Where Did Shaela Go?

It has been an eventful couple of weeks.  After overlapping visits by my mother-in-law, mother, and grandmother-in-law, N and I took the boys down to Virginia to a huge cabin N's mother rented at Fairy Stones State Park.  (Which, by the way, was everything a state park ought to be.  I liked it a lot.)  Then R went south with N's parents while N and I took A home.  I quickly washed laundry, repacked, made a quick trip out to the garden, then A and I flew to Omaha and drove down to my sister's farm in Missouri.  (Sadly, they are experiencing a nasty drought right now.  It was more than 100 degrees and very, very dry for most of my visit.)  Meanwhile N worked for a few days, then flew to Louisiana, where he met his parents and R to watch his brother's graduation.  (Go K!)  A and I flew home Sunday, while N and R drove home, arriving about 3pm Monday.

All in all, it was a crazy couple of weeks and we are happy to be home, though we did have buckets of fun and my sister's new baby twins are just amazingly precious.

Did I mention that our phone line was struck by lightning two days before we left?  They fixed the line while we were away, but it also fried our phone line, phone jack, router, and a computer.  There is even a nickel-sized black spot on the floor of the office where a phone cord split open and electric current jumped down to our floor.  (There is a metal conduit running under that room...)  Since we returned, N rigged up some very sketchy phone junctions in the basement, I replaced the phone jack, and I finally got Verizon to send me a new router.  N's working on the franken-puter.  Luckily it was just a cobbled-together desktop he built from bits of old computers, so he's mostly just trying to salvage the hard drive.  (Which is good, because he says that's about all that's left.)  We have been putting off installing new phone lines down in the crawlspace for more than a year, and now I suppose that will have to get done soon.  As it stands right now we can either have internet access, or phone access, but not both.  (Sorry, if you are trying to call me right now.)

So, lots has gone on in the garden that has not been reported here.  I've been there every day since I got back, cleaning up, watering, and hurrying to finish the fall planting.  R has been a huge help, and I think he is starting to genuinely enjoy the garden.  (Partly because he suddenly conceived of the notion that the garden paths are kind of like a maze!)  More news to come.