It's gardening weather!

A and I spent a sizable chunk of money this weekend on plants and plant accessories. All winter we've been laying grand plans, and it was fun to finally put some of them into action. It was also in the eighties......ahhh. We planted two arborvitae in the front, on either side of the porch, which will eventually grow to about the height of the columns. I had to transplant some tulips to do it, and they are not very happy, but maybe they will be back next spring. Also added some low woolly thyme to be ground cover when the tulips die in the summer. In the back, we planted two clematis on trellises to cover up the current ugly fence. They look as if they will start blooming any day now. More ground cover here as well -- some sedum and more of a funny little species nicknamed "brass buttons" that we planted last year and which is growing like mad. The other plants which survived the winter (I now only want to plant perennials), like the bleeding hearts, the dianthus, the peonies, the columbines, and of course the rosebushes, are also growing in an almost visible fashion. I swear they are taller every time I come home from work. It makes me smile. The next big plan is to tackle the "hell strip", that strange piece of land between the sidewalk and the road. Right now it is mostly dirt and weeds and sometimes trash -- it needs some love. But I don't want to have to water it, so maybe a mix of flagstones and native grasses. Hmmm.

Weddings and weather

We just returned from a trip back east (down south, really) to North Carolina for my cousin's wedding. It was a great trip -- a lovely wedding, beautiful weather, and plenty of time to visit with family. My parents were there, as well as my other cousin and her family, my granddad and his new wife, my two great-uncles, both my aunts, and several of my mom's cousins. That was probably the best part, getting to spend time with everyone (and it wasn't MY wedding, so I had nothing to worry about!). The kickoff was a bridal luncheon, which really deserved to be in the pages of Southern Bride or some such magazine. Mimosas, high heels, chairs with tulle bows, cheese straws, deviled eggs, Waldorf salad, and frozen grapes in martini glasses for dessert. Fabulous. I only needed a large floral hat. Actually, I needed something to wear besides the clothes I'd flown in on the day before, but our luggage, alas, was stranded in Memphis. Luckily it arrived before the rehearsal dinner. Best barbecue ever, with live bluegrass music! Southern barbecue, for those of you westerners like me, does not involve chicken drumsticks or hamburgers. It is shredded pork, and the North Carolina version includes a yummy vinegar-based sauce, not at all ketchupy. The wedding on Saturday was lovely, as mentioned -- a perfect blue sky day, ceremony in a little sunken park (watching the bridesmaids walk very gingerly down the steep steps and gravel path was amusing) and reception in an old mansion. Everyone had a great time, and things went off without a hitch. Oh, except for a bridesmaid who didn't make it -- apparently her boss waited until just a few hours before her flight to tell her she absolutely couldn't take the weekend off. We also got to spend some time exploring the Blue Ridge Parkway and wandering around in the arboretum, enjoying the weather and the scenery, very different from forests and mountains in Colorado.

Now I am home, dealing with the repercussions of taking two days off (my terrible threesome were, well, terrible to my poor student teacher) and feeling cooped up by the twenty-four hours of rain that has just turned to driving (very wet) snow. This is supposed to be spring!

Sigh of relief

She came to school today with a cast. No surgery. Performance goes on as scheduled.......at seven thirty on a Saturday!

Crack!

On Monday I met with my DI team. That's Destination Imagination, for those of you not in the know. It's an off-shoot of Odyssey of the Mind -- a task-based creative problem-solving challenge with a dramatic element. We've been meeting for months now, once a week, trying to get our performance (a mystery in which a crime must be solved using a gadget which works using the properties of visible light) ready for the tournament this Saturday. It's actually been coming along pretty well. The deal with DI is that it's very kid-centered. No adult "interference" is allowed, so we team managers have to sit back and bite our tongues a lot.

Anyway, on Monday the kids were finalizing some details. One brought in two long poles, plus two buckets filled with gravel. When a sheet was duct-taped to the poles and they were stuck in the buckets, voila, we have a back-drop. Because part of the challenge requires a visual effect, they decided to project their scenery onto the sheet using my overhead projector. Pretty cool. The other project was to build a pair of "stilts" for one of the characters in the play -- the only "adult" character. After sorting through a bunch of materials, they went with a pair of five-gallon buckets, turned upside down, and made straps out of foam and the ever-present duct tape. The resulting "stilts" looked sturdy enough, and we began rehearsal. All went well for about twenty minutes. Then, in a move that I've been re-playing in my head for the last two days, our stilt-walker took a step that was just that much too big, and toppled over sideways, snapping her right arm with a sickening crunch. It looked like a second elbow in the middle of her forearm.

She remained amazingly calm -- much more so than me or N, the other team manager. I grabbed her arm and straightened out the bones, then held it in attempted traction while N called the paramedics and the parents. It seemed to take forever for anyone to arrive. The other members of the team, who hadn't seen the full extent of the damage, nonetheless realized that something serious was going down, and stepped up. They cleaned up the room, put all the props away, and quietly worked on our team sign. When the girl's father got there, just minutes after the ambulance, and heard the story, he was furious. It was a scary moment. I didn't sleep well at all that night, worrying and second-guessing myself. "I should have..." "We shouldn't have...."

I didn't feel better until I saw the girl at school Tuesday morning, arm well-wrapped and in a sling. They had been at the emergency room until almost nine, and hadn't been able to get a cast since the arm was too swollen to see if the bones would set. She's going back in tomorrow to see if surgery (pins or a plate) will be necessary. The parents have calmed down, (so we probably won't be sued), but I'm crossing my fingers -- a break while under my supervision is bad enough, but I would feel even worse if she had to have surgery. In the meantime, our DI team still has the tournament this weekend, and we're scrambling to re-write our play just in case she can't participate! Yikes. I'm really looking forward to taking a couple of days off next week for my cousin's wedding. I could use a trip out of town....

No she didn't

Ridiculous moment today -- one of my students asked to go to the bathroom fifteen minutes before school was out. Recognizing this as a not-so-clever ploy to avoid work, I told her she needed to wait. Five minutes later, she starts whining again about how she REALLY needs to go, and how unfair I am. I remain firm. She gets out of her seat and goes to the sink. Some moments later, I notice her ostentatiously patting dry the front of her jeans, which were soaked, and glaring at me. Now, there's no way a fifth grader will wet themselves in public -- the girl had poured water down her pants in an attempt to make me feel guilty! She hadn't thought the whole thing through, though. There was a puddle of water under her chair, and I guess she hadn't realized that it's pretty hard for a girl to pee on her own thighs while sitting down. I just ignored her, waited for the bell to ring, and laughed silently as she walked down the hall. I wonder how she explained that one to her mom?

Everglades

Over spring break A and I flew to Florida to visit with his grandparents, aunt and cousins. His mom came down, too. We messed around Miami, and took a day trip to the Everglades, where we saw maybe twenty gators, including this lovely fellow. Also of interest: amazing quantities of epiphytes and bromeliads living in the canopy. Very cool. More pics are here. Now we're back in Denver, where it's snowing. Argh. Supposed to be nice again by Sunday, though. At least the weather never lasts for long...