A Relaxing Week with the Grandkids.

6-21-07 VERMONT: Where to start? A couple days after I got back from Montana, Judy left for San José to bring Eoin and Joey back to NJ to spend a week with us. She and the boys arrived Sunday night, and Monday we all came to Vermont. They immediately loved the pond and began harassing frogs, crayfish and newts, rode in the rowboat, fed horses, played with the dogs and took it all in. Tuesday we took the sailboat, without sails, and motored around Lake Fairlee, had a picnic on the water and watched the camps prepping for the kids, dinner at Murphy’s and dessert at B&J. Wednesday we had thunderstorms in the AM, and during the previous night, so we went to the Montshire where two of us ran from exhibit to exhibit excitedly trying everything while the other two of us displayed more restraint. The ball-bearing roller-coasters were a big hit. The water park left two of us pretty well soaked. Then to the market and home for dinner. Phew. Thursday we hiked to Janet’s to see the llamas, ferrets and her other animals, and then back through the woods along Lord Brook, around Steve’s sheep pasture and off to VINS, Vermont Institute of Natural Science, for the raptor show. Half way through we had a pretty violent thunderstorm which got Joey upset. Supper at home after a stop at D&W. Tomorrow’s activities will be organized around the dishwasher repairman’s visit, the DVD also doesn’t work.

Otherwise, we had 1.55 inches of rain when we arrived and another 0.2 inches and more today. The new planting survived with the help of Eliza’s frequent watering. There are moles all over the place and they might have destroyed the smallest elm tree.

In bloom: SHORT HILLS-elderberry, native rhodo, asian holly, hydrangea. VERMONT-solomon seal, columbine, azalea, daylily, stephenandra, daisy, iris-bearded, siberian, and flags, meadowsweet, peony, geranium and cranesbill, rogersia, wentworth viburnum, dianthus, mt. Bluet, lupin, hesperis, valarian, roses, ladys mantle, spirea, weglea, baptisia, diablo.

Roses and Iris.

Rogersia.

Three Princes.