Six Word Saturday!

Busy couple weeks equals slacking blogger.

I hit one of those periods where there was so much going on, much of it stuff I'd normally post, but didn't have the extra energy to say anything here. Only four more weeks of my busy season...

Thankfully my garden creates its own energy - it's going gangbusters! Soon we will have SO MUCH zucchini and loads of tomatoes. Can't wait!

Tomorrow the list gets posted for WRiTE CLUB. I did manage to get a pretty solid submission in, but it sounds like the initial selection has been really tough, so I'm crossing my fingers in hopes of making it into the actual competition. Otherwise it will be great to cheer others on. I've missed my blogging community with all the busy'ness this summer!

I did run my first road race since my foot injury two and a half years ago! One mile, downhill, on the 4th of July. Here's excited me before the race. My ability to run again has certainly felt like freedom, so it seemed appropriate to do a race on the 4th.

What have y'all been up to? (hey that's six words too!)

This post is part of the Six Word Saturday blog hop. Stop by showmyface.com to join the fun!

Oops! Missed 6WS!

Here is my belated Six Word Saturday post! Two sentences, for good measure:

Giant ponderosa pine smelled like butterscotch.

Duh, I'm a tree hugging hippie!

This post is part of the Six Word Saturday blog hop. Stop by showmyface.com to join the fun!

Garden update!

See how level it is?

One of the wonderful things we created at our home this year is a backyard veggie garden. The yard has a little hill in it, so it was quite a bit of work to lay the boards so they were flat. Lots of digging, a little frustration but we finally got it to look like this:

And afterwards I looked like this:

We've had stuff in there for almost exactly a month, and boy is it growing! This is the whole garden. The tall green plants along the fence are tomatoes and green peppers, with beans starting to climb the trellises.

Strawberries reaching for the sun and more dirt. Lots of runners.

And now, with plants!

Happy lettuce!

Mint (top), rosemary (right) and either a cucumber or zucchini plant (left) - maybe should have marked those :)

These are the raspberries we planted under our aspens last year. They've gone gangbusters! My goal is for them to take over that bed. Well on our way!

Also, a hay bale. 

I'm so glad we got all that hay for mulch. While it did have some seeds in it, we've found that a nice thick layer of hay keeps them from growing. It's nice to not really have to weed. Don't really have time for much of that this summer. 

There is also a little rhubarb plant in the other corner of the yard, and some asparagus (though those haven't come up at all - perhaps they are dead?). We had a couple leaves of lettuce on our hamburgers last week and they were oh, so good. Tender young ones.. Mmmm... Can't wait for more to come in!

Six Word Saturday!

Battened down hatches just weren't enough.

Sometimes no matter how you prepare, there's no way to control the chaos. This was one of those weeks - we did so much prep but there were just too many moving parts. Some didn't want to move in the same direction, so we ended up scrambling to fix things. Turned out well enough in the end, but boy am I exhausted! Glad to have today to rest and play in my garden - tomorrow is our biggest check-in day of the summer.

I decided to join Write Club, which I'll do a longer post about later. But, if you're a writer and want to throw 500 words into the ring, I encourage you to check it out!

This post is part of the Six Word Saturday blog hop. Stop by showmyface.com to join the fun!

Six Word Saturday

The prep before the storm. Eek.

Our first large conferences arrive on campus starting Monday. This past week has been an exercise in simultaneously battening the hatches and opening our doors. Every day I find myself a little amazed that I am out of time. It seems like there should still be a couple weeks before everything starts. But thar she blows! Hold on tight - it's going to be quite a ride!

This post is part of the Six Word Saturday blog hop. Stop by showmyface.com to join the fun!

Summertime...

And the livin' is BUSY! (someday I'm going to learn all the words to that one. I love it and it's so fun to sing sultry songs!) 

Summer is officially here. Summer, my busiest time for work. So many people coming to and departing from campus. A staff of nine to train, and six buildings to overhaul between academic year students and our conference groups. Thus far things are fun, but not very smooth. We re-keyed two of the buildings at the end of the school year and it appears that the students never actually USED their new keys. So my staff had the pleasure of discovering all sorts of issues as we were moving people into apartments. Excellent timing. The staff handled it well though, and hopefully tomorrow we can get everything sorted out.

We decided to have one last hurrah before life really gets crazy, and had a bunch of folks over for a bbq yesterday. It was our first really big gathering in the new house and it was great fun. We had bacon-wrapped dates au flambe (oops!) and quite a few cornhole games. Made some connections between friends we'd been wanting to introduce to one another, and ate SO MUCH good food. Overall a really fun, relaxing success. Bonus: we'll have leftovers for days!

Am quite grateful for the long weekend as the next couple weeks will be intensely busy. We'll see how the summer blogging schedule shakes out. I might be able to swing by only a couple times a week. I'll try not to let 2 weeks go by again though, I promise. :P

Happy Memorial Day! I hope it is filled with love and celebrations of all the freedoms we enjoy in these United States.