Seventeen

What have I been doing for seventeen days?

Late spring/summer apparently has much more activity to offer me than deep dark winter and crisp, cool autumn.  I shall write a list of my goings-on:

It is cherry season on the West Coast.  I have cherry orchard customers who want attention, and they WANT IT NOW.  Orchard growers and people in the orchard research biz are the nicest people to work for and with.  So, even though they want my attention NOW, they always say it with a smile, (because I can hear smiles over the phone), and end it with a thank you.  I have only experienced one unkind person in the orchard biz (and he did not get my biz), and although we get occasional frustrated customers (because not all orchard growers are computer geeks), the best in my recollection is the woman who RANTED and RAVED and RANTED yet again and again because her equipment was not working and IT WAS ALL OUR FAULT.  Granted, a cherry season is short and time is of essence in all things harvest-driven.  But her apology at the end of the season was sweeter than honey, when she realized (actually, we realized it for her), that her testing instrument, which we had sold to her, was not even plugged into the wall.  And she, my friends, was a university professor.  It happens to the best of us.

Ten days after our return from Richmond, VA, that Spouse o' Mine embarked on a trip to Ghana.  He is still there.  Things are really quiet around our place.  I get sporadic email and garbly phone calls from him, depending on the phone and internet capabilities of any given area he is traveling in.  He is on a team of USAID workers (Agency for International Development) who are on a 5-year project to implement improved post-harvest handling practices amongst grain growers in Ghana.

After two years of lavender planting and propagating, I asked a tractor-owning neighbor of ours to plow a swath of land for my lavender farm.  OK, that's a bit of an exaggeration.  Yes, he did plow a swath of land.  Yes, I have lavender to plant.  But while most small lavender farms hold as many as 6000 lavender plants, mine will be a 50+ plant lavender farm.  No, I am not planning to make essential oils or sell soaps or things like that.  I just want a large plot of lavender to enjoy.

Thursday Women's Bike Rides have commenced for the summer.  I am helping with drumming up interest and routes for said activities.  It's a fun group of women who started riding together last summer, and this year we are starting earlier and plan to ride well into fall.

College Boy Graham graduates in two weeks.  Saints be praised, NO MORE TUITION PAYMENTS.  I know, I know, most parents endure this just like we have.  We put three kids through college, and some semesters called for three tuition payments at the same time.  Gulp.  But you know what?  My parents somehow managed to put five kids through college, very often paying multiple tuitions per semester.  I have no clue how they managed it, but I suspect prayer was involved.

Daughter Gillian has spent a year exploring Cape Cod while gainfully employed, and announced last month that no one under fifty can afford to live on Cape Cod, and that she was heading west, to Colorado.
Here she is on her brief stop in rural Kansas, down the road from our house:

 College Boy Graham is leaving for Australia soon after graduation.  He will visit the Aussie Gma & Gpa, and the Aussie aunties and uncles and cousins.  He has been to Australia twice, although once was in utero and while he will not recollect that trip, I do.  I so, so, so do.  Morning sickness and all that it encompasses magnifies when one travels across something like twelve time zones.  I do recall that trip well.

Daughter Gillian is contemplating joining Graham on his adventure to points Southern Hemisphere.  That Spouse o' Mine and I concur: go while you're inbetween jobs.  My weeks have been spent reminding the two to make airline reservations soon, before fares go up...get Int'l Youth Hostel cards (because one can travel cheaply and meet fun people...most times), check insurance and driver's licenses, do you have a tetanus shot? and what about health insurance...I hope you two are applying for jobs even as we speak, you can always decline a job, but you can't make one appear out of thin air...I think you should stop in Hawaii...I think you should stop in New Zealand... I think you...

Uh-oh.  This mother should sit back and be quiet.

This past week was a glorious show of Springtime at her best. Our roses, roses, peonies, salvia, clematis, and lilies all went !POOF! and bloomed overnight, it seems:

June is Bustin' Out all Over

Well, June is not too far away.  It is a beautiful time here in rural Kansas.