We had a glimpse of what summer could be like last week, and it was good!
On Friday, I had signed up for a cart tour at Garden in the Woods, so I was so glad it wasn't raining. We had 6 elderly ladies from The Gables, plus their attendant. The cart only holds 5, so usually we do two loops, each with half of the group, but in this case one of the ladies felt confident she could walk, so we could all go together.
The ladies had a wonderful time and were so appreciate of being able to get out in the garden. I love doing cart tours. I got hugs from some of them at the end and they all were very enthused about coming back next year and telling all their friends about it.
On Sunday, Alex and Steven and I went into Boston for dim sum. Usually we like to do some walking along the harbor, but Steven was still getting over a leg injury, so wasn't up to a long walk. But we did have a good late brunch at Chow Chau City, including lobster dumplings, and then come back and played Dominion/Intrigue with Kelley until late. Normally we are all roughly equal players, but something happened this week and I was in The Zone, winning over half of the games. Everybody (including me) was trying to figure out what it was about my playing style that caused me to win. We concluded that maybe I was more middle-of-the road, whereas Steven gets over-committed to a particular strategy. But really, it was a puzzlement. Fun, though!
The week with the Middle School class was good. We didn't have any exciting field trips planned - just a walk to a nearby garden of one of the administrators. This was a less polished garden than some of the ones we've visited, but still had a lot of interesting stuff to look at.
In our garden, the big job was planting some shrubs. There was a lot of difficulty digging holes large enough, since we were dealing with heavy clay soil. On the second day, I brought my heavy pick/mattock and that helped quite a bit.
Henrietta supervised the shrub planting, Wende worked on the day lilies, and job was separating and planting vinca in a new area under some small trees. We each had crews that rotated around so that everyone sampled each job. My crews were pretty quick to figure out how to separate big clumps of vinca into many little sprigs with roots. They even came up with an assembly-line process on their own: one person dug holes spaced the appropriate distance apart, another followed along with a watering can, putting water into the holes, and the third person followed with the vinca sprigs, planting them and firming them in.
On Tuesday, I brought in a couple of my plants that I thought would work in the spaces we were planting. I dug up about 8 divisions of Lady's Mantle to plant along the front of the day lily bed, and also two big clumps of polypody fern for the vinca bed. I picked the polypody because it is evergreen, so would be a nice spot of green in the winter. It also had some bright yellow spore cases on the backs of the leaves, which gave me a chance to talk a bit about spores and how they differ from seeds.
The only problem was a few times when we ran out of things for part of the class to do. Like when all the other jobs were done except for the shrubs, which only a few people could work on at a time. Then the kids would try to find things to do and sometimes make rather poor choices. I'm learning a lot about working with Middle School kids. As Michelle says, "Structure, structure, structure!" They're eager and willing, but you need to be able to direct them or sometimes odd things will happen.
On Thursday, Henrietta gave a class on propagation. She brought in three different kinds of houseplants, plus pots and potting soil, and again we broke up into three rotating groups, each doing a different kind of plant. My group did coleus, we also had a lovely-scented succulent coleus, and Henrietta did rabbit's-foot fern. That went pretty well, except for the one girl who was afraid of the rabbit's foot fern and thought it was creepy. Sigh.
We all got to take cuttings for ourselves. I really hope I can get that aromatic coleus to take - it was very nice.
Rita, the Community Education coordinator, has been asking all of us if we want to give an adult education class this winter. I have been exploring the idea of doing a class on Gardening with Native Plants. One obstacle to developing a class like this is getting together a collection of slides, so I asked Bonnie at Garden in the Woods whether I might be able to access their collection. They normally charge for images, but Bonnie is willing to work out a deal where I develop a slide show that they can use as well. So that could be a fun winter project. I told Rita that I might be able to do a spring course if this works out.
In between the school garden activities, I also got a chance to do some work on my own garden, mow the lawn, etc. I am still behind, but it's a bit better. In the veggie garden, the zucchini is producing fruit, so I made a couple of dinners based on that - a crustless quiche and a casserole with cottage cheese. There's still no sign of red on the tomatoes and the peppers seem to have given up the ghost. I might get some green beans before leaving for Montreal next week.
On Thursday night, the good weather ended and the heavens opened in torrential rains again.
On Friday, I met a young guy, Adam, that Nancy had asked me to take under my wing. Adam and Nancy's niece Sara, will be moving to the area this fall. Sara is going to graduate school at UMass Lowell and Adam will be continuing in his current job remotely and looking around for a graduate program to enter. Adam was here for a short time in advance, looking for an apartment and also visiting with a friend of his that works in the Stata Center at MIT.
We initially met for coffee at Starbucks, but hit it off pretty well, so I invited him to lunch at Legal and then I took him on a quick driving tour through Boston. We stopped at Castle Island to walk a bit and look at the harbor. I kept apologizing for the rain, but he loved it, coming from a dry state like Colorado. He's already arranged for an apartment in Lowell, so didn't need any help with that, but he hoped that he and Sara could meet up with me in September so that I could show them around Boston. I said it would be a pleasure.
So now I'm getting into the last week before Montreal. I am so not ready. I have been working on finishing up my taxes, trying to get my house and garden into shape, etc. There is also a nagging sound my car is making that has me a bit worried about going on a driving trip. I brought it in a while back and the mechanic didn't see anything wrong, but maybe I should try again. All I need is for my car to break down in the wilds of Canada. Now that would be an adventure....
Back in February, 