Herb and Flower Festival ... check.

The twelfth (?) annual Herb and Flower Festival was a smashing success. The bad weather we were told to expect held off until 2:00 (festival ended at 3:00 anyway) and even then was just a quick shower.

Anne and I had our free times at the beginning this year, instead of at the end, so we had a greater selection (flip side: no one was frantic to sell off plants rather than pack them back up, so we had to pay full price.) We bought three trees and about a dozen various perennials, including a couple new lilies, some extremely cool wrought metal stuff including a planter shaped like a turkey, and miscellaneous herbal creams and the like.

Our centerpiece was a hit, our cookies declared some of the best. All in all, it was a wonderful day, as always.

Now, too tired to do any actual work, we can start figuring out where to plant our new stuff, shift some of the other stuff around...gardening dreams. *happy sigh*

check list

-mow dahlia-woman's lawn ... check
-fill prescriptions ... check
- pick up dogs ... check
- do drugstore deliveries ... check
- touch up roots ... check
- attend graduation w/ no tears .... check (well, one minor puddle, but no actual tears)
-make lavender shortbread cookies ... check and...
- create centerpiece ... check (wooden shoes filled w/ sedums, twisted grass, furry thyme and portulaca)


Done! On to the Herb and Flower Fest!

The votes are tallied...

and the party was, in fact, a success. The guests did have a good time (including the four who were still here this morning), the food was good and plentiful, the fire was fun to sit around and nothing else (barn, house, etc.) was inadvertently ignited, no one was seriously or permanently injured in the moon bounce thingee. One kid stepped on a "rusty nail" - which may or may not have been a nail, could have been any sharp thing, including hay - and had to be reassured at 3:00 a.m. that she, noticing some swelling around her mouth, did not have tetanus/lockjaw and was probably simply allergic to the strawberries in the fruit salad.

I was up at the crack of dawn, or nearly so, to take down the strings of lights (which never did stay lit properly) and scrape the wax off the rental tables (from the candles used for illumination after the failure of the lights.) Gathered up all the napkins that had blown around, dealt with trash and recyclables, folded the chairs and in general picked up and put away. The mess was minor, considering.

Tomorrow evening is the graduation proper - thank gods all I have to do is show up. Tomorrow afternoon I have to deliver tables for Saturday's Herb and Flower Festival, as I seem to have the only pick-up in Cornell Cooperative Extension existence with an eight foot bed, perfect to carry eight foot tables. At some point I should generate a plate of herbal (probably lavender) shortbread and ...some sort of centerpiece.

But first I'm going to try to take a nap, assuming the carpet guys/rental guys/dumpster guys (our world is totally crammed with guys these days) don't make that impossible. But I'm going to try. This celebration stuff is murder.

Okay, so maybe I was right the first time....

According to Alex, the party is a complete bust - it looked to me like it was going well, and everyone was having fun. Besides, the thing I remember about being a teenager at outside-at-night parties was just the wandering around outside in the dark with other people, the feeling of wild/free. But maybe it's not like that anymore. Or maybe Alex is over-wrought. Or something.

And my husband is totally anti-me now. Not sure what sins or series of sins I've committed this time, but apparently I don't babysit actively enough (I thought kids who were leaving for the armed forces next week, old enough to get married, etc., were old enough to have a small bonfire without a watchman) and poor John once again does all the work. ALL the work. While evil and lax me sits upstairs in my bedroom writing this. Yeah well. Must be difficult to be married to someone who just isn't up to one's standards and is such a constant disappointment.

And like not being 100% ready for this party, I find I just don't care about that either. I've done the whole mea culpa deal, done it to death, and I'm just not that into beating up on myself anymore. I'm learning, finally, to let go, to take what I need when I need it - food, rest, time, whatever - and be a little easier on myself. And if it doesn't suit, tough. We'll get by, or we won't, but either way it'll all sort itself out. All these people - guests and family members - know where the door is. Hope they don't let it hit them on their way out.

I was wrong - I LOVE parties!!

It's the people I can't stand. I love the prep, the cooking of fun stuff, the decorating, and all the fuss. I'm right there, right up until the people arrive.

Okay, I was good for a while even after that. I was up on the deck turning out hamburgers and hot dogs, and the salads and condiments were all in place. I was good. Then the people decided it would be nice to interact with me, for cryin' out loud.

I tented my remaining food, turned off my burners and declared my work finished. John can take over with overseeing the bonfire and the fireworks (!) while I retreat to the safety of the house.

After a while, I may put in a brief appearance to bring out the Congratulations Alex! cake. Then I'm slinking off inside and staying there. My kids are 20 almost and 18 - surely they can police their own buddies, fold up the leftover food, etc. And I can get at least a partial night's sleep, since coming up very soon is the Herb and Flower Festival, for which I must cook (herb shortbread - yay!) and make a centerpiece and tote the tables around in the pick-up.

That's to look forward to, along with all the party leftovers. It's all good, yes it is. Summer. Yes indeed.

OK, this is pretty silly even for my family.

So Alex's graduation party, to which she has invited something like 90 people, is tomorrow. And she's painting the dining room today. We have only vague plans concerning food (after I got over cackling wildly at my to-do list, which appeared to contain the item "talk to Alex about men" - actually "talk to Alex about menu" - and then promptly lost) and I think I'm supposed to make a cake of some sort. We do appear to have a moon bounce arriving sometime tomorrow morning, however, which is a good thing...assuming the guys get the lawn/field sufficiently mown.

We had planned magnificently to impress everyone (yeah) with our new living room sofa...which won't arrive for another four weeks...and our new living room carpet...which was supposed to be here today, but in fact is still in Jersey and won't make an appearance until Thursday (when, I hope to God but am not counting on, all the guests will be gone.) The TV man is the only person I'm actually expecting to be here tomorrow morning, to fix/replace the satellite receiver that got clobbered by lightning the other week. (And if I have to listen to DirectTV's tech support "I'm sure this is very frustrating for you" speech just one more time....)

I never did get all the gardens fixed up, but the ones closest to the party (and not under threat of the ever-present bees) look good. Maybe I'll run out tomorrow morning and buy some fluffy annuals to sprucew the place up. Since the hippo pond (alas) is in the path of the proposed sunroom, it isn't even dredged for the year yet; we just hope no one notices its little algae-fied self there in the corner in the tall weeds.

Alex wants traditional American cookout fare - hotdogs, hamburgers, etc., but this is made difficult by the fact that we have no idea how many people will show up - all the invitees have massive (Catholic) families and may/may not bring them. So, dinner for 10 or 100? Who knows? I've also been informed that Central New Yorkers do not eat potato salad (wha? no potato salad at the traditional American etc.?) They apparently prefer pasta salad, which I cannot abide and certainly do not want lingering in my fridge for days because we figured on dinner for fifty and got fifteen. And there's still the cake...I guess it should say "Congratulations Alex!!", although the temptation to put something really ...fun...on it instead is quite strong.

My response to all this is to buy books on Amazon - Brian, our UPS guy, is making almost daily trips out here, between my books and Alex buying grad gifts for all her various pals. Elizabeth Goudge's three volume saga of the Eliot family, four books on pre-Raphaelite art, a book on repairing stairways, one by my friend Jack Elinsky (not from Amazon, but from Rampart Press), a missing Cannell paperback - too many, and it isn't as though we had room for more books, or even for what we already have here.

Ooh, Brian just left - wonder what that's about??

I'm hiding out upstairs, wondering if there's any possibility whatsoever that I'd be allowed to sleep for an hour, or, ideally, until the thing is over. I don't like parties in general (although I usually think the prep and cooking is fun) and I don't like parents much in any circumstance. But I suppose I ought to go clean up the living room or generate a list or bake the accursed cake or...something useful. *sigh*

Then Friday is the actual graduation ceremony (at a church - thank you SO much for that *grumble*) and yet another ending. I know, I know - endings are just inverted beginnings, or some such nonsense. It's like telling someone who's going through some form of hell that it's a learning experience they will some day appreciate. I'm sure it is, but at the moment, well, it sucks with a pretty stiff vacuum. I need time, maybe, to assimilate some of these changes before moving on to the next one (booting Joe Gunn out of the house in Media, selling the house, disposing of the goods, all that still awaits) but that just never seems to be an option. I feel like I'm going over the falls without my barrel.

*knock knock* "Who's there?" "It's not the cake."

Whew!

Just a breaker, not fried electrical wiring.

Still...I kind of liked that tree, and I don't have a lot of hope for its survival.

And I feel sorry for Anne - she's such a weather fanatic, and when lightning strikes a few feet from her head, she's not here to see it.

Excitement on the Hill!

Okay, kids, let this be a lesson to you: it CAN happen to you!

Getting struck by lightning, that is.

After the heat (up to 94 degrees, which is unheard of in Central New York) of the last few days, we're supposed to be getting a cooler spell, ushered in by strong storms. Okay, a little thunder, some far away lightning, maybe a stiff breeze or two.

Not.

Winds up to 80 mph (didn't see them, but I'd estimate 60 mph here, briefly), 2 1/2 inch hail (didn't see that either, for which I and all the little flowers I've been slaving over are grateful), and dangerous lightning. Guess I got that. Sitting in the bedroom, watching the storm come over the hill, got all pringly on the backs of my hands and WHAM! BIG CRACKING SOUND!

I thought maybe lightning had struck the big barn, which - in theory - shoiuld be okay since there are these really cool lightning rods all down the roof of it. Still, when the rain let up a bit I thought I'd look outside. I opened the back door and the tree that sticks up through the deck is split down one side - the side nearest the house. *cough*

John just came in holding big pieces of wood that were blown out of the tree - the bark is totally off, totally smooth.

The lightning that struck the tree also fused - FUSED - the wiring on that side of the house at the outside outlet (forget that electric fence)- there's no electricity from the dining room on. I'm hoping it just tripped a breaker rather than frying all my wiring.

The interesting thing to consider is that my daughter's bedroom is on that side of the house, and if she'd been sitting in her bed doing computer stuff, as usual, the lightning would have been five or six feet from her head.

Gratitude - and possibly homeowners' insurance - may be in order.

Pictures as soon as possible - have to wait for the rain to stop.