Ramblings of a rural(ish) geek

as it does.

It rained most of last week, and they tell us that it will do so this week as well, so the strawberries are still not weeded. boo. It is not currently raining, but we got an inch of rain over the last two days, and almost two inches Fri-Sat, so the ground is too soft to work. There was a threat of inches of snow on Saturday night, but the upper air temperatures warmed up more than they expected, so we just got cold rain. I guess that's better.

Despite the rain and chill, the second flush of daffodils (those farther away from the house, or later blooming) have bloomed, and the species tulips in the side garden are open when there's sun -- so they were open on Sunday, but I haven't seen them since. The orange-red double tulips in the deckside bad are half open, but they don't like the rain/chill either. The crabapple in the front yard is showing lots of flower buds, and has a very faint haze of pink as some of them are just starting to open. Later this week, when it warms up, they should pop.

We (all!) had dinner with Mum last week. She was in town to catch a flight for a mystery trip, and will be returning to NC later this week. DB was setting up for a show, but we were able to schedule dinner late enough that he could skip out and join us.

SR has applied for an Australian permanent resident visa. She says she'll be back "sooner rather than later" to sort through the stuff in her room, but there's more paperwork to be done for that amendment. (she had limited space when she packed for Taipei, and did think that she'd be back in the US in a couple of years.)

In FCB news, you'd think we had a concert coming up or something. Lots of in-depth work on a couple of pieces, and hit some of the rougher spots in others. Also got the first of a few joint pieces for the Harrison Closing Ceremony and HHS Graduation. We still don't have a dress code for those events, but as they're at least four weeks away, I'm not too concerned. I expect that the Closing will be 'dress nicely' rather than 'concert blacks', as it's an Alumni band, and graduation the same. The concert on the 19th of May (at Kirk in the Hills in Bloomfield Hills!) starts off a spate of performances - concert May 19, rehearsal May 20, performance June 1, rehearsal June 3, performance June 9, rehearsal June 10, performance June 13, rehearsal June 17, performance June 23. eeesh! And the Livingston County Community Band starts rehearsals for their summer session on May 28 -- the new dental hygenist plays bassoon with them, and recruited me to play at least the summer. They have three weeks of rehearsals and then play in Brighton/Howell/Hartland through mid-August.

Still in the thumb splint. Doc has agreed with an MRI, so that's ordered for this weekend (xrays showed no damage to bone and only minimal joint degeneration, so there's that). Still waiting for the specialist to call back WRT scheduling an appointment with him. Small neoprene splint not sufficient for everyday wear, but okay(ish) for rehearsal/concert. The S word has been mentioned, by both OT and doc.

DB working Nutcracker, now at a different venue. No uber-annoying auditorium manager, which is a plus. He has submitted his 2 week notice, with an addendum that it's entirely the new auditorium manager's fault, and that he'll be more than willing to come back when the AM is replaced. He says he just can*not* work with the new guy. (and it's not because he's new, it's because he's inappropriate for the job. He came from a university auditorium where he was the assistant, and is not suited for being the boss at a HS venue.) The outside clients don't like him, either, and have not been particularly shy about letting the administration know. DB came home from the Nutcracker stage rehearsal absolutely incensed.

Concert Sunday with bonus change in soloist, as original soloist has a family emergency to deal with. {sarcastic voice} Gosh, it's too bad there's not a university with a strong music program anywhere nearby, nor one where the band administration knows people {end sarcasm} The new soloist is an associate professor at UMich, playing mostly jazz and contemporary small-group music. I hear that they have cancelled the last two rehearsals for December -- which is good, because I was going to skip them anyway.

I've been filling the birdfeeders, although not as much as I might expect -- despite being cold, we've not had a lot of snow or wind, so the birds can get to the grains and seeds in the fields and on trees/shrubberies. The pond has frozen over (again), so the birdbath has been getting emptied.

Let's see:

I did not cut back the milkweed -- most of the seedpods still have seeds in them, so I'm leaving them up for the birdies. I did go and cut back the beardtongue and Chinese lanterns in the NW garden, leaving up the stonecrop and the Russian sage which still have seeds.

We have had a couple of hard freezes, but they haven't lasted very long. Temps are supposed to be warm for at least another week, so the pump gets to stay in the pond for a little while longer. DB is muttering about how 'kids these days' have it easy -- the village holiday parade is Saturday, and it's supposed to be somewhere in the 40s(F) for the parade. The valve body on his sousaphone froze two of the four years he did that parade, and SR had icicles off her sax at least one year. (I think she marched in the first two parades - I don't remember exactly when they started the parade.)

The birds have not been eating a lot of birdseed - consumption usually goes down in November unless it's snowy or very cold. Once the migrating birds have gone through, all that we have are the ones wintering over, and there's seeds and fruits available until it snows and/or freezes and stays frozen.

I wound up making a cranberry bundt cake for Thanksgiving dessert, modifying a raisin pound cake recipe as necessary to fit the ingredients I had on hand.

(I do have three things! It's a post!)

Finished DB's coat & vest on Friday. Well, I sewed the buttons on the vest Saturday AM, but that was 25 minutes. The handwork on the coat took 3 hours -- knotting/clipping/running ends, sewing buttons, etc. Part of that is that the coat is just ssooo big -- a lined calf length duster with a capelet and bucket cuffs on the sleeves -- that it's hard to handle.

Finished my jacket (bright red sateen cutaway tailed coat) Saturday evening, but I wasn't in 'must-get-it-done-NOW' mode or I would have finished it earlier. I realised on Wednesday that I didn't really have a suitable white shirt to wear underneath -- all of my white blouses have white buttons! But I do have a white polo shirt with dark shell buttons, so I wore that. I had to borrow white gloves from the bell choir box at church because my box of costume gloves (doesn't everyone have one of those?) had nearly everything except short white. There's no lack of gloves in the box at church -- the dad of one of the members is a mall Santa, and has access to lots of barely worn white cotton 'elf' gloves every January. I used to borrow short white gloves from the kids, but DB hasn't marched in 3 years, and it's been 5 for SR. Their band gloves are long gone (not that they're very white by the end of the season).

The Halloween concert went pretty well, I thought. Only a few bobbles, but nothing we didn't recover from fairly cleanly. The Looney Tunes Overture still bothered me - I had the TSax part memorised in college, and the BSax part is quite different. We just got notice that tonight's rehearsal is cancelled due to a "building issue", which is probably related to the broken water main that's had that corner of Farmington under a Boil Water advisory for a week.

SR is settled in Melbourne, Australia now. She got her first Care package last week (well, and she asked me to send her some of the dress trousers hanging in her closet - she wore jeans/capris most of the time in Taipei).

I've actually been watching the World Series -- not nearly as bad coverage as in the past, and the games have been really good.

Now they're on to the south side of the roof. (Thursday saw no roofing done, as it rained just enough to make and keep everything slippery.) The south side is easier (no dormers or porch roof), but there's a lot of vent stacks to work around, and a bunch of roof/attic vents that are being removed so there are holes to be patched. Still, they should finish today. Sunday when they were telling us that we were going to get storms, J and I pulled the ladders down. Then the storms were somewhat less severe than originally predicted (to be fair, the Weather Service downgraded the predictions as the day went on). However, we got a lovely out-of-nowhere storm with 30mph winds on Monday afternoon, so it was not wasted effort.

Saturday, J put in gable vents. Those things let a lot of air move through, and just doing that should cool the upstairs quite a bit. Then the ridge vents go on, and those should help even more. Putting the gable vents in included bonus 'can you climb this 30' ladder and pound on this for me' action -- J was creeping around in the attic (120F, dust & fiberglass everywhere), so I can't complain too much. Still, not my favorite thing to do.

Monday, we packed up the car with two saxophones, three music stands, two instrument stands and three people, and wandered off to Franklin (MI) to play in the Brigadoon band. The Franklin Community Band officially disbanded about 8-10 years ago due to dwindling numbers, but a friend from the Farmington band recruits a small group to play for Franklin's Memorial Day celebration. I took both the tenor and the bari because I didn't know which they'd need more. DB came along with a tuba mouthpiece -- it was surprisingly easy to get him to do so "hey, d'you wanna come play an old sousaphone? It'll only be an hour or so." "sure.". J came along to take pictures. (I saw him chatting with a reporter, so DB and I may wind up in the local paper.) I played tenor sax, and played TSax, baritone (treble clef), and 2nd Cornet parts, depending on what I had music for and what was needed more. In retrospect, I should have played bari on one of the marches -- it has a tricky tuba part, and DB was flailing, and it's one that I transcribed the bari part from the tuba part a few years ago. It's been two years since DB's played sousaphone, and other than that piece he did really really well. He said the hardest part was getting used to the weight -- the Franklin sousaphone is probably 80 years old, and is tightly wound plated brass. He said that he wouldn't want to march with it. :) (I suspect it's more tightly wound than current fiberglass sousaphones so that it's easier to wear.)

This year's recipient of "I don't remember planting this" is five oriental poppies in the side garden. They haven't bloomed yet, so I don't know what color they are.

There are bitty frogs in the pond -- at least half a dozen, all about an inch long.

The cranes seem to have moved in -- they're in the yard almost all day. Their poo is not as bad as goose or dog, but I still don't want to step in it. The frogs stay hidden when the cranes are near the pond, but otherwise they don't care much.

DB has been working in the theater spaces at the schools for the last couple of weeks, and worked sound for the first few days of VBS this week. Bad timing on someone's part -- he'd have been willing to work all of VBS if it hadn't been the same week he was sorting/building/cleaning at school. J filled in on the days DB wasn't there -- he'd have been there anyway on Wednesday, as a tree branch came down on the powerline that goes by the church and the entire corner (including us!) was without power. J went over with the generators so they'd have lights and sound.

I have more plants for the garden, and a plan for where to put them, but probably won't do that until next week, when it cools down a bit. Transplant shock plus heat shock is a good way to kill a plant.

SR leaves for Taiwan on Sunday -- she'll be there for at least a year, teaching English (vocabulary & conversational) at a 'cram school' in Taipei.

There is one more FCB performance this season (Monday, 7pm, Riley Park in downtown Farmington), then most of the band gets six weeks off -- a bunch of us are going up to Band Camp at Interlochen, though. I have music and bins to transport to the concert, and may have custody of some auxiliary percussion until September if we can't get in to Harrison after the concert.

The state of the habitat in the yard:

• two tree frogs, one toad (at least -- that's the different calls we hear);
• indigo bunting, cardinal, oriole, blue jay, gold- and house- finch, barn swallow, three or four species of sparrows, hummingbird, red-winged blackbird, cowbird, crows, downy woodpecker, northern flicker, hairy woodpecker, mourning doves;
• the milkweed and the sea holly and the penstemon are attracting lots of bees and butterflies;
• the short orange lilies bloomed last week, the taller red ones bloomed earlier this week, the pink and white ones in the front flowerbed bloomed about a week before the ones I moved last fall, the second wave of alliums (smaller flowers) is just now starting to open, the blanketflower and sedum are blooming as well.

When it's too wet to work in the garden (which has been most of the last couple of weeks), I've been sorting out the workroom, and culling fabric and yarn. My goal is to get everything onto the shelves I have, so that the only boxes down there are the ones for the rummage sale.

The weird weather (for June -- it's not bad for April) has been wreaking havoc with FCB performances and grad parties. Last Monday's outreach gig was cancelled due to storms, and then Saturday's gig was washed out entirely. I probably wouldn't have played it anyway -- too chilly and damp for the various creaky parts of me. I rather *like* moving, yanno. There were three grad parties on the schedule anyway. Monday's gig has been rescheduled (afaik) for July 6, so there's that.

DB and SR have both received their diplomas and transcripts. DB is off to community college in the fall, SR is doing the job hunt thing, with possible grad school if nothing shows up by December or so.

So the jacket fit and is approved, so he's actually wearing his jacket today, not J's. So that's good.

The boots, otoh? They're too small. And it's -3F in the back yard, and all I want to do is stay home where it's warm. (I have a cold, and my back really dislikes this extra-cold weather.) But he's got to ride the bus tomorrow, and would really like boots that fit -- he got dropped off this morning for Jazz Band rehearsal. As usual, it's warmer in town, and the wind is far less than they had been predicting, so school as usual today. Many schools east and south of us are closed today. AA cancelled at 6am(!) due to "transportation issues" -- whether this means that buses wouldn't start or that the heaters wouldn't be able to keep up with the door openings, I dunno. (-15F wind chill cancels school, at -10F (air temp) the buses won't start, 10F means indoor recess for K-5.)

Must go feed the birds, but see above paragraph about cold. At least the birdbath isn't frozen -- the wind's not been blowing hard enough to do that.

It was 3F when DB went off to school. The thermometers here say it's now 1F in bright sun, the local weatherunderground site is saying -8F (-22C). J drove to work in SR's car, as the van is at the shop waiting on a wheel bearing -- they probably won't even get to it until tomorrow, but it can sit in their lot as well as here, it's not going to be driven anywhere anyway, and this way SR's car can go into a garage and actually get driven while she's home on break.

The FCB holiday concert was yesterday. It was fun, although I could have played better (missing Monday's rehearsal really hurt). The Mass Choir from the Community Church of Christ (Detroit) joined us for the finale, which was a blast (not quite literally) to play. And now I have three weeks off from that to rest my hand. (I still have rehearsal and performance for church, but that's not quite as hard.)

We went out in the snow on Saturday for kidpix. There are people in my holiday pictures! Sheesh. I guess this means I should start writing the holiday letter.

There's hoarfrost glittering on the trees (pretty!), and the birds are all fluffed up. I don't want to go outside and feed the birds, but I really should sometime today. I'll wait for it to warm up a little. I also have errands to run (something about snow on Saturday and a concert on Sunday meant that I didn't get anything done over the weekend).

[ETA:The black cat, who has been curled up in the warm spot left behind when I got out of bed, has now moved into the sunbeam. I can go make my bed the rest of the way!]

Choir Sunday, then senior center hymn sing*, with bonus "um. Could you lead us in the singing?" sigh. "sure", figuring that a small congregation of senior citizens is unlikely to come up with a hymn from the hymnal that the pianist or I don't know. I was right, although the arrangement of Swing Low, Sweet Chariot in the Methodist hymnal is different than the one in the Pilgrim Hymnal, and I flailed a bit more than I like to.

*: it was supposed to be a wind trio+piano, but wind players kept having family scheduling issues, so it wound up being me+Esme+piano. With 20 minutes of rehearsal and a balky octave key. such fun.

Soon, it's off to the HS for Fall Echoes. We don't have to go quite as early as usual, as DB is already there for play rehearsal, but if we want to get decent seating we should leave soon. I just got back home, after spending two hours retrieving props from various theater storage areas all over town.