Friday June 5th was the official last day for teachers in my district. I wrapped up my data and blog plus worked on some grant related classes.
The weekend was a hint of summer vacation with some work mixed in! Our PTO president and I worked hard to move dirt to the raised beds and plant half the school garden on Saturday morning. This was slowly finished on Sunday and Monday nights with the help of my husband and children.
On Saturday afternoon, Cadia was just not happy unless she was being held. She is nearly 30 pounds and I had already had my "workout" for the day after working in the garden in the morning. So into the stroller she went. I decided to pull a few weeds by my back door since the flower beds (untouched since 2017) were starting to look a bit overgrown. By the end of the day, I had found railroad ties on the edges of the beds, had my husband help thin down the HUGE hosta plants, and just puttered around.
Fast forward to Sunday...I decided to move to another "easy" section of the mammoth flower beds around the entire back of the house and sunporch. There are HUGE rocks all through this bed which probably were pretty or useful in the original vision that we never saw! I moved a few rocks, pulled some more weeds, and then found SLATE tiles/chunks. No major plan or ideas. Just improvement was the goal.
Once upon time, there was slate in several beautiful flower beds. Not sure when because it is all under several INCHES of mud and dirt. Last year, I found them in my pachysandra and poison ivy patch. This turned into a meandering path to my back barn (and a horrible case of poison ivy!). This year, a few pieces from a different "flower bed" turned into a PATIO. It is not done "right" or complete. But I have a patio under my picnic table.
Here is the updated patio picture
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Here the patio...I have added to it all week so look for a better picture later today! I keep finding more pieces of slate deeper and deeper in the dirt.
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Plus I kept thinking...where am I going to put my mini home garden. The spot from last year was not sunny enough and NOT close to water. I did not "love" this spot. I picked a second spot, but two gas lines and electrical wires left us uncertain about rota tilling that spot.
So where I found the slate is flat, all dug up from a sewer project, close to a spigot, and not too easy to mow so this became the ACTUAL home to my garden for 2020. Thanks to an awesome friend, it is rotatilled. My daughter and her fiance helped to plant my seedling starters. Plus I keep working with that area of the flower bed. Sounds like relaxing fun...right? Here is the before garden picture:
Here is the after:
Not done but improving
So the weekend was spent in my garden/yard/jungle as well as at the school garden!
THANK YOU TO MY FAMILIES WHO ARE WATERING OUR SCHOOL GARDEN this week! The pictures and stories that they shared made me so happy throughout this long week. I am excited for our school garden this year...
Fast forward to Monday. This week was my contractual library work days week. So "Summer Vacation" could not really start yet.
What do we do? LOTS of different tasks. Luckily, I get to work with another awesome librarian. She and I are opposites, but we both compliment each other. We started shelving several hundred books on Monday and weeding almost 700 chapter books. It is so hard to let them go, but just like a closet...out with "old" and in with the new. We save classics, award winners, student favorites, and other books for a variety of reasons. Some books are just done with their useful life on our library shelves. Then we had to take them out of the system.
Next was removing old magazines, encyclopedias, and other library items. STEAM needed more shelf space for storage.
Then we moved onto my LEAST favorite job - INVENTORYING. This means touching each book (over 10000 books) and scanning the barcode and then listen for the beep sound. A pleasant beep means all good. If you get the most annoying "ERRRH" sound then you have to walk to the computer and check what happened. Sometimes it is in the wrong place or that it might have not gotten checked in correctly or the barcode is no longer working. Then you go back to where you left off and repeat.
Erin and I did this in record time this year - about 2 days! Then we rewarded ourselves with ordering new books using Scholastic dollars from Book Fair profits and our library budget. Plus we added in additional new books from Scholastic. The Scholastic order got split in the chaos of COVID in March. Adding new books means barcoding with stickers, adding them to our database system, creating spine labels, and stamping the book. It is a multi-step process!
Then we worked on the STEAM area as well. Sorting new items from our Mobile Science Grant and then CLEAN OUT. I am a "saver" and my partner is NOT. So we teamed up for a morning of cleaning out STEAM on Friday. It was our most productive week together in our joint roles and now I am looking forward to my days in July/August!
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| Trash pile |
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| STEAM is ready for a new floor and more clean up |
So that is summer vacation week 1! We missed a couple trips to the beach with cousins. But overall, I am farther ahead minus some grant work and now summer vacation can really START. It feels weird to not have library activities and tons of running to do...but maybe I will finally get more items off the "TO DO" list!
Here is what my children and I are reading:
Together as a family: We have ready book 1 which is the "The Magician's Nephew" and mostly through "The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe" Then 5 more books!
My 12 year old is working on "I Survived"
My 10 year old is working on "Choose Your Own Adventure"
My 7 year old is working on "Sophie Mouse"
Have a great week 2 of summer vacation! Find ways to celebrate and enjoy your time at home. Look for new pictures from the garden. Plus I will find myself a book to read :)
