Kathleen's Korner at TheStidhams.com

I wasn’t able to write last night — got some kind of nasty bug in the afternoon and it really laid me out flat.  I am still tired, but wanted to give my report.

The elderberries are almost all eaten. As predicted, the flickers and other birds truly have enjoyed them.  The dahlias began to bloom on the 20th, we have the bright yellow and one purple already!  The peaches all fell off the one tree that wasn’t damaged by curl this year, so no peaches will be in our yard this year; but we should get a good (though small) crop of plums.  The cherries are starting to get ripe, but I am afraid the birds are getting to them just as they are almost sweet…

But the strawberries, raspberries and the trailing blackberries are coming in and they are delicious.

The roses all look so lovely — and sweetwilliams, poppies, and various wildflowers are all over again.

It has been pleasant weather the last couple days, and the forecast is for warm and sunny for the foreseeable future.  We are ready for it now!  🙂

And the children came home for the summer today, the bus dropped them off at the end of the driveway and Lucky waited to meet them.  An excellent start to our garden season.

Well, I have been enjoying painting silk scarves. Think I am getting the hang of it! Hope to be able to sell some at some point. They take longer to make than cards, but are a nice change of pace.

M’s last concert in school is tomorrow night. G will hand out programs, and T and I will help in other ways. He will also play for the 8th grade promotion ceremony next week. We are all looking forward to hearing him play.

G is looking forward to summer vacation, I can tell! He is so full of energy… and he will be taking two classes at the summer music camp in town: violin and trombone…

M will not be going to music camp. He will have oral surgery on the 28th, and braces will also be put on his teeth. We don’t know for sure what it will be like, but are anticipating he will be unable to play the trumpet for a while. He has some new piano music to try, and some books that he will enjoy as well.

Later in July, we will be taking the boys to Vancouver Island for their first international trip. Then they will have Y-CAMP the last week of July, and all of August for excursions closer to home. Hope to see my grandfather and his partner at some point this summer also, but not sure when or how. It is a longer trip than we can easily make now that we have the bigger dog.

I think that’s the big part of the recent news. Life continues, mostly good with a few challenges to make things interesting. May your life be as pleasant.

Hadn’t realized how long I had left off updates… probably a good thing since it meant life was relatively quiet!

The weather the week after Mother’s Day was quite warm – August weather, really; this last week has been cool and rainy — more like March or April. I guess it all evens out to just about right for this time of year!

We have had a good month, all in all — however our well is not working at the moment. One of the electrical components appears to have faulted sometime Saturday evening, and so we have been drinking bottled water and using out emergency water supply for dishes and hands — and buckets of water to flush… somewhat primitive, but since we still have power we can cope! Of course the well company was closed for Sunday and the holiday and most of the hardware stores as well. We’ll get the replacement parts tomorrow, we hope. Keeping our fingers crossed that this was the only part that failed, we don’t think the pump itself needs replacing.

Tomorrow T goes on a field trip with G’s class, and we have about four more weeks of school before summer vacation. Will do a garden update in my next post…