starting to live again

It was a glorious weekend; sadly, now almost over.  The sky threatened thunderstorms all weekend with intermittent storm clouds, thunder rumbling in the distance, but no rain, and temperature of around mid-80 so it seems summer-ish.  The locust trees smell like heaven and my rhododendrons have exploded into bloom this week.  

Locust smells like heaven

   

The time is here for planting flowers and getting things going in our garden.  I made two trips to the greenhouse.  The first time, I purchased conservatively and left with a single flat of flowers.  Those I set out this morning; impatiens around our mailbox, and begonias in a strawberry jar.  So, there’s a space where we took out a tree and it gets SUN there!!  Sun is rare in our yard because of all the trees.  This is where my new flower bed will go, but I sincerely doubt that with Gracie’s addiction to digging and destruction, and the voracious appetite of all the deer in this area, my flower bed has much chance of being even 5% as beautiful as I imagine.  Someone has offered to help me install a 5-foot tall wire fence around my new garden....but that really detracts from the beauty aspect of the garden.  We have a 6-foot fence around out vegetable garden.  Anyway, I went back to greenhouse this afternoon and left with three flats of glorious flowers for sun – zinnias, cosmos, snapdragons, alyssum, and petunias.  I would have bought more but common sense kicked in...it’s going to be a lot of work to plant all those.

Lost all sanity at the greenhouse

 

This weekend, Someone and I played golf and saw the Star Trek movie together.  The whole family played tennis doubles together.  I planted flowers, we grilled out, I did some housework, caught up laundry, and played my guitar.  It was awesome to get to do so much in two days.  It reminds me of my life before my grandparents got so bad off.  Shortly after my grandmother died, I launched into school.   There hasn’t been a weekend like this one for at least 7 years! 

The signature forms for my dissertation are in route for committee and dean signatures.  I won’t be officially finished until the dean signs off on my dissertation, but I’m making tentative plans for graduation.  It’s funny that several times last week I dreamed I was presenting my defense...in my sleep, I’m espousing significance levels and r-values, and explaining scatterplots.  Some people dream about Brad Pitt or George Clooney, but I dream about graphing data.        

Tomorrow it’s back to the salt mine.  I’m co-managing a huge project that has all the signs of failure.  It’s hard to stay positive when the handwriting is on the wall (so to speak).  On Friday, we will have a definite go or no-go decision.  Meanwhile, 11 people will continue to waste a significant amount of time this week.  Sometimes I wonder how we manage to stay in business!     

very important meeting notes