Twins Visit

Watching Pop's model trains derail.  Note engineer caps.

I is for Ingrid, Iris, and Ibis.

M is for Maggie and (Coral Bark Japanese) Maple.

What a smile.

Enjoying a swing.

Am I coy?

We love oranges.

Flower show poster on bees

Jane had a poster on native American bees at her garden club's flower show.

She described three of the many types of native American bees.  It turns out that, by contrast, 'honey' bees are not native, they are from Europe, where they were bred.  Honey bees build hives, which recently have been subject to colony collapse.
Native bees do not build colonies.  A 'condo' for squash bees is shown lying on the table.  The natives are all pollinators, although they may not pollinate as many types of plants as do honey bees.

Magic Carpet in use

It turns out that the new play area is a magic carpet.  Hand rails are being added.

Play area or castle or stage

Yesterday I built phase 1 of an area for kids with imagination to play.

It is not quite done.

Flower Show

The Beverley Garden Club, of which Jane is president, put on a 'Standard' flower show on Saturday.  This is a huge amount of work, but they were very happy with the results.  Here is Jane's arrangement.

She won a lot of blue and red ribbons.
This is the horticulture section.

And there was a lunch.

Trip South #3

We went from Margaret's to Bob's, where he and I played a little tennis, and we all went for a boat ride on his lake.

Then we went to Sarasota for my 50th high school reunion.  On Friday night, there was an outdoor get together around the pool at the Bird Key Yacht Club, where they had food stations.  On Saturday morning we went to Sarasota High to show it to Jane.

Then we went by the house on Bayshore Rd.  No one was home, but we took pictures of the changes they had made to the outside.

For lunch Saturday, we ate with the reunion group in a Tiki Hut.  Here is my friend John Hanna and his friend Vicki.  We had spent Friday riding around with them and going to lunch.

On Saturday, there was a sit-down dinner back at the Bird Key Yacht Club.  We sat with my friend Dan Senecal, and his wife Claire.  The food was excellent.  We had about 150 classmates in attendance.

There were 5 of us who had attended St. Martha's school through grade 9.

Jane was very amused by all the Sarasota streets with fruit names.  Here we are at the intersection of cocoanut and pineapple.

Back at home, everything looks so verdant.  All the trees have leafed out.  The bee condo is almost full.

Trip South #2

This morning (Monday), we took the boys down to the beach.  It was very windy, and no one swam, we just waded in.  True to form, Anthony was not crazy about it and he in particular did not like us to fly the new kite.  Michael, on the other hand, is a real beach bunny.  A wave poured over him as he was sitting on the sand, and it did not bother him a bit.

Trip South #1

We are on our three-week trip to the south.  First, we drove north to Harald and Cecilia's, where the girls played in their back-yard pool in the afternoon.

Then, we flew to Florida on a day with terrible tornadoes in the southeast.  We arrived in Memphis one hour late and missed our connection by minutes.  As we (later) flew from Memphis to Panama City, there was quite a lightning show.  Even though we were at 29000 feet, there was lightning both above and below us.

Saturday, at Margaret's, we had a picnic lunch beside a very nice lake on Nokuse.

Also, on Saturday, we completed the boys' new "Gorilla" playset.  More detailed pictures of the construction are shown Here.