spring

this is a lovely little screenprinted book my sis sent to me for my birthday. i decided to share some of the clever illustrations with you, especially those that reflect my mood lately...

i have been thoroughly enjoying getting outside with my camera, taking walks downtown for brunch, and basking in the sun this spring, but...

...it does come with a price.

approaching the end of another school year and i am deeply needing a...

alas there is no rest until june 2. 29 days of school left, and counting...

here are a few shots from around my yard and on the walk between my house and downtown:

i have a few single tulips that spring up every year. i really ought to plant some more bulbs to fill it in a bit. a single tulip seems a little depressing.

i found this winding vine-thing (honeysuckle maybe?) to be really curious. i like it.

blooming yard = happy black thumb!

despite my shameful neglect of my yard and my ominous past as a black-thumb plant-killer, the magnolia tree in our front yard has the most beautiful blooms. they only last a short while, so i ran outside with camera to capture the moment before the wind swept all of the petals away!

this is one of my favorite shots, but it was not a very pretty flower! the blooms almost begin to look burnt at the edges when they start to fall off, makes for very curious-looking photos!

loving my new camera and it's ability to zoom in very close! this is inside the magnolia bloom, you can actually see the pollen!

i did take some other fun pictures from around the yard, but they're still on the camera so that will have to be for another day...

goodbye to summer/favorite things

i don't think school should start until it is at MOST 99 degrees, as a general rule. mainly that is because i don't think anyone should be required to do ANYTHING when it is 106 degrees outside. however, no one asked for my opinion and school has resumed regardless. i've decided that you probably want to know about my favorite things of summer, so here you go:

*world cup 2010 - the usa team created many exciting moments (there was much screaming, near-pants-peeing, and elevation of heart rates!) and the event was hosted in south africa (who provided a great opening celebration, awesome music, noisy bubuzelas, and a dancing desmond tutu). what more could a person ask for?? favorite player, you might ask? dempsey. he was always bleeding or falling or crashing into something or someone. scrappy.

*daily lap swimming at the outdoor aquatic center in lawrence...ahhhh. first of all, humans feel weightless in water...all together enjoyable feeling. secondly, it's cool in the water and it's not so cool in the not-water. thirdly, i discovered i can still actually get a tan! i thought i had lost my childhood talent for getting really brown and freckly, but not so. fourthly, i just miss swimming. i lived at the pool as a kid. we lived a block away from the city park pool in manhattan. we spent the mornings there for swim lessons, came home for lunch, and rushed back after lunch for the afternoon. it was like an extension of our backyard.

*planting a garden and watching it not die. by far my greatest accomplishment so far in life. i have not tackled anything of consequence yet, like vegetables, but i've managed to keep marigolds, roses, russian sage, lambs ear, hibiscus, and thyme alive for the summer, even despite the drought. i also have a peppermint and avocado plant that are not-quite-dead, but aren't looking great so i'm not holding my breath there.

*reading. my great summer pastime. I managed to read 4 novels, a memoir, a gardening book, 3 or four textbooks, and start a few others. i especially enjoyed finishing the girl with the dragon tattoo series (although i'm hesitant to recommend it because i never know what other people will like, or dislike, and how sensitive people may be to things that i'm not as affected by, so it's awkward...so that's my disclaimer for recommending books, and movies for that matter) and reading brideshead revisited by evelyn waugh. as always, i bought and stockpiled more books than i was able to read in one summer, but i'm holding out great hope that i will accomplish more reading during this school year now that i'm a seasoned veteran and not enduring the stress of a first year teacher. haha.

*colorado/buchheister reunion: family, hiking, mountains, biking, swimming, settlers of catan, visiting Carrie, my oldest (as in longest time known) dear friend, and no humidity. enough said.

*grilling. i just like it. i like grilling peaches and eating them with vanilla ice cream. i like grilling corn on the cob. plus, instead of me getting sweaty over a hot stove or boiling water in the kitchen, kirk gets the pleasure of roasting out in the great outdoors while he "mans" the grill.

well, there are a few of my favorite things of summer. i bet you can't guess what my absolute favorite thing of fall is! props to whomever leaves a comment with the correct answer!

out on the town with tiff...and antique/junk/thriftstore finds

tiffany and i went antique store shopping and had lunch on friday for a nice little girls day out on the town. i picked up this cute little globe (i think percival approves...he's currently sleeping on the base of it). tiff and i discussed pieces of furniture that we have "issues" with, like no matter how full your house is, or how many of this item you may already have, you can't keep yourself from being pulled toward these pieces anyway. for me, it's antique dressers, chairs, and industrial furniture (file cabinets, metal desks, etc). and bookshelves! but at least the bookshelves serve a purpose for my other "habit." i'm currently having to stack books 2-deep in my over-six-feet-tall bookshelf, not to mention the hundreds of books that i've taken to school so that i can further hide my habit from kirk. hehe. one of the projects that i want to do is turn my big hall closet into a library, as you see here from real simple magazine:

(sorry about the blurry phone-pics...my camera is in the shop being cleaned...let's just pretend that i took these hazy, vintagey-looking photos on purpose! i'm a creative genious!).

anyway, doesn't that library look wonderful?? i told kirk that he might as well get over it, because i'm never going to stop buying

books, and i just don't take enough books to sell back to half price bookstore (love!) to keep up with my habit. and as far as vices go, it could be worse...

anyway, i've had a bit of antique/ junkshop/thriftstore/craigslist luck lately. here are more of my finds:

1. farm table (from locust street marketplace antique store in lawrence) and white enamel lamp shades ($5 each at habitat restore)

2. another pic of the globe (notice it still has USSR on it! and all these wonky colonial names in africa).

3. cute light blue metal cabinet (locker-style) with shelves...eventually for our bathroom, once we get around to that project! ($75 craigslist, from a person who turned out to be my friend who moved to tejas...so it at least stayed in the "family")

4. handy red wheel barrow ($10 craigslist...by the way, you would be amazed how many people on craigslist think it's wheel barrel. nope, sorry folks.)

5. the last pic is of my avocado plant that i found growing in my compost pile from a discarded avocado pit! i decided to pot it and see what happens! not really a "thriftstore find" but i was really excited that i caused something to grow without even trying so i decided to post it! ok, i realize that god actually caused it to grow. stop stealing my thunder!

new green things

well, we had to buy a new car. kirk was in a little bit of a wreck last week, he's fine, but the car is not.

so, we did a little research (and by we, i mean kirk), narrowed it down to a few cars to test-drive, test-drove (and experienced a very snobby, insulting sales person at one place - she managed to insult my name, my job, and my personality in only a 20 minute time frame!), and today we bought a car (not from the snobby insulting lady). we decided on the prius. makes the most sense for all the driving i have to do, it's super reliable, and it comes highly recommended (thank you, meesh!). so, i can add that to my checklist of green-living changes i've made! get this: the color is called pearly blizzard, or snowy pearls, or something. it's basically white.

in other green news:

*kirk and i are now composting. we have yet to use any of it for our yard, it's not fully decomposed yet. i'm bothered by our "style" as really it's just a big pile of junk behind our garage. i really would rather have a compost bin or some sort of enclosed area. oh well. also, we're learning about what can and can't go into the bin. we eat a tone of citrus fruit, but it's not good to put to much citrus into the heap as it makes the soil very acidic (makes sense). worms don't like acid so they don't do the work they need to do to decompose the compostables. but, coffee grounds are good and we've even been given the "green light" (hahaha) to pilfer big bags of grounds from the alley behind our fave coffee shop (thank you to casey's old establishment and shannon's current). their flowers look way better than mine so hopefully there's something magic in these grounds! if you are a compost-er you should leave a comment with tips, i'm still just an infant.

*i had some sort of creature or fungi attacking my flowers (i know, i just planted them, like, 2 minutes ago) and some of the rose bush leaves were turning yellow as well as something was chewing through my lambs ear leaves and hibiscus leaves. so, a friend (thank you sara p!) recommended spraying the plants with dish soap diluted with water to kill any pests. i reused a washed out stain-remover bottle to make the concoction and sprayed away! i didn't kill my plants (i'll admit, i was a little worried that they would turn brown and wilt immediately...just my luck), so we'll see if it actually works to repel the pests! so, a natural, chemical-free solution in a reused bottle...2 gold stars for me.

planting

so, i realize that late june, early july is just about the WORST time to start planting flowers, but... well i did it anyway. i only have time to work on my yard during the summer and i spent the first month of summer stewing about what to plant and where and how would i avoid killing everything???? here's some pics of what i planted in the front little flower bed:

the lavender-looking plant is called russian sage...i really wanted to do a mix of lavender and thyme, but it's too late to find lavender anywhere and it can be rather persnickety so probably not a good idea for this fearful gardner. i planted about a bazillion marigolds because they are supposed to keep mosquitos at bay. ironically, i didn't think about the fact that peat moss (which we mixed in with the soil) attracts flies (because it's basically poo), so... one pest avoided, an infestation of the other. i'll learn. next time, i'll just mix sand into the soil. i think the roses are knock-out roses, but not sure. the tag said "easy-care" roses, which i'm pretty certain is not the latin name. hehe. they look like knock-out roses, right? and knock-out roses are very easy to care for.

leaving for boulder, co tomorrow so my friend shannon will be watching after the boys (cecil and percival) and the flowers. thanks, shannon!

i'm back!

i've decided to take a cue from my friend, shannon d, and choose 15 random things to tell you all (you all...wishfully thinking that i still have some friends that occasionally check my blog to see if i'm still living) about my life in the months since i've fallen off the blog-wagon (hahahaha).

1. percival had a near-death experience but is back to his thriving percival-self minus a functioning tail. whew! kirk says he looks like snuffleupagus because his tail just kind of hangs. very sad.

2. i successfully survived my first year of teaching!

3. i am OBSESSED with the world cup. i've been watching as many games as possible and trying to pretend that i'm studying while i watch. i had to do a case study and conduct observations for an hour for one of my classes in an area of interest, so i decided to observe spain vs. portugal! i kept a stats sheet and wrote a research question about whether cristiano ronaldo is a "selfish" player. my hypothesis was that he would take more shots and have fewer assists than anyone else on his team. my hypotheses were correct.

4. i've "run" almost everyday since summer began. and by run i mean shuffle. me running + humidity = me not really running, per se.

5. i have not made much of a dent in my summer reading stack.

6. i planted flowers! and they are still living! mostly. i'll post pics soon!

7. i think i may have broken my finger in, like, march or february. it involved trying to carry too much to my car on my way to work at 6:00 am (ick), dropping things, trying to catch things, and jamming my finger in the process. so, i can't fit my rings on my finger anymore. sad. and it's still hard to grip things with my finger. i know i should go to my chiropractor to get it fixed, but now i'm just afraid he's going to have to re-break things which makes me want to vomit.

8. i'm getting a new camera! i don't know when, but i'm excited!

9. i have this problem when i run that my calves start to get really tight and then it starts to spread down to my achilles tendon area and across to my shins and it just becomes horrendously painful! i don't know what is going on. any runners out there, please tell me what to do! i've tried stretching better, using those band-y things to stretch my calves, eating potassium sources before or after the run, warming up for longer, altering my stride, new shoes, icing my shins, massage (ouch, that really hurt! having my shins massaged is NOT fun)...

10. i'm not losing any seniors this year, and i'm gaining something like 7 freshman! that's a whole lot of freshman! teachers, you know what i'm saying.

11. i'm getting a new classroom next year. it's bigger, which is good.

12. i had about 13 zillion things that i was saving for summer to do, or plan, or re-work, or fix, or whatever, and summer is just FLYING by. how does that happen?!?

13. resource books i've found very useful lately: garden anywhere by alys fowler, national geographic photography field guide, voices of protest by i can't remember who (for teaching), no time to garden by anne swithinbank, and runner's world complete book of running.

14. i have an antique dresser sitting in my basement waiting to be sanded and painted! as soon as that project is complete i'll post pics. trying to decide what direction to go with new hardware for the drawer pulls. the dresser is a short 2-drawer with a curved front. i'm painting it a bright, glossy yellow. suggestions for hardware??

15. i have been strangely silent on all things football, basketball, etc. and the formerly-big-12-but-still-called-big-12. mostly because i don't even know what to say. i hate texas now more than ever. they have quite a little dictatorship going. sassy move, nebraska. sassy.