FIBERGUY

These were taken by Jonathan (Uncle Johnny to Miss J) and we are grateful he documented the party so well.

Click the image to see a slideshow of pictures

We had a great party yesterday – dear friends and family (Americans, Norwegians, Canadians) gathered to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Helen & Kaare. It was terribly hot and humid – everyone drenched in sweat – but we all had a great time!

You mayknow them as raspberries – but to J they are fingerberries because, of course, you put them on the end of your finger to eat them!

Here are pictures of what I found in our garden the day we arrived back in town. I just had to take some pictures to show you. Alas, peony season ended while we were gone, but there is plenty more to admire.

Click on the image below to see a slide show of all the pictures we took from our trip to Florida.

June 2011 Trip to Florida

What is the best way to start your first day back from vacation, other than a good night’s sleep in your own bed? Going to your early morning appointment and being released from PT two weeks early because you are pain free and symptom free. It remains to be seen what effect a return to work will bring (wow, could work stress be the foundation of much of this pain?) but for now I am happy to get good news. I’ll be on a home-based program unless and until I need more.

I miss my mom and my family in Florida already, but it also feels really good to be home. There were two cats and one dog that were very happy to see us at home again. We’re gonna lay low and close to the house for a while, I think.

This is what we arrived to last night in Tallahassee. This footage was taken this morning. A remarkably efficient construction crew. It is all part of the road widening and holding pond project that is taking half of her two acres. I have quite a few mixed emotions of seeing half of my childhood yard ripped up and stripped of all life in order to build a dry holding pond to accomodate some federal drainage requirements that haven’t been necessary for more than 50 years. Well, anyway ….

This one is a dark maroon red color. It’s the last thing I see when I leave home and the first I see when I arrive back- from neighbor Margaret.

One of the prior owners planted this peony – and in the entirely wrong place – nestled under an ash tree with little. The brave little thing clung to life but never thrived. When we lost the ash tree to last fall’s ice storm, we were glad that we had moved it. Now it lives in the back of the garden – Peony Lane – and is thriving in the full sun that peonies so much love. And the bloom opened even more when we cut it and brought it in – with the most heavenly smell. One neighbor said she hadn’t smelled a peony like that since her grandmother’s garden. Lovely, just lovely.