Our tree peony is in full bloom. It doesn’t last long, but it is beautiful.

It’s hard to believe, but both our children graduated today–one in Georgia and one in New York. Sarah received her Masters of Divinity from Columbia Theological Seminary after three wonderful years. All her hard work paid off as she received a $4000 Honors Prize. She’ll be applying that toward her program next year at Princeton Theological Seminary where she’ll be working toward a Masters of Theology. Here’s a photo of her and her dad taken this morning.

This afternoon Matthew graduated from Finger Lakes Community College with high honors. All his hard work has paid off as he found out yesterday he has been admitted to the plant science department at Cornell University where he will be a junior this fall. Here’s a photo of Matt and his mom.

We couldn’t be any prouder. They have worked very hard to get where they are ,and they deserve every honor!

It couldn’t have been nicer.
•Opened some lovely gifts from Tracyand his always thoughtful card.
• Picked Matt up at 8:00 for breakfast at Papa Jack’s and then spent well over an hour at Wayside Nursery. Bought a red bud to replace our dying dogwood tree in front of our house, five huge geraniums for the patio garden, and a new red hydrangea as well as a few other perennials. Matt bought me another forsythia for Mother’s Day and a beautiful hanging pot of purple and white million bells for my birthday. Tracy bought me a lovely shade container garden for our front porch. Always love shopping for plants with these two guys.
• Came home and dug in the dirt. All the new plants are in and several hundred maple seedlings have been removed from various beds around the house.
• Visited with Tracy’s mom and they planted our gift of the biggest New Guinea impatiens I’ve ever seen. Looks great near the front steps of the B&B.
• Had a nice call from Sarah–also a delightful card and a new book of poems by Mary Oliver.
• Went to see Miss Potter which was just a lovely movie–tender, sad, and uplifting–beautiful photography.
• Decided not to open the school bag. Hope I don’t regret it tomorrow.

As Charlie Gibson says each night, "Hope you’ve had a good day."

I hadn’t realized how long it had been since I posted an entry. I’ve been so busy with school and the Photography 101 class which ends this week. I will be very sorry to see it end. I’ve learned a lot, can use many more features on my Rebel XT, and have so appreciated the constructive criticism I’ve gotten from Barbara Carroll. It’s been worth every penny and then some! I’m in the process of updating the Photo-A-Day blog on the sidebar. They aren’t all from this month–many are from our vacation in April, but I decided to upload them a day at a time, rather than trying to backtrack.

Even scrapbooking has gone by the wayside. I’ve managed to get cards made for all the April/May birthdays so far, and I started a scrapbook for our Kiawah trip. This weekend I finished layouts for the two circle journals I need to send on in about a week, but I completed nothing for the DW 2007 Challenge at 2Peas in April. That’s the first month I’ve missed since I started over a year ago. I don’t think it’s going to change much as I’ve signed up for Cheryl Johnson’s Painting with Light photography course. I’m looking forward to it as well. When I looked through the introductory posts, I was the only one so far from the states. I’m so ready for summer vacation but it’s still a good seven weeks away. Then I’ll have time for all my hobbies!

There have been many quotes I would have liked to respond to from A Fancy Word for Simple, but by the time I get to looking at my favorite sites at night, I’m too tired to write anything sensible. Saturday’s, however, struck a chord—weekends always seem so short.

"Weekends are a bit like rainbows; they look good from a distance but disappear when you get up close to them."

—-John Shirley

This weekend was wonderful—warm, in the 70’s (haven’t seen that since November!), and sunny. We had to have our photographs taken for the church directory Friday night. I had high hopes of accomplishing quite a bit afterward, but they were running well over an hour behind. We went to dinner and to my mother-in-law’s to wish Bill a Happy Birthday. It ended up being a really nice night, very relaxing in the end—but nothing accomplished at home.
Saturday was better. I went to the gym early and then met my friend Mary. Our favorite stamp store is closing so we went to say good-bye to Linda and to wish her well. I was able to buy almost a whole spool of my favorite black and tan checked ribbon and loaded up on a variety of envelopes as well as one set of journaling stamps. Got all the bills paid, and found a birthday gift for a good friend, cleaned and organized my study, and had time for a glass of wine and dinner on the patio.
Today Tracy and I got up, went to breakfast at Papa Jack’s in Victor, and went to Bristol Garden Center. We bought two 6-packs of pansies for along the front walk, two holly bushes for the hill near the patio, and lots of black mulch. While I planted the pansies and cleaned out the large flower bed, Tracy got the mulch down in the beds in the front yard. We’re way ahead in lawn clean-up. Spent the afternoon organizing the photographs from our Kiawah Island vacation earlier this month and started on a scrapbook/album of the trip. Tonight I worked on next year’s school budget—almost done. So could I use another day? You bet, but it was a pretty productive weekend after all.

Her space : My space photo for the day is FENCE. Once again, I’m using a photo from last week’s vacation in Charleston. We do have a fence, but it’s too rainy to take an SLR out in it. So here’s a pretty fence from Charleston (much fancier than mine.)

The Her Space : My Space challenge today was “bug.” No bugs to be found in western NY today–cold rain and now snow. But here’s a lizard I “captured” in Charleston on Wednesday.

“It’s paradise.” That’s Matt’s opinion and none of us are disagreeing. It was a picture perfect day. The guys got in their third day of golf and it was warm enough for me to sit in the sun and read. Tonight after dinner we went for a bike ride. The photo supports Matt’s opinion.

I’ve been following Her Space : My Space for several weeks and have often wanted to join in. Today’s prompt was daisy and I had one right on the table here. Being on vacation gives me time to take on these challenges, so here’s my daisy: