July

 

Its long past time I caught up on the blog and today is the day.

The July garden was the best we've ever had. It was a combination of us being home so much and of the increase on the amount we planted. We and particularly mom did a good amount of soil amendment with extra soil and humus from old leaves.

The berries did well. We I made a number of trifles and a few cobblers.

The monarchs visited and we were happy to see the caterpillars.   

We had lots of tomatoes both from the yard and the local farm stand Knills

Because of the extra time at home and because the kids were out of their social routines we started doing a good bit more family exercise. Kiernan and I took a break from our bike riding the C&O tow path. We bike rode near home and put a focus on getting Megan to learn to ride hers without training wheels. Megan did not love our plan.

I started a couch to 5k running program and on Sunday mornings meet up with Licia for the long runs of the week. I found some nice off road running spots.

One day while running at the park we saw a group of little kids doing karate (maybe Tae Kwon Do?) in the park. It reminded me that I wanted to get our kids into martial arts, We'd had a few abortive starts but usually David and I weren't happy with either the style for the kids or the schools were not at all what we wanted for the kids. 

The problem here is that I did a good bit of martial arts (Tae Kwan Do and Jow Ga Kung Fu) when I was young and up into college, on and off, and I had a very definite ideas about what martial arts places should be. I'm not picky about most things but this one decision, because its for the kids, and because of my own entrenched feelings, was one I was perfectly willing to be picky over.

David had also taken several martial arts (Kung Fu/Kenpo/Tae Kwon Do/Krav Maga) and had ideas too.

Most of the schools were teaching very sloppy styles that were mostly only useful as daycare with exercise options. Some of the schools were far too militant sort of Kobra Kai for the junior set and worse yet the most popular one here in mount airy (though fun) is a belt factory.

The first time we took the kids to a playground here in Mount Airy I was pushing little toddler Megan in a bucket swing when a boy of about 7 or 8 came up to me and started chatting. He was dressed in a white karate gi. I was happy because he was so friendly and it gave me a good feeling about the town and the day and the kids future here. I asked him about his gi and he told me that he went to the local place and that he was of an improbably high belt rank. I was skeptical because of his age and figured he was exaggerating like little kids do sometime. Then he pointed out other kids with other improbably high ranks. Looking at the belts present I realized that he was not exaggerating. I wrote that school off instantly. Later for a scouting event Megan went to the school and although they gave the girls very very good self defense advice that pleased and reassured me about the quality of the school to some extent I saw many many children with ranks that made me skeptical and reluctant to send Megan there. Megan loved the school and being with all her friends there and Kiernan hated it because it was full of noise and chaos.

So the day running in the park with Licia I was thinking of all that and wishing that there were a Kung Fu school close to us. I decided to have another look online (gyms were of course closed for Covid). I looked for Kung Fu in the Frederick area when we moved here and periodically ever sense and couldn't find anything. There was something in Rockville but that's a long drive and I knew commuting to something like that wouldn't work out. Then I gave up and just went to look at my old style. I found a Jow Ga Kung Fu school in Columbia. It was about a half hour or 40 minutes away. They were offering online classes over zoom to keep things going.

So, unexpectedly I found myself emailing a Kung Fu school about getting the kids lessons.

After some back and forth and a zoom meeting we did a trial lesson for the kids and wound up  signing up. We signed ourselves up too.

I've missed Kung Fu. In a weird way Kung Fu was my identifying characteristic in high school. I attended classes and did some demos and read Kung Fu magazines and watched Kung Fu movies. Kathryn did it too. In college I took David to my school in the way some people introduce boyfriends to their families.

Here is a picture of Kathryn and me showing off our splits (Kung Fu flexibility there) from that time. 

Here (even younger)  on this day.

David still had his uniform and it still fit!

We got our new uniforms and started up Kung Fu at the Columbia school. I am super happy about this. Despite their faces in this picture the kids are enjoying it and David is loving it.

We started transforming the house into a good place to kick and punch and learn some forms.

We had a very quite family only 4th of July tie dye.

I made a jello flag and we had a good cookout.

We set off some fireworks. The next door neighbors had some good ones and we enjoyed each others shows. Everything at home this year. the town display being canceled for Covid.

We wore Red White and Blue

You can see behind us that there are azaleas where they used to be.

I chose a stupidly hot day to do a big yardwork project.

I chopped down and dug up all the azaleas. 

I did this for two reasons. First they were old and the blooms were not what they should be but more importantly I wanted to replace them with edibles.

The figs I put in last year made it through last winter and were thriving. I'd been trying to think of what would look nice and go with figs and hopefully hold up the Christmas lights in the winter.

We went to the local nursery D.R. Snells and with an eye to my inexperience and climate change chose some herbs to put in the front.

I'm going to try to make the front walk smell amazing and produce lavender, thyme and rosemary.

I had a Covid exposure and went to stick a swab up my nose at CVS. It was not a pleasant sensation and the anxiety that went along with the whole thing was not great either. I worked from home for 10 days waiting for the results to come back (negative thank God).