Let Summer Begin

Did you know that meteorological summer begins June 1? So while the calendar might still say it's spring for a few weeks yet, I'm officially in summer mode. Part of the reason for that is that Mo is officially on summer break. Apologies if you've already seen this on Instagram, but I couldn't resist sharing it again here:

Her school does a really nice end-of-year ceremony for each school level -- Lower School (pre-K-4th), Middle School (5th-8th), and Upper School (9th-12th) -- in addition to the commencement ceremony for the graduating students, and the highest class in each level are the special honorees. Mo finished 4th grade in spring 2020, so their virtual event was a bit of a let-down. That made this ceremony all the more special. All the members of her class wore dresses (the rest of the Middle School students had to wear their uniforms), and they were recognized by the faculty with personal anecdotes and a rather hilarious song about them to the tune of "Gaston" from Beauty and the Beast. Some special awards also were handed out, and we were all so proud that Mo received the Scholar Award for achieving a 3.8 or higher GPA (students at her school receive grades, but their GPA is only calculated internally for awards like this or for reporting to colleges). We had our families over for a celebratory dinner on Friday night, and then she proceeded to sleep nearly 13 hours -- I guess she's really needed to catch up on sleep for a long time! She has no real plans for the summer other than enjoying it. She plans to read for pleasure, do some clean-outs of her room and the basement (which mostly is storing toys she's outgrown), and do some more cooking. We also just signed her up to do the Great Race 5K with us in September, so she's going to start doing some training runs with me soon.

This past weekend was moderately busy with chores and errands and so forth, but it felt rather relaxing in comparison to last weekend! I did give some attention to my Rift tee, and I put half of it on another needle to stretch it out and verify that it will fit.

For the life of me I cannot get my phone to capture the color accurately; it's a bit more yellow in real life. The good news is that just laid out like this, it's measuring 35" around, and I'm fairly certain it will stretch when it's blocked, so I think I will be fine on the fit. I think I'm going to add a bit more length to the body before I split for the sleeves just so that it's not too cropped. I have about 150 yards more than called for in the size I'm making, so I should have plenty to add an extra inch or two. While the fabric I'm getting with this yarn is a little lumpy-bumpy, it feels good, and I think this tee is going to be worn a lot this summer (provided I can keep up my momentum on this project and get it finished soon).

Summer brings with it a lot of time outside and in the garden, and while the bunnies are still trying to eat everything in sight (they seem to be especially fond of hostas), I'm happy to report that my raised planters with fencing are keeping them out and everything in there seems to be growing well. One has a tomato plant, an eggplant, and several zucchini plants, while the other has two kinds of peppers and basil. I've got spaghetti and butternut squash growing along the side of the fence in our driveway; it worked out well last year to have them there so I could drape the vines on the fence as the fruit started to grow. And my beloved hydrangeas have exploded in the past week or so:

There are actually two plants there that were put in the ground at the same time, but the one on the right lost about half its volume last year because of what I suspect was a rabbit den in its root system that killed off a good portion of the plant. I'm hoping it'll come back eventually. In the meantime, I'm enjoying the full range of colors that we're getting!