(vintage postcard from california)

the end of the school year is always just BANANAS… there are so many band concerts and dance performances and award nights and TESTS and teacher appreciation weeks and concluding events from activities both in and outside of school that it is REALLY hard to keep track of it all. some days we’ve had more than one thing… racing from lucy’s hip hop performance to theo’s band banquet (i’d messed up the time for that one and thought we had an hour in between… we DIDN’T. the band thing was so interesting though because the first part was a dinner in the cafeteria and i felt like an anthropologist observing all the different groups of kids - what they were wearing, how they interacted, the ease of the seniors versus the restraint of the underclassmen… generally, they looked a lot like we did in the late 80’s - high waisted jeans with big hightop sneakers and thick socks, giant sweatshirts… we had bigger bangs and more colorful make up while they were sporting MUCH smaller tank tops and faces twinkling with “highlighter” but it was the same general vibe and i loved seeing them.)

(here i am the last week of school senior year 1987 in the courtyard with my dear friend, christian… today’s kids would NEVER wear a tank top with that much fabric!)

(this is how most of the boulder high girls - AND my middle schooler lu (she tells me it’s “her body” and she does “not consent” to me washing her face… HAY SEUS - do their make up - adding sparkle and shine all down their noses - we were always trying to get rid of any shine… but we DID have crazy, intense blue, green and purple liner and mascara! lu’s mascara is bit more heavy handed than this girls’… she’s been veering into tammy faye levels of application.

photo credit: flickr)

so i am always a little off at the end of the school year (i actually ran out of COFFEE last weekend, which is an indication of how discombobulated i am - usually i keep several bags in reserve and sunday morning i GASPED in horror as i opened the cupboard. PRAISE JESUS i had some instant “travel coffee” in my make up bag or i don’t know what would have become of me) trying desperately not to miss something (i don’t know WHY it all has to be shoved into the last two weeks of school!) and this year mother nature also weighed in and gave us a giant blizzard that started friday night. mind you, everything has been in bloom for WEEKS already - my lilacs and apple tree were in full blossom, the leaves were out on my big maple tree and i was well into my seasonal allegra because the pollen this year has been particularly intense. thursday afternoon it was EIGHTY-SIX degrees… the temperature dropped over fifty degrees in one day. i just NEVER get used to the roller coaster weather here. we got over a foot of heavy, WET snow. (i AM grateful for the moisture and i hope it fends off more fires - it was also VERY windy on thursday, which is super unnerving after all the wildfires and town fires we’ve had.) saturday morning i tromped around my garden brooming snow off the trees so the branches could bounce back up and hopefully not break off - one big one DID crack off one of my cottonwood trees in the middle of the night…luckily it just landed in the grass.) i think most everything will recover except our poppies… they just got pummeled with snow and when i tried to broom them it seemed like i was breaking the stems so finally i gave up and am hoping that when it melts - it was SIXTY on saturday - they will be okay.

(i keep these in my travel stuff in case i end up in hotel where i can’t figure out the coffee machine)

(the weather in boulder, minus the beach of course!)

i LOVE my poppies. i am not a natural gardener but they were the one kind of flower i wanted planted when we moved into this house. they are, of course, the state flower of california and make me feel like i have a little bit of home in my front yard. we get so excited when the first one pops… usually for about two weeks we eagerly check each morning to see how many more have opened and count how many we have left. they don’t last too long but they are totally worth it. i am so sad that a LATE MAY blizzard cut short this years’ batch… only five of them had made an appearance before the snow. just another example of how upside down the world feels right now and a big reminder to really appreciate those first few poppies…

(the morning our very FIRST poppy popped in boulder)

(we had LOADS of poppies during corona lockdown)

(one sad little poppy at the beginning of the blizzard… i realize now that i should have covered them like a responsible flower caregiver…)

to read more about our poppies click here