For weeks I was looking forward to the weekend when the Thayns, Miriam, and the Fosters would be here. I love it when my children come home. Last Thursday they arrived and the days we spent together were wonderful. Originally the Thayn party planned to depart on Monday morning and the Fosters on Tuesday morning, but with a minimum of persuasion, the Thayns decided to stay an extra day. We spent that Monday having fun being together one more day. I got to do the chores with Hazel and June one more time. We all had one more great dinner together. We played a few more games. I got to cuddle Mabel one more time.
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| Sarah with a fruit tart she made for us. |
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| One last game - playing Ticket to Ride. |
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| The children's table at our last dinner together. |
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| The adult table. |
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| One last cuddle with Mabel. |
Tuesday morning came too soon. Our long weekend together seemed to have passed in a flash. I’ve related often in this journal how much I hate to say good-bye. This time as departure time neared we kept reminding each other that we’ll all be together again in eight weeks at the family reunion – and with even more family. That helped me cope a little, but not much. The good-byes still hurt. After everyone was gone, the house quickly settled into a sad, quiet slump. I went to school for half a day that afternoon, which kept my mind off things, but when I got home, the silent house was almost unbearable. There was no Hazel and June to help me do the chores. No Sarah busy in the kitchen making something delicious. No one waiting to play a game. No one to talk to. I fled to the garden where at least the hard work and the singing birds distracted me for a while. When Stacey got home we were subdued. It stayed that way for several days.
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| Good-bye to the Thayns and Miriam. |
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| Good-bye to the Fosters. |
On Thursday Stacey and I celebrated our 33rd anniversary. Well, we didn’t really do much to celebrate that day. On Saturday we went to the temple to commemorate the day. On our way home from the temple, we stopped in Canandaigua, New York, to tour the Sonnenberg Gardens. It was an overcast day and the gardens were in that not-so-impressive-in-between time – the spring flowers were mostly done and the summer flowers had just been planted and were tiny. But it was nice. We want to go back later in the summer when the gardens are at their peak. After that, we stopped at Denny’s for
lunch. We don’t eat out much and after lunch at Denny’s we remembered
why. We make better food for less money at home. So that was how we
celebrated our 33 years together – nothing extravagant, but that’s the
way we are. At first, 33 years might seem like a long time, but it isn’t
really. When I look back over the years at the adventures we’ve had,
the places we’ve been, the children and now the grandchildren that have
filled our lives with so much happiness and love, it all seems to have
gone by far too quickly. And the older I get, the faster time seems to
go.
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| At the temple on Saturday. |
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| The Japanese Garden at Sonnenberg. |
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| The rose garden - it will be beautiful in a month. |
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| Stacey in a grotto. |
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| A peony at Sonnenberg. |
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| The mansion house at Sonnenberg. |
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| A heron in one of the ponds at Sonnenberg. |
I did some planting out last week. I transplanted my cabbage, broccoli, and cauliflower plants out into the garden. I checked them after we got home from church this afternoon and found that slugs have already eaten some of them. I’ll have to get some slug killer right away. I also transplanted some of the flowers – snapdragons, pinks, and hollyhocks. They are all tiny, but should take off now that they are in the ground.
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| The lupines have started to bloom in my garden. |
Tomorrow is Memorial Day and for the first time in many years, we do not have a child marching in the parade with the high school band. In fact the day looks like it will be more normal than not. Stacey has to work. I’ll be home all by myself. I have a list of garden things I need to do. The weather looks iffy, there’s a high chance for rain, but I’ll do what I can.
This is the last week of school. I’m not scheduled to go in, which is usual for the last week. The teachers are giving final exams and turning in grades. So unless something unforeseen happens, I’m home for the summer now. I have plenty to keep me busy here. I have sign orders I need to work on. And I’ll get to start working on the long list of projects I’ve got lined up for the summer. Over the next few weeks I will tackle some big projects – painting the back porch (finally), finishing the walls in the stairs and upstairs hall (finally!), making alterations down in the barn. I will also do the spring cleaning here in the last days of spring. I will gut, clean, and reassemble rooms, wash windows, wipe down walls, scrub floors, clean out closets, and generally attempt to de-clutter the house. I will be working alone, but as long as I have music to work by, I’ll be fine. And then there is the garden and the orchard to attend to all summer. That’s an unending task. The weeds never stop growing. The pests never cease in their attacks. There’s always mowing and pruning and thinning. And I love doing it all. We're about to leave May behind and move into June and the summer and all the changes that come with it.
