when you turn, which he doesn't. The plan is to gradually raise the training wheels, introducing more and more wobble, and forcing him to stay balanced. Noah did feel left out this week as Maxim spent the day with Emilie and her family and there were no boys for him to play with. Last night he cried a lot about that. Ellen, the youngest, is only three, so Noah couldn't really figure out how to play with her. We are bracing ourselves for an even busier week ahead as classes are now full time for all of us. This will be true until December. So this is the beginning of school, for real. The Novo Reisings left for the beginning of their journey across the American South,this tenth anniversary of their wedding. And so for them, we wish a most delightful second decade of marriage just as it gets under way. More again next week.

July's End

Mom said that I had to start putting up something again. These days, no one knows you exist if you don't post to the web. So, ok, I'll post. Hello. Missed you. This is the backyard. You'll notice the pool. More green, as it has rained a great deal since I last posted. The plastic table is often out there on the grass. It serves more as a towel hanger than a regular sitting place. The thing about Florida grass is that it attracts all kinds of Florida insects and you often get bitten by annoying little flies if you sit there for too long. But we do it sometimes. Especially at night when it has cooled down and we can light the tiki torches. We have done a lot of work on the yard this summer. You can't see any of it in the photo above. Except for the new grass we seeded, which you can't really see, but is there. The flowers you see on the right side have been there since last March and April. Many of them were grown from seed. The kids are two weeks from starting school. They will spend them participating in Art Camp at the The Art Center, where Marcela is also going to be, teaching classes on bookmaking. They are a little bored this past week. We have seen some friends and done a lot, going to visit a new earth friendly home being built in Manatee County south of here, and watching a terrific story teller at the public library, but they are done. They are ready for kids their own age and structure and all the trapping of school. Who can blame them? Yesterday Marcela and I transplanted a bunch of flowers that the kids and I found at a roadside flower stand, cheap of course. I've put photos at our fickr site. The summer, so far, has been mild, a few real scorchers here and there, but nothing too persistent.  More next week!

Home Again

Our return to summer has been busy. We had quite a bit of yard work to do and then a pool to install. You can see the progress at my Flickr page. Watch a slideshow of Pool. The kids were great about it all. The process was a long one that began with the removal of sod from a fifteen foot diameter circle, was followed by the leveling of the underlying sand, and ended with the oh-so-gradual filling of the enormous pool with water. The kids have been happy to be home. Us, too. Although we are busier than we had been during the past month. But we are happy to be in our own space again. Things will be busy starting in just a few weeks, so we want to get ready for the chaos by laying a good foundation in our homecoming. Literally. We are planning to have a slab poured underneath the carport roof where, one day, a brick walled addition will extend. Both of the kids seem to have grown up in an accelerated way in Buenos Aires. They seem more settled somehow.

The semester has come to its close again. Three and a half months of utter insanity. And then closure. The kids finish up first grade and pre-k respectively and look forward to the prospects of attending the same school next year, Lakewood Elementary, for the first time ever. Marcela taught her first Eckerd course and survived. She also completed a big project for the Ringling Museum, including rebinding four giant books. She also began substitute teaching in the nearby elementary schools. There is not enough time to do all of the things we plan, but we certainly find a way to stay busy. Last weekend we had a bunch of students and faculty from the school for a barbeque. Tomorrow I go to California for the weekend. In two weeks we leave for Argentina where we will spend four weeks getting caught up with Buenos Aires. Life is moving past at a seemingly rapid rate. Transitions are fleeting and then on to the next thing. We adopted kittens last fall and now they are grown almost into cats. And the house has been rid of all of its small and medium sized anole lizards. We planted a lemon tree and several flowering bushes. We also planted a magnolia. In back our gaillarda and beach sunflowers have each begun to flower. Plants started as seeds last fall. Now coloring the west side. We have put in three ferns on the east side. We'll see how they fare. I screened in the front porch, which has moved many of the kids toys up there and shifted the way they play. And we plan to lay a slab under the carport and put in some temporary walls.

We will be home all July -- hot! And back to school again at the start of August. I must write this summer.

New gardens. Plans for this type of deck, and then plans for a different type. The back yard hasn't changed much in the past year, but our ideas for it keep changing. We have priced out concrete slabs, but just this morning Marcela said she thought a wood deck would do just fine. We have strung a clothes line and keep threatening to put up a hammock. Marcela has planted beans and squash, and we have dispersed seeds from a colorful native flower and transplanted a few butterfly bushes. In the clay pots I gave her for her birthday, Marcela has started tomatoes and broccoli and wild flowers. The rains came in January and intermittently in February, and things are sprouting and starting to grow. The past week has been cold, which seems to have slowed everything. Something eats the plants. We don't know what, but it has an appetite. On the east side we have a fern started and an orchid (if it lives!). In back we have started a small yard waste compost and I am growing worried that we have to do some expensive trimming of the Eucalyptus. The kids play out here a lot, as do the cats. Maxim still loves her pretend kitchen and Noah builds blocks on the linoleum surface, pretend towns where his matchbox cars can drive and race. It has been busy, but the spring warmth is upon us.