Long Time No See

I just took a look at my blog and realized how long it's been since I entered anything new.
So, what's been happening lately?
Well, our first grandson has done the rounds investigating various colleges to which he has been accepted.  He looked and toured, and then settled on UMass Amherst.  He felt like this was the one and something just "clicked" when he toured that campus.  Good for him!

Our youngest will be 2 in just a few months.  He still looks like his father, my son; but he is now sporting a full head of curls.  Most babies in our family start out with very little hair, so it's a long time to wait to see what these little baldies will finally look like.  Everywhere he goes, people admire his blue eyes and his curls.  He is such a little blessing.

Our one girl is entering her second year of high school, and as always is an outstanding student, more athletic than anyone else I know, and of course, a beautiful girl.  She is always participating in something, and always seems to be a leader.  That's how she's always been.

Our next guy, who is 10, is my hockey hero.  It amazes me to watch someone grow up trying to crawl, walk, run, then turn into an expert at skating.  He is aggressive and fast on the ice, and those attributes help him become such a good hockey player.

Facebook has changed over the years; and unfortunately, not for the better.  I am really trying to avoid getting trapped in conversations filled with political arguments and faux news.  It's really become a field of land mines over at FB.  Lately, I have been picking up my formerly-loved poetry skills.

I remember when I was doing massage therapy, I would sit down and write a haiku each morning before my day began.  I have had the overwhelming desire to incorporate that into Facebook lately.  A haiku can tell a lot in just three lines.  Characteristically, a haiku is a story told in three lines of 5, 7, and 5.   I enjoy posting poetry in this form, and sometimes I don't even have to count on my fingers. Haha.

We recently had six extremely large trees taken down from our yard.  One near the driveway, had been reaching and hovering over our neighbor's yard, and the other five were pine trees between our yard and our next door neighbor's yard.  I can remember planting them when the kids were little, and we hadn't lived in our house too long.  We wanted to plant trees everywhere for shade and just to make the yard look better.  When we planted these trees, they looked like little, short bushes.  Then they continued to grow and looked like Christmas trees for years.  Then they got taller, and taller, and taller.  Yikes!  I cut the lower branches as they took up a massive amount of room, and it was hard for my husband to mow near them.  With the lower branches removed, it seemed better for a few years.  One thing that I noticed was that my veggie garden suffered from a lack of bright sunlight until about 11 a.m. each day during the growing season.  I just accepted that, as I didn't want to change the garden location.  It was pretty well established and got sunshine for the rest of the day, and I liked where it was in relationship to the rest of the yard.

During the winter, we really started to think that in case of a bad storm, those ultra-tall trees might break and land on our neighbor's roof, or our roof.  We decided that it would be best to say good-bye to them and they were cut down a couple of weeks ago.  The tree company also ground down the stumps for a better result.  Wow!  I haven't seen that much morning sunshine in the bedroom window since we first moved in here.  Also, my vegetable garden is reaping the results with great sunshine from the start of the day.  My plants don't have to wait until nearly noon to bet the benefit of the hot sun.  Therefore, I think that this will be my best garden ever, this year!  Pics to follow when the vegetables are ready!  (I have already been collecting strawberries, and quite a few of them.)