Car-eating Kudzu

B pointed out this car that the kudzu has entwined in its death grip.

We think it has succumbed.

Be careful choosing your parking place.

The Porch Swing

I knew when we built the screen porch a year ago that I wanted a swing out there. I have been shopping in town and on-line for months to find just the right swing. For our 34th anniversary, we finally decided on one made of teak and we ordered it.

(Some assembly required.)

B had it together in no time.

We bought some teak oil and rubbed it down to increase its weather resistance.

The issue with having a screen roof, though, is that you have no beam for hanging a swing.

Therefore, a frame was needed. The frame you can see in the yard below was one B found in a trash pile along a road. Our original plan was to use that one.  It is a very large frame and was going to eat up a lot of space on the porch. The swing needed to be a five-foot swing, which is not nearly as common as a four-foot one. It is also not very high, which affects the swinging motion.  The more we searched for a swing we liked, the less suitable this frame seemed to be.

Apparently, the people who design most of the swing frames are very petite folks. The usual height was just over five feet. That did not seem adequate to us. So B  custom-made ours.

(It was a “cross to bear.”)

The base timbers are made from pressure treated 6x6’s and the others are 4x6’s. It is heavy. It took some planning to get it up.

But it is done, and we love it. It is very steady. I really like how the top beam visually disappears into the gutter behind.

We use it almost every day.

Mailbox Monday: Schoolhouse

For letters, don’t you know. (ABC’s, as well as, 1,2,3’s)

Kiddie Circus

Every other year, two teachers at my school put on a little circus performance with their students who are five- and six-year-olds. We always look forward to it and our students thoroughly enjoy it.

There are the growling bears on tricycles and the talented pony riders (on stick horses),

the beautiful acrobats...

And the strong men….

Check out those muscles!

And the trained dogs…who can bark the answers to math problems.

Unfortunately, one was “injured” and had to leave with the vet.

The ferocious lions were a hit.

And what is a circus without clowns?

Here they were cleaning up after the ponies.

And here setting up for the strong men and dropping the barbells on their toes.

And here with their cars at the car wash.

Cute, cute, cute!

And valuable lessons for the children: following directions, memory practice for their routines, cooperative behavior, language development, as well as the other academic lessons that these teachers work into this unit, such as writing and art activities.

My hat is off to this year’s group!

What a Funny Tater!

Tater Buns

8^)

Jacquemontia tamnifolia

This wildflower has become invasive in the fields around our garden. But it is a very interesting plant.

Hairy clustervine is a common name for it. As I suspected, it is in the morning-glory family. Smallflower morningglory (yes, it is just two words here) is another common name. The genus is closely related to sweet potato and you can see the leaf shape is very similar.

Jacquemontia is named to commemorate the French traveler and naturalist, Victor Jacquemont (1801-1832). Jack-in-the-pulpit is also named for him. He traveled to North America and Haiti. When he was just twenty-seven, he left his home in Paris to explore plants and rocks in India and other lands in that part of the world. He died in Bombay of disease. Below is his portrait painted by Claude Monet.

As I said, it is an interesting flower and, like its namesake, it seems to wander all over everywhere.

Well, I’m Back

After our house was broken into, I was asked to submit a detailed list of the items in the stolen jewelry box. The hardest part of this was that I was supposed to come up with a value for each item. So I went online to look for similar items. While I was doing this, I managed to encounter and receive three different trojan horse viruses with a total of nine infections to our only home computer. It was fatal.

I was surprised at how much we had come to rely on this little piece of technology to fill in the moments of a our days. I had access at school to check my mail but B was without entirely. I was surprised at how much I missed blogging.

Dear friends returned the computer wiped and, as of last night, it is  mostly restored. (Thanks, A and B!)

While we are back and up and running, it will be a while to recover. I lost the drafts of upcoming blog entries. I usually have close to a week’s worth that I work on for (almost) daily publishing.

It is good to be back!