Busy busy busy

Summer has slipped away in a flash, at least somewhat lost in a porch painting project. Each summer we seem to take on one major project and this year it was replacing some of the rotten wood, discovering that it would be a lot easier to replace the bead board ceiling and sides than it would be to scrape off 80 years of peeling lead paint. I've spent hours and hours cleaning, scraping, filling, priming, and painting and I'm still not finished although all I have left is painting the porch floor. It's been stealing all my free time and leaving me unmotivated to take on more interesting things.



My Mom flew out to visit last weekend. We had a nice and relaxing time and I painted on only one of the days she was here. We meandered around Vermont just a little bit and ended up in Smugglers Notch wandering the trails in inappropriate foot wear. We managed not to lock our keys in the car -- this is significant because in a previous visit, we locked the keys in the car at the top of the Appalachian Gap. It's hard to get AAA to understand that there IS no intersecting road.

I discovered that when the alarm is set for 4:30 am for the purpose of bringing Gram to the airport, Sam will wake up and join us even if he didn't fall asleep until nearly 11 pm the previous night.

I also seem to be growing some of the world's largest tomatoes. I haven't limited myself to large heirloom tomatoes because I've also got one of the most prolific cherry tomato plants around. First it ate it's own tomato cage and then went on to gobble up the cages of other nearby plants. But those plants are fighting back by growing up into a nearby tree and the vine is now much taller than my head.

As a change of pace, today Sam and I spent the day enjoying things that will be much less fun in a month or two. We rode our bikes downtown, went to the library and the co-op, then rode down to the Echo Center to enjoy the place nearly empty of tourists and kids. We took the bike path all the way to another park stopping to visit a friend and watch the trains. All told we probably rode about five miles. Remember that Sam did it on a bike with 12" wheels!

I'd like to rewind summer, spend more time playing and less time painting. Oh, and I'd like to have started the summer with industrial-strength tomato cages.