August

 

In August the garden started giving us more than we could eat and we started freezing and donating and even throwing away some of the extra. I think next year I am going to see if Mount Airy Net  (a great local group) will take fresh food donations.

My dad started getting a cool new tattoo.

Megan challenged me to a new YouTube challenge in which we had to dress in and eat things of our favorite color for 24 hours.

Green foods are great but green drinks are definitely not.

We went to Scearce's for the first time since February or March.

There wasn't much wood in the shed but a huge limb had come down right into the lilly pond.

I climbed around there with a chainsaw and pulled muddy things out while David rolled some big logs toward the log splitter.

We kept a great deal of distance and it was a relief to see them.

Their garden didn't get any tomatoes this year and I bought a huge box at Knills and brought most of them over for Scearce's to eat.

The morning after working over there my head hurt and I had a sore throat. I was convinced that I had Covid and that I had exposed Scearce's to them and put their lives in danger and I had about 3 days of nearly complete anxiety. I couldn't eat or sleep and kept thinking that I had killed them. It was terrifying and miserable. I started to feel better and after enough time passed was reassured that no one over there was sick but the being shaken about the potential exposure still hasn't left me. Its made me a lot more careful about being around them and about social distancing.

A hypochondriac during a pandemic is a mess and here I am. On the other hand it doesn't hurt to be extra careful just now.

Summer butterflies were all over my work walk and my home garden.

I took the kids to baker park for the first time of the summer. The kids found a Frederick rock. 

Frederick Rocks are a super neat tradition here wherein people paing rocks and hide them like easter eggs all over frederick and then if you find one you can post it on their Facebook page. This from their page: "Frederick Rocks is a way to connect the cities and towns in our community, to encourage art, and promote random acts of kindness as a way of life in Frederick county."

We worked on Megan's bike riding and I had some hope that the next time we visited Baker Park (filled with nice flat bike paths) we would bring the bikes and ride there.

My schedule was not quite half and half in lab and work from home. Work from home had a fair amount of webinars and zoom meetings and writing SOP's, we also started a journal club which I loved. Lab work hasn't changed.

I worked on 3D printing and printed out more towers out for my Etsy shop and also these fun pieces for me. Labyrinth door knockers and a few book marks.

I got and read this great book by my favorite politics writer/commentator.

I liked it so much that I got one for my grandfather. The book is a great history of the American Presidency and its evolution over time. The title says it all.

I wrote to ask Mr. Dickerson if he would inscribe it for my Grandfather (who worked in the Whitehouse for several administrations) and he sent this.

I am proud and grateful for it.

I sent it to my Grandfather for his birthday.

I keep wanting to go down there and see my grandparents. I keep thinking about my scare with Scearce's and not wanting to.

Covid is terrible.

I'm lucky because my Aunt Betsy sends us videos (Marco Polos) from time to time so I can see them a bit that way but I miss them and want to spend time with them.

We got a fair bit of rain in August and the caterpillars crawled under the milkweed leaves and munched away.

I took the kids and mom to a garden to see the flowers one not crowded evening. For the record: my son is very silly.

The lavender and rosemary and thyme in the front did not die. So far so good,

The deer came down and ate most of the front garden plants to the ground, even things that deer "don't eat". Ug they are dirty rats.

We have two solutions we are trying. The first is a deer repellant called plantskydd it is blood and oil mixed and dried into granules. The deer don't like the smell. It was 32 dollars for a jug and I didn't love that but man did it work! I love this stuff. The other thing we are trying is to replace the more high maintenance things that need weeding with ornamental grasses. Mom and I went back over to D.R. Snells and asked about local grasses and came back with these, plus an optimistic sweet berry bush which the deer have slowly picked apart as the plantskydd wore off.

I think they are beautiful and hope that they will fill in and give us something beautiful to look at that wont take work. We shall see.

I started working on some wood working projects. The above will be a thumb piano and the below is a panpipe of sorts. I'm pretty happy with the horse head.

Kiernan started a hat collection. He's got a good head for hats.

We ate lots of tomatoes. These roasted with herbs from the garden and some garlic.

Our major August adventure was a Haven inspired trip. They went on a social distancing inner tube trip but it was during my Covid exposure quarantine so even though I'd gotten some new innertubes from amazon we missed the trip.

We loaded up the cars and I parked and the bottom and David drove a few miles up and we floated along down for a good few hours.

I really enjoyed it. The kids went back and forth between obnoxiously grumpy and excited and goofy. This section of the watershed has a swimming hold with a rope swing and they were so high I thought they would back out of it but they swung along and splashed into the water like naturals.

Kung Fu flexibility and happy family time above.

snarky jokester above

Why have you brought me into the nature above

It was great and we will difinitly do it again next summer. The innertubes were about 35 bucks each and if it were a normal year and we had gone to harpers ferry to do an inner tubing trip it would have cost as much for one trip pluus we would have had to sign lots of wavers and have ridden a but that would have inevitably made Kiernan car sick. This was much nicer.

Mom found the holy grail of a wading pool on a local yardsale group. Bikes and wading pools are not to be found anywhere around here as families deal with the end of summer lock down stir crazies. 

David put my bows up in the living room. I love it.

eggplant

peppers

so many tomatoes

work

I moved my drawings and paintings over my work bench in teh garage. I am proud of all the creative stuff I've done this year. I also started unpacking my Qiagen work boxes. There is still a lot of pain with all that but I am reclaiming the good stuff. I still dream about Khatera and Jasen. I still always feel unsafe at work and like I am about to be fired at any moment. I've felt for years like I don't belong in that typical imposter syndrome sort of way. I'm working on it. Its the human condition. We are all in it to one degree or another and the best we can do is the best we can do.

We are still running. During August the days were so long that we could run in the evenings. This started hurting my knee but the improvements over all seemed worth it.

I made peach ginger cobbler.

Licia and I found our mascot while running.

I trimmed the crape myrtle out back in an attempt to train it. I'm not satisfied with how it came out and will have at it again next year when its filled back in a bit but we got some lovely bouquets out of it.