the week in pictures...

Kara trying the orange almond polenta cake I made in the blender. (too bad you can't see the fabulous cake!)

A loud noise, sirens, choppers hovering over the scene- not at all an uncommon experience in Baltimore. Only Tuesday morning, it was right behind our house. Someone had driven a car back behind Barclay Elementary and lit it on fire. I stood on my porch and watched it all go down at 7:30 in the morning. Crazy.

Happy Baltimore row houses in the early morning sunshine, on my way to work and stuck in traffic on 29th.

June 21- after 9:00pm. summer solstice. Across the street, one apartment has this tacky light get up on their porch - a palm tree and flamingo. Its just kind of an intriguing sight to me.

Baltimore A-rabbers. Thats what they're called- no kidding. (may not be how its spelled, but thats how it sounds- "A-Rabbers...") Guys who have horses with bells that jingle and carts filled with fresh vegetables and fruit; they clop through the streets of Baltimore calling out for people to come buy their wares. This fellow comes down our street every afternoon... I'm going to have to work on a better photo of him.

And today- another exciting jaunt to Harpers Ferry and a float down the Potomac River in Butts Tubes...

After which, we decided to try and find a nice little picnic spot off the beaten path a bit... but the road kept going and going with no place to pull over for our picnic, or promise of one coming up any time soon... so we just stopped and had our picnic on the side of the road. None too exciting, and LOTS of bugs... We finished up got back into the car and just around the next corner... a beautiful little clearing right by the river. Figures. (Kinda like the time we stopped in the Mara... and after a nice lunch, got back in the car and happened upon a huge pride of lions two minutes down the road... ha! Only not quite)

I see you...

...and of course, our customary Harpers Ferry shot at the end of a spectacularly beautiful day.

(we're now home, tending to our crispy sunburns... fun fun)

Community garden...

While I'm at it... here are some photos of our very exciting plot in the community gardens... I don't know how many people have plots... maybe 30? Hmmm...


We were late comers to the garden this year so were relegated to the far corner, which is mostly in shade- not super great for growing... but we're giving it a go! This is looking back at the rest of the garden, the gate where you come in is in the far left hand corner. The mulch, manure and compost piles are all just outside the front gate... lucky for us. AND because we have so much shade, we get a bigger plot- which just means MORE mulch to haul up! Burn baby burn!


Kara happily plodding along in her own little world...


Can you see the zinnias blooming?


My freshly planted little basils, see them lined up on the left? And our sunflowers... ALSO blooming. (Dude, what can I say? we got mad skills...!)


PS- Our persnickity passion plant also decided to bust out her fancy blooms this week too...

Strawberries out the wazoo!

Enough of graduation already... so here we are strawberry picking at a farm west of DC...



Its a lot more labor intensive than say, apple picking...




...mmmmm.... should have gotten a photo of the millions of strawberries we ended up with... we've been eating all things strawberry for the last week... strawberry smoothies, strawberries straight up, strawberries with ice cream, strawberries in oatmeal, strawberry salads, and today I think I'm going to have to finally bake something with some of the half million that are frozen in the freezer. Anyone want to come over for strawberry daiquiris?

GRADUATION!!

So graduation. Graduating. I LOVE graduating. I do... Its FUN! I love the pomp and circumstance, I love the caps and gowns, I love the celebration and the sense of accomplishment. I LOVE BEING DONE WITH SCHOOL! So, really I graduated from MICA last July in a special MACA only ceremony... but this May was the official MICA graduation. Graduate again? You don't have to ask me twice...! And it worked out so nicely... I re-graduated on Monday, May 14th, Kara graduated from Johns Hopkins with her MPH on Wednesday, May 16th...


So this is a little silly, but I got a royal kick out of looking back over all my graduation photos... and I thought I'd share... just for the fun of it...

8th grade graduation at Rosslyn Academy, June 1995


High school graduation from Rosslyn Academy with dear friends Joy and Hayoung, June 1999


Graduation from Gordon College with a BA in Visual Art, May, 2003


Masters of Art in Community Art, July 2006.














And official MICA graduation May 14, 2007 Woohoo!




Kara and I donning our regalia together...





so fun!

For all you kindred spirits out there who can't spell to save your lives...

(click on image to read it) from FORMICA 08.02 spring 2007

...and even more for all of you who can't understand why!

I fought the mold...

... and the mold won...

Phase two of spring cleaning: put away my winter clothes and haul out my summer clothes which have been hibernating in the basement all winter. Now a wee bit of background here-- our basement has flooding issues... which we only discovered AFTER the fact when we moved in last summer. We had boxes of stuff piled on the floor-- one of those projects we kept meaning to get to, to organize everything neatly in our alloted storage space and get stuff off the floor... Well, these things have a way of getting away from you until its too late, until you are forced to deal with them because you HAVE to, which in this case was after our first torrential rain when we came down to find our mess sitting in four inches of water. We lost some stuff, but managed to get our selves organized finally-- plastic rubbermaid trunks on the bottom, cardboard boxes on top- other miscellaneous items on our shelves. Beautiful. We could rest easy through more storms and more floods knowing that our stuff was safe and sound down in the basement.

HA! Not so my friends...

Yesterday morning, I headed down to the basement, threw a load of laundry in and set about sorting through stuff in search of my summer clothes. I discovered the massive, half full bag of potting soil, I'd "lost" behind a large box on top of our stack of trunks. (woohoo, now to get some plants to plant... perhaps NEXT weekends project) I pull down the boxes and unstack the trunks. Whats in this one? Oh yes, heres my tabla case, an old frame I have big plans for (its like Christmas re-discovering long lost treasures!), that sweater I bought in Boston freshmaa......huh? .... WHATS THATT?? I pick the sweater gingerly pinched between my thumb and forefinger and hold it at arms length. It is covered in what looks like... suds... with a sinking feeling I continue to pull out progressively damper, soggier, smellier, less recognizable pieces of clothing... till I have a pile of grossness on the floor- bright orange and green and white.... and a trunk with a layer or sludge at the bottom. This is where I SHOULD have taken a photo... you'd have been mighty impressed... But I was too busy trying to figure out what on earth to do.

KJ was no help- up to her eyeballs in her own mess of papers and deadlines... Call my mom: "well, try washing it..." Ok... So I fill up the washing machine... though I can't really imagine this stuff is going to just wash away... I come back half an hour later and open up the machine to find what looks like I'd accidently thrown a large, long-haired grey cat in with my clothes. My grey sweater had disintegrated, and everything was fuzzed up with grey wool... and I find myself with yet ANOTHER mess to clean up... *sigh*

So after the fact- I took photos to document this impressive event so I could share on my fabulous blog. Sadly it doesn't really look quite as impressive as I'd hoped (as it WAS)... but I thought someone might find it mildly amusing.

This shirt WAS white...

All thats left of the sweater I got freshman year in Boston....


So long sweet stuff...

PS- it wasn't actually my summer stuff that got ruined. thankgoodness. And I decided if its down in a trunk then I probably don't need to hang onto it anyway. Now I'm on a mission to purge all my unused and unneeded stuff. WOOHOO... Goodwill here I come!

Such a Saturday...

That the weather is such a huge influence on my state of mind is both not-so-good, and fantastic! Lately with endless grey days that barely crawl up into the 50's, my soul has been dragging. But today... TODAY the winds blew in balmy and warm, I woke up to golden yellow sunlight filling my room through the blinds and I could hardly contain myself! The warmth of spring has been such a long long time coming this year, which maybe makes it all that much more glorious on a day like today.

Spring calls for cleaning: mopping long-overdue floors; organizing a cluttered pantry with the windows and doors wide open; dancing to loud happy music and the neighbor cat peering in to see what the fuss is all about; moving plants out to the porch; hauling our recycling to the recycling place- with my heart in my throat the whole way for the sheer joy of the day... oh glorious warm, sunshiny day!


(yes, I may have had the peanut butter and chocolate out with me too...)


This evening I decided not to do any of my work- not even to think about it. I ambitiously took my sketchbook, my journal, my water, my phone and my book out to the back porch... I made some tea and I sat. I did read some, but mostly I just sat. I looked out on Barclay Elementary and watched the line of sunlight move slowly across the playground. It was quiet save for the noises of the end of a day... the breeze gently knocking the wind-chimes now and again, the little boy crying next door, a dog in a yard across the way sitting expectantly at the door waiting to be let in. Birds twittering about. A group of high-school boys moved into view and walked slowly across the playground. As I sat drinking my tea from my perch on our second floor porch, I had had this feeling of being at Tarangire-- washed up and sunkissed after a full day of swimming and being out on top of landrovers-- sitting on those blue chairs, feet up on the wall, quietly watching a herd of elephant move slowly in, stop for a drink, muck around a bit, and move on... Two girls came out of the house next to the one with the little dog with a frisbee and a soccer ball.. kicked it around while their grandpa stood by. It was the first time in a long time I just sat, and soaked in where I'm at, and just appreciated the moment. Many moments, I couldn't bring myself to come in staying till it was dark... until my phone finally rang and my happy solitude was interrupted by a happy conversation with my mom.







I was thinking of all those moments of sitting-tea-drinking-contentment in my life, in different places all over the world with different people at different times. Time is a funny thing, and some day soon, this place that I am in will join all those other places fondly in my memory. Somehow that makes me sad. Its exciting too, to think about the new places around the corner, and the new people I have yet to drink tea with. For now, I simply want to be fully in and thankful for all that is.

"Each deed you do, each act, binds you to itself and its consequences and makes you act again and yet again. Then very seldom do you come upon a time like this, between act and act where you may stop and simply be."
~Ursula K. LeGuin, The Earthsea Trilogy

KJ is 29!

She got a beautiful rainy spring day... and her own special rainbow to order...





We took her out to Iggies for pizza,











...five and a half bottls of wine (BYOB)...












... and a super fabulous choclate cake with whipped cream frosting and fresh black berries and rasberries (if I do say so myself...)