With no long trip planned for June this year, I decided to take a visitor's look at things on one of my neighborhood walks. You see so much more when you're in an unfamiliar environment, so applying that fresh look to places I pass every day, brought some new views and a different appreciation for familiar ones. See more photos and let me know if you recognize this gorgeous branch. I'd like to have such a plant for my deck garden.
After a wonderful time skiing in Breckenridge, Meg and family flew back into Boston to spend a couple of nights with us. The weather was lovely and warm, so we spent some time playing up at the monument before heading down to Braintree for GG's 95th birthday celebration. A wonderful time was had by all but especially by GG herself.
This year we spent two whole weeks in Vermont, with the proper winter ski vacation weather, finally. Last year was a bit of a bust, but this year there was some snow nearly every day, and significant snow at the beginning of our stay when we most needed it. On the other side of the mountain, the snow wasn't as heavy as on our side, so we rode in a horse-drawn wagon to get our tree instead of the usual horse-drawn sled. The bumpy ride felt pretty much the same though.
On Christmas Eve, Marcia and family came over to get the holiday celebration started with early presents and a raclette dinner. We all missed not having Mike and Leesee join us this year, but we're hoping for some vacation time together on Nantucket instead. Then on Christmas day we opened stockings, had our usual baked French toast breakfast, unwrapped the rest of our presents and headed outside for snow angels and sledding. The sun was amazingly warm up close to the house where we ended the afternoon with hot chocolate made on Meg's new camp stove.
After that, it was all skiing every day. Check out the sledding and skiing videos.
Driving in traffic this morning, a large black vehicle with livery plates pulled in front of me. When I stopped behind the driver at a traffic light, I chuckled at the specialized service provided. With its end letter 'r' removed, the vehicle was the perfect livery service for Boston passengers - a ride in a Lincoln Town Ca.
Minna is a happy girl who loves riding on carousels, and there were many in Paris to satisfy her. Ollie is a clever boy who made his own paper carousel to play with back at the apartment. See Ollie's carousel and the rest of our Thanksgiving vacation photos.
The first days of our trip to Paris were taken up with kids clothes shopping, neighborhood walks, a trip to the Eiffel Tower and lots of playgrounds. We kept a vacation schedule so everyone slept until nearly ten in the morning, supper wasn't until seven or a bit later, and the kids went to bed around nine. We ate late and long lunches, followed by simple suppers at home, trying different cheeses with baguette and wine. Cheese-lover Ollie consumed prodigious amounts of every cheese we sampled, and with little to clean up afterwards, it meant vacation for all. More pix here.
Last Sunday we had a great walk from Charlestown to the river to watch the Head races, and back home again to Charlestown. Along the way, we had coffee at our favorite Area Four, passed by the always colorful graffiti alley next to Central Kitchen and watched much of the race from the Western Avenue bridge. As the races were finishing up, we walked up the river and headed into Harvard Square where we got a prime football-watching bar spot at the Russell House Tavern and yummy steak tartare for me. After dinner we paused in the Square to check out a band playing behind the subway stop and then meandered back down Mass Ave, through Kendall Square again, and on to home. See some random photos from the walk.
Sometime this spring we noticed a rip in the plastic covering the greenhouse, and by summer the wind had pulled it all off, leaving the frame open to the elements. We settled on this past weekend to all (Phil, Marcia, Jay, Peter and I) meet up in Orange when the weather looked ok for the job - no rain, not too cold and especially no wind. Saturday, the day we arrived, was the most promising day, so we got everything ready while we waited for Phil to arrive from his drive up from Virginia. The plastic had already been dropped off by FedEx, so we just needed 1x3's for the cleating and a box of screws. We got the plastic rolled out next to the greenhouse and loosened the folds by opening it up a bit. Then we laid out the 1x3's and started screws about every foot so everything was in place and ready to go when Phil arrived. He put on his work boots and hauled out the special ladder, which I'd seen forever lying in one of the greenhouse beds but never had any idea what it was. The ladder was exactly wide enough to cover one sheet of glass and rest on the frame on either side, with a roller at the top for sliding it up and clamps at the bottom for hitching it tight. Philip was quite confident about going up on it but no one else expressed interest in trying it. To get the plastic over the ridge to start, Jay had put an old baseball into a bag, tied it closed and, with enough line to go over the greenhouse, tied the other end to one corner of the plastic. Then he threw the bag over the greenhouse and Phil began pulling the plastic up and over and untied the line. There was one moment when a very slight wind started to blow the plastic off the peak, but luckily the wind died right down, and we were able to pull it back along the peak for Phil to go up the ladder and cleat it to the house. Once it was stretched tight and cleated at the far end of the greenhouse as well, there was no more worry about it blowing off, and all that remained was cleating both sides and trimming off the excess plastic. It went quite smoothly on this calm day but it was easy to imagine how frustrating it would have been had we been forced to do the job on a windy day. There was much rejoicing when the job was complete. See it all in the job pictures.
Here are some photos from our most recent Vermont visit. We rode the chairlift to the top and walked back down on the one good day of the weekend. The day before it rained all day and the day after it snowed about 4" on the top! The kids have gotten their new gear and we're all ready for the start of the season.
We've been lucky to see so much of the kids this past month. In August we spent about 10-days with them on Nantucket and last week we spent a long weekend together in NYC. The changes, particularly in Minna, come so fast these days that there's always something new. On Nantucket we saw Minna's fearless love of the ocean and Ollie's first attempts and success at skim boarding. Then in New York, we took them to school and to the playground, and discovered just how fast the two of them can go on their scooters. Next time I visit, I'm getting my own scooter to keep up.