Day 10.238: Back to school

Here are the kids on the first day of 10th, 8th and 5th grades:

For Exile #4 and E5N1 that was today - for Exile #3 it was last Thursday (although today was her first day of regular classes). Any suggestion that she should pose for another "first day" picture today was met with this response:

As far as I have gathered, the day seems to have gone well for all of them.

Day 10.237: Viles Arboretum

After a rainy evening curtailed our anniversary outing yesterday, we were pleased to have a dry sunny day to end the holiday weekend. We had a lovely visit to Viles Arboretum in Augusta where we saw trees and other plants and sculpture and even a few animals. It looked something like this:

Some of the other plants we saw included an apple tree called "Canadian Strawberry", some lovely berries and a lot of hostas. We also discovered that most American Chestnuts were wiped out in Maine during the first half of the 20th century by a fungal disease. The arboretum has a small plantation trying to recover the situation a bit. We also found out that the seed pods are known as urchins.

We also saw a monarch (and some other butterflies), a painted turtle, a broad-winged hawk and - spotted by the ever eagle-eyed Exile #4 - a praying mantis (probably a Carolina mantis). The owl was a sculpture - but sneaked into my animal collage!

Day 10.236: Exile #2's Sunday Column #171

Exile #2 writes...

Twenty three years and many adventures ago, on a slightly rainy day in Oxford, Exile #1 and I got married. Appropriately enough, it was raining today too, but it didn't stop us getting out and enjoying some very tasty Chinese food in Portland. We did decide to head home and watch a movie though instead of wandering the soggy streets. But it is Labor Day tomorrow and even Exile #1 has the day off, so we can enjoy the evening, knowing we have one more day before normality (and school resumes). Happy Anniversary, Exile #1!

Day 10.235: New Yorkers from New Hampshire

Our friends H, M & C from our years in New York visited today from their vacation in New Hampshire. We had a lovely day that flew by - the only time I got my camera out was during a tense game of Suspend. Fortunately, we remembered to take some more photos as they were getting ready to leave.

Day 10.234: End of the summer

It's the beginning of Labor Day weekend - the unofficial and generally practical end of summer. Exile #3 had one day of school this week but all the kids will be in school on Tuesday.

Last weekend, while Exile #3 was dancing for the seagull, E5N1 jumped around the rocks and gathered periwinkle shells, but Exile #4 mostly just sat and looked at the sea. She was quite content and quite photogenic:

Day 10.233: Oh yes...cicadas

I really thought I was done with our camping trip recap - but then I remembered - cicadas!

When we arrived at our camp site, we spotted that two of the nearby trees had the shed skins of cicada nymphs about five feet up them. Here is one of them:

After our first trip to the beach we spotted this (dead) adult cicada on the boardwalk:

But most iconic is the sound (unless we're mistaken and another insect makes this sound - there are a lot of insect sounds...):

(be sure to listen - there is no visual action in this video)

Day 10.232: Surprises to come home to

Most of the surprises you come home to after a week away are not good ones. In our case, the nasty surprise was that we had left the fridge creating ice cubes which had taken over the freezer section in a way that required multiple chipping tools to remedy.

The better news was that Exile #2's little container garden was in full swing. I took this that day and there has been more since we got back: