June 2007 Archives
Thanks to some cross-country collaboration a box of fresh fruits and vegetables arrived on a flight Saturday morning and the trusty Warbelow's agent dropped it off all the way out at our house for me. Keith whipped up a pretty great birthday morning spread.
Later I made a cake and tried my hand at decorative frosting. It was an interesting effort.
Here's to 26!
On the first day of my summer vacation I was awakened by a phone call that some of my preschoolers wanted to come visit, a good sign that there won't be any getting bored for me this summer. Over the first five days of vacation no less than six kids ended up "visiting." A few action shots show the fun we had:
This afternoon noon I'll hug Danielle goodbye with tears. May/June is the leaving time arround here as people affliated with the school take off. The Neuberts made a speedy departure a few weeks ago, our principal took her final flight out recently, I dropped the kindergarten teacher off for her flight out the day after school ended.
Danielle, who has taught in the middle school and high school for three years is moving on to teach at a charter school for immigrants in Colorado, closer to home. She has such exciting prospects, but its very hard to let her go.
Just last week we were playing Hearts, and losing her wits for a moment, Danielle led the Ace of Spades while gleefully shouting "let's get this party started." As the Queen was dropped on her trick Keith, Cliff and I rolled on the floor in tears. There are many Danielle moments like these that we will all miss lots.
Good luck Danielle, One Love.
My arm after a session in the garden, all exposed skin was painted with smashed mosquitoes and my own blood. Thankfully I inherited a low level of mosquito bite reaction, so I don't get itchy, and the pests don't like me too much anyways. But they are there, and they won't let you forget it. And really the worst is the one mosquito that is in the house at night. All the hundreds that swarm during the evening around you outside don't hold a candle to the one that buzzes in your ear just as you fall asleep, promising to bite any flesh you dare stick out from under the blanket as you sleep.
When I reported I was trying to dig up a fifteen by eight foot rectangle of topsoil for my garden, my dad commented that it would be a piece of cake, as long as there weren't too many roots or rocks....well, dad:
I did manage to rip all the sod off the shallow gravel bed, and then set about building the first of two raised beds, using fallen timber from behind our house. Spruce poles to build up the side walls, willow stakes to hold everything upright. Using only man-power I got the frame together pretty quick.
Then I started crumbling and sorting the sod by hand. Grabbing handfuls of the sod I removed the rocks and roots and crushed the hardpack into loose clumps. This project would take me three weeks to finish...actually still a couple feet to fill yet. By the way, the weather in late May/early June reached highs of 88 degrees here. (120 degrees warmer than three and a half months ago).
More photos to follow, I've got most of this first box filled with soil, and seeded with morning glories, snow peas, beets, chives, basil, mesclun mix, and lettuce. Squash will take up the final couple of feet and then I'm off to build the second of the boxes and find a quicker way to till the earth. One handful at a time is perhaps quaint...but I'm running out of growing season. Got to get the seeds in the ground.
A woman in town is a cermacist and has a stuido here. Her duaghter is in my preschool, and her husband is the magistrate, and teaches a couple small engine and machine classes. He's also the Gwichyaa Gwichci'in tribe's second-chief. She also teaches one course a year as part of the vocational education program through the high school, community members are invited to take the course as well, and can count it as college credit through the UA system.
Keith took the ceramics class this spring and turned out some, many, bowls. This is one series of many.
